Small Magics
Thomas Flarety # 1
By- Erik Buchanan
Genre- Fantasy
Published By- Dragon Moon Press
In a world where no one really believes in magic, one man is stealing all that's left... Erik Buchanan's first novel introduces Thomas Flarety, whose first visit home from school in four years brings him face to face with a juggler who can create a ball of light from air, a Bishop who can control men with his voice, and a plot to steal what magic is left in the world. Before long, Thomas is thrust into a nightmare of betrayal and murder, where all that he has is threatened by a power he does not understand, and where learning to master a power he did not know he had may be the only way he can survive.
Welcome Erik Buchanan to the blog today. He'll be sharing the story of how the Thomas Flarety Novels came to be!
The Thomas Flarety novels came first out of a reaction to the stereotypical fantasy trope: there is powerful magic and it changes the world. This led me to wonder what would a fantasy world be like where there was very little magic, and what was there was not particularly powerful or useful, unless it was in the wrong hands..
The second piece of it came from reading too many stories where the lead character is perfectly suited to win the day. I wanted to see what would happen when a very intelligent person thrown into something that is completely out of their life experience. Think Hamlet seeing the ghost but without all the weird family relationships.
In Small Magics, Thomas Flarety is well-educated, and a good fencer, but that doesn’t help him in the slightest when his father throws him out of the house, or when he discovers magic. He is forced to rely on his wits and to embrace his new reality if he is going to survive. In the process he is also forced to grow up -- through change, through loss, and through making tough choices.
For Cold Magics, I wanted something quite different, but I still wanted Thomas out of his depth. So I pulled him out of the world he knew and sent him into another, much more dangerous place -- a Duke’s court in the northern City of Frostmire. Cold Magics was an exploration of the effects of war those who are fight it, as well as an exploration of privilege and politics. We how those politics would manifest, and happens when our heroes get caught up in them.
True Magics was also about war and politics, but in a very different way. It was inspired partly by historical stories of “gown versus town” battles at medieval university towns, but also by the rise we see today in intolerance for difference and the desire for supremacy, both political and religious. In True Magics we see students battle over whether Eileen should be admitted into an all-male academy, while in the streets the church and king battle for control of the hearts and minds of their citizens, and for control of magic. Thomas is trapped in the middle, trying to help Eileen win her dream, while at the same time trying to prevent the city and the Academy he loves from being torn apart.
I had a great time writing this series and I hope all those who read it will enjoy it as much as I do.
Erik Buchanan started reading at age two and has been hooked ever since. He met the Hardy Boys when he was six, Bilbo Baggins when he was eight, and cried for an hour when he was ten because that really shouldn't have happened to Frodo toward the end of The Two Towers. It was also at age 10 that Erik thought, "maybe I could write a story."
Before he was 12 Erik had attempted a book, an epic poem in rhyming couplets and various bits of stories and poetry. In high school he kept writing, and managed to create an impressive portfolio of maudlin teen-age angst-filled poetry that has thankfully not survived.
It was in his last year of high school, in the creative writing class of Mr. Robert Currie, a great English teacher, writer and poet, where Erik where he had the first vague notions of "being a writer." He kept writing through university, even as the theatre sunk its teeth and claws into him. He came out of university with a B.F.A., a pair of black belts, and a desire to be on the stage.
Erik moved to Toronto and spent thirteen years pursuing (but never quite catching) a career as an actor and a fight director. He wrote his first novel in a small attic room in a downtown rooming house, sitting on a cushion on the floor with his laptop perched on a box in front of him. Shortly after, he wrote "Small Magics," then "Cold Magics."
Erik is has just finished writing "City of Phantoms," a young adult novel set in Victorian England. He is now writing the third book in the Magics series while he edits "the King Below" (another fantasy novel he has written) and "City of Phantoms," and still works on that zombie movie.
Links-
Website- http://erikbuchanan.ca/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/erik_buchanan
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