How It All Started

I wrote The Shapeshifter’s Gambit when I was 20 years old, a poor college student with far more enthusiasm than skill. I let a friend read it as I wrote it. I’ll be honest… it was a hot mess. That version was twice as long as the published version, riddled with irrelevant subplots, gaping plot holes, and grammar issues that made it barely readable. I never intended to publish the manuscript. It was just an exercise in creativity during my free time.

The manuscript lived on my hard drive as a WordPerfect file. (For those too young to know, WordPerfect was the granddaddy of word processors that refused to die.) Every time I upgraded computers, I transferred it along, keeping it alive without really thinking about it.

Fast forward twenty-five years. I have a wife and children, and the novel was largely forgotten. One night, my younger daughter (then 18) came to me, excited after finishing Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. We talked for hours about plot, characters, and fantasy worlds.

Near the end, I mentioned that I had written a fantasy novel when I was her age. She immediately asked if she could read it.

I said, “No.”

Of course, she asked why not. I explained I was embarrassed by the lack of polish. I thought the conversation was over. It was not.

Over the next week, she asked repeatedly about reading it. Eventually, I relented. I warned her it was terrible and unpolished. I converted the WordPerfect file to Microsoft Word (a Herculean task by itself) and printed the manuscript. Two reams of paper—about 1,000 pages—landed on her desk. I walked away, expecting to never hear about it again.

Later that night, she came to my room and said, “Dad, the first chapter is great! I can’t get enough of Valko. He’s my kind of villain.”

I was mildly proud, but insisted the next chapters would make her lose interest. Instead, she finished the book in three days. When she reached the end, she burst into my room, brimming with excitement, and asked the question that would change everything:

“What happens next?”

Those three words set me on a journey to write the following five books in the series, starting with The Demon’s Reckoning. My daughter insisted I finish the series and publish it for the world.

Now, with this first series complete, I’ve already started my next story. The journey has been gratifying, and it all began with one simple question: “What happens next?”

As long as readers keep asking, I’ll keep writing.