The Story

Moving to a new city can seem like the end of an era, or even tantamount to a life lost. Giving up the home and friends you knew for a new setting filled with new people you want nothing to do with? It’s torture, or a personal teenage hell.

And then the fun happens. You find out you secretly possess the ability to perform magic, or that your biological family are actually royalty or creatures from myth. An ancient city of wonders may reside beneath your feet, or a freak accident leaves you with ironic or poignant super powers. You make a choice to accept a destiny you never knew but always dreamed of, and save the day thanks to Fate’s guiding hand.

Now, what happens if none of that applies?

What happens if you nearly get killed - twice - by the world you’re trying to avoid, and on the first day of school? What if Fate keeps knocking at your door despite your protests and surprisingly sound reasoning?

What if Fate lied?

Well, you might do things a little differently than Christine Villeneuve, but hers is the story we’re here to tell. After a move to a new city upends her comfortable, familiar life, Christine is more than content to keep to herself and fight acclimation... Until her life is upended by a crashing military robot, fights at school and with her mother, and falling comet calling out to her before it nearly kills her. Now swept up into a world of super-powered thieves, adventures around the world and beyond the stars, and with the help of a verbally-challenged dragon and a premiere school for training Powered young women, Christine may not have a choice but to accept her new surroundings and saddle up alongside her newfound confidants. But as talk of prophecy and destiny swirl around her, is she truly the herald of change others believe her to be, or has she been burdened with a fate that was never hers to have, caught in a scheme of friend and foe far bigger than the world she once knew?

Background

Sometime around the year 2000, knee-deep in a newly-installed cable package and access to the family computer’s dial-up, I began crafting fan-characters to interact with those I saw on tv and read about. Over time, the characters began to evolve in their own right and presented me with a unique question: What happens to these characters - created for a single purpose - once the show was over? Once the book was closed or the theatre emptied, how did they interact? What became of their lives, their adventures? How would they interact with each other, with each other’s worlds? With a common threat?

Looking back, my ten-year-old self did what every aspiring fiction writing did at some point: create my own Avengers/Justice League-style fan fiction. However, stories of a Gundam fighting alongside a Megazord and superheroes discussing the merits of their respective brands quickly became an expanded world populated with countless characters, organizations, governing bodies and universes, each with their own stories just waiting to be told.

This is not their story.

Okay, kind of. It’s not about those core characters from my childhood - that’s an entirely different manuscript.

This is a story about a world beyond theirs. For the past fifteen years - more than half my life - I’ve been crafting a literary world comprised of people, places, and plot lines that interweave and intersect in ways that are still unfolding, building on each other in ways I hadn’t originally planned. Characters have come into their own while others have instinctively sunk into the background to be used another day. World building was a term I only discovered in the last few years, but it effectively conveys my end goal for these stories.

Star Light, Star Bright was an effective way to introduce readers to my world, and watch as its characters grow and interact with one another and discover the greater depth of the universe in which they live.

The manuscript is complete and is being edited every day as it inches towards publication. To call it the first in a trilogy or tetralogy would be a bit of a misnomer, as the story of Christine and the White Star Academy are far bigger than a single comprehensive arc.

This endeavor is a lofty one, and quite frankly daunting: create an entire literary universe comprised of multiple volumes covering countless players and plot threads, all to play into and inspire a physical brand through numerous mediums (but, more on that later), and Inkshares might be just the right partner to start this journey on.

Well, including you as well, dear reader. Thanks for your time and your support.