In this guest post, author B.T. Harris tells us all about his upcoming release.
Guest Post
My upcoming release is titled 'The Heir of the Dark Lords - Volume One'. It is actually two books in one manuscript, each titled ‘The Gathering of Power’ and ‘The Enemy Revealed.’ It is a start to a dark fantasy series, but formally I would tell readers it is a darker fantasy with hints of optimism.
So, what is the story about? Imagine this, you are at a bookstore shopping for a new craving to share with your rainy day and favorite beverage, and you see a table with a pile of books that are about five hundred pages each. The author of that book has his pen in hand, writing notes, and you notice he has a bear paw tattoo on his hand. You walk up to the table intrigued because you noticed by the cover of his book it is a fantasy story and you ask him what his book is about. The author looks at you and smiles, telling you that he could give you a quick summary or perhaps recite the blurb; or he will explain that this volume took years of notes and lore writing. Countless nights building the world and the characters and finding the meaning behind the life and death of every encounter within the story. In so doing, he will instead ask what you want to know about the world in which the story takes place. Are you fascinated with magic and the arcane arts; and I will explain the various systems of magic. Do you want to know the functions of a werebear transformation? Are you into mythology and want to learn about the pantheon of gods and how the world of Aufterra came to be? Do you want to know how a villain can, in fact, be born evil and embody the essence of chaos? I can go on passionately with the lore of the story and try to reach out to a reader better than giving a short summary. Besides, why give away the story when fandoms are built on lore fascination?
It was always a reoccurring dream since I was a child to publish a book, but the 'Heir of the Dark Lords' started off with small projects here and there. The biggest source of inspiration is, a lack of better words, mental illness. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was seventeen and I had been experiencing symptoms since I was in middle school, which was ‘rare but not unheard of’, quoting my therapist at the time. When I introduced the first three characters of the series I based each as different parts of my personality, and each of them have their own set of flaws as well. A magician who represents ambition, a scientist who is obsessed with knowledge and facts, and a teenage werebear who wishes to find happiness. When it got to the point where the story was going to introduce the main villain, the first dark lord in a thousand years to summon an apocalyptic demon into the world; just how? It took me a few weeks to figure out what I was actually doing with the story. By the time I decided that the dark lord was going to be based off the hallucination that haunted me growing up, I knew then and there that the series is an allegory or metaphor of a schizophrenic man fighting his inner darkness. In my own eyes that’s what it is; I put different versions of myself fighting what is in our world the lifelong battle. It is safe to say that different points of the story are based off various experiences in my life, although some things involving the dark lord are without a doubt exaggerated for the sake of the story. The real question would then be what didn’t inspire this book?
The book will be released May 14th of this year. I am excited mostly because this is not the first time. This story has been with me through various transformations and publications. I finally feel happy that we reached this point together.
End Guest Post
Thank you to B.T. Harris for telling us about the book and what inspired it. If you would like to check out the authors work, click on the following links.