Welcome to Mâvarin

Welcome to Mâvarin, where circumstance, choices and magic can turn a person into someone very different. Human to tengrem, villager to royalty, friend to foe, daughter to mother, magician to trader... the one thing you can count on in Mâvarin is that people change, one way or another.

The question of what makes us who we are lies at the heart of my first novel, Heirs of Mâvarin, and the trilogy that follows it, Mages of Mâvarin. Mâvarin is an "otherworld" equivalent of the Eastern United States, except that the River Misis is roughly where Appalachia ought to be. It is a place where magic works (for some people and against others), but literal monsters didn't exist until a generation ago. Most of all, it is the home of Rani Fost and his two best friends: Del Merden and Del's twin sister Crel. Their respective journeys have more to do with self-discovery than with surviving magic and treachery, finding a lost king or getting back to where they need to be—although there's plenty of that, too.

The aforementioned novels are not yet in stores, for the simple reason that I have not yet sold the first one, and am currently editing the second. I've also written a few scenes for the prequel, To Rule Mâvarin, and for a further sequel, tentatively titled The Mâvarin Revolutions. (The weekly serial Mall of Mâvarin, which appeared in two of my blogs in 2005, is most likely apocryphal.)  I am determined that these books, my life's work, will be published. These characters deserve no less.

This site is perpetually under construction, with a one-person crew that seldom shows up for work. It will eventually include a map, more background information on the setting and history of Mâvarin, and more information on the writing of the books. It will also be updated with publication info when there is any. Meanwhile, I've put in a sample scene from each completed book, along with some other items as a promise of things to come. The heart of the site is the character pages, which can be accessed below from a gallery of character drawings by the well-known sf/fantasy artist Sherlock.  Some of these have fictional journal entries by the characters, which do not appear in the books themselves.

Thanks for looking!

Rani Fost / Rani Lunder   Darma / Darsuma

A Note About Character Names

As of January, 2009, the projected series is as follows:

• To Rule Mâvarin (also called Prince of Mâvarin) - a prequel, not intended to be the first volume read. I've only written about a chapter of it so far. It will detail the troubled relationships between Lore (later Lormarte), her sister Jere, the doomed future queen Genva, and young Prince Jor.
  
• Heirs of Mâvarin - the first novel written, and the one intended to be read first. It languished in a major publisher's slushpile for over a year with no reply at all, and more recently was rejected by another publisher. I have since made a major revision of Chapter One (the most likely source of the problem), and will seek a literary agent as soon as I complete my edit of the remaining chapters. (This is in danger of becoming a lifelong occupation!) It chronicles Del and Crel's separate journeys from teenage stablehands to hunted royalty and beyond, plus Rani's journey of self-discovery.
  
• Mages of Mâvarin - like The Lord of the Rings, the Mages trilogy is a single story in three volumes, rather than three books with related stories. (I make no claim about Mages resembling Tolkien's work in other respects.) It is about 99% written, but in need of revision and general editing for continuity and so on. A young mage adept, Darsuma, comes to Mâvarin and befriends Rani before the evil influence of her dead mother causes her to very nearly destroy the lives of most of our major characters. The three volumes are as follows:
• An Adept in Mâvarin
• Another Mâvarin
• Return to Mâvarin
• The Mâvarin Revolutions - is intended to be the last book in the series, although this could change at some point.  Like the prequel, it is in the very early stages of being written. The government of Mâvarin is destabilized in two worlds as one monarch dies, and others are distrusted due to their relationships with friends and loved ones.
  

follow me on Twitter