Okay, the origin story of this book is kind of dumb, but here it is.
In November of last year, I flew out to San Diego to do an observation with a colleague of mine, Dr. Gary Kustis. I had just finished uploading my poetry book, The Tavern at Map’s Edge, to Amazon. I was tired, I was proud, and I was pretty sure I was done doing ambitious creative things for a while.
Then Gary asked me if I’d ever considered publishing a book.
“Besides my poetry book?” I said.
He chuckled. He meant a fiction novel. “Nah,” I told him. “I used to write creative short stories, but when I started my dissertation, I had to give that up. It’s been at least ten years since I’ve written anything fanciful.”
“You should try it. You’re an amazing storyteller.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
I got home and didn’t really think much about it... until my poetry book dropped on December 12. In that book, there’s a figure I called The Proprietor. I said their name was Angel. That wasn’t entirely true. The Proprietor was me, and my raw, emotional words. And that gave me the beginnings of Aestraea.
I started working on race ideas and little worldbuilding tidbits. Then on December 26, I started writing. I figured I’d struggle to hit 80,000 words — the minimum for a fantasy novel. So I set a goal of 10,000 words a week and figured I could knock it out in 8-10 weeks.
Four months later, I’m over 115,000 words into Chapter 25, and I know I have at least 7-10 more chapters to finish Book 1 and set up Book 2: Beneath Stone and Shadow.
So. That’s how A World Reborn happened.
And on June 1, it’s coming to Kickstarter.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to bring you more fully into this world, from the people in it, to what’s at stake, and why I haven’t been able to stop writing it since December. I hope you’ll stick around.
— C.N. Mackey