The Author
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| A retired software architect, traveling the world – in theory living out of my backpack,
but currently (temporarily?) in Cuenca, Ecuador, since COVID hit. Taoist, Buddhist,
reader, gamer, mudita addict,
INTJ, Bacon Number: 3, scifi/comics/anime fan, queer, mostly ace, and can't
taste bitter. Gnostic by nature. Pronouns at your discretion. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️⚧️🧘♂️🖖🇺🇦 |
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| Fav Games: | Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dune: Awakening, Enshrouded, Starfield, Journey |
| Fav Books: | Stranger In A Strange Land, Narnia, The Expanse, Beware of Chicken, The Lord Of The Rings |
| Fav TV: | Card Captor Sakura, The Expanse, Natsume Yuujinchou, ST:TOS, Heartstopper |
| Fav Comics: | Lucifer, Young Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Heartstopper |
| Fav Music: | Mozart, The Police, Fleet Foxes, bagpipes, "4K Cozy Coffee Shop with Smooth Piano Jazz Music for Relaxing, Studying and Working" |
| Fav Podcasts: | Imaginary Worlds, The Memory Palace, Dear Hank & John, Serious Trouble, Breathing Space (Scifi western anthology), Camlann, Answer Me This |
| Fav Movies: | A Room With A View, L.A. Story, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse |
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Some Background:
So, here’s the thing. Back in 2022, back around the time that Heartstopper came out
on Netflix, I came to realize that, while I
was happy with my existence, I’d let some things drop by the wayside and I
actually wanted more out of life than I was currently pursuing. So I started reading with more
dedication (it’s been, I don’t know, 1,000+ books as of early 2026?), and
exercising more. I started a local Science Fiction and Fantasy reading
group here in Cuenca, which has a pretty consistent membership of 6-8
expats — just the nicest, smartest, funniest people you could ask to
hang out with.
And, while listening to a new (to me) podcast (“I Only Listen To The Mountain
Goats”, 2 seasons, it’s super good), random phrases that the 2 podcast
guys would say in talking to each other would start to spin out stories
in my head. And I felt like I really wanted to write them down, so I
did. A dozen or so stories later, my friends Mark and Jenni read some
of them and declared them Not Terrible™️ – which was an unwise level of
encouragement if you ask me, but they threw caution to the wind.
So, I took the next step, and sent them off to a writing coach /
editor I knew of, Hal Duncan, an award-winning Scottish writer (of
fantastic books like Vellum, and others). He gave me feedback, of
varying degrees of criticism/enthusiasm, but he generally agreed with
the Not Terrible™️ assessment for several of them.
Three of those stories were novella length — 15-20,000 words — and
they were all about the same theme: a person in our regular world who
is, or comes to be, the Guardian of a doorway between our world and the
fae world. They were basically all in the same fictional universe, just
different Guardians, different takes on how that sort of thing might
work and what it would mean to those involved.
One of those stories grew, as I continued to have thoughts about the
characters, into what became this novel. It was fairly natural to
interweave that tale with the other two novellas, and with other related
tales in the same universe that I wrote along the way. Hal continued
to give me feedback and suggestions and, eventually, when the whole
thing was done, he declared it publishable.
I’ll spare you the painful saga of my following up on references for
possible agents for the book and discovering that they were either not
currently taking submissions or had submission websites that asked
questions like, “How many followers do you have on social media?” I
dunno, a couple hundred maybe, just of internet friends not followers of
my writing? I’m not an “influencer”! I get that this is how
publishing works these days, you’re expected to be doing your own PR,
but… nah. I’m just a guy who wrote a thing, I don’t have a rabid fan
base on AO3 (the fanfic website, An Archive Of Our Own).
But I realized that all the cozy novels that I really liked were
self-published by their authors. Which makes some sense. Cozy novels
have grown in popularity — like, Legends And Lattes, about an
orc woman who retires from adventuring to open a coffee shop, actually
won a Hugo Award for Best Novel — but they’re not the sort of “fighting a
desperate battle against a dark lord” that brings in the mass market
and gets you a movie deal. They’re generally warm, quiet stories about
found family, and sensible people solving problems in sensible ways with
the help of their friends.
(I think there’s a reason cozy novels have become so popular. The
world’s kind of stressful right now, y’all. People want to get away
from that for a bit, and be reassured by friendship and caring and
sanity.)
Well, it turns out that what I wrote *is*, in fact, a warm,
quiet story about found family, and sensible people solving problems in
sensible ways with the help of their friends. Also: letting things go
but not letting people go, working through your issues, doors between
worlds, the multiverse, reincarnation, panpsychism, and the fundamental
nature of reality. But mostly found family. So, self-publishing seemed
like the way to go.
I confess, I wasn’t originally planning on publishing any of this. I was just
writing it because it was enormously satisfying to write, and even Hal
telling me that it was publishable wasn’t quite enough to push me over
the line of hubris that I thought was required to do it. I mean, *I*
liked the book — I should hope that I did! — but that was no reason to
think that anyone else would.
But, at a certain point I realized that I’d stopped writing stuff for
pleasure. And I quickly realized that it was because, in my head, the
previous thing wasn’t done yet. The last step to writing that book was
to publish it, and until I did that, my brain wasn’t freeing up to write
other things. I had to do the last step, or I couldn’t move on.
So, I started looking more carefully at what I would need to do, to
do that, what was required to self-publish on Amazon — book formatting,
cover artists, etc — and putting some of my fiction up on AO3. (Where
it’s done better than I’d hoped, honestly, considering that it’s
original fiction on what is mainly a fan fiction website, where most
people are going for Naruto stories and romances about Harry x Draco as
secret lovers. And werewolves. So many werewolves.) And, low and
behold, as soon as I started moving on this, I started writing again!
And, thus, here we are: with me setting up a new site to be
an author page, and to be able to explain in one place, to my friends
and family, what this book is and why you might or might not want to
read it.
Your friend / family member / acquaintance / random book author,
Charles
(As in Charles Castleberry. You probably knew that. If you were
looking for someone else, like Chris Hemsworth… wow, do I not blame you,
but you came to the wrong place. Good luck with your search!)