​The first draft of The Osiris Circle is complete!

The book was finished in about a year and a half — which is the fastest I've completed any manuscript. There were three major factors that contributed to the speed of completion.

The first was the intentional brevity of the manuscript. As an illustrated novel, about half the book will be artwork, so I accounted for this during the writing process in order to maintain a 200+ page count. 

Second, the book is intended for a younger audience than I usually write for — teens (ages 12 to 17) as opposed to young adults (generally 18 to 25 year olds). As such, the plot is less involved and although it does carry some serious themes, this had to handled appropriately for the less mature reader. 

Third, because large parts of the book have a distinctive graphic novel feel, parts of the manuscript had to read like a script with stage directions. This was ultimately quicker to write than prose.

Now, with the manuscript completed, I'll now spend another year on illustrations — many of which were only possible to create after finalizing the story and characters. 

Even though draft #1 is done, there will be more writing ahead. Revisions will ultimately be made as I get feedback from my editors and there's still a some research to be done. I'll write more about this in my next blog!

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Whenever it was lunch recess in elementary school, I and my best friend would head off to a remote corner of the playground, to a single mesquite tree, which according from Google Earth, still stands today (see the photo above). And every day we'd play around its base and among its limbs. All these years later, I can’t really tell you what imaginative worlds we were creating there — but most likely they were inspired by our favorite Saturday morning television adventures or recent movies. 

No one was troubled by what we were doing except one particularly imperious yard monitor. One day she marched up to us and announced that it “wasn’t normal” for third graders to be off by ourselves, creating pretend games, instead of playing dodge ball or basketball like most of the other kids. 

We were polite in rejecting her unenlightened opinion, because we really did not care what she thought. Despite our age, we were quite practiced in not caring what others thought but it always astounded me how many teachers, parents and peers often mistook creativity and imagination for something abnormal.

As I was completing the Quinton’s Curious Mind Series, I wanted my next writing project to celebrate these kinds of kids — kids who saw the world differently, created their own safe spaces and problem-solved creatively. I also wanted to dip my toe in the mystery game — being a huge fan of true crime, cold cases and classic whodunits. As a kid, I gobbled up the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Three Investigators mysteries. Some of my favorite standalone titles featured clever kids solving mysteries tinged with the paranormal and supernatural. Harriet the Spy, The Egypt Game, Nate the Great and Encyclopedia Brown were all favorites. As I got older, I added the works of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith. 

And yes, I’ll throw Scooby-Doo in there for good measure. 

Aside from trying my hand at a mystery, I also wanted to  infuse more illustration into my books and as I read more graphic novels, I became very interested in using art as part of the narrative process.

All of this eventually culminated in The Osiris Circle, a book series which will revolve around a group of young teens who solve cold case mysteries out of a historic theater located in a fictional town. 

I’ll provide more details about all this in the posts ahead so check back for further updates, or follow my socials for alerts.