Charles Boyd ’14 says he doesn’t like to brag, so we’ll do it for him.
While most high school students keep busy with sports and other extra-curricular activities, Charles had other things on his mind: he was busy writing a trilogy of books, one of which is already on sale at local bookstores and on Amazon.com—a triumphant culmination of four years of writing and editing. Mountains of the North is a book for young readers, set in a fictional universe resembling the late Roman Empire.
Charles had wanted to write books since he was five years old and takes his cues from fantasy writers like C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and J.R.R. Tolkien, to name a few. He says that many of the situations and events he writes about in his books are based on political and historical events he’s read about in the real world. “In terms of characters, I didn’t base many of them on specific individuals,” he admits, “because I know that’s a good way to get people to hate you!”
“I just enjoy being able to suspend the laws of reality sometimes. For instance, for my book, I wanted to have talking dinosaurs that would interact with humans–not something that you could really do outside of the fantasy genre!”
The history major spent less than six months on the original manuscript, but took almost half of his high school career editing the book and trying to get it published. Finally, at the end of his junior year, Charles released the 165-page Mountains of the North through a self-publishing company called iUniverse.
“Finding a publisher was tough, because most companies require an agent, which is something that I didn’t have,” says Charles. “In terms of editing, the process is very lengthy and arduous. I can honestly say that I spent about a year and a half editing. The biggest thing people need to be warned about is that you will be banging your head against the wall by the time the editing is done! Thankfully, my mom and best friend helped me out with it a lot.”
In his book, talking dinosaurs (believed to be demons) are hunted down by the people of the Talagardian Empire. The protagonist, Menerith, is a physically handicapped peasant boy who grows up in the empire oppressed and enslaved by the Talagardian aristocracy. Through a series of events, he joins forces with the dinosaurs in an effort to save the dinosaurs from mass extinction and his people from being slaves forever. Read an edited excerpt below:
“Menerith felt Hod’s massive body shake again as he tried to break loose from the cave…A boulder rolled off the top of the cave, nearly hit Menerith, and rolled down…Hod tried to free himself a third time, this time successfully. Unfortunately, in doing so he dislodged numerous boulders that came crashing down, knocking both Typhonus and Hod off balance. All three toppled off the edge of the cliff, plunging fifty feet down into the flowing river…Hod managed to keep his head and neck above water so that Menerith could climb up to safety, where he held on for dear life…”
What’s next for this budding literary star? “I’ll always be writing more books,” he says. “Mountains of the North is the first book in a trilogy. I also have a few other manuscripts that I’ll be editing over the next few years…I’m a big fan of alternative history. So once my trilogy is done, I’ll probably publish an alternative historical novel that I’ve written about a 1930s America in which the South won the Civil War.”
Mountains of the North can be purchased here at Amazon.com. To find out more about Charles’ books, visit his Facebook Fan page.
