With springtime in the air and the snow fading out, I have been busy piecing together this first book-length entry for The Severis Tales. I have formatted a 6×9 template with the contents of the book and am doing the last thorough read-through of the book, checking for formatting, continuity, and grammar/spelling mistakes. All that remains is the book cover, and it’s set.
With that said, publication of the book is almost here. Might as well announce it.
The Severis Tales: Semi-fantasy Stories for the Everyday Layperson is a collection of eleven stories featuring the Severis family and other characters from the world of Algenon. These are stories set in an imaginary world somewhere far away from Earth, where elves and upright dragons live together in their struggles of day-to-day life.
With modern science and technology mainly replacing typical magic, The Severis Tales is a series designed for readers who prefer fantasy or general “slice of life” stories. There is not any epic fantasy—just stories of the mundane and ordinary (for fantasy), with some fantasy elements mixed in. The series attempts to serve as the bridge between the two camps, to provide a common ground between the two types of literature.
Details
- Format: 6×9 Paperback. Amazon Kindle e-book will follow after paperback publication.
- Number of Pages: About 235 pages for the paperback version. Amazon Kindle e-book may differ.
- Price: To be determined in a future update. Stay tuned.
- Availability Date: Q2 2022 for paperback.
Featured in The Severis Tales: Semi-fantasy Stories for the Everyday Layperson
To give a little detail into the book, here is a small list of what featured:
Stories
- A Red Letter Day: Natafasma Po’nomer recounts in a letter to her mother the nasty week and a decision that is on her mind.
- Roofing: The Severis’ roof is falling apart, and after a confrontation with Larry, Xiveer is forced to fix the roof before it becomes dangerous.
- The Traveller: A mysterious man enters Mila’s pub who claims is on a cross-country tour of Caldore.
- Franklin Has a Gas: Franklin Ferguson, the Severis’ close friend and next-door neighbour, experiences serious health complications, forcing Xiveer to take up the challenge of running his cornfields while he is in hospital.
- Twenty and One Blackbirds: Judith Aptow, a potato farmer, deals with a nasty pest of blackbirds destroying her crops. Her husband, Joe, has the perfect solution, with severe consequences.
- Leena’s Mum: Leena Severis’ mother, Aylenne Rosewater, unexpectedly comes down from North Fairbanks and visits her daughter and her family for a week.
- Chantrel’s Folly: William Chantrel-Kalflar, husband of Maven Kalflar, of Kalflar Farms and her famous pickled eggs, is tasked with finding out a fake selling pickled foods in order to drive Maven out of business.
- Retail Tale: the Caldore Tax Authority summoned Brackneed Vendyor for a special investigation into fraud and other dubious transactions, forcing him to call upon his competition for help.
- Smelt Fishing in the Cadence River: Xiveer recounts to his elder sister Lyssa an adventure he had when he was ten years old, when his late father—Larrynton Severis Sr.—took him smelt fishing for the first time.
- The Babysitter: A tale from the year 1100 NA, when Leena and Xiveer Severis required a babysitter for then-five-year-old Michale Severis for an important meeting, which goes well.
- Love and Mining Accidents: Aerisynda “Teylah” Garikkalan—a bipedal dragon and close family friend of the Rosewaters—is down in Barlett for a mining convention, where she has trouble talking about an incident from her past. Meanwhile, school life and other live changing events happen between Larry and three other friends.
Resources
- About Algenon: A small reference at the end of the book about how Algenon works and how to relate between the series and our own world. The section also describes the sentient species of Algenon, the date and time system, and a description of Algenon as a whole.
- Pronouncing Names and Naming Conventions: Sometimes, there are names that require a bit more thought in pronunciation. This next section contains a bit about custom naming conventions and how to pronounce certain names.
Any more information—the price, the book cover, and maybe a sample—will be provided in a future update. If you wish to get a bigger picture of Algenon and the characters in The Severis Tales, please read stories 1-9, available here on the Patrick Rivers Website. You can also use the reference page for The Severis Tales, which has the basic concepts listed. I will update these pages as time goes on.