Paperback available on all major platforms. Ebook available soon.
The Four Winds - Blurb
William Taylor feels like a total school failure and misfit. That is, until his life is turned around when he receives an invitation from his favourite teacher to enter the hidden Thomon world and join Belbury Acadamy. Here he is not perceived as a school failure but a highly gifted individual.
William embraces this thrilling and advanced world, where he learns to use an object-altering, imagination controlled device called a Hadron-Tool. However this exciting adventure soon turns dangerous when he uncovers a plot by Krevak Ragwort to control world-altering technology, and must be stopped at all costs.
The Four Winds - Background
William is based on myself and my personal experience with dyslexia. His pains and struggles are based on my own, when I was at school, and actually still now. This I hope makes him very relatable to those in similar positions.
Throughout The Makers Of Magic I wanted my characters to show the positive side of talents and gifts that our world constantly overlooks and degrades. The book features a mix of characters with a range of what I term as gifts. We would say that the characters were neurodiverse and had learning difficulties. Characters have gifts like Dyslexia, Synesthesia, and Mirror-Touch Synesthesia.
Through the characters, I wanted to show that given the correct environment and support, anyone can thrive, and that learning disabilities and different ways of interacting and perceiving the world can and should be seen and developed as gifts.
Another area I wanted to explore was a different way of conducting education. The world is very stuck in its ways of class rooms and lessons, and this does not suit everyone. It did not suit me. In The Makers Of Magic - The Four Winds, I decided to make the school one with the town it was based in so that the lessons could be carried out in the business around the town. This style of apprenticeship learning, I feel, would hugely benefit a large percentage of our kids. For William, this is one of the key things that means he can move from being a school failure to being a success.
I love engineering and backstreet mechanicing, so I wanted to use those things to create an advanced world that had the feeling of magic. In today's fast paced world we have magic all around us all the time, such as our phones, but we just don’t see it and dont care. So with the Thomon world I wanted to demonstrate that creativity and knowledge engineering, design and the sciences can lead to the enchantment that we all long for.
Underlying everything though is the wanting to create just a good, exciting and fun story that young adults will love and be inspired by.