Overview of THE GUARDIAN

Well, in posting the description for ALDEN RIDGE, I realized that I never did post an overall description for my other book, THE GUARDIAN (the one I am currently looking for agents for). So I thought I would go on and post that, too. This is not the description that I use in my query letters, as this one purposefully avoids revealing the major twist that drives the latter half of the book (and that has been the most intriguing thing to agents).

This is more of a vague book jacket description, if anything--though it's not really in the right format for that, either. It has some elements of a Project Description for a nonfiction book, but doesn't even stay to that faithfully. So, my point is that a description in this fashion isn't good for much of anything inside the actual publishing arena, but I think it will suffice for giving blog readers an idea of what the heck this story is even about.

THE GUARDIAN is set in the present day, but follows an alternate timeline in which computers are of little importance and the Internet does not exist—instead, twenty years ago, the Otherworld was invented. The Otherworld is a magical plane, apparently endless and initially featureless. Over the course of the last two decades, these virgin lands have been built up and settled by citizens of nearly every country of the world we know, which people now call the Outside.

The one blot on the history of the Otherworld is that its inventor was brutally and unexpectedly murdered only five years after he revealed his discovery. His death, and the death of the research team that had worked alongside him, sealed a secret of the Otherworld that only they knew: it was not created by any human hands. The Otherworld has seemingly always existed, and the undetected human civilizations there stretch back well over ten thousand years—perhaps even predating the earliest recorded Outside history.

The protagonist of the story, an Outsider named Sean Sunderland, works in the Otherworld as a guardian magi—one who maintains magical systems and protects his company’s Otherworld facilities from magical intrusion. When Sean passes through a door that inexplicably appears in his office building, he finds himself in an entirely unknown part of the Otherworld, filled with ancient towns, mythical creatures, and an evil that has reigned since the birth of humankind. This is Ivoria, the oldest realm of the Otherworld, separated by a great abyss from the Far Reaches that the Outsiders inhabit.

Ivoria is lorded over by an entire civilization of demons, who hope to capture Sean because of powers he does not even realize he possesses. They hunt the last of the Thaumaturges, powerful magi who are able to control magic without the aid of the runes and amulets which are normally required. As Sean discovers more of Ivoria, he becomes increasingly aware of the connections between it and his own world, and the danger that the unsuspecting Outside populace is in. At the same time, he is forced to face his growing power and the potential threat that he represents to those around him. While Sean tries to reconcile all the conflicting parts of his life, it becomes progressively clearer that he must face the demons if he is to save not only himself, but the masses of innocents suffering under demonic rule.