There it is: I did it. 50,024 words in 30 days.

I have discovered things I didn’t know were in it (Basketball tryouts, just today), and found new things that were in me (attitudes toward the challenges and delights of witnessing).

A summary:

It’s not until 17-year-old Gydeon Calder visits his mother’s homeland for Christmas break that he discovers she is from another world. One where magic is very real. Back home on Earth his father wrestles with suicidal thoughts and the question of whether his family is better off without him.

When Gy’s mother becomes ill in her homeworld of Eshe, he brings her back to Earth with the help of a magical girl who for a time was a swan. Sharizalli is used to an openly violent world where she hid her true thoughts and feelings. In Moscow Idaho, Shay discovers a world where threats are less-open and relationships can hang on speaking the whole truth.

While Gy seeks to restore his parents’ will to live, and with it their marriage, fear mongers from Eshe infiltrate Gy and Shay’s high school in positions of authority. Shay must decide how much of her old life to reveal, and whether she can sacrifice the ease of her new life to save those she has just begun to love.

~

So does that sound melodramatic? Maybe confusing?

Between The Veritas Project and The Fairy Tale Novels (among other titles)  which I’ve read in the last year, I’m firmly convinced of a vibrant, if small, audience for solidly Christian and morally grounded fantasy and adventure stories.

I feel like I’m supposed to be a part of that, and prayed a lot through this month that my stories, however and whenever they become more widely read, will be useful and encouraging to those who read them.