How it all came to pass.
Once upon a time, a scribe who wrote tales of suspense and mystery spent many a night reading bedtime stories to his first born. This boy, who was only six years of age at the time most enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia, which his father the scribe read to him every night. And each night, the boy would say, “Please Daddy, just one more chapter.”
The boy came to love all the characters and far off lands in all seven books and could even recite all their names, and what each book was about. It was somewhere around the time when Eustace Scrub became a dragon in THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, that the scribe’s son stopped the reading, looked at his father with eyes twinkling and said, “Daddy, will you write a book for me?”
And thus began the journey in which this scribe, Ian Alexander (yours truly) began his quest to write a series of books that he hoped might one day delight and inspire his son perhaps as much as those by the scribe’s hero C.S. Lewis. At first, the story flowed from the scribe’s heart–the story of a young slave boy who one day would become the saviour of his kingdom. Then came the peasant girl from the enemy nation. As their stories began to converge, however, life for the scribe took several unexpected turns.
Artwork by Anna Steinbauer
There were illnesses and deaths in the family, the scribe who’s employment of the past nine years had been terminated and his entire department shut down, and in the midst of all that, he almost gave up writing altogether. Well, to make a long story not quite as long, three years had passed and the scribe had since written about thirteen other books (yet only one of them completed.) In the interim, his second novel BEYOND JUSTICE came into publication, hit multiple bestseller lists, and came into critical acclaim. From all the feedback, and after hearing from fans about how moved they were by this book, the scribe who took on the public persona of “Joshua Graham” realized it was is his calling to devote his life to this craft.
Finally, before the book (only half-completed) he promised his son slipped from his mind forever, the scribe decided he must finish it to fulfill his promise. And so he did. However, while he completed this book, his next suspense thriller entitled DARKROOM was picked up by a major NY Publisher who offered him a contract to publish it. New responsibilities and obligations arose. Undaunted, the scribe pressed forward and completed his promised book, ONCE WE WERE KINGS, the first in an epic saga of a race called The Sojourners.
This would be a fine place to say that they lived happily ever after, however, the story has just begun.