Elliot Kessler

My new novella is about to launch this Saturday! I am so excited for you guys to read it. I’m so proud of this story, and I think you guys will really like it.

The novella is the beginning of a series following a young adventurer named Eorum. As he travels the western countries of the continent of Eretor, he helps those in need and gives what he can.

In The Shadowman, Eorum has journeyed for several years, and he is now ready to find a house and settle down. But Eorum must go on one more quest before he can hang up his sword.

Liam’s daughter has fallen fatally ill, and he tasks Eorum with finding a cure for his daughter. The pair soon discover that she has been attacked by an ancient evil: a Shadowman.

Together, Eorum and Liam must find this monster and destroy him to free Liam’s daughter from her illness.

Eretor is a fantasy world I created when I was 13, and this novella is based on one of my very first short stories. I grew up with Eorum and several other characters in this epic, mythical. I’ve seen them go on adventures and travel to distant lands and fight terrible evil.

Years ago, I had a plan to write the greatest fantasy series of all time. I began to write the first book, but quickly gave up. I wasn’t ready for such an enormous task. I still had much to learn.

I had moved on from the world of Eretor. I decided that was my jumping off point into the world of creative writing, and my real books were going to be other stories set in other worlds following other characters. But there was something about these stories that I grew up writing that I couldn’t let go of. They were always in the back of my mind, and I wanted to find some way of bringing them back.

Originally, I was going to write a Kindle Vella series centered around Eorum. Each episode would be a brand new adventure, and it would build into a climactic battle before the next series of short stories began and a new evil force arose.

The problem with this is that Eorum’s adventures are far too epic to be condensed into 2,000/3,000 word short stories. The original Eorum story was only 1,500 words long, but that was my longest work at the time, and it barely scratched the surface of the full story I wanted to tell.

Because of this issue, I decided that Eorum’s adventures wouldn’t be a series of short stories, but a series of short books. Novellas.

A while ago, I heard of a science fiction series of novellas called The Murderbot Diaries. I tried the first one, and I didn’t like it very much. Not only was the story boring, but there was too much swearing in it. It seems that I’m in the minority on this point, but I prefer my books to be devoid of swears rather than filled with them. I thought the idea of a novella series was interesting, though. But I never gave it a lot of thought until a few months ago.

At the time, I was reading classic Spider-Man comics when an idea occurred to me. Why don’t I write a series of short books with action-packed yet meaningful and thoughtful adventures centered around a specific character? Each book would be its own adventure, but they would all tie together and connect in some way, much like comics.

I thought the idea was brilliant, and I quickly got to work on creating a character to make a series with. Some were good, but most were terrible. Then I decided to make the series with a character I already knew well and loved.

I knew the first Eorum Chronicles novella would have to be based on his original adventure. It feels like forever since I first wrote his story. Since then, I had written another story featuring Eorum about how he became an adventurer, so I knew his backstory. Everything was in place. I wrote the first draft of the novella in a week, sent it to my aunt to edit it (She edited the original short as well.), and had a cover made.

Now, it’s almost here! The Eorum Chronicles: The Shadowman is the first of many exciting adventures filled with action, heart, and biblical messages about sacrifice, servitude, and humility.

The paperback edition will be available this Saturday, October 7th, but you can preorder the Ebook now!

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.