Today is a big day. My first novel, The Alchemist’s Notebook, has been published and released into the wild. This is big. So big. Huge.

The Alchemist’s Notebook is available exclusively through Amazon KDP Select for the next 90 days. Right now it’s available for the Kindle (and Kindle reading apps). A paperback version will be coming in the next week or so. After the KDP Select period is finished, the novel should be available for all e-book platforms (including Nook, Kobo, and iBooks).

This is the kind of fantasy story I wanted to read. It takes a nice-but-gruff alchemist (and small business owner) out of his comfortable setting and forces him to help solve a mystery in order to help the community. This is not a detective story. It’s not a mere fantasy. But it has elements of both.

Read the back cover:

As Salt City’s only alchemist, Malcolm Ward has been minding his own business for the last ten years. His shop, The Village Alchemist, caters to mages, mystics, and magic wannabes—including Tommy DeLuce, the mayor’s son. But when a fire elemental kills Tommy, the city council demands that Mal investigate.

The trail from the fire elemental to Tommy isn’t exactly a straight line; it’s more like a circle. An elemental means alchemy, but everyone assumed Mal was the only alchemist in town. Now he’s taking it personally.

Malcolm’s alchemical mojo is a bit rusty, so he’ll need help from his friends in the metaphysical community to uncover the truth about Tommy’s death. And he needs to do it soon, before more customers go missing.

Most people probably don’t know this, but The Alchemist’s Notebook isn’t technically my first novel. Nearly 20 years ago, I actually quit a good-paying job to write full-time and finish my fledgling manuscript. My co-workers thought I was crazy. Most of them didn’t even realize I wanted to be an author.

After several months, I finished the book and started querying agents. It was not well received, and I never had even so much as a nibble. But I didn’t give up. I put that book into a folder on my computer marked “Not Published” and moved on to the next idea.

Over the next decade, I wrote mostly movie reviews and short essays. Then, about five or six years ago, I started writing stories again.

Thanks to the local writer’s group (shout-out to the LFK Writers!), I took part in National Novel Writing Month and tried to write a novel. Over the next few years, I started and stopped three different novels (one of them I tried writing twice). But it wasn’t until I wrote a short story called “Paradise Out of Order” for the anthology Dimensional Abscesses that I realized what kind of story I really wanted to write.

For the past year, I’ve been working hard to bring The Alchemist’s Notebook into this world. It took a lot of research, a lot of early morning writing, and a lot of busy weekends, but it was all worth it.

I hope you enjoy reading it, and stay tuned for future novels in The Village Alchemist series.

Get The Alchemist’s Notebook for the Amazon Kindle.