Thursday, July 2, 2020

The Long Road to Neverland by Misha Handman @frivyeti #bookpromotion

The Long Road to Neverland

By Misha Handman

Appropriately enough for a novel set in a grown and fading Neverland, “Shadow Stitcher” owes its roots to a pair of games. It all started in the fall of 2013, when I learned about a worldwide challenge to write 50,000 words in only a month. It was my first experience with National Novel-Writing Month, and I was filled with fire and zeal. I gradually sharpened my idea to a fanstasy-historical detective piece, The Maltese Falcon meets Peter Pan. This would be the moment! I would write a novel, pushing through writer’s block and uncertainty and carving a place in the world of great fantasy authors.

I did not succeed. In fact, I only managed 15,000 words. Disheartened, I put the story aside. Over the next couple of years, I would keep working on it between other projects, in bits and pieces.

Then, in 2015, I took part in another contest, this one to write a novella for publication by Tor. The timeframe was tight, so I looked through my old files, dusted off Everland, and wrote a 30,000 word mystery in a month and a half. This time, I thought, I had made it.

I hadn’t. The novella was not published. But it succeeded in re-igniting my fire for Basil Stark and his oddball world. I spent the next several months diving back into the novel, making changes and streamlining information based on what I’d learned writing the novella. I submitted to a half-dozen publishers, each of whom told me some variation on the same theme, “We like it, but it’s not quite what we’re looking for.”

Until I found EDGE. As it turned out, “Shadow Stitcher” was exactly what they were looking for, and together, we have finally brought it to life.

About the Author

Born on Vancouver Island, Canada, Misha Handman spent his early life immersed in the arts, with one parent a teacher and the other a manager of theatre and opera. Moving across the country to Ottawa, and then Toronto, he began writing at a young age – first writing comics and designing card games for his closest friends and then, buoyed by their approval, gradually expanding out to submissions to magazines and short story collections, and graduating from the University of Toronto with a classic English degree.

Misha has always believed in the importance of entertainment to our health and well-being. He is also interested in our shared fictional history, working in game design to develop collaborative games and story-driven experiences and exploring the new worlds that we are sharing. His fascination with these things led to the development of his first novel, Shadow Stitcher, as an exploration of the English classic “Peter Pan.”

When not writing, Misha spends his time in Victoria, Canada, working as a professional fundraiser for charities – a job he describes as “helping people to help people.” He continues to work on game design on the side, and is always excited to see the myriad ways that people approach story construction and creation, both as a voracious reader of genre fiction and a dedicated player of games.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website: www.mishahandman.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/frivyeti
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mjmhandman/

About the Book:

Title: SHADOW STITCHER: AN EVERLAND MYSTERY
Author: Misha Handman
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction & Fantasy Publishing
Pages: 268
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Mystery

BOOK BLURB:

Basil Stark isn’t the man he once was. A reformed pirate and private detective, he walks the line between criminal and hero, living in the corners of what was once the island of Neverland, its magic slowly fading into the new world of the 1950s.

When a routine missing-persons case turns into a murder investigation, Basil finds himself pulled into a tale of organized crime, murder, unstitched shadows and dangerous espionage. With only a handful of fellow outcasts and a stubborn determination to bring a killer to justice, will he survive the many people who want him dead?