Colin Parsons

Author of fantasy fiction for children and young adults. His books include the Wizards' Kingdom series and The Curious World books.
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Jul12

Ten year anniversary

by Colin R. Parsons on  July 12th, 2015 at  10:51 am

Wizards' Kingdom

Well, this is really hard to believe. My very first book: Wizards' Kingdom is ten years old. I remember getting my advance copies on July 13th 2005. I wrote this little beauty in 2004.

How it came about? My youngest son Ryan was falling behind in his english lessons - his teacher Mrs Hall, called my wife and I in to discuss his reading problem. Mrs Hall, now head teacher at the school, had proof-read all of my short stories, and loved them.

'Ryan needs to read more,' she said, 'he's doing what boys do; playing sports and video games, but if he continues not reading then, he's going to fall behind and his grades will drop. 

'So, what can we do?' I asked.

'Write him a book,' she replied, just like that. 'Your short stories are great, and Ryan loves wizard's. So maybe it would be good to write him a wizarding tale?' she explained.

So that's exactly what I did. I wrote ten short stories (because that's all I knew how to do) and linked the character's and plot. It took me four months: edit after edit after edit. Low and behold...Wizards' Kingdom was born. I had to self publish because no-one was taking on wizarding stories at that time. The publishing market had been saturated with: Harry Potter, Disc World and many others. I was to say the least, naive at that time.

I didn't expect it to sell, but with the help of Borders bookstores, it did sell, and sold well. That led me on to book 2, The Obelisk of Ashmar and finally the last in the series book 3 Jarrak's Darkness. 

Wizards' Kingdom since it's initial debut, is now traditionally published on kindle, audio and (eventually hopefully) foreign translation rights. The movie will be a natural next move and then world domination.

Happy anniversary Wizards' Kingdom.

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