Stephen Hayes, Author of The Magic Crystals Series Chats About the Inspiration Behind the Books

 Meet Stephen Hayes

Stephen Hayes lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia. Having been born partially blind in 1986 and lost his limited vision in 2000, he started writing stories at the age of eight, winning the Harold Dickinson Memorial Australian Literary Competition for a short story about a haunted house at the age of eleven. He completed his first novella in Braille at fourteen and by sixteen, had completed the first draft of The Seventh Sorcerer.

Since 2002, Stephen has allowed his imagination to run wild with The Magic Crystals saga; sometimes pushing boundaries that today’s somewhat moral society deem to sweep under the carpet. Although classified as fantasy genre due mainly to the prominent magic component, Stephen’s writing also includes a good balance of drama, mystery, romance, humour, and he isn’t afraid to address controversial moral issues.

His latest books are The Seventh Sorcerer and Rock Haulter from The Magic Crystals Series.

Visit his website at www.themagiccrystals.com.

Synopsis from Goodreads:  On the surface, Chopville appears not unlike any other small town in rural Australia. However, its underbelly is more than extraordinary.

Amongst its modest community reside six people from two very different families – they make up the six most powerful people in the world today. Branded as "Sorcerers", they are the only six people in the world with true magical power. Yet these two families do not cooperate together and although there is no open fighting in the year 2010, things weren't always that peaceful.

John Playman knows this as well as anyone; at the age of 14, he is familiar with the concept of magic, having been raised in a family heavily involved in the magical war 30 years earlier, even though he has never met any of the Sorcerers himself. This year, however, all that is about to change; John and a group of his school friends will find themselves in an unprecedented situation and carrying a responsibility almost too great to comprehend.

Chopville sets the scene for summer fun jumping off bridges and getting ready to begin another year with the dreaded Mr. Hall giving them all hell.

John and his cohorts struggle on two fronts with their hormones raging and with the discovery of whom among them is to become the Seventh Sorcerer.

Coming to Amazon and Barnes and Noble on 3 February 2013!

Synopsis from Goodreads: In the wake of their miraculous victory over the dastardly Moran, the teenagers of Chopville think they can now relax and enjoy a few days in the sun before attending a simple school camp. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The original villain is back, only this time he is on a different mission, taking orders from the evil and cunning Hammerson Sorcerers, and his path will intersect those of John Playman and his friends on Rock Haulter.

A desperate race must ensue, Moran and the powers of the Hammersons against the Chopville teens. The prize will be the most powerful of all the Magic Crystals and a control over the balance of life, but such extraordinary power is heavily protected. There is no guarantee that all will live to see the end.

The danger faced this week will be greater than anything faced in The Seventh Sorcerer, but that won't stop the teens from having a good time, as only teenagers can. There is to be no shortage of jumping off bridges, feuding with teachers and clashing with their young rivals in this book, but beneath all that, a far more serious situation is simmering.

It is only those closest to the Sorcerers who understand how delicate the peace between the Woodwards and Hammersons is, and how quickly that could change.

Coming to Amazon and Barnes and Noble on 3 February 2013!

I would like to welcome Stephen Hayes, author of The Magic Crystals Series to Emeraldfire's Bookmark. Mr. Hayes was kind enough to write a guest post for me and here it is below in his own words: 

'The Story Behind The Magic Crystals Series'

by Stephen Hayes

The simple and rather dull truth was that the original reason why The Seventh Sorcerer (and therefore the entire Magic Crystals series) came about was because I had a Saturday night in which I needed to do something, and nothing but a brailler and about twenty sheets of braille paper to do it with.

Within a month of that night, I had written the first two books in that original series (each about twenty thousand words), and would eventually go on to write three more in the following two years.

The story was pointless, serving no purpose to entertain me and my sister, as it was based on the games we played as children, and yet it was good enough for me to want to re-write it, on my computer this time, in a way that I could perhaps share with other people—a way that would allow me to thicken the plot and close those holes which the first draft had left open. And so over the summer of 2002-2003, The Seventh Sorcerer began.

I have said elsewhere that the theme of The Magic Crystals is power, but while that is true, it wasn’t the original theme. In fact, far from power, the first six chapters of The Seventh Sorcerer centered around youth. Being only sixteen at the time, it was the sort of writing that came naturally to me, even if much of it had to be cleaned up or removed before publication.

Not only did the writing quickly become my favorite hobby, but as I was going through a difficult period of my life at the time, it also became therapeutically for me to step outside myself and into the lives of my characters, who despite having plenty of troubles of their own (the story would be rather boring if they didn’t), seemed preferable to my own.

I finished the first draft of The Seventh Sorcerer in June 2003, and from then until its publication in 2013, altered it so many times that probably less than half of the original text remains to this day. I would not have considered publishing it at all except that The Magic Crystals, the story which grew from the first book in the series, became one that had much more meaning than I had anticipated, and is now a story that many besides myself can enjoy.

Stephen Hayes, author of The Magic Crystals Series

You can visit Stephen's website at www.themagiccrystals.com.

May you read well and often