Thanks, Marilyn, for inviting me to post.
School of the Ages is a series of books set
in a magic school in New York City. The students and teachers work together to
solve problems in an environment that varies from the real to the weird.
Described as sad and dark but fascinating, the books have won me some loyal
fans as a self-published author in the U.S. and U.K. and are currently being
published in India by Times Group Books.
When I set out to build the world for my
School of the Ages series, I knew that I wanted a more realistic setting than
other urban fantasies. I wanted the world to be close to our own, and to treat
magic in terms of realistic paranormal phenomena, such as I had been reading about
for years in the work of Colin Wilson and others. And so I use lots of real-life magical lore
and events, and I am very restrained as far as the power levels of the
magicians during the first two books. And I am careful with my jargon, to make
it restrained too. I rarely say "wizard" or "witch" and
prefer "magician" even though that term also refers to illusionists
and prestidigitators. Likewise, every book is full of ghosts, which are the
most fascinating of supernatural beings, and none the less interesting for
being written about often.
I also knew I wanted the heart of my series
to be in New York, for which reason every book has important scenes set in real
places in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.
Want some city landmarks? You'll get them, ranging from the Upper East
Side to Midtown to Downtown. The Empire State Building really gets a workout,
appearing in the first, third, and eventually the fourth novel. You'll also see
Union and Herald Squares (the latter with the iconic Macy's), York Avenue in
the Upper East Side, citywide diners and brownstones, the Statue of Liberty,
the Twin Towers, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Flatbush Avenue, Bayside Hills,
and Queens Hospital Center. And that's just in the first three books.
My fictional world is also global in scope.
Books two and three have major sequences set in Paris, and book three also adds
storylines taking place in Germany and the Czech Republic. Book four, which I
am still writing, is heavily grounded in India, especially Mumbai. The one city
I've visited most often but left out of the books is London. (That's because
I'm saving it for book five.)
Not just the settings, but the culture is
global. Although I have invented a lot of magic, I have mixed it in with magic
that is very realistic and with authentic names of figures from history, occult
and otherwise, and I hope readers will have difficulty distinguishing my
inventions from things they can look up in other books. I postulate magic as a
worldwide phenomenon with different versions in different places, for which
reason my kids learn Asian meditation and visualization techniques and use them
side-by-side with magic in the European tradition.
Thus, my world-building has really been
about a complex cocktail of real-world material and invented material that
feels very similar. It requires frequent research, and, I hope, encourages my
readers' curiosity to learn more about the various people and places I
describe. Overall, though, it's a story about characters and their problems,
and I hope they are characters that readers of all ages will want to stay with
for the entire five-book journey.
Thanks again, and let's keep talking
online.
Matt
Author Bio
Matt
Posner is a writer and teacher from New York City. Originally from
Miami, FL, Matt lives in Queens with Julie, his wife of more than ten
years, and works in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Matt is also the Dean of
School of the Ages, America's greatest magic school, located on a secret
island in New York Harbor, and is pleased to tell stories about its
people in the five-book series School of the Ages, which will be
published between 2010 and 2015. As the child of classically trained
musicians, Matt is a performing poet and percussionist with The
Exploration Project, New York's premier avant-garde multimedia club
band, along with the painter Eric Henty and founding musician and
empresario Scott Rifkin. (Look us up on Facebook and sample and buy our
music here on amazon and in many places online.)
Matt teaches high school English, with a fondness for special education students, and teaches world civilizations at Metropolitan College of New York. His interests include magic and the paranormal, literature, movies, history and culture, visual arts, world music, religion, photography, and professional wrestling history.
Matt teaches high school English, with a fondness for special education students, and teaches world civilizations at Metropolitan College of New York. His interests include magic and the paranormal, literature, movies, history and culture, visual arts, world music, religion, photography, and professional wrestling history.
Ways you can connect with Matt,
Matt Posner, novelist, speaker, teacher
Twitter: @schooloftheages
Pinterest: mattposner
Sounds like an interesting novel. Glad to be introduced to it. And Matt, you sound like a traveler - I can relate. I've often wondered how authors base stories in cities and cultures they haven't experienced. I've wanted to write a few things like that, and I'm always so worried I won't get it right.
ReplyDeleteHi Steven, thanks for stopping by!
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