There is a character in my upcoming novel who has existed for over three hundred years. He has survived the Shattering of the world. He has watched civilizations rise and collapse. He has catalogued wars, famines, political upheavals, and the slow erosion of things that were once considered permanent. He carries a journal. He is made of stone. He does not have feelings about any of this — or so he would like you to believe. His name is Reaper.He is the narrator of The Chronicles of Reaper: Book One — The First Stroke of Red Ink.And last week, my beta reader dunked him in a lake.
Not literally. But when you hand your manuscript to someone you trust and say "be honest with me," you are essentially grabbing a four-hundred-year-old stone archivist by the ankles and yeeting him into cold water. The pages fly. The dignity does not survive. And somewhere in the chaos, you are laughing — because the good notes, the real ones, are worth every splash.My beta reader is thorough. My beta reader is committed. My beta reader left over a hundred comments on the manuscript and asked "Seriously, who is Cordie?" no fewer than six times in a row, at increasing levels of desperation.
My beta reader is also, and I say this with complete sincerity, the real person I modeled Reaper after. He has known this since the beginning. Reaper is made of stone because my beta reader loves dwarves above all other fantasy creatures. Reaper writes in red ink because my beta reader has been leaving red ink on my pages since before this book had its current name — through every iteration, every title change, every version of this story that became something better. I needed a narrator. The character walked in fully formed, because I already knew who he was.
Yet. He just spent several hours leaving clinical, precise, cataloguing notes on a manuscript about a stone archivist who leaves clinical, precise, cataloguing notes — and slipped so completely into the role that he didn't even blink. The journal pages were flying past his head. He was too busy documenting them to notice he had become the character. That is either the greatest compliment I have ever paid someone or proof that I know him very, very well. Possibly both.
The "Seriously, who is Cordie?" comments? That was intentional. I wanted exactly that reaction. Cordie is supposed to make you ask that question. She is supposed to make you slightly uncomfortable with how little you know about her. She disappears from scenes without anyone noticing when she left. She has been doing this the entire book.
My beta reader noticed. Good.
The Chronicles of Reaper is a dark fantasy novel told through the archive of a Stone-Born creature named Reaper — a being carved from living stone by the god Korrin at the moment the world broke. Korrin's last words before the Shattering consumed him became Reaper's founding purpose: "Bear witness. Speak truth. But not of what we did."
Three hundred years later, he is still bearing witness. He has been watching a young woman named Serelith for fifteen years. He writes about her in clinical, careful language. He calls her Subject A.
He tells himself this is professional distance. It does not stay professional distance.
The book is about memory, identity, the cost of power, and what happens when the most emotionally repressed archivist in recorded history is forced to admit he has a stake in the outcome. It is dark. It has monsters. It has a found family held together mostly by stubbornness and spite. It has a character named Rowan who made my beta reader yell NOOOOOOOOOO in the comments at the end. That one was also intentional.
The manuscript is currently in its polish pass, with my beta reader's notes sorted into a very organized document that I am choosing to find exciting rather than overwhelming. There are real fixes to make. Good ones. The kind that make a book tighter rather than different — filling in the small human details that make characters feel like people instead of plot functions.
Release is coming in the late autumn window — somewhere between late September and early November.
In the meantime, please enjoy this image of Serelith throwing Reaper into a lake, which my AI image generator produced when I asked it to help me process my beta read feelings.
Yes, I used and AI prompt for this image. The journal pages are a nice touch.
He's fine. He's stone.
The Chronicles of Reaper: Book One — The First Stroke of Red Ink is coming soon from Irish Rivers Press.
Follow along at www.irish-rivers.com for updates, excerpts, and the occasional act of literary violence against a three-hundred-year-old archivist.
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