“True…” August admitted. “What’s the time, anyway?” she asked. I looked up at the clock above the Silvemists’ mantelpiece.
“We’ve got about five minutes,” I replied. “Wow, five minutes left of 2016… That’s insane…”
“You can say that again…” Matt agreed.
“Can… Can I make a toast?” I nervously whispered to Matt.
“Sure…” He shrugged.
I stood up at the front of the room and smiled.
“I… I just… I wanted to thank you guys… Everyone I’ve met over the last year… I know it hasn’t been easy for all of us… any of us… But…” I trailed off. “I don’t know what I actually wanted to say…” I laughed. “I suppose it doesn’t need a big speech…” I raised my glass up. “To… To the future, and to those who can’t be here to see it…”
The whole room raised their glasses. People clapped as I sat down and shrank awkwardly back into myself.
“That was really good, Em,” mum whispered to me. “Very well said.”
“Thanks…” I smiled as I put the glass down. I was trying to stay away from the champagne, to be honest. It probably wouldn’t have killed me, but the voices were pretty quiet at that point, and I wasn’t going to try and taunt them…
And so, the last few minutes of the year slipped past. Honestly, I couldn’t actually say whether or not it had been a good one or a bad one. I’d lost a lot, yes. I was definitely in worse health than when I began, between the brain damage and handful of scars I’d collected… But on the other hand, I’d found Raven, the sister I’d wanted for my entire life. I had friends now, real friends. I had a place where I belonged. A lot had happened, and although there was plenty I wished hadn’t happened, I knew I was a stronger person than I was at the beginning of the year.
So, good or bad, everyone in the room was smiling as we counted down the seconds until the New Year. Matt and August held hands (Something I really hadn’t seen before), and mum hugged me and Raven as we counted down.
“5,
4,
3,
2,
1.
Happy New Year!”
Afterword
Afterword seems like a pretentious name for this. Honestly, it’s more of an explanation.
If you’ve gotten this far, it’s clear that you’ve finished this book. This book is called ‘The Arch Stone’, and was released in 2018. However, it’s not exactly the first time this book has been released.
This book, or, at least, something very similar to this book, was released in August 2017, as ‘The Guardian’. It was the culmination of over a year’s work, and I was really proud of it. It was a really big deal for me, and I’m really glad that I released the book when I did. It meant that I was able to put something which I had worked on out into the world, and even make a little money off of it. And that was fine.
Then I went to University.
Initially, I was studying Film Production, but, after the first Semester, I changed to studying Creative Writing. And that sort of changed some things.
You see, I… I actually learned how writing works. I learned about proper punctuation and formatting and concision, and when I looked through my book, I realised that it had a lot of issues. I realised that my book wasn’t at the best level that it could be, and I realised that when I first published it, I should have done a LOT more editing than I actually did, because the book that I had published definitely wasn’t the best I had to offer.
So, I set out to re-edit the book. I fixed the grammar, I reformatted the lines to make it easier to read, and I tweaked bits of dialogue to make it all flow a bit better. And I thought that was going to be it.
And then I looked at the name again. The name which I had only just sort of settled on, rather than really liked. And it was sort of… Boring.
It’s something I already sort of knew. It was impossible to search for the book on Amazon, because ‘The Guardian’ showed so many results that definitely weren’t my book, and it just didn’t stand out. Hell, I wouldn’t notice a book with a name like that, and I spent a year working on it.
So, I tried to think of a new name. And that was one of the most stressful things I’ve done in a while. I tried so many different ideas, so many different perspectives I tried to look at. I found a website to make a wordcloud from, just to usefully find that the most commonly used word in the book was, bizarrely, ‘Artemis’, which wasn’t hugely useful. I spent about half an hour playing around with the cover to try and find a name which looked and sounded right.
I think I was probably overthinking it a little. I do that a lot. I wanted to find something really thematically linked to the story or something like that, but nothing felt… useable.
I actually don’t know why it suddenly clicked for me that I had a pretty good name for it already. I mean, the book revolves around a specific object, with a name that isn’t entirely self-explanatory, but which also has an underlying suggestion of something a little bit magic.
So, ‘The Arch Stone’ was the winner. And it’s a name which I’m much happier with. Especially since my brainstorming also gave me the names (and covers) for the second AND third books in the series as well!
I hope you enjoyed the book as much as I enjoyed writing it! It means a lot that you’ve taken the time out to read something which I made, and I hope you stick around for a little preview of the second book in the Foxway Academy series, ‘The Guardian’s Burden’…
1
It was about 8.00 in the morning, the day before we were supposed to go back to Foxway, when she arrived.
I was standing in the bathroom, trying – and failing - to cover up the scar across my cheek, so it wasn’t like I was asleep. Not that it made it any less surprising when the doorbell went off. We never really got visitors we did know, let along complete strangers turning up first thing in the morning without any explanation.
So, when I saw a girl, about my age, with light blue hair, sitting on my doorstep, eating an orange, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to say.
“Um… Excuse me…” I awkwardly mumbled. “I don’t want to be mean… But who the hell are you?”
The girl laughed as she climbed to her feet.
“Sorry, how rude of me,” the girl apologized in an airy Scottish accent. She stuck out her hand. “Sophie Moon.”
I hesitantly shook her hand.
“Nice to meet you… I think…” I muttered. “I’m-”
“Emilie George. I know. I’m here looking for you.”
I stood staring at the girl for a couple of seconds, before I heard footsteps coming in from another room.
“Emilie… What… Who’s here this early…” Raven dragged herself towards the door. That was a big difference I’d noticed between my sister and myself. Raven was not a morning person.
“And you must be Raven Blake. I have heard a lot about you two, you know,” Sophie said. “Can I come in?”
“Um… Sure… I guess…” I stood in a daze in the doorway as I tried to work out what had happened, before I followed them into the flat. Raven seemed to have slipped off back to bed immediately, and Sophie had made herself comfortable on the sofa.
“So, what… what are you doing here?” I pulled a chair over from the table and sat down opposite her.
“I’m transferring to Foxway Academy from the beginning of the year.”
“Wait, did you say your name was Sophie Moon?” Raven asked as she dragged herself out of the room again. “Where have I heard that… Moon…”
“I came down here from a Magic school in Scotland. The guy that taught me magic said he’d done some work at Foxway, and said I should try and track you down,” Sophie explained, ignoring Raven.
“He worked at Foxway? Who is he?” I asked.
“Sophie Moon…” Raven muttered under her breath.
“Russian guy. Ivan Sokolov.”
“Mr Sokolov? He taught you magic?”
“Yeah... For a few
years, at least. Taught me as much as he could, but eventually he decided it would be best to send me to a proper magic school. Not that it really worked out...”
“Well, if Mr Sokolov sent you here, I guess you can’t be that bad,” I laughed. “Tea?”
*
“So, how did you meet Mr Sokolov?” I asked as I put Sophie’s drink down on the table.
“It’s… it’s a long story…” She replied. “I… I…”
I was just about to try and push further when my phone went off. It was Charlie. I’d been speaking to them a lot since the attack on the Architects’ Ball, and we’d even met up a couple of times. It wasn’t anything serious, not at all, but it was nice to be able to talk to someone who I didn’t have to be the Guardian around.
“Sorry, I’ve got to get this…” I apologized as I answered the phone. “Hey, Charlie. You do know it’s eight in the morning, right?”
“I… I mean…” Charlie stuttered. I laughed.
“You know, you’re really going to have to learn to work out when I’m screwing with you…” I decided. “Seriously, I’ve been awake for an hour already.”
I heard Charlie laugh on the end of the phone.
“That was just mean…” they groaned. “Anyway, I was just wondering if you were still good to meet up later on? I’m in London, staying with family so I can get to school tomorrow, and if I hear another one of my aunt’s stories from her hippie days, I’m going to scream…”
“Shit…” I sighed. “I totally forgot…” I looked at Sophie. She shrugged. “I should still be able to make it. I’ll text you later, okay?”
“Is everything cool? You sound weird…”
“I’ll explain later. Weird morning, that’s all. I’m fine.”
“Okay…” They didn’t sound too convinced.
“I’m fine, I promise,” I smiled. “I’ll see you later.”
“See you later…” Charlie sighed before hanging up the phone.
“Everything alright?” Sophie asked. I nodded.
“Charlie?” Raven asked.
“Yeah, they were just checking everything was still good for tonight,” I explained. “You’re still good with me going out tonight, right?”
“Of course,” Raven replied. “Lucy’s back early, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t let her handle dinner… You know what happened last week…”
“True…” Raven agreed. “Maybe I’ll have to cook tonight…”
“Probably smart…” I agreed.
“So, who’s Charlie?” Sophie questioned. “Boyfriend?”
“It’s… a little more complicated than that…” I sighed.
“Is he nice?”
“They,” I corrected.
“They?”
“Not he,” I explained. “Anyway, it’s not really anything that serious yet…”
“Sophie Moon!” Raven’s eyes widened with a sudden realisation. “I do know you!” She shouted, snapping me back to the real world.
“What do you mean?” I looked over at Sophie. She seemed to be silently pleading with Raven not to tell me. “What does she mean? Seriously, you’ve just appeared on my doorstep without any warning, at eight in the morning, and you’re not going to explain what you’re actually doing here?”
“I… I…” Sophie stuttered. “I guess that’s fair…” she admitted. “Last year, I was studying at a big magic school in Scotland, St Margaret’s Institute for Magical Studies, but I… I got into some trouble… And they kicked me out… Foxway is the only place that would take me…”
I smiled at Sophie.
“Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Emilie? You know there’s more to the story, don’t you?” Raven asked. I nodded. “And you’re happy with that?”
“I am,” I turned to Sophie. “You said Foxway was the only place that would take you, right?”
“I applied for every magic school in the country, but no one else even heard me out…”
“Well, that’s all I need to know, then,” I decided. “Professor Greyford wouldn’t have let you into the school if he didn’t have a reason.”
“I… I admit, I didn’t think you’d get it…”
I looked at Raven. I mean, I really couldn’t hold whatever Sophie had done against her. Before Foxway took Raven in, she’d killed someone.
“Let’s just say that you’re not the only person at Foxway with a tough past…”
The Arch Stone: Foxway Academy: Book 1 Page 37