I'm Writing Another Book

I’m not new to storytelling. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve created innumerable stories. I played out some of my favorites with my toys and my younger brother, weaving narratives from my imagination. The few times I convinced myself to commit my stories to writing, I soon abandoned my work, fearing that it could never reach a satisfactory quality. A few years ago, as I was speaking with a friend about the nature of self-esteem, I envisioned a story about the worth of human life in a nihilistic setting; I later refined this concept after reading Berserk and a webtoon called The Horizon, two works whose themes I saw the need to portray in a modern setting. I outlined some concepts for a story about a hardened mercenary who grows as a person after meeting two orphaned children in his trek across a desolate wasteland, but didn’t write a word of the actual story. I was passionate about the idea, but I struggled to distinguish it from its two major inspirations. I recalled a dream I had in which I transformed our world into a utopia where I was the supreme ruler. Although naïve, my dream had strong connections to the value of human life. I thought long about the intersections between government and individual happiness, in addition to ways my story could differentiate itself from the slew of tales of Machiavellianism.

Eventually, I settled on a premise that I felt I would find extremely compelling as a reader—a story of an intellectually precocious, altruistic boy who becomes ruler of the world after magic emerges in modern society. It may seem convoluted, but I saw potential to distinguish this boy from the typical Machiavellian, to uniquely explore the story’s themes, and to imagine the world differently from the generic superhero society. After studying the inspirations for my novel’s premise, I drafted the prologue of the manuscript, birthing Alistair the Ambitious. A character-centric tale of politics, modern society, and moral philosophy, Alistair the Ambitious subverts the standard coming-of-age dystopian novel.

It follows the titular protagonist Alistair from his humble beginnings in a village of orphaned children to his rise to power while supernatural abilities manifest in a satire of our society. I deliberately wrote Alistair to be the opposite of an every-man; he’s exceptionally intelligent, mature, and ambitious for his age. He’s uninterested in romance, level-headed, and meets his challenges with aplomb. Alistair doesn’t awkwardly fumble through his personal problems like most adolescents. In fact, his inability to relate to people and his grand vision for the world is what illuminates his shortcomings. Alistair the Ambitious is the tale of a child who is more mature than most adults in many ways, yet immature in others. I’ve been ardently at work writing these past few months and I’m happy to say the novel is almost half-way finished. Once I complete the novel, I hope all of you will enjoy reading it as much as I’ve adored writing it.