A half-elf and half-human named Sten is self-conscious because of a childhood injury and thinks whenever a girl talks to him, they are pitying him. An unexpected journey with his brothers to find their missing father, takes him to places he never dreamed he would see.
That is the plot of Faribault native, David Anderson’s novel, “Three Sticks: Book One.” It’s Ebook release was May 17 and it’s paperback release was Sept. 5. Anderson said he has two more books in the series planned. The second book will be released Dec. 20 and the third one is projected to be released July 31, 2025. He said he got the idea for the book by his love of Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons.
The book starts after a war that takes place between the humans and the Dwarven and Elvish kingdoms. There were these necromancers controlling the undead and walking along the ocean floors. They took out most of the kingdoms. The humans came up with a plan to draw out the magic from the land, so the bad guys would go away. It was originally meant to just to sever the the arcane bond between the necromancers and the undead, but it ended up killing the good all the good guys and all the bad guys.
“As far as mages go, it’s rare in humans but common in elves. While it stoped the war, it also killed all the good mages. So much of their economy was based on magic and keeping the creatures out, there’s some huge turmoil that happened in the kingdom as the book starts 500 years after the stone was activated. And it still is radiating and stops the arcane creatures from entering,” said Anderson.
Anderson said one part he decided to do differently from Tolkien is how he portrayed the elves. In Tolkien, the elves are immortal. In Anderson’s book, he did that with a twist. Sten’s mother is a magicless half-elf, which is rare. Some elves are born without magic and die quickly. Sten’s mother did not and lives within the ward of the humans.
“In Tolkien, the elves are basically immortal. You’re born immortal, boom, you live for 800 years or 1000 years. In my book, the elves aren’t necessarily born immortal, but they’re born with the ability to cast a spell called ‘yesterday.’ They wake up in the morning and they cast ‘yesterday.’ It resets their clocks back to the day before,” said Anderson. “So they don’t age because their cells are, ‘oh, you know, we are, we’re back at the day before.’ You can’t cast ‘yesterday’ back a million years, but you can one day prior. And so the elves do that every morning. And when elves get tired of living, they just stop casting that, and then they age and die like anybody else. So I thought that was kind of an interesting twist on the elves.”
While Anderson was writing his book, he said he ran into some issues with it. One of those issues was figuring out the logistics of how all the characters were going to interact.
“If you go from point A to point B, this is hundreds of miles across this ward and you’re there for days. A lot of my time was spent figuring out the timing. ‘How far a horse can travel on a road versus a wagon.’ ‘What if they’re going through the woods?’ ‘What if they’re going through the the magic woods, where things are a lot tougher?’ ‘What if they have an elven scout?’” said Anderson.
Anderson said he didn’t see himself as becoming an author. He was looking for something to do when he retired. He started thinking back to his youth and drew inspiration from there.
“’Am I gonna drive the wife nuts?’ ‘Am I going to rearrange the spice shelf every day?’ I thought I would just do something that would be fun and lasting in a way too,” said Anderson. “I remember playing Dungeons and Dragons in the Faribault basement when I was 16 and the stewing and a mix of mild radon exposure and all that kind of stuff that gives life to some of those memories for the book, and hopefully helps other people remember their youth in a fun way.”
Anderson said he had the most fun coming up with the banter between the characters. There is one scene from the book where the characters are at this peach festival in this town where they are famous for their peaches. There is a conversation between Sten and his friend that Anderson said might have been one he had with a friend years ago.
“He’s 13, and he’s seriously crushing on some very popular girl. Obviously the festival is an event where sometimes things happen, right? So he’s musing with his friend about that. I kind of like that conversation happens pretty early in the in the book, between him and his friend talking about these girls,” said Anderson. “His friend is 15 and he’s got a crush on this blacksmith apprentice girl who’s 20. Sten’s like, ‘What are you thinking?” and his friend is like, ‘Yeah, but when I’m 50, she’ll be 55 and then nobody will think twice.’”
Anderson said he hopes people enjoy his book and are able to delve into his fantasy world and have fun while reading it.
“I think they should read it for just, just for sheer enjoyment, and help them remember, remember your youth. It gives you the eyes of other kids making mistakes,” said Anderson. “It’s not just for kids, there’s adult aspect of it. I would put the age on it for 15 and older. There’s some really, I would call hard moments in there. It goes between whimsy and horror in equal parts. You get a breather and then BLAM, they’re fighting again.”
WHERE TO BUY
The book is available for order on Amazon where people can get a physical copy of it or an Ebook version. People can head over to Anderson’s website, potatoseven.com to learn more about him as an author and when his next books will be out.
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