At 17, Alastair McPherson Has Brought Two Fantasy Epics Out of the Shadows
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Corbeil, Ontario–native Alastair McPherson is spending his summer like many university-bound teenagers: hanging out with friends, playing music, and working to save up for his eagerly anticipated first year studying Life Sciences this fall.
But in between the more conventional summertime fun, Alastair is hard at work on the next entry in his The Aeternium Cycle fantasy series — the third in a planned four-part sequence of adventure stories he first started writing when he was just 14. Publishing under the name A.G.V. McPherson, Alastair has now published two books of epic fantasy before his 18th birthday with the support of FriesenPress’s publishing services: From Out of the Shadows and the recently released followup, Burn the World.
Still only 17 years old, Alastair has now graduated high school and is leaving copies of his books for other students to enjoy in the school library. We recently caught up with the young author to learn what fuelled his ambition to publish a book at such a young age, the marketing lessons he learned with Book 1, and get the backstory behind his recent viral tweet.
What inspired you to first try your hand at writing?
I've always really enjoyed writing and creating stories. I've been coming up with stories and such for, I think, probably as long as I knew how to do it. Writing is just something that I've worked at honing throughout my whole life. The first thing I remember writing, just for myself, is this really short comic book thing. It was about an eagle. I was in grade one, and I just made myself a little comic book. Eventually, I started writing little stories about dwarves and elves and orcs after I read The Hobbit.
As I got older and started to write bigger and bigger projects, I decided that I really wanted to try to write a book series, and it just became a goal of mine to try to come up with some cool ideas. And then off I went.
Do you remember the moment you thought, “Hey, I think I can write a book myself”?
At some point, because of how much stuff I [was writing], my dad began telling me about Gordon Korman, who published his first book when he was all of 12. [My dad said], "Oh, I bet you could be a Gordon Korman and publish as young as he did" — probably half jokingly. But that was a moment for me where I can remember thinking, "Wow. Okay, I actually kind of want to see if I can do that." I didn't publish quite as young as Gordon did, but I still decided that I was going to make this a goal. “I'm going to try to publish a book before I'm done with high school,” and I made it.
Writing a book is often a huge challenge for anyone, let alone a 14-year-old. What was feeding the fire in you to meet this challenge at such a young age?
I think the biggest reason is that I just really like bringing the ideas I get in my head to life. [Writing] the book is something I was really excited about, and it was something that I really wanted to create. There would absolutely be moments when it was like, "I cannot write a single word. I can't think of a single thing to put on a page," but then there'd also be lots of moments where I got incredibly excited to just put some spark of inspiration onto paper. And I think that's probably the biggest thing: just the excitement I had about wanting to bring these ideas to life.
Burn the World is the second book in The Aeternium Cycle series. Was it always your intention to write a series?
It was, yes. I've always liked book series more than standalone books. I find you get to spend more time with the characters and more time with the world. I wanted to do something where I can kind of really plan and flesh out a whole cast of characters and a whole fantasy universe. The plan is to make four books, so we're halfway done.
Are you working on the third book? How’s that going?
Well, it's been up and down. I hit a stretch of writer's block for a little while recently, so I haven't made as much progress on it as I would've liked to by this point. I’m starting to come out of that slump and get some more chapters powered through.
I find that as I'm working on these books, I'll suddenly have ideas that I suspect make the book a lot better than what I was originally planning. I've had a few of those moments — which I always think is a good sign that I'm making good progress, when I kind of get these ideas where it's like, "Okay, this is how I want this book to shape out, and this is so much cooler than what I was thinking of weeks ago."
How did the process of writing your second book compare with the first? Did you learn any lessons from Out of the Shadows that you took with you?
I definitely did, yeah. The very first draft of the very first book was a lot different from what ended up getting published, and a lot of that came down to pacing. The longest thing I'd written before Out of the Shadows was about 75,000 words. That's still a huge project, but I had a little bit of an issue with stretching things out. I was used to having things move really, really quickly, to the point where it was too fast. It was too much all at once. With writing the second book, I think I was a lot better at tracking the pacing of everything.
As I wrote my first book, my ability to simply write improved a lot throughout that process — from selecting the right words to choosing how to describe things. That's something that has carried over to book two.
A tweet of yours recently went a bit viral after you sought out sensitivity readers for a nonbinary character you’re writing. Is that process underway? What’s it like working with a sensitivity reader for the first time?
It’s one of my more interacted-with tweets, for sure! Actually, it shocked me how many people reached out. I was expecting to maybe have just one or two people contact me, but there were a lot of people who left replies who were happy to let me ask them some questions.
I got a lot of really great advice and feedback, and some interesting lines of thought that I hadn't really considered before. [And that] was obviously the whole point of reaching out — to connect with others who could help me look at angles that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise.
I haven't gotten to the point in the manuscript just yet where I'm introducing the character I was seeking help with. But when I do get there, some of the people who I talked with said they were happy for me to reach out to them again. So I'll definitely be getting more guidance once I've actually started fleshing out and introducing the nonbinary character.
Can you talk about your promotions strategy for your latest book, Burn the World? Did you learn anything with your first title that you’ve taken with you into promoting your newest project?
Working the social media angle is, I think, a big one. As time has gone on, I've been getting better at using the tools I have to make better social media. Oriana, my [FriesenPress] promotion specialist, has been really helpful with that too. We had a chat about that recently and she gave me some helpful advice that I'm working on implementing.
The other important thing — just also looking at how things went in terms of [securing] a lot of sales — is that my book signing was huge. I had the most success with the book signing, by far, and I'm really hoping to do more now that Ontario is opening up again. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do another book signing or two really soon. Being able to have a big event that you can build a lot of hype around and get a huge audience for was extremely helpful.
I hit every social media front I had and encouraged people to share it. And also contacting local news media. I reached out to local newspapers and that definitely helped. Word of mouth is also a powerful tool — you just try to get [word about your signing] in as many people's ears as possible.
Is writing something you’re keen on pursuing in your post-secondary education, or as a career?
Writing is a big passion of mine, obviously, and it's something I want to keep doing. I don't intend to ever stop writing. It would be really awesome someday to be able to write full time, to make that my full-time job. I would really love that, but at the same time, I've also got a huge passion for the sciences, and it can be difficult to transition full time to writing.
Post-secondary, I'm hoping to get a degree in the sciences so I can look at one thing that I really love and really care about enough to work in — particularly the field of medicine — to help support me with my writing and maybe allow me to, one day, transition to writing full-time.
If it's actually making the medicines, designing new ones, improving existing ones, I really want to do something that uses science to help people. I'm not too picky as far as that goes.
What advice would you give to other writers who are just getting started?
The most important thing is to write. I know that probably sounds cliché, but honestly, you've just got to put stuff on the page. I’ve often found that when I'm unsure of exactly what to write, or if I’m having a bit of writer's block, sometimes the words start working for you — as long as you can get started.
And then, of course, the only way you get better is by writing, and then also by reading other people's work, right? Don't ever stop reading [others’ books]. That's a super essential element, as well.
What’s one thing you hope readers take away from The Aeternium Cycle series?
I’d really like for people to have just read something that they found engaging and enjoyable in a fantasy setting, just a great fantasy series. But I think one of the big concepts that I've been trying to develop with these books is simply the theme of equality and equity.
I’ve tried to present this idea of equity and cooperation in several ways within The Aeternium Cycle. In some instances, there are characters who have already scrubbed away their prejudices and treat people with the respect they inherently deserve. Other characters have prejudices at the time they are introduced (some far more extreme than others) but learn that those views are wrong — both morally and factually — and are able to change.
We spend so much time hating each other over completely arbitrary and altogether unimpactful differences that nothing ever gets done. We just hurt other people and cause conflicts and succumb to other problems. And we really need to learn how to set [that] aside and just embrace each other as people. Only then will we be able to move forward and start making real change and real progress in developing our world. That's my primary message, so hopefully people start to gather that from my books.
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Alastair’s books are available now on the FriesenPress Bookstore.
Visit agvmcpherson.com to learn more about Alastair and The Aeternium Cycle series.
