In the Valley

In the Valley

She was told the World Above was where the gods live. Then one of them fell into her grove.

Persephone is fifteen and has never left the Valley. She's not sure anyone has. Elder Mori says the grove is as far as any girl should wander, and that the sky belongs to the gods of the past.

Persephone wanders anyway.

What she finds is a boy named Ezra who claims to have come from the clouds. He says the Valley is called Earth. He says his home is an orbital city in the sky where everyone has a machine in their arm except him. He says nobody up there believes anyone lives down here.

The Archives of Edgar Brave Alister: The Archives of Edgar Brave, Book 2

The Archives of Edgar Brave

Edgar Brave never took a risk in his life. Then a stranger tore his brother through a wormhole—and the wormhole started to close.

Five seconds. That's what Edgar has to decide: leap into a world he can't see, or stay on Earth and let Simon disappear forever.

He jumps.

Cassini is nothing like home. Tides glow in the dark. Island cliffs rise from the sea on their own. War drums roll across the horizon, and something is hunting Edgar through the trees—something that knew his name before he ever arrived.

Because Simon's kidnapping was no random act. Three immortal brothers have ruled Cassini for millennia, trapped in a war they can't win and can't end. And Edgar and Simon have been dragged into it before. Every time, they fail. Every time, the cycle resets. No one remembers—except the ones who took Simon.

Now a kingdom is falling, a queen is waging a war from mountain caves, and a witch is slipping between dimensions searching for the one thing that might break the loop. All of it is converging on Edgar—a foster kid who spent his whole life avoiding the fight.

This time, running isn't an option. If Edgar fails, he doesn't just lose his brother. He loses him again. And again. Forever.

The Archives of Edgar Brave is a coming-of-age epic fantasy trilogy for adult and YA readers—part portal adventure, part family mystery, and a story about breaking the cycles that have owned you since before you were born.

Start with Alister. The wormhole won't wait.

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About the Author

I'll tell you a story that may feel familiar. A young child, old enough to explore the world but not enough to see too far ahead, stumbles upon a book, a movie, a game, and cannot stop indulging. What does that child do when they finish? The child has been set down a path, and what would happen if they couldn't spot the next bread crumb, the next obsession?

As you may have guessed, that boy was me, and the source of my obsession was a game: The Dig. You perhaps haven't heard of it, but that doesn't matter as it only serves as a placeholder for Harry Potter, Star Wars and the like.

The more important question is what do you do when you cannot find the next bread crumb? There is no "other game" to play, because The Dig was not an action game, and that was all that game makers were making.

My wonderful parents presented me with a what-if: "what if you made one yourself?" The next bread crumb, when left unfound, could be created!

That lead me to two diverging paths. Do I learn programming and create the game, or do I learn to write and create the story?

You might be confused (mostly by the subject of this website) to learn that I chose to learn programming. But still, as I progressed through my Computer Science books and received my degree and continued on to my profession, that tap-tap-tap of that ghost I left behind nagged me.

You can diverge along a narrow wood and leave behind the path untraveled, but not forever.

And so I checked in. Wrote a little. A little more. Then finally took aim and focus and completed three drafts of that story from childhood, the one I left behind.

That story is The Archives of Edgar Brave.

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Adam is a husband, and a father to four wonderful kids in North County San Diego. A Software Manager by trade, Adam spends his free time writing a meld of science fiction and fantasy. His goal is to have his readers believe the fantastical, if only for a fleeting moment.

Email

adam [at] adamwschmitz.com