Maxwell Edison is a daydreamer. He spends his days, especially when he is in school, dreaming about the beings and creatures that inhabit the realm of Fantasy. His best friend, well, only friend, is Billy Shears and they are freshman in high school.
After Maxwell accidentally makes the class break down in laughter, he is asked to stay after school in detention. When a Shade starts to crawl out his teacher’s head, Maxwell find that a magical silver hammer has suddenly appeared in his hand. He attacks the Shade and it disappears.
Father Mckenzie shows up at his house and recruits him to attend to Crabalocker Order of Multidimnesional Magical Arsenal, COMMA for short, an academy for training young fighters that can call forth a magical weapon to batter the Shades.
The Shades, known as No-body, are lead by the Nowhere Man who has plans to place Shades in all leaders throughout the world. Only COMMA can foil his evil plans.
NOTE: The ideas for this book are not all locked in yet, so the synopsis will most likely change as the book progresses.
Idea for the Maxwell Edison Series
When I was in eighth grade, Christmas came rolling along and my Uncle Art and Aunt Ann gave me an 8-track tape of The Beatles called The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Now, I had never paid much attention to the Beatles at that point, as I was in the KISS Army, and hard rock was my jam. But that one tape changed everything.
For my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I only listened to the Beatles on 8-track tapes and records. I bought books and read a lot about John, Paul, George, and Ringo. I watched their movies. I didn’t listen to the radio at all. It was all Beatles, all the time. I knew every song, which album the song was on, how long it was, who was lead singer, and so forth.
Unfortunately, during my sophomore year, this was also the time that John Lennon was shot and killed. I will never forget December 8, 1980. It still brings tears to my eyes, like right now, when I am typing this. What a horrible tragedy that was.
Anyway, time passed and I fell in love with all Rock music, then New Wave, Big Band, New Swing, Electronic, and all sorts of other genres, but I never forgot The Beatles.
While I was taking a break from writing The Amber Swords, I got the idea for writing a series of books that focused on the names of people, places, and things that The Beatles mentioned in their songs. I’m not interpreting them as the Beatles may have meant, but just using these items in any way possible. Sometime it is just a mention of a song name, or an item from a song, like glass onion. All major character in this series are definitely from their songs.
I am writing the book with my daughter, Cierra Tigard. She is also a lover of Fantasy and quite enjoys listening to the Beatles.
I have added first drafts of the five first chapters. Feel free to contact me with any feedback.
The Song That Inspired It All
Click on the YouTube video to listen to the Beatles play Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. Paul McCartney is the lead singer.
The song is about a student named Maxwell Edison who commits murders with a hammer, with the dark lyrics disguised by an upbeat sound. McCartney described the song as symbolic of the downfalls of life, being “my analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as it so often does”.
Yes, in the song, Maxwell kills people with his hammer, but I changed it up so that he is a hero, not a villain. He is now fighting Shades, known as No-body, who all work for the Nowhere Man.
George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon