Rüneglaive: Sword of Heroes—a magical book with an unbelievable back-story
HOLLYWOOD, CA—In a world of 6-second movies, 140-character insights, and instant image sharing, what’s a 500-page novel to do? Michael Reed McLaughlin, author of the epic high fantasy series, The Hero Sagas, turned to Los Angeles-based indie publisher Rare Bird Books to help bring his decades-long creation to print. McLaughlin spent over three decades writing his tale of a young hero coming of age, and decades developing the legendarium (the rich world) behind his epic novels… Or did he?
According to an imaginative back-story, McLaughlin was not so much writer of his books, as translator of a tome of crumbling leaves and ancient scrolls discovered in the secret base of a childhood treasure chest, purchased in the 1970s, along the Old Santa Fe Trail. He traced the parchment’s origins to the first Spanish Conquistadors to venture north of the Rio Grande 400 hundred years before, eventually learning to translate the previously unknown, pre-ancient writing systems and languages used by a mysterious wizard named Zorwind.
What McLaughlin has uncovered so far are enough tantalizing tales to fill three books with the story of Mitak of the Oakwood, a young man on the cusp of adulthood who, in Rüneglave: Sword of Heroes, Rüneguard: Shield of Heroes, and Rünehelm: Helmet of Heroes, must grow in body, mind, and spirit to be worthy of these ancestral talismans. He’s now begun the translation of a second trilogy—The Hero Within, which tells the tale of Mitak’s father, when he was an even younger boy, thrown into a series of harrowing quests of his own.
The first book of The Hero Sagas is due to launch in Fall 2014 at San Diego Comic-Con, along with a robust enhanced iBook edition that will enable the full range of its extraordinary complementary materials to be enjoyed. From the 30,000-word glossary and audio pronunciation guide, to 3D renderings of the castles and caverns, weaponry and wizard’s spellbooks, to theme music, coats of arms, language dictionaries, genealogy charts, etc., etc., all will be vividly rendered in an Enhanced Reading Experience iBooks Edition that brings the book from the page to the fingertips in a way not yet experienced in the fantasy genre.
To fund this elaborate iBook Edition, a Kickstarter Campaign launched June 30, 2013 and will run for 30 days, culminating at the close of this year’s Comic-Con, a fitting bookend to the most recent turn of this remarkable story’s path—from Pre-European civilization to cutting edge 21st-century technology. Search “Runeglaive” on Kickstarter.com
AUTHOR BIO—Michael Reed McLaughlin is an avid sailor, Student Emmy® award-winning filmmaker, and long-time author. For over 30 years he has been working on his Tolkien-like high fantasy novels in his The Hero Sagas and The Hero Within trilogies. Michael lives in Hollywood, CA.
VISIT—Kickstarer http://kck.st/118RJ0o After the campaign visit TheHeroSagas.com
