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Hello! My name is Craig Montgomery. I’m a fantasy author. My debut novel, A Circle of Stars, releases on June 16th and I’m here to say that writing a book is hard.
The Inspiration
I started writing A Circle of Stars in the summer of 2019 with a box of tarot cards and a dream. Three unsuccessful attempts at writing a novel had brought me to question if I could really do it. As I said, writing a book is hard. If anyone tells you differently, you can tell them I think they are a liar.
More seriously, every brain and every story are different. And the years I spent writing stories that didn’t quite work were teaching me a lot of things. I couldn’t see past my frustration that they weren’t working stories because I desperately wanted to crack the code. I’ve loved books since I was a child. When I got the idea that maybe I could take my fun little thoughts and overactive imagination to the page myself, I couldn’t let the thought go. I’m so glad I didn’t. I’m proud of A Circle of Stars and I can’t wait for people to pick it up. It’s a YA queer coming of age story. It’s also a dystopian fantasy with strong sci-fi feelings.
ACOS centers on Casper Bell, an 18-year-old gay boy, who is abducted from Earth to a magical lunar city on the other side of the universe. There, he is told that astrology is magic, and he can access powers from all twelve zodiac signs. But it doesn’t take long for Casper to figure out that they did not bring him to this magical city for his own benefit. He wonders if he was better off with his shattered life back on Earth until he meets Helix. Helix is sweet, playful, basically royalty, and very hot. As social unrest stirs in the city, Casper and Helix have to learn how to trust each other and their own selves as the world around them starts to fall apart.
Back in 2019, with my tarot deck, I asked myself what I would write if I could write anything. And because I live with my brain, it first answered with something I had to do before I could get to anything I wanted. I knew I had to write about my perspective of the queer experience. Of growing up feeling like I was outside of every group I encountered. The deep, soul-wrenching realization that I didn’t fit into the place that raised me. It was going to come out of me whether or not I wanted to write about it. I was in a fulfilling relationship with my soon-to-be fiancé (now husband) and the path to finding him and our life was extremely prevalent on my mind.
The Backstory
But I also wanted to write a story about joy and finding your tribe and so much magic it could fill an entire world. Something that could encapsulate the feeling I would get escaping into my imagination as a child. I often say that I grew up like Mowgli from the Jungle Book. My mother homeschooled me and two of my older siblings starting my kindergarten year through my fifth-grade year. I had a lot of time playing alone in the backyard while she worked with my older siblings, whose curriculums were much closer to each other.
While tumbling about our front and back yards, I would tell myself stories. Often creating characters with superpowers that I would go on adventures with using the trampoline or the disc swing attached to one of our old oak trees as setting pieces. It’s been too long for me to remember any specifics, but I can confidently say that my battle to figure out plot began with me spinning around the lawn of my childhood home.
When I laid out my tarot cards to scry for some semblance of a story, these were the things bouncing around my brain. And when I started writing, what came out of me was what would become A Circle of Stars. A story of a gay boy who escapes his oppressive upbringing when he’s brought to a magical lunar city that is dealing with its own issues brought on by totalitarian rule.
A brief pause here to note that I am so incredibly grateful that my family has grown with me during my life. The opening of ACOS is difficult and is very much informed by pieces of my lived experience, but Casper’s family situation is not a biography of my adolescence. While I did grow up in a fundamentalist Christian environment and it was a very painful experience, my family has always loved and accepted me. I am so incredibly grateful for their support.
The Writing Process
I also am aware that it might sound strange to admit openly that as a writer I struggle with some of the foundational pieces of the craft. But I don’t think bravado helps anyone and I’ll always choose honesty if I feel like it might help someone else who might identity with my experiences. And I think it’s silly that we have a culture of everyone pretending they’re an expert. I think to be human is to learn, and the only way to learn is to fail. My experience of writing has very much felt like a series of failures, so I think I might be on the right track.
I found my way into writing by pantsing, which is shorthand for writing by the seat of your pants. This is usually juxtaposed against plotting, which is more methodically planning out a story before you start writing it. I’ve turned into something of a plantser now, which is a mix of both, but as I was approaching writing ACOS I had not found tools that were helpful for me in plotting. Hence the tarot cards. Which I actually think did a good job, by the way. I found Casper through those Celtic crosses.
Something I’d like to note for any aspiring authors is that my relationship with story is still fickle. I’m really proud of A Circle of Stars and I think it’s a good book. But before I fumbled my way through getting this story ready for publication, it was difficult for me to understand how much a book finds its shape in the revision process. You can read advice and hear the truisms a hundred times, but sometimes things don’t quite make sense until you have the lived experience.
I’m still not entirely convinced that turning a bunch of scenes into a coherent story isn’t a magic trick. The whole experience felt ephemeral to me. But the other side of the seemingly impossible task exists, and it can work. And yes, I am mentioning this because I think it’s something I still need to hear myself. (Looking at you, book two!)
Weaving in the Magic
Another thing I knew I wanted to do with this book was to get creative with magic. I’ve been a fan of fantasy and superheroes my whole life. There is a sentiment that the queer experience is mirrored really well by the superhero story, and I definitely identify with that idea. But it was always the powers, the magic of it, that drew me in. I wanted to be swept away from a world that I did not feel comfortable in because I wanted to be special, sure, but more than that I wanted to fly and be extremely strong and transform into whatever animal I could think of. I can’t think of a better analogy of breaking free from a life that you feel you don’t fit in than discovering you have superpowers.
There were two big sources of inspiration when I was brainstorming the magic for ACOS: Allomancy from the Mistborn trilogy and Avatar the Last Airbender. I wanted to push myself beyond reimagining an elemental magic system, and I was really drawn to the concept of multiple kinds of powers that were present in Sanderson’s Allomancy. I think because I was in a phase of learning Tarot, I stumbled across the idea of playing with the zodiac. And very quickly, the Fosergatis were born. A magic system centered around the sun signs of astrology. All the intricacies and depth of the zodiac and relationships present in astrology gave me so much room to play while developing twelve different power types. I had so much fun building the magic in this book.
So, I had brainstormed my way into a main character and a magic system. And honestly, every other part of A Circle of Stars spun out from those two things. I designed the world with the magic system, both the setting and the society. Casper comes to this new world as an outsider, so I had a fresh eyes perspective. I wanted his love interest to be a character established in the power structure of the world. This would become Helix. And eventually, as I explored the social issues that were coming to light in the story, I met Talleah. And I say that literally. That’s the magic of pantsing and why I don’t think I’ll ever fully let it go. She showed up and had a lot of things to say. I realized that there was another angle of the problem that needed to be fleshed out, the people oppressed by the authoritarian rule of the governing council in this city.
A Community to Identify With
The story heart of the story is Casper’s queer coming of age, and I wanted to reflect that journey in the overarching story as well. Something that has always stuck out to me in my relationship with my own queerness is that I don’t feel comfortable allowing the label of my sexuality to define me. In the opening chapter of ACOS, Casper questions in the narration whether being gay changes who he is as a person. And I’ve attempted with this story to explore that question, to ask what it would it look like if we were defined by what we can do (magically in the story, of course) instead of where we are from, what we look like, or the many, many other ways we divide ourselves up into categories.
I think there is a so much power to be had in an identity and the community that can arise from shared experiences. And I think self-image and our feelings and opinions of our own identities are incredibly nuanced and complex things. Having grown up in the bible belt, it was difficult to not feel like the gay identity would swallow me whole if I let it. I felt like I would disappear, and all people would ever see when they perceived me is that I was gay. So, in exploring this with Casper, I built a queer-normative world and turned the question on its head. What would it look like if our identity was a non-issue and society cared more about what we can do and how we serve the community?
How to Connect
Earlier I joked about book two being an issue, but I promise it is coming along. I have been focusing my energy on the launch for book one, but I’m very excited with how the second book is progressing. It’s also important to note that ACOS reads well as a standalone, and I did that intentionally. I don’t plan to drag out writing book two, but I’m recovering from a pretty serious burnout from the corporate world, and I needed to build comfort into this writing process for me to move at my own speed. There’s a culture in the indie space to rapid release and produce books like crazy because there are no barriers, but in this phase of my life I needed a clear boundary to let myself move more gently through the process. I do plan on releasing book two as soon as it’s feasible, and I will keep everyone up to date on my progress and the expected timeline.
For that you can follow any of my socials which are @craigmontgomerybooks on all the normal platforms except Twitter, or by signing up for my newsletter which you can find on my website at www.craigmontgomerybook.com.
I’m so excited to be releasing A Circle of Stars into the world and for people to explore Novilem and meet these characters. It’s honestly a dream to have reached this point and I’m so eager to see the book in people’s hands. The ebook is currently available for preorder on Amazon. It will be released in both formats on June 16th. The audiobook is being produced by Kirt Graves and is expected to be available through Audible mid-July.
May the stars bless and guide you,
Craig Montgomery
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