Author Guest Post :The Seventh Sorcerer and Rock Haulter by Stephen Hayes

The Story Behind The Magic Crystals Series by Stephen Hayes

The simple and rather dull truth was that the original reason why The Seventh Sorcerer (and therefore the entire Magic Crystals series) came about was because I had a Saturday night in which I needed to do something, and nothing but a brailler and about twenty sheets of braille paper to do it with.
Within a month of that night, I had written the first two books in that original series (each about twenty thousand words), and would eventually go on to write three more in the following two years.

The story was pointless, serving no purpose to entertain me and my sister, as it was based on the games we played as children, and yet it was good enough for me to want to re-write it, on my computer this time, in a way that I could perhaps share with other people—a way that would allow me to thicken the plot and close those holes which the first draft had left open. And so over the summer of 2002-2003, The Seventh Sorcerer began.

I have said elsewhere that the theme of The Magic Crystals is power, but while that is true, it wasn’t the original theme. In fact, far from power, the first six chapters of The Seventh Sorcerer centered around youth. Being only sixteen at the time, it was the sort of writing that came naturally to me, even if much of it had to be cleaned up or removed before publication.

Not only did the writing quickly become my favorite hobby, but as I was going through a difficult period of my life at the time, it also became therapeutically for me to step outside myself and into the lives of my characters, who despite having plenty of troubles of their own (the story would be rather boring if they didn’t), seemed preferable to my own.

I finished the first draft of The Seventh Sorcerer in June 2003, and from then until its publication in 2013, altered it so many times that probably less than half of the original text remains to this day. I would not have considered publishing it at all except that The Magic Crystals, the story which grew from the first book in the series, became one that had much more meaning than I had anticipated, and is now a story that many besides myself can enjoy.


About the Author
Stephen Hayes lives and writes in Melbourne, Australia. Having been born partially blind in 1986 and lost his limited vision in 2000, he started writing stories at the age of eight, winning the Harold Dickinson Memorial Australian Literary Competition for a short story about a haunted house at the age of eleven. He completed his first novella in Braille at fourteen and by sixteen, had completed the first draft of ‘The Seventh Sorcerer’.

Since 2002, Stephen has allowed his imagination to run wild with The Magic Crystals saga; sometimes pushing boundaries that today’s somewhat moral society deem to sweep under the carpet. Although classified as fantasy genre due mainly to the prominent magic component, Stephen’s writing also includes a good balance of drama, mystery, romance, humour, and he isn’t afraid to address controversial moral issues.

You can visit Stephen’s website at www.themagiccrystals.com.