Releases - The Word Guardians

March 5, 2026

Book 5, The Story Thief, first draft is nearly complete

This is a shorter blog this week to say that book 5, The Story Thief, is close to completion of the first draft. Then we’ll be heading into editing rounds, before sharing it with you later this year. In the meantime, I can ‘whet’ your appetite with a few details.

What is book 5 about?

The Story Thief is a mystery that involves knight lore and witches, and takes Yas, Sam and their friends into battles that they wouldn’t expect. They must find out who the thief is and return the stories to restore balance to the otherworld and the outer ‘real’ world.

It will feature many of the same characters as book 4 and start pretty much where The Lost Beginnings ended. Yas and Sam are working as interns for a news organisation while also investigating Word Guardians mysteries. There are stories of a knight in armour, riding the streets of downtown Vancouver. Parts of stories are disappearing, literally off the pages of books and the Word Guardians suspect the knight is behind it all. Finding him though proves a challenge. Yet, with the help of a mysterious ‘grey’ lady, they enter the otherworld once more. They soon discover that all is not as they remember and someone is changing the realm for a new storyline, twisting the purpose of the realm.

So, in the meantime

I can’t wait to be able to share book 5 with you, but there’s time to read (or re-read) the first four books while you wait. Click the button below to view the books in your usual Amazon store (all the books in the series are available in paperback and kindle editions).

The Word Guardians book series

March 15, 2025March 15, 2025

Book 4, The Lost Beginnings, is now available on Amazon

I’m excited to share that book 4, The Word Guardians and the Lost Beginnings is now available on Amazon.

It’s been a work in progress for the past year and I’m really happy with the result.

It’s another multi-layered story, set in the familiar (if you’ve read the other books in the series) setting of the magical realms.

Yas and Sam feature in this book, along with some other memorable characters from previous books. There are some new faces too.

I’d like to thank my wife, Angela, for helping me through the editing stages and Larch Gallagher for the wonderful cover design and cover revisions for the other books in the series.

A different take

I wanted the story to be a slightly different take on magic and realms. Whereas previous books have seen the characters move between a number of realms, book 4 is a tale of just two realms, the outer world (set in Vancouver, Canada) and an inner realm, ostensibly also the same city.

The inner realm is hidden though, the doorways are locked and only accessible to a few. There are reports of missing people in the outer world, and flashing lights that resemble portals. Yas and Sam become interested and do some investigation of their own.

If you could conjure anything you wanted, would you be happy?

Yas and Sam find a realm in which magic is an everyday commodity. You would think that in place where anyone can conjure anything they desire, life would be rosy. Yet, most don’t and everyone seems miserable. People seem trapped, having forgotten how they came to be there. Something or someone is at play behind the scenes.

New characters and relationships

This all sets the scene for new characters, a man that Yas and Sam find in the outer world who knows about the realm, the boy he’s kidnapping, a police officer, and more. In order to escape back to the outer world, Yas and Sam have to help the police officer discover her lost beginnings, uncover the identity of the mysterious Controller and foil whatever plot he or she has in mind.

Where to buy book 4

Book 4 is available to buy on Amazon using either of the buttons below. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Book 4, Lost Beginnings, on Amazon

The Word Guardians series on Amazon

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025

Have you noticed? The book covers have changed

It’s been a busy month. I’ve just completed revising the book covers for the first three books of the series and I’m really pleased with the result. As always, it’s been a privilege to work with Cover Designer Larch Gallagher, whose creativity, attention to detail and regular communication makes working together a real pleasure.

The models have changed

While working on Book 4’s cover (The Lost Beginnings – yes there’s a new book on the way and I’ll share more on this in a later blog), Larch suggested that it would be good to switch to models who had several images and poses available. It’s certainly made it easier for the first three book covers, so that the same ‘Yas’ and ‘Sam’ could be used consistently across these.

This was a great suggestion and solved a challenge we’d already hit for the original book 3 cover (The Shadow Readers). It used a different model for Sam, because the positioning of the image for the book 2 (The Twisting Tales) didn’t work as well as we’d hoped.

As a result, the models for Yas, Sam and Penn have changed for the covers of the first three books and on this website. If you spotted the change, that’s the reason why. For the really observant among you, there’s still an older post on the facebook page that has the previous Yas model. I’ll leave that there for posterity.

Results

I’m really pleased with the results, and I highly recommend Larch for any author who’s interested in creating a book cover for their own published works. If you’d like to see the result for yourself, please go and buy one of the books. And if you already have a copy of a previous version of the cover, I hope it becomes a valuable collectors edition at some point in the future. Time will tell.

To buy one of the books with the new cover, please use the link below.

The Word Guardians book series