Go Ask Your Mother Book 1: Sorcerer’s Playground

Tom is just a regular guy living in the suburbs. He has some stories from his glory days as a battlemage. But those days are long gone… right?

Sorcerer’s Playground snippet – 

I kicked my feet up on the ottoman. That might have been the hardest battle of my life. No, I didn’t take down an evil sorcerer with aspirations of world domination. I didn’t defeat a creature from another realm. Sure, I was a battlemage, but those skills didn’t serve me when it came to putting my three spawn to bed on a school night.

Twenty-one years ago, I saved the world. Today, I struggled to keep up with the dishes. Yeah, I was the battlemage who took down Caedes the Destroyer. Now I was the forty-two-year-old father of three boys who worked his butt off each day to get to this moment.

The kids were in bed. The house was quiet. Finally, I could enjoy a little alone time with Katerine, better known as Kat.

No, we weren’t going to make love. We were both too exhausted for that. After ten years of blissful marriage, we had our evening routine. The best part of the day.

Put the boys to bed, kick up our feet, and catch up on our latest shows. Tonight it was Grey’s Anatomy.

I couldn’t wait to find out who was sleeping with who this season. I think Kat and I experienced our love life vicariously through those fictional doctors. Chances were good we’d fall asleep before the end of the show, but what was the difference, anyway?

The same thing happened the last time we tried to get in a little hanky-panky. Kat fell asleep mid-tryst. I wasn’t offended. I was frigging relieved. So far, I hadn’t thrown my back out. Maybe I didn’t get to finish, but for me, that’s a win. It meant I could go to sleep, too. When you are raising boys of nine, five, and three, you take your sleep (and your brief moments of sanity) when you can get it.

I don’t mean to complain. I loved my family more than the world. The love I had for those boys made every second of chaos more than worth it. I was more in love with my wife now than I was the day we got married—even if our moments of intimacy were fewer and farther between.

Kat snuggled up next to me on the couch and I started the show.

Whaaaaaahhh!

I sighed. “Sounds like Elliot.” He was my youngest.

Kat kissed me on the cheek. “You have to work early, Tom. I’ll take this.”

I kissed my wife on the forehead. “Love ya.”

“Love you, too.”

I was supposed to go straight to bed. That’s what Kat expected. Instead, I took a moment and went out to the garage. I was a tool guy. I worked for a tool rental company. Store manager. I didn’t have every tool I needed, because I could always grab whatever I needed from work. Somehow, though, my work bench was a constantly cluttered mess. I reached for a long dusty box on my shelf.

It held my wand, which I hadn’t used since the day I vanquished Caedes. I’d bound him to an arcane prison and buried him beneath the ruins of an old warehouse in downtown St. Louis. In the years that followed, the place was leveled and they put a park there. I still took the kids there on occasion. I knew that somewhere deep beneath our feet was a sorcerer who’d nearly destroyed the world. Was he still alive? It was hard to believe he was, but as a master of the dark arts, I’d always suspected he’d find a way to escape. He never did.

After my victory, they threw a parade in my honor. I did all the media rounds. I even went on Jay Leno. I had my fifteen minutes of fame. At the time, I assumed that some other vile foe would eventually rise and I’d be the one to thwart his insidious schemes, but it never happened.

My wand went into a box. I had a name for my wand. Its name was Wand. I know, not especially creative. But when I held it, the thing came to life, almost as if it had a mind of its own.

I didn’t need Wand to access arcane power. I was born to a family of mages. The power was passed on from father to son. My boys hadn’t manifested any power yet, but someday they could.

When our oldest boy, Elijah, was born I promised Kat that I was done. We wanted to give him a normal life. I doubled down on that promise when Ezra was born and when Elliot came along nothing needed to be said. I’d always be a mage. I couldn’t deny it. I was Tom Gregory, the most powerful mage born to my family in generations. I saved the world once. They sold action figures bearing my likeness. Six months later, the world moved on. The endorsement deals stopped coming in. I had to get a job, so I applied at AAA Tool Rental. A few years later, I married the owner’s daughter. The rest, as they say, was history.

I retrieved Wand from his box. When I held Wand, my power was amplified and focused a hundred-fold. Forging a wand was something of a rite of passage in mage families. I made him on my sixteenth birthday. It was an arduous and painful process. It meant entering the arcane plane in the flesh. Not every mage in my family emerged with a wand so powerful. I don’t know if there was something special about me, or if it was dumb luck. For some reason, though, the arcane furies blessed me beyond measure. Wand made me more than a mage. When I took Wand in my hand, I was a battlemage. I was a hero. The power I felt with Wand in my hand was addictive. Power like that can change a man.

Caedes was born to a family of mages as I was. He also received a wand when he came of age. The difference was that I was loved and nurtured by my parents. They taught me to respect the power, to master it rather than allow it to master me. Caedes’ family took a different approach. They revered structure and discipline above all else. When we were kids, Caedes was a rambunctious boy. I met him at the yearly conclaves that the mage families used to attend. I’d go so far as to say we were friends. He didn’t go by that name back then. Tim Wagner was a joy, and he was as gifted as I was. When he got his wand, everything changed. He leaned into the power. He let the magic consume him. It changed him.

Some thought he was rebelling against his strict family upbringing. Others thought he was a bad seed from the start. No one knew what turned Tim to the dark side of the force. At the time, it didn’t matter. He was bad. I was good. Good guys beat bad guys. That’s how the world worked in my twenty-one-year-old mind. It was never that easy, though, not even then.

After my victory, when the rest of the world celebrated Caedes’ fall, I mourned the loss of my friend. What happened to him frightened me to the bone.

As I held Wand, it took me back to my so-called glory days. It wasn’t just the memory of being the world’s hero. It was also the power that I used to wield. I was an unstoppable force. I never allowed the power to define me, but I could have. A moment of anger, pain, or heartbreak could have sent me down a dark path. I could have reached deep into the arcane well and grabbed the alluring power that turned Tim into Caedes.

I almost did. In that final battle, when it looked like he was going to win, when he was about to blast me with a deadly spell, I almost gave in. I think that’s what he wanted me to do. If I did, together, we could have ruled the world. I never gave in. I blocked his attack. I bound him in a prison. I chose to become the world’s hero rather than its master.

Now, most people didn’t even remember my name. The world forgot me. Did I regret that? Not at all. I had more than I’d ever wanted in life—I had a family.

I missed being a battlemage, in the same way a high school football hero might miss the field, thinking fondly back on one’s younger days. Back then, I thought I was living my destiny. But life happened, the world moved on, and so did I.

I placed Wand back in his box and placed the box back on my shelf. Would the world need that battlemage again? Probably not. But a small part of me hoped it would.

A tingle remained in my body. Usually, after I set Wand down, I returned to normal. Why was the power lingering? Was Wand trying to tell me something? It wasn’t uncommon for mages to grow in power with age. Maybe that’s what was happening. My capacity for arcane magic expanded even while I wasn’t wielding it. It was like I had just drunk ten Red Bulls. The power would fade, eventually. Somehow, I had to get to sleep.

I snuck back into the house and retrieved a jug of milk from the fridge. Everyone was sleeping. No one would know. I unscrewed the cap, took a swig straight from the jug, and put it back on the shelf.

I shuffled back to my bedroom. Kat still wasn’t in bed. She was likely back in Elliot’s room trying to get him back to sleep, or perhaps she fell asleep beside him. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

I rinsed my mouth out with Listerine. Original flavor. Tasted like ass, but it was a refreshing ass. I splashed a little water on my face. I peed and went to bed.

The magic in my body still tingled, like a flow of electricity penetrating every cell in my body. I pulled the sheet and comforter over my body.

“Alexa, play binaural sleep music on repeat.”

Alexa confirmed that she understood my command. The soothing tones filled the room. I closed my eyes. Who was I kidding? It was going to take a while to get to sleep.

Something tells me that a quick power surge here and there is not the only action that Wand is going to see. Stick around becasue on February 28th Go Ask Your Mother Book 1: Sorcerer’s Playground is coming out. Until then head to Amazon and pre-order today.