New: The Mauled Mage Read-Aloud Kit

The Mauled Mage is a fantasy adventure with a hard edge. Beneath the portals, trolls, spells, and shifting avatars, it explores what cyberbullying really does to young people: the fear, the secrecy, the humiliation, the group cruelty, and the long shadow it casts over trust and wellbeing. It does not look away from the emotional damage. Instead, it draws readers into the experience from more than one side, showing not only what it feels like to be targeted, but also how crowd pressure, anonymity, and moral confusion can turn others into participants.

As an edufiction writer, I care deeply about helping young people learn how to live well in an increasingly digitally enhanced world. Story is my chosen way in. I want readers not just to be told about cyberbullying, digital pressure, manipulation, or bad choices online, but to feel the weight of these things through exciting adventure, through characters they care about, and through consequences that matter.

That means writing the books is never just a matter of making up a plot and hoping for the best. It takes a good deal of research, educational judgment, and careful shaping to make sure the story carries both truth and momentum. The adventure has to work. The characters have to feel alive. And the underlying learning has to be woven in so naturally that it never feels like a lecture.

Still, the writing is only one part of the journey.

The truly hard part, at least for an independent publisher, is getting the books into the hands of the people they were written for. That is where the challenge becomes very real. There is no large machine behind you. You do the quality checks. You think about developmental strength, clarity, structure, design, production, discoverability, and presentation. In my case, having a Fictionary developmental editing qualification in my pocket has helped a great deal. It has given me another layer of discipline and confidence in shaping manuscripts to a professional standard.

And then there is the rest of the publishing task. The formatting has to look right. The covers have to stand beside trade books without apology. The overall package has to signal care, seriousness, and quality. Remarkably, much of that is now possible for independent creators in ways that would once have been out of reach. I find that encouraging. In fact, I am quietly amazed by what can be done these days, and I am very pleased with how far my writing work has come.

One of those milestones has been The Mauled Mage. It has now been translated into Italian, and it has also taken on new life as a comic book serial. Seeing a story move into other languages and forms is one of the more satisfying parts of this work. It suggests the core of the story is carrying.

Even so, I know I need to keep improving the way I reach readers, educators, librarians, homeschoolers, and families. A friend in publishing recently suggested I create Read-Aloud Kits to make the books easier to use in real settings, especially where adults want to open a discussion but may not have time to work through a whole novel first.

It was sound advice.

So I have now created a brand new The Mauled Mage Read-Aloud Kit, a practical resource for schools, libraries, homeschoolers, and anyone working with tweens and young teens. It is designed to use short, powerful passages from the novel to spark discussion about cyberbullying, anonymity, empathy, accountability, and repair.

I wrote The Mauled Mage to confront cyberbullying honestly. I did not protect my characters from the emotional cost of it, because I wanted readers to experience something of what this behaviour feels like from the inside, including the pressures and distortions that can place young people on both sides of harm.

So, on that note, do have a look at the new The Mauled Mage Read-Aloud Kit and see whether it appeals. I would be interested to know what you make of it.