Granby Mother and Son Co-Author Fantasy Novel

A Granby middle school student's struggles with creative writing eventually led him and his mother to team up and co-author a self-published fantasy novel that hit online retailers this month.

Karen Stanhope said in a telephone interview Friday that in 2006, her son Dan, now a student at the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando, was having difficulty in a sixth-grade English class at when they came up with the idea of what developed into “Skycat and Sword: Jadan’s Rise and Revenge” (published by iUniverse).

“He wasn’t doing as well as he could have been in creative writing,” Karen Stanhope said in a telephone interview. “He was having trouble putting his imagination on paper, and he definitely has an active imagination.”

Karen Stanhope said that she and Dan started talking about story ideas, and they would revisit them periodically.

“It was something that he and I could share and it ended up being the book,” said Karen Stanhope, who is an architect for a major computer company and a frequent contributor to The Drummer. “It was a nice evolution.”

Aimed at “tweenagers,” “Skycat and Sword” is a fantasy tale set 4,000 years in the future after a meteor has crashed into the Earth. The story centers around a human prince who, after having his birthright stripped from him, befriends a mutant half-man/half-spider who teaches him survival techniques.

“It’s a quest story [for the prince] to regain his kingdom,” Karen Stanhope said. “But it also has some moral that despite being shaped by the things around us, we’re basically the same. It’s also about acceptance and forgiveness.”

Karen Stanhope said that she did most of the writing, while the ideas came mostly from Dan, though Stanhope’s youngest son and some of his friends helped to critique the work.

“It brought us closer together and it enabled me to connect with both of my sons,” Karen Stanhope said.

Paperback copies of “Skycat and Sword: Jadan’s Rise and Revenge” are available on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com for under $15, while the book is available for the Nook at Barnesandnoble.com for under $4.

Click here for more information on the book and Dan and Karen Stanhope.