Hello all and welcome!
My name is James Harrington, and this is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine and I hope that you will find it interesting.

So… let’s start off with a little about me, shall we?

First off, I am 31 years old as of this month, I am Boston-born and raised, and among the last generation of the Mission Hill born of my family. I graduated the University of Massachusetts with a degree in History. I had every intention of becoming a teacher, but being a strong right-wing conservative/libertarian, the extreme left wing views of the professors, as well as the political indoctrination of the school system left me disillusioned, resulting in me following a different career path.

I now work in the healthcare system where I support the technology side of things… but that’s not what you’re hear to read about.

So as no doubt everyone who has come here knows, I am a published author. My work includes both Historical Fiction and Urban Fantasy. Currently, the Magnifica trilogy is my only published work.

I started out writing short stories and fan fiction. I did have some successful publications in school papers and won a few essay contests here and there, but never really had a major break through back then.

In college, I had all but abandoned writing until a few friends began playing a Star Wars Role Playing Game. For those of you who don’t know what that is, basically you sit around a table telling a story and each person takes on a character in that story. Each person makes decisions along the way that affect the outcome.
Back on topic, said friends didn’t have a story and were getting nowhere coming up with one to launch their adventure. At that point, I took some time out of my schedule and began writing them a complete story that they could use as an adventure. It was a big hit and before I knew it, I had become their dungeon master. To be clear, I’d never played one of those games before and had no interest in them, but the guys loved my writing, so how could I say no?

Over time, I began taking the adventures that I had written for my friends and compiling them in a word document. Once we stopped playing, I went to work patching the adventures into a complete story. I printed it and had them read it. The story was a hit and my first novella was born.

Unfortunately, I knew it couldn’t be published because I simply couldn’t afford to pay royalties to Lucas Arts and any other number of sources that I had borrowed from. So I kept the story in paper form and gave copies to anyone interested in reading it.

It was around this time that I decided to really challenge myself. I knew I could write long stories that people were interested in, but I had never taken on something completely original, at least not to this level. Most of my original work up until now had been short stories. If I was going to come up with something completely original, it would have to be about something I knew a lot about. So I sat back and thought to myself, “What do I know a lot about?”
Three things popped into my mind; history, theology, and mythology.

“Of course!” I thought to myself. It was all so clear. So I sat down and after listening to a lot of Epic/Power Metal, I began working.

Within a few weeks of reading, writing, and listening to more metal, Divinity was born. I spent the next few months polishing it up and then spent the next year submitting it to literary agencies. As you can imagine, there was little to no interest in it or a first-time author with no significant credentials.

This did not stop me from writing through as I went on to work on an entirely new book series: James Harrington’s Magnifica. The first book, The Last Enchanter, took a new spin on Urban Fantasy. As a major fan of all things Tolkien, Elder Scrolls, Elder Edda, and more, I wanted to try something new. Modern day stories featuring fantasy creatures had been done before, but those stories mostly consisted of aliens, vampires, werewolves, wizards, or ghosts. There really weren’t any of the classical elves and dwarves living among society.

After a good year of writing, The Last Enchanter was complete and submitted for publication. It became my first success, which spawned two more novels in the series. Having now established myself as a writer, I could now revisit Divinity and begin work on getting my original novel available to the public.
So that’s about where I am now. Hopefully I have not bored my soon-to-be audience too much.

My books are available at the links below, or at your local bookstore (hopefully):
Magnifica: The Last Enchanter:

Magnifica: Tears of the Fallen

Magnifica: Gravestalker

Divinity: TBD