After writing a story as a present for his daughter's 13th birthday, Neil Godbout decided to continue writing until he had finished a teen urban fantasy called Disintegrate.
The book is set to be the first of a series called Broken Guardian.
The book launch takes place at the Prince George Public Library main branch Tuesday at 7 p.m.
A few years ago the novel Twilight was all the rage. Young girls everywhere were fascinated with the genre of the angsty teenage dilemma of loving a vampire and all the struggles that resulted.
"When I read the book I thought it would be so much more interesting if the roles were reversed - the female character with the physical power," said Godbout, who read the popular book because he wanted to know what his daughter was reading.
Godbout, a journalist for 20 years, now communications co-ordinator for the library, said he grew up reading Marvel comics where the fate of the entire universe was always hanging in the balance. The conflict is on that kind of scale in his novel. Main character, Lily, has the power while Sam is the lovelorn teen who never really feels like he fits in.
"The characters are in Grade 12 and meet and fall in love - it's a love that shouldn't happen but it does, and of course, it comes with consequences," Godbout explained. "But my female character has the power and she's not human but in human form."
Lily is part of a race of people called the Guardians, who are basically the caretakers of the universe and represent different aspects of it. There's a guardian for light, dark, power and so on, Godbout added.
"Lily has done some things to anger some of the other Guardians so she's in hiding," he said. "She meets Sam, a nerdy, keep-to-himself kind of guy, they hit it off and all hell breaks loose."
These are characters in transition, said Godbout. As teens, as well as in adulthood, people want to know who they really are, seeking their identity. Lily is a Guardian that wants to be more human.
"And Sam doesn't really know what he wants, but he's not happy with what he's got," said Godbout.
When Godbout's daughter Claire read the book, she told her dad something that got him thinking.
"She said 'dad, this is something I would have taken out of the library,'" he said. He started working on the second draft, really sharpening it up, getting people to read it for their feedback.
He went looking for a publisher. He didn't need to look far. Bonduran Press in Prince George published it.
With guidance from Virginia O'Dine, Godbout said the story coming out Tuesday is much different than the novel he wrote for Claire two-and-a-half years ago.
He had to write longer, something that O'Dine told Godbout she had never come across before.
"As a novelist I make a heck of a journalist," laughed Godbout. "I'm used to writing short, tight sentences, so I had to flesh out the story."
It went from about 60,000 words to 70,000.
The second novel in the trilogy will be in Claire's hands in time for her sweet 16 in March.
