The short version
Joe Field is the author of all books set in the world of Algendis, and Watchers of the Evenfall is his debut novel. After submitting his manuscript to numerous literary agents, Joe decided to self-publish so he could be rejected by a much wider audience. He is a student of psychology and an amateur YouTuber. He loves world folklore and mythology and wished to see a greater range of monsters in fantasy than dragons and unicorns which is one of the inspirations for his work. He lives with his two cats in Texas.
The long version
An overwhelming majority of children engage in make-believe play. This may range from simply playing house to emulating favorite superheroes. I was no different. Before the internet and with limited access to the glut of media now easily available to children, I would play a variety of games with friends, not the least of which was imaginative fantasy play. Any stick could become a sword, wand, or magical staff. We built stories together while climbing trees and running outside. The stories we told captivated me, and every time I was told that I would see a friend, I looked forward to our collaborative storytelling. This is, however, a phase of childhood that dwindles until it disappears. Pretend play is gradually replaced by more structured games, which then grow into competitive play. My peers grew older and stopped visiting the strange and magical worlds we created, but I didn’t. The magic had been more and more abandoned, but I couldn’t part with it. I continued to cultivate the magic as I aged, though I kept it mostly a secret. My friends left me alone to explore these uncharted lands, likely without ever realizing it. I found great joy in that solitude and still do.
Around this time in childhood, one of my favorite movies was Quest for Camelot, an animated film better known for its musical score than anything else. While there were many things for an eight-year-old to appreciate, the most amazing thing to me was the griffin. I had seen dragons and unicorns before, but the appearance and danger that the griffin exuded, along with its unique physiology, captured my imagination. The idea that other magical creatures existed beyond what I knew enchanted me and launched my search for books on different kinds of monsters.
Around the age of ten I noticed a friend of mine reading a book with a dragon on it while we were at summer camp. I asked about it since I was an avid reader of fantasy at the time, and we both shared a mutual appreciation for the books of Brian Jacques, the author of the Redwall series. He described the book to me and I later told my mom about it and obtained a copy. It turned out to be a book that took the world by storm, and I absolutely loved it. What made this unique, however, was the author. The book was Eragon, and the author was Christopher Paolini. My parents left out a newspaper article about him for me to read and I discovered he wrote the book at the age of 18. Furthermore, he had been homeschooled. This revelation astounded me. Authors had always appeared to me like mythical beings little removed from the unicorns and elves they wrote about, and yet here was an author less than ten years my senior who had been home schooled as I had been. Realizing this flipped my perspective from viewing creative writing as the activity of some quasi-supernatural being to people just like me.
A few years following this I watched The Fellowship of the Ring and subsequently read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien’s work became a matter of endless questions and enthusiastic debate among my friends as I looked into other texts, including the Unfinished Tales. This latter work excited me in a different way from the others. The tentative language he used when describing what happened to the blue wizards (a heretofore unknown group to me) surprised and enthralled me. How could an author not know the beginning and end of his own creation? It brought me to the realization of exactly how massive Tolkien’s world was. Arda grew beyond the imagination of its creator to the point that he acted more as a historian than its architect. That attention to world building inspired me to seek similar depth in other works. I began work on my first novel and wrote around forty pages in Microsoft Word with the exceptionally unhelpful Clippy to assist me. The novel remains uncompleted, but the world sowed the seeds of what was yet to come.
From around fifteen began a long moratorium in my fantasy adventures that would last into my early adulthood. I strove to relate to others when it came to books and so I turned to the classics, starting with Homer’s Odyssey at around thirteen. I think I may be the only teen who thought it would be easier to relate to others by reading Homer, but it was meant to ease me into other seminal works. This led me to gradually abandon fantasy novels in favor of reading classic literature. It was during this time that I discovered Edgar Allan Poe and grew to love his style of writing. In fact, the powerful emotion he wrote with was something I tried to emulate for many years before eventually finding my own voice, later adding my love of Victor Hugo to my writing style which then decayed into its present state. That aside, it should be noted that I never abandoned my interior fantasy world. I would daydream about stories and circumstances for a variety of characters. It became a constant source of solace from the troubles and demands of the day to day. Still, I mentioned it to no one. During this time, I had to purge some of my collection of books and, thinking I needed to put aside childish things, I gave up most of my fantasy books. This continues to haunt me as I think of all the books I have since reacquired in an attempt to rebuild my collection. Few things are more childish than putting aside what one loves for the sake of trying to seem mature.
In my early-mid twenties, I continued thinking of this world and created a cosmology I liked, reawakened by my appreciation for games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and D&D. One day I had a chance meeting with an old friend from childhood after attending church at the same time and we got on the subject of fantasy. He, too, maintained an interest in it. We talked for maybe an hour and I mentioned my ideas, which he reacted positively to. The interaction helped to fan the flames of inspiration in me and I began to write notes in my phone detailing aspects of the world. An idea occurred to me not long after. In a medieval-esque fantasy setting with humans being the predominant race, the other fantastical races inhabiting a shared society would seem like superheroes if most people were normal. This concept excited me and I built it with a particular interest in the monstrous beings who could work together as a team. With this inspiration I began work on a new novel, then tentatively titled The Nightwatch. The name shifted again as I made the team part of a preexisting group and they became known as Agents of the Nightwatch. When I finished this in mid-2020, I began working with beta readers and critique partners and one noted a similarity in theme and name to Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch. I had never heard of either the author, nor the book–though she assured me it was a famous novel. No one has exclusive rights to a title as generic as “Night Watch” but the knowledge of the similarity picked at me until I felt the overwhelming need to change it. I decided that “agent” was too modern a term for what I wanted. I developed a list of potential names and got feedback from close friends and family. Taking their feedback I developed a new title using words that first appeared etymologically around the same time period: evenfall and vigil. I still liked the idea of watching and waiting, and so I created the designation of the team. Put together, it became the final name of my debut novel, Watchers of the Evenfall. In the end, I liked this name better than what I had before. It maintained an irresistible mystique that would not be immediately apparent to most readers.
I published my debut novel in October of 2022 with a sequel that was released at the end of May 2023. Many people have reacted positively to the books I wrote, which brings me a deep sense of peace and joy. The fantasy world I imagined from childhood has been accepted by others and now works in their minds, not just mine. The imaginary places that my childhood friends gradually abandoned are slowly being repopulated with others who bring their sense of wonder and interest to it. You are all part of my story and my world. Welcome.
