Arcane Elemental Academy is my sell-in YA fantasy

So many authors thirst for success that they’ll “sell out” to make it. As for my YA fantasy? It’s confirmation that the Old Martyr’s “selling in.”

Why’d I roll with the name TC Marti? Two reasons. One, I first went with TC Martikainen, but it would’ve been too hard to remember. So, I tried other options, shortening it to Marti because it held an Italian flair and it sounded a helluva lot like ‘Martyr.’

Martyr’s how you’d describe an author who balks at commercial trends and expectations, preferring to forge his own path.

While I’ve proven this with other book series, I drove a stake through the mainstream YA fantasy genre expectation’s heart with my libertarian fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy.

Arcane’s for YA fantasy readers with literary flair

Take every genre expectation in YA fantasy and, at most, toss ’em out the window. I’ve kept a couple on the docket, but I put my own spin on ’em.

This isn’t a series that’ll tell you who the antagonist is in Chapter 1. It also won’t stick strictly to the story. In an anarcho-capitalist setting, the book’s true theme, I’m driving home what makes it so preferable to the invasive bureaucratic system the regime convinced us to live under.

Arcane Elemental Academy and the village it resides in become characters, and likable ones if you’re a libertarian craving their next fantasy read.

But if the regime poisoned your mind to think that the private sector exploits and leaves people worse for wear unless government intervenes? Oh, you’re in for a rude awakening if you pick up this work.

The way I see it? If the content pisses you off, it’s because you probably never bothered to look at things from another angle.

Instead, you ate so much propaganda your teachers fed you that you’re mentally in My 600-lb Life territory — overfed on indoctrination and too weighed down to take a single step toward property rights.

Why? Because they condition you to look into the horizon, but never beyond it. But don’t worry. Most of us looking beyond that horizon spent years deconditioning our minds and unlearning the garbage they taught us.

I wasn’t gonna write a forgettable story

Is The Arcane Prophecy an entertaining read? Hell yeah, it is. It’s still YA fantasy at its core.

Yote Diamondback’s a girl who spent all her life living in her sister’s shadow. Arcane boasts a Hogwartian flair, with its vast limestone buildings and its location outside of a bustling village that sends nostalgic chills down the spine in the autumn and resembles a Christmas card in the winter.

The forest surrounding Arcane’s full of mysteries and secrets, and not every secret’s benign. Heck, it’s got a literal light and dark side.

But it didn’t need to go into cookie-cutter land. I mean, there are what? 60,000-plus YA fantasy reads on Amazon? No, Arcane wasn’t gonna be another one for the muck pile, I can tell ya that.

Love or hate the series, I’m making for damn sure you remember it. So, I decided to ‘sell in,’ and not ‘sell out,’ even if I could’ve easily done the latter.

So what’s The Arcane Prophecy all about? Glad you asked. Check out its first three chapters, and maybe you’ll find it interesting.