Aurora Village and its shades of small-town fantasy

Arcane Elemental Academy is no small-town fantasy series, but Aurora Village would fool even the most notorious genre sticklers.

I’m not gonna lie or sugarcoat it: If you read fiction strictly for character archetypes and genre tropes tied to a specific formula, I got bad news for you: you’re gonna hate my work. Now, how many authors will tell you that upfront?

Yeah, very, very few. But listen, I’m not someone who’s gonna conform just because archetypes, tropes, and formulas sell. No. I write because I’m libertarian as f*ck, and it shows in the themes that influence my work.

Don’t like it? You know where the ‘X’ is to click out of this page. But if you’re cool with it, you’ll know that one of my many works, The Arcane Prophecy, is a young adult academy fantasy that also contains shades of small-town fantasy thanks to the Aurora Village.

Aurora Village is a character in and of itself in The Arcane Prophecy

This book, available come September 2026, features a female protagonist in Yote Diamondback. A girl who attends this mysterious Arcane Elemental Academy in the cozy Northern Region of the country.

The Northern Region, a completely voluntary society, has a hidden gem called Aurora Village, which the academy calls home. The 32-school academy sits right on the village’s edge, and its picturesque setting of a deep green landscape, cobblestone sidewalks, stone buildings, and miles upon miles of deciduous forest leading to rolling hills in the vast countryside in the background paints a calm, quaint, and homey setting.

If you’re a city slicker and you seek refuge out, but not too far out, in small-town America, you have an idea of what Aurora is. Heck, I based it on Wintersville, Ohio. So, if you ever passed through that hidden gem in the eastern part of the state, or a similar town based on the above description, you know where I’m going with this.

Aurora is a typical village in many ways. I wouldn’t call it an “everybody knows everybody” town, but one where everybody living in specific parts of Aurora knows everybody, if that makes any sense. It’s a small town, with about 3,400 permanent residents, but not small, small.

What gives Aurora small-town fantasy vibes?

Aurora would be a pretty boring place if it didn’t hold a lot of mystery within it and its surrounding area. The forest has a trail system that leads to an area called ‘The Pentagram.’ I don’t think I need to go into too much detail for you to know what ‘The Pentagram’ might be, yeah?

Also, Aurora’s got some magical elements that appear to certain people. I’m sure you can guess that Yote’s one of those lucky few, or else she wouldn’t be our protagonist now, would she? Yeah, she’s in for a wild ride.

Then, there are the professors, who may know a thing or two about the place, but they’re not saying much just yet. And finally, there are the cryptids that like to venture too close to the school and town.

So yeah, Aurora looks like your cozy little small town on the outside, but on the inside? Oh, it’s got quite a bit of secrets and Yote might just cross a few of ’em.

Yote can find comfort in the place while she’s uncovering secrets

As I mentioned earlier, Wintersville, my de facto hometown, inspired the work. What I love about Wintersville is more than just its picturesque scenery with those rolling hills, valleys, and lush trees amidst a cozy village vibe, but also its standing in the Upper Ohio Valley.

You think of the area, and abandoned steel plants near the Ohio River come to mind. Something straight out of a Bruce Springsteen song (his music rocks even if his politics suck, alright?). At least that’s how I’ve always worded it.

As for Wintersville, you won’t see any old, abandoned, and rusted-out steel mills or foundries of any kind. Heck, you won’t even see the river. You won’t see any of the mills in the distance. Not even the occasional smokestack coming from the nearby power plants.

But you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world there. You’ll see those hills, lush trees that put on quite the collage of colors in the fall, and in the distance, standalone landmarks like a church that sits in front of a trio of baseball fields where I spent a lot of my early years, water towers as far out as Knoxville, Ohio, and even, from the Overlook Hills, all of the good part of Steubenville.

It really is a phenomenal and magical place. And it’s why I injected that magic into Aurora Village. A place that Yote’s about to fall in love with. And if you want to meet Yote and get a taste of her magical ability before she goes to Aurora, you can find her in The Arcane Prophecy’s prequel, Arcane Awakenings.