Shepherd University professor publishes debut novel

ISSUED: 7 November 2024
MEDIA CONTACT: Hans Fogle

SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV - Shepherd University Professor of Psychology Larry Daily celebrated the publication of his debut novel with colleagues, friends, and students during a reception at the Scarborough Library this week.

Daily read the first several pages of the book to introduce Lauren, the main character in his epic fantasy "The Minstrel and the Prophet: Book One of the Chronicles of the Lawbreaker."

Lauren is a young boy whose only dream is to become a minstrel, an itinerant musician scholar for the Federated Kingdoms.

His dreams are shattered when his warrior father demands he start training, but unexplained occurrences set him on a different path entirely.

Daily explained that he began developing the characters and world he brings to life in his book in 1973 when a friend shared the preface to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."

"He [Tolkien] said the desire of a teller of tales is to tell a really long story," Daily said. "That resonated so deeply inside of me, I walked away from that paragraph with a really deep-seated desire to write my own trilogy."

Daily originally sought an agent to publish his book, but eventually self-published through Amazon, a process he said lets him protect his work.

"I don't want to end up in a situation where someone says, 'Well if we're going to publish this, you need to change that,'" said Daily. "There's stuff in there that's really important to me."

Daily waited to finish the trilogy before publishing the first book to avoid conflict between teaching and meeting deadlines for future works.

He unveiled the cover of "The Ring and the Sword: Book Two of the Chronicles of the Lawbreaker" during the event.

You can read reviews or purchase a copy of "The Minstrel and the Prophet" on Reader's Favorite and Amazon.

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