About Beverly Twomey
Beverly Twomey was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. For over ten years, she has worked as a used bookseller which has greatly expanded her personal Tolkien collection. When she is not lost in the stacks, she can be found drinking vast amounts of tea, snuggling with her two cats, reading fantasy novels, writing in the wee hours of the morning and plotting ways to play more Dungeons and Dragons.
Author Links: Newsletter/Blog ● Instagram ● Bluesky ● Facebook ● Goodreads
The Necromancer’s Apprentice sprung to life with a single pun – “The Dying Art of Necromancy”.
It came to me during a discussion on Twitter about wanting to see the trope of a grim, dark magic, and evil necromancer turned on its head. What if the necromancer was just socially unaware of how their magic was received by society? After all, they’re simply doing what they’re best at. It’s this desire for a ‘dorky necromancer’ that sent me into a rapid frenzy of brainstorming.
I had just finished writing an emotionally heavy book and needed something fun. I wanted to make puns, write whimsical wizard duels, animal companions, big action sequences, and above all, discover who this necromancer could be if given the space and time. Within a year, The Necromancer’s Apprentice was born.
I very quickly realized that my ‘fun little story’ carried with it a wounded heart. After all, you can’t have a book about necromancy without death. It’s a taboo subject, especially for a children’s book. As much as The Necromancer’s Apprentice is about recapturing whimsy and wonder, it’s also about grief. How we can struggle to process it when it’s all encompassing, or the ways in which we distract ourselves from grief to feel human again.
It’s my hope that readers will find the courage to face not only the spooky, scary skeletons but their grief as well.
Cover design and artwork by Luisa Galstyan (Instagram ● Behance)
Title The Necromancer’s Apprentice
Author Beverly Twomey
Target Audience Middle Grade
Publication Date October 1st 2024 by Snowy Wings Publishing
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Blackwell’s ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
Georgie would do anything to help his father – even learn the dying art of necromancy.
Twelve-year-old Georgie works hard to care for his grieving father while keeping his nosy younger cousin out of trouble. But when his father begins to decline even further, Georgie decides to bring back the one person who could do it all, his deceased mother.
The local Necromancer is an awkward and solitary man with an ancient black cat and a literal skeleton in his closet. With a few words, he can cause a dead sparrow to fly, stop an animated skeleton in its place, and even speak to the dead themselves. Georgie is quickly swept away into a world of skeletal horrors, abandoned graves, and wizard duels where woodland creatures arm themselves against the undead. But can he convince the Necromancer to resurrect his mother in time?
Perfect for fans of Diana Wynne Jones and T. Kingfisher, The Necromancer’s Apprentice is a whimsical take on the process of grieving and learning to live again.
