call forth the moonlight

Deubrise is a land blessed by the breath of the slumbering gods. Magíq lives within nature, powerful and beautiful. Few else can harness it besides the gryphons that reside in the mountains near Nico De Falco’s home, and the rare magíqon like Nico’s little sister. But magíqon are shunned and feared by modern society.

To protect himself from such treatment, Dr. Ackerleigh Sebring keeps his magíq a secret. Yet his “radical” teachings of magíqal history gets him fired from Ravensbourne University. Desperate, he finds a gamekeeper job caring for an imprisoned gryphon. Finally, he can be his whole self.

That is, until Nico follows a misguided impulse and frees the gryphon, injuring Ackerleigh accidentally.

Their fates—and feelings—become entangled in their determination to protect the sacred magíq of the gryphon. Ackerleigh and Nico will stop at nothing for the sake of liberation.

inspiration

I can’t pretend like my primary inspiration for Call Forth the Moonlight wasn’t NaNoWriMo, even though there was some controversy over that as there are all things. I started the project wanting to finally set a book in my memories of New Zealand, to write a slow burn romance, and to focus on found family and radicalism. This book ends up being described as a “eco punk” novel wherein tech battles with environment in a way that pushes against the industrialization of society. It also ends up being very allegorical for gay and trans rights as this deeply affects many people I love.

I wasn’t sure until the day I was first brainstorming that it was going to center around a gryphon, which ended up being a challenging research endeavor to feel competent in managing the body, speech, and flight of a gryphon.

recurring characters

Technically by the time of publication, there’s no recurring characters in CFTM. Things changed quite a bit after putting out The Heartwood Trilogy since literally all of my recurring OCs are represented in that trilogy. Initially, since I was writing this for a monthlong novel challenge and time was of the essence, I just stuck Andrew in as the scholar and Micah in as the farmboy. Prying Andrew and Micah out of Ackerleigh and Nico was really terrible lol. I’ve gotten there and I am OBSESSED with the characters that came out of them, but it’s sort of embarrassing because most of my friends and even my editor were able to tell that’s where their roots were. I even gave Ackerleigh Lucienne as his BFF, although since she’s was more of a cursory character, that was easier to swap out after my friend beta read for me and IMMEDIATELY picked up on her hahaha.

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