Copperoton, Vol. 1 is my very first novel, an epic fantasy/sci-fi about an alien world called, you guessed it, Copperoton. The plot centers around a blue-skinned man named Drigo, who turns the world of the humans, penguins, and his own race—the darvekians—on its head with his immense supernatural abilities to disrupt the balance of power and bring about an age of peace and prosperity. However, as his abilities threaten to corrupt him, and as the secrets of the universe unravel, the path to a better world becomes increasingly uncertain…

I have a completed first draft of the novel, but it’s very rough and not ready to publish. It doesn’t stand on its own. It simply ends, leaving many questions and plotlines unresolved. Two more volumes have been planned, which will balloon the story even further—a foolhardy plan for a debut novel, if you ask me.

Pictured above are a few of the penguins, a colorful race of sentient, flightless birds who have been given the technology to sprout fingers out of their flippers and establish cities, towns, systems of governance, and much, much more, all on the southernmost continent of Arctica.

Pictured below is an early draft of the ‘magic system’ of Copperoton, what I’ve called the ‘Spectrum of Interactions,’ based upon the four fundamental forces of the universe. ‘Hadronic’ comprises the strong nuclear force, while ‘Decaying’ represents the weak nuclear force. Basically, it’s a soft magic system disguised as a Hunter X Hunter-inspired hard magic system.

Pictured below is the green rockhopper penguin named Gabriel Edwards at the beginning, where he commits to finding his father and becoming an ‘Interaction user.’ Beside him is his best friend Jed, an enormous, amphibious blue-ringed octopus possessing high intelligence and crippling social anxiety. Behind him is the Interaction user Jack Gibson, who has a mysterious ability to generate intense heat from within his body, and further behind is Air Edwards, Gabe’s sister and the former mayor of their destroyed hometown, Nossrunn.

Copperoton, when you boil it down, is the story of a boy searching for purpose and meaning in the world, which Gabe thinks is about being as big and great as his father, the figurehead of a cultural revolution and a powerful fighter of evil.

Way far north from Arctica is the nation of Esclopia, the oldest and most powerful human nation on Copperoton. The capitol, Escloe, is at the epicenter of Drigo’s assault on the established world order. Tasked with defending it is the Escloe Underground, a team of Interaction users headquartered within a complex network of caverns beneath the city. Led by a man simply named ‘Boxer,’ the Underground finds their backs against more and more walls as they attempt to undermine Drigo and his army of darvekians.

Pictured at the bottom of the above image is Toby, a boy much like myself at the time that I was writing the novel. His story begins when Drigo destroys his identity, or, rather, all of his connections to the people in his life. He wakes up in the middle of the night only to discover that his friends and family have all forgotten about him. Then, later, after finding himself in a hospital belonging to the Underground, Drigo returns to bestow the Interaction Technology upon him, giving him the power to manipulate gravity. He does all of this because he sees Toby’s future and knows he’d be capable of handling the corrupting nature of power; that he would selflessly put his life on the line to save others and make the world a better place.

I realized over the years as I kept writing that authors end up putting themselves in their stories like this all the time, but they change around details about the events of their lives, their appearances, their names, all while retaining what drove them to the blank page. Despite my worries, what I was doing wasn’t wrong, it was what every other good writer did, which is pulling from personal experience. I just wasn’t being very subtle about it, and how much subtlety can you expect out of a 13-year-old kid?

What does Copperoton seek to accomplish? What does it say about the human condition? What does it contribute to the canon of science fiction and fantasy?

If I were to give an answer off the top of my head, it’s about the indomitable human spirit. It’s about succeeding nihilism. It’s about the nature of power, of good and evil, and everywhere in between.

It’s a cool story, and I hope to share it one day. If you got this far down on the page, thank you for reading and I appreciate your curiosity!

Signed,

Lucas Steed

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