THE MIRROR OF TRUTH

JULY 15, 2025

I’m currently crafting query letters to agents for my first YA fantasy, THE MIRROR OF TRUTH.

This story has been brewing for a very long time. I started the manuscript over ten years ago. I’ve read many retellings of the Snow White fairy tale for readers from Middle Grade to Adult. One thing that always interested me was how the authors handled the magic mirror. Sometimes it was portrayed as evil, sometimes neutral. Rarely did any of the books explore how the mirror was made and how it ended up with Snow White’s stepmother. I grew up playing in an abandoned theme park in the middle of the woods, and there was a stone cottage in it that I imagined was the cottage of the seven dwarves. The memory of that place fueled my love for fairy tales and has haunted me for over fifty years. It inspired me to create my own re-imagining of this well-known story.

I started with the premise that a teenage dwarf makes a mirror for the queen. The idea grew and grew and I ended up building a complex dwarf kingdom where my character Ban is a seventh son and heir to the mirror-smith of the realm. As a seventh son he comes into magical powers, and when he delivers a mirror he’s made for the queen in a nearby human kingdom, he offers to cast a spell of truth on the mirror—for a price. And the plot thickens when he botches the spell… Could this possibly be because he is only a half-dwarf?

The illustration of the mirror is in scratchboard and I’ve mocked up a possible cover design, though a traditional publisher would likely design it themselves. This would be for a Kickstarter version. I added the color digitally.

If you are interested in the publication journey for my book, sign up for my newsletter and choose MIRROR OF TRUTH NEWS. I’ll wait awhile for agents to get back to me, but if I get no takers I’ll illustrate it and do a Kickstarter.