This is a new post for me. I’m just trying to navigate around blogs after some years of absence. 

I have blogged before about my reproductions of First Word War artifacts, including leather goods, and brass badges. Now I have written a novel. Here is the synopsis.

 I am selling this for $25 Canadian, and shipping in Canada is around $15. For more information please email me at timothyjsoper@gmail.com.

ALCHEMISTS OF THE CAMINO

The quest of the living to understand Death can lead to strange and dangerous places. Tom, the story’s narrator, has not been able to resolve his grief after his wife was killed in a terrorist bomb blast in Alexandria, three years earlier. As his last resort, he goes to Paris to embark on the Camino, by bicycle, all the way to Santiago de Compostela.

Within minutes of his arrival, Tom is caught in an alchemical intrigue with significance greater than his own grief. He is entrusted with a mysterious flask that contains alchemical mercury, a substance with an equal capacity to bring about good, or evil, depending on who possesses it.

Tom’s journey to Santiago must determine the fate of the flask. The  depth of his responsibility engulfs him as other travellers start to join with him, and their role in the flask’s history is slowly revealed. Tom seems to be inextricably linked to the flask, and must determine whom he can trust amongst his fellow pilgrims. From the fire at Notre Dame de Paris, to the final showdown on the steps of the Cathedral of Santiago, Tom confronts ghosts, those who have drunk the alchemical “elixir of life”, and his own demons, as he lays his grief to rest. He experiences a personal alchemical transformation, and makes his peace with the world when he discovers, anew, the balm of love.