Lloydminster self-published author Mike Champagne held a book signing at Coles on Saturday. Geoff Lee Meridian Source
Lloydminster author Mike Champagne is reinventing how to write books.
He’s just completed three books in his self-published fantasy series, The Stones of Mana Saga, using a stream of consciousness approach to get a start during the pandemic.
“I was bored. I just sat down at my computer. I had an idea of a story and I just started writing and I just kept going and going with it. Eventually, it sort of built itself onto it,” said Champagne.
He creates fictional Mana worlds, which are places in the universe with magical stones that enemies fight for.
The 43-year-old courier with Purolator talked about his unorthodox technique during a book signing at Coles in the LloydMall Saturday afternoon.
His three books, The Prophecy Stone released in 2020, The Focus Stone in 2021 and the Wisdom Stone released a month ago, prove ‘how to write a book’ is not etched in stone.
“I started off without the usual discipline of writing out an outline and creating characters and establishing all their relationships and all of those things upfront. I just started writing and building it from there,” explained Champagne.
He says it was a bit of a challenge because he didn’t do that and had to remember all the storylines, as opposed to having it all laid out in front of him.
“Once I got through the first book, I got a lot of response from family and other people that had read it saying I should continue on with it,” he said.
He wrote the second book and decided he needed to wrap up the series with The Wisdom Stone.
His next idea is to write a book about the magical places his characters have visited in keeping with his favourite fantasy genre.
“It’s probably the genre that I relate the most to. I enjoyed those kinds of books when I was younger and I enjoy those kinds of movies,” said Champagne.
“I find it gives you much more freedom because you can invent your own rules.”
The experience has him stoked to aspire to be a full-time writer of best-selling books.
“It’s got me pumped up. It was a challenge and pleasure at the same time to learn how to self-publish. I’ve got a taste for it now,” he said.
He typed his stories on Pages, a word processor on a Mac computer, then logged on to the Lulu.com self-publishing website with print-on-demand format.
“Basically, you just put it all together on their website and they print it for you,” said Champagne, who used Photoshop for his covers.
His first book is for sale for $15 at Coles and various online booksellers, while books two and three going for $25 apiece.
You can also special order all three books in an omnibus for $6o through mikechampagne78@gmail.com.
Champagne studied broadcasting at Mount Royal College in Calgary and mastered in creative writing and television commercial production.
He came to Lloydminster about 20 years ago to produce ads for CKSA Television and worked a couple of years as a graphic designer for Reid and Wright Advertising and the Meridian Source, known as the Lloydminster Source back then.
“From there I just jumped around jobs due to the economy. I needed to find a job that made a decent amount of money to support a family,” he said.
His job with Purolator is current putting beans on the table.
“It’s a good job for being union; a lot of security, we’re always busy,” said Champagne.
