Brent K. Newcomb writes cross-generational fantasy adventures with a classic sensibility, set in richly imagined worlds that are at once strange, perilous, humorous, and deeply human. Based in the Midwest, he writes for smart, curious children and for adults who grew up turning the pages of classic fantasy and never entirely stopped looking for another door.

 

The Chronicles of Ber'Ebrin grew out of the books that shaped him early: the marvelous worlds of L. Frank Baum, the moral imagination of C. S. Lewis, the dreamlike logic of Lewis Carroll, the shadows and lessons of the Brothers Grimm, the vast mythic reach of J. R. R. Tolkien, the mischievous darkness of Roald Dahl, the absurd wit of Douglas Adams, and the restless invention of Michael Moorcock. Newcomb set out to create the kind of stories he would have wanted to discover as a child—adventures filled with wonder, danger, laughter, and unexplained passageways—and to make them rich enough that an adult reader might find new meanings within them.

 

The Chronicles generally follow children between the ages of ten and fifteen, often traveling as families, companions, or uneasy groups of friends. They enter worlds that do not merely entertain them, but test them. In Newcomb’s imagined polycosmos, each realm is shaped by a consciousness at the heart of the Etherodrome, and a child may be drawn into a story when he or she is ready—sometimes reluctantly—to learn, change, or grow.

 

The realms themselves are elaborate networks of period and period-adjacent worlds, each with its own manners, mysteries, dangers, and peculiar rules. Their inhabitants may be whimsical, noble, vain, frightened, foolish, cruel, generous, or all of these at once. Humanity appears in distorted, amusing, and sometimes darkly revealing forms, because the adventures are meant to test not only whether a protagonist can escape a strange place, but what that protagonist will choose to become while there.

 

At the far edge of the great realm system lies Ber’Ebrin, the ultimate realm: a land of paradise governed by two difficult rules. Only the worthy may enter. Only those who do not seek it may find it. Across centuries, the longing to find Ber’Ebrin has led many people toward obsession, corruption, and madness.

 

Newcomb began writing stories at an extremely early age. At ten, he completed a ninety-page adventure story on a classic typewriter. As both a writer and an artist, he found that he could illustrate a world with a pen or with words; the two forms of invention have remained closely intertwined ever since. Artwork accompanies The Chronicles of Ber'Ebrin through the project’s visual materials, its website, and—where appropriate—special editions.

 

His work is built through extensive research, mythology, folklore, historical detail, and patient world-building. Each book is supported by hundreds of pages of notes and research intended to give the settings their depth, texture, and period character. His personal library contains more than 10,000 volumes, ranging from beloved literature to reference works on history, philosophy, folklore, myth, and the peculiar corners of human life. He is especially drawn to obscure works from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, as well as the literature and philosophy of Ancient Greece.

 

Newcomb’s stories return to friendship, family, sacrifice, courage, moral choice, madness, corruption, power, and the complicated struggle between good and evil. He is particularly interested in the old question raised by Plato’s Ring of Gyges: whether a person who could act without consequence would choose evil. His fiction does not assume that goodness is effortless. Rather, it considers goodness something learned, chosen, practiced, and defended—often imperfectly—against the pull of self-interest.

 

Before beginning a story, Newcomb begins with a concept and its people: the voices, flaws, longings, and contradictions that make them feel real. He then draws or visualizes the world around them, develops its history and rules, and follows the threads that emerge. He enjoys constructing unusual voices, hiding symbolic details and Easter eggs, and weaving long-range connections that may not reveal their significance until much later in the Chronicles.

 

Outside fiction, his work as an immigration attorney informs his interest in journeys, borders, displacement, resilience, and the search for home.

 

If he were to find an unexplained doorway between worlds, Brent K. Newcomb would take a journal and a pen—both to chronicle what he discovered and to draw it before it disappeared.

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Let the first portal draw you in. You may never wish to stop traveling.