Daniel David is a London-based author who began work on his second novel, Joshua and the Lost Souls, over a decade ago, inspired by his own otherworldly experiences as a teenager and curiosity about a reality that might be beyond our own understanding lies.
Released March 1, 2023, this low-fantasy YA crossover draws readers into a dark but hopeful tale of friendship, betrayal, belonging, and maybe even the meaning of it all. It’s a dark and brooding novel, part letter of solidarity to all the crazies, outcasts and dreamers in the world, that follows 15-year-old Joshua on a startling journey into a mysterious parallel world where his own begins to fall apart.
A deeply personal novel in which Daniel explains how the story came about. “I wrote my first notes about this boy named Joshua over 10 years ago, drawing on my experiences of loneliness and hearing voices as a teenager. Since then, characters have come and gone, situations have changed, worlds have grown, and I even had to create a language. Oddly enough though, Joshua has always been the same, a rather lost and lonely boy who I really grew to love.”
Joshua’s world is a difficult place. Since the death of his mother, he has lived in a small house with his alcoholic father and his girlfriend. They don’t have much money, are often without electricity for days, and live on welfare and donations from food banks. After a traumatic event, Joshua finds himself in The Coral, a strange world populated by sexless, multidimensional beings called “race”.
“The Coral is a bit of a paradox,” says Daniel, “emerging from a set of ideas centered around nondualism, metaphysical idealism [as popularised by Barnardo Kastrup and the Essentia Foundation] with a little Druidry in the mix. Maybe it only exists in Joshua’s head. Maybe it’s the other way around. It’s really a big “what if”. What if those voices I heard years ago, or those inner voices we all hear constantly, are a breakthrough from another dimension? I started to wonder what that would mean, how I would have felt at fifteen or sixteen if I had followed them and discovered something truly remarkable.”
As Joshua explores this world outside of time, gender and life as we know it, he learns that he has an incredible gift, but in his own reality his desire to belong overwhelms him and after making a foolish decision, he sets off a catastrophic chain of events for which he must sacrifice everything to atone.
This novel will appeal not only to YA readers who enjoyed the otherworldly mysteries and identity exploration of Ryan Douglass’ The Taking of Jake Livingston or the gritty, suburban character building of Annalee Newitz’ The Future of Another Timeline, but also to readers who enjoy it delights in the playfulness and sense that anything is possible in Murakami’s classic Kafka on the Shore. This is a story that will resonate with anyone struggling to figure out where they belong.
Joshua and the Lost Souls will be available for pre-order starting March 1, 2023.
- Publisher: Fireythings
- ISBN: 978-1-9997828-1-8
- Size: 5″ x 8″ paperback
- Pages: 366
- Word count: 120,000
- Tags: #lowfantasy #urbanfantasy #loneliness #mourning #metaphysical_idealism #portal #otherworlds #friendship #belonging
