Although he aspires to be a mechanical engineer in a few years’ time, Anela Mdungela cannot shake off the fantasy-writing bug that bit him when he was merely 12 years old.
The 21-year-old, from Sterkspruit in the Eastern Cape, has now published his debut book titled Moonlight Blue Vol.1, a fantasy novel packed with scenes of magic, mysticism, angels and demons, and re-incarnation.
Anela, who is doing his third year in mechanical engineering at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein, Free State, said the book started off as nothing but an idea because of all the Sci-Fi, fantasy literature and movies he had been consuming since he was 12 years old.
“I have always had a good imagination with bold ideas that accompanied it, so it was only natural that the simple hobby of writing a few thousand words a week would become an obsession,” he said. “The biggest hurdle has always been that I was nothing more than an aspiring author and I was self-taught in the craft, without much experience.”
Anela said he was then referred to PUBLISH’D AFRIKA, an independent publishing imprint that assisted him to edit and structure the story, and developed the manuscript as well as the characters. The book took four months to edit, develop and publish.
Moonlight Blue is about a man who is murdered and then reborn into a world of magic and mysticism. Shortly after birth his mother, who is of noble descent, is brutally taken away from him but he survives the attack. He is found and raised in the outskirts of the Silent Demon Forest by his sickly adopted grandmother, the adventurer Barba.
“She names him Allen, blissfully unaware that the bundle of joy is a re-incarnated being born with magical powers, who remembers vividly every detail of his previous life,” said Anela. “As Allen grows up, he discovers that not only does magic exist in this new world, but monsters and demons exist too. He vows to be the strongest of them all so that he can protect the human race.”
From unexplained mysteries to moments that steer Allen closer to discovering his alternate universe’s ancestral bloodline, Anela’s Moonlight Blue is packed with captivating scenes that take the reader down the rabbit hole, each chapter offering no respite from the action. Volume 2 of the book will be released in 2023.
