Shane Wilson has been a full-time resident in Fayetteville since moving to the city in 2014. After almost a decade here, he calls the Can-Do City his home. Wilson is a professor in the English department at Fayetteville Technical Community College and is active in the local arts scene.

“It’s nice that there’s a space here for artists where artists and artists of all varieties like visual arts, poets, all that. It’s been, I think, really nice to be able to be a part of a community like that,” Wilson said.

Wilson has published two novels so far, “A Year Since the Rain” and “The Smoke in His Eyes.” The novels are part of Wilson’s “World of Muses.” They aren’t sequels to each other, they are stand alone novels, but they both take place in the same world.

“The world feels pretty much like our world. It’s not set in sort of like middle earth, fantastical ideas. There are no elves and things like that. It’s mostly just regular people and regular places. But there are these magical people in the world. It’s like a reimagining of Greek muses, is how I’m explaining it. It’s called The World of Muses. These people are brought up in a school where they’re taught how to inspire people to change or grow, and all of the users have their different focuses,” Wilson said while describing his series of novels.

His book, “The Smoke in His Eyes,” won two awards at the Spring 2022 edition of The BookFest’s Book Awards. It received second place for Contemporary Fantasy, and third place for Coming-of-Age Literary Fiction .

He suggests people read his second novel, “The Smoke in His Eyes,” before “A Year Since the Rain,” in order to fully immerse in the world, but they can be read in any order.

His upcoming novel, “The Woman with a Thousand Faces,” is the final post-apocalyptic chapter of this world.

The novel follows newspaper reporter Sean Forrester, who was convinced that Troy Gideon, the CEO of Pure Elemental, had nefarious plans for the top-secret Project Skylight. He needed only to find proof. But that was before a globally cataclysmic event, and Forrester lost everyone he ever loved in an instant. He is alive, emotionally traumatized, and questioning everything he can remember.
He ends up staying with a woman he doesn’t know. She’s a muse and is able to access Sean’s past if he wants. That’s where the bulk of the story takes place.

“It’s a post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of world that the novel opens up into a sort of on the other side of some globally cataclysmic event. Even though it’s post-apocalyptic and dystopian, it breaks that tradition from a lot of those kinds of stories because it’s not exploring the entire world. It really is just focused in on these two characters that are locked inside of this house to try to stay safe because they don’t really know what’s going on,” Wilson told Up & Coming Weekly.

The inspiration for the story came from a memorable night of talking and drinking with a close friend from college.

“I had one of those nights where you get a couple of bottles of wine, and you just like hash out your entire life story with somebody,” Wilson said.

Despite the book sounding like it was written during or after the COVID pandemic with its theme of locking down and being stuck in a house with someone, Wilson wrote this well before mandates and masks.

However, Wilson did say that during COVID, he started to write more short-form escapist stories.

The book, “The Woman with a Thousand Faces,” is expected to be published on July 20.

There are no scheduled events at this time, but Wilson expects to do local signings and readings, as well as digital conversations when the book is released. Wilson’s books are available on Amazon. For more information about Wilson and his previous works, go to https://www.shanewilsonauthor.com/