Hello, I am Chaz Young and welcome to my website.

Travels to Fahdamin-Ra is my first published novel, but it is going to be part of a series. I have too much fun writing about Celestine and Joel to stop at one book!

Like the Bridges family in my book, I live in Bath, Maine. I have a daughter named Callista, a son named Toliver, and a husband named Arnold. I am very much like Valerie in the book. In fact, the Bridges family is based on my own.

I got the idea to write this book from my kids. We could not find any fantasy adventure stories that featured brown children. By the way, Callista and Toliver refer to themselves as brown because they are multiracial. My husband inspired me because he has curved indentations on the backs of his earlobes, and so do our kids. Arnold jokingly said that somewhere in Africa, he would be considered the prince of a tribe because of those marks! That is the idea that got me started.

I did a lot of research on West Africa and especially Nigeria for my book. I wanted to get an idea about the climate and wildlife in that region of Africa. I used my research results as a base when I created tribes and customs on my own.

We have two cats, but I decided that the Bridges family couldn’t abandon them for uncertain amounts of time while they travel to Fahdamin-Ra, so that is one reason why I had Celestine create cats for the Harun. Toliver loves dragons, so Cheswick was generated because that is what my son would bring to life if he had the chance.

I love to hear from people that read my book. What characters do you like? What chapter or scene is your favorite? To which tribe would you like to belong? Please e-mail me at chazyoung@rocketmail.com and let me know!