Australian YA Fantasy Novelist and Psychiatrist Signs to American Publishing House

Pittsburgh, PA, July 24, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Australian author and academic youth psychiatrist, Associate Professor Brendan Murphy, has been signed to Phantasm Books, an imprint of Assent Publishing, Pittsburgh, PA in a six book deal. His YA fantasy series, Sebastian and the Hibernauts, explores the psychological and moral landscape of a brutalised boy turning teenager and is both an homage to Celtic mythology and an allegory of the Troubles in Ireland.

In the first instalment, Beyond the Gloaming, a cowardly Yorkshire lad must brave the ghostly Gloaming to save the Celtic dreamworld of his ancestors. It explores a number of themes including: the loneliness of childhood trauma; how children deal with grief; the soothing power of dreams and dissociation; the external forces acting on the moral and psychological landscape of a brutalised child turning teenager and how that might deviate by being removed from the influence of the Catholic Church; and dislocation as therapy: what happens when you remove a child from a vicious home life and place them in a nurturing, but potentially more traumatic environment. The book introduces Hibercadia, a world brimful of hunkypunks and gobbleratches, quizzing glasses and magic shillelaghs, mechanical fireworks and night rainbows, tragedy and joy. Assent Publishing's President, Les Denton, is 'thrilled to have this fantastic YA series at Phantasm Books'.

'We are thrilled to have this fantastic YA series at Phantasm Books'.

Les Denton, President Assent Publishing

English born Brendan Murphy studied medicine in London before specialising in psychiatry. He has written widely on youth mental health as well as publishing a book on the history of football. For further information contact the author at www.brendanmurphyauthor.com and www.hibernauts.com or Assent Publishing at www.assentpublishing.com.