The Iron Circus

Lewis Bokurtz is not saving the world. This isn’t that kind of story.

His parents don’t keep him in a cupboard under the stairs. His teacher doesn’t lock him in a closet filled with broken glass. His friends have never treated him with disdain due to his expression of any unique supernatural powers.

He desperately wishes they would.

A thoughtful young boy yearns for adventure, like so many he has lived between the covers of his favorite books. When the discovery of a rusted iron coin hidden in the depths of a pond leads him to the towering black gates of the Iron Circus, he finds everything he ever wanted waiting just for him beneath the monolithic reaches of its imposing iron Big Top.

But everything at the Iron Circus is not as it seems: the performers are all busy preparing for their spectacular upcoming show, almost too keen for Lewis’s help. Meanwhile, the sinister Ringmaster lurks in the shadows, his hollow smile a mask for sabotage and subterfuge.

Can Lewis triumph over every challenge, ensure the show goes on, and live the adventure he’s always dreamed of?

Or is this just not that kind of story?

Matthew Robert Howe
 
Educated in all matters fine and delicate; a glorified bum, incorrigible daydreamer, and no-good layabout with a penchant for the literary, taste for the theatrical, and an unabashed fondness for the morbid, strange and obscure.
 
When he's not writing you'll often find him rocking in his chair like an old man, lifting weights (and nursing recurring soft tissue injuries), watching horror movies, and practicing light witchcraft in the forests surrounding his home.
 
He lives in New England, where he considers Autumn the finest season, Halloween the best holiday, and Pumpkin the only kind of pie.