Caleb Franklin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caleb Franklin’s journey as an author is an unconventional one. Although his mother recalls that he began reading fluently at an unusually young age, his early academic years offered little indication that writing would become his passion. He made his way through elementary school with passing grades, an awkward personality, and a collection of self-insert fan fiction that is probably best left forgotten.

In high school, Caleb discovered freehand sketching and began developing his artistic abilities. Alongside his best friend, he created a world in which their Victorian, Gothic, science-fiction, alien, and space-opera artwork could coexist. During late-night drawing sessions, they invented characters, developed backstories, and constructed a rudimentary history spanning an entire galaxy. Those ideas became the earliest seeds of Archaea, although the world remained conceptual for several years.

Caleb entered college intending to become a history teacher. While studying the ambitions, betrayals, conflicts, and moral complexities that shaped history’s heroes and villains, he watched his fictional characters grow increasingly vivid. Eventually, they demanded stories of their own.

His first serious novel, originally titled The Doomed Emperor of Golden Archaea, was extraordinarily ambitious: eight protagonists, five interwoven storylines, and numerous connected antagonists. The project soon consumed his sleep and social life. Roughly 45,000 words into the manuscript, Caleb recognized that imagination alone was not enough. The story needed greater structure, stronger foundations, and room to breathe. He abandoned the original draft, removed less compelling characters, and divided the sprawling narrative into multiple books.

Two years later, his first completed novel, Templar of Archaea, was born. It required six drafts and more than five years of teaching himself the craft of creative writing. Encouragement from his family and positive reader feedback kept him moving forward, and he has since begun developing several sequels.

Today, Caleb teaches high school history and performs caretaking work while continuing to expand the universe he first imagined as a teenager. Entirely self-taught as a novelist, he brings an independent voice and distinctive creative vision to his fiction.