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While most kids his age are struggling to write book reports and essays, young Blake Varnadoe was completing and publishing his first book, Eclipsar.

The 12-year-old prodigy author wrote and edited Eclipsar in three months. He said aside from school work, he did little else during those months.

Varnadoe said he isn’t sure where the inspiration came from to write the book, but he loves to write.

“Some ideas started coming into mind, and I’ve just filtered them down,” Varnadoe said. “I’m not sure where the inspiration came from. I do watch a lot of CIA shows, a bunch of crime thrillers, so I guess that’s where the genres came from.”

Varnadoe’s first book, Eclipsar, is a psychological sci-fi thriller. In the 230-page novel, a bioweapon is created that is capable of turning people into malevolent entities. As the disease spreads, the protagonist, Andy Solbright, goes on a deadly mission to save his girlfriend risking his life and finding other survivors along the way.

Blake is a native of Troup County, having lived all of his 12 years in LaGrange. He said he started off at Lafayette Christian School and is now taking classes online.

Varandoe said he wrote the book all on his own, though he did get plenty of emotional support and mentoring from his family. 

“I edited it all by myself and formatted it all by myself in a mere three months,” Varandoe said, comparing himself to role model Stephen King,

Varnadoe did note that he didn’t design the cover, though, and had it professionally designed.

Now that his first work has been published and is officially in print, Varnadoe is writing the first book in his next project, Lyra Dorne, a crime thriller series similar to Dexter, where a serial killer goes exclusively after perpetrators of sexual assault.

Eclipsar is available in paperback and ebook formats on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/2myz3dha.