At the age of sev­en­teen, Ed­ward Ma­habir has al­ready pub­lished his first book. It is a sci­ence fic­tion nov­el called 'The Leg­end of Bizari­um, a New Di­vide'. The book was pub­lished through a self pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny in New York in De­cem­ber, 2010. The idea for the nov­el came to him one day while he was lim­ing with friends. "I just had this idea where I vi­su­alised my­self and my friendsin an al­ter­nate re­al­i­ty, with abil­i­ties that matched our per­son­al­i­ties," Ed­ward re­lat­ed to gieMAGAZINE. Us­ing this idea, he de­cid­ed to start writ­ing a nov­el and so it came to pass, that while most of us were hap­pi­ly wast­ing our lives away on Face­book dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion last year, he was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly on his nov­el.

Writ­ing is not some­thing new for Ed­ward and he be­lieves that it is his love for read­ing fan­ta­sy books (which he has had since child­hood) that in­spires his de­sire to write. Among his favourite books are, Har­ry Pot­ter, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and Catch­er in the Rye. He has been writ­ing since he left St. An­drews Pri­vate School in 2005 and be­gan at­tend­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al School of Port-of-Spain where he en­joys His­to­ry, Art and Eng­lish. Writ­ing, to Ed­ward, is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant as he sees it not on­ly as a means to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers, but al­so as a way to ex­press him­self. Al­so, he sees it as an es­cape; it is some­thing re­lax­ing which can help him get away from every­day rou­tines and pres­sures.

What were the chal­lenges he faced when writ­ing his nov­el? Asked this ques­tion the teen au­thor ad­mit­ted, "When it comes to writ­ing, dis­ci­pline and ded­i­ca­tion to my work is not as easy as it looks." He be­lieves, how­ev­er, that one must have the willpow­er along with a good plan to en­sure that a sto­ry is writ­ten well. Cur­rent­ly, Ed­ward is writ­ing a se­quel to his first nov­el in which he hopes to take the book to an­oth­er lev­el through some in­tense char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. "I'll be more dar­ing and al­low the char­ac­ters to be them­selves and not just re­strict­ed to the peo­ple they're based on. They will ex­pe­ri­ence more neg­a­tive emo­tions," he told gieMAGAZINE. His aim is to en­sure that his read­ers are en­ter­tained while al­so be­ing able to feel like they can re­late to the char­ac­ters.

Aside from his love for writ­ing, Ed­ward al­so has a pas­sion for Me­dieval Eu­ro­pean His­to­ry, es­pe­cial­ly that of clas­si­cal pe­ri­ods of an­cient Greece, Egypt and Rome. He al­so en­joys art, video gam­ing and hang­ing out with friends. The writer de­scribes him­self as a de­ter­mined and hard­work­ing per­son and these qual­i­ties are def­i­nite­ly re­flect­ed in his ac­com­plish­ments in life thus far, es­pe­cial­ly in the writ­ing world. Ed­ward be­lieves that any­one who would like to have their work pub­lished should def­i­nite­ly work on do­ing so once the op­por­tu­ni­ty is avail­able.

You can sup­port Ed­ward by pur­chas­ing his book at The Knowl­edge Zone, Nigel Khan and on­line at

ama­zon.co­mor Barnes and No­ble.

Paige An­drew

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

St. Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain

And Deb­bie Ja­cob