Charles Mandrake is a pen name. The author lives in the midwest USA and came to writing late, after years of knowing a character named Charles Mandrake existed but not knowing what to do with him.
The Charles Mandrake Compendium is a portal fantasy series following three inseparable characters: Charles, Anna, and Todd, between the coastal town of East Bay, Maine and the parallel world of Skelderheim. The series is built around found family, the cost of duty, and a world where everyone works for coin and no one is the chosen one.
The series runs on an extensive story architecture system built from canon files, authoring rules, and revision controls, designed to keep the world coherent and recognizable across multiple books, side chapters, and formats.