Aaron Sher
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Aaron Sher
@aaronsher.bsky.social
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Fantasy author, martial artist, software engineer, cook, ally, and cat minion. Not necessarily in that order. (he/him) http://aaronsher.com
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Aaron Sher @aaronsher.bsky.social · Jun 22
“This isn’t just magic in a trench coat. It’s magic on a job site.” - Goodreads reviewer

Applied Leverage is an award-winning urban fantasy novel starring a snarky telekinetic locksmith in a world of magic. On Kindle, KU, and Audible. books2read.com/AppliedLever...

#fantasy #books #booksky
aaronsher.bsky.social
Give Fox an inch and he’ll take the highway, the off-ramp, and all the rest stops in between.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Name it," I said, fully prepared to commit the College to whatever he might ask for. "I want a cheers." "A what?" "A thank you." "Of course," I said, puzzled. "Not from you. From the College. In writing." I thought about what it would be like to try to get DeRose or, worse, Andrews to publicly thank a psi-and even more so, a teep—for supplying critical intelligence in a crisis. "I can make that happen," I said, probably lying through my teeth. "In the form of a limerick," he added. "Don't push your luck."
November 29, 2025 at 12:43 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Going with “weave”. Nia’s most un-Nia-like moment in two books. Needs must and all that…

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Want to try to pick his pocket?" "Which pocket? What am I grabbing? I don't think it works like that." "Always gotta make me do things the hard way, don't you?" she asked. Getting up, she moved towards the man, a bit of a weave in her step that I knew she hadn't had enough beer to justify. Fascinated and a bit terrified, Elise and I watched her chat the guy up. He'd apparently been in the process of ordering a drink; we couldn't hear the conversation, but it looked like Nia got him to buy her one too and then she went back to his table. Thankfully he seemed to be alone; I don't know what we could have done if there had been a whole table full of mages. "Any idea what we can do to help?" I asked. "None whatsoever," Elise said.
November 28, 2025 at 4:43 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
It’s not laziness, it’s a forensic countermeasure! That’s my story, anyway.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"And what do you think they were up to?" I'd really expected this conversation to go a bit better than this. Hope springs eternal, I guess. Franklin put down his tablet and actually looked at me for the first time. "We don't know. Obviously there was something going on. They lost a bunch of their people..." "And one of ours," put in Elise. "Rothbauer, right," said Franklin a bit sourly. "And then when Ms. Vaughn showed up to investigate they tried to kill her." "And Connor and Nia," Elise prompted. "Whatever," said Franklin, picking up his tablet again. "So there's clearly some shady stuff going on and we need to know what it is. We were hoping to find records but they're such a disorganized mess here that it's an almost perfect shield."
November 27, 2025 at 11:38 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
If you’re going to make magical golems out of something, why WOULDN’T you make them out of suits of armor?

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Do it." Nia said. "We'll buy you time." She stuffed her flashlight, too small to be useful as a weapon, into a pocket and moved forward with empty hands. I recalled that she'd lost her belt in the cemetery, and that pen probably wasn't going to be useful against armor. Terrific. I hefted my cane and backed her up. The actinic light from Elise's wand swelled behind us, but too slowly. The first armor lowered its halberd and stabbed at Nia with the spear point on the end. It was slow and awkward, and seeing that I felt like we might actually have a chance at this. Nia slipped to the side and grabbed the shaft with both hands... and was almost flung down the hall as the armor raised the weapon again, totally unimpeded by her weight. Slow, but very strong. Noted.
November 26, 2025 at 1:30 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Not considering telekinetic locksmiths is at LEAST one star off their Yelp rating.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
She went on, "And now, here you are, robbing my private office. You didn't think I'd have magical alarms on it?" Crap. Of course she would. I'd gotten caught up in the idea that mages usually relied on physical protections, and neglected to think that usually didn't mean always. Come to think of it, the spells on the safe were probably what the tracker had been leading us to, not the focus itself. "Well, the rest of your security was so shoddy, I figured maybe you didn't care if people wandered in and out." I mean, what did I have to lose? "I admit, my consultants evidently did not design the system with telekinetic locksmiths in mind. An oversight." "People who put in lousy security systems make my job a lot easier overall. I vote you give them an At rating and pay them a bonus," I said. At this point, I was just letting my mouth run in order to stall for time. I wasn't sure what I was hoping would happen, but whatever it was, it didn't.
November 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
I went with “start”, and conveniently it’s literally the first word of my debut novel.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Chapter 1: Starting in a Bar is a Cliché The fireball made arcs of light as it flew back and forth across the table. It wasn't much of a fireball, only a few inches across and burning a dim orange, but it was bright enough in the dim light of the bar and it would certainly burn your skin if it touched you. The mages were playing a game involving trading off control of the thing-as I understood it, if you let it go out or lost control, you had to drink. Alcohol doing what it does, somebody usually got burned. Typical. I was sitting a couple of tables away, and the damned fireball kept flashing in the corner of my eye and catching my attention. I was trying not to watch-mages can be touchy to us "lesser folk", and I didn't want a tableful of drunk mages catching me staring at them. Tossing a fireball around in a dusty wooden room full of alcohol was already a pretty good indication of their state of mind, so discretion felt like the better part of valor. Not that valor is a thing I usually worry about.
November 24, 2025 at 12:01 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Always disconcerting to trip over an army you didn’t know was there.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Rome?" "Aegis central command." Aegis was a single worldwide organization? Id thought it was sort of like local police, individual commands reporting to the local College chapter. I took a moment to think through the implications of that one, while Andrews gave some orders repositioning the outside teams or something like that. I really wasn't following the tactics going on, though I'm sure that Nia was. If Aegis had a central command, and I had to assume units attached to many chapters of the College, that meant... hell, the College had an army. And they weren't all mages, meaning that they could recruit mercenaries or retired military or whoever they wanted. The College could certainly get their hands on the kind of ordnance that would normally be ridiculously illegal for a non-governmental organization to have. And then of course there was the magic. Why did they need an army?
November 23, 2025 at 12:22 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Maybe a cemetery isn’t the BEST place to fight the undead?

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Averill and his lackey weren't doing so well. They had personal shields as well, of course, but the zombies had so much sheer mass that just standing up was a problem. I was sure that if they went down before that wave of rotting flesh and bone that would be the end of them. Averill was calling thunderbolts down from the sky like I'd seen White do once, though seeing it from this angle wasn't nearly as impressive as it had been at ground zero. Edwards was using his crystal-tipped wand like a whip, trailing a line of blue flame that cut through zombies like they weren't there. All of it, all the devastating magic, Nia's enchanted axe and my cane, the explosions and the fire, all of it together...it wasn't enough. There were just too many zombies. And now DeRose's wall of water had died down and they were after us again. I set myself to go down swinging; I didn't see any way out of this.
November 22, 2025 at 11:34 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The introduction of Elise! She, ah, turns out to be important.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Suddenly, there was a flash and the dog was gone, leaving swirling energy in its wake. I heard a pair of muffled screams from the direction of the mages. When I looked over, I saw Jeeves and the other man down on their knees, holding their heads in what looked like blinding agony. At least, that's what I hoped it was. The woman, on the other hand, was sprinting full speed towards us. "Go!" she yelled I started to ask a question like an idiot, but Nia wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She grabbed me by the hand, hauled me to my feet, and took off towards the door again. By the time we'd gone two steps I had my feet under me and I was analyzing the locks on the door to see what we'd need to do to get it open. A second before we reached it, however, it exploded outward in a shower of splinters and we ran out onto the lawn, the woman who'd evidently saved us hot on our heels.
November 21, 2025 at 12:02 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The story is set in London in February, so the weather is a bit off a running theme.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
And here we were back at the cemetery yet again. At least it was daylight this time for a change, though it was doing what the meteorologists euphemistically call "wintry mix"—in other words, there was slush falling from the sky in tiny droplets that burned with cold when they hit skin. There weren't a lot of people in the cemetery besides us, for some reason. Marks stopped in at the office to explain that there was some kind of special police thing going on and that they might need to restrict access to a part of the cemetery. I had no idea what excuse he used, but if it worked I didn't care. Elise stayed with him; the plan was that the two of them would come in behind us, keeping at what we hoped was a safe distance but within screaming-for-help range, and try to fend off wandering people.
November 20, 2025 at 12:43 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Telekinetic prank war.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
I lifted my glass again, ready this time for the nudgeto the side this time, where it would have been hard to stop with my hand. My mental grip had no such limits and the glass stayed perfectly stable. Simultaneously, the probably-joint fell out of Fox's mouth—his own mental hold notwithstanding—and somehow found its way directly into his drink. On top of that-with my third mental handhis cap somehow flew from his head, falling off the far side of the table and rolling improbably into the crowd on the dance floor below. He stared for a second. Damn few teeks could have pulled off either the glass or the joint against resistance, and with the cap as well... I had him outclassed and he knew it. He grinned and tapped his finger to his forehead where his cap ought to be in a salute. I raised my glass to him.
November 19, 2025 at 12:05 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
That’s not a word I’m likely to ever use, I think.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
It was interesting that neither of us were willing to name the Artisans out loud, even though she'd just openly admitted to ordering a murder in front of a half-dozen of her flunkies. It probably meant that she'd kept that bit of knowledge to herself, which was good news for me. And likely also for the flunkies if this fell out the way I was hoping it would. "Shall I go back and tell them that, then?" I took a casual step backward, away from all the guns and mages. "Away" felt like a really, really good idea at this moment. "I think not," White said. She made no gesture, not even a flick of her eye, but I felt bands of invisible force clamp around my feet like cement shoes. "You and I will have a more... extended conversation inside, I believe. You have information that would be useful to me. Mr. Mortenson, if you would please subdue him."
November 18, 2025 at 11:23 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The magic self-driving cars work better than Teslas, but not quite as good as Waymos.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Elise had her wand out, a pale foxfire glow dancing at the tip. "The car is a golem," she said. "Boy, these folks only have one trick, don't they?" I complained. "I told you, the London mages are known for specializing in golems. If I spend a few minutes on it maybe I could break the spell?" Nia said, "Leaving us in a suddenly-not-self-driving car traveling at highway speeds. Could we not?" Just for something to do, I carefully tried the door handle. Of course it was locked. "I guess we wait and see where the magic car is taking us."
November 17, 2025 at 11:59 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
This book goes to beta readers today!

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Elise, the door's open!" I shouted, but I wasn't sure she could hear me. She was almost in the doorway, wand and free hand both extended to hold the shield, braced like there was a strong wind coming down the hall. "Get ready to slam the door!" yelled Nia. I took a step to the side and put a hand on the door. Nia stepped to the other side. She met my eyes-then reached out, grabbed Elise by the collar, and yanked her sideways out of the doorway. I slammed the door just as the first licks of flame breached the shield. I heard the lock click. There was a moment of stillness, the only sound Elise's raspy breathing. She sounded like she'd just run a footrace through an erupting volcano. "You OK?" I asked. "Um... I think so," she said. Her eyes weren't quite focusing.
November 16, 2025 at 12:04 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
At least things can’t get any worse, right? Right?

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
He crumpled like someone had cut his strings, surely dead before he even registered the attack. I moved up on still-shaky legs, being very, very careful to stay behind the bulk of the golem. "Elise, you've got to get out of there!" "No!" she shouted. "I can do this!" She herself wasn't doing anything visible, but the golem was yanking hard on its stuck leg. It was making progress, but it wasn't going to be fast enough. I could see the globe in front of her—it looked hot, almost burning from all the magic it had absorbed. We were using it in a way it had never been designed for and clearly it wasn't handling it very well. And that's when I saw the first zombies.
November 15, 2025 at 11:29 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
It’s the “cheerfully” that makes this but for me, I think.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Well, fuck," said Nia, with my complete agreement. If Elise got herself badly hurt, I wouldn't be able to go home again. On top of that, if she didn't show up for the cops in a week there would be all kinds of trouble, and I still wouldn't have any idea of what was going on. Not that any of that was the real reason, of course—I could never have let her go down there by herself no matter what. Equally of course, Nia was already moving, leaving me standing alone. In the cemetery, in the middle of the night. The potentially zombie-infested cemetery. "Right behind you," I said cheerfully.
November 14, 2025 at 11:37 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Explaining the dead guys is an important part of any plan.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"Does that mean they don't think they can handle us themselves?" Elise said, "Or maybe they don't want to try again, for fear it would draw attention to them. Somebody's going to be looking into the cemetery, right? And we were there and also at the Hermetic Society, which links the damage there to the mages. I think somebody's building a cover story here." "For the dead guys at the cemetery? Sounds right to me," said Nia. "Put all the bad stuff on us, and they're just the victims. What, did we go to the cemetery to meet a fence and sell these books we supposedly stole? Maybe that went bad and there was some kind of fight?"
November 13, 2025 at 12:17 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The Bruise Fairy must have visited during the night.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
I must have made some noise because Nia's eyes snapped open as if she'd been just faking being asleep. For all I know, maybe she had been. "I think I figured something out," I said quietly. Nia sat up. "What have you got?" "A headache, a bad attitude, and a set of bruises I don't recognize at all." "Welcome to the club. We should have T-shirts." "T-shirts would be pretty useful, actually," I said. Like all of us, she was still wearing the same clothing she'd had on yesterday, though she'd taken off the camo coat that was now liberally splattered with Elise's blood.
November 12, 2025 at 12:16 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The full English, with bonus tea joke.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Joining Nia and Elise at the tiny breakfast table, I watched Marks happily working in his kitchenette making the most extraordinary spread of food: back bacon, sausage links, fried eggs, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, toast, hash browns, and probably a few other things I didn't spot amid the piles. There wasn't room on the table even for all of our plates, so we filled them from the counter and held them to eat. No coffee, still, but we made do with tea. Nia used two teabags and left them in the mug while she drank it. I tried not to watch Marks wincing every time he looked in her direction.
November 11, 2025 at 11:19 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
I mean, come on. You just don’t say things like that out loud.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
"It'll take them a few days to get here, though. They're traveling incognito and separately so that they don't tip off the London mages, just in case the whole chapter is corrupt." "They can't just call somebody closer?" Nia asked. "They don't dare. If the London chapter has gone bad, who knows who's trustworthy? He did give me a local contact, though, 'for use in emergencies.' Some old friend of his named Blake." Nia snorted. "That's OK, hopefully we can just hole up and not draw attention until they get here. More mages usually means more problems." She should have known better than to say something like that- -because at that point, predictably, everything went to hell.
November 10, 2025 at 12:05 PM
aaronsher.bsky.social
I love this tiny little exchange, because it really captures the three of them in a nutshell.

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Nia said, "There are pictures of the inside here. How in hell did he get these?" "Don't care," I said. "What's it look like?" "Pretty small for a warehouse. Looks like a single storage room with an enclosed loading dock in the front and an office above the loading dock. There's a rolling door between the street and the loading dock, and another one between the loading dock and the storage area in back. He doesn't have any pictures of the back, but he does have shots of security cameras and several door locks." "You know this is a trap, right?" I asked. "Of course it's a trap," said Nia. "Why would it be a trap?" questioned Elise.
November 9, 2025 at 11:55 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
I’m picturing mages lined up in rows practicing spitting out single syllables with anger, contempt, derision, dismissal…

A snippet from Applied Leverage, book one of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
The mage turned on me with clear recognition on his face, along with the kind of searing disdain only achievable by the alchemical combination of arrogance and alcohol. "What's it to you, little psi?" It shouldn't really be possible to put that much contempt into a single syllable, but he managed. Maybe mages get special training? Being a psi, a psionic as opposed to a mage, meant I was lower-class in supernatural circles. Mages had vastly more power than we did, and they never let us forget it. I looked up at the mage. Quite a long way up. "Come on, everybody's little compared to you. I know Joe's fries are great, but maybe lay off them a bit?" My mouth sometimes has a mind of its own when I'm scared, and it usually doesn't have to pay its own bills.
November 8, 2025 at 11:22 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
The only time in the whole book where Nia gets to use a gun. Not very effective, it turns out.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
That sounded like a really excellent idea to me, and I started backing towards the tunnel entrance. I faced where I thought the slithering sound had come from last, though who knew if that was actually where the thing was or whether I could do anything about it if it chose to attack. Nia moved with me, her gun up. Nothing happened. My back touched the wall of the cave and I glanced back to find the tunnel entrance. At that exact moment, there was a sharp crackling sound and an indistinct rush of movement in the light-spangled blackness of the cave. Nia's gun went off twice, deafening in the enclosed space. I threw myself into the tunnel and started scrambling up, heedless of how the sharp bits of glass cut my fingers, and heard Nia right on my heels.
November 7, 2025 at 11:47 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
Close as I could get. The lack of guns in London is really crimping everyone’s style.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
Her smile made me feel warm. She had such confidence in me. I wish I felt like I deserved it. I wish I didn't feel like the splint on her leg was somehow my fault for not being more useful. "I hope he's willing to help. I'm going to have to pitch it to him just right, I think. Ultimately, though, I don't see how this doesn't come down to a fight, and if there are forty or fifty of them like Andrews said then we're seriously outgunned. And we don't even have guns." "I may have an idea about that. I need to work on it some more." I knew that look. She was coming up with some magic gizmo or something that nobody had ever heard of before.
November 6, 2025 at 11:30 AM
aaronsher.bsky.social
This is my experience of most places in Europe.

A snippet from Mechanical Advantage, book two of the urban fantasy series Origin Key (see my pinned post). #amwriting #WIPsnips #WritingCommunity #WriteSky #fantasy 📚💙
A big cemetery, called Brookwood. The driver recognized the address and regaled us with the multi-century history of the place on the way, all tied up in the Anglican church and the world wars. I guess that's most places around London, though? How do they keep track of all the history? Living in Boston we have little plaques and stuff all over the place commemorating various Revolutionary War events, and there's the Freedom Trail that's basically a history buff's guided tour, but in London every place was like that. The random pub you walked by probably had a four-hundred-year history involving plagues and civil wars and the occasional king, and you'd never know about it unless you happened to buy a drink for that one old guy in the corner. But I digress.
November 5, 2025 at 12:16 PM