I wrote this while on our honeymoon in Key West. It’s been on a note stuffed in my wallet for two weeks, I guess it’s time to put it somewhere a bit more permanent.
Taking a page from Neverending Story, Narnia, and the Dark is Rising series (a modern day person discovering an artifact which enables them to travel to an alternate world), a young adult man in the modern world with troubles (fights with wife and family, money problems, etc.) finds an old ring in the attic of his house. The ring takes him to a fantasy world full of magic, elves and dwarves. Time elapses in each world when he is in the other one at varying rates. Sometimes a month in the fantasy world is a day back home, sometimes one day there is almost a week at home. Vice versa as well. At first he believes it is all an illusion, a day dream or hallucination. Later, unsure of whether it is real or not yet, he uses the fantasy world as an escape from his less than ideal modern life.
In his adventures in this other world, he encounters those who need help fighting the dark forces of a great evil which has begun plaguing their land. This evil force has even managed to find a way to send an agent back into the protagonist’s world, our world. He discovers this and tries to track down this agent in the real world, driving his family crazy as he ignores them and won’t tell them what’s going on, missing out on their lives. It turns out the agent is after another artifact which will open a vast portal. They intend to lure or force vast numbers of criminals in the modern world armed with weaponry into the fantasy world for a war and conquest of devastating proportions.
The protagonist pursues the agent, but his family chases after him and accidentally fall into the hands of the evil agent. Throwing caution to the wind the hero saves his family and defeats the antagonist. Returning one last time to the fantasy world, they plead with him to lead them, to become their champion in the battle that still rages. He regretfully declines as he has decided his family needs him more and returns home.
A possible sequel could have a young orphan boy living in the house of an old widower (the protagonist from the first book). The boy has no self confidence and doesn’t fit in anywhere. The old man gives him the ring and tells him to go fulfill his prophecy, and he leaves for the fantasy world. (Perhaps this would make a good epilogue).