When Maguire returned to Boone almost a quarter of a century later, he was not only an award-winning journalist based in metro Atlanta, but also was working on another creative endeavor: finishing a new novel.
For several weeks in winter 1996, writer Mark Wallace Maguire, a long-haired guitar-wielding nomad, lived out of his Toyota Corolla and on the couches and good will of fellow musicians in Boone as they worked to make a go of it as a band in The High Country.
It was even colder, quieter, and darker back then during that very icy January in Boone and the sunrise was proportionally more longed-for and more elusive during those days.
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Maguire says he doesn’t blame The Mountain for what turned out to be a brief sojourn in Boone before driving back south. He doesn’t blame The Mountain that beyond King Street he wandered very little through the Misty Mountains during that stint.
After a professor barred him from graduate school in Ireland, Maguire managed to graduate college, but was left rudderless, he confesses. In an attempt to make something of himself, he reconnected with seminal bassist Glen Denig. The two had previously played together in the mercurial Prufrock’s Pets from 1991 to 1993 and gigged throughout the Southeast. Maguire called Glen up, discovered Glen was attending Appalachian State University and decided to give the music another shot.
“Those were dark days for me personally, because I was grasping at straws, I couldn’t find a job and the music had a hard time gaining momentum,” he said. “I played several open mic gigs around Boone with Glen and we jammed with some [local darlies], Deacon Brodie, but after a few weeks, I had nothing left in my pocket or pride and had to move on.”
When Maguire returned to Boone almost a quarter of a century later, he was not only an award-winning journalist based in metro Atlanta, but also was working on another creative endeavor: finishing a new novel.
In the summer of 2019 he returned to see The High Country in the daylight and experience the place he’d only caught glimpses of many years before.
“I took three days off to come up to Boone and spend time with a dear friend of mine. I stayed in a room I rented north of the city and when I wasn’t visiting I worked heartily on my manuscript doing everything from rewrites to developing final chapters and new landscapes.”
He discovered a fresh breath of inspiration in the mountains.
Maguire’s sequel to In Pursuit of The Pale Prince comes out in mid-October. The Last Wizard at the End of the World, doesn’t take place in Boone, but Maguire shared how the otherworldly atmosphere around Boone helped inspire it.
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“I’ve always been drawn to The Old Ways and The Old Ones as Louis L’Amour alludes to in his writing. The ones who were here before those we even know. When I was in Boone finishing up the drafts of ‘The Last Wizard at The End of the World,’ I found that spirit alive and well. These are old mountains. And the paths, the trails, the rocks and waters go back before the Cherokee. This place recalls The Old Ones, The Deep Woods, the time before time. When you hike these trails or see the fog-filled mountains, it brings back that reality which is so often lost in urban life.”
When he wasn’t busy or writing, he did get to partake of Boone’s downtown area, including a trip to Mast General Store and Black Cat Burrito.
“I checked out some fantastic Bigfoot trousers at Mast. What a wonderful place that is. I also enjoyed the dining scene, but my favorite part was the amazing brewing scene in this part of the country. The local stouts and porters were fantastic.”
From atop Ship Rock, he recalls, alone on that precipice and with a mind many-years besotted with the Tolkienian and Narnian narrative of the world, Maguire says he was inspired to tell his kids and others a good story of a young man who fights for beauty like this.