King Arthur.

The Knights of the Round Table.

Monsters and magic.

And… high school?

The age-old, medieval tale of King Arthur and his loyal knights has been crafted, molded and penned to fit our modern world.

Senior Jaren Tankersley wrote the new fantasy novel “The Arthurians.”

“The Arthurians” gives a glimpse of what the Knights of the Round Table are up to in our day and age. No longer are they wielding swords and protecting the gates of Camelot, but they form a secret society to keep the monsters under the bed.

“I grew up on tales of high adventure and high fantasy,” Tankersley said. “Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia were very formative works for me. Lewis and Rowling are my primary influences.”

Tankersley drew ideas from his favorite authors to help create his first draft.

“The original ‘Arthurians’ was essentially a ‘Percy Jackson’ rip-off,” Tankersley said. “It was very, very, very bad. There was a lot of inspiration taken from ‘Percy Jackson’ originally. Then I went back through and thought of all the various ways this could be a lot better and reorganized it as such.”

Tankersley wrote three drafts in total over the course of five years.

“I started writing when I was 13,” Tankersley said. “The first draft was finished when I was 15, and that was the terrible one. The second draft I rewrote until the Christmas break of my junior year, and the third draft I wrote half over the summer and half of the beginning of this year. Then I went back and made sure the separate drafts didn’t show through the seams.”

Though inspired by famous authors, Tankersley had a personal reason to complete his novel.

“My biggest fan, the person who encouraged me the most, was my mom,” Tankersley said. “She was my first test reader. She was the person who was there for every new chapter, every new character idea. She was a big fan of ‘The Arthurians,’ and, to an extent, she was the reason they exist.”

Tankersley said his mom was the reason for his love of literature.

“To her, reading was like air,” Tankersley said. “It became like that to me, so I finished the first draft about a month and a half after she passed away. There was a sense of closure to that. After my mom went to be with the Lord, it was a fairly singular process of editing. To be honest, my harshest critic has always been myself.”

“The Arthurians” is available for purchase on Amazon.

“I didn’t write a big long dedication; I just wrote, ‘To Laura Tankersley. Hey Mom, I did it,’” Tankersley said. “That means a whole lot more to me than any number of sales, any big recognition, any teen authorship. I finally finished something that I started with my mom. That means a lot more than any simple book deal.”