The Herobrine Chronicles

Logan Gonzalez, a sixth-grader at St. Thomas the Apostle School in Delmar, has spent plenty of time designing his own personal world in the popular video game Minecraft, one block at a time.

And due to an increase of at-home learning caused by the pandemic, Gonzalez combined his imaginative prowess for the video game with his love of reading to build an entirely different type of world on the printed page. Initially sparked by a library program for young writers, Gonzalez published his first book, “The Herobrine Chronicles” in September.

Logan’s mother, Erin Gonzalez, says it’s hard to keep his appetite for reading satiated. Every single night he reads. 

“I have a hard time keeping him in supply,” Gonzalez said. “We definitely frequent the library a lot.”

When the RCS (Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk) Community Library began its young reader program in March, Logan was naturally drawn in. Every week he attended a meeting with library staff who held him accountable for word count and walked him through the process of publishing a book.

In Minecraft, players explore a blocky, 3D world with infinite terrain, as they discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items and build structures. Depending on the game mode, players can fight computer-operated "mobs," as well as coordinate with or compete against other players in the same world. 

In Gonzalez’s novella, the main character, David Diamond-Blade, is on a quest to make it to The Cursed Village, ultimately to defeat a community of Herobrines, Minecraft’s rumored, elusive antagonist. The story follows the perspective of Diamond-Blade, who, at first, doesn’t know he’s in the game. 
Upon wandering into his real-life home, Diamond-Blade discovers himself (Gonzalez) sitting at his computer. Shortly after, his crew notices they are being spied on by an Enderman, a slender black “neutral” type of mob that towers over players, only attacking if users make “eye contact” with its glowing pink eyes. 

The crew fights a bundle of mobs and descends from The Cursed Cloud Village, where they are introduced to H3L1x r31g10n, pronounced Helix Region, as well as his secret base, a structure Gonzalez is currently crafting on his PC outside of the story.

A sudden boom erupts, prompting the players to go back to the Village. They discover a war has started between the Herobrines and the Mobs. 
“I wrote this book because at the time I was really interested in Herobrine himself, he’s such a mysterious character to the game,” Gonzalez said, “I wanted to write a story that maybe there’s more, maybe not all of them are bad.” 

Gonzalez says when writing the book, he never expected it to be published, but rather something he could share with his friends. For this reason, he fully intends on delving deeper into each character’s motive in his upcoming sequel, “The Winter Warrior.” 

“It’s going to be basically a bigger version of this story and then it’s going to be a little bit of the next,” Gonzalez said, “Because in most books you’re seeing the hero’s side of the story, and this one is too, but in a way to other people, that might be the villain’s side of the story.”

Gonzalez’s book, The Herobrine Chronicles, may be purchased online at Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.sg/Herobrine-Chronicles-Battle-Over-World/dp/B08HBGJ999.