Little Falls Author Steps Into the “Perilous Realm” with Debut Illustrated Novel

Daniel P. A. Van Meter’s “The Last Knight of the Round” arrives October 1

LITTLE FALLS, N.Y. For Daniel P. A. Van Meter, the goal was never a Hollywood contract. It was a spot on his grandmother’s bookshelf.

Van Meter, who grew up in Little Falls, has written and illustrated “The Last Knight of the Round,” a comic fantasy novel that sends ordinary people tumbling into a fairyland ruled by the fantastic, the ridiculous and a questionable sense of right and wrong.

The book will be released October 1, 2026, and will be available online through Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other publisher outlets.

“I hope people like it. That’s my big thing,” Van Meter said. “I’m not thinking that this is going to be a big success financially, but I’m hoping that it at least makes somebody’s day better.”

A Childhood of Bedtime Books

Born in Utica and raised in Little Falls, Van Meter attended Benton Hall for elementary school, spent a year at the middle school, and then went on to Notre Dame in Utica. He earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Siena College and has worked alongside his parents, Chris and Dave, ever since.

His love of fantasy began at bedtime. His father believed in pushing his children to read a little above their level, moving them from picture books like “Mouse Soup,” Thomas the Tank Engine and Dr. Seuss to more ambitious fare as quickly as they could handle it.

“My fondest memories of childhood were actually at night, right before we went to bed,” Van Meter said. “He wouldn’t read me a bedtime story. He’d make me read the bedtime story with him.”

Those sessions covered Roald Dahl classics like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach” and “The Witches.” But the first book Van Meter remembers clearly is J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.”

“To him, and to me, that was kind of like the trial by fire, that you can read,” he said.

He has returned to it again and again: in third grade, in high school and again just a few years ago. “Every time I would read it, I’d find some new nuance, something that I had forgotten, and a new appreciation of it as well,” he said.

From there came “The Lord of the Rings,” a fourth-grade reading of “The Wizard of Oz” that impressed his teachers, and, more recently, a first reading of C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“I’ve always loved stepping into those other worlds,” he said. “I still even do.”

Words and Pictures

That love of other worlds shapes the new book, which carries the tagline “Step Into the Perilous Realm,” a nod to Tolkien’s view of fairy stories as both imaginative and moral landscapes.

“While I read fantasy, I definitely really try to have it be like a journey for both the character and the reader,” Van Meter said.

Illustrating the book himself was never in question. He has been drawing for as long as he can remember, likely since he first picked up a crayon.

“For the book, it was a no-brainer for me,” he said. “I’m writing a fairy tale. Let me do illustrations.”

He believes pictures add something even to a well-written story. “It is a writer’s job to try and illustrate an image in your mind with the prose and descriptions,” he said. “But they say a picture is worth a thousand words too, and sometimes you just like to have a nice little visual.”

Writing, he admits, does not come quite as naturally as drawing, though storytelling always has. He enjoyed English and history classes where he could write essays and “have as much fun as I’m allowed to in a scholarly sense,” but the idea of writing a book did not take hold until late in high school.

The Family Bookshelf

The spark came during a visit from his aunt, an English teacher in Albuquerque who had written several books herself. His father had also written books on historical topics, and an uncle had self-published a number of titles.

What moved him most was his grandmother’s house, where she keeps a copy of every book her children have written.

“A part of me found that so very touching, and a part of me said, I want a space on that bookshelf,” Van Meter said. “And so I’ve been spending the last couple years just trying to hone my craft and write something.”

He will soon get his chance. With hard copies in hand, he plans to deliver one to his grandmother when he visits her next month.

Born at the Game Table

The book’s central character grew out of a game of Dungeons & Dragons with his high school friend Jose Parilla of Utica. Van Meter, who developed a deep love of Arthurian legend while researching the book, created a character designed mostly to needle the game’s organizer: a bold, boastful paladin who believed himself the very embodiment of King Arthur and who went by the name of Sir Gawain the Green Knight. Readers of the medieval poem will recognize the contradiction.

“I just fell in love with playing this character, this kind of bold and audacious and braggadocious paladin who, well, thought he was the bee’s knees despite being a total idiot,” Van Meter said.

When he tried to build a book around him, he quickly hit a problem. “He cannot hold a novel or a novella because he is too ridiculous,” he said. “You need a straight person to bounce them off of.”

The solution was a classic fairy tale structure: everyday people from our world crossing into a fantastical realm and struggling to make sense of it.

“I wanted to write a story about that kind of ridiculousness and the kind of gray morality one would see in fairyland,” he said.

What Comes Next

Van Meter already has ideas for continuing the story and says he will likely return to this world regardless of how the first book is received. He has also dabbled in science fiction and has considered trying a detective story.

Five years from now, he expects to still be writing and drawing, simply because he loves it, with a more polished process.

“This is actually really hard, doing everything yourself,” he said. Asked what might help, he had a ready answer: “Maybe a copy editor.”

“The Last Knight of the Round” by Daniel P. A. Van Meter will be available October 1, 2026, through Barnes & Noble, Amazon and other publisher outlets.