About Nineteenth House Books
The Literary Home of Jessica & Chard Pawley
The Story of Our Stories
In 2013, J L Pawley released the first edition of the first book in Generation Icarus under the label Nineteenth House Publishing. Three more books quickly followed, until the series was noticed by Steam Press, a well-respected New Zealand sci-fi and fantasy imprint that had been recently acquired by Eunoia Publishing Group. Steam/Eunoia also picked up the Pacific Commonwealth duology by Chard Pawley. Generation Icarus was reworked, reedited and rereleased between 2017-2020 as Air Born, Take Flight, and Sun Strike.
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Under Steam Press' representation, Air Born was translated into Russian and Chinese, and the series was optioned for adaptation to the screen. Click here for more details.
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Between 2022 and 2026, Jessica also completed doctoral research into teen reading in the digital age, and her work has produced practical, realistic, and adaptable strategies for high school teachers and parents of teens. Visit this page for more info about what she found.
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In 2023, Jessica and Chard returned home, and Nineteenth House Books is now back in operation. Its roof shelters our books, our love of reading and writing, and our other literary activities.
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If you're interested in having Jessica present to your staff, students, or customers, please click here.
If you're interested in learning more about Jessica and Chard, read on!
About J L Pawley
Born in New Zealand in 1989, J L Pawley has spent most of her life in a book - either reading it, or writing it.
She wrote her first chapter book aged 12, and earned a Diploma in Creative Writing at 17. She graduated university with a BA in English & Media Studies in 2010 (having met her to-be husband, Chard, on a summer Writing For Children course in 2008), and worked for a while as a Teacher Aide at an Auckland high school. While there, she was inspired by her literary-challenged students; she wanted to write a book even they would want to read. This novel evolved into the YA scifi series Generation Icarus.
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Writing the series remained her obsession while she continued working in the real world as an online university teaching assistant, and for the Auckland public libraries. After dabbling in self-publishing for a few years under the label Nineteenth House Publishing, she earned over a million reads and over twenty thousand followers on Wattpad. Meanwhile, the first manuscript of her next scifi novel, The Knowledge Keeper, was shortlisted for the NZ Storylines Children's Literature Charitable Trust’s Tessa Duder Award in 2016.
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Around the same time, Generation Icarus was noticed by the Eunoia Publishing Group. They signed Generation Icarus with Eunoia’s latest imprint acquisition: Steam Press. All independently published copies of the books were immediately withdrawn from sale worldwide, and underwent significant revision. The first book, retitled Air Born, was completed in early 2017 and was launched in NZ in September 2017.
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Whilst rewriting the first book of Generation Icarus with the guidance of the Steam team, J L Pawley was also finishing her original postgraduate research and thesis, titled “The Rise of Social Ereading: Interactive Ebook Platforms and the Development of Online Reading Communities”. Following this, in 2017, she graduated with a first class Master’s degree in English from Massey University.
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In 2019, pending the publication of the final Generation Icarus book through Steam Press, she earned her Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary) and worked from 2020-2024 as an English and Media Studies teacher.
Over 2022-2026, she worked on her PhD in English Education with a focus on adolescent literacy and book reading, with the support of a Massey University Doctoral Scholarship. You can learn more about what she found, with plenty of practical, adaptable tips & tricks to support your teens with reading, on this page.
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She would like to thank her family, friends, and the Generation Icarus fanbase the Flight Fam for their continued love and support.
About Chard Pawley
Chard Pawley joined the merchant navy at seventeen and earned his captain’s stripes by twenty-nine—a role he still commands today. His career has taken him across the globe on container ships, charter boats, and offshore vessels servicing oil rigs in every ocean.
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A lifelong mariner and self-professed history nerd (with the degree to prove it), Chard draws on two decades at sea to bring grit, realism, and atmosphere to every story he writes. His debut series, The Commonwealth Collection, blends high-stakes adventure, survival, and near-future intrigue drawn from a career spent staring down the horizon.
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Despite the captain’s workload, he continues to write prolifically, most recently completing Jurassic Mars, a science-fiction adventure for his dinosaur- and space-obsessed son. He is now at work on his fourth book, a return to his signature brand of ocean-bound dystopian fiction.
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When he’s not navigating the world’s oceans, Chard can usually be found near or in the water—swimming, rock-hopping, or SCUBA diving—or on the couch, with a book in one hand and a coffee in the other.
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He lives in New Zealand with his wife, fellow author J L Pawley, their two children, a fiercesomely cuddly Labrador, and a cat that rules with an iron paw.
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