Where I Am As An Author

As you probably know if you've read the posts in this blog so far, I am a small press author and I don't make a whole lot off my writing.  It started out as something of a hobby, writing from within the furry community where making a living off of any sort of work is unlikely; it's a small, mostly Interned-based community that enjoys stories, art, and other media involving anthropomorphic animal stories and although sexual material is definitely out there, non-sexual stories and art still sell decently well.

The first book I published (also the first manuscript of any sort I actually sold copies of) was a dieselpunk action romance called "Basecraft Cirrostratus," and yes, it did play somewhat to the sexual aspect of things.  I've been told by a few non-furry readers, though, that aside from the sex it's actually a decent early attempt at a story, kind of in the vein of "The Rocketeer" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in a dystopian setting inspired by the neoliberal crony capitalism and dominionist politics of the 2000s.  As such, it was hardly "porn" so much as an adventure story with erotic scenes.

It got decent reviews, and was greeted enthusiastically enough that I began to think that maybe I would eventually have what it took to support myself as an author.  I was called out on being too brief and breezy in my pacing, sort of the opposite of what you hear about amateur authors most of the time.  There were also minor issues with forced dialog and a plot just a little too fraught with convenient coincidences (though I did lampshade it somewhat in the sequel by having all the loose ends from the first book come back to haunt the protagonists).  But after a while, sales slowed and I decided to put something else out.

"The Vimana Incident" Available Now!

It's finally here! "The Vimana Incident" is available online!  Just click the title and you'll find the online order page in a new window.

For those who have just stumbled upon this blog, I should probably explain what's so special about this story.

For a long time, I wrote "safe" stories that were reasonably well-conceived, but hedged my bets.  The first novel I wrote, "The Goldenlea," was a medieval low-fantasy story that was OK for a first attempt, but the style was extremely naive.  

My second novel was a little more adventurous.  "Basecraft Cirrostratus" was my first foray into the fringes of science fiction.  It was a dieselpunk action romance about gay characters in a dystopian world based loosely on 1930s Europe.

My third novel was a still-unpublished biographical fiction story called "One Could Do Better," inspired by my time in London in the early 2000s.  It was almost picked up by a small press but a dispute arose and it was dropped.  

My fourth novel was a sequel to Basecraft Cirrostratus called "Escape from St. Arned."  That one goes kind of sci-fi at the end too, but more as a device to prove a point about the characters and their relationship.  

My fifth novel, "The Linen Butterfly," was finished early last year but is currently pending for a major rewrite.  It's a sequel to "The Goldenlea" that expands on the sci-fi themes of the first book.

Then we come to number six, "The Vimana Incident."  For this one, I decided to throw caution to the wind and do an honest-to-God Philip K. Dick tribute.  I had previously spoken to Phil's last wife, Tessa Dick, and to Johnathan Lethem (one of the editors of the Exegesis) on another matter but their insights proved valuable when I set out to write this novel last spring.  "The Vimana Incident" draws heavily on "Ubik," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," and "A Maze of Death" thematically, but stylistically it is entirely my own.

The story begins in England in an alternate 1939 in which the Second World War has been averted by a space race.  It transports the reader to an off-world colony around the year 2606, Laon France in 1153, Post-WW2 England in 1946, and finally to Humboldt County, CA in 2039, with the US coping with the effects of climate change and civil war.  A strong theme of reincarnation runs through the story, but this is ain't Cloud Atlas!  Psychedelics, neurochemistry, the Bardo Thodol, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and a dominant thread of Gnosticism make this book the sort of thing very few writers are doing any more.  The addition of anthropomorphic animal characters also turns the book into something of a postmodern Reynard story.

This is more adventurous than anything I've ever done by leaps and bounds.  I sincerely hope it wins the hearts of readers.