As you may, or may not know, I had a Kickstarter campaign to try and raise money to do a really nice professional cover, professional editing, and marketing for the fourth book in "The Casitian Universe Series." It failed, rather miserably.
A lot of people ask me about the themes present in my writing. Of course there are themes relating to gender, race, and sexuality - I'm not sure it would be possible for me to write fiction without those themes.
I have just lauched my first Kickstarter Project. It is for support for the completion of the 4th novel in The Casitian Universe series. The premise of this fourth novel is:
One of the things I like to do is interview my characters - especially those who aren't the protagonists - the ones who don't get much play. The novel I'm working on now, with a working title of "House Trageri", is new for me for a couple of reasons.
This is a follow up to my previous post about Fantasy vs. Science Fiction. One of the cool things about Fantasy is the maps, and I have one for the new novel I'm starting. I thought it would be fun to share it. It's definitely a very early draft - there is a lot missing, and I know that there will be many changes in the final version. I created it using a great program from Pro Fantasy called Campaign Cartographer.
I've been reading both fantasy and science fiction for years. Many, many years. I love them both, although I do tend to read much more science fiction than fantasy. And I've always considered myself strictly a science fiction writer... until now.
I have a fantasy story that has been running around in my head for years, and my muse tells me it is time to start writing it down. As I've begun to outline it, and spin the plot out before beginning to write scenes, I'm struck by the differences and similarities in my process.
The Casitian Universe Series was originally meant to be one trilogy. It was designed to be three books which chronicled the twenty-five years or so after the Casitians contacted Earth, and life for humans on Earth and in the galaxy were forever different. I was going to finish the trilogy, and then go off to write one of several other book ideas set in different universes.I have three different first contact stories that I would like to at some point expand and work on.
Self-publishing books used to have a bad reputation. That has changed a little bit over the past couple of years, but there definitely is the sense that people who get published "for real" must be better writers, and certainly have more cred. I decided to self-publish my novels for a number of reasons, after long consideration and contemplation. These reasons are both philosophical as well as deeply personal.
It's been almost 5 years since I wrote my first novel in the summer of 2006, a science fiction story about aliens who are human. It has finally made it to the light of day! After a lot of consideration about the current massive changes in the publishing world, and my own penchant for all things technical, I decided to self-publish the novel, in eBook form first. If enough people request it, there will be a print run. There may even be an audio book!
