The Actionopolis Books: Agent of DANGER & Evolver

Today I got my physical copies of the second and third Agent of D.A.N.G.E.R. books, Extraordinary Arrays and Weird Circles. Take a look at them, aren’t they cool?

Weird Circles, Extraordinary Arrays, and Strange Polarity. Covers by Phil Hester and Shannon Eric Denton. Published by Actionopolis. Available at Amazon.com.

Alongside the first book, Strange Polarity, I now have a novel published in three parts. 373 pages in total (plus the front- and back-matter) of the adventures of Ezekiel Wolfe and his cadre of disavowed secret agents as they battle mythological and magical figures for the fate of the Earth.

They’re aimed at 5th or 6th grade me, hungry for something that was out of the ordinary for its time but full of Weird Things and Cool People. When I started writing AoD:SP in 2012, I wanted to emulate the kinds of books I was buying from the Scholastic paper that came about once a month. That kind of feel was important to me as I crafted this tale, and I knew it was going to be three books so I laid out some ideas to pursue in the other two. Like I said, I wanted to have fun with them, so I did.

There was a long time between the release of AoD:SP in 2013 and AoD:EA and AoD:WC here in 2021. A lot of things contributed to the delays not the least of which was my own slow production on them. The original document that Shannon Denton, Rob Worley, Phil Hester, and Jon S. Lewis worked on was a great spine, but it needed muscle and sinew to show off. Demigods and alternate mythologies don’t just create themselves, you know? (Or maybe they do…)

The other title I wrote for Actionopolis is Evolver, which also is a novel in three parts: Apex Predator, Cell Structure, and Acceleration. (These books add up to 307 story pages if you’re keeping count!) Look at these covers, willya?

Apex Predator, Cell Structure, and Acceleration by Hester and Denton (with McCorkindale on Apex Predator). Published by Actionopolis. Available on Amazon.com.

E:AP dropped in 2011 with E:CS and E:A following 2015 and 2016, respectively. Which means I’ve been working on these two novels for about ten years. That’s not too bad, is it?

My influences may be slightly more obvious in Evolver with nods to Michael Moorcock and Ray Bradbury, and even a couple of British science fiction shows in there, too. But I took the same approach as I did on Agent of DANGER: have fun and tell a rollicking good story. I’m so happy with how both have come out, though I would like to go back and tell younger Jason just where he needed to pay more attention and up his game more than slightly.

The great thing about these six books is that they’re a chronicle of about ten years of my writing life, warts and all. Yes, there are mistakes there and many things I would do different if I was doing a page one rewrite, but that’s not the point. These objects exist as they are because of who I was when I wrote them. By the time they were available to anyone else, I had moved on. That’s the case with any writer, I suspect, given publishing schedules.

I am proud of what I’ve done here, as any writer should be of their own work. If you’ve read them, I hope you liked what you got. If you haven’t read them, I hope you’ll find what I’ve described above: fun adventures.

While this kind of reads like a eulogy, it’s not. I’m happy in my relationship with Actionopolis and I actually have plans to write more Evolver and there’s been some casual talk of continuing with Agent of DANGER, too. I’ve also been playing around with a third title, even wrote about 7,000 words of it. But I don’t know when I’ll get back to play in these particular sandboxes. I’m hopeful for maybe 2023, but we’ll see. When inspiration strikes, you got to go to it.

I love these characters, I love these books. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to love them, too. Take care! I’ll see you at Planet Comicon August 20 – 22, 2021. Be safe, stay healthy, wash your hands, and cover your cough.