Systems Check: Statement of Intent
As social media continues to prove it’s all about the content we users provide for free that enriches the billionaires who dreamed of being billionaires long ago, I wanted to put this out into the world again:
Creator unknown. Found on the Internet sometime in 2024. I write science fiction stories with an art-house approach. That is, I’m more interested in writing things that relate to people and how they arrived at that particular future and what they’re going to do about it. It might’ve been classed as ‘social science fiction’ back in the day but I’m incorporating a little more than the classic stuff. So not quite Star Trek but less fantasy and (hopefully) more cerebral than Star Wars. Less pulpy than Stan Lee’s and Jack Kirby’s groundbreaking science fiction comics (Fantastic Four, for instance), but not as literary as Michael Moorcock’s fantasies. I’m looking at our motivations, what makes us human as far as I can tell. I think we should be concerned with more than just being entertained because there are myriad influences pushing us together and pulling us apart in the real world and that that’s fair game for a story. This means there’s likely more talking than big action sequences in my books, but I use those as needed to move people along their path. So yeah, art house.
Every word in my stories, in my books is mine (or my co-author’s). I don’t use artificial intelligence, I don’t use prompts, and I do my best not to show my influences too clearly. My books are my work for good or ill. I’m a human doing human things and making human mistakes, celebrating human wins. I co-wrote a novella, Rudow Can’t Fail, that has been compared favorably to Richard K. Morgan, Max Allan Collins, and Philip K. Dick if that helps you decide. The first book in the All the Devils Are Here series, The Envoy, was hailed as “An edge-of-the seat galactic and political thriller!” on GoodReads. It’s available through Kindle Unlimited if that’s the way you read.
There’s an audience around this kind of writing and I’d like to see if I can interest some of them in what I’m doing. I try to reach as many as I can, but as you know it’s a struggle. So I depend on word of mouth.
If you’ve read one of my books, thank you. Would you mind rating it wherever you do such things? Would you mind telling someone you know who might like it about the book? Even just an occasional reposting of a note that I have books available is very much appreciated.
Hey, you can even share this post and encourage others to sign up below to get these (very infrequent) posts delivered to their inbox directly when I publish one. They’ll drop no more than twice a month and that will be rare, I promise. Just type your email into the box down there to get started.
No matter what happens I’m going to keep writing. I’m going to keep publishing however I can because I don’t know how to stop. Sometimes it takes a little longer to get a book together because I work full-time and have a reasonably interesting life outside of that and writing. Sometimes I’ll write about what I’m reading or listening to (today would have been David Bowie’s 78th birthday and I’m listening to The Next Day and Blackstar). I’ll always be honest with you.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for sharing. I’m glad we’re on this Earth at the same time and have a chance to connect. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments and I’ll see you when I see you.
