A Glimpse of the Cosmic Dance and Other Stories Is Now Available!

Posted on September 9, 2023 by John Walters

My 35th book and 12th short story collection, A Glimpse of the Cosmic Dance and Other Stories, is now available as a paperback and as an ebook at various online outlets. Links to these are below.

In a world whose inhabitants routinely visit famous historical events, two jaded road-weary tourists take a holiday in an isolated retrograde enclave where time travel is forbidden.

Humankind is plunged into chaos as the recently deceased reappear and take up residency in their former homes.

As the result of an expensive technique that restores their youthful vigor, wealthy old people gallivant from place to place adventure-seeking and partying. However, their newfound energy comes at a terrible cost.

In these and other tales you’ll find heart-pounding excitement, deadly perils, baffling perplexities, complex conundrums, dread mysteries, deceptive hallucinations, fantasy landscapes, far planets, distant futures, evil menaces, and unlikely heroes.

Trade Paperback

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple iBooks

Smashwords

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Book Review:  Babel; or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R. F. Kuang

Posted on September 2, 2023 by John Walters

I had never heard of this book until it won this year’s Nebula Award for best novel from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Since then it has won several other awards, and since awards season is not over, there will probably be more. It is a terrific book; it well deserves the accolades. Seldom have I read a fantasy so intelligent, complex, absorbing, character-driven, nuanced, surprising, and yet despite its fantastical elements so grounded in the world in which we actually live.

Babel is an alternate history novel set in the 1800s at the height of the British Empire. In it, the crown jewel of Oxford University is a literal tower of Babel, a linguistics center that creates the magic that runs the empire. The magic is based on the use of the element of silver combined with codes matching words from two or more different languages. To create the effect that powers the magic, silver workers must be able to know the languages they use so well that they can think in them. Since they require this level of expertise in diverse languages, magical silver workers are scarce; professors from Babel search the world for suitable candidates.

The main protagonist, Robin Swift, is a half-Chinese and half-British young man born in Canton, China. His mentor, who turns out to be also his father, Professor Lovell, transports Robin from Canton to England and arranges for tutors for him so that he can qualify for the language school at Babel. Once he begins, he becomes close to the other first-year students: Ramy, from Calcutta, India; Letitia, or Letty, from an aristocratic English family; and Victoire, from Haiti. Reading about these four teens learning to interact and trust one another in the midst of their studies and discoveries at Babel, I was reminded of the group of kids who get together in the Harry Potter series (which, I must admit, I have watched in films but never read). However, in Harry Potter the magic is presented simply and straightforwardly, while in Babel the approach is much more complex, being dependent on principles of linguistics. It turns out that when they arrive, European languages are becoming less effective in bonding with English to create magic; this is the reason for recruiting Robin and Ramy and Victoire from the more distant reaches of the empire.

Speaking of the empire, though, the students eventually find out that there are more sinister reasons for their recruitment than the mere making of magic. Babel’s true purpose, besides self-enrichment, involves strengthening Britain’s oppressive hold on its colonies so that aristocrats and capitalists can get rich at the expense of everyone else. When Robin’s cohort accompanies Lovell on an excursion to China, they discover that Babel is intent on assisting the empire in making war on China to ensure that the lucrative Chinese market for the debilitating drug opium remains open. This, of course, causes Robin and his friends to question their roles as Babel linguists.

I am only skimming over a few highlights. The story is meticulously researched both in history and in linguistics. Kuang obviously knows her languages. When she references a Chinese word, for instance, she not only gives the phonetic pronunciation but also the character in Chinese. These details are often included in footnotes, which give the story additional verisimilitude. While reading the novel I was often amazed at the depth of research and scholarship the writer must have gone through to get it all right.

Concerning the evil of empire and the negative effect that conquering nations have on their colonies, I was reminded of another book I have read recently: Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. The authors point out that over the last thousand years of history technology has invariably been used not to benefit all of humankind, but rather to enrich very few at the expense of the multitudes. Kuang uses the highly profitable silver-working magic in her novel as a devastatingly effective metaphor of this principle.

All in all, it has been years, perhaps decades, since I have so thoroughly enjoyed a fantasy novel. Don’t miss this one. It’s a sure classic.

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Book Review:  Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game by Oliver Stone

Posted on August 26, 2023 by John Walters

With its subtitle in place, this book has a long, long title. I’ve found that most nonfiction books have subtitles; publishers probably figure that buyers browsing in bookstores won’t pick up a book unless a bombastic title spells out the details for them. Personally, I would have preferred something simple like Chasing the Light: A Memoir; I would have assumed, of course, that everyone would already know who Oliver Stone is and be familiar with at least some of his work. Then again, maybe not – who knows?

For those unfamiliar with his work, Oliver Stone has been writing, directing, and/or producing movies since the 1970s. Besides those the subtitle mentions, they include such iconic works as JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street, The Doors, and many, many more. This memoir begins in his childhood and takes us up to the evening when he wins the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Platoon. His reminiscences of his early years are not extraneous, though; the background is crucial in understanding his intensity and what motivated him to focus on the subject matter that he did. His dad was an American GI who was stationed in France at the end of World War II, and his mother was a young French woman. When Stone was away at a boarding school during his high school years, they got divorced, and the trauma and confusion following their neglect of him during this time caused Stone to volunteer for the army and get promptly sent off to Vietnam. More severe trauma followed, of course, and this became inspiration for the screenplay of Platoon.

Stone is an excellent writer, although sometimes given to hyperbole. At the heart of the book are the accounts of how he managed to create Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, Platoon, and other works, usually when faced with great opposition. He tells of his struggles with drugs, obstinate actors and film crews, foreign locations, producers, and financers. This is all fascinating, of course, but even more important to me are his insights into the creative experience. For instance, one of his teachers at NYU film school, a young Martin Scorsese, praised one of Stone’s early short efforts by exclaiming: “This is a filmmaker. Why? Because it’s personal. You feel like the person who’s making it is living it.” Whether Stone, in his creative efforts, flew or fell flat on his face, he always remained emotionally intense and personal. He also persevered against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Of the arduous filming of Platoon in the Philippines despite multitudes of difficulties, he writes: “I had to keep going now… Self-pity is not possible. You must be stronger than your captors – or your critics.” In referring to captors, he meant the POWs and their efforts to stay sane when they had to endure horrific confinement during the Vietnam War; he mentioned critics because at the same time he was off in the jungle filming Platoon on an excruciatingly tight schedule and budget, the film he had just completed, Salvador, was premiering in the States to mixed reviews.

The answer, according to Stone, is to persist in spite of everything. His early career was like a roller coaster: extreme highs followed by extreme lows. One moment he’d be winning an Oscar for the screenplay of Midnight Express, and soon afterwards he would be involved in several flops in a row. As Stone makes clear, the point is to remain resolute, or in the words of Kipling in the immortal poem “If”: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same…”

As I mentioned, the book ends on a high note, with the triumph of Platoon at the Oscars in 1987. For Oliver Stone, there would be many more triumphs and disasters yet to come. This book is so absorbing and well-written that I hope he carries on the story in another volume.

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Book Review:  Elevation by Stephen King

Posted on August 20, 2023 by John Walters

The cover of this recent book by Stephen King says: Elevation: A Novel. In fact, though, it’s not a novel; it’s a novella, and a short one at that. We are all accustomed to King’s books being thousand-plus page brick-heavy tomes, so this small, slim volume might be quite a surprise to those familiar with his work. Don’t let that put you off, though. One of the things I like about this book is that it is not such a formidable read. It is told in succinct and simple prose that is nonetheless effective for the story it tells.

In fact, one of the things that puts me off from reading more of King’s work is its length. You have to commit to a significant amount of time and effort to tackle most of his novels. That’s not to say that the effort is not rewarded. I greatly enjoyed his time travel epic 11/22/63, about a man who attempts to thwart the assassination of JFK, even though the hardcover version I read was well over one thousand pages. Elevation, on the other hand, you can easily read in one sitting if you are so inclined.

Besides length, the other thing that causes me to hesitate before opening a King novel is the genre he usually writes in. His name is associated with horror, and for good reason. Horror, however, is simply not my thing. It generally frightens me in a bad way and not a good way. The good news, for me at least, is that Elevation is not a horror story. It has a fantasy element at the heart of the plot, but it is not dark fantasy; instead, King assiduously avoids taking it in that direction.

In short – and I’ll keep the synopsis brief because I don’t want to give too much away – a middle-aged man discovers he is losing weight while at the same time retaining his heavyset bodily appearance. It is an anomaly that his friend, an elderly doctor, is unable to explain. At the same time, he becomes involved in the lives of his neighbors, a lesbian couple, who have just opened a restaurant in a small conservative town in Maine. As his malady progresses, so does local ostracism of his neighbors. Using his signature straightforward writing style, King builds this situation up to an exceedingly satisfying conclusion.

Until now, my favorite book by Stephen King has been his memoir On Writing, in which he tells an abbreviated story of his life and offers this immortal advice to aspiring writers: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” It is possible, though, that Elevation might supplant On Writing as my favorite King book. In fact, I wish that Stephen King would write more sweet, inspiring stories like this. I think that it might have been published separately instead of in one of King’s short story collections because it is so different from the rest of King’s work. It demonstrates, though, the range of King’s talent, and I hope that in the future he ventures into this unfamiliar territory again.

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Book Review:  Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

Posted on August 12, 2023 by John Walters

This brilliant book is not an easy read, but it is definitely a rewarding one. The authors (both professors at MIT) delve deep into history and economics to explain why in our present era the very few elite prosper while the rest of humankind gradually becomes poorer. It has to do with technological innovation and how those who control it decide to use it. As the authors explain, it is not inevitable that people lose jobs due to automation; in fact, in some countries this has not happened. However, those in power typically look out for themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Technological progress is supposed to make everyone’s lives better; at least that’s what corporate propaganda would have us believe, but at crucial historical moments this has not been true – nor is it true today. The authors prove this point through examples such as England at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the Deep South in the United States when machinery like the cotton gin enriched plantation owners and made the lives of multitudes of slaves miserable, and the rise of factories and communal farms in Soviet Russia. In each of these situations, only the elite prospered while most people endured worse conditions than before. The evolution of economic history the authors present clarify what most of us are aware of even now: that progress favors the few, while the rest of us see no gain or even a diminution of our quality of life.

Certainly modern tech companies are set up like this. Instead of using the amazing recent technological innovations to benefit us all (and the authors make it clear that this could have been an option), the biggest digital businesses are set up for exploitation of the masses, for surveillance and personal data collection that makes the very rich richer. This was not inevitable. Instead of focusing on automation that replaces humans, innovators could have opted for machine usefulness – in other words, machines complementing and assisting humans. The present social media algorithms, contrary to what is touted in slogans and advertisements, are not set up to increase communication and socialization. They are set up to sell advertisements. For this reason, they foster hatred, division, and misinformation. They want you to be enraged and upset (regardless of the truth or falsehood of what you read or see) because these emotions increase platform engagement and help them sell more ads. They honestly don’t give a damn about you.

The new trends in artificial intelligence platforms are also set up for similar reasons: to enrich a few innovators at the expense of everyone else. They scrape data from everywhere with complete disregard for privacy, let alone copyrights. And what AI is theoretically capable of (although at present it can do it only poorly) could put many, many more people out of work. This has happened to me personally recently. For years I have been ghostwriting articles and blog posts as a primary source of income, but in the last several months these income streams dried up. The reason? The companies that were paying me and many others to write for them decided it was cheaper to have AI write their articles (they even outright announced this), even though there is a significant drop in quality and basically all the AIs are doing is copying what they have scraped without permission from other sites.

In the final chapter, the authors of Power and Progress offer a number of possible solutions, none of which are easy but most of which are necessary. I won’t spoil the book by giving away the ending, though. Read it yourself if you want to know what’s really happening and not just what those in power tell us.

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Book Review:  At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

Posted on August 5, 2023 by John Walters

A while back I became aware that there was no quick cure for my living alone and being alone much of the time. To mitigate the loneliness, I looked for some books that might give some insight on turning the negative state of loneliness into the more profound positive state of solitude. Back then I didn’t really find what I was looking for, but now I have come across this book, which though flawed (by flawed I mean that I don’t agree with everything the author says) is close to what I was looking for.

Johnson makes a compelling case for the solitary lifestyle; in fact, he gives the name solitaries to the individualistic people he profiles. Besides telling of his own life lived in solitude, in separate chapters he writes about Henry David Thoreau, the painter Paul Cezanne, poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson, the novelist Henry James, Eudora Welty, Nobel Prize-winning Bengali author Rabindranath Tagore, Black writer Zora Neale Hurston, Rod McKuen and Nina Simone, and photographer Bill Cunningham. I am most familiar with the work of Thoreau, Whitman, Dickenson, and Tagore, but all of Johnson’s profiles and explanations shed light on the role of solitude in the life of artists. Johnson also often mentions Thomas Merton, the author and Trappist monk; the abbey Merton lived at was near Johnson’s family home in Kentucky, and the monks, including Merton, knew the family personally.

After a chapter about his own background, Johnson starts off with a study of Thoreau, claiming that though Thoreau was not a cloistered monk he lived a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience (to his conscience) without the trappings of ordinary religion. For me as a young writer making a decision to head off on the road seeking my own unique voice, Thoreau’s Walden was certainly of extreme importance. And Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” is one of my all-time favorite poems. About Whitman Johnson writes that he “came gradually to understand, the solitary’s challenge is the conversion of loneliness into solitude.” In his explanation of Whitman’s and Dickenson’s distain of conventional marriage, Johnson says that they instead embraced “a literary polygamy as vast as their readerships.”

This brings up one of my disagreements with a conclusion that Johnson repeatedly expresses: that conventional marriage is a hindrance to wholeness and creativity. I was married for twenty-five years and wrote some of my best and most heartfelt books during those years. I can think of countless artists who were married but still managed to find time for solitude and the creation of great work. I think too that Johnson sometimes tries to over-explain the reasons for artists choosing solitude: their sexual predilections, for instance, or their racial or cultural backgrounds. Sexual orientation is incidental to creative solitude, as is, ultimately, race, nationality, gender and other such considerations. The fact is, in my opinion, artists seek out solitude to clear their minds for creative endeavors regardless of their backgrounds. I also believe that Johnson puts too much emphasis on celibacy. He writes that “the solitary foregoes openness to one for openness to all.” For me, though, and I think for many creative people, the patches of temporary celibacy in my life were always involuntary; I have derived intense creative energy from sexual relationships – whether long-term or short.

Still, Johnson is much more often right than wrong in his expostulations. Consider this gem: “Capitalism tells me I will find myself in things – I will locate myself, literally and psychologically, in and with my phone – when what my solitaries have taught me, again and again in their different ways, is that if I want to find the self, give it away, again and again, until there is no more left.” Or this, concerning Van Gogh’s mindset: “One understands being an artist as not about making product for a market but as a way of life.”

In the final chapter, Johnson sums up his ideas with great skill, making a strong case for what he refers to as secular monasticism. Did this book help to assuage the pain of my loneliness? Maybe not. However, it brings my solitude into clearer focus as a thing of value to be treasured and not despised. In time, perhaps, I will be able to better see it in that light.

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My Story “Dark Mirrors” Has Just Been Published in the Summer 2023 Dragon Gems Anthology

Posted on July 29, 2023 by John Walters

The Dragon Gems anthology for summer 2023, published by Water Dragon Publishing, has just been released, and it includes my short story “Dark Mirrors.”

About “Dark Mirrors”:

The people of Earth are losing a war with aliens that they themselves provoked. Every able-bodied person is being called up to fight, even prisoners; those who refuse are threatened with dismemberment to provide spare parts for wounded soldiers. A battle-hardened general enters a prison to recruit a woman who refuses to fight, but who may have a most unusual special ability that can turn the tide of the war.

You can find links to sales outlets on the Water Dragon Publishing website.

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A Spray of Short Stories for Summer Stimulation

Posted on July 26, 2023 by John Walters

This article was originally written and posted in January of 2019. I have updated it to include my latest short story collections. Relax and enjoy the excitement of some great short stories while you bask in the summer sun.

I mean the word “spray” in the title both as a powerful expulsion of metaphorical liquid and as an attractive display of flamboyant flowers. I’ve written a blog post called “Books Make Great Gifts” about some of my available full-length works, so I thought why not highlight some short stories? So here they are, volume by volume, some of my personal favorites from among my own short stories. Note that there are links to entire collections or to individual stories.

To check out some promotional videos of my short story collections, click on the Instagram icon on the upper right of this page.

From The Dragon Ticket and Other Stories:

“The Dragon Ticket“: Presented with an extraordinary gift by an alien artifact high in the remote Himalayas, a young woman named Michelle must learn how to use her new power as nuclear war plunges the world into chaos.

From Painsharing and Other Stories:

“Beyond Purgatory“: On a far planet the ultimate civil punishment is to be genetically deformed into a monstrous beast and forced to live in the forbidden compound called Purgatory as a slave of the State.  When authorities arrest and condemn the woman he loves, Justus determines to find and save her, even if he must search Purgatory itself. 

From Dark Mirrors: Dystopian Tales:

“Dark Mirrors“: The people of Earth are losing a war with aliens that they themselves provoked.  Every able-bodied person is being called up to fight, even prisoners; those who refuse are threatened with dismemberment to provide spare parts for wounded soldiers.  A battle-hardened general enters a prison to recruit a woman who refuses to fight, but who may have a most unusual special ability that can turn the tide of the war.

From Fear or Be Feared: Fantasies:

“Fear or Be Feared“: A teenage Greek girl climbs Mount Olympus with some of her friends.  Lost in a lightning storm, she discovers the spirit of an ancient Greek god which possesses her and uses her against her will as an instrument of vengeance.

“The Customs Shed“: Those who wish to cross the river of death must first be purged in the customs shed; but within await the mysterious customs agents.  What will they require as the price of passage?

From Opting Out and Other Departures: Stories:

“Opting Out“: It is the near future, and due to easier availability of alternative energy, fossil fuels are becoming outlawed.  Fleeing south along the coastal highway from a state government that threatens to confiscate the gasoline-fueled camper-van he lives in, a homeless man comes across a seemingly-idyllic communal refuge for homeless people set up by a philanthropic dot-com billionaire.

“Opting In“: An old man, feeling useless, leaves his daughter’s home to go live in a homeless shelter. Following up on a tip from a fellow vagrant, he finds an alien being preparing to leave Earth who invites him on a journey from which he can never return.

From Heroes and Other Illusions: Stories:

“Matchmaker“: From a future bereft of emotion, a time traveler journeys to Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1917 to find a legendary matchmaker and learn the lost secret of true marriage. Although aware that the city is about to become decimated by fire, he becomes betrothed to a local woman and must choose between remaining in the past or returning to the future with the desperately needed knowledge he has acquired.

“Katabasis“: After traveling to India to take advantage of cutting-edge psychiatric technology, a jaded ailing old man embarks on a guided journey through his memories to locate and correct errant decisions that shaped his life.

From Invasive Procedures: Stories:

“The Beatification of Lady Poverty“: A government operative recruits a young woman with a very special power of self defense for a mission to help end a war in Europe. However, once she unleashes them, her mysterious abilities provoke changes beyond anything her handlers intended or imagined.

“Camp College“: In the near future, as societies continue to erode and the gap between rich and poor widens, inexpensive college camps spring up around the country as an alternative form of higher education. At one such camp, a partially dysfunctional veteran and a woman alienated from her family meet and attempt to make sense out of the rapidly changing world.

From Apocalypse Bluff and Other Stories:

“Connecting the Dots in Pointillist Paintings“: A recently divorced woman joins a virtual community in search of social acceptance and companionship. After fashioning a new identity for herself, she sets off to explore the meticulously created landscapes of this new world, unaware that the beautiful environments are rife with human predators.

“Apocalypse Bluff“: As invading aliens unleash monsters resembling mutated Earth carnivores to devour humankind, an extended family gathers together in a mansion on an isolated bluff for a last stand. To survive, they must fight together against ravenous beasts attacking from land and sea.

From The Woman Who Fell Backwards and Other Stories:

“The Woman Who Fell Backwards“: A woman agrees to take part in a research program that will propel her backwards in time on a one-way, never-ending journey. On one of her pauses during her tumble into the past, she meets someone who seems to know her, and they initiate an unusual and enigmatic romance.

“The Magic Debit Card“: An elderly homeless man suddenly discovers that his debit card, which is usually almost empty, has been filled with thousands of dollars, and whenever he spends money, by the next morning it has somehow reappeared. He uses this inexplicable bounty to get off the streets, clean himself up, and attain a measure of personal security. The source of the magical largesse is something he never would have imagined.

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Book Review:  Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman

Posted on July 22, 2023 by John Walters

Joe Haldeman is best known for The Forever War, an award-winning novel about a military conflict with aliens that lasts for over a thousand years. Forever Peace was published two decades after The Forever War, but despite the similarity of titles, it is not a sequel to the earlier work. Forever Peace is also about futuristic warfare; however, its conflict takes place on Earth between opposing human factions.

It begins in a fairly conventional science fictional way: the Alliance, which includes the United States, is fighting a union of third world guerilla forces. The Alliance has the advantage of superior technology, including nanoforges that can construct anything as long as they are provided with materials, and surgically modified soldiers that can jack into a network system and operate combat robots called soldierboys by remote control. The story is mainly told in first person by a solderboy named Julian Class, but it occasionally switches to third person point of view. It begins by describing the violent and pointless conflict between the two factions, but it soon introduces other elements that add tension and intrigue. Julian’s lover Amelia Harding and her colleagues find out that a massive interplanetary physics project, if completed, could destroy the universe by creating a second big bang. The scientists that discover this want to warn the powers-that-be to end the project before the universe is destroyed, but a group of ultra-violent religious fanatics known as the Hammer of God want it to proceed and bring on the end of existence. At the same time, the creators of the jacking technology that makes it possible for people to share minds and for soldiers to power their robotic weapons find out that this technology, under certain circumstances, can “humanize” people, making it impossible for them to kill others; if this process were enabled universally, world peace would ensue.

All of this makes for an action-packed, if unlikely, tale of intrigue, warfare, politics, subterfuge, and fanatical religious assassins, as one side tries to bring about global peace and the other side tries to prevent it.

There is something profoundly wrong with the idea of achieving peace by forcing everyone to jack into a computer network. This in effect is what the protagonists are attempting to bring about. The pessimistic and cynical premise is that only forced mechanical reprogramming can bring peace to humankind. On the other hand, if we take a look at the current rabid, crazed, polarized state of the world, it seems increasingly unlikely that people will simply cease arguing, shake hands, and agree to live in peace. It might indeed take something spectacular to cure humankind’s inherent aggressiveness. So who knows? Right now, I think we all have to agree that whatever is being tried isn’t working. Despite the efforts of many, the world continues to become increasingly confused, chaotic, and divided.

Ultimately, Forever Peace works on two levels: it is an entertaining science fiction thriller, and it raises questions and introduces ideas on the importance of peace and how it can be achieved.

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Why I Self-Publish

Posted on July 19, 2023 by John Walters

I shouldn’t really have to write a justification of self-publishing. If readers and writers were as open-minded and magnanimous as they should be, they would realize that there are as many artistic paths as there are artists. Unfortunately, however, there are always hecklers and naysayers who decry the outliers, the unusual, and those who deviate from established systems.

I don’t only self-publish. I have sold dozens of stories to magazines and anthologies owned and edited by others. However, I have also written dozens of books, including novels, short story collections (usually a mix of original and previously published tales), memoirs, essay collections, and other works, and these I have chosen to release under my own imprint. I am grateful to modern technology that has made possible the relatively easy publication and distribution of original works throughout the world. Some self-published works are low standard, it is true, but then, if we reference Sturgeon’s Law, 90 percent of everything is shit, even books put out by traditional publishing. Almost all publishers have always been much more concerned with their bottom lines and the prevailing winds of politics and public opinion rather than with pure quality. So it has been, and so it will likely continue to be.

I had a sudden realization that I was a writer when I was in my late teens, during my one year of college at the University of Santa Clara. I was as confused concerning my life’s path as a directionless young person could be until I took a class in science fiction literature and read Harlan Ellison’s dynamic short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” By the time I finished it, I knew that I had to be a writer. When I moved back to Seattle, I attended the Clarion West science fiction writing workshop in 1973, shortly after my twentieth birthday. In the mid-seventies, I set out on the road so I could gain experiences to write about and find my voice as a writer. Once I left the United States, I remained an expatriate for thirty-five years. After a long hiatus, I resumed writing and publishing in Greece, where my wife and I raised our children. It was there that I formulated the hybrid publishing model that works for me.

Every artist walks their own path, and no two paths are alike. I do the best that I can. I think most of us do.

Many well-known writers have chosen to self-publish at least some of their work. For instance, Harlan Ellison self-published several volumes, including collections of his early pulp work, through his own imprint Edgeworks Abbey and HarlanEllisonBooks.com; Andy Weir self-published The Martian; Hugh Howey self-published Wool; Christopher Paolini, or more specifically his parents, self-published Eregon. In other genres, Mark Twain self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Jane Austin self-published Emma and Sense and Sensibility; Lisa Genova self-published Still Alice. These are just a few of many possible examples.

In the end, of course, it’s not the accolades or the awards that define you. As Henry Miller observed in his essay “Reflections on Writing”: “Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.” Consider the markings I have made, in whatever channel of publication, to be signposts along the path I have chosen to take through this baffling, magnificent, and infinitely fascinating universe.

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