I wrote a book! October 8, 2013

Posted by shaunphilly in Skepticism and atheism Tags: books

(update: buy it here on Amazon!)

Back in 2008, I found myself newly unemployed. I had been laid off from a job I really liked, but was paid through the summer (it was a school job). Of course, with the economic recession starting around then, it ended up being a tough couple of years for me after that, so I had a fair amount of time on my hands. During that summer I re-watched Babylon 5 for the second time (I just finished re-watching it again) while I started looking for another job. I also had time to start doing more reading and writing. The origins of this book of mine come from that summer.

The background of this story was based upon a universe I had created in my mind as a child. It had changed some over the years, but it was essentially the same. It involved this character, which (to be honest) is a little bit based on me. But as I started to write, it also became clear that the narrative I was spinning was also based upon living in a post-9/11 world. It was about fear, insecurity, the desire for power, and understanding our place in the world. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the narrative unfold before me, and in time I had around 100 pages (in .doc form) and a sort of cliff-hanger ending. Having done so, I gave it to my girlfriend at the time to read.

By August of 2008 I had moved in with this same girlfriend (we were polyamorous, and I eventually had another girlfriend who lived out in Chester county), and things were going really great between us. I was still not working steadily, but was managing to keep pretty busy anyway. Substitute teaching is not very consistent, and it left me more time to write. I had a really crappy (geocities) website, was starting to write more about atheism (I had been dong so since 2002, off and on), and it would be in February of 2009 that I first created this blog. Early posts here were from that time, around when the first draft of part 1 of this book of mine was finished.

After my girlfriend finished that draft, she threatened to murder me if I didn’t finish the story. And so, preferring to stay alive, I did eventually start writing more. In the mean time, that relationship ended, I moved to Atlanta (October 2009), and then my life went to Hell for a little while. Sometime during all of this, I started writing again. By 2011 or so, the book was finished. It was still fairly rough, however.

I did a massive re-write last year (2012) and talked to Ginny about editing it. She, however, was busy with grad school, and never finished reading beyond part 1. We had some discussions about my conception of tense (since she was an English major in college), which led to revelations that the way I view time (in its relationship to memory and consciousness) is strange. So, if you do decide to read it, and I ended up missing some point in the text where I seem to move from one tense to another (which seems natural to me and was partially intentional), then that’s why. I wonder if I do that in posts here. I don’t usually notice that I do it, all the time. My mind is strange.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I wanted to fix a couple of things in the story I had been thinking about (it will never be done! It will never be perfect!) and while i was doing so I wanted to refer to my story notes, but couldn’t find them. I looked everywhere (or so I thought) and resigned to the fact that they were lost. Then, the other day, I found them. As a result I spent the weekend editing the whole book, and decided to bite the bullet and just publish the damned thing already. I did that just today, and here it is (kindle version, only. For now).

The book has been worked and re-worked many times. I have tried to make sure that it is internally consistent, clear, and totally bad-ass. I may or may not have succeeded in any of those goals.

So, if you are interested, take a look. if you don’t have a kindle ( since so far I only have a kindle version available [edit: now available at Smashwords!]), and you want to read it send me an email, and I can send you a copy [edit: if you don’t have en e-reader, i will consider sending you a pdf copy, if you ask]. I didn’t write this to make money, I wrote this because I loved doing so. But I figured that maybe I could sell a few copies and pay for a case of beer, a bottle of bourbon, or maybe just a six pack of PBR.

If you do end up reading it and like it, tell your friends. Also, tell me! I know not everyone will like it (Ginny, my darling wife, is not a fan of my writing style). Also, if you just want to check out part 1 ( my favorite is part 2, personally), that is also available.

Anyway, I hope some people like it. I like it (which, I suppose, is all I was after).