Novels

For many years I counted the months in pages of fiction written. I never made a living at writing fiction and even now I mostly make my income running Outschool Chess Clubs, but in the years before I started writing and performing the plot lines for multiple Outschool D&D Clubs a week, I wrote a few pulp adventure and science fiction novels.

Oliver Lucas Adventures

My first finished novel introduced Oliver Lucas, a pulp adventure hero in the vein of Nathan Drake, Indiana Jones, or Flynn Carsen.

The Staff of Moses

A bit of a spy thriller, a bit of an Egyptian adventure yarn, a lot of a first novel. I learned a lot about pacing, character development, and writing action while composing and revising this book. The version presented here is probably the fourth major revision of the novel.

The Eye of Odin

The affairs of forgotten gods trouble our all-too-mortal mortal hero. This entry in Oliver’s adventures saw me exploring multiple perspectives as I tried to hone my storytelling voice for this series. The structure of an Indiana Jones or Bond flick remains, but the action is far better paced.

The Diamond of Souls

A crime thriller decorated with dungeon crawling, magic, and awkward romance. This was one of my favorite novels to write. I was part of a vibrant Google+ community at the time, allowing me to source all sorts of material on mining disasters, cave diving, international travel, and hacking. It’s a wild ride from beginning to end, even if it gets rough in parts.

Words of Binding

Things get complicated when Soviet Psychics, Chinese history, and Japanese mythology collide. This is one of my most experimental novels, as I tried to pull together the threads of my own mythology by exploring a part of the globe Oliver hadn’t visited before. I’m also a little obsessed with Brutalist architecture and Soviet conspiracy theories.

Echoes of the Fall

Cosmic horror and psychic kids complicate a road trip from Japan to Eden. This was a very strange novel for me to write for multiple reasons. At the most surface level: How do you write a proper Haggard-esque adventure novel without leaning on gross tropes? I got a little too into my own head with some of the spiritual aspects and struggled to cross the finish line, but I’m relatively proud of the ending to this series. I would probably write this very differently now, but we’ll get to that in the Oliver Lucas Retrospective series.

Science Fiction Novels

Burning in the Void

My first effort at writing a full length science fiction novel. This book has some of my strongest ideas and worst execution, but I’ve got a soft spot for the concept of a society which has forgotten their home is a space ship. Come for the techpriests, stay for the cyberpunks, be a little surprised at how rapidly it ends.

Dyson’s Angel

One of my greatest regrets as a writer is that I’ve over a decade without writing the sequel to this madcap action story. When your main character is literally in love with her space ship and whole solar system has been imprisoned in a sphere, there’s bound to be some weird cyberpunk action. I still hope to return to this world some day.

A Cold Day to Drown

My darkest, most unsettling adventure in to writing a gritty action mystery. Out main character, Talbot Liu, is a distillation of every violent cyberpunk impulse into a broken man trying to do the wrong things for the right reasons. From children working in a garbage mine to clones being slaughtered for spare parts, this is me at my most cynical. Enjoy!