Exploring a new reality.
The next weird thing to hatch from my brain is nearly here.
I finished WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? a few weeks back, and I am preparing now to upload it to Amazon. The book comes out in March, and I thought I’d walk you through what the series is about, and why you’ll probably like it.
I’ve even created a fictionalised author interview for my online synopsis; this has been patched together from real conversations I’ve had with everyone from fellow comedians, to other Sci-Fi authors and podcast hosts.
Take a look,
Lucy was built to keep human minds entertained when their bodies died, but it didn't take long for the New Dead to combine their disembodied intellects and find a way back into the land of the living. Once there, the humans grew tired of Earth and followed an alien signal, abandoning Earth and Lucy. Now, with only memories of humans, Lucy attempts to build a new world, but something about her maniacal control over the New Humans gets her thinking. What if she is just another mind in some bigger afterlife machine? What if the humans never returned because they reached the edge of reality and were captured or obliterated?
That is the premise of the first story in Who Built The Humans?, and it only gets weirder from there.
From sentient afterlife machines to alien archaeologists, time-travelling shapeshifting crabs and ghostlike posthumans, the stories in these novel-length collections are more than glimpses into future worlds, they are pieces to a larger story that you can uncover. Built with re-readability in mind, both Who Built The Humans? and Who Killed The Humans? are designed to not just be read, but to be explored.In that way they are more than short story collections.
They are entire universes.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Q: You say these are 'more than short story collections'. How does that work?
A: In Who Built The Humans?, there are signs at the end of each story which direct you to other stories that follow it. You can follow those signs, or you can simply flip the page to discover a new universe. In this way it is both a short story collection and a larger, more poetic narrative. Whilst every story functions perfectly on its own, it is on your second or third journey through the book that you might discover the subtle links that bind them.
Q: Is Who Killed The Humans? more of the same?
A: Not quite. WKTH is another collection of Science Fiction and Comedy stories, some of which connect, but the gimmick here is a little different to how it was in WBTH. This time reality seems to be splitting down the middle, giving our characters a choice of two futures, serious or silly.
Q: Could you give an example?
A: Sure. A chapter will open with characters talking about a premise, it is then your choice where that premise goes. My favourite premise is "What if mushrooms used us like we use mushrooms?". The serious story from that is Mycelial, a dark exploration of a truly alien mind which already exists here on Earth. In the story, a mycelial network becomes sentient, and learns to inherit memories from human blood.
Q: What's the silly story like for that premise?
A: The silly timeline is called Who Baked The Shroomans?, and it's a more comedic look at this idea of mushrooms finding and eating humans. This time they're huge, lumbering teenage space mushrooms, and Earth is just some planet they bumped into at a house party. They suck us up through their gills and hallucinate their way into our lives. They are particularly fond of receptionists, and find their line of work the most trippy, dude.
When I first wrote WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? I did not plan to have a sequel in the works. It appeared to me one night, and I kept it secret for a while.
This new collection is spiky, jagged, and at times contemplative.
It includes a magic horse who contains a universe, psychic crystals, gorillas beating up aliens, future cavemen fighting against alien squid, a little bit of time travel, a bit more time travel, a drunk tardigrade, and love machines.
It is the kind of book conventional publishers would shiver and recoil from, before telling me they are “risk-averse” (real quote from several queries for less weird books).
It contains some returning faces from WBTH, too, so if you’re an old fan you’ll get even more enjoyment out of this, like a time traveller attending the same party twice, holding back their own hair as they puke.
Okay, that’s not a pleasant image but it might show up in a future book, maybe Earthloop.
You do not need one book to read the other, as they are collections of stories, and any direct sequels have their stories explained organically in the text.
There are no rambling forewords.
Of course you would get a wider, deeper experience reading both, but they’re designed with layers. You could probably read 2 and then 1.
Allow the following graphic to explain.
By designing my books like this, and writing the universes as if they were crystalline in shape, I am able to tie together comedy and sci-fi in weird new ways that make the books more engaging. They’re not just stories contained between a front and back cover, even their order in the manuscripts has been meticulously arranged so that they have maximum impact when you read the whole thing in one go, and still work if you hop from cosmos to cosmos.
Conclusion
So WHO KILLED THE HUMANS? is ready to go, and this is great, but I cannot help but feel something is wrong. This feeling runs a bit deeper than the typical anxiety I get when I finish a project; this time I have to do something which makes me deeply uncomfortable.
I have to ask for your help.
I wrote the first book in the series in 2019 and 2020, and somehow managed to get 26 pre-orders from Etsy sales, despite only having a handful instagram followers (and no substack, no website, no other presence) at the time. I wrote the first book from bed and then on a sofa, then on the floor before getting the writing desk I am using right now.
I tried to do a crowdfunding thing this time for Who Killed The Humans? but it didn’t work out. I didn’t have the cash to advertise it when I should have, and I missed out on the conventions I was planning to rely on for 99% of my advertising. So now, as we speed along towards March 2025, I need your help.
Right now I have 14 pre-orders.
The first month of a book’s life on Amazon is critically important, which is why I’m probably going to slip into my overdraft to advertise it (if the advertisers approve my application). During that first month, Amazon sees how popular your book is, and makes hard decisions based on that popularity.
The eBook is currently $2.99. The final value will be 3.99 or 4.99, meaning if you pre-order it, you essentially get a discount. I’m doing the pricing this way so I can thank you for your support in advance. Buy the book early, and it is cheaper. Simple.
If I can jump from 14 pre-orders to 100 pre-orders by the end of January, I will try to reduce this price again, to 1.99. That will mean about half as much money for me, but less money spent for you, as Amazon should only charge you in the week before release day.
So, even if you ordered it at $2.99, if the price goes down before they charge you, you’re charged the lower price.
100 pre-orders would show Amazon that I am a real author, a real boy, and the machines will therefore care about my continued existence and will show the book to other people, who might then buy the book.
To further this effort, I’ve got 700 business cards and I’m going to start putting posters on toilet ceilings around town. Every time someone looks up drunkenly whilst urinating in a cocktail bar, my books will be there, staring ominously down at them.
Anyway, please consider pre-ordering the eBook on Amazon, because it is quite literally be the difference between more interviews and obscurity, and if I can get more interviews, I can do comedy in more places, put out more books, sell more books, and get much, much closer to my endgoal - to create a cat charity and bookstore funded by my books.
We will have a reading pod, secret bookshelf doors, and a performance space hidden away somewhere.
The future could be weird. It’s up to you.
Pre order Who Killed The Humans?
Extra bits
Extra extra bits…
Any electronic musicians here? I’ve always wanted to try darkwave.
So cool. Love that it’s got different story pathways. And also comedy! I pre-ordered and I love your big goals and that you’re putting up flyers.