Novels Completed and Seeking Representation/Publication
A Four Color Noir
(Science Fiction / Crime)
77,000 words
Sample Chapter
SYNOPSIS:
Something is rotten in Island City. The usual gangs of robots, talking rats, and hyena roam the streets at night spreading fear. The police look the other way as usual, the citizens suffer: as usual. An uneasy peace is held between the mob lords and legitimate powers that be.
Then the cities most powerful cyborg detective is brutally murdered..
The peace is shattered and the streets run red with blood. Amidst the most intense mob-war of the century a new hero arises, a dead man learns what it means to rule, a Fox plots and schemes for a future of absolute power, and a Kitten runs away from home only to discover the sinister side of the city she has grown up in.
Amidst a massive cast of bizarre and twisted characters lies the many threaded plot to the darkest anthropomorphic animal science fiction crime epic ever conceived. It is written in the style of a depression era crime novel mixed with the trappings of nineteen fifties science fiction and filled to the brim with enough gangland slang to choke a horse.
It is a universe of four colors soaked in danger, brutality, and the stark contrast of hope. An island city of vintage twenties nightmare peopled by the meanest characters of genre fiction. You have heard of Crime and Punishment? Be prepared for Crime...and CRIME. It’s a complex world and a simple color scheme. It’s a Noir without rules, deceptively simple yet beautiful in its intricacy.
It’s A Four Color Noir.
77,000 words
Sample Chapter
SYNOPSIS:
Something is rotten in Island City. The usual gangs of robots, talking rats, and hyena roam the streets at night spreading fear. The police look the other way as usual, the citizens suffer: as usual. An uneasy peace is held between the mob lords and legitimate powers that be.
Then the cities most powerful cyborg detective is brutally murdered..
The peace is shattered and the streets run red with blood. Amidst the most intense mob-war of the century a new hero arises, a dead man learns what it means to rule, a Fox plots and schemes for a future of absolute power, and a Kitten runs away from home only to discover the sinister side of the city she has grown up in.
Amidst a massive cast of bizarre and twisted characters lies the many threaded plot to the darkest anthropomorphic animal science fiction crime epic ever conceived. It is written in the style of a depression era crime novel mixed with the trappings of nineteen fifties science fiction and filled to the brim with enough gangland slang to choke a horse.
It is a universe of four colors soaked in danger, brutality, and the stark contrast of hope. An island city of vintage twenties nightmare peopled by the meanest characters of genre fiction. You have heard of Crime and Punishment? Be prepared for Crime...and CRIME. It’s a complex world and a simple color scheme. It’s a Noir without rules, deceptively simple yet beautiful in its intricacy.
It’s A Four Color Noir.
The Monsters of Story
(Modern Fantasy / Folklore)
Co-Written by: Christopher Seelie
115,000 Words
Sample Chapter
SYNOPSIS:
Below New York City, the fairy court ruled by Boss Saint Dollar, Duke of New York and pretender to the throne of America, is startled from its midday lull by the entrance of a storyteller. He comes to collect his prize: the princess Lady Penny. Although fairies have very poor memory, Boss Dollar does not doubt that he made a wager with this mortal to find a story that has never been told. Should the storyteller lose the wager, so shall he lose his life.
What follows is a labyrinthine epic, stories within stories, across this bizarre continent and deep into the American Underground as our young protagonist (who changes names like a pair of socks) discovers magic, mystery, bigotry, nobility, determination, sex, cruelty, friendship, the Devil himself, our daily apocalypse, and—if you read our novel—the truest culmination of the Great American Spirit seen from the up-coming generation.
From humble beginnings as a stolen child in the court of Boss Saint Dollar, he pits wits against the Jack of Blades, the most malicious rival to vie for any lady’s hand, and John Mirror, that prince of doppelgangers. He encounters religious fanatics and an electric Jesus. He encounters money lust, power lust, lust lust, and even whimsy. He makes friends, influences people, and comes to know the carnival of American life as his own.
After leaving Boss Dollar’s court with the magical but not-so-helpful Whiskey Cat, who is older than a century due to reincarnation and still psychotic as only a cuddly cat can be, they cross the Mason-Dixon line with Carlyle the Faun. Engaged to the beautiful kentauride, Concertina Polo, Carlyle invites the duo on his trip to meet the parents in idyllic Echo County. They witness race relations in Virginia as Carlyle must prove himself to the austere patriarch, August Polo. We hear of the disembodied nymph Echo and the headless horse-man coming to America. At Echo’s Log, an ancient race in which all New World centaurs participate. Thrilling hijinks ensue.
Then a tale about a Vietnam vet who falls in love with a tree spirit is followed by the truth about the Devil, like it or not.
Meanwhile, intrigue is afoot as our modern day Scheherazade engrosses his magical audience in tales of Southern decadence. The duo are off to sensual New Venice, where the food is spicy, the canals putrid, the parties sumptuous, and the loves are…operatic. Sheila is the naughty nun saved from the Red Bishop by her cousin: TJ Belvedere.
TJ Belvedere is the genial rogue who joins the duo as they flee New Venice with his cousin. They are out for the wider world and end up in Texas. Do not mess with Texas, where zombie family dramas play out in contrast to Billy America’s fate to do Death favors as Death has favored Billy.
The cadillac lent by the Devil breaks down, and our travelers are rescued by the Reverend Crow and his Runagate Revival Rail-church. They are off to the great plains, where the railroads have been forged in family feuds and reforged in Reverend Crow’s all-or-nothing conversion sermon delivered to a pack of rioting trolls as Death waits in the wings.
On the other side of the Rocky Mountains, they part ways with the Reverend and his newly won love, Sheila. Our protagonist, TJ Belvedere, and Whiskey Cat end up stranded in the high plains desert until Death comes to save them with a volkswagen and two friends, one of whom has more power in her manic pixie fingers than Boss Dollar has in his whole body. They go to Las Vegas and meet Rorrim Nhoj, the reflection of John Mirror and a hospitality prophet of the coming end times. For it is told in the Book of Revelations that the end is nigh, again. Las Vegas is flooded in the process
Out on the pacific, lost and delusional, our protagonist has to go big if he wants to go home. He makes a deal with the Devil, steals Billy America’s name, and takes fare sailing from the Jack of Hearts. Hearts fare well in California, where life is lived and lost in the height of action hero fashion. The Jack of Blades is loose in Los Angeles. Under the name Jack Diamond, he is gunning for control of the west coast by means of corporate take-over.
With the help of Jack Trades, Billy America goes down the Rabbit Hole, a night club on Sunset which mainlines into the American Underworld and his ultimate fate: a showdown between church and state. Do not worry, constitutionalists! That rangey old boxer Uncle Sam is still made of true grit. And he can’t abide the Red Bishop beating up a constituent. Then it is back to the court, where cloak and dagger escalates to dagger and dagger as magic warlords battle it out for control and the storyteller meets his finale.
Our novel is titled: “The Monsters of Story” because it fits the grand and grotesque vision of America. It is also a call-to-arms for any who have wished to say “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!” This book is a free-formed, bedraggled tale of young love wrecking havoc on the world so glorious and profane. Tired of cliché fantasy? Poor science fiction? Huddle not in the depths of literary, boutique fiction. Breathe free on our American road tale/bildungstroman/horror/satire/weirdness. It is like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods if it had been written by two young Americans addicted to story.
Co-Written by: Christopher Seelie
115,000 Words
Sample Chapter
SYNOPSIS:
Below New York City, the fairy court ruled by Boss Saint Dollar, Duke of New York and pretender to the throne of America, is startled from its midday lull by the entrance of a storyteller. He comes to collect his prize: the princess Lady Penny. Although fairies have very poor memory, Boss Dollar does not doubt that he made a wager with this mortal to find a story that has never been told. Should the storyteller lose the wager, so shall he lose his life.
What follows is a labyrinthine epic, stories within stories, across this bizarre continent and deep into the American Underground as our young protagonist (who changes names like a pair of socks) discovers magic, mystery, bigotry, nobility, determination, sex, cruelty, friendship, the Devil himself, our daily apocalypse, and—if you read our novel—the truest culmination of the Great American Spirit seen from the up-coming generation.
From humble beginnings as a stolen child in the court of Boss Saint Dollar, he pits wits against the Jack of Blades, the most malicious rival to vie for any lady’s hand, and John Mirror, that prince of doppelgangers. He encounters religious fanatics and an electric Jesus. He encounters money lust, power lust, lust lust, and even whimsy. He makes friends, influences people, and comes to know the carnival of American life as his own.
After leaving Boss Dollar’s court with the magical but not-so-helpful Whiskey Cat, who is older than a century due to reincarnation and still psychotic as only a cuddly cat can be, they cross the Mason-Dixon line with Carlyle the Faun. Engaged to the beautiful kentauride, Concertina Polo, Carlyle invites the duo on his trip to meet the parents in idyllic Echo County. They witness race relations in Virginia as Carlyle must prove himself to the austere patriarch, August Polo. We hear of the disembodied nymph Echo and the headless horse-man coming to America. At Echo’s Log, an ancient race in which all New World centaurs participate. Thrilling hijinks ensue.
Then a tale about a Vietnam vet who falls in love with a tree spirit is followed by the truth about the Devil, like it or not.
Meanwhile, intrigue is afoot as our modern day Scheherazade engrosses his magical audience in tales of Southern decadence. The duo are off to sensual New Venice, where the food is spicy, the canals putrid, the parties sumptuous, and the loves are…operatic. Sheila is the naughty nun saved from the Red Bishop by her cousin: TJ Belvedere.
TJ Belvedere is the genial rogue who joins the duo as they flee New Venice with his cousin. They are out for the wider world and end up in Texas. Do not mess with Texas, where zombie family dramas play out in contrast to Billy America’s fate to do Death favors as Death has favored Billy.
The cadillac lent by the Devil breaks down, and our travelers are rescued by the Reverend Crow and his Runagate Revival Rail-church. They are off to the great plains, where the railroads have been forged in family feuds and reforged in Reverend Crow’s all-or-nothing conversion sermon delivered to a pack of rioting trolls as Death waits in the wings.
On the other side of the Rocky Mountains, they part ways with the Reverend and his newly won love, Sheila. Our protagonist, TJ Belvedere, and Whiskey Cat end up stranded in the high plains desert until Death comes to save them with a volkswagen and two friends, one of whom has more power in her manic pixie fingers than Boss Dollar has in his whole body. They go to Las Vegas and meet Rorrim Nhoj, the reflection of John Mirror and a hospitality prophet of the coming end times. For it is told in the Book of Revelations that the end is nigh, again. Las Vegas is flooded in the process
Out on the pacific, lost and delusional, our protagonist has to go big if he wants to go home. He makes a deal with the Devil, steals Billy America’s name, and takes fare sailing from the Jack of Hearts. Hearts fare well in California, where life is lived and lost in the height of action hero fashion. The Jack of Blades is loose in Los Angeles. Under the name Jack Diamond, he is gunning for control of the west coast by means of corporate take-over.
With the help of Jack Trades, Billy America goes down the Rabbit Hole, a night club on Sunset which mainlines into the American Underworld and his ultimate fate: a showdown between church and state. Do not worry, constitutionalists! That rangey old boxer Uncle Sam is still made of true grit. And he can’t abide the Red Bishop beating up a constituent. Then it is back to the court, where cloak and dagger escalates to dagger and dagger as magic warlords battle it out for control and the storyteller meets his finale.
Our novel is titled: “The Monsters of Story” because it fits the grand and grotesque vision of America. It is also a call-to-arms for any who have wished to say “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!” This book is a free-formed, bedraggled tale of young love wrecking havoc on the world so glorious and profane. Tired of cliché fantasy? Poor science fiction? Huddle not in the depths of literary, boutique fiction. Breathe free on our American road tale/bildungstroman/horror/satire/weirdness. It is like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods if it had been written by two young Americans addicted to story.