I Wrote A Science-Fiction Book And You Can Read It Now!

When I was a kid, I always thought I would grow up to be a comic book artist or writer. From the moment I fell in love with the comic book medium, I had my own stories to tell. Some of my earliest work – which my parents still have tucked away in boxes under their stairs – focused on monsters and robots, strange stories that showed my admiration for science fiction.

My work was crude and riddled with grammatical errors, but I put my heart and soul into it. I would lock myself away in my room for hours just to work on one page of a comic. My skills improved with each passing story, but stalled out when I hit my teenage years. I ended up going to college to pursue my dream, and learned a lot in the process, but I should have known that I didn't have the skill set required to make a living doing what I loved. I wanted to write and draw DC and Marvel comic books. My art wasn't good enough. My stories weren't good enough. Sure, I could have gone the indie route, but I wanted to write about Spider-Man and Batman – that was the dream. Anything short of it wasn't good enough.

I then fell in love with writing about video games. I was plucked out of college to work at Game Informer. I was a horrible writer out of the gate, but in truth, we all were. The majority of video game press were young kids just like me who were hired for their love of games. Any additional skills (like writing) were bonuses. We learned as we went, and made plenty of mistakes along the way. I devoted my life to improving my craft and I had a blast doing it.

This endeavor meant I had to abandon my stories and art. From time to time I would dabble in short stories or would sketch a battle on a notepad, but all of the plans I had for my own characters and universes and where I would take DC and Marvel's characters were locked away in the back of my mind. Any attempts I made at working on something substantial were met with the feelings that I was out of practice and I would never have the time to finish it to the quality I wanted. I never thought I would revisit any of my work...and then I met a nerdy gamer named Chris Kluwe.

Chris liked everything that I did. He loved video games, bad science-fiction movies about sharks, enjoyed conversations about outer space, and ate just as poorly as I did (candy, candy, and more of it). He also was driven with the desire to create. We teamed up to form a band, and eventually decided that we should write a book together.

The idea came to us when we were discussing the finer qualities of Sharktopus, a Syfy original film about a shark/octopus hybrid. We started throwing around ideas for monster movies that we would want to see made, and eventually landed on one that we decided to explore further. The original idea was about a shark with a human brain that solved crimes as a detective, but occasionally would give in to his bloodlust and kill people. He would then have to scramble to hide the bodies. In hindsight, it sounded like a really silly version of Dexter. That idea gave way to us talking about biohacking. That discussion led to world building. That talk eventually formed a plot. Two days later and we had an outline for a story. A year removed from that and we finished our first draft, clocking in at 312 pages. Another year of editing led to the finished product.

I still can't believe we wrote a book together. We ended up calling it Prime: A Genesis Series Event. Here's the synopsis:

In the distant future, following a genetic cataclysm on Earth, humanity lives among the stars, welded together by a massive network of space-tearing gates. A sprawling political entity, Government, guides the burgeoning empire via complete control of the gate network - and all of the information flowing within - ostensibly to prevent biohacking. This ban on genetic modification is absolute. However, like all political systems, rules are not always followed. Deep at the end of a secluded Gate chain, on an isolated resort moon nestled within the shadow of a gas giant, a Government sanctioned biohacker named Xander Lillibridge is on the cusp of a discovery that will change the universe forever. Unbeknownst to Xander, his lab, hidden beneath the crust of the moon, is not as secure as he would like to believe, and some creations should never be set free...

Yes, we're already working on the sequel. And yes, we're still having a blast dreaming in this universe. Working with another writer on one project has been an absolute blast for me, filled with creative energy, laughter, and plenty of awesome discussions about monsters.

The book is available now in print and on a wide range of digital devices. Check out the cover and a sample chapter below. You can buy the book here for about $10.

LAB GENESIS

Timestamp - 21.26.04LT:10.23.32OT:03.18.407AG

Three figures dash down a cavernous tunnel, shadowed end expanding toward infinity, and the steady drip from a memplas-edged sword silently chases their heels. Some of the fluid is clear, cold, alien, expelled from the innards of a creature none of them has ever seen before.

It steams as it hits the rocky floor, and seems to move under its own power. The rest of the fluid, the majority, is incandescent red, welling out of a hundred cuts and gashes on an experimental biotech suit, rivulets coursing down a wavering arm and pooling off the monofil tip of a living weapon, one that dumbly repairs its perfect razor exterior after each beading drop, shedding jagged atoms like bloody dandruff.

Rhinestones triggers another three cc's of stim and feels the fatigue receding, banished from his mind by the complex cocktail of chemicals coursing through his veins. His arm steadies, just in time to parry another whiplash series of strikes from the tireless nightmare harrying their every step, constantly seeking their flesh with its impossibly sharp talons and serpentine tail.

Prime.

He considers it grimly ironic that the hunters have become the hunted, fleeing for their lives from a creature they willingly loosed, thinking themselves invincible with their glamorous tech and unlimited funds.

There's always something stronger, he muses, whipping his sword through the complex katas of kenjutsu, turning aside those blows that would be immediately fatal, suffering weakening strikes as the price for another minute or two of life. He is intimately linked with his suit, the old biotech prototype an extension of himself, pharmocopic compounds filtering through his blood and powering the eHydro infused armor.

The newer versions Black Colony uses have more bells and whistles, but this is the first suit he designed, five short years ago, the one that served as a base for all the others that came after, and he wears it like a second skin - biohacked musculature granting him preternatural speed and strength, the abilities of a demigod.

Abilities that come with a price, however, for each drop of blood the suit spills is a drop of blood no longer flowing in his veins. His heart jumps raggedly until he pushes two cc's of calm into his system, riding the turbulent edge of overdose like the world's largest wave, somehow balancing right on that chaotic edge.

He designed many of the compounds himself, his life a product of twenty years intense schooling under the most demanding biohackers and chemists his father could procure, along with engineers and physicists who taught him the fundamentals that led to the biosuit, preparing him to take over the family business once he came of age and could contribute to the corporation - no wastrel sons in the house of Eno; the pursuit of profit and excellence above all. Memplas and Government made the family company rich, but it is a poor CEO who does not diversify, and biohack-derived chemistry application looks to be an area Government is very interested in, especially now that the suits are in production.

Thoughts of the past vanish beneath another flashing exchange, lightning quick claws raking and rending, another percentage point dip in the biosuit's integrity, internal sensors flashing a warning yellow on the integrated glARs display covering the inside of the featureless helmet.

Memplas muscle fiber is tough, resilient, but even it has limits - limits Rhinestones is all too fearful he's reached. He triggers two cc's of adreno and the fear dissipates, subsumed beneath a neurochemical rush, the surge of energy flooding his entire being like caged lightning.

With a thunderous shout he goes on the offensive, raining a series of punishing blows on the oni, the demon. It briefly falls back under the assault, writhing beneath the flurry of strikes, massive gashes opening on its forearms and upper body.

A sudden scream and it retreats, scuttling up the one of the clear memplas sheets lining the tunnel, perched halfway up like some sort of malignant tumor, a swollen black tick clinging to its host. He triggers the ocular zoom function in the suit and can see the wounds already closing up over pulsing internal organs, the creature regenerating at an astonishing rate of speed, entropy reversing in a wholly unnatural way.

He is envious.

The biosuit has self-repair functions, but compared to the speed with which the oni heals itself, he might as well be wearing dumbtech metal armor from pre-Diasporan Terra. The suit labors to seal the many cuts marking his body, but he knows it's a losing battle, the best efforts of the Daison-Eno labs is nothing compared to the graceful lethality of the killing machine currently besieging the group, entropy somehow harnessed and reversed at the molecular level.

Rhinestones watches the last gaping wound on the oni quiver shut and realizes it's only a matter of time before the wicked claws land a final blow, the impossible sharpness of their edges tearing through him one last time, his life spilling out in an unknown tunnel deep within the crust of a backwater moon.

He knows this, feels it in his bones, yet refuses to accept it; that everything he's planned for his entire life, all his hopes and dreams, can be so suddenly snuffed out, so quickly extinguished.

He refuses to accept he no longer has control, because it simply does not occur to him that that could be an option.

The creature screams again, tense muscles quivering, and fires multiple spines from its body at eye-blurring speed. He parries three, the force of their passing jarring the sword in his grip, but a fourth impales itself into his upper thigh, needle point piercing muscle and bone alike, and he grunts in pain.

Warning icons cascade down his display and the biomonitor blinks frantically, a checklist of destruction to the shell that houses his spirit, but he triggers another three cc's of calm and ignores them all, letting the suit compensate for the loss of control in his leg. A timer counts down ominously at the corner of his vision - the spine carried some sort of neurotoxin that isn't immediately fatal due to the suit's defenses, but his lifespan is now measured in minutes.

He ignores that too.

The creature suddenly drops back down to the cavern floor, rock splintering and cracking under its weight. Dust billows up from the impact, and slowly it stands up on its hind legs, twice the height of a man - humanoid, and yet so very inhuman, eyes gleaming in the stygian gloom. It casually bats aside two highex rounds fired from the Atlas; explosions ripple the memplas behind it into fractured sheets that immediately begin to self repair. A razor-edged tail lashes the ground with whipcrack snares; once, twice, thrice. Teeth glisten in a Cheshire Cat grin.

Rhinestones stares into those cold, dark eyes and feels them boring back into his soul, piercing the blank facelessness of his suit's mask.

There's an intelligence within them, a hunger, the devouring emptiness of an event horizon, and he proffers his blade in quick salute to that perfectly honed void.

Very few can say they've danced with Death itself.

Both figures subtly tense, the air crystallizing around them, and then chaos erupts like the heart of a supernova.

Rhinestones dashes forward and triggers every remaining store of adreno, zerk, and chrono, blade trailing behind him in the low sweep position. The drugs hit his bloodstream and time immediately slows to a crawl, amplified by the suit - he can see all potential outcomes before they even happen, the ultimate chess game, the ultimate high, a wave of potentialities awaiting only his action to collapse down into reality, yet all paths lead to the same destination.

He shuts down the beeping biomonitor with a frozen synapse thought - its mechanical warnings immaterial to the final outcome. He knows the auguries of his fate, the chemicals' oracular vision - all that matters is the now.

The oni sprints toward him on all fours, gouging deep scores in the ground, and it moves molasses syrupy slow - the bounding lope of a predator closing for the kill. He can count the individual shards of rock it kicks up as each scimitar talon grinds through the floor, muscles expanding and contracting in a beautiful symmetry of motion. It pulls itself upright just before they clash, powerful blows sweeping in at his head, and he wants to weep with joy at the sheer perfection in front of him.

Reflexes take over, a lifetime of study. He becomes one with the blade.

Crane Kisses the Lake, a set of talons passing less than a hair's width overhead, the blade carving a deep furrow in the oni's side, other talons raking down his back in delightful agony.

Reed In Monsoon, twisting underneath the flashing backhand, spine grinding in his femur while more spines clatter to the ground, severed as the blade flashes skyward along the oni's back, razor tail curling and punching through his left bicep.

Mountain Sleeps Lightly, the blade smashing down like an avalanche, detached chitinous forearm flopping on the ground before he's flying back from an organ pulping kick, abdomen torn and gushing, viscera sliding loose.

Phoenix Rises, uncoiling like a spring, soaring toward inevitability, the blade whipping into skin, flesh, bone, deeper and deeper, forcing its way to the core, claws punching into his chest and squee-

----------------

Augstar and Monocle continue to race down the tunnel, deeper into the darkness. Behind them, the grisly scene draws to its final conclusion. Rhinestones' sword lies buried deep within the creature's torso, bisecting it almost to the midline, steaming blood gushing onto the cavern floor.

Rhinestones himself is held aloft by a clawed hand thrust directly into his chest, and his arms and legs briefly spasm as Prime clenches its talons around the mangled remains of his heart, squeezing it into so much useless muscle fiber and tissue. Another echoing scream rips through the tunnel and Prime flings the lifeless corpse away - the body crashes violently into one of the memplas wall panels and slides to the floor, a broken and ungainly husk robbed of its vitality.

Augstar continues watching the feed from one of the Atlas' rear sensors, internal VI compensating for the lurching gait of the badly damaged machine, and she shudders violently inside the mech's cockpit as the creature does something impossibly unreal.

The hulking figure - fluid leaking from the sword still impaled in its chest, half its back spines missing - reaches down and picks up its own severed forelimb, contemplating the clawed appendage before ramming it back on top of the neatly amputated stump of its left arm.

It then wraps its right hand around the join and holds the limb in place for several seconds, muscles bulging and twisting, before curling and uncurling the talons on its left hand, combat functionality fully restored.

Augstar can hear whimpering, and with a start, realizes it's coming from her own mouth, a sound she never thought she'd make. Sector administrators, especially those from one of the Hundred Government Families, make others whimper, their whims literally law for thousands of planets and the billions of people upon them.

Augstar's hands have wielded the power of life and death for close to twenty-two years now, ever since her initial appointment as a planetary governor at the edge of nineteen, and she thought she knew every secret Government kept - a lifetime of bureaucratic maneuvering revealing the skeletons in all the closets, even those tucked away in the Council of Five.

With a start, she realizes she doesn't, and whimpers again.

She angrily forces herself back under control and commands the mech to redline the servomotors, but they're already maxed out, warning diagnostics steadily accumulating along the bottom of her HUD. A glance over at the offensive system tab reveals three canisters of flechettes, five highex missiles, and twelve hundred penetrator rounds left, but they might as well be wet wads of tissue for all the effect they've had on the creature already.

It appears there are some things in the galaxy that even an Atlas class mechanized combat platform cannot deal with. She licks her lips nervously, trembling finger hovering over the AM self-destruct, Rhinestones' grisly death fresh in her mind, but even now the will to live is too strong.

The fervent desire, the completely illogical belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, that somehow a miracle will occur.

She pulls her finger back and quickly programs an attack profile for the remaining highex missiles, a staggered launch designed to impact precisely around the creature in a cage of destructive force, perhaps disabling it long enough for her to escape this waking nightmare and return to the world she knows, the world she owns. A world free of permanent consequences for her actions.

A flash of motion in her rear visual feed reveals the sinuous lope of a jagged form on all fours, tail twisting to counterbalance, rapidly closing the distance from behind. She swivels both shoulder launchers to a reverse launch angle and fires off the last of the missiles. They descend in a twisting pentagram around the monster, contrails weaving through the air.

The familiar thunder of detonation rolls through the tunnel yet again, cataclysmic gouts of flame and rock fountaining up into the air, the shockwave of superheated air briefly whipping past in a maelstrom of sensor static. Ahead of her, Monocle briefly stumbles as the gust front hurricanes past him, but his pace doesn't falter and he continues to slowly outpace the deteriorating Atlas. Suddenly, the servomotors seize up in the mech's right leg and it grinds to a halt, the air curiously silent. Nothing moves behind her.

She screams at Monocle but he doesn't look back, rapidly disappearing into the distance, arms and legs churning in that metronomic gait.

<>

<> A ghostly electronic chuckle. <>

The cloud cuts out, all parties disconnected, and she sees a massive roar of explosions illuminate the tunnel in front of her, multiple Six Sixteen rounds set to maximum dispersal, a literal wall of fire cascading out like some fantastic light sculpture.

A deep rumbling briefly echoes through the cavern, the sound like that of water rushing down a giant pipe, and an underground wind roars past again, writhing banks of fog ripping past in tattered shreds, drawn in by the vacuum created by the inferno. Her sensors hash and craze with digital ghosts, temperature readouts spiking briefly, and then steadily dropping lower and lower.

The mini-cyclone dies down a minute later and her sensors clear up just in time to see a myth swooping down at her from above.

"Oh you have got to be shi-"

----------------------

Rob curses as he continues his desperate pace through the HVAC system set above the tunnel. His glARs just pinged an emergency alert - sensor traffic finally overwhelmed the digiworm, automatic flush is on the way, a portion of the lake even now diverting down into the underground complex.

He glances through the clear memplas floor of the tube, and then stares, eyes caught by the scene playing out beneath his boots. The unfolding chaos is oddly surreal, even from the jaded perspective of an Agency operative.

Darting through the clouds below, shimmering wings flashing with oddly glinting specks of light, a massive reptilian form swoops and dives at the ten-meter tall Atlas stranded on the tunnel floor. Billowing waves of flame issue from its mouth, and it twists and plunges, rolling to avoid the brief bursts of penetrator fire rattling forth from the mech's remaining arm cannon. It shoots past the Atlas in a rush of air before climbing back up to the top of the tunnel, mist curling behind in a vortex wake.

Rob sees it briefly pass beneath him, no more than five meters away, scaled dorsal ridges tapering back to a lightly armored tail, limbs tucked tight against its body while delicate wings vibrate constantly. His breath catches momentarily at the sheer grace of the creature - something that so patently shouldn't exist, yet does, flitting through the air in defiance of all commonly held theories of physics.

Several heavy penetrator rounds punch through the tube behind him and the trance is broken, shards of memplas spalling out from the exit vectors, narrowly missing his left side. Rob swears briefly and continues on, sprinting as fast as his crouched over stance will allow.

Down below, the fight rages on, the dragon unwilling to get too close to the chattering arm cannon. It eels through the air around the Atlas, raining continuous sheets of flame onto the crippled mech. The hardened armor withstands the furnace blast heat for the moment, though sections are beginning to melt and deform.

Suddenly, the barking cough of multiple flechette canisters discharging at once rattles through the cavern, thousands of tungsten shards splitting the air like a giant shotgun blast from the Atlas' shoulder mounts.

Hundreds of the tumbling pieces of metal tear through the dragon's delicate wing membranes, and it plummets to the floor in a ragged spiral, bellowing in pain as it falls. Unnoticed by all, a jagged figure races on all fours toward the mech from behind, closing distance at an alarming pace, a chill wind curling in its wake. The temperature continues to drop, accompanied by a distant roar at the very edge of audibility.

The dragon hits the ground and its twenty-five meter bulk rolls awkwardly, coming up to rest against the lift rail in the middle of the tunnel in a tangle of legs and shredded wings. Scrabbling furiously with curved claws, it levers itself to its feet, and shakes its scaly head briefly before blasting a fireball at the roof in rage and turning to advance on the mech in a low run. The Atlas' arm cannon spits out a chattering burst of penetrators that whistle past the sinuously weaving body, gouging massive craters in the memplas walls, but then the cannon falls silent, barrel spinning impotently, a dry clicking issuing forth from the empty ammunition bin. Inside the cockpit, Augstar shrieks in frustration as she watches the massive serpent draw closer and closer.

The dragon completes its charge, smashing a shoulder into the Atlas and sending it sprawling to the ground. It leaps on top of the mechanical construct to pin it, and then pours a torrent of flame directly into the memplas faceplate, a terrified face briefly visible before the incandescent torch burns clear through and splashes out from the rocks beneath the mech. The dragon swipes the immobile machinery several time before stretching its head to the ceiling and bellowing a triumphant roar.

An answering scream announces the arrival of Prime, and it leaps at the beast perched atop the broken mech, talons extended hungrily. The two tumble onto the floor, a furious welter of rending fangs and tearing claws, blood spraying out in huge sheets. Seconds later, Prime dashes back, several chunks missing from its already scarred and gouged right side, two talons broken from its left foot, steaming ichor spattering the rocks as it moves.

The dragon shrieks and blasts flame at the scuttling figure, but misses, depth perception irrevocably altered from a gouged out eye, half its skull sheared down to the bone. It limps in a defensive circle, right forelimb badly bent and twisted, long rents in its breastplate shedding thick red blood - Goliath warily eyeing David while the two prepare for another exchange. The chill wind continues to whistle past, subsonic roar growing louder and louder.

With a deafening shriek, the dragon suddenly coils in on itself like a snake and rears up to spew more fire, but Prime darts in, thrusting razor-sharp claws deep within the dragon's side, aiming for the softer underbelly scales. With a rippling twist, Prime tears a massive hole open and starts ripping out chunks of flesh, driving in to the vital organs its combat sensors tell it lie deep within. The dragon vomits a thick stream of blood, and then collapses on its side and dies, remaining eye glazing over in a cloudy film. Prime continues its butcher's work for several minutes longer, finally emerging from the corpse dripping blood and bits of flesh, fangs snarling in triumph.

The roar filling the tunnel now sounds like a tornado, wind whipping the dust into blinding sheets. It teeters on the edge of a physical force, a battering ram of invisible atoms driving all before it with a deafening howl.

Prime tilts its head back to the ceiling and screams again, tendons and muscle visible in places beneath hideously shredded chromatophore skin trying futilely to repair overwhelming local damage, and then a tidal wave of water hits the battlefield like a cresting tsunami, sweeping everything to the darkened end of the tunnel.

Deep within the facility, the automatic reclamation systems continue cycling up to full power, vast filtration pumps readying to receive the incoming influx of materials.

If you read all of that and end up finishing the book, please leave us a review on our Amazon page or send Chris and I a tweet. It turns out reviews mean a lot to me. Thanks for reading, folks!