So, my short ficlet “No Ordinary Gentleman” which was accepted as a “Hot Flash” submission has a cover and a release date! The release date is September 30, 2020. The cover is simply one of the premade “Hot Flash” covers as you can see below.
There’s also a short blurb for the story here:
“Arthur Watson is a sessional English instructor at Hudson College, and he barely has his foot in the door. He’s nothing at all like handsome and charismatic Matthew Parker, the star instructor of the department. That doesn’t stop Arthur from having an unfortunate crush on Matt, even if it’s unlikely Matt even notices him.
That changes when it’s time for Arthur’s teaching assessment. Arthur is already worried about not being good enough, but now he has to teach in front of the hottest instructor in the department? But as it turns out, maybe Matthew Parker noticed him after all.”
It’s a short 2500 word ficlet, but I hope everyone still enjoys it!
Recently got my sales report for this quarter. I’ve been keeping track of my most popular books, and it looks like All the King’s Men has come out on top!
Book cover
I think I’ve mentioned before, but this novel was originally published with Less Than Three Press and was republished with JMS Books in 2019.
I do wonder sometimes what makes a book popular, and what makes it less popular. I know one aspect is the pairing. All the King’s Men is a M/M pairing, and that type of pairing tends to sell more. I think genre probably also has something to do with it. All the King’s Men is a sci-fi/cyberpunk novel as well as a romance novel. I really enjoy writing sci-fi and fantasy, but I know contemporary genres also tend to sell more. Not that this fact will stop me from writing sci-fi and fantasy novels.
I wonder what about All the King’s Men has made it the most popular. It might be the cover, which is one of my favourites of all of them. It might also be the blurb is exciting, or maybe people have read some goodread reviews about it. Ultimately, I’m not really sure; all I can really say is why I liked writing it.
All the King’s Men is a cyberpunk novel heavily influenced by my love of the movie The Matrix. The Cerebrum in my novel functions a little differently than the matrix of the movie, but some of the aesthetics are similar, particularly some of the outfits that the characters wear. The titular King of the novel is a little bit similar to Morpheus as well.
I started writing this novel mostly because I was particularly interested in exploring the theme of identity when it comes to cyberspace. If any of you have read the novel, you know (SPOILER) that the agents of the Cerebrum are not programs, but actual humans who have been brainwashed into thinking they’re all the same, from appearance to purpose. (END SPOILER) There is also the fact that appearance varies in the Cerebrum, and that various governments have attempted to limit the ways in which people can appear in cyberspace, but no one really listens to the law, and it’s not really enforced. So can one really know who’s who in the Cerebrum?
I love chatting with people about themes in books, mostly because I have two degrees in English literature. I was honestly wondering if readers would be interested in hearing some of the themes that I purposefully put in my novels and novellas, or would that be going against Death of the Author too much? To be clear, I wouldn’t be adding post-canon material at all in a blog post.
On the other hand, if anyone is interested in more material from any of my novels, writing a short story to accompany the novel is always a possibility. However, I generally don’t do these types of things unless there’s genuine interest in it.
Anyway, let me know what you think, and as always, happy reading and writing!
alex powell 