I’ve been writing science fantasy fiction for twenty years. I’ve been an artist since I was little. Ever since I got here, I’ve been looking for something. Maybe even someone.
When I was fifteen, I encountered my first love – science. With the help of a quietly dynamic teacher, I mopped the floor of the regional science fair with a project in inorganic chemistry (“The Color of Transition Metal Ions in Aqueous Solution Using Crystal Field Theory”). I knew I had found my life’s purpose. Ah, to be so young….
Fast forward to the university. I blasted through my degree in three years studying a wide range of topics from art history, western civilization, eastern religion, and politics to German and Russian languages, literature, and film. Science had long been dropped by the wayside – it just wasn’t enough to feed my hunger. It still isn’t.
Unable to pin myself into any single field, I settled for a career in the … cough, cough … legal field just to pay the bills (don’t even get me going) and started a family, all the while reading, reading, reading and teaching myself the rudimentary skills of meditation and psychic vision. If physics didn’t have the answers, maybe metaphysics held the keys I was searching for.
After several eye-opening trips in the 90’s to ancient sites around the globe, I decided it was time to craft a story out of the rather amazing things I had been learning and experiencing. The foundation for a series of books formed in my mind and I put my creative juices to work. With my infant daughter in my lap, I spat out the entire 290,000-word draft of Blood of the Prime in nine short months. That was 1997.
The story is big and bold. My bad guys are nine-foot reptilians. My protagonists are psychics, struggling to meet the challenges of dealing with a violent, shut-down race. By necessity, parts of the story are graphically violent and highly sexual, fleshing out the power of blood, gold, geometry, sound, and sexuality as well as the power of conscious intention. It digs into the issues of servitude, addiction, and wounded psyches, told from multiple perspectives, including the damaged reptilians. It’s a reflection of the very issues which lie at the heart of human experience on this planet, issues which need to be dealt in order to break out of the matrix and reestablish our connection with the rest of sentient life in the galaxy.
As you might imagine, the manuscript went nowhere with the big science fiction houses. The writing is outstanding, so I had to assume that the junior editors in charge of filtering the slush piles either didn’t know what they had or else the manuscript was just “too” something – too sexual or “unrealistic” for nuts-and-bolts science fiction types, too long by conventional standards, or just too different. A good friend and fellow author told me she thought it was “ahead of its time.” Print-on-demand technology was still in its infancy and was seen as something tainted by the so-called literary elite, so I put the project on hold with the intention of someday starting my own brand, Reality Raiders Press, to publish my work my way, with no one telling me I was out of bounds or to whack the manuscript down to accommodate average tastes.
Then, when I wasn’t looking, self-publishing exploded. Wow. Thousands of publications by indie authors now fill the pages of online vendors. I would like to think of this new outpouring of human imagination as a microcosm of what we could potentially accomplish as a race. Bold creativity, off the leash, standing strong, looking for connection – right up my alley.
On top of that, thanks primarily to the internet, the lid is off for topics and materials that were easy to squash or suppress just a few short years ago. The oddities about this reality that I had been discovering through my own experience or the works of a few brave researchers are now quite widespread. It’s about bloody time, and more than high time I pick up my over-the-top writing and put it out there for people to read.
In order to launch my work, I decided to write a collection of backstories for several of my favorite characters from Blood of the Prime. It took a year to write the first two prequel novellas, teach myself to use digital software in order to design the covers, get the business started, and design a website platform.
In January of 2016, Reality Raiders Press was at long last off and running with the publication of To Steal a Moon and Flare Shifter. Over the next few months, I wrote and did the cover for the prequel novel Descent of the Maw, published in October 2016. Three books in my first year – not too bad.
It’s a beginning. I still have a long road ahead to bring to life the vibrant stories and worlds that swirl around in my vivid imagination. If you are reading this, there must be something in my work that strikes a chord with you or piques your interest. Perhaps you’re T’nari.
Who knows what the future of the press might be. Eventually I can see expanding to include other authors who are creating thought-provoking worlds and exploring out-of-the-box concepts beyond the bounds of normal science fiction. Time will tell.
For now, it’s sublimely satisfying to see Reality Raiders Press manifest in 3d space and time.
Damn well took me long enough.
Erin MacMichael is a visionary science fiction author and artist, creator of the T'nari Renegades series of novellas, novels, covers, and artwork. Her lifelong quest has been to explore past the boundaries of conventional thinking and figure out what really has transpired on this planet. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her marvelous offspring.
I’ve been writing science fantasy fiction for twenty years. I’ve been an artist since I was little. Ever since I got here, I’ve been looking for something. Maybe even someone.
When I was fifteen, I encountered my first love – science. With the help of a quietly dynamic teacher, I mopped the floor of the regional science fair with a project in inorganic chemistry (“The Color of Transition Metal Ions in Aqueous Solution Using Crystal Field Theory”). I knew I had found my life’s purpose. Ah, to be so young….
Fast forward to the university. I blasted through my degree in three years studying a wide range of topics from art history, western civilization, eastern religion, and politics to German and Russian languages, literature, and film. Science had long been dropped by the wayside – it just wasn’t enough to feed my hunger. It still isn’t.
Unable to pin myself into any single field, I settled for a career in the … cough, cough … legal field just to pay the bills (don’t even get me going) and started a family, all the while reading, reading, reading and teaching myself the rudimentary skills of meditation and psychic vision. If physics didn’t have the answers, maybe metaphysics held the keys I was searching for.
After several eye-opening trips in the 90’s to ancient sites around the globe, I decided it was time to craft a story out of the rather amazing things I had been learning and experiencing. The foundation for a series of books formed in my mind and I put my creative juices to work. With my infant daughter in my lap, I spat out the entire 290,000-word draft of Blood of the Prime in nine short months. That was 1997.
The story is big and bold. My bad guys are nine-foot reptilians. My protagonists are psychics, struggling to meet the challenges of dealing with a violent, shut-down race. By necessity, parts of the story are graphically violent and highly sexual, fleshing out the power of blood, gold, geometry, sound, and sexuality as well as the power of conscious intention. It digs into the issues of servitude, addiction, and wounded psyches, told from multiple perspectives, including the damaged reptilians. It’s a reflection of the very issues which lie at the heart of human experience on this planet, issues which need to be dealt in order to break out of the matrix and reestablish our connection with the rest of sentient life in the galaxy.
As you might imagine, the manuscript went nowhere with the big science fiction houses. The writing is outstanding, so I had to assume that the junior editors in charge of filtering the slush piles either didn’t know what they had or else the manuscript was just “too” something – too sexual or “unrealistic” for nuts-and-bolts science fiction types, too long by conventional standards, or just too different. A good friend and fellow author told me she thought it was “ahead of its time.” Print-on-demand technology was still in its infancy and was seen as something tainted by the so-called literary elite, so I put the project on hold with the intention of someday starting my own brand, Reality Raiders Press, to publish my work my way, with no one telling me I was out of bounds or to whack the manuscript down to accommodate average tastes.
Then, when I wasn’t looking, self-publishing exploded. Wow. Thousands of publications by indie authors now fill the pages of online vendors. I would like to think of this new outpouring of human imagination as a microcosm of what we could potentially accomplish as a race. Bold creativity, off the leash, standing strong, looking for connection – right up my alley.
On top of that, thanks primarily to the internet, the lid is off for topics and materials that were easy to squash or suppress just a few short years ago. The oddities about this reality that I had been discovering through my own experience or the works of a few brave researchers are now quite widespread. It’s about bloody time, and more than high time I pick up my over-the-top writing and put it out there for people to read.
In order to launch my work, I decided to write a collection of backstories for several of my favorite characters from Blood of the Prime. It took a year to write the first two prequel novellas, teach myself to use digital software in order to design the covers, get the business started, and design a website platform.
In January of 2016, Reality Raiders Press was at long last off and running with the publication of To Steal a Moon and Flare Shifter. Over the next few months, I wrote and did the cover for the prequel novel Descent of the Maw, published in October 2016. Three books in my first year – not too bad.
It’s a beginning. I still have a long road ahead to bring to life the vibrant stories and worlds that swirl around in my vivid imagination. If you are reading this, there must be something in my work that strikes a chord with you or piques your interest. Perhaps you’re T’nari.
Who knows what the future of the press might be. Eventually I can see expanding to include other authors who are creating thought-provoking worlds and exploring out-of-the-box concepts beyond the bounds of normal science fiction. Time will tell.
For now, it’s sublimely satisfying to see Reality Raiders Press manifest in 3d space and time.
Damn well took me long enough.
Erin MacMichael is a visionary science fiction author and artist, creator of the T'nari Renegades series of novellas, novels, covers, and artwork. Her lifelong quest has been to explore past the boundaries of conventional thinking and figure out what really has transpired on this planet. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her marvelous offspring.
Erin MacMichael is a visionary science fiction author and artist, creator of the T'nari Renegades series of novellas, novels, covers, and artwork. Her lifelong quest has been to explore past the boundaries of conventional thinking and figure out what really has transpired on this planet. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and lives in the Pacific Northwest with her marvelous offspring.
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