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'Hold on Mr. LaFond, this One's Gonna be Weird'
Beowulf and the Crackpot Discuss His Least-Read and Largest Work
© 2021 James LaFond
JAN/28/21
Organa and stuff
Inbox
Beowulf
Wed, Jan 27, 4:57 AM (1 day ago)
Hold on Mr. LaFond, this one's gonna be weird
First of all, I always struggle with how to address you. "Dear Mr. LaFond" makes me feel like I'm in English class again (which is where I decidedly do not want to reside), "Dear James" sounds like I am addressing some gay British butler and "Hey you old hobo" is just not my style.
[Here in the Cascades they just call me LaFond.]
Anyway, I thought I'd give you my two cents on "Organa", since you always complain that no one reads it.
I usually don't enjoy science fiction, and the only reference I have are some Warhammer 40k novels (modern pulp?) and Heinlein's Starship Troopers. But this is really cool. At first I was put off by the weirdness of the language. Might be cause I am no native speaker. But once I got the hang of it, the story unfolded nicely. I must admit, it did not expect this to be as amusing as it was. Don't really know why. But that band of renegade Amish being blasted to pieces for example. Man you can't get imagery like that anywhere else.
[The diction was purposely odd to lend an alien quality to the future and allow the reader to get immersed in an alternative setting.]
This vision of the future makes a lot more sense to me than what I associate with contemporary science fiction. I usually also abstain from time travelling plots, but you got me hooked. Now I want to read the whole thing, no matter how fucked up it gets. So my point is - once you get people to actually read your fiction, I think a lot of your "non fiction" audience might get pulled in. I did not listen to all the crackpot Podcast stuff, but have you tried reading sample chapters on Youtube or something? Maybe that would get more people interested.
[Lynn lured me into reading 3 samples for the Harm City project, and there will be no more. I am a very poor out loud reader—retarded actually, and I miss punctuation, mumble and detest the resulting audio. It is good advice though.]
Do you have the whole Sunset Saga as a pack of PDFs or something? I'd rather pay you directly than the rats on amazon.
[Most of the Saga is available at our site e-store, which I will link below]
Also, I am really interested in the overton railroad stuff that is print only. Is there no way you or Mrs. Lockhart are gonna sell me a PDF of these? I gather I'd have to pay about 10€ shipping and import taxes per book, and the state is taking enough of my money as it is.
[Anything that I have listed as completed and entered into the publishing progress, except for Search of an American Spartacus, can be had directly from me by email for a paypal donation of whatever you think it will be worth. Buying print books in Europe means they get printed there, so shipping should not be too bad. If you over pay by my estimation I'll send additional books.]
I ask not only because I'm a cheap bastard, but even for someone who follows your blog closely, it's sometimes hard to gather what is available from where, and which books "belong together" for lack of a better way of putting it.
[Will address this below. I don't even know how many book's I have written or published.]
By the way I like to look up locations you describe in your articles, so I get an idea how stuff in Harm City actually looks. When I googled the strip club Big Izz hangs out in, the search engine commerical recommended I do a scavenger hunt in Baltimore, using some mobile APP. Who comes up with shit like that? I just thought you'd find the idea amusing.
[When he went there it was on "The Block" on West Baltimore Street. Last time Duz and I went it had moved to East Lombard 6 miles away.]
So have a nice day & take care
-Beowulf

Thank you, Beowulf, for that review. Organa is one of the few fictions that I have written that men and women enjoy equally, with four of each having read it. Organa is the 23rd century future where the time hunters in The Sunset Saga come from. It was difficult for my few readers of The Sunset Saga to get through 5 novels just to find out what the future looks like, as it is written from the perspective of people of 2009-2013 Modernity and of ancient people they are contracted from the future to contact on behalf of the "Sponsors" of the chronological genetic reclamation mission. For this reason I wrote Organa, as that world was my most probably mid-future. I also wrote Out of Time, a prequel, which is outside the main narrative flow and links directly with White Sky Canoe, the final and unwritten volume.
The Sunset Saga
At the bottom of the page is a link to the print listings and a video discussing the series. None of these novels have been edited. However, Seven Moons Deep will be edited and published in hardback this year. If you read Out of Time, you don't have to start from the beginning, but I would.
The rights to the paperback series will go to my host Yeti Waters and his sons, who are working on editing it. Once their work is done, the books will be reissued and the current listing deleted, except for God's Picture Maker and Den of the Ender, which will be shared by my niece. Lynn owns the hardback and e-pub [an e-book with an audio reader] rights to everything I have written.
The ebooks on this site combine volumes as indicated in the first two sub-headings below and the dust cover may be viewed by clicking on the link. Print listings are at the bottom of the page. A PDF listing means you have to get my draft pdf from me via email.
0. Out of Time: Prequel [31,863 words, 197 pages]
I wrote this in 2015 while ghost writing Jason Van Veldhuysen's boxing manual and used him as the template for the protagonist, Pozer.
Book 1: Of the Sunset World
1. Big Water Blood Song [158,480 words, 671 pages]
2. Ghosts of the Sunset World [116,150 words, 574 pages]
Written between March 2009 and December 2010
Book 2: Pillagers of Time
3. The World Is Our Widow → The World Is Our Widow
4. Beyond the Ember Star [78,222 words, 367 pages]
5. Comes the Six Winter Night [43,361 words, 201 pages]
6. Thunder-Boy [96,148 words, 422 pages] → Pillagers Of Time
These were all written in 2011, with Thunderboy: The Transmogrification of Three-Rivers, written in the month of August 2011, for my best output to date.
Book 3
These three novels were written in 2012.
7. Behind the Sunset Veil [102,993 words, 461 pages] → Behind The Sunset Veil
8. Den of the Ender [67,682 words, 240 pages] → Den Of The Ender
9. God's Picture Maker [68,121 words, 319 pages] - pdf draft from the author
Book 4
10. Seven Moons Deep [67,235 words, 429 pages]
Pendleton Shaw’s Quest for the Seven Cities of the Moon, available as a pdf draft from the author, written from 2012 through 2019
Book 5
11. WhiteSkyCanoe [unwritten except in my mind]
Books 6-7 have been cancelled. This was originally going to be 7 books in 21 volumes. However, the Plantation America project, which grew out of researching Seven Moons Deep, has taken up the use of what is left of my mind.
Side Stories
Astride the Chariot of Night is a Myopic Extract
This takes the Jay Bracken thread from God's Picture Maker and Seven Moons Deep, written in 2012 and places them as 2 short novels. This is the first self-published book I did and I think, does not even have page numbers. Available as 2 site ebooks: By This Axe! & God Of War
Organa: the Malfunction of Tray Sorenson
Available as a site ebook novelette, if you buy it 'll send you the pdf of the expanded novella: Organa
This Design is Called Paisley
Can be read for free here, on the site: This Design Is Called Paisley
Video Discussion and Print Listing of The Sunset Saga
Recommended Avoidance Reading
crackpot mailbox
Fire and Vice
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
ranger?
eBook
battle
eBook
broken dance
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
shrouds of arуas
Sidvic     Jan 28, 2021

Caught you on myth 20. It was great.
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