aka Of how Pear Tree Came To Be

Despite what I said in the Star Trek blog, I still need to blog more.

I need to do a lot more, and sometimes it feels out of reach in such ways that the struggle is much like that goddamn boulder that Sisyphus refuses to let go of. But as Camus desires use to do in these absurd times, we have to imagine that pushing that boulder up the hills is not only good, but great fun.

And Fantasy is always great fun for me. It always will be.

I write novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories and have sold all of them at various points. One thing I can do very well and am still improving upon is my ability to scale narratives. There is a difference between the bounds of a big story versus the bounds of a little story. In every success there is always a measure of failure too, and failure is the soil which we grow out of and improve upon, hopefully stronger for it in ways we won’t realize until later.

I wrote Pear Tree over a decade ago (which now feels like an entire age away from us in many profound way.) Still in the midst of figuring out how to write short fiction, back then my process was as it still remains: I’m not necessarily trying to sell every piece of short fiction I write, but I’m working out the nuts-and-bolts of my voice, my vocabulary, and more importantly, my structures. I think narrative structure is a pivotal aspect that is lacking in today’s fiction where genre is somewhat defined by tropes and authors trying to play with story beats (or lacking them entirely) instead of trying to tell a solid narrative with a foundation in character, setting, and voice. Structure, and there are many different types, provides the arrangements to your favorite songs, build the tension in your favorite movies, and are the backbone of the most successful books you’ve read. That is not to say that there isn’t success for authors that throw away structure and build a longer form narratives without it, but they are fewer than we think.

But short fiction, even with structure, is where you can play jazz, noodle with the notes, mix different colors, and try to turn a shed into a palace and a palace into a prison and everything else. Short fiction is where you can bend the rules of structure to fit the narrative you are trying to tell. The challenge is that you still have to be precise with your narrative because you and everyone else will know whether it works or not. Short fiction is also a great medium for critique and writing groups, but I don’t think necessarily works for longer formats.

I had sold about seven pieces of Sword & Sorcery fiction by the time 2016 had rolled around, and I recall writing Pear Tree with several challenges to myself in mind:

1. I wanted a Fantasy story that featured no men or masculinity whatsoever.
2. I want to write a Fantasy story that didn’t have any good or bad characters, but everyone to be a compelling shade in a vivid, colorful narrative.
3. No swords or discernable sorcery/spell-making would be featured. There could be death and gore, but not from any acts of daring or combat, and certainly no magical battles.

I also wanted to feature the influences that had been gained from what had (by that point) turned into a sincere and ongoing study of shamanism, ethnobotany, and the rise of new practices centered on the use of psychedelics, meditative techniques, and audio and visual stimulus to create altered states for the purpose of healing, creativity, and spiritual discovery.

(Yes, I’m one of those. And yes, I watch McKenna tapes on repeat.)

The tone and characters of Pear Tree were also heavily influenced by Dark Tranquillity’s The Gallery, a 1995 masterpiece of Melodic Death Metal and a foundational slab to that specific genre of heavy music.

The main character of Lethe is taken/inspired by the eighth track, which was inspired by the Greek myth of a river in the Underworld where the imbibers of its waters would have their memories erased. Her journey is dark and intentionally purple in places (because sometimes you have to write purple), but it also fit into a greater universe I was shaping at the time to feature the world of Dovhain, my dragon-world with two moons and the setting for stories like Spy|Counter|Killer, A Wave of Lions, Atenia, and many more stories that are on their way soon. I’ve also sold a lot of Sword & Sorcery set in this place.

I really enjoyed this story not only because of its themes and influences, but because it was also a hit with Charlotte Writers Group, the writing and critique group I was a member of at the time. It had some refinements made to it in the process up to its current form, but readers loved the craft of this story from the beginning. It needed little in the way of follow-up edits or structural changes, which for beginning writers should be a sign that you are getting better at your craft.

I actually sold this twice before I decided to self-publish it. The first contract offered was by Weirdbook over in Germany, but because of production issues on their end at the time and the unlikely chance of the story being published within the time-period of the contract, the editor Douglas Draa was more than kind in letting me shop it elsewhere. I then sold Pear Tree to a small publisher called Mirror Matters Press, which folded six months after they purchased the rights and disappeared from the Earth completely, but not before they paid me. Happy to have made a semi-pro rate on a story even if it didn’t make it to press, I decided to try to my hand at self-publishing.

The first cover was created by Melissa McArthur, a former editor and Associate Publisher at Falstaff Books. The new cover is a collaborative creation by my wife Margo and I using stock images and stencils from Depositphotos which I edited using Pixlr Advanced Editor. The audiobook will be produced using a combination of Audacity and Filmora, which is a combination DAW and Film workstation.

This will be released to Kindle Unlimited and is for sale at $0.99 and as a free audio download that can also be listened to on YouTube or Bandcamp! It’s the start of using a lot of the short fiction I’ve had published and gotten the rights reverted back to me to do things that are fun and cool for me and I hope are fun and cool for you. I think with the way the marketplace is changing authors need to be willing to try new things, and I think audio is something wide-open for new things.

But the most important thing to know about Pear Tree is that is a labor of love that I still love and am immensely proud to be presenting to my audience and new readers. It’s one of the stories where I learned I can do a lot with my skills that allowed me to break out of Sword & Sorcery while at the same time strengthening my writing abilities all-around. That’s a hard thing to know is happening in the moment, and Pear Tree, like Lethe’s journey, is very about finding that truth I obtained in the moment.

And I hope you all enjoy the short but cosmic journey we’re about to go on!

Pick up Pear Tree here!