Today, I released my third book, In the Wake of Newton. It's roughly sixty pages in length and is more of a novella, or novelette than a novel. I've been pretty low-key about its release, having learned that it takes a massive effort to try and get people to read these days, let alone pay to read anything.
I was asked two weeks ago how I came up with the idea for my new book. It is of course an origin story for another story, Garage Sale, which I first wrote as a screenplay several years ago. I tried to sell that story out at the 2009 Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles and learned several valuable lessons. The most important lesson was that nobody wanted to buy a horror anthology. The other was that I hated pimping myself like a prostitute. I had done that for years as an actor before I ever wrote my first script. It was because of that Expo that I became an author. I also realized that there was something missing from the story. I needed to give the enchanted items at the garage sale an origin.
When I was preparing to write my first novel, Monarch, I took an online writing course. In that course I was asked to write about a holiday. I decided to implement the old English holiday Michaelmas celebration into an origin story for Garage Sale. Sir Isaac Newton was the ideal subject from history. The quote from John Maynard Keynes at the opening of the book explains why: " Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians…”
Newton was a complex individual. Not only was he a brilliant mathematician, scientist, and inventor but he was also a practicing alchemist and a devout Christian. His ability to balance the private practice of alchemy, keeping it secret from the church and its prosecutors, while also being one of the greatest scientists of all time is extraordinary.
My story is of course a work of historical fiction but Newton was the perfect person to have at the very heart of the story without ever actually having him in the story. Everyone knows the name Isaac Newton but few know of his ties to long history alchemy. Back in 1727 it was still perceived a practice of magic and to this day alchemy still carries with it a sense of mystery. To have the items in the Garage Sale created by the most famous alchemist of all time who just so happened to be the most famous scientist of his time as well was a no brainer.
The power that the items possess was also influenced not only by alchemy but also Newton's scientific work. It was such an exciting story to write, as if I were rewriting history to include this secretive side of Newton's legacy that he could not share with anyone for fear of religious persecution. It still gets me jazzed to think about it. If only Garage Sale were real, what a wonderfully bizarre world we would live in.
You can now purchase In the Wake of Newton in eBook format at the following websites.
AMAZON
iTunes
Barnes & Noble
