[about the project]
Simon Drake is an up-and-coming young FBI hotshot, an agent with a personal track record so
outstanding that it borders on unbelievable. Not yet thirty, he's already the leader of his own special
ops team; a ragtag bunch of talented but nigh-uncontrollable lunatics, it's true, but under Simon's
inspired leadership they're a force to be reckoned with, a team with an unparalleled success rate, a
team with an almost unblemished record--until now.
Jeremy Archer is the brilliant and unpredictable scion of a long line of international art thieves,
simultaneously a phenomenally wealthy English socialite and one of the most infamous criminals in the
world. At twenty-seven years old he's already wanted on nearly every continent for thefts totalling
more than ninety-one million dollars, and yet no one has ever come close to catching him--until now.
Now?
May the best man win.
This wasn't supposed to happen. I'll just say that right now and get it out of the way. In hindsight,
I blame Lyn. It's all her fault.
She started it.
All we wanted was to make up silly slashy stories over AIM. We made up a couple of really fun
characters and started playing with them, and somehow our characters got surrounded with a bunch
of other characters, and eventually we'd fangirled up the vague plots of four novels and a bunch
of random short stories. Lyn,
smart girl, was able to make herself stop there.
I, however, lost my mind.
I actually lost my mind in several steps: first, I drew a bunch of random sketches of the characters.
(Those are in the gallery.) Then I wrote a handful
of short stories and porn (which will eventually appear, one by one,
in the short stories section, once they will no
longer spoil books that have not yet been written). Then I wrote a single random chapter out of Book Three.
Then I wrote a bit more of Book Three. Then I said to myself, "Self, you cannot build a pyramid from the
top down. If you're going to actually do this crazy thing, do it all. Go back and start at the beginning, write
Book One, and do it all in order."
And I did. Well, I'm doing so.
At this point in time, I have no idea of knowing if I'm actually going to write all four novels. I intend to,
but even the best of intentions have this way of never becoming actual finished products. These four novels
are something of a testing ground for me: if I can make myself write all four, not only will I learn a lot in
the process, but I'll know that I apparently have what it takes to write novel-length original fiction. (Notice
I said nothing about having what it takes to get my novel-length original fiction published.) If I manage
to drive this project to completion, maybe then I'll be ready to try my hand at writing professionally. And if
not, well, there's still a bunch of gay in here! Woo!
[disclaimer]
I'm a hack writer. I'm nothing special. Never have been. Furthermore, this is the first original writing of
any length I have ever attempted, and as such, it's nothing special either. If I wasn't publishing these novels
on the web, they probably wouldn't get published at all. However, I like them enough to go ahead and slap them
up on the web.
These manuscripts are doubtless riddled with factual errors, false assumptions, anachronistic tech,
blatantly poor research, and grammatical errors of the insidiously subtle sort.
(I did as much research as the web allows, but in many cases, that's not much. Please note that most of the
FBI procedure is totally made up off the top of my shiny little head. I've read a whole bunch of novels with FBI
agents in them and a couple of personal accounts written by FBI agents, and that's about it. As far as these
novels are concerned, 'FBI' stands for 'Fangirl Bureau of Innuendo'. S'okay? S'allright.
... mostly, it's just that I'm lazy and don't have any plans to get these actually published. And also I have a
vague paranoid fear of real, actual FBI agents showing up at my door demanding to know why I was nosing
around their organization, and I don't think 'so I could write GAY FBI PORN' would go over very well.)
[about me]
I'm thirty-five, I live in Ohio, I write under a pseudonym, and I'm apparently insane.
[faq]
When's the next bit going to go up?
When it's done. I won't put up a novel until it's complete; it's bad enough if I leave people hanging,
but leaving them hanging in the middle of a book would be unforgiveable. Currently The Morning Star,
Double Down, and With A Bullet are all complete and online. I am hard at work on High Fidelity, the fourth and final
book in the series, aiming to add it to the site by January of 2009.
Short stories and artwork will appear whenever I have something new to show.
Hey, did you know you made a mistake...?
Possibly. I know I probably made a lot of factual errors. I tended to err on the side of 'fun to write and
internally consistant', much to the dismay of 'technically correct'.
That being said, if you find a mistake that's bugging the hell out of you... well, you can write and
let me know. But I probably won't do much beyond go 'oops'. By the time something makes it onto the site, it's
not going to change again. (However, if you know of a nifty-keen web resource or collection of first-person
accounts that I should check out, by all means, let me know.)
Why caper novels? Why not fantasy or SF or something?
Don't get me wrong: I love fantasy and SF. I read fantasy and SF voraciously. I squeal with glee whenever
I find a new fantasy or SF writer worth following, and I will defend to the death your right to read and write
fantasy or SF. Whatever turns you on, go for it.
However, for some reason, I don't find it as fulfilling to write fantasy and SF as I do to read it. I
like the idea of these people actually existing in my own personal world. I like the idea of them obeying the
same laws of physics that I do. I like them to struggle with real problems without having magic or futuretech
to help them. I really like the idea that some day I may go to Washington DC and pass one or another of those
characters on the street and not even know it.