The “evergreen” yet “forgotten” series…
Like many readers, I find that sometimes an author’s earlier novels are just as interesting or even more interesting than later ones. The later ones might prove that the author has honed his skills and become more adept at using the elements of storytelling, but the early ones can present an author’s fresh, new voice in the vast wilderness of fiction writing. I often cite Deaver’s Garden of Beasts and Follett’s Eye of the Needle as examples of the latter; I consider those two novels much better than the authors’ later ones.
As a consequence, I often look for the so-called “forgotten” and “evergreen” books to expand my reading experience. I also hope that my own readers do the same with my entire oeuvre and not pass on my earlier novels just because they’ve been sold for a while.
In fact, I have an entire series, the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy,” where its novels seem to be forgotten. The first book in that series, Full Medical, was also my very first published novel! It’s a sci-fi thriller that could be called dystopian or post-apocalyptic in a sense, but it’s more a warning that was motivated by that famous sheep Dolly. (People seem to have forgotten about her too!) In the order of publication (but not in the order of the extended fictional timeline many of my novels fall on), Full Medical is also where arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin first appears.
That first novel is about clones, a strange origin story, if you will, and far from a clone (pardon the pun) about X-men or characters from the Marvel Universe. (To see how Vladimir is involved with the clones, you’ll have to read the novel and its sequels in the trilogy.) The second novel in the trilogy, Evil Agenda, brings in the mutant; also created by Vladimir, Serena rebels against him. Finally, in the third novel, No Amber Waves of Grain, the heroic clones and mutant team up with Vladimir, of all people, to fight against an evil Korean industrialist born before the two Koreas are united (that occurs on my fictional timeline); this new villain has more enemies among the Chinese, who have their own mutant on the payroll.
These sci-fi thriller novels still seems to me to be as fresh and intriguing as the day I finished their manuscripts; i.e., they’re “evergreen.” They’ve all but been forgotten too, I’m afraid, which is a shame, because they also might mean more to today’s readers than when I published them. And, if you first met Vladimir at the ends of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” and “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, you can follow the rest of his history in these novels and Soldiers of God. Or you can learn more about him in some of the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series as well as the novella “The Phantom Harvester” (a free PDF download—see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).
Vladimir Kalinin and his sidekick Sean Cassidy tie most of these stories together, in fact. While that’s unusual for an arch-villain, it’s also evidence that I don’t do “the usual” when writing sci-fi, mystery, and thriller stories. And every one of these novels is “evergreen,” even if it’s been “forgotten” by readers!
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“Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” The clones and one mutant perhaps steal the show in these three novels, but ordinary humans also step up to become heroes. At the beginning, they battle that evil genius Vladimir Kalinin; at the end, they team up with him to battle another evil genius who’s even worse than Vladimir. (Don’t worry. Kalinin has a revenge motive!) All these novels are available wherever quality ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
