My latest sci-fi book is four years in the making, and centers on an all-too-real arena. It releases on October 17th.
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When I set out writing Embassy in 2012, the first of my current sci-fi series, I had originally planned it as a trilogy based off a short-story I’d written at the beginning of that year. There was espionage, alien insect swarms, and a high-stakes chase through an alien city.
Anyone who’s read Embassy is scratching their heads right now, because that’s nothing like what the novel turned out to be.
What it did become was a character-driven story full of relatable emotion, personal dynamics, the joys and fears of travel, the highs and lows of life itself. It explores grief and self-hatred, isolation and tunnel vision, friendship and self-discovery. Arman Lance in the first third of the book is a wholly unlikeable protagonist who some readers have compared to Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye (which I’ve honestly never read, but from what I’ve seen summarized about it, seems appropriate in comparison). Arman’s arc is made ever more fulfilling as he undergoes a transformative journey.
Resonance, the second book of Arman’s trilogy, compounds his journey and propels him to new heights. He has flashbacks and periods of self-doubt, jealousy and retreat; so too does he recognize he needs to build on his upward momentum as a human.
Perihelid, the conclusion to his trilogy, explores his struggle against regression and abandoning all he’s worked for in the face of devastating adversity.
While Arman is certainly introduced to the politics of the Embassy program, it is only on the surface level; the political sphere is not his focus, and the story would be wholly ingenuine if it were. His story, his themes, his connection to the reader is through our human experience, our emotions, our fallibility, our journey to create purpose.
On the political side, he is in many ways naive, and certainly ignorant to some of the deeper goings-on and inner-workings of societies and players, particularly those of Belvun, a planet he has, for years, glorified upon a pedestal due his father’s deeper involvement with that planet. Arman is only partially disillusioned during his visit, and since the first trilogy is experienced through Arman’s eyes, his limited experience and thoughts are all we get of that side of this universe.
Then there was BELVUN, book four of the series
I began writing this book in 2014, shortly after finishing the first draft of Resonance. At this point I knew the series would stretch out beyond a trilogy (by then I had eight planned books; I didn’t decide on the ninth until finishing the final draft of Purnell). The original title was The Fires of the Spring, but I felt that title didn’t fit the overall style of the series. Once I truly focused on this book at the end of 2017, that’s when I renamed it Belvun.
Belvun is our first deep look at the planet the entire series is centered around: the politics, the people, the deterioration. The whispers Arman heard, the shadows Arman saw; all of these are now shoved to the front of the story. The civil unrest, the political upheaval, the loosely organized efforts to rescue civilians from natural disasters and predict where future risks are greatest as the planet’s undergoes environmental deterioration triggered by eco-hacking and rampant deforestation to sustain the export economy. We see what Arman never did–what he never could.
I admit Belvun is a messier book than the previous three; I hadn’t written a new book in third person past, let alone multiple POVs, in nearly a decade at this point, since my 2008 sci-fi novel Shadows: The Resurrection. That’s part of the reason it took me seven years to complete Belvun: I knew I needed to hone the voice of each character, add their own quirks, exaggerations, spellings, tendencies.
Side Note: one of my biggest pet peeves in books is when the entire story is told from one POV, and then the final chapter(s) switch to a different character. That character often feels overly exaggerated in an attempt to sound different from the main protagonist OR sounds exactly like the main character. As I stated above, that’s part of the reason I took so long: I knew every character sounding the same would drive me crazy as a reader. So I figured out how they would emphasize and spell words, how they would perceive body language, how they would speak about certain people, places, and ideas.
Above all else, I needed to maintain continuity. I think that’s why I enjoyed writing the “flashback” chapters of both Belvun and Purnell so much. I got to explore the histories of characters we’ve heard about or seen on the side, and in doing so, connected them to events we’ve already heard about or seen directly. Especially in Purnell, these flashback elements added so much more weight to the story. We never see the character in those flashbacks operating in the present events except through the eyes of the people around them, so in the present day, we can only infer why that character is doing what they’re doing through the lens of their past choices.
In both Belvun and Purnell, this is the element I’m most proud of. Not to pat my own back, but I think I handled the flashbacks in relation to the current events very well, which adds this deeper layer to the story in a way snippets of flashbacks in the present could not have done.
And now, the politics of PURNELL
I began writing this book in December 2021 and finished the first draft in 2023. I say this intentionally, because anyone who reads it will think I wrote the entire thing this year. But I have the paper first draft stored away at my friend’s house in Florida, as well as all the metadata for the files to prove it. But to be clear: nothing in 2025 influenced this story in any way. This is important to know, because it shows the events of Purnell are not just me dragging in current events for clout and shock value. Purnell is and always will be my observations, interpretations, and translations of the politics I have experienced in the 14 years of my adult life.
And those politics have been very, very predictable.
The first three books of the series were thematically light on politics. That wasn’t Arman’s focus. He became a little focused on interplanetary politics by the end, but as I’ve already covered, his story is about his journey, his rise out of mental isolation and emotional stagnation, his choice to create a purpose for himself through his work, and his ultimate struggle against regression.
Belvun and Purnell are focused on the politics and deterioration of the planet that we saw hints of, but never face-on. In these two books, and the sixth book that will conclude this second of three trilogies in my series, we see it all in the open.
Arman’s father created the Belvun Recovery Treaty for a reason. Of the nine inhabited planets of the Bubble, three–Undil, Daliona, and Belvun–are directly involved in the BRT, and three–Undil, Belvun, and Narviid–are actively involved in Belvun’s politics. But as Belvun dives heavier into civil unrest, its politicians become embroiled in a battle of wills, and a handful of opportunists jump to consolidate power and destroy a pillar of Belvun’s government.
I view Belvun as an observation of a society that can’t shake chaotic politics, and I view Purnell as a warning about political opportunists who seek power and enact retribution.
Purnell tackles this theme from various civilian and governmental viewpoints. When politicians are absent, negligent or abusive, what are citizens supposed to do? Should we, and how should we push back? What line is too far? When is it too late to decide to act? What does a chaotic government look like? To what end do politicians exacerbate conflict and chaos? How do we know when power and authority have been stripped away and put into the hands of ill-intending individuals? How do we know when our rights as citizens are no longer recognized by the acting government?
These are among the dozens of questions I went into this book asking myself. For better or worse, readers will see parallels. Art is a translation of the world, of society, of politics, of hopes, of experiences. You cannot separate an artist from the world, because we are in many ways more entwined into its fibers than other people. We use the world for inspiration and paint, write, sing, craft it through the lens of our lives.
When I say my books are political, it’s because they are. In the case of Belvun and Purnell, I fully intend for them to be. While the books don’t explicitly attack one side or another, I’m here to tell you Belvun and Purnell are a condemnation of authoritarianism, of attempting to eradicate dissenting views, of political violence, of subverting courts, of propagandizing, of condemning court-protected free speech, of laying down and letting democratic processes bleed out from under our feet.
Purnell is a warning and condemnation of fascism.
The current regime grappling for control over the United States–because that’s what it has functionally been doing for several months now–was not in power while I wrote this book. In fact, my original planned publication date was October 2024, then May 2025, and now October 17, 2025. Adult life got in the way and slowed me down, hence the delays. But virtually no content in the book changed during those delays. I have the printed paper first draft from 2023 to prove it.
In 2025, the United States has undergone a fascist rise at the hands of people who believe they are the endgame, whose goals are to cause human suffering and enact retribution and prejudice against political opposition and dissenting citizens. They are systematically achieving that goal through twisted or entirely false interpretations of the Constitution; they are erasing statutes, laws, and language accessibility from websites; they are intentionally limiting or removing access to resources and funding across all fields and functions; they are occupying cities; and most alarming, they are directing virtually all economic and technological resources to state surveillance and paramilitary operations, a definitive hallmark of authoritarianism and dictatorship.
In 2025, the United States has undergone an extreme reduction in investments toward education, medicine, social services, international aid, science, environment, democracy and due process, and more. Simultaneously, we see increasing investment in religious bias and superiority, government propaganda, unrestrained paramilitary forces, blanket profiled immigration raids, removal of due process in these raids, and direct verbal and violent attacks on political opponents and dissenting citizens, including the threat of total eradication of political ideologies that conflict with the authority’s agenda.
I keep saying the following: “If it takes using the military to create peace, you don’t have peace; you have occupation.”
Studies show again and again and again that providing and increasing access to social services lowers crime, violence, homelessness, hard drug use and distribution, and other factors of social instability. Removing those services (and others I listed above) has only one intention: to destabilize and provoke. No modern society that limits those services has an opposite outcome.
Democracy aims to develop social peace. Regimes, however, aim to create silent peace. Peace, to authoritarians, is control. It is the lack of uprising by using escalating propaganda and threats to drive fear into dissenting parties.
Subdue resistance. Destroy hope. Force inaction. Frame the discourse to turn bystanders against active resistors.
I say this: if you have the ability, please remain active. Please nourish hope. Please stay standing. For yourself and for those around you, it is so important to push back against these people in power and demand authentic, good-faith representation. Voting every two years is not enough. “We the people,” as some so often display illogically and in bad faith, must participate in democracy. Call your representatives. Make your demands. We created the government. The people in those seats answer to us. So when all else fails,
Organize your community, protest, and be fucking loud about it.
This world is beautiful. We must protect it–and we must protect each other.
Alex
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