Axel’s Song

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Interior illustration by Carmen Carnero.

ReDeus is a shared universe, and the brainchild of Bob Greenberger, Aaron Rosenberg and Paul Kupperberg. In these stories, the gods return in 2012. Yes, all of them! In the first volume, Divine Tales, eleven authors told tales of the different pantheons and how their returns changed the world, and the lives of individual people.

My story tells of Axel, a 20-year-old musician who was poised to become the next YouTube sensation until the gods turned off the Internet all over the world. Axel comes to New York City, still the center of culture, hoping to reclaim the celebrity that was almost in his grasp. There he meets Bragi, Norse god of poetry, who demands his allegiance. What follows is an odyssey through the melting pot of pantheons, as Axel encounters more gods than he ever wanted to, and all of them want something from him.

You can order Divine Tales, published by Crazy 8 Press, from Amazon. This fantastic volume also contains stories by Aaron Rosenberg, Dayton Ward, Steven H. Wilson , Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, Dave Galanter, Allyn Gibson, Phil Giunta, William Leisner, Scott Pearson, Lawrence M. Schoen

Daddy Detests Salmon Mousse

Kayan’na Atal is bored. With her sites set on an appointment to the Naval Academy, she has no interest in her planet’s vapid culture or the sybaritic rites of the parties she and her father must attend. So Kaya decides to make trouble–and a very public spectacle–by victimizing spoiled rich kid and media idol Sestus Blaurich. This story contains explicit sexual content.

GypsyHeaderImageListen to the free podcast at Nobilis Erotica

It’s like this: Nobilis Reed had proposed erotica readings at Farpoint 2009, and I didn’t want to be left out of something that all the cool kids were doing. I had never published actual erotica, but I was pretty sure I could write a story, especially in the Arbiters universe, where sex was the, er, driving force. The plot was just sort of an extended dirty joke, but, as I wrote it in Kaya’s voice, I found myself developing and describing parts of my universe which had never occurred to me before. I also found myself falling slightly in love with Kaya, a character I’d always been emotionally distant from. The experience of writing “porn” actually deepened my understanding of my characters and the world they live in. I read an abridged version at the con, then turned the full manuscript over to Nobilis for consideration for his podcast. He said he’d never laughed so hard while turned on in his life. So I guess the story was a success. Give it a listen, if sex, salmon and physiologically unlikely acts with vegetables don’t offend you.