About the Trilogy

One of the central themes in The Kaladrious Reflection trilogy is science versus spirituality. Constance Vierra, a space station commander from an elite science discipline, takes up the atheistic argument. Admiral Brubaker (and later Kelly Becker) takes up the spirit-centric argument.

Notice that Constance is wholly about observation. She's about what can be seen and touched. You never read that Constance feels or senses or intuits. For Constance it's all about what can be observed and proved.

Admiral Brubaker is all about passion suppressed. He loves Constance but to give into that love would risk losing his tenuously held self-control. Everything is feeling for Brubaker. His psychometric ability to read Constance’s essence when he picks up her cape is one clear example of his close connection with his own psychic nature. His need to involve Constance in his plans, despite the danger and risk to his grand schemes, is all about his disregard for logic and what, superficially, would be the prudent course of action.

The Kaladrious Reflection trilogy begins in space, a thickly laden scientific environment. Space ships, life support systems, artificial gravity: the characters exist and function due to their ability to learn and implement science's lessons. My intent was to create a setting where the idea of being a spirit in a body, of life after death, seemed a rather absurd, unenlightened notion.

As the story progresses, and the characters land on the colony world, the layers of technology and science gradually fall away, until by the story's end the veil between this world and the afterlife seems thin indeed. One's notion of reality changes from superficial, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, to a universe fraught with hidden meaning and purpose. One thinks, How could I have ever denied such larger realities?

 

Writing the Trilogy

I began writing the trilogy in May of 1987, after I had finished writing my last term paper for the semester. Chapter 1 (what would later become chapters 4 and 5) began with the simple image of two characters in a shuttle cockpit, getting closer to a derelict space station. I wrote several pages before stuffing the project into a drawer. I probably would have given up my efforts had it not been for what happened about a month later.

What I call "The Dream" (what I now recognize to be an out-of-body experience) took place early in the morning of June 18, 1987. It profoundly changed my life. As a result, I continued writing. By the end of that summer I had fleshed out an outline for my first draft, which I finished about a year later.

Normally, first novels sit in drawers gathering dust. And for good reason. First novels are usually sloppy affairs where one learns the craft of writing. My own first novel was no exception. But at the heart, I found the story compelling enough to re-vamp and re-write. Twelve years and six drafts later, I had finally finished my opus.

In the mid-90s, when I was busy tinkering with the fourth draft of my story, I came across some papers from when I was in the seventh grade. I had started writing the first page of a novel on a used typewriter Mom had picked up at a garage sale. The story began in the cockpit of an airplane flying over the Amazon rainforest. As I reviewed the characters assembled in the small 1930s-era propeller plane, I recognized the characters from my science fiction trilogy. The parallels were startling. Apparently, the story had been in me all along.

 

Publishing the Trilogy

I signed with my first literary agent in the summer of 1999, shortly after finishing the final draft of my novels. I signed with my second literary agent in the Spring of 2000, just before reading Astral Dynamics and meeting Robert Bruce. Both agents were new and inexperienced. I learned a great deal about what to expect and what not to expect from an agent. It was a huge learning experience.

About this time I broke off efforts at publishing the trilogy to work on Mastering Astral Projection, what in those early days Robert and I were calling The Astral Dynamics Workbook. While Robert was busy writing Practical Psychic Self-defense, I was laboring over the outline and first draft of Mastering Astral Projection . The manuscript went through five drafts (mine were drafts 1, 3 and 5; Robert's 2 and 4) and some rigid content editing before it finally hit the selves in the fall of 2004. But for short respites, that took most of my time.

With the publication of Mastering Astral Projection, I'm now marketing The Kaladrious Reflection directly to publishers and a few select literary agents. I believe in this story and am optimistic that the trilogy is publishable. Please wish me luck!

In the meantime, I'm working on the next project, the first in a series of Civil War novels. Fiction is my first love and it’s wonderful to get back to it again.