Thursday, March 18, 2021

STARFARING AGAIN


Starfaring, a role-playing game by Ken St. Andre has been republished, including the original art and cartoons by yours truly. It was my first paid publication. As usual, I let my imagination run wild.


These cartoons, and a comic strip that appeared in the zine, Supernova, inspired my first (sadly unpublished) novel Nwatta-Nwatta-Nwatta. Eventually, I extracted a short story out of it, “Love Nwatta-Nwatta-Nwatta Style” that was published by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in the second issue of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine.



Here’s the first paragraph:


After a while, Fredd figured he wasn’t going to vomit anymore, so he unwrapped himself from the toilet, got up and tried to walk around. His knees, like most of the rest of him, were wobbly. He staggered around the bridge, which was empty but still cramped. He was the only one left on the ship, left as a sort of hostage to that disgusting spider. He touched his neck, it was still a little swollen and bruised around the two mandible-holes.  It was horrible, would be even if he wasn’t afraid of spiders. The way she held him close, clamped on, and lapped up his blood with those horrid sucking noises, and she insisted making him rub her silky hair, her exoskeleton and sensitive areas, long after she was finished with the drinking, clinging to him, whispering things in his ear like: “Oh, my hot-blooded little sac of delight! My tasty mammalian morsel! I want to consume you! Absorb you! Suck you totally into my being!’


Ahead-of-its-time bestseller material if you ask me. I’m still sure I’ll find a publisher for it one of these days. Any of you publishers out there interested?


 

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