The first volume of my new trilogy starring Phane, the green alien from the star Vikos, is relatively done, “doneness” always being a subjective judgment in writing. I’ve re-written, edited, and double-AI-grammar-checked. I have a cover design. I have uploaded the draft manuscript. All that’s left is to read the physical proof copy and curse at the remaining errors.

The cover of the new novel shows Phane’s spaceship rising from the lake where he accidentally crashed it. It was a long road from crash to recovery, and that road is the story of Phane in Alien Body.  Well, that’s the story-story, anyway. My psi-fi stories are never really about what they’re about.

In this case, the important thing is the size and shape of Phane’s body. He’s a green sphere (green because of chlorophyll), about a meter in diameter, with arms and legs, and most importantly, with two writhing tentacles atop his head, each sporting an omnidirectional eyeball. What would it be like to have a body like that? You could see all around yourself in every direction all the time. What would that do to your understanding of the world and of yourself?

Phane is mystified by humans’ fixed frontal eyes. “How do you know something is not sneaking up behind you?” he asks Dave, the physician he befriends. “I guess we don’t,” Dave says. “Some people won’t sit with their back to the door.” “That’s understandable,” Phane says.

Alien Body (80,000 words) explores how one’s embodiment affects their consciousness. Does a hawk live in the same world we do, but just sees it from a different point of view? Or does it live in an entirely different world that we cannot understand? Why is our view of the world the “right” one?

Despite such deep questions, the fact remains that bad guys want to catch Phane because he is, after all, a genuine alien. He goes on the run (on the roll, actually), but it’s not easy for a giant, talking tennis ball to hide.

Alien Body is scheduled for release on September 1, 2019, on Smashwords, on Kindle, and as an Amazon KDP paperback.