My latest creative work, the Daikaiju Universe novelette “Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat,” is now available as an e-book on this site and wherever you buy e-books online. It’s also available on subscription services like Everand, and public libraries supporting the Libby app.
As has become my custom when I release a new work, here’s an inside look at how “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” came to be.
It arrives twenty months after my last release, the non-fiction Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure, and a touch over three years after my last published work of fiction, the Shaper’s World novelette “The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay.”
I gotta tell you: I just patted myself on the back for not applying emphasis / incredulous italics to “over three years” in that last paragraph. I want to be more prolific, especially if I have any chance at all of publishing all of my planned works while I’m still able. But kicking myself over such things? That’s a mug’s game.
In fact, examining what it took to write “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” is really less about the novelette and more of a mini-memoir. It’s possible that all milestone-reflecting can, or should, serve that purpose. Let’s see.
About “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat”
“Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” is part of my Daikaiju Universe storyworld. To date, the other work in this milieu is the short story “Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf,” which takes place before “…Dragon Squidbat,” but doesn’t necessarily need to be read to enjoy the new novelette.
Given that it’s been… some time… since the first Daikaiju Universe story, and it’s far (far, far) from one of my more popular works, allow me to explain the storyworld. It’s the epitome of high concept:
Since the 19th century, humanity has been plagued by occasional manifestations of mysterious creatures — kaiju storms — that are often improbably large and almost always defy the known laws of physics.
Now, that’s an intentionally broad canvas with an almost unlimited palette. So far, the stories written involve two intrepid investigators with the Kaiju Collaborative Response and Defense Agency, Reggie and Ben. These two are both highly capable, intelligent guys — absolutely a requirement of their job — but they’re not action heroes. They’re workaday folks doing their best in a challenging gig in an unusual world.
“Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” finds them fresh off an exhausting mission and almost immediately thrust into one that might just be their last… and not because they’ve finally earned their pensions. Oh, and the fate of the world is at stake, too.
If you’re a “what genre is this / what are the tropes” kind of person, we can file “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” in the science fantasy adventure category. I mean, it’s a story featuring giant (and not so giant) monsters, psychic phenomenon, and a patently ridiculous premise. Because I wrote it, there’s also strong verisimilitude, economically presented but well-developed characters, and an expectation that the reader can and will jump in and keep up.
Above all? I set out to have fun with this one. Savvy readers will see the love letter to some of my beloved influences written between the lines.
What Did it Take to Write “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat?”
“Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” would likely remain in the queue of “I’ll get to it eventually” semi-completed drafts in my archives if not for the generous support of some of the patron members of my Multiversalists community of creators, friends, and fans.
Every month there are at least 40 active patron Multiversalists, or net member revenue is $175 or more, I’ve pledged to write and publish a short story and make it available in e-book, audiobook, and limited-edition chapbook formats. Thanks to a handful of patrons who pledged at the annual rate, the revenue goal was met in January, 2024.
I had two unfinished short story drafts as easy choices to complete. “…Dragon Squidbat” is the oldest, and I hadn’t released anything in the Daikaiju Universe storyworld since 2008, so I dug it out.
An Artifact of a Different Life
I started thinking about what would become “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” in late 2014 / early 2015. I was 47 years old, living in Long Beach, California with a girl I’d been with for over four years. I was driving three hours (round trip) to care for my increasingly decrepit mother at least once a week, and I was struggling in my freelance practice. It was not a great time, about to get worse.
I wrote the first words of “…Dragon Squidbat” on my Alphasmart sitting at a little metal table outside of a cafe in a strip mall in Carlsbad, California on Wednesday, February 11, 2015. I often stopped at that place — driving twenty minutes down the freeway past my mother’s exit — to touch grass, metaphorically speaking, before committing to the long and usually very trying hours helping my 79-year-old diabetic mother with this and that and the other thing.
In retrospect, that strategy didn’t engender the best mental space in which to write fiction. The shadow of the temporarily deferred difficult day loomed large.
I got a thousand words or so down, and fleshed out the beats of the rest of the story, before my relationship died in March and my mother ended up in the hospital in April.
The next four months were entirely occupied with relationship withdrawal, keeping up with clients, raising and saving money to find a new place to live, and spending several days each week at the hospital and subsequent short-term nursing home(s) as my mother built up the strength to return to her apartment.
I had my first, and second, and third anxiety attacks in that period. It was shitty.
But fiction? Get the fuck out.
By July 2015, I was in my own apartment and my mother’s health had stabilized and she was back in her home, at least for a while. Life was stressful, but there were plenty of bright spots, and moments of real joy and contentment. By 2017, I was back to a pretty regular writing practice, but the focus was on what would become my third novel, Light of the Outsider. You can read what it took to write that one, if you’d like.
Sure, I would glance at those first thousand words of “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” now and then. I may have even written a little more on it, or at least touched what was there with a light editing pass. But there was something missing to the piece, something I couldn’t put my finger on, and that kept me from getting back to it. Besides, I really, really wanted to finish Light of the Outsider, a work with an even longer history as a never-done, languishing quasi-draft than “…Dragon Squidbat” would ever accrue.
2017 ended with my mother nearly dying of kidney failure, two weeks sleeping in her hospital room, and the beginning of another long stretch of weeks making sure she didn’t get mistreated or killed in a rehabilitiation facility. Seriously, people, do not get me started on those places.
2018 was… you know what? I barely remember 2018, save that my partner and I got going in a serious way, after some hemming and hawing (and general inability to do much but cope) on my part.
2019 was a shitstorm of transitions, drama, and deaths, including my mother entering hospice in June and passing away in August. If you’ve ever dealt with the passing of an elderly parent, especially if you’ve ever had to do it without the support of other family members, you know that’s another massive drain of time and resources… all while slogging though fresh grief and all its complicated emotional cousins.
Then, next, hey, the pandemic.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, haltingly, with long gaps and false starts, I finished Light of the Outsider, and “The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay.”
Meanwhile, between “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf” and the beginning of 2024, giant monster movies moved from low-grade b-movie kid stuff to international box office gold. I saw a few of the hallmarks of my Daikaiju Universe storyworld (a global research and response organization dedicated to kaiju; eco-terrorists attempting to exploit giant monsters, and so on) in the Monsterverse films and TV shows.
I was now faced with my nearly twenty-year-old storyworld being viewed as not a loving, fun pastiche, but derivative bandwagon jumping.
But! It’s an open secret (my patron Multiversalists know the score) that all my storyworlds are part of a larger whole. Abandoning, or substantially changing, one of them just to avoid critical comparison is very much counter to my personality.
So when my patron members effectively said, “Go!” with their support… I went! And I went with “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat.”
A Horse to Get Back On
I viewed the opportunity / mandate to finish “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” as a way to get back to writing fiction after a long time kinda… stuck… with my next novel, Shadow of the Outsider.
I haven’t been suffering from writer’s block, whatever that is. I’ve known what I need to / want to write, and since May of 2023 I’d figured out how to write it.
For a variety of intertwining reasons woven from interpersonal, mental health, financial, and logistical threads, I haven’t felt as if I could dedicate the time, energy, or resources (or, better put, take time, energy, and resources away from other things) to writing fiction. I’ve addressed this a time or two over the last few years, mostly in episodes of Sonitotum.
I recreated my website and reimagined the Multiversalists community, in part, to provide motivation and cause to climb out of this unhealthy creative rut.
“…Dragon Squidbat” was a way for me to serve my community and get back into a writing / producing / publishing habit… while, creatively, it represented a chance to have some fun doing it.
Shadow of the Outsider is a heavy book, with big themes, and some very heavy shit going on in it.
“Reggie vs. Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat,” from title to tone to content to inspirations and source influences, is, let’s face it, kinda goofy.
It’s a pony ride around the petting zoo before I jump in to clean the hippopotamus enclosure that is Shadow of the Outsider.
Which is not to say I’m any less interested in people telling me it’s a pretty pretty pony, or that I did a very good job riding it..!
About the Fun
From the beginning, “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” was built around a few images that wouldn’t leave my skull.
Sharing those would be spoiling the novelette.
What I can write is that I very intentionally set out to tip my hat, give a nod, coyly reference, and straight up use some of the elements from media I’d loved since I was a little kid.
Namely, the Showa Era Toho kaiju movies and their wacky, over-the-top concepts and hijinks.
I’m someone who saw Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (known originally as Godzilla vs Hedora, and yes, that’s the one where Godzilla flies) in the movie theater, gang (it would have been a dollar theater revival showing while I was elementary school age, not the 1971 first run).
I’m the kid who stopped everything if a Godzilla or Rodan or mushroom people movie showed up on one of the two local TV channels. I devoured cut-to-hell poorly-dubbed Johnny Sokko and Ultraman re-runs after school.
These ridiculous things are in my blood.
If you, too, dig that stuff, the references and inferences in “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” will be obvious, though intentionally not on-the-nose. This is a spiritual tribute, not a retelling.
Also, this novelette marks my second attempt at incorporating Lovecraftian lore and tropes in my fiction. The first was a bit of X-Men fan fiction I wrote in the very early 1980s (TELL ME that Magneto’s short-lived island didn’t remind you of R’lyeh?!), so it doesn’t really count. Right..?
Given that the Daikaiju Universe storyworld is an alternate history, not simply our world with some fantasy shit smeared on top, I knew the Howard Lovecraft represented would not have the same life as the H.P. Lovecraft you might be familiar with. Which gave me room to, again, have some fun, and maybe say a thing or two, too.
Oh, there’s also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Gaiman- or Moore-flavored occult societies, as well… which are, if you go deep enough and follow the trails, themselves tributes to Philip Jose Farmer-esque Wold Newton sources… something else I love down to my bones.
I had fun writing this thing… and it got me back on the horse (pony)… and it serves as a meaningful and important addition to the Daikaiju Universe canon!
Win win win.
What Have I Learned Writing “Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat?”
Aside from the thing about having fun, I discovered that I really liked knowing I was writing this thanks to, and for, the patron members of the Multiversalist community. I acknowledged them, and dedicated the novelette to them. The fact that I’d set a goal, and they’d met it, really pushed me to finish the draft, and get the e-book out… and continues to push me to complete the audiobook, and design and ship the signed, numbered, limited edition chapbook editions, too! (If you’d like to be notified when those are available for purchase, join the community for free!)
I reminded myself that not every piece of fiction I write has to be of Great Importance. Yeah, those emphasis caps are there for a reason.
Look, I believe in challenging myself with each and every work of fiction I create. What I discovered with “…Dragon Squidbat” is that challenge, and the resulting growth, need not always be concerned with (here are more emphasis capital letters) Literary Merit.
“Reggie vs Kaiju Storm Dragon Squidbat” exists as validation of an impulse I began following in 2023: that I’d find greater satisfaction as a creator if I shifted my concerns away from chasing sales and reviews on Amazon and the like and instead renewed — and strengthened — my commitment to serve my community. To truly “make things for people who like the kinds of things I make,” and to do it directly, for them, and with them.
Now, I’m under no illusions. The tiny cadre of patron members whose generosity in January (and, one hopes, annually each January for years to come) hit the community’s monthly short story goal represent a small — a mighty, but a small — start. There’s a long way to go.
But getting there?
That’s a trail I’m excited to blaze with my community. Maybe with you!