Blog Archives
Alpha-Female
Purple Bleed Naughty Beasts follows a teacher and trauma survivor who comes back to ordinary life after a brutal ordeal called Project Purple, only to find that ordinary life is no longer stable, and maybe never was. What inspired the idea of Project Purple, and how literal is it meant to be?
“Project Purple” is about thirteen Americans who recreate the lives of the early colonials for a worldwide online audience. They don’t know their ordeal has been gradually, brutally altered by their organizers, and a struggle for food, shelter, and survival turns deadly as an Arctic winter approaches.
The nutshell of this idea emerged from a conjoining of two mediums—the first being a PBS TV series called Colonial House back in 2003, and the second being an extraordinary novel about the harrowing saga of the Donner party called The Indifferent Stars Above. Somehow, the ordeals of these people from different centuries fused. I think “Project Purple” seeks to understand what it takes to draw on one’s inner survivor. I just started thinking: What could a writer do to give this story more adversity and more propulsion?
Purple Bleed Naughty Beats follows the three survivors of the ordeal that took place in the first book. The color purple, here, is the blending of red and blue that forms the majority of US political thought.
Henri lives in a constant state of uncertainty. Did you always intend for readers to question her reality?
Henri’s initial uncertainty is due to the medication foisted onto her. Once she kicks the downers, we can see her alpha-female persona reemerges.
The Rot feels physical, social, and spiritual all at once. How did you develop it as a unifying force?
The Rot begins in the first book—the beginning of a new world order with an entirely new language, and with an entirely new taxonomy: a new way of ordering and naming things in life—the Rhizome. It follows a fierce path of human destruction and rebirth in the second book, which is more about the cyclical nature of human history—how we progress to a certain point, only to fall back, destroying ourselves in senseless hatred and warfare. It’s loosely structured on a classic science fiction book called A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. If you remember that story, you can see similar plot devices and characters. And the message is, of course, the same.
The spiritual aspects of the story come from the role of the Catholic Church, which plays a large role in the affairs of state in Canticle. And it’s a monastery of monks that preserves history. Scientific discoveries are also, once again, made in the monastery.
What do you hope readers feel after the final page: clarity, dread, recognition?
When reading Canticle as an eighteen-year-old in a college science fiction class, I recall being stunned by what happens to the protagonist in the story. Killing one’s protagonist halfway through your book is not something anyone would recommend in a writing seminar. In Canticle, no character really picks up the slack to resume the mantle of lead. I’ve structured the story the same way, but Reygil steps up, and we follow him and his journey for answers in a post-apocalyptic world, some thirty years later.
I know a lot of readers don’t like somewhat open-ended messages, but I do them a lot. I hope they’re not disappointed that any stark resolution gives way to a weary kind of acceptance of a new world order—as the cycle continues.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
As the Rot spreads, it dissolves bodies, memories, and entire realities. Henrietta Dobie survives by instinct alone, guided by masked figures who insist she has been chosen for something greater. Each collapsing world forces the same brutal demand: adapt—or die.
Elsewhere, Reygil Buford staggers through the wreckage of civilization, torn between cowardice and grace. He wanders a landscape of false prophets, feral survivors, and absurd wars, where history repeats itself not as tragedy—but as grotesque farce.
Reality fractures. Empires decay. Survival becomes a test of the soul.
Darkly comic, hallucinatory, and unflinchingly violent, Purple Bleed Naughty Beasts is a genre-bending survival thriller where humanity consumes itself—and the only way forward may require becoming something unrecognizable.
What part of you must die so the rest can learn to fly?
What Goes Around Comes Around
The Fanny Upping follows a Japanese girl living in a multi-dimensional mayhem who is trying to unravel everything that has turned upside down and backward in the world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
As you say, I wanted to paint a world upside-down. Driving the story is what’s called the colloquium—where participants, always unwilling, learn a life lesson. For those that survive, it’s a valuable learning experience—though the unhuman entity that runs this colloquium seems indifferent to the fate of its participants. This story is just a natural growth from the first novel, The Cuckoo Colloquium, though I write the novels so that they can all stand alone.
What were the morals you were trying to capture while creating your characters?
Evenhandedness. Justness. What goes around comes around. The colloquium can be a harsh and unforgiving mentor. Self-indulgence will be corrected. Those who think themselves superior, or in some way better, will find themselves on the wrong, maybe fatal, end. It probably all comes down to the fundamental scruple of doing the right thing.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Coming of age is a big theme, of course, as we follow the maturity of Pinky Bell from gangly little girl into womanhood. But it’s also about honesty and being true to oneself. The stories look at what it means to assimilate into another culture, too, and play with the highs and lows of this exacting process. I hope the themes stray from mainstream novels and challenge social norms in ways that readers don’t usually get.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
No follow-up planned, but the themes and messages will continue into my next book called 33 Frivolous Pricks (out in June 2024) that returns to the theme of time travel and the human toll one inevitably must pay for the experience. The story, like most of what I write, is set in Kyoto and Los Angeles, two cities I know well. Like The Fanny Upping, 33 Frivolous Pricks is a wild ride, and I just hope readers are able to hang on and enjoy it until the end.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Amazon
The crazy colloquium is back, and it’s up to Japanese Pinky Bell to come to grips with the mystifying events of multi-dimensional mayhem all around her. The haves and the have nots—the system we’ve had throughout time has gone fanny up opposite: the poor and downtrodden find themselves owning vast fortunes, while the prideful, the selfish, the greedy, must now endure life as the objects of their past scorn in this wild, furious reversal of fortune. Unpleasant things are happening to Pinky Bell’s teachers too, giving what they call faculty development a whole new meaning!
And it’s up to Pinky Bell (again) to deal with all this madness.
Her exploits lead back to the rain forest of Sarawak, where the wildlife is set to unleash a brutal reckoning on unsuspecting tourists in a final, most frenzied, fanny upping of this crazy, new colloquium.
The Fanny Upping
In this wild adventure, full of talk of buttocks and backsides, The Fanny Upping is not what one would call a typical science fiction adventure. Our story follows the tale of 16-year-old Pinky Bell Asano, a Japanese teenager whose life focus seems to be dodgeball. As the tale progresses, we see the emergence of the TittiButt, a creature who has an unworldly eyeball for an anus. As it goes around, sucking people up, one thing is for certain that after reading this book you will never be the same.
The Fanny Upping, by Michael A. Greco, is a novel written to make its readers think about the world differently. Cultural taboos, teenage dramas, and investigations into supernatural occurrences that would make the most dedicated science fiction readers pause. Filled with Japanese influences throughout, this book brings a unique perspective on the world of fantasy and fiction.
Greco’s infusion of Japanese terminology lends an authentic cultural flair to the narrative, adding depth and color to the tale’s tapestry. The distinctive character names, such as Pinky Bell and Candy Buppie, are a testament to the novel’s creative spirit, though they may require the reader to pay close attention to the unfolding story. This element of complexity in character development adds a layer of engagement, encouraging readers to immerse themselves more deeply into the world Greco has crafted. While the journey through the character arcs may be intricate, it invites a delightful challenge to the adventurous reader, making the experience of unraveling the plot all the more rewarding.
The narrative of The Fanny Upping joyfully defies a linear storyline, offering a mosaic of events that invite readers to piece together the plot in a way that is as engaging as it is unique. The novel’s liberal use of humor, including its cheeky references, is a bold choice that adds to its distinctive voice and charm. While the unconventional structure may seem like a jigsaw puzzle with its scattered pieces, this quality makes it an intriguing read for those who delight in assembling the bigger picture from the whimsical details. This book is a perfect match for readers who relish the opportunity to think outside the box and enjoy a narrative that keeps them guessing.
Pages: 234 | ASIN : B0CKPJ9LZM
The Monsters of Their Imaginations
Hollyweird Needs is a wild SciFi story following a group of kids from a special needs school that discover a portal to the past in a new arcade game. How did this idea start and change as you wrote?
I started with my own fantasies about characters lost in space and time, and then played with all the possible twists involved with jumping through these dimensions. I should credit Steven King’s 11/23/63 for the following idea: What if these forces of space-time resisted change? I took this a step further with the characters ‘breaking’ the continuum, allowing all the fun stuff to happen, with the monsters of their imaginations pouring through.
There is a lot of interesting characters in this book. Who was your favorite character to write for?
I suppose my favorite character would be Chester. Even though there is no outstanding lead for this story, as it’s more of a buddy story, Chester is the one with the greatest understanding of how the time-jumping works, and she undergoes the most change, including how she rejects the moniker of Chester for her real Assyrian name as her self-actualization develops.
This seems like a very imaginative book. Was this an outlet for your natural creativity or was did it take some effort to put together?
I write within the genre of what I call comic fantasy, but my last couple of books (“Project Purple” and “Assunta”) wandered quite a bit from that category. You can say I got the HORROR out of my system. I probably should have published those under a different name, but I didn’t. And so now I’m back to doing what I enjoy the most—trying to be funny.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
The next book is in the comic-fantasy realm, out this summer called “A Labyrinth for Loons”, about an American tourist stuck in Covid lockdown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He’s given the body of a corpse for storage because the family of the deceased is not allowed to drive it home for burial during lockdown. The dead man begins to haunt the guy, and he slips into a psychosis, losing his sense of identity and taking on the characteristics of the corpse—when it was alive. This action takes place with the day-to-day life and culture of Kuala Lumpur in the background.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
But the adults, especially those in the nearby screenwriting workshop, catch wind of the teens’ exploits, and in their own clumsy attempts to leap back into the past, tear a hole in the dimensions of time and space.
That’s when the monsters come through.
The Butts Plaza shopping center falls under siege, what with giant man-eating worms, dragons from the under-world, brain-eating zombies, killer monkey-birds, a deadly, gargantuan bouncing head, and even the Terminator–on a mission to terminate.
It turns out that forays done willy-nilly through the time continuum have consequences–mainly that the monstrosities featured in the adults’ screenplays come to life. Now the little shopping center has turned into a mish-mash of horrific goings-on.
The teens, all on various stages of the autism spectrum, must rescue the adults in Butts Plaza (and maybe the whole wide world!) from the horrors pouring through that hole in the sky.
And all of this begs the question–Who are the ones with special needs, anyway?
Hollyweird Needs
![Hollyweird Needs: when monsters fell from a hole in the sky by [Michael Greco]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41K1ithchfL.jpg)
Michael A. Greco’s Hollyweird Needs is one of the most unique books I have ever read. The first word that came to mind as I read it was “peculiar”. From the characters to the storylines, there seems to be an eerie vibe to this book.
It follows the life of Chester, Smegman, Wordsworth, and other autistic teenagers living in a Los Angeles special need school dubbed “Special Kneads”. Although most of these teens don’t have any other caregivers, the school staff and neighbors play a huge role in their everyday lives, some even taking the place of family.
Havoc ensues in the shopping center that houses the school (Butts Plaza) when a new arcade claw game mysteriously shows up. Although the game seems harmless at first, it begins sending those who play it to the past, something that eventually results in devastating consequences. It is ultimately up to the teens to save the adults and restore order.
Not only is this book’s storyline unique but it also goes to great lengths to explain what goes on in an autistic person’s mind. I particularly appreciate the author’s efforts to not paint any of the teenagers as victims but rather as masters of their own destiny. Their individuality really did shine throughout the book.
The use of wordplay throughout the narrative is also a nice touch. For instance, the fact that that Wordsworth doesn’t speak and the claw game is called Dimensional Needs is quite a treat. But while the plot of the story is quite solid, but the execution is wanting, some dialogue seems out of place, and there seems to be a large cast of characters to keep track of. Apart from brief family history and information about their journey with autism, we didn’t get much about who the main characters were, and I really wanted to know because I found the characters interesting and wanted to know more.
With a solid concept and a large dose of creativity, Michael A. Greco’s Hollyweird Needs is an interesting science fiction story that will appeal to readers who like a little dark comedy in their urban fiction novel.
Pages: 264 | ASIN: B08SJ2XGMS
