A thrilling science fiction adventure that takes place in the aftermath of an ancient apocalypse, a modern gilded age, and far ahead to the future. This is also a book for anyone who’s ever made fun of a name, or had a name that was fun to make.
Briefly:
Set long before marble temples and emperors, explore a world of warrior women, terraforming dragons, an unspecified Librarian, a sentient donkey, and a group of friends seeking a future of self awakening in a stricken landscape and diminished cities.
Blurb:
This book is about the legacy of Myrna, War Chief or Myrine of the Makri people. Following a volcanic eruption when she was a child, a chain reaction leads to changed weather, devastated crops for decades, and depopulated lands. Conflicts between old allies see a world transformed as whole cities are destroyed, and leading the fight against ravenous invasions that follow, chose her destiny for her. But what will her grandchildren choose?
Soaked up to her ears in blood, now Myrna is retired, and she has prepared the seeds for a new path forward for the tribes of Makriya. Her world’s memory is kept in song by poets, advanced memory workers, but this means that too many memories can die with them, if their difficult training is not passed on. Now her grand-daughter is leaving home to discover a world changed by hunger and loss, who with new eyes witnesses the land slowly coming to life again, as she seeks her own path through it. There’s also an early 20th century Librarian, time-hopping witness to these events which are stored in the crystalline memory of a tangible hologram Dragon, disguised as a surly human. This creature takes them back in time to search for clues that will help it leave the planet, but those who travel forward with it may not be any more free from slavery than the ancient people whose memories they lurk among.
Introduction:
Sometimes an old story is repeated so often, that it just grows and grows, until the towers are too tall, the cities too large, the monsters too powerful. Then it becomes blurred with our own lives today, and like overgrown weeds, a good myth needs a good whacking down again, so that you can see what the actual people were doing, and why we were even talking about them in the first place. If everything was so grand, why have humans in the tale at all? This is a detailed science fiction world-build very much like our own, called Erthe. The prose is experimental, and jumps between past, present, and future, exploring themes of loss, deception, starting over, and the meaning of keeping memories. Full of experiments, invented words, and humor, it explores in a light, earthy way early ideas of philosophy, nature, and science that seems like magic. Visit a world in which poetry is a profession that communities rely on, where the way you sing can decide how you live or die. This book teaches critical thinking, introductory linguistics, the philosophy of knowledge, and questions many things we take for granted about how things work in human society. In this detailed tale of nonsense, if you find any wonder or amusement about the names of things, all hopes and goals have been accomplished.
This book is about war too, so it is also about lies. Despite being named for a war chief, set around the events of climate change and a tremendous, world changing war, there are no battle scenes in the entire book so we can focus on the language aspect of it. Just memories, and landscapes marked by them, and some other ways that events are remembered.
Bisacs: Fiction -> Science Fiction -> Humorous / Fiction -> Experimental / Poetry -> Ancient / Fantasy -> Dragons
Themas: Humanist Philosophy / Science Fiction – Apocalyptic / Historical Linguistics / 2000-1000BCE / Women in Leadership
EPUB Now Available: $1.99 USD
This ePub is fixed format because it contains illustrations, so it does not work with reflowable readers. The formatting in is a little funky, Epubs are terrible, The print copy is crisp, and justified, and looks better. After print, a flowable edition will be made.
COMING SOON: Three Volumes – Hardbound
Development Log
Substack Announcement 5/19/26
“The book once finalized weighs in at around a thousand pages, so we’re weighing options on how to print it affordably, possibly a kickstarter. This might be a good idea because there are wonderful, detailed maps and illustrations already done, and more in the works, so there will be sweeteners to anyone backing the print stage of this. And we welcome your sharing the EPUB with legitimate publishers or anyone who is truly without a penny but would love to read it. All this means taking extra time to be sure the proofs are perfect, and to revise it as needed, so by the time it is in print, you can expect changes. Already, new stories are brewing in the author’s imagination, that take place in the world detailed in this book! So early readers be welcome, and send any thoughts or comments to us.”
Trading cards would be a great vehicle for the tight, close illustration style of the author, definitely on the planning board.
5/22/26
Working proof for the (old) paperback cover. Scroll to see the new one.
5/23/26
Note from the author:
Don’t underestimate the fact that this book is fiction! If you know your history, or archaeology, you might recognize some things about it, but don’t fall into the idea that this is a ‘thinly veiled’ theory, it is not, at any point, a historical theory! It doesn’t even take place in this dimension of reality. There is a reason this is fiction. For one thing, schools get defunded for theory nowadays! I don’t want to be a political target, duh! In addition, I added so many things to this that are *intentionally wrong* so that someone who does know a little about the subject, is going to see these intentional errors and think, ok I can relax, this person is just giving us a good laugh about grim topics, instead of claiming to be authoritative. Think of them as an easter egg, except it’s rotten, or one of those chocolate ones but completely melted by climate change, so that the prize inside was once the foil wrapper. Oops! I mentioned another forbidden phrase! Now the bots will never index this page, only the spiders!”
Page 2
“Part of the point of the book is to look at our distortions, bias, assumptions, like how we’ve blocked out an entire thousand years because no one wrote much of it down, but wrote so much around it… now we skip it as though it was as collapsible as a folding chair. Or how nowadays we’re counting on word of mouth, hot take, and temporary videos – what is going to happen to your history if you don’t write about it, have archives, museums and libraries, or complete journalism coverage? And I wanted to do it casually, enjoyably, because you all have the shouting match completely covered, and that harshness is so infectious you know? It’s not as easy to breeze into a realization of your own, if someone is always threatening your character. So it’s just, you know, like putting a snack out, it’s there if you want it, if not, no problem. These are the topics that interest me as an experimental writer. If I wanted to publish a thesis, I wouldn’t write a satirical novel! But if it inspires some interest in history, and the nature of facts, then I have totally accomplished the subtle mission. Too much ‘authority’ spinning bad facts out there, I wanted to sort of look at that independently from the talking heads were are relentlessly subjected to by the complacent half of media. I think only fiction can really grant full permission, almost all of the thinking, is being done by the reader. Again, this is not a history. Judge this book by its cover, it says science fiction novel right on the it. And hey, if you just realized your own bias made you look for a problem that wasn’t there, it worked! That’s exactly what I’m trying to gently, humorously point towards. This isn’t for academics, you should be able to gloss over it and know that! But I bet you’d enjoy it, it is made for you to enjoy too, if you could get real about what you’re actually reading.”
6/11/26
Proofs have been scanned and the Trade Paperback edition of this book is on its way for final review! You are free to place an order for the First edition, though some minor corrections are likely to happen and we’ll call that the 2nd edition. We’re working on a free book guide that is meant to go with this, it’s a map pack, with illustrations and a glossary, that is going to go along with this. The cover price gains us about $5 per copy, that’s fine for POD, just want to get it out there. Shipped directly by Ingram Spark. Excited, can’t wait to hold a copy in person!
6/11/26
Promotional Offer: If you buy a print edition of this, we will send you a free ePUB file of the book for your reader, or for you to share. Just ask!
6/16/26
Note from the Author:
“I introduce freely the use of slang in the book, because it is in part humor. So the surprise is essential to humor, and dropping some modern slang into an ancient tale is perfectly surprising. Also, we don’t know what their language sounded like. But they are young people, so they would have been using at least a little slang, special to their generation, invented as children, changing the locks on everyday life, which is how language works. Since we can’t guess about their slang, as we’re barely broaching the topic of a speech that hasn’t much survived, the only way to make them feel real, and young, was to give them a light sprinkle of our slang. I grew up with a ton of slang, and lost it after I left the home city to roam. But it just sounds like being young, to me.”
6/17/26
The first proof copy of the printed book has arrived, and we have already found a dozen errors in the first section of it so it looks like we have a learning curve to experience. Since this is our first full on book publication, and we do not have the budget for a copy editor, we are learning a new reverence for people who do that work! Thankfully not one copy has sold, so we hope to sneak in a revised first edition and it might even be slightly less than a doorstop with some minor spacing adjustments. Few of us realize how many professionals have traditionally existed behind the scenes making sure what we see and read is smooth and non-distracting. If we are going to be an Indie publisher, we’re going to have to up our editorial game! Clearly proofreading on screen is not the best way to do things. As if the eyes just sort of lose their tracking after a while! But this is definitely a good time, and overall, this time the format is pretty close to perfect.
7/15/26
Note from the Author:
“I’ve been thinking about the subtle experiment in grammar itself that I’ve included as part of this book, and without spoilers, there is hope, if I’ve done it right, that you won’t even notice. One of my influences, Ursula K. LeGuin, a half century ago produced a similar experiment, but a recent book club talk I listened to helped me realize what was different. She felt that she had to use words like ‘mankind’ and the collective ‘man’ for humanity, because in her time she felt it was going to get in the way of readers entering the story. I don’t think that’s true now. And in 1969, she avoided ambiguous terms for reasons of style. Even from story to story, she played with the physics of culture, one of the great freedoms provided by science fiction. So you have to use emotion and often, empathy, to understand her stories at all. I love that. It occurred to me that my experiment also does this for a different reason. It is definitely a way of having fun with the reader’s perspectives. For my own purposes, the concept of ambiguity is meant to define a solid state of being, and for my purposes, is ultimately transcendent. The dragons, for example, do not appear in their true form, because people tend to go insane when they see them. And the disembodied dragons can only produce an illusion, whether it is of their formerly true form, or of the human forms they prefer to take to move among us. There can be a sense of calamity around even the slightest lean into the ambiguous depending on who you ask, even in grammar, because it challenges the ego. The ego is supposed to be your inner project manager, so any change to the blueprint can be highly generative, out of its comfort zone. If you can’t read the blueprint, even a few of its symbols, it becomes a kind of test. One ego might respond with a need to control and eject the changes, while another’s ego is going to see a fancy puzzle that looks like fun, and that is the secret spice of a good fantastic story. Science fiction definitely has a broad arc, from selling toys, to deep operatic visions. I tried to include a little of both, to include the kid in you. A healthy ego isn’t afraid of a challenge to their perceptions, so for one person, it can be mystifying, and for another it can be a truly transcendental experience – though both are related concepts. Either way, such a challenge to the blueprint can leave you energized, disoriented, but ultimately, even more your integral and together than before. Lucky for me, it worked out in a transcendental direction, but a kind of spiritual madness I think is just the price you pay for seeing beyond the ‘kingdom of men’. Now I am contemplating the next attempt to express what a fine experience I’ve had with the experiment, in some completely different structure. I hope to include some small expression of the peace that has come of it.”
Editor’s Note
Phew we are about 90% done with the final proofing task for this book, and again what a sense of reverence we have for copy editors. Fortunately no copies have sold so far, so we feel pretty safe that these many minuscule errors will not be seen too much. It’s like at least one per several pages! But structurally it’s fairly complete. A few times, the characters names are switched, Maitel is the tall redhead, and Kyme is the curvy dark haired one that likes to work on chariots. Other than that, structurally, it seems to be pretty much finished. Some changes to spacing should also reduce the size of it, by at least a few hundred pages, so it doesn’t scare the young ones as much. Thanks for reading our technical updates! And here’s to a little escapism, so that we can face reality together with a little more in our hearts. We might split this into two, but it feels like a complete enough world manual for a series of shorter books, which the author claims already live on the back-burners with ease.
7/23/26
The grueling task of nitpicking every typographical error, the smallest ones of course were the ones missed, is finished. It’s sure to be imperfect still, but reading that slowly showed us new sides of ourselves! Ironically, it only took one day to clean the copy with the proofing marks. The chapters have been reshuffled lightly, like a deck of cards, for better story flow. The book will be divided into three parts now, three hardbound volumes under 300 pages each, plus a complete copy for those who have muscular hands, and the trilogy also available in an inexpensive eBook. Managed to shave off 160 pages with a little format massaging. What’s delightful is early this morning, as the final touches of the copy editing were in place, a mysterious thing happened, and a little bee appeared, flying lazily around the bed a few times. No window is open, and this has never happened before. It seemed languid, perhaps it was pulled in earlier in the day while the door was briefly open. Then it disappeared, haven’t seen it since. We take this as a positive thing, even though a bee indoors isn’t ever ideal. The bee is a symbol of the Earth. Without it, these tiny ancestors far more ancient than we are, we would starve. And without stories to take time off from the madness of the mundane world, and all the ways we fumble this paradise, this lone green orb, we would starve without stories. What’s left is to add a few little illustrations from the author, to add a sprinkle of charm, and some wonderful hand drawn maps to make the whole thing real. Should be ready to release a proper first edition in the next few days! Then there will be a few weeks for the printer to get set up. A joyful night, stolen back from whoever steals this sort of thing away… now we just need a couple more public domain paintings in a similar vein to the 14th century one, with a suitably muted palette of chaos and wonder. And dragons. Each cover needs to have some kind of dragon, the stranger the better.
7/28/26
The new manuscript is now lightly illustrated, and also includes hand drawn maps!
In addition to the appendix of nine maps, there are about fifteen inset illustrations by the author. In addition, three new covers are being designed. The front plates are digital collage, crops from paintings by Frederic Edwin Church which are over a hundred years old and in the public domain. His intense, studied paintings of the natural world carry a story of uncertain times and social tension. They are collages with Renaissance era depictions of a colorful variety of apocalypse dragons. More work on the spine and back plate left to do, and then it’s back to the printers for approval, which should take a few weeks.
The retail price is going to cost a bit more if ordered from your favorite bookstore, but these are the prices if you order direct from me.
Hardbound covers – $19.95 ea., 250-300 pages per volume.
Trade Paperback cover – Complete Trilogy $19.95, 818 pages:
100% Natural Human Writing
Our Theme is… Erthe, miss. Some say this world is here to put us all on trial, others feel it’s just a place that often tests us.
8/25/26
Final proofs are looking good! Just another week or two until the samples arrive to make sure they’re all lined up right, and then we’re good to go with the new hardbound editions. We’ve also upgraded the type and covers for the other books the trade paperback collected volume, and Decade, the collection of poetry. This is a thrilling day, with Hattree Press looking forward to finishing months of preparation to launch these five titles!
9/1/26
Almost forgot to document it, but you never know it might make a difference down the line – the ‘pen name’ chosen for these books, R. Harper, by some complete coincidence also appeared as a character in an episode of Star Trek, as a scary ghost who possibly murdered, or failed to prevent the murders, or self murders, of the entire crew of the haunted Griffin space ship, in a parody episode of Event Horizon maybe. In the same season the same name was introduced to a far wider audience than a small press can even begin to dream of, as the space ghost lady of self harm.
Oh to have those numbers when premiering an author’s name, horror show or no! The press formally states that there is no connection and this must all be a coincidence, or a horrible mistake. While we can attest nothing in the author’s life remotely resembles a ghost ship, or resembles in any way the woman portrayed with the same name, it is a mysterious and haunting inaugural coincidence that should be recorded, so that if these books ever find their way to the public eye it will have been a fun anecdote. As to the separate author, it is all a clean affair, with no massacres involved or required in their writing, and self harm is just not one of the topics they feature, so the similarities end with the name. The author chose the pen name, to honor their generation of grandparents for their introduction of music, poetry, reading and writing as a vital part of being alive, and it is an already existing family name.
The television character was of color, and she was defaced, disfigured, a Frankenstein’s monster of some offscreen situation we barely see explained in the episode. A survivor character is often unpleasant against their original context, they might be too animated by passion, and perhaps worse, a refugee. The sole survivor is suspicion herself, and must translate, act in liason to unwanted realities, live to explain undesired topics. She was a woman named Rose, all cut to pieces, was she a warning, or entrapment? The survivor, or the disease, that proximity of survivorship, always closer to the violent?
So again, to reassure you, the author who released a three volume book as a debut, of the same name, in the same season as this horror fiction theater was aired, is not in any way related, not visibly disfigured, nor named Rose, but is an altogether different R. Harper who is not involved in any way with a haunted murder ship, or any television show that does satire about haunted murder ships.
The author of the three volumes of Myrna has in fact never been a Starfleet officer of any kind, and is not even terribly interested in the sea, beyond its poetic materials, nor have they ever been offered such a thing even as an observer. It seems fun, to boldly go forth and science has a place on the bridge and wisdom prevails in diplomacy, this is all quality utopian fantasy, but not so fun when a ship is haunted by murder spirits that self-criticize you to your doom. It seems on average it’s pretty much awesome, or horror show, to be on a space ship, with very little dramatic enough to lie between in storytelling. I don’t know, I always imagined long hours of self improvement. Now that I’m older, long wasted hours of skill building put off by ennui. Lack of sufficient music and walking breaks.
My species must not need any further representation with them, or I might have been chosen. Or it may be I just haven’t found the location of their Academy. So the timing might confuse but these are different R. Harpers, presented at a similar time. Just seemed off, like a weather event, worth adding to the journal of this special series of stories, Myrna. Myrna had her own voyages. She was not known for trans-era, trans-epochal fame long enough to reach modern people. Presently, her crew endured, and they built free ports to reduce the cost of goods, and guard towers for tired sailors, and libraries and schools to preserve the songs of memory, and a sacred island where anyone free or slave is a drumbeat in the soul of the world if they would only swear the truth – but for how long did her efforts last? Of any survival in the humanities, of that we can celebrate!
A complete stranger can talk over you for years and years, just jump in there and start shouting over you every minute you have left your front door, but they go on being a complete stranger. If you have no idea why they stalk your house like that, you can only remind yourself of why you became a writer. The life inside can easily be the more free and exciting one, than what is created by others. And if they try to entertain others, by offering a little labor in book form? Then hope they kept their sense of humor! Hope they carried on, writing in their own little world, and didn’t listen to any orders to cease, ever, but remained self employed and immune to market conditions, every last minute they wished to enjoy the work. So they can remain a character in this inhumane world. It is easy to disfigure a stranger, the world is built on organized disfigurements these days. But it is no parody to try to put together a story, add a story, to an ever-flooding world, ready to drown rage of stories out beyond the door. Knowing the world is a flood, why not put some purpose to your story telling? Why have a life, a name, at all? And if you ask this world, it may only howl at you, or answer with a thunderclap, or a plant in the audience sneers like a cartoon. But you have chosen a life, all the same, and that makes your name, your own name, and your work, your own work, and you have chosen to make a gift of your life to others, and only a character does something like that. So bravo to the real, enfleshed, embodied and in three volumes R. Harper, the not entirely but only partially disfigured author of three odd volumes of science fiction. And ho hum to the lurking phantom of disfigured women at the heart of the investigation, in a passing fear, in someone else’s world, far, further than yourself, oh lonesome author. Further than the facial scars, to the invisible layers of emotion you see in your bathroom mirror, somehow the most real.
Sincerely, the Editors, Hattree Press
“I have learned a few of the eldritch rules that govern this world. Like the power of words, you can extend yourself too dearly with them. And to one there is nothing but misunderstanding, and fear, and to another, there is a serious embrace of knowing, or the sound of rescue on the wind. You can’t explain or do much about this, it is a risk to be alive, a risk to smile at it, or brave it, or look sternly at it – it is your face. But you can’t do a thing about how one exists who will crush what you hold dear, for lack of sight and sense. This just exists, it is proof that reason does not rule the world. It is a reminder to count your blessings, and guard yourself well against accidental discovery by the unkind spirits that haunt every corner of human space. That your own reason brought into harmony with this life, that is the gift. That is maximum use of this life, to be in harmony with the gift of the world, taking the bad with the good, and navigating all of this as well as we can.”
The Author’s reply to this coincidence of naming.
“I knew that any story that enjoys the quality of warrior women, of independence and means, living their lives, would invite controversy. But it would be absurd to obey remote rules such as these, my culture is just as old and deep, and honors women’s right to serve their people, and choose who to marry or part from, and own their own property, and decide their own fates. That is literally what I’ve believed and sworn honor to since I was a teenager and began thinking about such things, as how the world should be. Some things are best only as stories, most things, really, are best only as stories. To be sure, violence is close to the skin like a rash for people, or they would not dwell on its stories all day and night. The easy money, as they would say in my life. To write the conflict, is the money, and where the attention goes. Why I am called to write another kind of story – and why is the aftermath of war, disagreeable to the craving of ‘action’? Oh boohoo piles of bones is not enough, let it upset our thoughts and senses too! Dancing skeleton isn’t delightful, you like the dull, inanimate ones better? You want a skull on a flag, literally no one is bothered. But I don’t live that way, I don’t live by even that much of a flag. I want you to visit another world with me, where nothing is familiar, and see how you react. What is a person, even an observing conscience, in a place where nothing is familiar? Can you handle it? Can you see something else, in the unfamiliar, that you recognize?”
It’s just a countdown now to seeing the first copies of the hardbound editions of this, any day now! Thrilling.
9/18/26
Ok the proofs on the hardcovers are here! It’s so wild to finally see the finished results after all this time! Probably won’t do this size again, A5 next time maybe, they’re a little large, and the cover art is too dark but otherwise not bad at all for a proof. Since these are POD, they are available from online booksellers and all fine local bookstores, and you pretty much have two choices. For any of the titles, you will either be paying the author, or the bookstore. I don’t mind either way, I’d prefer you support a charming little bookstore over a robot interface. If you order here, direct from Hattree Books, the author makes around $12 for each title and the rest goes to the printers, and if you order from a bookstore, the store makes around $7, and the author makes $3 for each hardback, and $1 for the paperback complete trilogy. Just to keep the retail prices sane. I hope this transparency is useful. This seems fine to us, didn’t have anything better to do for the last few years, we just want to make it available to read at this point.
- The Editor
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