Cover Stories: HIS SELACHIAN MAJESTY REQUESTS
Greetings, genre fiction fans. Welcome to Cover Stories in which an author shares a book, what’s on its cover, a hint of what’s inside and some insider info on their creation.
So, what’s the book of the day?
HIS SELACHIAN MAJESTY REQUESTS
What’s on the cover?
If you’re a fan of the Rolling Stones, then you’ll recognize the title immediately — it’s a riff on their 1967 album THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST. I handed the cover of that album to my cover artist Thomas Nackid, and told him to make it look like that, only with sharks. No, more sharks than that. Sharks, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll!
What’s inside?
| Cam was sailing to rock stardom. He wrote a pop song that hit #24 on the Billboard charts in 1979! But when he drinks his big break away, his father ships him back to Asia to sober up. Now Cam’s marooned on an island in the South China Sea. He has to straighten out, right? There Cam learns that, since his father was once the king, he could claim the island’s ancient title, the Shark Lord … if he learns to sing with the sharks. When he does, he discovers that sharks, all the major life in the ocean, are sentient. Sharks remember, repeat their history in their songs, and are intelligent. Supported by a local population yearning for the good old days, encouraged by men who may not be his friends, Cam becomes King and the Shark Lord of Singii. Everything goes his way now, the records topping the charts, the economy of the region reformed, world religions rethought, as he spearheads the defense of ocean ecology. This makes him some powerful enemies. Sharks in oceans are pussycats, compared with the predators in international politics. But his most dangerous enemy is in his own mirror. Cam’s got a lotta names, and one of them is addict… |
Where’d all that come from?
I wrote 12 novels of Victorian adventure, the Marian Halcombe series. To get my engine out of the 19th century thriller gear, I hopped a generation and wrote about her great-grandson in the 1950s. Whose son is Camlet See, pop star turned king. So it’s all connected on the back end, even though this is a freestanding novel. But I swear this is the last one.
What else should I know?
This is science fiction, a first contact novel. It’s about the power of music, and it’s historical . It couldn’t be set in 2025. But in 1979, a song on the radio could change the world. We dreamed once, that it could. This book is that dream.
What have reviewers/readers said?
About me? A reviewer on Facebook said of my works, “It’s as if Charles Williams wrote for John W. Campbell’s ‘Unknown’ magazine.” And SF Revue has hailed me as one of the genre’s best writers.