Issue 2, August 2026
Welcome to my newsletter. My goal is to let you know what I am working on and entertain you in the process. I’ll share my thoughts and opinions and want to hear yours in return. The focus is on writing with occasional forays into the unknown and unknowable.
Here we go…
On Writing:
I hope the above image didn’t startle you. That’s a Garuda staring at you. Creating the Garuda, the aliens of NanoMorphosis, has been one of my most enjoyable challenges. In writing Peace Mission the upcoming sequel to First Contact, I delve deep into their world. If you have read NanoMorphosis: First Contact, you may recall that they were named after the terrifying, winged demigod of the Hindu religion. I wanted them to feel truly alien, not humans in feathers, but similar enough to us to be relatable.
The Garuda race began with a question: What would an intelligent, birdlike species be like if it evolved along a path entirely different from our own? Their bodies would shape their world, much as ours do, but in ways incompatible to us. They squat rather than sit on chairs, walk on taloned feet, and their feathers signal age, role, and identity. Even such familiar places as classrooms had to be reconsidered. Every detail led to another question. How to accommodate bodies that cannot sit in chairs? Who would lead them? How do they raise their children? How would they react to a human in their midst?
Not only would their structures be different, their culture would be as well. The Garuda are governed by a strict caste system. They revere Nature, the Great Mother and Nereids, the mysterious beings whose harmonies affect not only the human mind but space-time itself.
When Daniel Walker enters their world he becomes the alien.
A Topic of Interest:
I recently saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and thoroughly enjoyed it. The film is visually powerful, and its portrayal of war and its violence was not always easy to watch. The same can be said for how the monsters and gods were portrayed. One scene I found particularly disturbing was Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’s crew into pigs. Homer’s epic includes this transformation, but the movie depicts it with a graphic physicality so horrifyingly real, I had to look away.
I noted that the film’s Circe fell short of the character I read about in Madeline Miller’s novel Circe. In her book, Miller retells Greek mythology from Circe’s perspective, presenting her as an isolated and complicated woman struggling to understand her powers and determine her own place among the gods and mortals. In The Odyssey, we learn little about her. The same could be said for all the mythological beings and monsters in the film. Each time I was left wondering who or what they were and where they’d come from. It seems the director’s intent was to reveal only enough for us to know that they are frightening and mysterious.
To my knowledge, there is no single, entirely consistent version of Greek mythology. The stories evolved through generations of oral tradition, and writers from Homer’s time to modern day have interpreted them differently. The overarching themes remain but the details change depending on who is telling the story.
After the movie ended, I was struck by the similarities between Odysseus and Daniel Walker, the central character in my NanoMorphosis series. Both of them undertake an epic hero’s journey in an unfamiliar world, encountering powerful beings they can’t fully understand, and contending with forces beyond their control. The creatures Odysseus meets are mythological, while those Daniel encounters are alien, but they serve a similar purpose—they challenge the hero’s understanding of himself and his place in the universe.
Watching The Odyssey reminded me that an epic journey is not defined by the distance traveled, but by how it changes the traveler; something I can relate to in my own life’s journey.
Breaking News!
You can now order author-signed copies of my novels directly from me. Just go to this page on my website. https://www.mlandersonauthor.com/shop-signed-books/
Thank you for sticking with me this far.