SETH W. JAMES

It gives me great pleasure to announce that my twelfth book, a novel entitled Ethos of Cain, will debut this September, 2023, exclusively on Amazon in ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover formats.  Ethos of Cain is an episodic, near-future, cyberpunk science fiction novel that follows the eponymous character, Cain, through high-stakes contracts as a soldat de fortune, explores his growing romance with Francesca, the Mayor of Venice, and delves into the substance of identity as he struggles to balance the disparate aspects of his life while remaining true to the Ethos of Cain.

The back-cover copy:

“The perfection of cold fusion and CasiDrive propulsion had lifted humanity into the wider solar system—and widened the gulf between the nameless masses and the sovereign-class wealthy.  Into the grey between corporate and criminal walked Cain, a soldat de fortune, who, for the last twenty years, had taken scores and completed contracts for the elites of any world, impenetrable, abstruse, and solitary.

All of that changed one year ago when, after a triste with a former client turned into a romance, Cain’s relationship with Francesca caused him to question how he could walk in her world and survive in his own.  The boundaries of their lives then came crashing to Earth when the man whose syndicate they had destroyed returned for revenge.  The money behind the man, however, concealed a deeper, more sinister plot, one that threatened Francesca’s life and would challenge Cain to walk the razor’s edge between their two worlds while remaining true to the Ethos of Cain.

Ethos of Cain is the first novel in The Cain Series by Seth W. James.”

The inevitable question arises, after penning a story such as Ethos: is this the beginning of a series?  It gives me even greater pleasure to answer, yes, it is the first novel in The Cain Series.

I had not employed the episodic format since Shadow Over Odiome, despite really enjoying the challenges and opportunities it offers; but Ethos of Cain’s story so naturally fit the episodic format that the novel seemed to select it more so than the author.  I can’t say that I will employ it exclusively for the series—we’ll have to see where Cain and Francesca go, the sorts of trouble they get into—but it may become the default format for the Cain books.

Anyway, stay tuned!  I plan to release the cover art as soon as it is available, followed by the release announcement.

Thanks for reading!

Every reader is an artist.  When approaching a novel or series, an old favorite or new recommendation, we of course think of the long hours of artistic labor that the author devoted to crafting the prose, but the artistry does not cease when the author’s pen lifts from the page: writing requires reading, to complete the artistic act, and every reader performs an artistic act while reading.  As writers, we plot plots and craft images, we decide what the characters say and when, and we allude to the works of the past as we create the those of the future: as readers, though, we are the ones who give voice to the characters’ words, perhaps hearing an accent unmentioned in the prose, we clad the characters in our mind’s eye, to suit our interpretation of such a person’s style, and we make the skies weep or the leaves crackle underfoot, as we follow the characters through a world of someone else’s devising and our creation.  As readers, we start with the author’s words and then create our own version of the story in our minds as we read.

Writing and reading are unique in this way, when compared to other artistic media: the audience of a novel actively create as they read, while in other media, the experience is largely passive.  From sculpture to painting to performance of every variety, the audiences are given the exact substance to consider, whether it is an actor’s costume or a singer’s cadence.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  I love movies!  But when watching a movie, I don’t dress the characters or set, I don’t apply tone to their voices, nor expression to their faces.  All is provided.  Certainly audiences can engage with movies, wondering if a character can be trusted or if the heroes will escape in time, the interaction, though, is not artistic but rather it is social.  We consider the characters and the scene, we anticipate or disbelieve, just as we would in our daily lives with those we meet in our travels.  We do not, however, create.

And it is for this reason that overly descriptive prose can hamper a reader’s experience, rather than heighten it.  Novels can, of course, possess a cinematic quality (my Pyrrhic Rendition is quite cinematic), but when an author adopts the provide-everything sensibility of the movies or other media, they deprive the reader of one of the fundamental benefits of reading: the act of creation.  Raymond Chandler said it succinctly—and with a simile, of course—in his The Long Goodbye, when he wrote about the tendency of tough-guy villains to speak only in exit lines, “It’s like playing cards with a deck full of aces: you’ve got everything and you’ve got nothing.”  It’s the same with overly descriptive prose, if, as writers, we describe everything to within an inch of its life, we not only leave no room for the reader, we can soon find ourselves on a three-page jag expounding about wainscoting.

The trick, therefore, is to leave room for the reader to create.  If a description or action is not central to the plot or a character’s arc, consider whether it would be better to leave that detail for the reader to create.  Trace the clothes or the trees, but leave the reader to color them; name the song and the tune, but leave the singing to the reader’s mind; cloud over the skies, but leave the reader to fill up the puddles.  After all, in your mind’s eye, you may see Lauren Bacall as you create your femme fatale, but the reader may prefer Rita Hayworth.  Let the reader cast whom they will and their experience will be all the more satisfying.

Leaving out details can test an author’s willpower; many of us can see the scenes and hear the sounds so vividly in our minds as we write.  I always go back to a passage from the Tao Te Ching, when struggling to decide what to cut:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore benefit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

Write what will benefit the reader and leave out what will be useful for them to create.  Happy reading!

In relaunching my author website and updating my book covers, I had the opportunity to return to my original byline of Seth W. James, restoring the W after many years of absence.  It had been my intention while penning my first novel to include my middle initial, if for no other reason than to help disambiguate which is my first name and which is my last.  Despite the widespread familiarity with actor Brion James, author Henry James, and outlaw Jesse James—to name only three of the many notable Jameses—I’ve been Mr. Seth’d on numerous occasions and, with resignation, have answered to James simply to extricate myself from those apparently unfamiliar with Seth as a first name.  (I really ought to see if Seths Green, Meyers, and Rogen want to start a union; The International Society for the Heightening of Awareness that Seth is a Given Name; bit of a mouthful, really.)

During the last years of the 1990s, however, I was busy writing my first novel—an impenetrable crime noir masterpiece, so dense that even I couldn’t understand it, reading it many years later—when one of former President George Herbert Walker Bush’s sons decided to enter the next election: to disambiguate himself a bit from his father, he went by George W. Bush.  Damn it.  I was leery at that point of including my W, as it might give the wrong impression that I shared more than an initial with a fascist who, even before the election had begun, had indicated his intention to invade Iraq.  After the Supreme Court appointed him President and he stumbled his way to a response to the awful events of September the eleventh—a response that included torture, disinformation, and war—and with those praising or lambasting his crimes, foibles, and general incompetence referring to him often simply as W, I thought it best to quietly remove my middle initial before embarking on my writing carrier.  So, after rewriting my first novel four times—to ensure no one could possibly understand it—I sent it off to literary agents simply bylined with Seth James.

With worse dictators and their enablers having taken the stage since, and with no punishments having been applied the Ws of yesterday—ensuring, as we now see, that no crime is out of consideration and that the terrorists of the Republican Party will stop at nothing to destroy the United States of America—the country seems to have largely forgotten George.  I understand he spends his time painting, now; I would have thought wallpaper would have been more apropos, but nevertheless.  And so, as I gear up for my next literary salvo, focusing on the issues of climate change and inequality, painting my own pictures of the future, wherein Earth’s ability to sustain human life has waned while oppression has waxed, I have reaffixed my W.  A terribly minor point from a terribly minor author, perhaps, but it is my name.  And so, it is with my full name that I’ll see you on the bookstore shelf, I hope, and we’ll wander together through a troubled future.

Seth W. James

My new author website, SethWJames.com, is finally live and I couldn’t be happier with it.  It has been a long road, from identifying the resources I would need, to screening the potential creators who could deliver them, to bringing them together (well, my web designer brought them together, really) in time to launch before the holiday season, with all its advertising fervor.  Launching a new author website takes as much time, energy, and passion as writing a novel.  I hope visitors are as pleased with the end result as I am.  It was hardly a single effort, of course, and so I thought for this, my return to blogging for the new site, that I would give credit where credit is due and thank the many artists who helped to make SethWJames.com a reality.

I am fortunate to be a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America (also doing business as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) and, when I finally mustered the energy to undertake relaunching my author website, I naturally visited the SFWA’s author resource channels and discussion boards to see what I would need and, hopefully, pick up some useful advice.  With a little digging, I found all that I needed and recognized that I would have to enlist a few other creators to achieve what I had envisioned.  For an author website to do what it needs to do, it has to showcase to readers what the author has written, it has to provide news outlets and similar entities with author bios and photos, and it has to facilitate communications: to achieve those ends, therefore, I would need a photographer, a cover designer, and a web designer.

It’s the indispensable and often most embarrassing resource for any author: the author photo.  We all need them, to put on the dust covers of hardbacks, to show website visitors that we are, in fact, human beings (of particular importance to science fiction writers, as there’s always a bit of suspicion where we’re concerned), and for the occasional biographical piece, if you are lucky enough to get one.  For independent authors like me, there is the temptation to use that one selfie you took, which for some reason you’re unshakably proud of, but—and it is a sad truth to face—that selfie is, in fact, awful.  It’s just awful!  And worse than it not presenting you, regardless of your appearance, in the best light possible, it just doesn’t look professional.  If readers come away feeling that you could not be bothered to have a proper photograph taken, why should they believe you’ve invested every last ounce of energy in your writing?  That’s why it’s best to go to a talented photographer who will do the job right.  For me, that artist was Celestina Ando and she did an amazing job.

Celestina has a studio off Bloomfield Ave in Montclair, NJ, just down from the Wellmont Theater, and she was great to work with, very passionate about photography and very present and encouraging to her subject, who in this case was not the most graceful of models.  Celestina is a pro’s pro, creating not only beautiful photographs but also providing expert advice, both to clients and through her lectures.  Just take a look at her website and you’ll see that Celestina can do it all, from classic portraits to edgy chiaroscuro to even adding a bit of suave to the photos of grumpy old novelists.  If you click over to the press kit page on SethWJames.com, you’ll see the full photo shoot there.  I couldn’t be more pleased with what Celestina was able to create.

While photos are important, the first thing readers will see, however, is not the back of the book, but the front, which is why I knew that relaunching my author website and brand would not succeed unless I updated my covers.  The old idiom, you can’t judge a book by its cover, certainly has its place, but where readers are concerned it might as well be flat wrong: a great cover may not guarantee a great book, but a bad cover will guarantee that readers won’t pick it up.  As an author, you have about one second, at most, to interest a passing reader, whether it’s on the bookstore shelf or in the infinite scroll online: if you can convey not only the essentials of genre and plot, but that you invested the time, energy, and—it has to be said—the money into creating a professional, attractive cover, the reader may just pause long enough to read a few words.  At that point, it is entirely up to you, the author; but for the covers, go to Damonza.

Damonza is the leading design company in the cover, formatting, and collateral space and has been for many years.  The praise I saw around the SFWA for Damonza was well earned, as the experience working with them to create my new covers was excellent.  Whether you are a fellow independent author or published by one of the Big Four—and Damonza works with both—it is entirely natural to feel a bit of trepidation about another artist representing your work, which of course is unavoidable where covers are concerned unless you are also an illustrator or digital artist.  The great people at Damonza made the process as pleasant as possible, with constant communication—which is so important, you’re never left wondering, never in the dark—and by asking the right questions about my books and what I had envisioned for their covers.  They provided me with several options and even the potential covers that I did not select were excellent (it was a tough choice, particularly, for Shadow Over Odiome, as both of the finalists met my expectations in different ways).  In the end, I’m thrilled with the covers they’ve created and wound up calling on several of their other services, including interior formatting and the creation of the banner for SethWJames.com.

With all the preparation lined up and underway, I next went in search of the most fundamental artist needed to launch SethWJames.com and that was, of course, the web designer.  Hamiltro is one of the leading website design companies in Manhattan, creating everything from powerhouse ecommerce sites to simple, elegant author websites.  Like the other artists above, Rohesia at hamiltro was very hands-on, very engaged and invested in getting the vision right for SethWJames.com.  We collaborated several times, kicking around ideas and making sure that we were on the same sheet of music, before Rohesia delivered the first, early version of the site, just showcasing functionality.  From there, once the other assets were created, she dived into the style and esthetic of the site, building the wonderful blend of form and function you see today.  The communication was constant, the advice was expert, and the end results speak for themselves.  While anyone can buy a domain and slap together a free WordPress template, it takes a professional to build a site that is lightning-fast, bold, clean, and easy to use.  With hamiltro, that’s just what I got. As I said at the beginning, it has been a long road to finally reach a place where I feel that my work is properly showcased, that the enormous care, effort, and time that I have invested in each of my novels and stories are conveyed in the second-and-a-half a reader might take to glance their way.  It took the efforts of many artists to achieve this goal and to them I say, thank you.  And to the readers who visit SethWJames.com, I hope that you enjoy what all of our hard work has created.  Thanks!