Writing
Rune Skelley writes science fiction novels for adults, stories set in worlds very much like consensus reality, but with an insidious twist, worlds where something just out of sight is dangerously askew.
Divided Man Series:
- Book One: Miss Brandymoon’s Device
- Book Two: Tenpenny Zen
- Book Three: Elsewhere’s Twin
Miss Brandymoon’s Device
a novel of sex, nanotech, and a sentient lava lamp
Divided Man: Book One
Get it free at Barnes & Noble.
Prophecy can go fulfill itself.
Fin Tanner takes a certain pride in the spectacle of his gradual self-destruction, until he meets body piercer Rook Brandymoon. She punctures both his eyebrow and his cocoon of isolation. Fin and Rook bond over a joint, a game of chess, and conversation with Fin’s lava lamp, Vesuvius. After one carnal night together, Rook uses Fin to escape her toxic relationship.
But the problem with a romance foretold by fate is that it comes with strings attached. Unbeknownst to Rook, the jewelry she installs in her customers — including Fin — contains black-ops nanotech that makes its wearer vulnerable not only to spying, but to mind control, and worse. The jewelry’s tech has drawn the attention of guerrilla televangelist Brian Shaw, who is bent on leveraging the transceivers to impose his dogma upon the masses. During a telepathic interrogation, the reverend unleashes Fin’s latent mental powers and triggers a meltdown that leaves Fin catatonic. Rook rebuilds him from the inside, cementing their bond.
While Rook tackles the question of why Shaw’s heretical prophecies seem to feature Fin and herself, Fin struggles to halt the invasion of a proselytizing alien collective who utilize the tech-tainted jewelry in their attempts to spread their monstrous beliefs.
Could it be that Fin truly is the Divided Man of Shaw’s prophecy, and Rook his Completer?
The couple’s gritty, darkly humorous adventure leads them from meeting in a tattoo parlor to escaping a mercenary-infested factory; from hiding in an abandoned bomb-shelter to Rook’s imprisonment in a religious broadcasting empire’s luxurious penthouse; from the bizarre, dream-logic landscapes of the characters’ minds to the cavernous interior of the asteroid Gaspra.
Ultimately, all Fin and Rook must do to stay together is save the world. Can they?
Tenpenny Zen
a novel of sex, cults, and an interdimensional henge contraption
Divided Man: Book Two
How does prophecy choose its victims?
Willow Charm knows how to run. She ran away from the military’s paranormal research program, away from the father who made her a test subject. To stay free, she’s learning how to hide.
The Threshold Elsewhere Following is excellent camouflage for Willow, and her secrets. The hippie commune’s leader pushes her to explore her powers and their uncanny connection to technology. Whether she wants to learn, or not.
Cult leader Severin Tenpenny has dwelt for years at the threshold of a source of unimaginable power. He can touch that otherworldly force, but not command it. There is much about Willow that his unnatural knowledge cannot discern, but he sees the potent energy she carries. Sees that with it he could unlock limitless power. The key to controlling that energy is controlling Willow.
Brad Tanner has no idea what he’s getting into when he gives Willow a lift. She’s drawn to him, for reasons both obvious and mysterious. He falls hard for her, too, not realizing he doesn’t even know her real name. Soon he’s got terrible secrets of his own. Brad refuses to be anybody’s bad guy, although it prevents him from being anyone’s hero either. No matter how badly Willow needs one.
Is it time for Willow to run again?
Someday, it will be time for her to disappear.
Elsewhere’s Twin
a novel of sex, doppelgängers, and the Collective Id
Divided Man Book Three
Prophesies don’t end with happily ever after.
Fin and Rook never wanted to be heroes in the first place, so it’s no wonder they did a sloppy job of it. All the same, they thought they’d earned a bit of downtime by averting the enslavement of the entire human race. And, Willow’s return should be the best news imaginable. But it’s hard to fit the pieces back together without cutting yourself on the edges.
It would be easier with fewer distractions. The alien spiders have discovered the prophecy, and disapprove of the reluctance of those called upon to fulfill it. Rook’s demonic inner children remain at large in her mind, with ambitions. Meanwhile, a new adept takes instruction in the attic of Threshold House, offering Severin another chance to assault the Collective Id, while the nanotech body jewelry falls into yet more wrong hands. Every player is trying to upend the board.
To learn the true nature of this shifting game of shadow-selves, Rook and Fin traverse hellish mindscapes and duel bizarre new adversaries alongside familiar ones. Every answer leads to new questions, with the fate of the world hanging as the ultimate riddle.
But Rook and Fin are driven by something far more important.