Mary Is Back Again for the First Time

My four-book Mary of the Aether series has had such a long, strange publication history, it's amazing that anyone has been able to find and read it. I wrote the first draft of the first book way back in 2009. In fact, I wrote it so long ago that it was actually technologically outdated. The characters were using flip phones. I mean, other than drug dealers, who uses a flip phone in 2018?

I sold the first book to an indie publisher called Whiskey Creek Press in 2011 and it hit the market in July 2012. Getting that first big box of books was a great feeling, even if I was concerned about the low-quality paper that caused the paperbacks to crumble into oblivion after the very first reading. In the summer if 2013, Mary of the Aether was included on a recommended reading list for Arkansas teachers and received a bunch of free publicity at a regional common core workshop. This resulted in me doing a bunch of creative writing workshops and book readings at schools and libraries.

In the meantime, I churned my way through the entire series, writing three sequels and bringing the series to a dramatic conclusion with Mary of Cosmos. Just as the fourth book reached its publication date, Whiskey Creek Press announced that they were folding up shop and selling their catalog to a company called Start Media. Only select authors were offered contracts by Start, myself included. I made a whopping $200 on the deal. Fortunately, I invested that $200 in an exciting multilevel marketing opportunity and it paid for my fleet of tricked-out Honda Accords.

Just kidding. I did take the $200, as did many (but not all) authors from Whiskey Creek Press. Then the awful silence of God descended upon the earth. Start Media acquired the catalog of books, put out their own versions, and that was it. They didn't do much in the way of publicity. Oddly, they actually introduced some formatting problems to Mary of the Aether, which already had a few typos and formatting problems from Whiskey Creek Press.

Fun times.

Eventually, things got a little bit exciting. Simon & Schuster, the big-time publishing house, bought Start Publishing, which meant my Mary of the Aether series was available on the Simon & Schuster website (ebook only). This should have been a big deal, but sales were as close to negligible as possible without being nil. Also, there was this weird thing that happened where the first three books of my series were listed on one webpage (out of order) while the fourth book was listed on a different webpage. Despite numerous emails, I was never able to get anyone at Simon & Schuster to fix this problem.

Funner times.

This year, I finally reacquired the rights to the whole darn series and decided to self-publish. This gave me a chance to go back through the manuscripts and tidy things up a bit. I corrected the typos and formatting problems introduced back in the day. I streamlined some clunky prose in a few places, added a few small scenes that I felt were lacking, and turned those outdated flip phones into modern smartphones.

Ironically, self-publishing is probably the best thing that has ever happened to the series. Sales for the new and improved self-published version of Mary of Aether are better than they have been in years. The first volume, in particular, is on its way to becoming my second most consistent seller, after Children of the Mechanism.

Things are looking up for good ol' Mary Lanham and her buddies the Devourers.

After finishing her work on Mary of Cosmos, my first editor raved about the series. In one of her final emails to me, she wrote the following:

I have to tell you, I have LOVED working on this series. It is one of my absolute favorites! I could definitely see this series doing well if it just catches on like it should!

Other than the initial interest back in the summer of 2013, maybe it finally has a real chance. People are reading it. If you haven't given the series a chance, let me entice you to do so now with the following review comments for the series:

"Jeffery Aaron Miller once again uses his unique knack for writing about other worlds to draw you in and to have you totally engaged in the story. Jeffery is a wonderful writer who can take you to a fantasy world yet still keep you in touch with the real world and its own conflicts. Mr. Miller just has the knack or ability to create these other worlds that are mixed with our own world, and yet the issues of growing up in this world, poverty, and unpopularity, are intertwined with the lofty goals of the other world. There is so much in his storytelling to admire and to recognize for the youth of today. I find his writing and storytelling abilities to be fascinating."     

--Readers' Favorite.

"I found this book to be absolutely brilliant! After the first couple of pages it really picked up, and I could hardly put the book down as I felt like I, myself, was in the book alongside Mary!"  

--Flamingnet Teen Book Reviews

"The story was fresh, the plot nicely paced, and the characters unforgettable!" 

--BTS Book Reviews

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, now's your chance to check out the series. Will it be among the best experiences you've ever had in your entire life? I can't say for sure, but why don't we find out? Here is everything you've been waiting for. 

Terrorizing Real Places with Clowns and Mayhem

I have a tendency to take real-life locations, particularly places I've lived in or visited, and insert them into my works of fiction. I usually take substantial liberties with these locations, playing with the geography and timeline. I enjoy this perhaps more than I should. Let's take a look at a few real-life locations that I've inserted into my novels and discover the terrible things I've done to them.

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Shadows of Tockland

This novel contains three real cities (all of them located in Northwest Arkansas) but moves them into a post-apocalyptic world and fills them with danger, violence, clowns, and plague. Isn't that nice?

Mountainburg

This small town has inspired locations in two of my novels: Shadows of Tockland and Mary of the Aether. In Shadows, it becomes a steam-powered, gas-lighted town on the edge of civilization. When the novel opens, a small traveling circus has come to town, and that's where our protagonist first meets our clown heroes.

In reality, it's a small, quiet town with a strange dinosaur park. It's also home to the Dairy Dream, which inspired the Dinky Dairy in Mary of the Aether.

West Fork

In Shadows of Tockland, West Fork is a city of strange hat-wearing, plague-ridden hillbillies. In real life, it a town of about 2,000 people that is chiefly known for Riverside Park, where you can dive off bluffs and splash around in the White River.

Fayetteville

In Shadows of Tockland, Fayetteville has been transformed by plague and war into a walled fortress city trying desperately to keep the sickness of the world at bay. The name has been reduced to Fayette, and the people have become hostile to everyone. In real life, Fayetteville is almost certainly the greatest city in Arkansas and is the fifth-best place to live in the U.S. Much of the action in the novel takes place in and around Dickson Street, so when the plague hits, watch out for Dickson Street, people. It's doomed!

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The Ribbon Tree

Bartlesville, Oklahoma

This small Oklahoma town is where I grew up and went to high school. I have strong memories of this place in the years 1987-1991. It has changed a bit since then, with new roads being built and some old businesses disappearing from the face of the earth. The version of it in the novel has had its geography messed with. Tuxedo Trailer Park, the setting of the story, is a fiction. It doesn't really exist, though it is based on a much smaller trailer park where a friend of mine lived. I've also placed a strange alien power in its midst and set it loose to ruin lives, so that's fun.

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The Vale of Ghosts

Siliven

Since this is a fantasy novel set in a completely different world, you might be surprised to discover that one of the primary locations in the story is based on a real place that I once visited. Siliven is a smallish town designed and built in a grid, where the north-to-south streets are numbered neatly from One to Ten. In the very center of the town, there's a large open plaza that serves as a meeting place. It's where a lot of significant events occur in the book series, and the dominant building there is the local church.

Believe it or not, Siliven is based on the city of La Plata, Argentina. Although La Plata is vastly larger than Siliven, it's layout is the same general idea. As you can see in the photo below, the streets of La Plata were designed and built in a grid. At the heart of the city, there's a large plaza which is dominated by the Cathedral of La Plata. If you took La Plata and shrunk it down significantly and moved it into a vague fantasy setting, you'd get Siliven.

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West Fork is the scene is a brutal struggle with plague-ridden hillbillies. Fayetteville (Fayette) is the sight of a fierce gun battle involving a clown troupe, an army, another army, and a mob of maniacs. Bartlesville is invaded by weird ribbon-like creatures that stir up all kinds of evil, grief, and hatred. Siliven (La Plata) is haunted by ghosts and eventually terrorized by a weird cave-dwelling monster.

See how fun it is?

The Positive Power of Ghosts

So in the last few months, I've gone through a bit of a change for the better. Specifically, my outlook on life has become more positive as I have dragged myself out of the slime of despondency and disillusionment. That sounds vague, but suffice it to say that I had found myself in a rather dark head space for a few years. Since shortly after the beginning of 2015, I have been revitalized in almost every way: in hope, in faith, in outlook, in self-confidence.

Now, this has led to a time of deep reflection about the kinds of stories I've written. The simple fact is that my writing had become increasingly bleak. From the lighthearted Mary of the Aether, I worked my way to the much darker, more violent, but still ultimately hopeful Shadows of Tockland. From there, I descended into the bleak despair of Children of the Mechanism, which contained some of my most gruesome scenes. And finally I wound up in the savagely hopeless wasteland of Fading Man.

It was not a healthy trajectory.

Right before the sudden rediscovery of a positive outlook on life, I wrote a paranormal fantasy novel called The Vale of Ghosts. It was filled with hopeless gloom and harrowing scenes. Honestly, I didn't know to do with it, and so it sat, complete and ready to go, in a folder on my hard drive.

Well, I finally went back and did some work on it. I didn't want to gut the novel or remove its teeth, but I did want to inject it with glimmers of hope and faith and maybe clip out some of the more indulgently bleak passages.

Having done so, I am now self-publishing that novel. It is the first volume of a planned multi-volume fantasy series called The Archaust Saga. I have no idea what readers will make of it, but I think the rewrite salvaged it. It still contains some truly harrowing scenes, and it still wrestles with despair, but it is not the same story that I wrote last year. It is better in every way.

Anyway, you can read the first chapter at my website, if you'd like. Just click the book cover. The opening chapter is pretty intense.