Sibs is the only one of my forty-plus novels with a strong erotic element.  I usually avoid sex scenes. (Yeah, I hear you: Write what you know, Wilson.) But really, they offer too much potential for purple prose.  And in too many cases I think they’re unnecessary.

But they were necessary in Sibs. It’s a novel about sexual possession and wouldn’t have worked without them. The villain is a voluptuary and sex is what he’s after. So I had to show rather than simply hint. The result is a mixture of horror and police procedural, with erotica fueling the plot.

The seeds of Sibs were planted decades before its publication when I was writing and rewriting a short story about a unique form of sexual domination.  When I finally got it right, Weird Tales published it as “Menage a Trois” (later reprinted in the first Hot Blood anthology).

But all along I’d been thinking about another variant on the story, and when I devised the final twist, I had to drop everything and write it.  I was in the middle of Reprisal but I put it aside and sat down and wrote Sibs in seven weeks (as a part-time writer). I was doing 50 pages a day sometimes. Like taking dictation.  It’s a wonderful experience every writer should have. It consumed me.  That fire is reflected in the pace of the book. Sibs has, perhaps, some shortcomings in that hellbent-for-leather pace, but I didn’t want go back and tinker with it. Something special there, the way it gushed from me.  I can’t say it’s a terribly nuanced novel, but it’s one of my favorites for the shear joy of being able to rap that thing out. It grabs you by the throat and does not let go.

The original editions contained 4 illustrations that are integral to the story and are included in the ebook.

For those interested in interstory connections, Sibs has a number of (admittedly tenuous) links to my Secret History of the World: Jack uses Dr. Gates’ house as part of a fix in Legacies; In All the Rage, Luc Monnet bids on wine offered by the Gates estate; the Gati family in Sibs is featured in “Menage a Trois” where a Detective Burke plays a part in the framing sections, just as he does in “The Cleaning Machine,” which happens to be one of the Seven Infernals.

The ebook sells for $2.99 here.

Have you heard of The Fifth Harmonic?  No surprise if you haven’t.  It’s the most personal novel I’ve written, the hardest to classify, and one of my best, I think.  It’s been called a New Age thriller, and that’s pretty close.  A mystical Mayan mystery woman is paired with a hardshell skeptic (like me) with terminal cancer (not like me), involved in exotic settings, strange legends, a romance, and really good sex (or so women readers have told me).  It supposes that a few New Age concepts are true.  (Don’t let that put you off – I don’t buy them either, but they work for the story.) I drew on the experiences of a trip into MesoAmerica and began fabricating. It virtually wrote itself.  Maybe because it was so personal.

The inspiration came from an acquaintance (let’s call him Sal).  He found a lump in his neck.  Turned out he had a squamous cell carcinoma on his tongue.  They cut out the tumor, removed lymph nodes and some muscle from his neck, and radiated him.

The result: Sal can talk fine but the surgery left him with a wry neck and the radiation did a number on his salivary glands, leaving him with a perpetually dry mouth.  He has to keep a water bottle nearby at all times, but otherwise his life goes on.

It could have been so much worse.

What if the tumor had been more advanced and more aggressive?  He might have had to have his larynx removed (which means he’d be talking through a squawk box or burping his words) along with part of his jaw and most of his tongue.  The more intense radiation would leave him with no saliva, and no taste buds as well.

Then I thought: What if that were me?  As far as I’m concerned, that’s not living.  I’d rather be dead.  But before I died I’d explore every other possible means of a cure.

And that’s how The Fifth Harmonic came to be.  I knew it would be a tough sell but it was something I simply had to write.  Turned out I couldn’t find a New York publisher for it.  (They all said they had no idea how to market it.)  It wound up with a small New Age house and remains largely unknown.  The hardcover is out of print, and the paperback is years off.  The publisher’s ebook edition remains available.  Go here.  (Again, I apologize about the price – not my doing.)

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