paranormal

Definitive Edition of “Sound Effect Infinity” to Release May 5

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~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Finally, the fully formed, definitive version of Sound Effect Infinity is ready for flight. Both the paperback and ebook launch on May 5th.

The team at Flat Branch Press has worked hard to get this edition up to snuff for readers everywhere. I love the new cover. Buy the book and you’ll learn the origin of that painting of a red house (if you look inside carefully enough). You’ll also definitely learn more about the famous red house in general – more than you ever thought you would.

If you are a music person, this book is for you. Also, if you know music people, especially those who love rock and electric blues, this is a perfect gift for them. Gifting books is a very important way to combat the anomie we are watching and experiencing in the world today – gifting books and reading them, too, and leaving them lying around the house or your office for others to see.

If you wonder about telepathy, CIA mind control experiments, the magic of improvisational loud guitar, answers to questions about altered states and psychedelic consciousness, especially those that were raised by Terence McKenna and others, this book will be at least intriguing and, hopefully, get you thinking up in the front of the line and around lots of corners. Obviously, if you know folks with those types of bent, give them Sound Effect Infinity for a perfect summer 2026 reading experience.

Also, if you are at least intrigued here, please share this post to your people everywhere. You never know who will thank you for the rest of their lives.

Final Note: The hardcover version of Sound Effect Infinity has been available as a special edition early adopter’s offering since late February of this year. You can read more on that in several posts that I’ve referenced below. It will be discontinued once the paperback and ebook arrive on the scene. A hardcover may return, but never with the preface I wrote in that original special edition or the weird textbook-looking cover.

Sound Effect Infinity: early adopter special edition

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~ David Biddle ~ Leave a comment

Finally, a hardcover, paperbound version of Sound Effect Infinity is available!

For now, you can only get it through Amazon. They’re set up to ship to you on-demand. Yes, you may have pre-ordered a version from my old publisher, but that book never shipped (sad face here). They were having issues with a big media company merger. After waiting three years, it seemed only right to take back my copyrights and go to work independently. That’s how real artists do things anyway. I’m not proud, just old-enough these days to be seriously tired and done with all of the bullshit.

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What I’m Working on in 2024

~ David Biddle ~ 4 Comments

[Note from 2026: A lot happened to prevent the proper publication of Sound Effect Infinity until February 2026, where this note is coming from. Click the links where you see them, and you’ll find the book posted to Amazon as a special edition hardcover offering. If you read below, you’ll see where things were, but not where they are now]

I already feel like a jerk. The only thing that is going to keep me from being selfish and single-minded here in 2024 is if I need surgery or get diagnosed with cancer or just don’t wake up some morning. A solid, working draft of my third novel for The Story Plant is due in December of 2024. The title we’re operating with right now is Notes on the Golden Country. I spent much of 2023 doing research and making notes for this year’s efforts. By late August I had started up on a first draft. As 2024 gets uncaged, I am about 120 pages in to Part I of three parts. I’m going to be a selfish jerk the rest of this year until I’m done. Meaning, I don’t want to come over to your house, go on a long walk, or anything else that will muddle my focus on writing this very odd story.

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Lining Up for Flight: “Sound Effect Infinity” About to Lift Off

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Note: Sad but True, the below did not happen. I write now (April 15, 2026) a few weeks before we finally launch Sound Effect Infinity. Time to buy the book. It took a lot of patience and humility to get it out to you.

My new novel, Sound Effect Infinity, will be released on January 23, 2024 (fingers crossed, because you never know about this world we all live in now). It’s a science fiction story about a near-future world where the mysteries of music and sound and human connection are front and center, along with mind control experiments of the CIA, and questions about the power of psychedelic drugs and paranormal phenomena. I’d say it’s worth the read just to see if the author can carry all that off.

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What Possibility Imagination?

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Most people would love to have any of numerous magical powers. The most logical ones for this day and age are probably telepathy and psycho-time travel (also known as chronovoyance). Remote viewing and telekinesis are up there, too.

Specialized telekinesis talents, like the ability to control clock speeds, have been amply documented during the 20th century in several places around the world, most notably Israel, South Africa, and the French Cola Islands.

By 2010, other powers had been almost fully ruined by superhero movies. We know now that if people assume things are myths or just movie magic–like flying, super strength, invisibility–even time travel and thought control–people lose the ability to figure out whether they can actually do those things. And some people have always been able to whether they know it or not.

The elimination of anything super human from the possibility of imagination is a purely 21st century phenomenon. There is no telling how this is effecting cultural evolution. It may as well be the reason that so many people are caught up in silly (and imbecilic) conspiracy theories. That’s all most people have left.

(In preparation for the publication of my next novel, Sound Effect Infinity)

Genre Rules In Indie Fiction: What Does A Mystery-Thriller-Paranormal-SciFi-Magical Realism Novel Look Like?

~ David Biddle ~ 2 Comments
What would Janis say?
There’s a simple question at the end here for folks who have read Beyond the Will of God.

When I started to seriously write Beyond the Will of God back in 1993, I knew where the book was going to take the reader. I knew that there were questions I’ve always had about altered states of consciousness and the power of music. I had some weird adventures late at night back in the 1970s. Adventures in my mind. Adventures that needed to be turned into an intriguing story.

But I didn’t know how to get the story to where I knew it had to go. [I promise there is no spoiler in this brief essay]. The first scene I wrote is part of the first third of the book. It came out of nowhere for me. I woke up one New Year’s Day and sat down in front of my new Mac II. I wrote one sentence: “His vision has that vibrating feel to it, like his eyes are being massaged with electricity.” 

And then another: “In the distance, through the humidity, ribbons of watery light look like Technicolor shower curtains strung one after the other into 120-degrees of rippling physical distance, overlapping ever so slightly in rainbow flashes, glistening in a sun made for teenagers and movie directors – neon orange, fluorescent lime, metallic blue, purple, aquamarine, magenta and yellow.”  

I had no idea why I wrote this. It was an extremely intense moment, to be honest. I knew the guy was weird and had secrets and that he might be connected to all the conspiracies that had ever been. That was it. 

So Beyond the Will of God got its inception as a mystery. But I knew it was going to go way out there as a story. I wanted it to. I wanted it to be a kind of funhouse fictional ride for Boomers and Boomers’ kids who “get it.” I knew that it had elements of being a thriller as well and that it would also deserve to be called a science fiction story or at least speculative fiction. Once I completed the novel and had sent it off to agents and publishers (2000 – 2002), I learned that some folks thought the thing had signs of paranormal activity. Recently, my good friend and colleague, Paula Silici, has pointed out that you gotta throw in magical realism as a category, too. I like this last description. However, most e-book consolidators — certainly Amazon — don’t give you “magical realism” as a category. 
Here’s the problem, though. Genre classifications are in many ways considered the first and fundamental rule of marketing a piece of fiction. Writers like me who offer up stories that are hybrids or that move from one genre to the next are told we have to lock into something. Check out this article on that issue.
The full title for this story is Beyond the Will of God: A Jill Simpson Mystery. So, obviously, I’ve decided to categorize my interesting tale of intrigue and secrecy as a mystery. But here’s the question: Is it really a good thing to classify this crazy story as a mystery? I think most people like mysteries, and they love kind of following along and puzzling things out. But at the same time this story deals with quite a lot of other stuff on a whole bunch of somewhat odd levels. A book in the mystery section of Borders (poor Borders) isn’t going to appeal to my crazy zombie loving friends; nor is it going to appeal to folks I know who love music and are still hooked on understanding the spiritual dimension of life. 
I’m asking this because I am in the process of designing a print-on-demand paperback edition of Beyond the Will of God. When you design a book, when you invest in a book, the end product is not as plastic or flexible as an e-book. I need the paperbound version of Beyond the Will of God to fit into the right framework and to look like what it is — the typeface, chapter structure, cover design, back cover, etc.
So the question is, what is Beyond the Will of God? 
  • Mystery
  • Thriller
  • Science Fiction
  • Paranormal
  • Magical Realism
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Visionary Fiction
  • Twisted Literary Fiction
What?
Thoughts from anyone are most appreciated. 
To buy Beyond the Will of God: A Jill Simpson Mystery, go here on Amazon.com.