On 7–8 September 2025, the Kindle version of my Ridley Park novella Sustenance will be available free to everyone on Amazon. (It’s always free if you’re a KindleUnlimited member, but these two days open it up to all readers.)
👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9PTK9N2
So what is Sustenance?
It’s a novella that begins with the dust and grit of rural Iowa – soybean fields, rusted trucks, a small town where everyone knows your name (and your secrets). At first glance, it reads like plainspoken realism, narrated by a local mechanic who insists he’s just a “regular guy.” But then the ground literally shifts. A crash. Figures glimpsed by firelight in the woods. Naked, violet-skinned beings who don’t laugh, don’t sleep, don’t even breathe.
What follows is not your usual alien-invasion story. It’s quieter, stranger, and more unsettling. The encounters with the visitors aren’t about lasers or spaceships – they’re about language, culture, and the limits of human understanding. What happens when concepts like property, law, or even woman and man don’t translate? What does it mean when intimacy itself becomes a site of misunderstanding?
Sustenance is for readers who:
- Gravitate toward literary fiction with a speculative edge rather than straight genre beats
- Appreciate the mix of the banal and the uncanny – the smell of corn dust giving way to the shock of alien otherness
- Are interested in themes of language, power, misunderstanding, and human self-deception
- Enjoy writers like Jeff VanderMeer, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, or Denis Johnson – voices that blur realism, philosophy, and estrangement
This isn’t a story that offers tidy answers. It lingers, provokes, and resists easy moral closure. Think of it less as a sci-fi romp and more as a philosophical fable wrapped in small-town dust and cicada-song.
This version of the book is available in these Kindle storefronts:
United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and India
For more details, visit the Sustenance page.
📚 Grab your free Kindle copy on 7–8 September 2025
Why a Free Copy of Sustenance?
I made this Kindle version available for free to get some reviews. This promotion is all or nothing, so take advantage of the opportunity. If you want to leave a review, please do.
Philosophics 