Non-fiction Author Branches Into Fantasy

MONTROSE, Calif. - May 19, 2015 - PRLog -- Kevin A. Straight (36), best known for blogging about literature and history and for his monograph Freight Forwarding Cost Estimation: An Analogy Based Approach (2014) has broken a new trail, self-publishing The Phylactery, a contemporary fantasy short story.

"I've actually been writing fiction, including fantasy, since 4th grade," explains Mr. Straight, "I thought it was probably time some of it saw the light of day."

When asked why he chose a to self-publish instead of following a more traditional route, he replied, "I think soon most short fiction, especially genre fiction, is going to be self published.  There are relatively few magazines left that handle speculative fiction, and most of them are trying to position themselves in a more literary way.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it means that there aren't really any good intermediaries for pulp sci-fi and fantasy.  If you want to sell it, you're better off selling directly to the readers.  Ultimately, I think disintermediation will be a good thing, because readers will have better access and writers will get to keep more of the value from the product."

The Phylactery is set in a slightly fictionalized Riverside, CA in the present day and follows the misadventures of an evil wizard trying to salvage an evil scheme in which everything seems to be going wrong.  It is available world-wide in the Amazon Kindle Store.

Kevin A. Straight is currently writing a non-fiction book, 14/2:  A History of Outside Scholarship and the Fourteenth Amendment, which will be published by Creative Minority Productions in 2017.

URL for the book:   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XV8NAAK

Kevin A. Straight's website/blog:  http://www.kevinastraight.com