On Jan. 24th, I started the Year of the Dragon by publishing the first four chapters of my long-promised, but oft-delayed and ignored novel Someone Liche You.

Here’s the TV-Guide synopsis. “Hot-shot technical writer Kevin Adderly discovers that the utopian sci-fi future he’s living in is a lie. And the only way he can escape alive is to become his dead girlfriend’s mother. Sort of.”

Someone Liche You is story of the the future fall of a totalitarian government built on technological break troughs brought about by biotronic revolution, where living organisms have become our machines and tools. It is about a young man who falls in love with a woman form the wrong side of the tracks and the extent of the things he has to go through to save her from becoming a mindless drone. There are zombies in it. There are strange cricket-like cleaning robots. There is a subway made of the digestive tract of huge worms. But all is not as it seems. Its like Freaky Friday meets the Matrix meets My Boyfriend’s Back. It’s terrific.

And you can make it better.

Let me explain: I had considered scrapping the novel, pushing it under a drawer and letting it sit forever unread by anyone. It’s not that I’m not proud of it, or that I think it’s bad. It’s just not, you know, perfect.

And the more I sat on it, thinking about how when I finish up Someone Liche You I’d finally be in a place to get serious about the two other novels I’ve been kicking around for the past 2 years, the more I realized that no novels were getting written, and even fewer were getting read.

The reading part, I think, is the important part. For me, the act of writing ideas and telling stories is part of celebrating life. Part of the great thing that makes our people better and smarter and all the more wonderful. Everybody contributes to this, I think. Creative works create better people when the writer is writing those writings, the dancer is dancing those dances, the singer is singing those songs, and the painter is painting those paintings. Whether the fruits of such are published or not, acting on a creative impulse adds fuel to the magic that is this life on earth.

I want you to read my story. Whether you slog through or delight in each new chapter. Enjoy it. Or hate it. Or steal a few good ideas and make them your own. I want you to see something about yourself in my characters. I want you to learn something about me when you read my stories. I want you to learn something about yourself when you react to the plot, or the tricksy grammar. Or whatever.

But none of that can happen until the work is published. And so here we are.

On Jan. 24th, I put up the first four chapters of Someone Liche You on Red Lemonade, the alternative publisher. It has a great commenting system, a fantastic community, and a really nice and modern approach to publishing.

But what’s really great about Red Lemonade is the commenting and annotation system. It lets you add comments, flag areas of text and suggest copy revisions right on the page. Just like you were holding a manuscript in your hands. I want you to read it. While you’re reading it, if you spot something you love, share! If you spot something you hate! Share! If you spot something misspelled (you will) share!

Over the coming weeks, I’m planning on posting the chapters in chronological order until the whole story is up. Head over the Red Lemonade and enjoy Someone Liche You. And thank you.