E.S. Raye

Wow. Yeah. That’s a mouthful. But as I look over the original projects I’ve got coming out over the next few months, as well as the projects I’m currently working on, this is undeniably true. I really love writing genre mashups that have a certain (if varying) historical element.

Here’s what I mean by that.

“The Stuff Legends are Made of”

The first of my projects coming to fruition this year is my short story “The Stuff Legends are Made of,” which will appear in RARE: A Dark Anthology of Unusual Secrets on April 22, 2025.

This story is a dark and gritty noir, complete with private detectives (of a sort), gangsters, hitmen, lies, and a “rain” soaked city. It all feels very 1940s, and I listened to a lot of jazz and pre-war music as I wrote it. I also watched a bunch of old noir movies to get the setting and tropes right.

But it’s also a sci-fi with ray guns and robot policemen and a galaxy on the brink of war. Oh, and that aforementioned city is at the bottom of a methane sea.

Gas Giant Gambit

If you aren’t aware my novel coming out in September 2025 is a space-western, you either haven’t been paying attention, or you’re new here (in which case, welcome!).

I wanted to create a familiar western story, like the kinds John Wayne or Clint Eastwood would have starred it. So, I watched tons of old westerns, from Shane, to The Magnificent Seven, The Man with No Name Trilogy, High Noon, and tons more. I also consumed tons of research on the American Civil War and the time period immediately before it, both in the form of books and documentaries (Ken Burns was very helpful).

And then I took all those tropes and history, and replaced the deserts of the American southwest with the empty expanses of space. Al while listening to spaghetti western soundtracks.

Shallow Trenches, Open Skies

The next novel I’m working on, Shallow Trenches, Open Skies, is a World War I tale with science fiction thrown into the mix in the form of a UFO shot down by the Red Baron.

For STOS, I’ve had to do tons of research on World War I, especially Belgium and specifically Ypres. This was one of the most brutal times and places during the Great War, and now I’m going to drop an original character into the fray, along with technology he doesn’t understand and an extraterrestrial threat on top of the destruction he’s already experiencing.

Uncanny Valley

This project has been stalled as we continue to search for funding (and perhaps give it a rewrite), but my original feature film screenplay Uncanny Valley is a scifi/horror.

“But where’s the historical bent?” I hear you asking.

The main characters are archeologists, and the long-gone people they are studying left them a warning. I don’t want to give too much away in the event this movie does get made, so suffice it to say, there are historical and pre-historical shenanigans throughout!

The Cobalt Fist

And finally, The Cobalt Fist, my long gestating seven book series that I will write someday (and that STOS is a sort of prequel to), is a mashup of:

Superhero, science fiction, dark fantasy, cosmic horror, occult, and, of course, alternate World War II history.

Inspired by things like Hellboy, The X Files, and my lifelong hyper-fixation on World War II history, I hope this story will one day be my magnum opus. An ode to historically inspired genre mashups!

—

My goal is to make writing fiction my full-time job, be it prose or screenwriting, or both. So, I do really want people to read what I create. That may mean I, on occasion, need to write stuff other people like (like, for example, the feature film and the web series I’ve been contracted to write thanks to the right eyes seeing Uncanny Valley). But I’m never going to have as much fun writing as I do when I combine two or more genres (let’s be honest, when I combine sci-fi with another or more genres) and sprinkle it with history.

So, if you’re down for that sort of thing (and I can’t possibly be alone), stick around. I think I’ve got some ideas you might like.