(Psst! If you want to REALLY know about my books in super-secret ways I don’t share publicly, click here to join my email list. I promise it’s not lame like other authors’ lists sometimes are. Seriously. Mine has unicorns.)
I write pretty much everything. I’ve done sci-fi, thriller, action, mystery, mindfucks, young adult, horror, fantasy, steampunk … even comedy and higher-brow stuff you might call “literature” while holding your pinky finger out. I also mix and match genres: Gore Point, for instance, is a horror mystery. (I call it “Backdraft with demons.”)
Variety is great (I think so, at least), but it comes with challenges. Because my catalog is so large and so varied, it’s hard for most new readers to decide which book to read first … or which to read next.
And so, to solve that problem, I figured I’d show you through the collection like a wordsmith tour guide. Join me, will you?
Let’s start with my reading order.
Easy. I don’t have an ideal “reading order” for my books. Next!
Seriously, though, you can read my books in almost any order and it won’t matter. Because I write in so many genres, it’s more relevant to match your mood to the book … and lucky you, I offer a lot of different moods. If you feel like being scared, I’ve got horror. If you feel like being spirited away into fantasy, I’ve got that, too. If you’re in the mood for a puzzle, you’ll want something layered and complex like my noir murder-mystery Pretty Killer. It’s up to you.
The one thing I will say is that within a given story world, I do have a recommended reading order: the order in which I wrote them, not chronological order. If you read them that way, you’ll discover things the same way I discovered them (I never know what’s going to happen in advance. It’s unknown for me, too!). I’ll give those suggested orders below.
Let’s begin with my most popular series:
Fat Vampire
GENRE: Horror, Humor
Fat Vampire was my second book, with only the semi-autobiographical standalone novel The Bialy Pimps before it. It’s a story about an underdog who’s not considered “perfect enough” for his new society. Fat Vampire was also adapted into a SyFy Network TV show called Reginald the Vampire, starring Jacob Batalon, who played Ned Leeds (“the guy in the chair”) in the Spider-Man movies.
I suggest reading the six “core series” Fat Vampire books first, starting with the one pictured above, and only THEN reading the four-book side series that begins with The Vampire Maurice. The Vampire Maurice series happens during the events of the first Fat Vampire book, but I wrote it after the core series was complete, so it’s full of events that will be more satisfying to read if you’ve read Fat Vampire first. There’s also a prequel in the world called Game of Fangs. It’s a prequel, but I suggest reading it last because I wrote it last.
So basically, I personally would choose to read the 11 Fat Vampire world books in this order:
- Fat Vampire 1
- Fat Vampire 2: Tastes Like Chicken
- Fat Vampire 3: All You Can Eat
- Fat Vampire 4: Harder Better Fatter Stronger
- Fat Vampire 5: Fatpocalypse
- Fat Vampire 6: Survival of the Fattest
- The Vampire Maurice
- Anarchy and Blood (The Vampire Maurice book 2)
- Vampires in the White City (The Vampire Maurice book 3)
- Fangs and Fame (The Vampire Maurice book 4)
- Game of Fangs (the prequel to Fat Vampire)
Gore Point
GENRE: Horror, Mystery
Gore Point is one of my new favorites. It’s about a firefighter-like brigade of demon-fighters who guard a “thin spot” between our world and Hell, slaughtering the demons that emerge from rifts that keep forming. They work in two parts: Legions, who fight the spawn, and Stitchers, who close the rifts … until new ones inevitably open. The system has worked fine for decades, but now it looks like maybe Hell has been sandbagging, with the help of a saboteur.
I think of Gore Point as the movie Backdraft with demons.
Order:
- Gore Point
- City of Fire (Gore Point book 2)
- [Still unnamed, releasing 2025) (Gore Point book 3)
- Mine Zero (in-world novella)
- Moloch (in-world novella)
- Suicide Flats (stand-alone in the world)
Unicorn Western
GENRE: Fantasy, Western, Humor, Young Adult Safe for all ages, but mostly read by adults
Ah, Sean’s and my most gonzo series and my biggest legacy book! It’s what it sounds like: a gunslinger rides a talking unicorn who’s also a total asshole. UW is one of the few books that’s okay for kids to read. Sean and I wrote it when our kids were in their tweens, and they all read it. There’s no swearing and only light, Western-style violence.
The premise is silly, but by the end the scope is enormous. People compare the complete saga to The Dark Tower, with one reviewer adding “… if Stephen King had been on acid when he wrote it.” There are 9 short books in the core series (sometimes bundled into “Full Saga” that you see above, plus a prequel called Unicorn Genesis. A side book called Unicorn Heathens is coming in 2025, followed by Unicorn Apocalypse, which chronicles events that come after Unicorn Western.
As before, I’d recommend reading in the order I wrote them:
- Unicorn Western 1-9 (available as individual books OR the “Full Saga” omnibus)
- Unicorn Genesis
- Unicorn Heathens (available 2025)
- Unicorn Apocalypse (available eventually)
Robot Proletariat
GENRE: Sci-Fi
Robot Proletariat is a super fun sci-fi read about robots who learn sentience and then battle other factions of robots who want to overthrow the human world. It’s a 5-book series written in serial format — which is incidental; you’ll get used to it.
I think of the first book as “Downton Abbey with Robots.” It quickly becomes much bigger than that in book 2 and beyond.
In order, the books are:
- Robot Proletariat
- The Infinite Loop (Robot Proletariat book 2)
- The Hard Reset (Robot Proletariat book 3)
- Cascade Failure (Robot Proletariat book 4)
- Reboot (Robot Proletariat book 5)
- En3my (in-world standalone)
- Adapted Memory (in-world novella)
Dead City
GENRE: Biological Thriller, Horror
Dead City looks like a zombie series, but it’s not — not really. It’s more accurately a biological thriller. I have a genetics degree, so I found I couldn’t write zombies in a normal way because “the normal way” makes zero scientific sense. Dead City instead follows a zombie-making virus and a drug that keeps zombieism at bay … until the drug stops working and the fragile mixed society built around it (humans and undead, living together) falls into bloody chaos.
It’s about as “realistic” as zombies are going to get. I even talked to friends of mine who are scientists and pharmacologists to get the details right.
Suggested order:
- Dead City
- Dead Nation (Dead City book 2)
- Dead Planet (Dead City book 3)
- Empty Nest (in-world novella)
- Dead Zero (in-world prequel)
The Beam
GENRE: Sci-Fi
Oh, the epicness! There are five “seasons” of The Beam (just think of them as “books”), and they’re some of the most in-depth, thoughtful, built-out stuff in my catalog. It’s about the rise of warring factions in a future world dominated by an omniscient (and increasingly self-aware) AI network.
This is many readers’ favorite series by far … and, fun note: We wrote it before AI became mainstream. Funny how much we’re getting right already.
There are a few side books in the Beam world, but the weirdest is Plugged: a fictional book that’s written as if it were nonfiction, attributed to an author we made up named Sterling Gibson. “Sterling Gibson” is actually me and my frequent co-author Sean Platt, but he’s also a character in later seasons of The Beam. He’s basically Malcolm Gladwell. So if you can imagine a future Malcolm Gladwell writing about his world in a Malcolm Gladwell sort of way, that’s what this book is. Plugged explains the world of The Beam, how it was made, and what it means for our characters’ society.
There’s also a prequel in the same world called Future Proof, as well as possibly my favorite series of all: The Future of Sex. FOS tells the story of a chosen-one-type prodigy named Chloe Shaw who becomes extremely important in the later core-series books. This series is a hard-R and you don’t NEED to read it if you’re not into that, but again: it’s my favorite of all my series.
As always, I like the idea of reading in the order I wrote the books because that way each read is informed by what I knew at the time. That order is:
- The Beam: Season One
- Plugged
- The Beam: Season Two
- The Beam: Season Three
- The Future of Sex
- The Beam: Season Four
- Future Proof
- The Beam: Season Five
(I know that order is weird. You absolutely CAN just read the core series or read in a different order, but the above is probably ideal if you’re asking and want the most thorough Beam experience. We wrote the outliers in between complete seasons, so each later book is informed by the ones before.)
The Dream Engine
GENRE: Fantasy, Steampunk, Young Adult Safe for all ages, but mostly read by adults
Like Unicorn Western,The Dream Engine is kid-safe but has mostly been read by adults. Sean and I wrote it when our kids were a few years older than they were for UW, and it’s meant to be a teen sort of book.
We wrote The Dream Engine as part of a writing experiment: a 2014 Kickstarter campaign called Fiction Unboxedwherein we promised to write the first book live, in 30 days, starting from nothing, while a thousand people watched us do it. It’s about a fantasy world in which dreams are harvested to make what the people need … with terrible consequences.
Oh, and you should SEE how big the world gets by the final book!
rder:
- The Dream Engine
- The Nightmare Factory (The Dream Engine, book 2)
- The Ruby Room (The Dream Engine, book 3)
- The Pandora Core (The Dream Engine, book 4)
- The Engine Convergence (The Dream Engine, book 5)
- The Tinkerer’s Mainspring (in-world prequel)
Invasion
Invasion began as a can’t-put-it-down action series about an alien invasion, but it quickly got all “Truant” and developed into an epic, multi-layered story that I’d compare in scope and feel to Battlestar Galactica — what with all the philosophical/political/social ramifications … and the way the entire world inverts and plays havoc with time and memory by the end.
There’s definitely more than meets the eye with Invasion. People yelled at us because they couldn’t stop reading the first few books and ended up staying awake all night devouring them, but then we got all deep by the seventh book, and that made them question everything because it’s so different from the way the series began. Invasion is EXTREMELY representative of what Sean and I do in a long series: We start out straightforward, then bend all of reality by the finale. (Oh, and by the way, the cover above says “Avery Blake,” but that’s a pen name. Sean was my co-author on everything here that I didn’t write solo, including Invasion.)
There are seven books in the core series, three books in an in-world side series (one that takes place in my town of Austin, that’s a ton of fun, and for some weird-ass reason features “Beaver Nuggets” from the famous Texas gas station chain Buc-ee’s), and then a prequel.
Here’s the order I’d suggest:
- Invasion
- Contact (Invasion book 2)
- Colonization (Invasion book 3)
- Annihilation (Invasion book 4)
- Judgment (Invasion book 5)
- Extinction (Invasion book 6)
- Resurrection (Invasion book 7)
- Save the City
- Save the Girl (Save the City book 2)
- Save the World (Save the City book 2)
- Longshot (in-world prequel)
The Tomorrow Gene
This fun sci-fi series began with this premise: A nefarious company begins selling clones of celebrities as sex slaves. It became more than that, of course, with mind-bending consequences.
There are three books in the core series, but this one is interesting in that my favorite book in the world is actually the prequel, called Null Identity. I just loved writing that one. It’s full of misdirection and mindfucks, and I dig shit like that.
Here’s the order:
- The Tomorrow Gene
- The Eden Experiment (The Tomorrow Gene book 2)
- The Tomorrow Clone (The Tomorrow Gene book 3)
- Null Identity (in-world prequel)
Stand-Alone Novels
Stand-alones are my favorite books to write these days. I’m a completist; I like to begin and then end without leaving dangling loose ends to hopefully follow up on later, which is what any series requires. I love these books because they’re self-contained. Here’s what I’ve got:
- Winter Break – A YA thriller that I wrote for my 16-year-old daughter. It’s one hell of a thrill ride, full of snow and cold and desolate isolation … while murder is afoot.
- The Bialy Pimps– My first book: a rollicking and ridiculous story that you could think of as “Clerks in a bagel deli.”
- Pattern Black – A mindbender about a man in a future prison, with hooks in both his body and memory.
- Pretty Killer – A noir revenge mystery centered on a locked-in dinner party: Truant and Platt do Agatha Christie.
- Cursed – Technically a series of 9 novellas in one omnibus, about a cursed shapeshifter. This is our most serious, most authentically horror book, with almost none of our trademark humor.
- Namaste – A pure action thriller about a deadly monk on a leveling-up quest for vengeance that, honestly, sort of feels like a video game (bigger boss, bigger boss, bigger boss …)
- The Target – A twisty, turny, Fight-Club-style story about a pair of brother assassins in an all-guns-out fight to kill their target before other assassins get him first.
- La Fleur de Blanc – This one’s genre is tritely called “women’s fiction,” but you can think of it as a backstabbing tale of a woman fighting for her dream amongst the bitchy residents of a highfalutin California shopping plaza. (I kind of hate the droll nature of that description, so you’ll just have to trust me: La Fleur is super fun. One of my wife’s favorites.)
- Axis of Aaron – Sean and I wrote this one based solely on a pre-existing cover and a mandate to write something that was “literary as fuck.” It’s a twisty mindjob about a man lost inside his own memories.
- Devil May Care – This is probably my favorite standalone. It’s technically a literary novel, but we did some seriously crazy stuff with timelines and perception. I also love the language itself in this one: the way we put the words together.
- Screenplay – A Black Mirror-esque tale of a woman being led through increasingly disturbing twists and turns as part of the ultimate techno-scam.
- The Island – Hoo boy. Only read this one if you just love my work and want something weird. I wrote The Islandas an experiment to see what happened if I started with a situation (two immortal kings stranded together in a place even they don’t understand) but had no plot at all. I love the way it turned out, but be ready for a nutty ride if you pick this one up!
- Burnout – After being replaced by an automated truck, an ingenious “unacknowledged” mechanic goes all hillbilly-justice on those who wronged him.
- Sick and Wired – A rich and lonely man buys a nurse robot to care for his dying mother … then finds himself developing feelings for her as backstabbing relatives fight for the family fortune.
- Everyone Gets Divorced – A pure comedy that tells the story of a divorce told How I Met Your Mother style. I know I wrote it, but I laugh aloud whenever I revisit it.
- Greens – A comedy about a clever shop worker who decides to sell weed that isn’t actually weed, because true marketing is in the sizzle.
- Decoy Wallet – One of my dad’s favorites, based on my friend Dave and his paranoia. Dad says it reminds him of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Hopefully now you know where to begin, or what to read next. And remember, although all of the links above are to MY direct bookstore (where the books are cheaper), you can also find the above books in all the normal places: [Amazon| B&N | Apple | Kobo | Google Play]
If you have questions or would like a personal recommendation, just reply to this and ask!
Thanks for being a reader!