This story collection, Protons and Fleurons: Twenty-Two Elements of Fiction, gestated over a long period of time. “Iron” and “Gold” were the first two stories I drafted, well over a decade ago. At the time I didn’t have any sense that they would be linked by a common theme of an element of the periodic table to each other, much less to another eighteen stories.
I can’t remember anymore exactly how the idea for a whole book of stories based on the periodic table came together, though “Molybdenum,” as an exercise in metafiction, tells some of what I’ve been able to reconstruct from my memory.
After I settled on the idea, though, I read John Emsley’s comprehensive book Nature’s Building Blocks: An A–Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). I took notes about aspects of the elements that I thought might give rise to a good story. The resulting stories are the ones that coalesced into a good yarn. But some of the elements I eventually set aside with regret: titanium, copper, silver, indium, tin, lead. Maybe someday there will be a second volume.
I also drew up as comprehensive a list of genres as I could to scry out what might be a good match for my selected elements. Here, too, I had to leave some behind that otherwise intrigued me: ode, travelogue, fan fic, picaresque, jeremiad, riddle, parody… Again, maybe someday a volume two?
And finally, since I wanted them to be set more or less in North America, I made a point of representing a number of different places therein as well as different time periods, including imagined pasts and imagined futures.
Eventually I settled on twenty stories, but since three elements appear in one story, I had to come up with the rather awkward subtitle of Twenty-Two Elements of Fiction. But, as it turns out, I published these 20 stories about 22 elements on the first day of 2022… so maybe it was meant to be after all.
The stories in the book are listed in sequence according to each element’s atomic number, with the delightful result that the chapters are not numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth but 1, 2, 6.7.8, 10, 11, 14…
This collection also marks the first offering from Thornbush Press under the genre “Mystagogical Realism.” Not every story has a mystagogical element, and in all fairness some push the bounds of realism. But then again, mystagogical realism is meant to be a higher realism anyway. If you enjoy the stories and want to understand the mystagogical elements better, be sure to check out the Palimpsest Guide to Protons and Fleurons.
Protons and Fleurons is available as an ebook direct from Thornbush Press or the e-tailer of your choice, and in print from Amazon and Bookshop.org. The audiobook is available on Authors Direct, Google Play Books, Chirp, and Scribd (among many other platforms) and is coming soon to Audible!
Finally, a fun option: you can buy one of the only 22 ebook editions of Protons and Fleurons for sale on the blockchain at Bookchain!
Table of Contents:
1. Hydrogen: A Recipe
2. Helium: A Tall Tale
6.7.8. Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen: A Solarpunk Story
10. Neon: A Legend
11. Sodium: A Testimony
14. Silicon: A Fable
16. Sulfur: An Epistolary Quartet
20. Calcium: A Complaint
26. Iron: A Gothic Horror Story
27. Cobalt: A Mystery
28. Nickel: A Cautionary Tale
33. Arsenic: A Love Story
40. Zirconium: A Coyote Tale
42. Molybdenum: Metafiction
53. Iodine: A Steampunk Story
79. Gold: An Apology
85. Astatine: A Eulogy
86. Radon: A Ghost Story
92. Uranium: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale
94. Plutonium: A Myth