Location: United States
Member Since: May 12, 2010
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Robert Stikmanz


Biography

Robert Stikmanz is the creative identity of an author and artist long resident in Austin, Texas. A native of the gulf coast city of La Porte, and a graduate of Austin College (Sherman, TX), he began work on the material that underpins /The Hidden Lands of Nod/ cycle in 1983. After various experiences with other publishers, Stikmanz signed with Blue Moose Press to bring out newly revised editions of the existing titles in his cycle during 2010.

Where to find Robert Stikmanz online

Website: http://www.robertstikmanz.com
Twitter: robertstikmanz
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: http://www.robertstikmanz.com

Books

Death on the Toilet    by Robert Stikmanz
Price: Free! 2450 words. Published on August 4, 2011. Fiction.
(4.00 from 1 review)
This short story is set on Earth in the imagined universe of Stikmanz's novels. A weird tale in which 82 year old Bigger MacGregor wakes in the night to find the Grim Reaper on his toilet, and himself drafted for an assignment that waits for no one.
Entranscing    by Robert Stikmanz
Price: $2.99 USD. 38890 words. Published on December 15, 2010. Fiction.
Entranscing, the second book of The Hidden Lands of Nod, picks up the tale twenty years on as Meg Christmas, the Dvarsh and the Thrm struggle to save love and the planet from a conquering horde. While the Dvarsh gird for psychic battle, Meg surfs the far reaches of being on the cusp of a new transformation. This offbeat fantasy is equal parts big ideas, grand adventure and considerable fun.
Prelude to a Change of Mind    by Robert Stikmanz
Price: $2.99 USD. 45700 words. Published on July 16, 2010. Fiction.
Prelude to a Change of Mind, the first book of The Hidden Lands of Nod, introduces the magical Dvarsh, their strange mental technologies, and the vast struggle at the heart of their society. Seen through the eyes of a human woman they save from death, these warriors from an alternate reality shift time and space in defense of the homeworld they left in our hands but have not abandoned.

Robert Stikmanz’s tag cloud

alternative fantasy    death    dvarsh    ecofantasy    environmental fantasy    fantasy    fantasy adult    grim reaper    literary fantasy    magical realist    offbeat fantasy    ontological fantasy    stikmanz   

Smashwords book reviews by Robert Stikmanz

  • Sharing on June 18, 2011
    star star star star star
    Fiercely imagined and eloquently told, Sharing is the story of Charlotte, a girl whisked on the back of a mythic beast to a realm of danger, unreality and numbing monotony. The beast, a mutilated flying unicorn the girl calls Mister, enslaves Charlotte to clean his home—a vast cathedral soiled continuously by gore and excrement—and to cook. Mister feeds exclusively on the substance (be it flesh or whatever) of sentient creatures, preferably cooked well and imaginatively spiced. First on the menu are several of Charlotte's friends brought along as a living larder. One after another, Charlotte must prepare and serve schoolmates slaughtered as she watches. Each loss takes with it assumptions she held about her place in being. With little else to anchor her sense of self, avenging her friends becomes a consuming passion. She begins to train as a fighter. Over time she hardens into a lean young woman, stripped emotionally to a desire for revenge, a single question about reality, and a kernel of decency she terms simply "respect." At this extreme, her only companions are a bookish cockroach, Asfodel, and a bloodsucking cyborgian sphere, Tessa. Charlotte communicates with these two by "Sharing," a kind of ultra-telepathic ability common in the universe but almost unknown in humans. Sharing allows her silent conversation with similarly able creatures, among whom both Asfodel and Tessa happily count. It also allows her to glean information of a sort from inanimate objects bearing traces or imprints of sentience--books, for instance, or skulls of the dead. One creature, however, with whom she cannot Share is Mister, her captor and the focus of her hope for revenge. The main story of Sharing is Charlotte's, and across the narrative she grows, evolves and habituates to the world of her captivity without reconciling to it. Charlotte's story, however, plays out in the context of another, that of Mister, and this second-order tale unfolds for the reader as it unfolds for the girl. Slowly she learns the origin of the strange realm in which she is held, and her captor's place in it. When Mister's past catches up with him, the girl who has long since grown into a warrior finds her allegiances muddier than expected. Sorting loyalties amidst the final conflict, Charlotte begins to understand Mister, even as she can neither forget nor forgive what he has done. F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously claimed that every novelist is a moralist, a sentiment with which Miracle Jones seems comfortable. Couched in a landscape of stark, alien weirdness, strange friendships and bizarre violence, Sharing plumbs questions of what it means to be who we are, the tension between self and other, and dynamics of power. Jones accomplishes this feat without sacrificing twists of plot or the logic of narrative. If the ride is surreal, the resolution is satisfying. Ultimately, Charlotte negotiates the quite actually shifting sands of her prison world to extract from Mister not redemption but a tiny measure of recompense; she manages, in the process, to preserve herself, her orb and her cockroach. Highly recommended.