Prometheus winner Dave Freer has a new novel coming out soon.
Storm-Dragon, to be published April 11, 2025, by Raconteur Press, is a relatively short novel (with illustrations) geared toward a young-adult audience – and especially targeted at boys and teenagers.
“It is my attempt at writing a Heinlein “Juvie” – a book aimed specifically at teen boys (not their scene) to get them interested in sf,” Freer said in an email from his home base Down Under in the Australian state of Tasmania.
Given that much of what SF/fantasy publishers have “on offer” these days is “romantasy,” appealing much more to young women than men, Freer considers boys and young men a grievously overlooked audience of potential readers.
Besides wanting to write an entertaining and interesting SF action-adventure, Freer’s overall aim is to do what he can to try to attract and build the next generation of boys and men who enjoy and regularly read science fiction.
“That’s a much-neglected reader section,” Freer said.
Freer, the first writer to win a Prometheus Award from our planet’s southern hemisphere, won Best Novel in 2021 for Cloud-Castles, an inspiring and humorous coming-of-age SF story.
(Read the Prometheus Blog Appreciation essay-review of Cloud-Castles.)
Freer considers himself a huge fan of Robert Heinlein, the most recognized author in the 46-year history of the Prometheus Awards.
Among Heinlein’s inductees into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, Methuselah’s Children and the classic SF juvenile novels Citizen of the Galaxy and Red Planet.
In particular, Freer said he partially was inspired to write Storm-Dragon in the spirit of Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky.
“My novel is (written) to appeal to anyone who would enjoy, for example, Farmer… because it focuses on action and adventure and problem-solving,” he said.
“It’s intended as an easy read for its target audience, but I think you’ll find it leans to the libertarian. We have to catch them young.”
The title of the novel refers to a storm-dragon, a six-limbed alien creative that is highly electrosensitive.
“The ‘model’ for the creature is the so-called ‘electric eel,’ which can to some extent do all of the things the storm-dragon does. Basically, the hero rescues the baby animal that he’s not allowed to keep, because bureaucracy. The creature would have died without his intervention, and is still too young to really survive alone – and the story follows from there,” Freer said.
Incorporating interior black-and-white illustrations, the 248-page paperback (listed as just 202 pages in the Kindle format) is available for pre-order on Amazon.
Storm-Dragon will go on sale April 11, and will be available to buy in paperback or as a Kindle ebook.
For more information, visit the Raconteur Press website at https://www.raconteurpress.com
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