Marshal has been writing his whole life, beginning with a script for a Star Wars knock-off when he was fourteen. 

Fantasy and science fiction have always been the genres that drew his interest.  Like most writers there were many pieces of fiction written that never went anywhere.  But in 2009, Marshal became involved in the Steampunk community and everything changed.  As he started setting down story ideas as background for art objects he was creating, the stories took over.  Those first ideas were the seeds of “The Tomahawk Incident.”

Once it started, it was like the floodgates opened.  There were so many stories to tell in Æsterverse, a whole world spun out from those concepts.  And with the rush of ideas from that came other worlds that are now in the offing.

As a writer, Marshal believes it is an ever-evolving skillset.  He loves the challenge of it all.  Writing screenplays is a different talent entirely that he indulges now and then, primarily short film concepts that hopefully one day he’ll get time and resources to actually make.  Learning how to communicate is something that underpins all writing, and that too is something that continues to evolve in our highly charged, technologically driven world.

In 2016, the events at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota created another change in Marshal’s trajectory.  After watching independent media coverage of Water Protectors being brutalized by militarized police and heavily armed security contractors trying to force the Dakota Access Pipeline through their treaty lands, Marshal joined the Veterans for Standing Rock deployment.  The days he spent at Standing Rock gave rise to nonfiction, journalistic writing and a documentary short film. 

Elements of what he experienced at Standing Rock now inform his work as he continues to write in his chosen genres of science fiction and fantasy.  The Æsterverse is currently the primary world that he is writing in, but there are several others, a modern fantasy and a far-flung science fiction setting to name two, that are anxiously waiting in the wings for their chance in the spotlight.

The Tomahawk Incident

“The Tomahawk Incident” is the first book in a series taking place in the “Æsterverse.”  In the Æsterverse, a strange, gaseous substance called the Æster blankets two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, it’s clouds stretching from the poles to twenty-three degrees north and south latitude... 

Æsterverse 101

Get to know a bit about the world “The Tomahawk Incident” and other books and stories are set it!