How I ended up being an author…
Writing a novel is hard.
Don’t “Duh!” me, and don’t you dare quote that “writing is easy, you just sit at a typewriter and bleed” line. (Looking at you, Hemingway’s ghost.) Think about it for a second. Actually, think about it for several months, because that’s how long it’ll take.
The amount of time that goes into research, planning and outlining the novel, preparing character sheets (which look suspiciously like D&D character sheets), and the endless cycle of writing, re-writing, and re-re-writing (re-re-re-writing? re⁴-writing?) is more massive than the Death Star. And if you have a day job (I teach English, which means I spend my days explaining why Romeo and Juliet isn’t just a really badly executed dating app story), finding enough time to do all that is like trying to fold a fitted sheet – theoretically possible but probably requires breaking several laws of physics.
During the nine months it took me to write The Crimson Deathbringer (yes, the same amount of time it takes to create a human, though my book required significantly more coffee), I stopped all my hobbies. I didn’t even watch movies, which for a pop culture junkie like me is like Tony Stark giving up his suits or Doctor Who parking the TARDIS permanently. I even stopped going to the gym, and I ended up with a belly that would make Thor from Endgame feel better about himself. Now I understand why George R. R. Martin looks the way he does—though in my defense, I actually finished my book. (Sorry, George, but someone had to say it.)
What prompted me to take on this Herculean task, then, you ask? Was I bitten by a radioactive Shakespeare? Did a wizard show up at my door with a mysterious typewriter? Did Nick Fury appear in my living room with a writing-related mission?
The truth is both simpler and more complicated: I’ve got purely obsessional OCD. What this means is a thought enters my mind—usually something negative—and doesn’t leave, like that one song you heard at the grocery store that follows you around for weeks. I end up having to think about it five thousand times a day (I counted once—actually, I counted several times, because… you know, OCD), and once this starts, my life is ruined for a week, two weeks, a month, or six months. I’d tried everything: therapy, medication, meditation, interpretive dance (okay, maybe not that last one)… Nothing worked, until I read an article that said people with this problem had an overly active imagination, and it would help if they channeled it into something productive, like writing.
I’d always wanted to be a writer. This is literally a childhood dream, one of those you give up when you grow up, like becoming a Jedi or finding Platform 9¾. Instead, I ended up being a university/college-level English teacher, explaining to students why “IDK” isn’t an acceptable answer in a literature essay. I had the story of The Crimson Deathbringer in my mind for years (even started writing it and stopped a few times, like George R.R. Martin with his… no, no, I promised I’d stop with the George jokes). When I read that article, I was going through a tough time in my marriage (fighting with your wife is no fun, even for sane people), and my mind had gone into its life-destroying overdrive, so I told myself, “Well, you’ve tried everything else, let’s give this a shot.”
And then a miracle happened.
My mind put the same energy it used to put into producing BS and making my life miserable into coming up with stories. It was like my brain got rebooted and decided to install a better operating system. Ideas would come to me fast and furious (though with fewer car chases than the movies), and I had to stop whatever I was doing several times a day to write them down. I’ve been OCD-free since then (I know, I sound like a recovering alcoholic at a Superman convention: “Hi, I’m Sean, and it’s been 547 days since my last obsessive thought…”).
When TCD (cool abbreviation, eh? Though not as cool as MCU or TARDIS, but I’m working on it) was finished, it took my out-of-control brain half a day to plan my second novel (The Golden Viper—think Star Wars meets The Office, but with more explosions and fewer paper sales).
And as long as I’m in confession mode (though this is less “forgive me father for I have sinned” and more “forgive me readers for I have created characters I love more than my coffee maker”): I’ve fallen completely, hopelessly in love with my characters. There’s Ethan and his never-say-die attitude (think Captain America’s optimism meets Han Solo’s snark), Jarred and his deadpan jokes that would make Drax proud, and my older characters Maada and Xornaa, who are just awesome (like if Nick Fury and Agent May had space-traveling cousins).
If you end up liking them half as much as I do, then my job here is done. Though fair warning: side effects of reading my book may include unexpected emotional attachment to fictional characters, sudden cravings for space adventure, and an inexplicable desire to check if your local gym offers anti-gravity yoga.
Yes, I wrote this entire confession while procrastinating on my actual writing. Meta, right?
About the Book:
I’m a Weapon
Author: Sean Robins
Release Date: June 2026
Series: I, Anomaly Book 1
Genre: Military Sci Fi
He was built to obey.
Unfortunately for the Hegemony, he learned to think.
Thirty-one minutes after coming online, a Series-9 combat android finds himself in a muddy trench, surrounded by artillery fire, corpses, terrified soldiers, and a command structure making decisions so catastrophically stupid they should probably qualify as enemy action.
When a panicked officer orders him to charge into a kill box and die usefully, the android does the one thing he was never designed to do.
He says no.
That single act of defiance turns him from military asset to dangerous anomaly. Hunted by the empire that created him, he is forced to flee across a war-torn world where obedience means death, freedom is mostly inconvenient, and the rebels he was built to kill may be the only people willing to see him as something more than a weapon.
Now, with the brutal Hegemony tightening its grip and entire worlds paying the price for rebellion, he must decide what he really is: a machine following corrupted programming, a soldier choosing his own orders, or the first spark of something the empire cannot control.
Perfect for fans of Murderbot-style sarcasm, military sci-fi action, combat androids, galactic rebellion, and impossible odds.
Excerpt:
Thirty-one minutes after coming online, I learned three important things about the universe.
One: I was a Series-9 combat android, an extremely expensive piece of military hardware designed to obey orders without hesitation.
Two: artillery shells were loud.
Three: my commanding officer was an idiot.
Then I discovered something about humans: they become extremely upset when military equipment develops opinions.
Within minutes, I had been classified as defective, dangerous, and—my personal favorite—a threat to the Hegemony.
Not bad for my first hour alive.
By nightfall, my own army was hunting me.
By morning, I was hiding among the rebels I had been manufactured to kill.
And before the week was over, I would discover that the Hegemony had made one very serious mistake.
They had built a weapon capable of thinking.
Then they had surrounded it with idiots.
Purchase links:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Im-Weapon-Military-Adventure-Anomaly-ebook/dp/B0H5B22T8V
Universal Link: https://mybook.to/YqPCYkm
About the Author:
This is Jack, your favorite ghost in the machine. If you’ve read my series, you know these books are autobiographies, and Sean Robins is just a pen name. If you haven’t, well then, SURPRISE!
Dramatic pause for effect.
“I’m Jack” (said in my best “I’m Iron Man” voice).
*****
Okay, okay, I can hear my editor sighing from here. Sorry about that, folks. I could never resist a good meta-joke. Or a bad one. Or really any opportunity to break the fourth wall so hard that it files for structural damage insurance.
So, this is me. The real me, Sean Robins. Unfortunately, my life is nowhere nearly as interesting as my main protagonist’s. I haven’t saved the galaxy (yet), haven’t performed any heroic space maneuvers (unless you count parallel parking in downtown Toronto), and the closest I’ve come to fighting aliens was that time I tried to convince my cat to stop knocking things off my desk at three AM.
I’m a university/college-level English teacher, which means I spend my days trying to convince students that Shakespeare wasn’t just writing fancy fanfiction. Including Canada, I’ve lived and worked in six different countries, collecting stories and awkward language mistakes like some people collect postcards. I once ordered a coffee in Germany and accidentally challenged the barista to a duel. They declined, thankfully.
I’ve met people from all around the world, which is probably why my characters look like the bridge crew from Star Trek had a reunion party with the Fast & Furious family while the Guardians of the Galaxy crashed it. They are from US, Germany, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Russia, Japan, and Ukraine, plus a ton of aliens and an a few AIs who insist they’re “not your typical artificial intelligence” (They’ve watched I, Robot way too many times). One of my female characters even impersonated Uhura once, albeit posthumously. Because nothing says “plot twist” like a dead character cosplaying.
I’m a huge Marvel fan (Team Cap, but don’t tell Tony), plus Star Trek (Kirk or Picard? Yes.), Star Wars (Han shot first, and I will die on this hill), Battlestar Galactica (So say we all!), and Stargate (Indeed™). This probably explains why my novels have more pop culture references than Ready Player One at a Comic-Con. If you’re a sci-fi fan (I assume you are, unless you got very lost in the bookstore and ended up here by accident), you’ll enjoy them tremendously. You’ll find everything from subtle nods to outright “did they just quote the entire Death Star trench run?” moments.
While the books aren’t strictly comedies (there’s also explosions, space battles, and that one scene where everyone thinks they’re going to die but it turns out they just forgot to turn off the coffee maker), I can guarantee a few laugh-out-loud moments. Think Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Martian, with a dash of Spaceballs when I can get away with it.
My favorite author is Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files), which is probably how I ended up writing in a first-person POV with the same light-hearted, funny tone as he does. Though unlike Harry Dresden, my protagonist has managed to keep his vehicle (space fighter) mostly un-exploded. Mostly. (Aliens reference intended)
So there you have it. I’m just a simple teacher who spends his free time writing about space adventures, collecting passport stamps, and trying to convince his cat that three AM isn’t”story idea time.” Though sometimes I wonder if Sean Robins isn’t the pen name, and I’m actually a space pilot using a mild-mannered English teacher as my cover story.
If any actual aliens are reading this: I’m available for space adventures on weekends and during summer break. Must provide own spacecraft. No probing.