We’re thrilled to announce that The Book of Squidly Light has been named the 2026 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book Award Winner in the Weird Book category!
Bold, imaginative, and delightfully difficult to categorize, The Book of Squidly Light invites readers into a genre-bending world where science fiction, Western adventure, humor, and the wonderfully unexpected collide.
The Sage Chronicles
Join Karima’s protagonist, enigmatic author Halycon Sage, as we explore these novels from the Post Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature where up is down, down is sideways and time flows in multiple directions!
Just Released!
The Tesseract, The Exciting Conclusion to The Chronicles
Read an excerpt...
The Squidren of SquidShip One, Halycon Sage, and the other Animals, Aliens, and Humans in this Trilogy Cordially Invite you on a Quick Visit to our Cozy Little Multiverse
FROM THE PREFACE
This book concludes The Sage Chronicles, which began with The Way Beyond and continued with The Book of Squidly Light.
The world is full of such ridiculous humor, unspeakable beauty, and unbearable horror all at once, and we—the editorial we, not the royal we—have done our best to sketch that complexity here. Everything you need to know will be revealed, either in the short list below or in the book itself. Everything will be revealed. It always is.
THE CONFLICT
Abruptly, the scene conjured up by Squidress Four dissolved, disturbed by the sudden appearance of Ruby, which had broken her concentration. Instead of walking into the cafe in the normal manner, Ruby had appeared out of nowhere next to the table, accompanied by a noise like an exploding firecracker. She looked a bit dusty, like someone returning from a long journey, which in fact she was. Nobody, not even Halycon Sage, had seen her in weeks. Various humans and Squidren exclaimed in surprise.
“Budge over,” said Ruby, squeezing into the booth, which now apparently held six. “I’ll explain later. Right now, we have a possible neoapocalyptic event shaping up for this time and place, and we need all our resources to deal with it.”
She and Four exchanged a look, and Four nodded. They were definitely on the same page.
“And the only thing that can really mess things up, taking everybody’s time and attention,” continued Ruby, “is this STUPID Literary Conference! It doesn’t seem like much, but remember that poem about the horseshoe nail? Little things can snowball and spiral into big things.”
There was another loud bang as No-Name Stupid shoved open the wooden cover over the only window in the Dirty Dog Bar / Canis Fidelis Cafe and Gathering Place that had no glass. It had been specially altered to accommodate him, for Stupid was a horse.
He was mostly indifferent to the incomprehensible human concerns of the Committees, but he had heard his own name spoken, was a poet himself, and was further attracted by the mention of a horseshoe nail, a subject of obvious relevance to his sphere of influence. He thought he might add
something of importance.
ORDER IN THE COURT!
In this book, you’ll meet Judge Rumblethunder of the Intergalactic Time-Loose Actual Justice For All Beings Court House.
But first you must meet . . .
Puppy for the Defense! Or, the Prosecution
Edwin Puppy had a problem. He wanted to work for the good guys. This meant that he wanted sometimes to prosecute, and sometimes to defend. As had been explained to young Mr. Puppy, a trial lawyer is either a prosecutor or a defender. You couldn’t switch back and forth. This
seemed so unfair! Puppy thought he should be able to represent the side he thought was right.
The other lawyers laughed and shook their heads, but Puppy remained unconvinced.
It occurred to him that he could work for both a noble defense firm and a fearless prosecutor’s office, though of course neither could know about the other. This would take considerable skill, but young Mr. Puppy was optimistic, clever, and full of energy.
Sifting quickly through the mountains of meaningless files, he began evolving his clever plan. He would’ve thought twice about this, had he known where it would lead.
A COMPLICATION
Mr. Brown was still babbling on.
“Of course, his works are not short; we’ll have to widen the conference title beyond “mini-novels” since his briefest work is around a thousand pages. And his books aren’t very cheerful either. They lack the warmth, brevity, and subtle humor that characterize your own brilliant work…”
If he went on like this much longer, Sage was going to throw up. He did not like flattery and was not a big fan of this guy.
“But as I say, leaving him out would be unthinkable,” the fellow droned on. “I know he has sometimes been called depressing, life-denying, a nihilist, but he’s an undoubted intellectual…”
Suddenly, Sage knew, with cold horror creeping up the back of his neck, who Mr. Brown was talking about. It was the author of The Black Gray Dark; I’m Fabulous, You’re a Necrotic Collection of Worm Food; Decay; The Swamp of Despair; Nothing, and other such travesties. The man who had kidnapped Ruby and Basel Vasselschnauzer and caused the loss of Preisczech’s Nanobot-controlling whistle. His would-be nemesis who had fancied himself a supervillain, redeemed at least briefly during the Great Awakening described at the end of Sage’s second long novel, The Book of Squidly Light.
But who knew what the guy was getting up to now, whether his transformation had stuck or whether he’d reverted to his former ways?
Sometimes people backslid. Who knew what he was like by now?
This man had not been seen in Dry Creek Gulch for many months, and Sage had been content to let the matter rest, hoping he was firmly relegated to the past.
Mr. Brown was talking about the nihilist author who had twice tried to destroy the world.
Archvillain Niemand Kompt.
When he heard about this, Basel Vasselschnauzer was going to have kittens.
Which Character Are You?
There was a funny old saying from 1960s media: “And now for something completely different.”
If you follow this link, we believe we can offer you, yes, something completely different.
Yours truly,
The Sage & Squid Editorial Board
(And of course, Karima)
“A Book for Our Times
I finally sat down with The Tesseract: The Sage Chronicles today, and I am so glad I did. I had been putting it off, worried that my ADHD brain would get lost in the complexity, but once I started, I found myself completely drawn in, eventually stepping away for a cup of coffee feeling strangely refreshed.
Karima Vargas Bushnell has a brilliant mind, and I am impressed by how she weaves multiple intricate plots into a story that is evocative of the works of George Orwell and Douglas Adams, creating a unique atmosphere that is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining, as frightening as it is delightful, sparkling and effervescent. This imaginative parody of 21st-century America feels like a mythical record of our time, and simply knowing this book exists makes me feel better about the world. It is a book that leaves the reader feeling refreshed, validated, and eager for more.”
—Roots Music
Sure, they’re all books in The Sage Chronicles trilogy, and they all feature author Halycon Sage, his redoubtable crew of quirky and multi-faceted characters, and the literary school he founded by mistake, but they grow in complexity and depth. There’s a progression.
Sage’s novels are only a paragraph, but his pure-hearted seeking is as wide as the western sky. Book One is the uncomplicated story of the world-famous but anonymous author and his horse No-Name Stupid seeking truth in the trackless desert. They’re helped by an eccentric Czech inventor, a precious Iraqi family, Ruby (resourceful queen of the Dirty Dog Gang), and Ratbone of the Fifth Street Mofos. They’re opposed by some detectives, some spies, and a shadowy figure of evil. The book critics, outlaws, and tiny invisible robots could go either way. Visualize a square.
The eccentric Dry Creek Gulchians create a joyful, post-technological society as we delve deeper in Book Two. The Nanobots become conscious with absurd results, the Apocalypse Zombie arrives, and telepathic, time-traveling Squids show up to solve our human mess, bringing guidance from their alien holy book. Sage meets author Rupert Griffin, founder of UnVirtual Time Travel, after rescuing a fictional dog from Griffin’s novel. Alternate time tracks, intergalactic communication snafus, a Shadowy Man with bad intentions, and the poetry of horses, cats, and a Squidish poet laureate each contribute something. Sage’s new mini-novels, Boo Radley Goes Hawaiian and Romance for Cat and Squid, complete the picture. Visualize a cube.
It’s not just the end of the world that threatens this time, but the end of the whole Multiverse! Book Three requires an ultimate journey through hyperspace with everyone onboard, but the levels and layers here are really too complex to describe in a paragraph. They include the 12 identical Halycon Sages, the far future, and the Indeterminate In-Between Space; Dry Creek Gulch and the First Annual Conference of the Post Modernist Minimalist Neo-Symbolist Pseudo-Realist School of Literature; mini-novels Puppy for the Defense! Or, the Prosecution, Clawdia Fanghorn and the Alligator King, and many more; the SUX2BU and SwitchingUp™ technologies; and lots of our old friends, some astoundingly transformed, along with a bunch of new ones. It’s a hyperdimensional trans-temporal supercube, hence its name. That’s why you need to read The Tesseract.
“Bushnell is an undeniable writer, with a talent for sentences and scenarios. ‘His urbanity was all surface,’ she says of a critic who has just been discovered in the back of a limo and is now shrieking for oysters, ‘a thin, thin earth’s-crust over the red-hot lava of his petulance.'”
— Kirkus Reviews
The Chronicles Are Complete!
In its form and shifting subjects, the imaginative speculative novel The Tesseract plays with the power of words and the limits of language.
Karima Vargas Bushnell’s reality-bending speculative novel The Tesseract moves through time, space, and various stories to sort out a multidimensional collapse, a grim future, and a literature competition.
Flipping through timelines, locations, and perspectives, this book is a fast-paced comedy adventure focused on the exploits of Halcyon Sage. Sage’s world has almost ended multiple times; in it, characters from books can come to life, and aliens are nothing new. When he begins to travel through time and space, Sage needs to find a solution to a past tragedy. Along the way, others attempt to fix the multiverse and host a literary event. Changing locations, perspectives, and stakes, the story weaves through different realities as Sage attempts to fix the world through the power of words.
Quick and lighthearted, the book includes an excellent index and fun formatting details. It flows with clear indicators of when and where the metafiction is happening. Jokes are laced throughout, from the narration to the pacing of information.
(Foreward Review continued…)
At times, these varying devices make the book hectic, but its general joviality makes its moments of confusion feel fun and deliberate rather than discombobulating.
The book experiments with genres and narrative expectations. Woven throughout Sage’s adventures are courtroom fights and romantic pursuits—both in the form of stories for the novel’s audience and in the form of stories for the characters in the novel. The stacking and blurring of different stories supports the book’s themes of exploration and altering realities; it leads to continual excitement and freshness. It also means that some character arcs, including Sage’s, are less developed: The movement of the plot takes priority over characterizations, and some narrative beats are missed.
Further, at times, the book struggles to balance its clear science fiction world with its inclusion of more serious topics. For instance, a central plotline features Sage attempting to prevent the Gaza war. While the subject is handled with seriousness and empathy, its inclusion clashes tonally with scenes focused on courtroom antics and aliens arguing over grammar. The ease and limits of the solution are a point of awkwardness, too, as is its disproportionate weight in the story.
A wild speculative novel about writing, empathy, and interstellar adventures, The Tesseract celebrates the strange and the silly.
“Wildly Imaginative! Buckle up for a laugh out loud romp through a multi-dimensional universe full of unforgettable characters that will change the way you see the world.”
— Jeneane Harter
Multiverse Alert: FREE BOOK!
Download Sage’s Multiverse Mini-Series — a wildly original, zine-style collection of short stories, mini-novels, poetry, cat law, space diplomacy, and probably a time-traveling Roomba.
This is what happens when absurdity and spiritual depth get stuck in a teleporter together.
Download it FREE and escape to a universe where you can:
- Learn five tips for Intergalactic Diplomacy
- Visit the Laundromat of Awakening!
- Hear from the Cat Mafia - or else...
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