Sortmind.com, created in October 1999, is an overview of my writing and art. Since August 2010 I’ve also maintained a blog at blog.sortmind.com where I muse on writing and art processes. In the spring of 2015 I ported sortmind.com to the WordPress platform.
old.sortmind.com still exists in its 2015 incarnation–a vast archive of my work, most of which wasn’t carried over to the new site.
The site is named after my novel Sortmind, published February 2019, about the telepathic Sortmind app which Mindwipes ten thousand users as hysterical factions battle in the streets over whether telepathy should be free or outlawed. It’s also a coming of age story about Oliver and Sam, high school art students whose fathers head the reviled Citizens Against Telepathy. Sortmind Publication – What You Need to Know explains the long history of this novel, first conceived of in 1987 and thoroughly revised 2016-2019. Over the long years of endless gestation, revision, abandonment, and resurrection, the novel’s title migrated to become the name of my website and of Sortmind Press.
I was raised in the Northeast and the Chicago area, then moved to Texas to attend Rice University, where I began developing as a writer and visual artist. In addition to exhibiting and selling paintings and drawings, I’ve completed seventeen novels. My Jack Commer, Supreme Commander science fiction series is published by Double Dragon Publishing and so far consists of six titles: Book One, The Martian Marauders (2012); Book Two, Jack Commer, Supreme Commander (2012); Book Three, Nonprofit Chronowar (2013); Book Four, Collapse and Delusion (2016); Book Five, The Wounded Frontier (2018); and Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion (2018).
CommWealth, my dystopian, black comedy novel about a society in which private property has been outlawed, was published August 2015 by Class Act Books. The Soul Institute, a literary and coming of age novel about a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul, was published December 2015 by Sortmind Press. Sortmind Press also published Akard Drearstone, about a rock group facing the onslaught of national fame at its rural Texas commune, narrated by a twelve-year-old girl growing up way too fast in a surreal summer between 7th and 8th grade.
My writing in both literary and science fiction genres has psychological and spiritual themes, but also humorous aspects. Or so I intend.
Visual artists are supposed to have “Artist Statements,” so here’s What Passes for an Artist Statement on blog.sortmind.com.
All words and images copyright by Michael D. Smith
The only one missing is Mike Bryant and I am trying to get the info from him.
Once you update the spreadsheet with their page links from Authors.TxAuthors.com send it to me.