Bob Proehl Books In Order

Publication Order of The Resonant Duology Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Author Bob Proehl grew up in Buffalo, New York, where Queen City Bookstore was his local comics shop.

Bob has worked as a record store owner, a bookseller and a programming director for Buffalo Street Books, and a bartender. He has written for the arts and culture site PopMatters.com as a reviewer and columnist and for the 33 book series.

Bob was a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction as well as a 2013 resident at the Saltonstall Arts Colony.

Bob began writing when he was just a kid. Fantasy, when he was a little. He grew out of it for a time, trying to be an academic for a time, but came back to it. Bob finds that it has always been the clearest way for him to think and finds it is how his thoughts take shape.

He has to outline, since he is a grown up now, more or less. Outlines he makes wind up getting tweaked a lot or just abandoned entirely as the book will tell him where it wants to go as he is writing it. Bob finds he has got a natural tendency to start sprawling if has no plan. He would wind up writing long books where characters just have wonderful emotional moments and not a lot happens. He would be thrilled with those but nobody would ever read them.

Since he is a parent, he has a tougher time making time to write. Once he gets to his desk, getting locked in and focused is the most difficult thing. Leaving the phone in the next room, turning the internet off. He writes in his garage, and so the only major distractions are the occasional bird that comes flying in and squirrels.

The roots for “The Nobody People” come from “X-Men” comics, and he wanted to deconstruct the themes that carry those tales and reimagine them, in some ways through the lens of the events of today.

Even though Bob has read a lot of science fiction, he never believed he would be able to write it. He found that there is a high concept element in it, and the stuff he was writing was more along the lines of literary fiction. His first novel came out and his agent told him he should try to write sci-fi, and he played with it for a bit and it wound up becoming this novel.

Life had an impact on his approach to the novel as well as its outcome. His daughter was born as he was writing it, which influenced his choice to include much more specific personal narratives to go with more of the broader political points he tried making with the comic book-centric themes.

His debut novel, called “A Hundred Thousand Worlds”, was released in the year 2016.

“A Hundred Thousand Worlds” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2016. Six years ago, Valerie Torrey took Alex, her son, and left Los Angeles and left both her costar husband and her role on a cult sci-fi television show after tragedy blew apart their tiny family. Val has to reunite Alex, who is nine years old, with his estranged dad, so they go off on a road trip from New York, with Val making appearances at comic book conventions on the way.

While they are heading west, coming across monsters, superheroes, robots, and time travelers, Alex and Val are pulled into the orbit of some comic-con regulars. From a brilliant corporate comic book writer that struggles with her the old school ways of her industry to one hapless twenty-something illustrator to a band of cosplay women that provide a chorus of knowing commentary.

For Alex, this is a magical world where fiction turns into reality. But while they start to get closer to their destination, he starts to realize the story that his mother has told him about their trip could have a much different ending than he imagined.

Readers enjoyed the writing style, which is just fantastically unique. Fans had a tough time putting the book down and could not wait to pick the book. The book is delightful and heartfelt and readers cannot recommend people check it out. As it is a well-written and quirky debut novel that more people need to be reading.

“The Nobody People” is the second and was released in the year 2019. Avi Hirsch has known his daughter was different from the start. When other people with otherworldly and incredible gifts show themselves to the world, Avi knows that her strangeness is much more, that his daughter is much more. He has a horrifying revelation: Emmeline is entering a society where her special abilities unfairly leave her marked as something of a possible threat. Even though he is her dad, he will not be able to protect her forever.

Emmeline quickly meets people that are just like her. There is Fahima Deeb, who is a woman with an uncanny knack for machinery, yet it is her Muslim faith that makes the American government suspicious of her. Carrie Norris, a teen girl who is able to turn invisible, yet just wants to be seen.

These are the nobody people. Just ordinary individuals with special gifts who just want a single thing: to live like as equals in a country that is gripped by both hatred and fear. The government passes discriminatory laws. Violent mobs take to the streets. One of their own, an angry young guy that seethes with self-loathing, has used his power in one act of mass violence that puts a brand new target on the entire community. The nobody people have to stand together and battle for their future, or just risk falling apart.

Proehl does a great job of giving this novel and X-Men style feel yet keeping exciting and fresh and always all his own thing. There is some striking realism to this fantastic story, as it dives into the idea of otherness with complexity and nuance. This is a fun ride and a timely story about hate, love, and all that falls in between.