When first envisioned in the spring of 2022, Genetic Test Subjects was a treatment for a new intellectual property for a graphic novel series called Pleiadean Test Subjects. As it was being worked on, a narrative developed along three story arcs. By the summer of 2022, the background material (which included background stories/case studies of over two hundred characters, internal office memos, diary entries and personnel rosters) began to instead be drawn into a single narrative with the intent of self-publication.

As that narrative fleshed out, it began to look more like a novella than a treatment.  The first draft was done by late September.  It was at that point that I began to hear other people say the name - or at least try to.  It seemed that most people were not familiar with the star cluster in our sky which holds such a central role in almost every early culture.  "Play-a-dee-an" did not come naturally to people at all.  The name had to change.

At least I was in the home stretch.  After a few rewrites and some polishing and I could be done with this odd little story.  I was on US-17, driving across Virginia.  Winchester was behind me.  Warrington was in front of me.  There was a clear blue sky and I was feeling good.  Then a new chapter wrote itself in my head.  It involved Teresa Kwan and a karaoke bar.  She was trying to be a better person, but it meant putting everything she had been through with Pauline MacAvoy behind her and coming to peace with Dougie's death.  The problem was - it didn't fit into the finished story, but it was just a little chapter, and I could forget about it.

Before I had driven as far as Fredericksburg and the interstate, another chapter appeared.  I saw it start to finish.  It was a very public suicide by Sarenna and Jackie Martins needing to understand what drove her to it.  (That chapter eventually was thrown out with pieces cannibalized elsewhere.)  Now there were two chapters and there was a darker existential theme knocking around.  There was a sequel.  I had not begun the first rewrite of GTS1 and GTS2 was forming.  I was not out of it yet.  

By the time I hit South Carolina, I saw it was a trilogy.  Somehow the moon was involved.  I didn't know how yet, but I knew there was a gap in time between GTS2 and GTS3 and during that time, they were going to the moon.

Over the next five months, there was the first rewrite and the second and editing and more editing.  Then I fiddled with it and fiddled some more as I put off pulling the trigger and publishing.  By the time it went to print, I had the full six book arc in my head with bits and pieces of each written down.

One day in the spring, while I was a thousand miles from home, I happened to think about who this band was that we heard so much about in GTS1 and GTS 2.  That day I pounded out "Beyond the Blue" and published it the next day. 

When the first draft of GTS2 was finished, I found myself fretting about all of the characters who had rich backstories but had never bade their way into the storyline.  With a fifty year gap between the settings of GTS2 and GTS3, I felt that I had to find a way to give some mention of some of them so the reader would not think of them as being pulled into the story out of nowhere.  So I slid the casino scene into GTS2.  With that Chastity Harpole and Anne Lundon got a mention along with two other un-named women who were of course Lori Majury and Katie de Witt.  Lori's backstory already existed in a character file on my hard-drive and I just found "The Dying light of Lori Majury" pour out over a two day period.