Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is fantasy not sci-fi, but if you follow physics far enough you’ll stumble into metaphysics and that’s where the gods live.  So maybe Gaiman’s book was not just a distraction, it was a detour taking me on a journey the long way around to the place my own writings have sent me.  Gaiman’s gods are down and out wanderers discarded by the more enlightened American descendants of the gods’ ancient believers.  I got lost in the ectometaverse in my first series when I contemplated how a time traveler could meet himself; there had to be a place where those two consciousnesses were connected.  In my new series, which begins with Perturbations of the Reality Field, the gods have punished any species that dares to think about traveling faster than the speed of light.  Thou shalt not go supraluminal!  I try to use physics and mathematics as the ladder to an expanded reality, Gaiman just walks right in.