Arguably, most of his contributions to Google's mailing lists were a very strange and very long form of fiction...

I don't know about that, but this synopsis beats 99% of book blurbs I've read:

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2017/04/10/farisas-cour...

so fiction might well be his real calling.

Haha, I have hung out with Michael a few times. Very interesting guy, still very bitter with Google though.