Senescence: prologue

The working title of the conclusion to the Jez series is Senescence--the final stage of aging where your cells no longer renew themselves. Barring violence or disease, it is the death that awaits the entire human race. This story combines futurism, feminism, genetic engineering, and choices for our planet.

Prologue – T plus 13 years

“In the future, everyone will have their own channel,” the world’s richest woman announced to the crowd of reporters and news drones that followed her from her jet into the Welsh airport. Technically, Mira Hollis had over twenty blogosphere feeds dedicated to stalking her. As CEO for Fortune Enterprises, she was the most public and transparent executive ever. While her competitors analyzed every voice stress, groupies purchased the same clothes and makeup. She was corporate royalty. Her security handle was ‘Golden Goose.’ “With advances in microcameras and Internet capacity, everyone can have a safety feed. Imagine the elderly and young, monitored twenty-four-seven.”

A man from a competing mega-corp piped in. “Won’t the government use that to infringe on our privacy?”

Mira smiled. “They already do. In public places, there are an average of twenty-two cameras on each person in Great Britain. This will give the public a chance to see what their elected representatives are doing as well. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Who watches the watchers? Fortune Multimedia will give you that power.” Her own info-link broadcast verified references for each of her statistics, the official product announcement, and the Plato quote.

During the armored limo ride, through the green and sunny countryside, the online commentators speculated. “Actually,” corrected the fact guru, Martin, “That estimate is already obsolete. With the advent of the new crosswalk safety measures last month and the independence of the Faukland Islands, that average increases to twenty-three.”

Gavin, the history correspondent, said, “The real question is: why is she coming to Wales? Sheep don’t care about tech.”

The fact guru replied, “She has a lawyer on the flight manifest who isn’t an employee of Fortune. Eliot Cook a specialist in British estate law. She’s only used their firm once before…the week of the mass funeral for Alcantara Spaceport.” Three seconds of silence ruled, out of respect for the dead. “Her entire family was wiped out in the Algerian reprisal for the Ascension landing on the alien artifact.” A stream of hyperlinks scrolled across the connection.

Bunny, the social commentator squealed. “That’s when she met with that dream boat Kieran Llewellyn.”

Gavin groaned over the link.

Martin punched up pop-feeds on Kieran’s residence. “The Ascension Memorial Museum closed early today. Directional analysis confirms—we have a destination. Deploy the high resolution cameras for the arrival.” His feed shifted to a commercial while technicians hustled to stage the next scene.

Eager to fill in, Bunny said, “After the death of her friends and family, Mira inherited majority ownership of Fortune. She was also one of the only three surviving board members, known as the Triumvate. The Chinese-Muslim alliance had declared war on her company and placed a bounty on her head. She had to force herself to be strong. Only after the treaty, at the funeral, could she allow herself to be vulnerable.” Someone posted a photo of the handsome, red-head Kieran with his arm around Mira. “He was ten years older than her, but he had lost his family as well.”

“The Llewellyns are all womanizers,” Gavin complained. “The will left everything to Captain Llewellyn. As a penniless cousin, Kieran had nothing to offer her. That’s why their mutual media blackout only lasted three days.”

“Well, he must have offered her something pretty special, because she loaned him the millions to renovate the family estate,” Bunny countered. “He was the first Cinderfella… and the biggest.” This is what the bloggers called the men Mira slept with and then made into successes—all of them subsidiaries of Fortune Enterprises.

Gavin grumbled, “She arranged for Kieran to head the foundation to hold the family lands in trust. That’s all.”

“He became the most eligible bachelor in Wales after that, but he still hasn’t settled down.”

“We know the who and where. The question becomes: why now?”

Bunny replied, “It has been eleven months and three days since her last acquisition. The Golden Goose needs to get laid. Maybe she’s never forgotten him.” In the background, producers scrambled for recent photos of each to splice together into a heart-shaped frame. This feed went to commercial as the romance-gossip team prepared for the reunion of old flames after thirteen years.

Genocide in Oz

I was researching Sioux history for my next YA book (Shaman) and came across a quote from Frank L. Baum (Oz) that floored me. In Chapter 6 of "Native American Tribes: the History and Culture of the Sioux" by Charles River Editors:

"Our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up with one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

Turns out that before he wrote children's stories, he was a newspaper publisher in the 1890's in South Dakota during the Indian Wars. This was from his editorial pouring salt in the wound of Wounded Knee.

From his Sitting Bull editorial  (which I quote from an NPR article by JJ Sutherland), he says, "The Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs... The Whites, by law of conquest... are masters of the American continent. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better they die than live the miserable wretches that they are."

I just read a 2004 CounterPunch article explaining the yellow-brick road as the path to the Black Hills gold territory. He was explaining political realities to children, including the opium use. In his book about Santa Claus, the chapter entitled "the Wickedness of the Awgwas" reviles a fallen race who are now only "earthen hillocks dotting the plain"...after the Wounded Knee massacre. This article also points out KKK parallels.

The only people to criticize him for this recently was the Times of Israel when the new Oz movie came out. Turns out that Baum converted to Theosophy, which is also antisemitic. They claim Oz painted Baum spiritual journey. Evidently, he was heavily edited to tone down his racism, including pictures and poems which were anti-African. His descendants have since apologized to the Sioux.

My conclusion: The wicked witch was probably just the wrong color and killed in her sleep by a guest. The winner wrote history.

Review of Book Blogs

I'm flogging my latest book now and started with a list of 65 pages of YA blog names in a word document. I spent a great deal of time slogging through the blogs. In about 2.5 hours of surfing, I find 10 that may be a good fit for my book. Then I email the information requested to each blogger or fill out their forms. Most bloggers want the same title and five pieces of info about my story, so I mail (BCC) every two hours for the ones with the same content. Forgive me for not personalizing more, but I try to put the key filters for you to accept or reject in one line. Next, I paste the cover, and last the pitch. I feel like a door to door salesman and get that door slammed in my face a lot. Now, I get my say for a few minutes while the bruises are healing.

You have to right to put anything you want in your blog, but here are some suggestion after viewing hundreds.

1. Professionals have a tab at the top called "policies" or "review policies" or a bolded subtitle in the About/Contact sections. It makes everyone's life easier.
2. The contact section should have an email address or a form if you want people to contact you. If you don't want your email shared because of spam, say that and a professional will bcc or make one-to-one mailings. If you only respond to email with personal greetings, put that in the instructions, too, but be sure to put your name and gender in the about section. I don't know how to address a cat photo on a blog called AnarchyofHate.com or KnittingFun.
3. If you have fewer than four followers or four books posted, you do not have the right to require 150 previous reviews on a book before you'll look at it. At that point, you need us for free stuff more than we need you for buzz. The biggest Kindle blogs only require ten.
4. "I don't have an e-reader" is not an excuse. You have a computer and all the major formats have free readers for your PC/MAC/idevice. We're the majority now.
5. "I don't read self-published" is blatantly hypocritical. Your blog is self-published.
6. Be polite in your refusals. If you actually slam Indies for bad editing, make sure you spell check your own policies page.
7. Put "closed to reviews" at the top of your policy page, not at the bottom of screen 16, or people will jump to the bottom and spam you.
8. If you've been on "temporary hiatus" for two years, your blog is officially dead. My favorite was the policy page with the picture of the EPT stick positive.
9. If all you review is romance, be honest and say so. Don't enroll yourself at a blog promotion site as YA. YA does not mean R-rated. If your "about" section say "I prefer Male on Male" or your featured book is "Wallbanger"... in fact, if every cover on your first screen is a woman in the throes of ecstasy, reconsider your self-classification.
10. If you live in New Zealand, or any other island over 20 hours of flying away, take a reality pill and use an ereader. I'm not mailing you an ARC.
11. Realize that your blog name is part of your brand and will affect the submissions to it. For example: if you have the word "Heaven" in your blog name, don't complain about being flooded by religious books.
12. Reviewing classics that have been around for over 25 years isn't very interesting.
13. Talking about only your own book isn't really a "book blog". This goes for publishing companies and authors both.
14. Consider adding a Goodreads user link to see if your reading list is compatible with the author's. If nothing else, the two of you can see what each other likes in an automated fashion. I've made several friends this way, and we both build our following network.

Cover Reveal-- Messenger

Messenger – Book One of Behind the Walls of Sleep
(YA Fantasy, 75K words)

When we close our eyes at night, we all see the same ancient place. Exploring Astra is like living a videogame. Tomorrow, I’m going goblin-tipping with some of the other wizards. The first rule of being a dream wizard is “no photos.” You don’t want the bad guys finding you where you have no powers. The waking world sucks.

Since Mom went to prison, the Nevada foster system sent me to Minnesota to meet an Uncle Joe I never knew I had. Snow loses its charm after five days. Only music and the dreams make my life bearable.

The weird thing is that elements of the worlds are bleeding into each other. Someone is trying to kill me, and I’m not sure who: the criminal underworld, the elves, or the crazy wizard causing these freaky storms.

Futurism, an Agent of Change

I just finished my first YA fantasy, and it's in edit now. My next project will be to finish the Jezebel series. The target is about 40 from now--2054. There will be 9 billion people on the planet by then, one and a half today's levels, most of the growth occurring in Africa and Asia. Extrapolating the technology won't be as hard as finding possible solutions. There are a few problems to tackle, such as the fact that more than a billion, perhaps two, of that enormous population will be so poor they will be starving. Health care and education are also critical, but human dignity will take center stage in this story.

The female lead characters are already concentrating on solving the problems through:

1. educating woman in third-world countries in science, math, and technology in a program that encourages beneficiaries to pay forward.
2. kindle schools for elementary education in remote areas
3. cheap universally available male birth control (nanotech called the genilock).
4. genetically engineering people immune to aids and several other life-threatening conditions.
5. access to close, clean water so that women don't need to spend all day gathering it.
6. processing of human waste and trash by insects that can in-turn be eaten, making slums more self sustaining.
7. factory jobs that produce things the people need for their own uplift.

The hardest part of any great endeavor is not the technology; rather, it is changing the tacit opinions of the society. Most of this education revolves around the treatment of women. Ultimately, parents and communities should handle the moral education of young boys. Corporations should also be leaders, paying living and equal wages instead of spending profits to maintain the status quo. (Can you guess who the villains in this story are going to be?) However, where they fail, media will need to pick up the slack. Therefore, the number one net show in my next story will be "Ball Busters", like Myth Busters, where they tackle a different public egregious wrong against women each episode. With over a million in revenue each week (plus corporate donations of gadgets in exchange for advertisement) they can tackle almost any issue. 

The first issue they tackle is men who have the means but don't pay child support. Picture any episode of Cops where former military women from the US and Israel are given a photo of an offender and a warrant for a forced genilock. The chase him down and zap him in the balls with a device which prevents him from having any more kids until he takes care of the ones he's already made. His genitals have a "boot" on them like a car with too many tickets. The woman reporting the problem has all child support paid by the show as incentive. As far as reality shows, this would be dirt cheap. With population growth and abandonment so out of control, this practice could be accepted.

The larger issue they need to address is the tolerance of rape.The team finds a problem spot (gang rapes in country X, police non-enforcement, rape kits unprocessed, refugees attacked when they go for water, etc) where they sweep in, brain storm, and then address the issue. Hopefully others with the same problem are shamed into fixing it before the team needs to intervene. The mindset of the show is follow the laws that already exist and restate the mantra "No one should be subjected to this."

Technology available will be:

1. inexpensive fabrication of key drugs.
2. inexpensive basic construction through "printing".
3. cheap and plentiful web cameras.
4. watcher participation to spot infractions.
5. genetic testing to prove paternity.
6. a way to trace the strain of a given venereal disease to force the man spreading it to pay for the treatment.

We have all this to some degree today. I'll just extend it and combine it. For example, they will distribute a mace-like spray with a built-in signal for help and a video feed. When used, the spray releases pink dye onto the suspect along with an enzyme like PDE5 which gets rid of any erection. Given that help is on the way, prosecution of the tagged and videoed man will be much easier. 

Right now, only about 3 percent of all rapists spend any time behind bars. What I want to show in Jezebel 5 is a society that works to fix this problem, because until we do, we're shooting our future before it can be formed. A society that can address this problem can accomplish anything.

My Geneology Homework

My son Pierce was just in the hospital for a week and recovered on pain meds for another week. Now he's catching up on homework. For one assignment, he needed to interview a family member about a great grandparent. Since Pierce interviewed me, I figured I would publish the interview in my blog.

Albert was my great grandfather. He was born in East Hanover Township, 1/11/1902 on his family’s farm in Pennsylvania. His family, descended from a Philadelphia cabinet maker from the Rhine Valley in Germany, still spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. He attended Findlay Divinity College in Ohio on a work-study program and shoveled coal to keep the school heated. He was ordained in the Church of God (before the split over tongues) and found his calling “repairing churches.” Whenever there was a problem, they would call him in. He could talk to anyone and always had a joke about any subject. His family moved a lot.

He was married to a younger Vera Valentine Eshlemann and had six children: Marlin, David, Stan, Eloise, Shirley, and Ken (my grandfather). She was good at baking pies, and after every meal she would hold up her hands and say, “I never owned a dishwasher my whole life, these were my dishwashers.”

By the time my grandfather was born, Albert’s oldest children were in the military. My grandfather joined too, because they were too poor to go to college without the GI Bill. When asked about President Eisenhower, Albert complained, “Ike promised our children would never again fight in foreign wars, and now my boys are in Korea.” He preferred reading the comics in the newspaper. He told his grandchildren jokes like

“Who was the shortest man in the Bible? Nehemiah (pronounced Knee-high-miah) or Bart the shoe-height.”

“Where is baseball mentioned in the Bible? In the big inning.”

“Where are there cars in the Bible? The apostles gathered together and were in one Accord. Before that they only had motorcycles, the Triumph of Gideon was heard throughout the land.”

His last official church was in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where he married my Great Aunt Shirley and Great Uncle Larry. This is the place he lived the longest. After he retired, he bought a row house there a block from the church, where he could hear the clock bells. He maintained a long, narrow flower garden with snapdragons, Peruvian daffodils, and roses, which he gave clippings of to my grandparents. My grandfather gave children of the same daffodils to my parents. Even retired, Albert drove a 20 year old Dodge Dart to preach at two small local churches. He only stopped after a stroke ruined his night vision because he didn’t want to hurt anyone.

Albert and Vera visited one summer when Grandpa Ken was stationed in Alaska. Ken took him salmon fishing that weekend when he had off work. On Sunday, in the stream, Albert reeled in a prize on steel leader, a salmon so big it took five people to help wrestle into the net. His response was, “This is God’s joke on me. It’s the biggest fish I’ll ever catch in my life, and I can’t tell anyone because I caught it on the Lord’s day.”

When he died in late May 1984, the funeral was huge. The line to view the casket stretched around the block. The oddest person there was a mentally challenged woman in a raccoon-skin coat (in summer). Nobody recognized her. When asked, she said she met him at the bus stop. He was the only one who would talk to her, and he would be missed.

Ten Goals for the New Year

I saw a friend in Facebook with some interesting goals for the New Year, so I thought I might make up a few. One of his was to get one of those Shriner cars with a helicopter blade on top. He can't afford one, so he was planning the theoretical heist. I helped. (Writers can do that without getting arrested.) I pointed out that right in the confusion before or after a parade was the best time. A clown costume could get him in and out without suspicion. Of course, then he had to add "Learn to ride a unicycle" to his goals. Small price to pay for a dream.
Here's what I came up with, in no particular order. I'll consider myself successful if I accomplish half, in addition to what life throws at me every day, but I'll still try for all ten.

1. Write three more books: hopefully a young adult fantasy, the finale of my Jezebel series, and something brand new. The new is always the hardest, more dangerous, and most exciting.
2. Get my son through hip surgery safely and with decent grades and happy, which is why I aimed for only three books not four like normal. He's going to be in a wheelchair for six weeks. We're not sure when it's going to be scheduled yet. I think we've had three rounds of X-rays, a computer gait analysis, and a CT scan so far.
3. Improve my hit ratio with books. Only about half hit the top 100 lists and pay for themselves. About a sixth don't even sell copies every month on Amazon. This means getting feedback from a content editor early so I can change stories if one isn't likely to pan out. It may also mean paying for more marketing.
4. Sign up for new health insurance. My two-year HP retirement benefits run out at the end of August. I can either pay for double coverage starting in March or pay the full amount to continue HP coverage for four months. Obamacare makes it possible for independent writers to see doctors!
5. Read four new authors. This is harder than it sounds. With my glasses problems, I only read about 20 a year and most of those are from old favorites or shared with my family. I want to start with the author of "Fight Club", Chuck Palahniuk. Since my early sci-fi has been compared to the Canadian Cory Doctorow, I thought I should find out why.
6. Create my first audio book (while the kids are at school). It takes about two hours of total silence to generate one hour of story. I even bought the equipment for it already, and Tammy has volunteered to do women's voices. I should do so soon to ride the current wave, but I want to have quality. I also want to make all that time count. Part of me wants to advertise "Foundation for the Lost" to increase its popularity. Another part wants to do Jezebel to boost my biggest money earner and the one most likely to be purchased.
7. Finish importing all my cassette tapes from the 80s into itunes, including converting the .wav files to mp3 for the first ten albums I did. Twice in the last year, I wanted to listen to a given song while writing a particular scene. However, this is tedious. I'll need to download new software and buy a tape player that doesn't hiss. Then I need to spend hours editing the albums into songs with Audacity.
8. Buy albums from four new artists. Again, difficult. I have about 4000 tunes in my collection, 980 in my current writing playlist. However, I don't want to become a barnacle and become stuck in the 90s.
9. Surprise my wife with a romantic gesture once a season. This is difficult because she doesn't like me to kill plants unnecessarily, and we don't have family nearby to watch the kids. She knows me well enough that this is even harder. I also admit to being a complacent. This means I have to make it a point to put forth the effort. She's worth itl.
10. Apply to teach at the local college. After the surgery but before signing up for insurance for next year. Notice this is pretty low on my priorities. As a retiree, any task that takes over 20 minutes of work I don't enjoy goes to the "later" pile. Hmm. That list it pretty long now. I could be an instructor for math or computers, but secretly hope to teach writing. This won't happen, which is another reason it's on the bottom. It's a scientific fact that only three people in any math class actually want to be there.