A to Z: Z for Zeta

This is the end, my only friend, the end.
Of our elaborate plans the end, of everything that stands, the end.
Jim Morrison

Zeta is actually the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. If this were a Greek blog we would be doing Omega, which stands for the end of all things -- being the last letter of that more classic and hence weightier alphabet. Zeta is actually a sort of frilly letter which reminds me of a fraternity house on a treelined college campus oddly quiet after the keg party the night before, the party to end all parties, the beer blast, raided by the campus police, you now only dimly remember although your pounding head is proof of living large for the moment, a moment now gone.

Speaking of living large for the moment, you can now pick up a free copy of my book, an appropriate end to the A to Z Challenge Book Launch Series for the publication of the new dystopian thriller about the end of the world, SAVIOR.

Yes. It is being offered free today through Sunday on Amazon Kindle as a promotional feature by Harvard Square Editions, the publisher, who hopes, as I do, that in this way you will spread the word and perhaps even be compelled to offer your feedback and insightful and praising comments on the Amazon page for SAVIOR.

So this is really not the end. It is just a beginning, possibly, as you pick up your free copy and begin a new adventure. I will quote now from a reviewer, who said of SAVIOR:

"Savior is a quest, a story of survival, a thrill ride, an exploration of youth finding the kind of truths parents dread … the kind that transform boy to man when the template exists outside the realm of normal and everyday." Diane Nelson, Beach Bound Books

And a heads up is in order here also. There will be a sequel. I'm working on it now. So do something good for yourself, pick up a free Kindle of SAVIOR and prepare to be amazed as you share a father's  and son's journey to the end of time and back again.

A to Z: V for Voice

Voice is the quality in writing that lends authenticity to the experience of reading and compels a reader to trust that what he is doing is worthwhile. Like singers, a writer's voice gets stronger with training. Almost all writers have a sense of what their voice is; it's that combination of story setting and characterization that fits the author's range of authority, knowledge and expertise. Although voice can be confused with character, because usually an author speaks through his characters, either through dialogue or interior monologue, voice is more than just finding the intonation, accent and authentic mood to fit a specific character. It is about having the competency to range above and beyond the character's diction and mental frame of reference. After all, an author is the creator of a world, and that world has to be seamless and apparently boundless in all directions in the reader's imagination. The trick is a type of illusion, a leading of the reader's attention with smoke and mirrors elsewhere while the stage is being set.

As citizens of a liberal culture in which we are urged towards self-actualization, we are all supposed to find our true voice in our actual lives. What does that really mean, when someone is said to have found his or her voice? It is a proxy for achieving a place in the world. Most adults need to feel useful and accomplished. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, acceptance and recognition come just below the apex of moral development. Acceptance and recognition from peers is usually reserved for people who have a voice, a say in what is being done and how it is being done. But as many people strive to have their voices heard, sometimes a cacophony results that leads nowhere. Look at Cliven Bundy in the news today as representative of a faction in adult America today that have lost their voice and never will find it again, seemingly.
In SAVIOR, I worked hard to get the voices of the characters right. I had the most fun with the villain, Samael Chagnon, whose voice is strong and compelling, and frightening in its lucidity. Al's voice is calm and sure and honest and therefore sometimes despairing. Ricky, Al's teenage boy, is hopeful, sometimes angry. For me, the greatest compliment so far in the reviews for Savior has come from a reviewer who had some difficulty with the book, but loved all the characters, even the minor ones, because they seemed alive and true. As a writer, that tells me I am on the right track.

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

(Photo by Melissa Rose)

A to Z: Time Travel

Time travel is the idea that humans will one day master the technology necessary to bend the space-time continuum and break the observable laws of physics by traveling back in time. Although theories of space and time don't necessarily preclude time travel, many skeptics point to obvious paradoxes that could arise, namely that a time traveler could alter the course of events by acting in the past to change the way things happen. In this way, someone could for instance go back in time and kill their grandfather before he could procreate, rendering his/her own existence impossible. The way to solve this paradox is by using the quantum theory of multiverses. Under this theory, a time traveler would not alter the course of events in the world by acting in the past. Instead his actions would trigger the formation of an alternative, parallel universe, branching off and forming its own reality.

In my book SAVIOR, Los Santos Muertos are attempting to build a doomsday machine, the Resonator, which uses the ratios of sound waves present at the creation of matter to set off cataclysmic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and threaten civilization, The Resonator also has the capability, harnessing the power inherent in the sonic ratios, to bend space-time into a wormhole that allows time travel.

SAVIOR is available as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and additional publication month details.

A to Z: Q for Quest

Quest comes from question. Is there a question you need answered? All of us share the basic questions that are answered in the course of our lives. What kind of person are we? Is there a purpose to our lives? Who do we love? What's the point? Everybody has a story because every life is a quest. It's the most basic of human experiences and if you don't have a quest, you probably don't have a pulse.
Heroes always have a quest, a journey they must accomplish, an object such as Lancelot's Holy Grail in the Arthurian tale that he/she must find in order to fulfill the mission. But even anti-heroes have quests; for example Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye could be seen to be questing for a purpose in his life. A quest without danger, or obstacles, is a meaningless exercise since it is always the lessons learned along the way that prove the most valuable, not the object or mission that seems to be driving us.

In Savior, Ricky's quest is to find his father, but in the process he is attempting to heal himself and his father from the wound represented by the death of Mary, mother and wife. And then there's the fate of world civilization hanging in the balance. Is this trite? I don't think so. We are all interconnected, and every individual's quest, every choice we make on the journey, decides the fate of the Universe.

(The Knight at the Crossroads by Viktor Vasnetsov)

SAVIOR is published Friday April 18th as an Amazon Kindle Ebook. Go to SAVIOR and pick up your copy, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: N for North

North, true north, is the direction of dreams. The land of the midnight sun is the land of the subconscious from which flow the primal images of the Jungian icons. The celestial night sky rotates around the star sign of the Ursa Major, which gave North its status as the prime direction around which all maps of the ancient world were oriented, at least in Western tradition. Still today, convention dictates that North is up on maps. The idea of North as the cardinal orientation for migratory man is as old as mankind itself.

Ricky's journey in SAVIOR winds northward towards Canada once he learns from the American military where his father is being held. It is a journey also towards self-knowledge and independence. Meanwhile, Al, in solitary confinement and sensorily deprived in the blackness of his underground cell, intuits somehow in which direction lies north. It is a comfort to him to be able to orient himself in space as he paces back and forth and tries to figure out where he is in between sessions with Samael Chagnon, leader of Los Santos Muertos, LSM, the former drug cartel that has morphed into an insurgent force bent on toppling Western civilization and establishing the theocracy that is the cult of Santa Muerte. North and south, life and death - the LSM is all about turning the world on its head.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: K for Knowledge

Knowledge is power. We live in the information age where even our personal information is valuable. Governments scoop up this knowledge about our private lives off the Internet like gigantic vacuum cleaners, sweeping it into computers. The computers churn out patterns, connections made in the oceans of information. By deciphering these patterns, our governments gain knowledge that provides vast power and an access to the lives of individuals undreamed of in past ages. The gain in security may pale in comparison to the corrupting influence of such absolute knowledge and power.

(Photo Courtesy of Walters Art Museum)

Megalomaniacs like Samael Chagnon, the leader of Los Santos Muertos, or LSM, in my book SAVIOR, know that the path to power runs through the world of knowledge, in this case, ancient knowledge that has lied buried in secret for millennia -- the hard won mathematical knowledge of the Mayan empire that carries the code of creation. With it, Chagnon will build a doomsday machine and  render world governments helpless before him. He believes Ricky's father knows the code, and tortures him to get him to reveal it. Al doesn't know the code. The only knowledge that matters to him now is information about his son, but as a prisoner of the LSM in an underground facility beneath the Alberta oil tar sands, that knowledge is inaccessible to him. Ironically, in the absence of such information, and using only his memories, senses and intuitions, Al gains knowledge and power that helps him survive until the final confrontation with evil itself.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: I for Indigenous

Indigenous refers to any thing or person native to a place. In the popular imagination, it can also mean authentic, a thing or person untainted or uncorrupted by external influences. In SAVIOR, Al seeks out answers not only to his personal or family issues, but answers as to what is happening in the larger world that he sees falling into violence and chaos. His search leads him to an old man of the mountains, Evelio, a native of the Guatemalan highlands, or descendant of the ancient Mayan people.

Evelio has answers, but before Al can learn more, the LSM, Los Santos Muertos, stage an ambush with some of their advanced aerial weaponry. It is up to Al's son Ricky to find Al and rescue him from the LSM. In the end, Ricky also gets help from his friends in Canada, some of them Native Americans. I like the idea that ancient wisdom can trump evil armed with advanced technological wizardry. It is an old idea in our popular imagination, and I hope that I have infused it not abused it with this new story.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: H is for Home

Home where my thought's escaping. Where my love lies waiting silently for me. These are the emotional longings that sustain Al Lyons, the main character of SAVIOR, as he lies underground in the secret prison of the Santos Muertos, not knowing where he is, whether he'll ever see daylight or his son or his home in Plymouth Beach, Florida again. He hallucinates apocalyptic visions and contemplates the release of breathing in the water while being water-boarded, but memories of home, and his son Ricky keep him from taking the easy route. Not that home is ever wholly there to get back to. His wife Mary is dead, and Ricky is on the verge of adulthood, ready to move on to the next phase of his life, finding a home, a place for himself.

(photo by Russell Lee)

The idea of home sustains us in the worst of times, but also every day. Getting home from work for me in the evenings is like shedding the false consciousness of the workplace and becoming again the person I can choose to be. It must be that way for most people, although there are the lucky few for whom the work world is a release into the desired persona. For me, getting home is that desired release. So to write about a man who longs to escape the torture chamber and get home again is a natural thought process to conceive of. Don't get me wrong, I do love my job, and appreciate the ability to get up every day and do it again, but home, that's where my thought's are escaping and my love lies waiting. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not in my book.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: F is for Friendship

Friends make life sweet, and in SAVIOR, both Al Lyons and Ricky his son find that friends not only lighten the load on their paths to freedom and maturity, but also teach them some of the deepest lessons of what it means to be alive.

Ricky escapes the clutches of the US military, and with his girlfriend Lianne he hits the road to find his father. Both of them have some growing up to do, but they watch each other's back until it is no longer possible.

Al finds solace with his fellow prisoners in the underground Santos Muertos compound. Together they plot escape and help keep hope alive. One prisoner in particular becomes Al's confidante and romantic partner, proving that the bonds of friendship can blossom into something greater in the worst of circumstances.

To quote the narrator of a book I wrote called LATITUDES - A Story of Coming Home, speaking of friends, he says "They were all coming from different places and on their way to different destinations. They served as precious holds for each other in the shifting sands."

"Greater love has no-one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: E for Environment

Environmental problems plague the world of SAVIOR. In Guatemala heavy rains cause flooding and destruction along the Caribbean coast during the time Ricky and Al visit. The mountain guide, Evelio, complains to Al that the trade winds have stopped blowing, the frogs are disappearing and the trees of the cordillera are dying. In SAVIOR, not only is the rule of law breaking down across the globe, but the fabric of life seems to be unraveling. This is the wasteland.

One of these days we will wake up and it will be ours. In a world of rapid change and environmental destruction, there are species who flourish: cockroaches, rats, coyotes. And in SAVIOR, the LSM, the Santos Muertos, a death cult that welcomes the apocalypse because it heralds the beginning of a new age, their age, the age of Lady Death, are also spreading their tentacles.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

(Photo courtesy of US National Archives and Records Administration)

A to Z: B for Boyhood

Boyhood is a time of innocence, a reverie, the short-lived golden age of youth that we look back on with the fondness of nostalgia. We try hard to remember, and our memories are tinged with self-serving aggrandizement -- all the games we played, the tears we cried, all the lessons learned, the mistakes made, the loves won and lost. Boyhood leads slowly into manhood, and many men wistfully call themselves "old boys" and hope to retain the luster of youth long past the days when the grass was really greener. Hope springs eternal, and at this time of year it's difficult not to feel a bounce and catch a whiff of the heedlessness and carefree days of the past, that foreign country where they speak a different language and do things differently, to paraphrase.

In SAVIOR, Ricky Lyons, Al's son, is that paragon of boyhood, an athlete and a scholar. His father has hopes for his perfection which are just dreams of extending his own glory and reconquering the ecstatic joys of those never-to-return days.

Ricky has struggled with developing his own personhood and ambitions, a conflict that has led him to the depths of suicidal ideation and self-hate. But in Guatemala, he finds an inner peace while the two, father and son, wrestle with the big waves of the Pacific in the surfing town of Monterico. Now he sees he is stronger than his father, but curiously, he needs him more than ever, and when Al is taken prisoner by the Santos Muertos, Ricky dedicates himself to finding and saving his father, a quest that will lead him through the underbelly of the Americas to the Santos Muertos compound deep beneath the Canadian oil tar belt. This is a coming of age journey like no other, and in the end we will know, as will Ricky, the true meaning of heroism and sacrifice.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.

A to Z: A for Adult -- Al Lyons

Al Lyons is a guy in his mid forties, a typical Dad, except that life throws him a curveball when his wife of seventeen years dies suddenly. Al is left with the care of his semi-estranged, teenaged son, Ricky. Like a lot of Dads, myself included, Al dotes on his son. But he has some problems communicating. And a hard time dealing with his frustrations.

Al is a teacher at the local high school. He also coaches football. He has looked forward to coaching Ricky on the high school football team. But Ricky shows some independence and a rebellious spirit and decides football is not for him.

This family rift is in the background when the two undertake a trip to Guatemala in the wake of the death of Mary, Al's wife. There Al hopes he and Ricky can reconnect and commit to strengthening their relationship, but their quest for wholeness mysteriously opens them to a world-shattering confrontation with evil itself. Al is kidnapped by the Santos Muertos and held hostage in an underground facility beneath the Alberta oil tar sands. There he is water-boarded, and interrogated by Samael Chagnon, the leader of the Santos Muertos cartel, and held as the bait to trap Ricky, who holds the key -  a Mayan  codex known as the Chocomal -  to Chagnon's desire for world domination. Al depends on his memories of his family and grows spiritually while in confinement.

As Al discovers. being a father, being an adult, and being a man, is a life-long voyage of discovery. And sometimes the key is not what you might think.

SAVIOR will be published April 18th on the Amazon Kindle platform by Harvard Square Editions. Visit the SAVIOR page on the HSE website, and then check back here throughout the A to Z challenge month to learn more about SAVIOR and publication launch details.