Playback Effect has another pretty badge

Here's an update on my post from last April about Awesome Indies Book's reviewing and approving Playback Effect. They've gone on to award the book their Seal of Excellence For Outstanding Independent Literature. And they gave me another badge.

Here's the badge. It's just as pretty as the last one.

And just as a reminder, here's the cover of the book, designed by Kit Foster.

And if you want to take a look inside, here's the Amazon link.

The Cause

As the citizens of South Carolina ponder what to do with the Confederate flag now flying at their state capitol, it seems a good time to focus on a crucial distinction: the difference between why a soldier fought for a cause, and what cause that soldier actually served.

Those who supported secession and the establishment of the Confederate States of America, and those who laid down their lives in its service, were moved by a multitude of motives. Some were swept up in local fervor. Some believed that the United States, by refusing to let states depart from the Union, had betrayed the principles on which the country was founded. Some detested the growth of industrialism and viewed the South as a bastion of rural values. Some felt a far stronger patriotic tie to their state than to the federal union of states. And some believed that slavery was either an economic essential for the South's survival, or a positive moral good, or a recognition of basic truths about human nature, or all of the above.

Those who founded the Confederacy included quite a few of that latter number. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that the "cornerstone" of the new nation "rest[ed] upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina itself identified the threat to slaveholders' rights as a cause or major cause of their decisions to secede. More examples would not be hard to find.

Whatever brought them to the battlefield, whatever their courage and their sacrifice, the soldiers of the Confederacy, in the final analysis, fought to perpetuate and enshrine slavery. The flag of the Confederacy symbolizes -- not solely, but inescapably symbolizes -- that goal.

And so I believe that Southerners can honor their ancestors who fought for the Southern cause, which so many of them viewed as a noble cause, while partially or entirely disagreeing with that view; that they can honor those soldiers' devotion while treating the flag they followed into battle as a historical artifact, rather than a symbol to be revered; that they can, finally, agree with the descendants of slaves, and with those whose cause is the preservation and extension of freedom, that a state capitol is no longer the place for that flag to fly.

On the Advice that Authors Subject Characters to Continual Torture

I recently read yet another article warning authors against "nice writer syndrome," and exhorting them to make things as awful as possible for their characters.

Am I the only reader who prefers a judicious dose of difficulty and danger to an unending horror show of "But wait, there's worse"?

And doesn't a single hard blow have more impact when it isn't just another beat in a hundreds-of-pages-long beating?

Pretty New Badge

I got some good news at the end of last week, in the form of a lovely review of my latest novel, Playback Effect, from the Awesome Indies blog -- and a very pretty "AI Approved" badge to go with it.

Here are some high points of the review:

"This is a novel that’s impossible to pigeonhole into a genre. The presence of a technology that permits recording and playback of dreams is science fiction, but it’s also a legal/crime thriller. The author, who has an extensive legal background, weaves it seamlessly into the story from start to finish. This is also something of a dystopian novel, in its description of the various uses and, most importantly, the misuses of technology, by those seeking to make money, by government, and by criminal elements – and the disastrous impact all this can have on individuals within society.

"Playback Effect has an astonishingly diverse cast of characters, and while Wynne is the main protagonist, the others play roles that are no less important. The author uses third person point of view, and moves from one character to another to keep the suspense level high and the tension as tight as a steel cable on a suspension bridge.

"Dialogue, descriptions, and narrative are flawless – not a wasted word anywhere. This is a book that will linger in your thoughts long after you’ve stopped reading – and are likely to invade your dreams. I give it a resounding five stars."

And here's the pretty badge.

A good book if accurate -- which I can't assess

I recently read The Zealot by Reza Aslan -- and would be reviewing it right now on Goodreads and Amazon if one could do so without choosing a numerical (star) rating. I can't make that choice, because whether I could recommend the book depends on the accuracy of its many assertions about Biblical scholarship and about the history of both Judaism and early Christianity. Without undertaking a good deal of independent research on those matters, I can't assess Aslan's accuracy.

If, and I emphasize if, Aslan has done his homework properly, then the book is a fascinating account of how Jesus fit into the history of Jewish messianic trends and of rebellion against both Rome and the Jewish priestly heirarchy.

Paperback update

Here's what's happening and scheduled to happen re the Playback Effect paperback.

The paperback is now available on Amazon and in Barnes & Noble's online store. However, I'll soon be replacing the current files -- twice.

Later today or possibly tomorrow, I'll be correcting a typo on the back cover and fixing some minor formatting issues inside. In a week or two, I'll be uploading text in a slightly smaller format, as the present text borders on large print.

So if you want a limited (unnumbered) edition, Future Collector's Item :-) -- order now!

If you want a corrected edition with slightly large print -- order around the middle of next week. To be sure, you could check my Facebook author page for paperback status updates.

To get a paperback with more conventionally sized text, order in a couple of weeks (after checking the Facebook author page).

Celebrating latest book release tomorrow on my Facebook author page

Rejoice or take cover as you prefer: my Facebook author page will get lots of my attention tomorrow (Tuesday, December 9th) as I celebrate the release of my latest novel, the near-future science fiction thriller Playback Effect. (I'll be interested to see whether readers think the label "thriller" is accurate. It is, at least, as close to a thriller as I'm likely to come.)

There's the lovely ebook cover from designer Kit Foster.

Throughout the day, I'll be posting excerpts, giveaways, trivia questions, and whatever else occurs to me. (I've already scheduled many of these posts, due to Facebook's handy scheduled-post feature.)

The ebook will be available from Amazon, Amazon UK, the Nook Store, Smashwords, and iTunes. Whether it'll be on Kobobooks by tomorrow I'm not sure. The paperback is already up on Amazon (better early than late . . .), and should be in B&N's online store within the next few days.

One aspect of the release isn't quite as I'd like it: I have no reviews yet, though some are on the way. Blame it on my quixotic decision to run for judge -- I had less time than usual, pre-release, for beating the bushes soliciting reviews. (So I'd be especially grateful to any reader who leaves one on Amazon or posts one elsewhere!)

Here's the link to my author page, so you can join the party. :-) Cheers!

For Cyber Monday, a better book description for my next novel....

Since my previous post about my upcoming near-future sci-fi thriller, Playback Effect, I've (I hope) substantially improved the book description. So here it is for your CyberMonday, along with the Amazon pre-order link. You can also pre-order it via the Nook Store, and (soon) on iTunes and Kobobooks.

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"O wad some Power the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!" But what if it's the other way round? 

New technology records the highlights of emotional experience for others to share. Buy a helmet and you can feel the exhilaration of an Olympic ski jumper, or the heat of a lucid dreamer's erotic imaginings. Commit a crime, and you may be sentenced to endure the suffering you inflicted on others. 

But such recordings may carry more information than the public has realized. What will criminals learn about their victims? When a husband is wrongfully convicted of injuring his wife, how will their marriage change? And what uses will a sociopath find for recordings of the experience of death? 

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The pre-order price is $2.99 -- the cost of a latte, and hopefully more likely to linger.

Here are the pre-order links for Amazon and the Nook Store.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Playback-Effect-Karen-Wyle-ebook/dp/B00OVJISTQ/

Nook Store: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/playback-effect-karen-a-wyle/1120799217?ean=2940046410945

Happy shopping! :-)

Pre-Order Announcement, Cover Reveal, and Request for Description Assistance for my next book

Late last week, I clicked the right boxes to put my latest novel, Playback Effect, up for pre-orders on Amazon. Here's the terrific cover by designer Kit Foster.

And here's the pre-order link.

If you follow the link, you'll see a fairly short description. In fact, it's so short I'll paste it in here:

Hal Wakeman, demolitions expert turned sculptor, shows little interest in the dreams his wife Wynne records and sells. But when a bomb destroys Hal's latest public sculpture and Wynne is gravely injured, the policeman whose love Wynne could not return is ready to believe Hal guilty of the crime. Now it may be Wynne's suffering, rather than her flights of fancy, that Hal will have to share. After all, the prisons are filled with convicts who have endured the pain and terror they inflicted on their victims. 

But such recordings may carry more information than the public has realized -- with incalculable results. . . . 

Well, that's okay as far as it goes. But it leaves out a few things.

Like what? Like the actual bomber, a sociopath named Tertius Shaw.

And the fact that one of the technicians who records the suffering of the bomb victims accidentally records one of their deaths -- a recording in which various folks (including Shaw) are quite interested indeed.

(The description doesn't say that much about just what information the recordings turn out to carry -- but that's on purpose.)

So I'd welcome feedback, in the comments here or on my Facebook author page , on the following questions: how do you like the description as it stands? How could I clearly and concisely mention one or both of the missing elements I've identified?

Thanks! (Oh, and feel free to pre-order the book. :-) )

Predictive capacity matchup: global warming models versus Ptolemaic astronomy

My husband, who doesn't blog nearly often enough, copied me on a fascinating email, which he's given me permission to post here (with a few very minor tweaks). The subject: Ptolemy's model of the solar system/universe and how it compared, in predictive value, with the models predicting catastrophic, anthropogenic (man-made) global climate change. (Spoiler: Ptolemy's model, completely inaccurate as we now know it to be, comes out way ahead.)

"Global warming orthodoxy reminds me a lot of the Catholic Church's involvement in the debate over the Earth-centered model of Ptolemy and the heliocentric model of Copernicus.  Church dogma attached itself to one model, which made the other heresy.  Statist and communitarian dogma has attached itself to CAGW.  The parallel is actually fairly close.  Most people tend to think of the Geocentric model has hopelessly flawed.  In reality, it had a LOT of empirical data supporting it.  Galileo's work, especially with Kepler's insight into orbits being elliptical, gave the advantage to the Heliocentric model.  The fact that Kepler was nominally Protestant may have been a factor in his not being molested by authorities the way Galileo was.  Perhaps the reception of heliocentrism in Protestant Europe was as much a part of the rejection of everything associated with Catholicism as it was the scientific arguments in its favor.  But I digress...

"The funny thing is that Ptolemy's model, unlike CAGW, ACTUALLY WORKED.  It was very accurate at predicting astronomical events.  Over time, however, it began to diverge from the empirical data.  Also, the problems with Mars' orbit observed by the last great eyeball astronomer, Tycho de Brahe, created more difficulties.  However, the degree of predictive rigor of the Geocentric model was orders of magnitude better than the global circulation models relied on by CAGW today - at least 2 orders of magnitude better, based upon the number of years Ptolemy's system worked versus the GCMs, which can't even hindcast accurately.  Here's the other thing.  To the extent that Occam's Razor is a workable rule (more correctly, a rule of thumb) in science, it must be noted that Ptolemy's model was actually simpler - had fewer cycles - that Copernicus'.  Also, Copernicus' system had a big problem in the lack of an observed parallax.  The Catholic Church's treatment of Galileo and heliocentrism makes a lot more sense on the basis of the EMPIRICAL DATA THEN AVAILABLE than the treatment meted out to CAGW skeptics by the bureaucrat-scientists and their political toadies based upon the data available today.  Consider, the Inquisition only showed Galileo the instruments.  RFK Jr. wants people who reject CAGW tried for crimes against humanity and imprisoned (or executed - that's implied though I don't think explicitly stated).  CAGW predictions based upon the GCMs fail the .05 level of significance test.  Ptolemy's system was way better than that in its day."

A few of the great artists at the Fourth Street Art Festival this year

I just made my annual visit to Bloomington's Fourth Street Art Festival. It rained yesterday and this morning, but the weather let up this afternoon, and the sun even came out at times.

I'm full of the Fire Department's roast chicken (part of their fundraiser, which makes it possible for the department to buy Xmas presents for poor kids in Monroe County), and I even had a poem written especially for me by a member of the Writer's Guild. (You can see it at my campaign website.)

Here are website for three of the wonderful artists whose work I saw:

--Leo Charette

--Jim Copeland

--Cathy Hillegas

Go feast your eyes and refresh your souls!

Why I'm Publishing a Revised Edition of Twin-Bred

My first novel -- not counting a bizarre childhood effort -- was the science fiction novel Twin-Bred. It got quite a few good reviews, though a few noted an overabundance of named minor characters and some initial organizational flaws. I was and am proud of it -- but I agreed with those criticisms.

So I've done some tweaking.

There are still named characters who appear only once or a few times. For me, that's part of creating the feel of an institution with dozens of inhabitants, and/or of giving a realistic tone to certain conversations. But I've eliminated quite a few of what I decided were unnecessary character names -- starting with the little girl in the Prologue, for whom readers might search the rest of the story in vain.

I've also moved a few scenes to what now seem like more logical places, and broken up some chapters that lacked internal cohesion.

I'll be publishing this revised edition as soon as (a) I have time, and (b) I figure out the logistics. I've updated all my novels to correct typos or to add previews of upcoming books -- but this edition needs to stand on its own, while also replacing the original. Another wrinkle: Twin-Bred has been in Amazon's KDP Select program for some time, but I'm not sure the revised edition should start there. I've yet to ascertain whether I may publish the revised edition separately and outside KDP Select without waiting for the original edition's Select term to elapse.

I'm also not sure whether a revised edition counts as an "update" which I can make available to previous purchasers. If not, I'll supply the revised edition to any previous purchaser who asks for it.

Stay tuned! :-)

An Independence Day excerpt from Wander Home

Enjoying myself at the lovely Independence Day party we attend annually, it occurred to me that the following excerpt from Wander Home was particularly appropriate for the holiday.

[The setting: an afterlife where memories may be relived and shared, and where one may be any age that the situation and its emotions require. The personae: Cassidy and her mother Eleanor.]

"Ready, mom?"

Cassidy, age thirteen, looked up at her mother, somewhere in her twenties. Mom asked one more time, "You really won't tell me where we're going?"

Cassidy shook her head, grinning. Mom had been almost everywhere with Grandpa and Grandma, but here was somewhere she couldn't have been. "Nope! It's a surprise. Here we go!" . . .

They stood on an unpaved street. There was little traffic: a horse-drawn cart loaded with grain sacks, a fancier carriage pulled by better-groomed horses. Cassidy could smell the dust of the road and the tangy odor of horse dung.

Despite the oppressive heat and humidity, they saw no one in shorts or showing bare arms, let alone midriffs. In fact, the men wore ruffled shirts, vests and waistcoats, with velvety leggings that stopped just below the knee, and then stockings. The buckles on their shoes might have been shiny, if not for the dust from the road. The women swished along in gathered blouses and long skirts, or else in low-cut dresses with tight bodices, skirts puffed out to the side and multiple petticoats beneath. Some of the men and women wore neutral colors, but there was a good deal of red, yellow, and blue. The adult women and older girls wore caps concealing their hair, and hats tied on top of the caps. From the elaborate costumes came an incongruous smell of stale sweat.

Young children ran after their mothers wearing loose white gowns. Cassidy tapped Mom's arm and pointed to a baby toddling along, pillows strapped all around its middle and a quilted velvet cap on its head. "Bet you wish I'd had that get-up when I was learning to walk!"

Mom shook her head, smiling a little sadly. "You didn't need it. You didn't fall much. You were graceful, right from the start." She let out a short breath of laughter. "You must have got that from Grandpa and Great-Grandma. Not from me, at any rate."

Now Mom was looking at their surroundings. They stood near a typical New England courthouse; up and down the street, they could see houses built with logs, and other structures that might have been stores. One building looked like a one-room schoolhouse. Mom looked around, her forehead furrowed, eyes squinting. "This isn't — I thought we were in Old Sturbridge Village, but we aren't, are we? Is this some other reconstruction of colonial times?"

Cassidy' burst out laughing. "Uh-uh! Try again."

All the while, she was listening. Finally she heard the sound she had been expecting: hoof beats. A man in a dusty uniform came riding down the street, thick saddlebags bouncing against the horse's sweaty flanks. Cassidy and Mom scurried aside, but the rider reined the horse in, just a few yards away. A tall man in a vest and shirt sleeves came running out of a doorway, toward the horse and rider. He turned their way for a moment to swat at a horsefly, and they could see his face: narrow, ruddy in complexion, with a long nose and a high forehead from which dark hair was already receding. One eyebrow had a crooked tilt that gave him a skeptical air.

Mom frowned as if concentrating. "I could swear I've seen that face before — but older, with a white wig on . . . . What was his name?"

Cassidy felt her face would split with grinning. "Would it be Isaiah Thomas?"

Mom's jaw dropped. She sputtered, "What? How?"

Cassidy knew she was looking smug. She didn't care. "I have a friend from Worcester — Massachusetts, that is — and she took me pub-crawling one evening. The oldest pub she knew was Moynihan's. This man was sitting at the bar telling a girl how this was nice enough for a new place, but she should try his favorite, the Hancock Arms. My friend grabbed my elbow and jabbered at me about how that was the great patriot, Isaiah Thomas. She's a history buff. She dragged me over and introduced us, and we bought him a couple of glasses of ale, and he ended up showing us — well, wait and see!"

Mr. Thomas and the rider were engaged in animated conversation. In a moment the rider reached into one of the saddlebags and with some difficulty extracted a folded sheet of stiff heavy paper. He handed it to Thomas, who unfolded it and whooped with excitement. Thomas handed the man a coin and pointed toward a nearby public house. A crowd had begun to gather around; Thomas brandished the paper and shouted, "Listen, all of you!" (Cassidy had heard all this once already, but the way Thomas spoke, something in the vowels, still sounded strange to her.) "Here's news, the most important news you may ever hear! They've done it, they've done it at last!"

Murmurs, questions, cheers. As the crowd buzzed with reaction, Thomas ducked into the building from which he had come. He emerged a moment later wearing a blue frock coat, and addressed the crowd again. "Come, all of you, come and hear!" He turned and half strode, half ran down the street.

Cassidy tugged Mom to follow. They joined the gathering crowd, whose excitement seemed to grow with its size. People streamed out of houses, stores, taverns, forming an impromptu parade, with ever growing clamor as the newcomers tried to find out what was going on.

Wherever Thomas was heading, it was a good long walk. Finally he turned toward a narrow building with a tall spire. The townspeople clustered around, blocking the street in front of the building. Leaping up the front steps to the porch, Thomas turned to face the crowd, held up the paper he was carrying and pointed to the words written large at the top. From those in front, who could read the writing, came exclamations that traveled like a wave toward the spot near the back where Cassidy and her mother were standing. Cassidy caught the words "Unanimous!" and "States!"

Thomas turned the document back toward himself, stood up straight, threw out his chest, and began to read, almost shouting the words.

"In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them . . . ."

Cheers erupted from the listening crowd. Thomas held up a hand for silence and went on, but the cheers, the calls of "Independence!" and "Liberty!", kept interrupting his reading. Mom gripped Cassidy's hand tightly and murmured in her ear: "Certain unalienable rights . . . that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men  . . . ." When Thomas came to the long "train of abuses and usurpations," Mom fell silent, and the two of them strained their ears to follow every word.

Tot Finders and Moving On

Last night, belatedly, I did something both practical and symbolic.

Many years ago, at some community function or other, I picked up some "Tot Finder" stickers: fluorescent orange, with a drawing of a firefighter carrying a toddler (a girl). These stickers go on interior doors and/or exterior windows, and are meant to alert firefighters that there may be a young child within.

Well, Daughter #1 is graduating college at the end of May, and Daughter #2 just finished high school two weeks early in order to join the Phantom Regiment Drum Corps as they begin spring training. My toddlers, my little girls, my tots, are long gone, and the two wonderful young women who have replaced them are fairly well prepared to rescue themselves when danger threatens. It had probably been a decade or more since I noticed those stickers: they became part of the scenery, part of the decor, along with that decade's worth of other stickers and drawings, taped or glued to the wood. But last night, I saw them and registered what I was seeing. Those stickers weren't just obsolete -- they posed a potential danger to any firefighter who might enter our home and take unnecessary risks to rescue the ghosts of my daughters' pasts.

So last night, while my younger daughter packed an enormous suitcase full of a summers' worth of tank tops and t-shirts and workout shorts and other necessities, I sat on the floor in the hallway and peeled off the stickers: first from my elder daughter's door, and then from my younger's. Sometime soon, I'll need to traipse around outside, through the edge of the woods, to peel the stickers off the windows as well.

My daughters have -- more or less, by some meaningful definitions -- grown up. I am a bit disoriented, and weepy, and also proud: proud of them, and proud of myself and my husband (and my extremely supportive parents) who have helped them reach their respective milestones.

I'm an agnostic, but there are feelings for which agnostics lack the proper words. Godspeed, my daughters. Godspeed.

In Which I Wade Unnecessarily Into the Fray (GoT SPOILER ALERT)

WARNING: this post is all about a spoiler re the April 20th episode of Game of Thrones.

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I really should stay out of it, instead of offering my face to be (metaphorically, I hope) punched. But I'm startled and disturbed by how many viewers seem to find Jaime's rape of Cersei substantially more offensive, despite its context, than the innumerable slaughters of innocents in preceding episodes.

The week before, for example, not for the first time, we had people burned alive. All the various burnings and throat-slicings and torturings apparently pale by comparison to Jaime raping Cersei beside her son's body.

Don't (PLEASE) get me wrong. I am not saying that in a court of law, or in any moral judgment, Jaime isn't guilty of rape. That's so in spite of Cersei having, moments before, kissed Jaime as part of her attempt to get Jaime to kill their brother Tyrion. It's rape despite the fact that we all know Cersei is capable of a much more emphatic and angry resistance than what she offers. It's rape, and it occurs when Cersei is at her most emotionally vulnerable. But is it really more shocking and culpable than murder by fire, or murder of children, or murder of a pregnant woman?

Not by me.

Division paperback release day!

Taa-da-da-taa-taa-taa-taa-taaaah! (That's my attempt to write out the sound of a trumpet fanfare.)

It's Release Day for the paperback edition of my near-future novel, Division! So of course, I'm providing a link (Amazon -- B&N will follow) and a short blurb.

Here's the link. And here's the blurb (complete with third-person reference to yours truly):

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Conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny have never let their condition keep them from living full and fulfilling lives. Now, new technology gives them a previously unimagined choice: to live in "normal," separate bodies. But who gets to choose? And what if one twin considers their conjoined life a blessing, not to be abandoned without a fight?

Division, like Wyle's earlier novels, uses original settings and situations to explore universal themes: the complexity and intensity of family relationships, the nature of individual identity, and the far-reaching effects of the choices we make.

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At the moment (I don't know for how long), the paperback is available at a 10% discount.

Thanks for listening!. This is my fourth novel, and it's still exciting. :-)

Cosmos, Fox, and Cognitive Dissonance

I'm guessing that the revived series Cosmos on Fox, and especially tonight's (March 16th) episode, has some folks scratching their heads, or even writhing in the throes of cognitive dissonance.

"This show touts the scientific method and the glories of science! Why, the latest episode even made a point of attacking Intelligent Design, using ID's pet example, the eye, for good measure! Isn't the Fox network made up of knuckle-dragging anti-science conservatives? What's going on here?!?"

Well, when a new piece of evidence appears inconsistent with one's prior assumption, it seems to me that the properly scientific thing to do is to examine the evidence underlying that prior assumption, to see if it can be interpreted in a way consistent with the new data.

Doing some more guessing, I'd wager that for many people, the assumption of Fox's anti-science attitude springs from the frequency with which they air the views of climate change skeptics (deemed climate change/global warming "deniers" by some of the zealous). If all climate change skeptics are either ignorant of or willfully ignoring well-settled science, then why would any network with any respect for science give them that much air time?

I'll toss out some hypotheses to explain how Fox can find room both for Cosmos and for these opponents of the allegedly settled predictions of anthropogenic, catastrophic global climate change.

(A)  Fox treats different branches of science differently. There's some corporate tie, some financial or personal interest, leading whoever runs Fox to make climate change an exception from either a balanced or a pro-science attitude.

(B) The exception isn't global climate change -- it's Cosmos. Someone owes someone a favor, or has some other lever, to make Fox hold its collective nose and air this pro-science program.

And finally --

(C) Skepticism toward climate change is not, in fact, a sign of either ignorance or disdain for science, but rather, true science in action, with skeptics refusing to be stampeded or bullied into accepting a politically pervasive message. The facts are more complex, and/or point at least in part in a different direction.

I haven't examined (A) or (B). As my husband (aka The Hoosier Gadfly) would say, "I'll leave that as an exercise for the student." As the reader will probably have guessed, I currently incline toward Option (C). For some of the data that's led me in that direction, you can take a look at this post from 2010. (I'd suggest ignoring the comments, as they somehow veered off into areas utterly unrelated to anything on my blog ever.)

Meanwhile, I hope you're enjoying the reboot of Cosmos as much as I am.

Coming attractions -- and a freebie in anticipation thereof

It looks like the paperback of my near-future novel Division will be available on Amazon on schedule -- which means March 20th. Whether it'll have all features (e.g. "Look Inside") by then isn't clear, but if not, they won't be far behind.

The paperback, if you buy it on Amazon, will come with a free Kindle version. But if you'd like to pick up the ebook for free, and then decide whether you want the paperback on your shelf, pop on over to Division's Smashwords page and use coupon code UP22R by March 19th.

Here's what the whole paperback cover looks like -- complete with some excerpts from early reviews (which you may be able to read here, if you have really good vision). 

Dear Senators: re HJR-3

I've been doing my bit to lobby the Indiana General Assembly against HJR-3, the proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. For those who haven't been following the process, a constitutional amendment has to pass two separate sessions of the General Assembly in order to go before the voters for possible incorporation into the state constitution. The original version of this resolution, HJR-6, passed the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support in 2011. The political winds have shifted remarkably since then, even here, and very few Democrats now support the measure, while growing numbers of Republicans are developing qualms. Many business groups, community leaders, and clergy are opposing it. Recently, the Indiana House dropped the second of two sentences, which would have outlawed civil unions and other (undefined) statuses "substantially similar to" marriage. This means that even if HJR-3 passes the Indiana Senate, it can't go to the voters yet, unless the Senate adds the more draconian language back in and gets the House to go along.

Here's what I sent, individually, to the members of the Senate Rules and Legislative Procedure committee, which will be the next body to consider HJR-3. (I excepted those who have already come out against the resolution, or who have unrelated reasons to loathe me and thus to support anything I oppose.)

You will soon vote on whether to incorporate a prohibition on gay marriage into a state constitution otherwise notable for preserving individual liberty.

There has been much talk about "letting the people vote" -- but if there were not a crucial role for legislative judgment in amending our state constitution, HJR-3 would not have to win General Assembly approval in two separate legislative sessions.

Public sentiment, in Indiana and nationwide, has changed significantly since this House held its first vote on what is now HJR-3. By making it exceptionally difficult for Indiana to adapt to the times, HJR-3 would do serious damage to our ability to attract and keep employers and investors. Moreover, even if Indiana would somehow benefit from the loss of many current and prospective gay citizens, it can scarcely afford to discourage all the bright, talented young people who would shun any state that treats their friends and family members as second-class citizens.

Nor will this amendment do what many of its proponents hope, and insulate Indiana from judicial interference in its social institutions. If, as seems likely, same-sex marriage is eventually seen in this country as comparable to (and no more controversial than) mixed-race marriage, then not even a constitutional amendment will prevent the federal judiciary from becoming involved. Moreover, our own courts will be increasingly burdened with the tangles inevitably resulting from our failure to recognize a legal status recognized by more and more other states. Ironically, the one reason any gay adult might have, under these circumstances, to relocate to Indiana would be the wish to evade the legal consequences and responsibilities of an existing same-sex marriage.

I urge you, as well, to look at the human costs, as opposed to the highly speculative, intangible and undemonstrable "benefits," of this amendment. Thousands of children growing up in loving families would be confronted with a state declaration that their parents were different, lesser, even dangerous to their society's values. Hoosiers already battling life-threatening illness would in some cases be forced to do so without their loved ones by their sides. Should they lose that battle, they would face their final hours in fear that their children might lose their surviving parent as well, due to the inability of courts to recognize that parental status.

(All these consequences, of course, would be immeasurably increased should the Senate revert to HJR-3's original and more draconian language.)

I urge you to exercise your legislative oversight and stop this ill-considered proposal before more damage is done.

Sincerely,

Karen A. Wyle

Since I need a link for the Division ebook cover...

I'm going to be bold, once again, and submit a cover to The Book Designer's "e-Book Cover Design Awards" -- so I need a link with a suitably sized image of the cover in question.

Hence this post.

For some reason, the color shifts depending on the size of the image, in my preview browser. FWIW, the skin tones should not be particularly bronze.

What the heck is author Sue Ann Jaffarian doing?

Since I stumbled on Sue Ann Jaffarian's mysteries, I've been scarfing up every one I can get my hands on. I think she has three series going, but I've only read the books in two of them:

--the "Granny Apple" series, about a woman (Emma Whitecastle) who can see and hear ghosts, including the ghost of one female ancestor (Granny Apples), who assists Emma in solving the problems that keep various ghosts from "crossing over";

--the Odelia Grey mysteries, about a plus-size paralegal who keeps finding herself in mystery-type situations, and can't seem to sit back and let other people handle them.

I read mysteries, when I do, more for the characters than the plot. I enjoy the main and subsidiary characters in both of these series, as well as Jaffarian's writing style. But I'm increasingly puzzled and somewhat irked by what Jaffarian is doing with the Odelia Grey stories.

Starting with perhaps the second or third book, characters keep confronting Odelia, more and more frequently and critically, with the fact that somehow, she just keeps stumbling on dead bodies! Her boyfriend, at one point, calls her a "corpse magnet." The obsession of almost every recurring character with this idea is playing a larger role with each successive book.

Of course, the reason Odelia keeps finding dead bodies is that she is -- ta-da! -- the protagonist in an amateur-detective mystery series. There's really no way around this (sorry) stumbling block. The more usual way of dealing with this element of the sub-genre is to ignore it -- which has never particularly troubled me as a reader. Am I unusual in this respect?

In Twice as Dead, the sixth book in the series, Odelia's friend Zee practically spills the beans, saying to Odelia, "It's just  . . . well, it's just that sometimes I wonder if somehow, some way, something unseen has chosen you to find these bodies." Yup, that's about right. If this had been the loudest note of the theme, an ironic wink toward the audience, and the characters had thereafter stopped harping on the subject, that would have worked. Or Jaffarian could have gone all the way into the meta level, and had Odelia regularly remonstrating with the author who was dropping unwelcome corpses in her path. Instead, we have poor Odelia constantly castigated by loved ones, friends and acquaintances for one of the foundational elements of her existence. I can only speak for myself, not having investigated how others react, but it distracts me and pulls me out of the story.

I've been wondering why Jaffarian takes this tack, and have come up with only one hypothesis. Perhaps Jaffarian finds the implausibility of the amateur-detective premise increasingly hard to swallow, and would rather be working on one of the other series -- but her agent or publisher insists that she keep cranking out Odelia Grey novels. The chorus of characters could be chanting Jaffarian's own complaint. Consciously or unconsciously, she could be declaring, or trying to ensure, that the assumptions underlying this series are untenable.

The "Granny Apple" series has no such difficulty. Naturally, a woman who can communicate with ghosts will be the one to receive their requests for assistance. The only improbability is the ability itself, and that's a familiar enough literary trope. Emma Whitecastle does have a fair number of scoffers and skeptics to deal with -- but unless they, in turn, start to drown out all other elements of the stories, Emma and Granny Apples should be able to keep solving mysteries for some time to come.

Yup, it's a holiday reminder of my books that you could give someone....

I haven't done a lot of posts, Tweets, etc. pushing my books this holiday season, but I figured I should do at least one. So here 'tis.

I have four novels available as ebooks (two only on Amazon, two all over the place) and three as paperbacks.

My series-in-the-making started with Twin-Bred, which springs from the question: can interspecies diplomacy begin in the womb? After seventy years on Tofarn, the human colonists still know almost nothing about the native Tofa. Misunderstandings breed conflict, and the conflicts are escalating. Scientist Mara Cadell’s radical proposal: that host mothers carry fraternal twins, one human and one Tofa, who might understand each other better. But both the human and Tofa communities have their own agendas for Mara's project. Will the Twin-Bred bring peace, war, or something else entirely?

Twin-Bred eventually acquired a sequel, Reach: a Twin-Bred novel. Mara and the Twin-Bred she helped to create embark on a new and perilous journey -- except for one pair who remain on Tofarn, attempting to live in the human and Tofa communities. Meanwhile, events on Tofarn approach a crisis, in which former host mothers Laura and Veda are deeply involved. 

(Will there be a third? Well, I have some ideas. . . .)

My one departure from science fiction, so far, is Wander Home, a family drama with mystery and romance elements set in a re-imagined afterlife. The tag line: Death is what you make it . . . . Driven by the compulsion to wander, Eleanor left her beloved daughter Cassidy in her family's care -- but Cassidy and the others died before Eleanor could find her way home. Now Eleanor and her family are reunited in an afterlife well suited to confronting unfinished business. But the restlessness that shaped Eleanor's life still haunts her in death. Somehow, she must solve the mystery of her life -- or none of them will be at peace.

Finally, there's my near-future novel Division, intended for general audiences as well as science fiction readers. It's only available as an ebook, so far, but the paperback is due out next spring (March 20, 2014).

New technology, new choices . . . but who gets to choose? Conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny have never let their condition keep them from living full and fulfilling lives. Gordon looks forward to many years of closeness and cooperation. Johnny, however, faces their future with increasing restlessness, even dread.

When the boys are in their teens, the new technologies of accelerated human cloning and brain transplants are combined into a single medical procedure. Someone whose body has suffered such extensive damage as to make normal life impossible may -- with court approval -- be cloned and then given a brain transplant into the clone body. With Gordon's unwitting assistance, Johnny realizes that this procedure provides the chance he had never dared to hope for -- the chance to live in a "normal," separate body.

But Gordon considers their conjoined life a blessing, rather than a curse. He has no intention of accepting separation -- not without a fight . . . .

You can find various purchase links for all these novels on my website. 

Happy shopping and happy reading! :-)

Cyber Monday sale on near-future SF novel Division -- on Smashwords only

I'm somewhat skeptical about most readers' willingness to use Smashwords coupons, given that one has to take the extra step of loading the book onto one's device of choice -- but nonetheless, I've made a coupon for my latest ebook, the near-future novel Division. With coupon code JA93J, you can pick the book up on Monday for $2.00 instead of $3.99, at this link. Various ebook formats are available.

And here's the blurb (complete with third-person reference to Your Humble Blogger):

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New technology, new choices . . . but who gets to choose?

Conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny have never let their condition keep them from living full and fulfilling lives. Gordon looks forward to many years of closeness and cooperation. Johnny, however, faces their future with increasing restlessness, even dread.

When the boys are in their teens, the new technologies of accelerated human cloning and brain transplants are combined into a single medical procedure. Someone whose body has suffered such extensive damage as to make normal life impossible may -- with court approval -- be cloned and then given a brain transplant into the clone body. With Gordon's unwitting assistance, Johnny realizes that this procedure provides the chance he had never dared to hope for -- the chance to live in a "normal," separate body.

But Gordon considers their conjoined life a blessing, rather than a curse. He has no intention of accepting separation -- not without a fight . . . .

Division, like Wyle's earlier novels, uses original settings and situations to explore universal themes: the complexity and intensity of family relationships, the nature of individual identity, and the far-reaching effects of the choices we make.

------------

There aren't many reviews on Smashwords, so you can head over to Amazon and read some. (Heck, you can even buy the book there, for $3.99, if you use a Kindle device or app, and prefer the convenience to the price break.)

Iran's Sweet Deal

Once again, my husband, the Hoosier Gadfly, has come up with a trenchant and timely bit of analysis -- and doesn't plan to post it any time soon. With his permission, I'm simply going to paste it here.

The subject: the proposal to relieve sanctions on Iran, in return for supposed concessions.

Without further ado, here's what the Gadfly has to say. (The starred items are quotations from this article in the Jerusalem Post, some with minor corrections of faulty English.)

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Let's parse this deal:

* Iran would stop weapons-grade 20 percent uranium enrichment and turn its existing stockpile into oxide, a harmless material.

I've previously stated that converting the 20% medium enriched uranium (MEU) into fuel is just another way of storing it.  You can go from oxide BACK to UF6 and then you have feedstock.  Rationally, you should treat unburned fuel the same as UF6.

* Iran would be allowed to continue 3.5% enrichment needed for power stations, but limit the number of centrifuges being used. The deal would, however, not include any demand to remove or disable any other centrifuges.

Idiocy.  3.5% is over 60% of the way to bomb grade.  Not disabling any centrifuges simply means that Iran is in a position to amass a huge stockpile of LEU that can quickly be converted to bombs.  It's necessary to eliminate the stockpile and the centrifuges.

* While still being allowed to work on its plutonium reactor at Arak, Iran would agree not to activate it for six months. The plutonium reactor could provide for another route to nuclear weapon capability.

Breathtaking idiocy.  This allows Iran to get the Pu reactor ready to go while further negotiations take place

* Iran would not use its IR-2 centrifuges that are more advanced and capable of enriching uranium three-to-five times faster than the older model.

Fine.  All that is required is to set up the cascades for bomb production and wait.

If I wanted to come up with a plan that would protect Iran from attack while it prepared for breakout, the above is what I'd propose.

Of course the elite Neville Chamberlain pin-stripers in the State Department love this deal.

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I would add that unless Israel has some remarkable magic up its sleeve, it's paying the price for excessive patience. Israel wanted to allow the futile negotiation process to run out of steam, and to placate the US as long as possible. Now, far more than before, any attack will look to many like sabotage of an actual peace process.

Release Day for near-future SF novel Division!

It LIIIIVES!... :-)

Right on schedule, my latest book, the near-future novel Division, is available as an ebook from Amazon, B&N's Nook Store, Kobobooks, iBookstore, and Smashwords (at least), at the introductory price of $2.99. (It'll go up to $3.99 in a week or two.) I expect to bring out the paperback next year (target date: March 8, 2014).

The cover you see was quite the collaboration! I found two poses with the same model and did a mockup of my conjoined twins. Graphic designer and friend Michelle Hartz did the final photo editing. I wanted to divide the twins somehow, toying with ideas such as black lightning or a torn photograph (but will people still print photos in thirty years?). Finally, one of my beta readers (see the acknowledgments for which one :-) ) gave me the idea of separated puzzle pieces. Cover designer David Leek and I then played with the design for weeks, ending up with what you see here. (The spine and back for the paperback are really cool -- stay tuned. . . .)

So what's it about, anyway? Well, I was reading a novel by Jodi Piccoult one day, and wondered whether she'd ever try a science fiction setting for her courtroom dramas. Then I thought: why wait for her to do it? . . . Unlike Piccoult, however, I spent a bit less time on the legal proceedings and instead explored in some depth what happens after the verdict. I attempted to delve, through the very appropriate medium of SF, into themes such as the complexity and intensity of family relationships, the nature of individual identity, and the far-reaching effects of the choices we make.

And finally, here's the blurb:

New technology gives conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny new choices -- but who gets to choose? 

Conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny have never let their condition keep them from living full and fulfilling lives. Gordon looks forward to many years of closeness and cooperation. Johnny, however, faces their future with increasing restlessness, even dread. 

When the boys are in their teens, the new technologies of accelerated human cloning and brain transplants are combined into a single medical procedure -- Transplant to Clone, or TTC. Someone whose body has suffered such extensive damage as to make normal life impossible may -- with court approval -- be cloned and then given a brain transplant into the clone body. With Gordon's unwitting assistance, Johnny realizes that the TTC procedure provides the chance he had never dared to hope for -- the chance to live in a "normal," separate body. 

But Gordon considers their conjoined life a blessing, rather than a curse. He has no intention of accepting separation -- not without a fight . . . . 

If you're intrigued enough to want a sample -- or hey, go wild and grab the whole book :-) -- I'll make it easy. If you read Kindle editions, this link will take you to Amazon on any of seven countries (if I haven't lost count). For other formats, there are a slew of retailers accessible from Division's purchase page on my website.

The faint shrill sound you hear is me blowing a party horn. Hooray for release days!

The Only Justification for Attacking Syria

Once again, I write in the capacity of scribe to my politically astute husband, who tends to rant very convincingly and then go off and lift weights or whatever. Today's topic: Syria.

Paul actually advocated an attack on Syria, years ago, as an alternative to attacking Libya. Back then, the Islamic jihadists in Syria were not yet a well-organized rebellion, so we wouldn't have been assisting them.

Paul is in high dudgeon about the fact that no one discussing this issue (at least, no one he's heard) is focusing on what he sees as the only adequate justification for attacking Syria at this point: to destroy the chemical weapons before Assad's government loses control of them to the radical insurgents. The factors we must weigh: how high a percentage of the weapons can we destroy, and how heavy will the "collateral damage" to civilians be from blowing up large quantities of horrific chemicals?

Paul raised the possibility that Obama is actually thinking along these lines, and that all his squishy equivocation and talk of limited, punitive measures are just a way to preserve operational security. (I don't give him Obama that much credit -- and I expect Assad will take the precaution of hiding his stockpiles somewhere new, before we get around to taking any action.)

Not a Cover Reveal, but a Tentative Cover Art Reveal

I'm working with my cover designer David Leek on the cover for my upcoming near-future SF novel, Division. In Division, new technologies -- accelerated human cloning and brain transplants -- would make it possible for conjoined twins who could never be surgically separated to live separate lives. But only one twin wants such a life. . . .

I already got a great deal of help with image manipulation from a graphic designer friend, Michelle Hartz. She helped me turn two photographs of the same model into the conjoined twins Gordon and Johnny. David combined that image with an image of slightly separated puzzle pieces. How this art -- if I go with it -- will fit into an overall cover design remains to be seen.

(The background color is not necessarily final, and the whole image looks a bit warmer on this blog, for some reason. The outer edges of the puzzle pieces will probably be eliminated in some manner.)

So, what do y'all think -- of the art concept and the actual image? Please comment!

When the Best Break the Rules -- Intentional Head-Hopping

When authors of undoubted craftsmanship choose to break a general rule of POV management, there's bound to be an interesting reason.

SPOILERS AHEAD

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In Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, the last full novel in her Lord Peter Wimsey detective series, Wimsey and Harriet Vane finally marry, and go off to spend their honeymoon -- with the competent and devoted manservant Bunter in tow -- in a country house Harriet had admired as a child. When the previous owner is found murdered in the cellar, the three collaborate on trying to solve his murder.

Most of the book is told from Harriet's point of view. Whenever the POV is to change, the scene changes as well. This is in accord with the prohibition against "head-hopping," a practice often found in the writing of novices, where the POV can change from one character to another within one scene, or even within one paragraph. Head-hopping can easily confuse and distract the reader: trying to figure out whose observations and reactions we are experiencing pulls us out of the story.

Toward the end of Busman's Honeymoon, however, as crucial clues are coming to light, in the middle of a long scene told (as usual) from Harriet's POV, we have this passage:

[Peter's] eye roamed the room, passed over Harriet and the vicar and rested on Bunter. "You see," he said, "we've got the first and last terms of the progression--if we could fill in the middle terms."

"Yes, my lord," agreed Bunter, in a colourless voice. His heart had leapt within him. Not the new wife this time, but the old familiar companion of a hundred cases--the appeal had been to him.

Suddenly, we have Bunter's POV. Then, within a few more sentences, we return to Harriet's, and remain there for (if I recall) the rest of the book.

Why this unorthodox transition?

Well, the moment is far more effective this way. If Harriet, observing, managed to spare a thought at this climactic juncture to comment on how Wimsey was bestowing his attention, there would be neither the certainty the Bunter POV conveys, nor the emotional impact. And if, instead, Sayers had forced a full-fledged scene change, she would have interfered with the tension and progression of the narrative.

That may be all. I suspect, however, that Sayers had another reason, that she shifted away from Harriet's POV in order to emphasize the similar shift that the passage describes -- Wimsey's collaborative attention returning, possibly against expectation, from Harriet to Wimsey's "old familiar companion."

I had read the book many times before noticing the discontinuity. This (as far as I know) single  instance of head-hopping neither confuses the reader nor interferes with the flow of the scene.

In contrast, the novel Run, by best-selling author Ann Patchett, head-hops all over the place. The POV constantly shifts, without any structural warning or transition, from one to another of the ensemble of main characters. And confusion, at least momentary, does frequently result. Where are we? What's going on? Into whose thoughts are we intruding?

Again, I believe this effect is intentional. It reflects the uncertainty, central to both the novel's plot and its emotional dynamics, about what these characters are all about, and just what relationships exist between them.

Do these examples mean we should all head-hop promiscuously? Of course not. But they do demonstrate that rules, once understood, are made to be carefully, judiciously broken.

What About Section 2?

I saw quite a few headlines, tweets, et cetera yesterday stating that the U.S. Supreme Court's Windsor v.Estate of Spyer decision had "struck down DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act]." In fact, only Section 3 of DOMA -- the section defining marriage for the purposes of a host of federal statutes -- was at issue in the case. The Court explicitly noted that the case had nothing to do with section 2.

So what's Section 2?

Section 2 allows states to refuse to recognize lawful same-sex marriages in other states. If Congress bothered to indicate the constitutional basis for Section 2, it would have been Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State; And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

(Emphasis added.) This provision generally requires states to acknowledge judgments issued in other states -- although I know of situations where courts have refused to do so, because the judgments were supposedly issued in one state without constitutional safeguards required by the case law of the other state. This language may also be the basis for the general rule that a couple married in one state is deemed married in all states. (A 2004 New York Times article, quoting author and law professor Andrew Koppelman, states that during the era when many states forbade interracial marriage, no state was ever forced through judicial proceedings to recognize such a marriage solemnized in another state. Mr. Koppelman was presumably referring to the period before 1967's U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which not only held Virginia's ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional, but involved Virginia residents married in the District of Columbia.)

Section 2 of DOMA assumes that "prescribing the manner" in which the states shall give "full faith and credit" to marriages in other states, and/or "prescribing" what "effect" such "full faith and credit" must have, may include providing an exception based on the parties to the marriage. Does Windsor shed any light on whether such an exception is valid? The two primary principles at work in Windsor point different directions.

Windsor relies in part on the principle of federalism: that in our federal system, there are many areas in which the states exercise primary or exclusive authority. In general, family law is a state concern, not a federal one, although there are exceptions (some of which Windsor lists). The definition of marriage, like other family law matters, has been a state province. Windsor holds that "[Section 3 of] DOMA, because of its reach and extent, departs from this history and tradition of reliance on state law to define marriage."

By contrast, Section 2 could reasonably be said to honor and protect the state's authority to define marriage, by spelling out that each state may apply its own definition, regardless of how far some other state decides to stretch its own. The Full Faith and Credit doctrine may be viewed as a restriction on state autonomy -- and any restriction on that doctrine, as showing respect for state autonomy.

There is, however, another thread running through Windsor. The majority opinion uses the word "dignity" (or, in one case, "indignity") ten times. It refers to the "status and dignity" accorded a married couple by state law; it states that New York's "decision to give this class of persons the right to marry conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import." (Some might quibble with the idea that New York "gave," rather than acknowledged or ceased to deny, this right.) The majority also makes numerous references to "equality," "inequality," and "justice." It notes that New York, eleven other states, and D.C. "decided that same-sex couples should have the right to marry and so live with pride in themselves and their union and in a status of equality with all other married persons." It describes DOMA as "writ[ing] inequality into the entire United States Code," and states that DOMA's "principal purpose is to impose inequality." Ultimately, the majority holds that given the context of our federal system, the provision in question violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantees of due process and equal protection. Perhaps there is a message in the fact that the holding is phrased in terms of "DOMA," not "Section 3," although the opinion's reach is technically limited to the latter.

Windsor deplores inequality between different types of committed couples living within a single state. Section 2 involves similar inequality, although the source of the inequality is primarily the state where these couples live, rather than simply the federal statute.

 The Windsor majority was comprised of Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Most analysts believe that the four more liberal Justices accepted the federalism argument in order to reel Kennedy in. Without that element, could they find a Justice willing to join them against Section 2? The answer may depend on whatever historical information may exist as to the original meaning of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Several Justices at least purport to rely on the original meaning of constitutional provisions. As originally understood, did  Congress' power to "prescribe" the "manner" of "proving" another state's "public acts," and the "effect" of such proof, reach so far as to let the state decline on the basis of substantive content or of parties affected? The Constitution was a grand and contentious compromise between state autonomy and national unity, a corrective for the rivalry and chaos of American life under the Articles of Confederation. If one state may disdain a marriage accepted by another state, is this too reminiscent of pre-Constitutional state conflicts? Somewhere, no doubt, lawyers and law clerks are busily preparing arguments to that effect. 

Why Book Groups Might Want to Read Wander Home

I've only just joined my first book group -- but my parents have been in book groups for years, and I have friends and acquaintances who belong to such groups. When I find Discussion Guides in the backs of books, I read them, and imagine the discussions they might provoke. And I believe my novel Wander Home would make for some interesting talk around a book club circle. (I'm using "book group" and "book club" interchangeably, and hope I'm not tripping carelessly into some mine field of disputed terminology.)

To begin with, Wander Home is set in an afterlife. Who doesn't have ideas or fantasies about what an afterlife might involve? My father the unshakeable atheist, perhaps -- but I would guess that most people have at some time imagined, or hoped, or feared, what might happen in a life after this one. Members of the group could discuss their own ideas, and express their opinions on the plausibility, desirability or utility of the features I've included.

There's also the question of just what kind of afterlife these characters are inhabiting. Does it fit into the structure of any established religion -- and if so, where?

Wander Home explores several themes that use, but do not depend upon, its unearthly setting. Forgiveness is one. Readers could ask themselves, and each other: if you were Cassidy, what would have to happen for you to forgive your mother? If you were Eleanor's parents, or her grandmother, how hard would it be to forgive what Eleanor did to you, or to Cassidy? If you were Eleanor, could you forgive yourself?

The critically minded could ask whether the plot device that eventually explains Eleanor's actions "works." Is it successful? Forced? Satisfying, or the reverse?

The characters have the chance to revisit old haunts. Where would you go, if you could? Whom would you want to take with you?

This afterlife allows you to relive, and to share, the memories of life. Are there memories you long to relive? Are some memories too painful to revisit? Is there anything to be gained by experiencing that pain?

These questions only scratch the surface of where the discussions could go. So -- am I right? Is this a book for book groups, or what? J

Why Hadn't Anastasia Steele Ever . . .

And now for something completely different. The following has absolutely nothing to do with my new book (*cough* Twin-Bred sequel *cough*). It just occurred to me. In the shower (where several scenes in Fifty Shades of Grey take place).

How the heck did Anastasia Steele go through childhood, adolescence, and the first years of adulthood without masturbating?

Virginity, I can understand. Her fellow undergraduates lacked the qualities that turned out to attract her. (I could, however, imagine her falling for the right kind of English professor. Hmmm . . . the chain of fan fiction could continue . . . .) But she's sexually responsive -- unusually so. She has no psychological inhibitions against experiencing sexual pleasure. Her family history might render her cautious about unprotected premarital sex, but there's nothing about it that would make her actually puritanical. Which, in fact, she isn't.

And she has a certain tendency toward curiosity.

It makes no sense that she would never have investigated her own body's capacity for pleasure -- or even discovered the same, accidentally, while exploring her developing body.

Certainly, her utter sexual ignorance fits with the more simplistic aspects of the romance formula. But it's the least plausible aspect of her character.

You may now resume thinking about other contemporary literature. :-)