As I mentioned in an earlier blog, when I finally finished rewriting HIGHER FORCES and signed with a publisher, I felt deep satisfaction that I'd told the story successfully in suspense/thriller mode. The story was now all laid out scene-wise and character-wise for the film or limited cable series - that's my ultimate goal. But ... all along, I knew I hadn't gotten to the thematic and relationship depths of the story, certainly not as far as the female hero, Mahalena, was concerned.
So yeah - following that publication I spent six months working on an experimental version of the story, told...
For the last decade I've mostly been writing fiction aimed at the suspense or thriller genre - thus my last four novels, ending with Higher Forces. That's the basic story that I came back from my Guatemala adventure possessed by - and it's gone through several different renditions as I've struggled to get to the heart of the characters and the just-emerging mythic undertones. Higher Forces manages to merge just-emerging Silicon Valley mood-modification technology with ancient shamanic methods of influencing people's thoughts and emotions. This intriguing merger is what ignites the novel's power.
HIGHER FORCES is finally finished - whew. This novel has been a very long time emerging - ever since I conducted brain and LSD research with Humphry Osmond MD for NIH, I've been possessed with a particular vision of the future - and that vision was (and still is) in many ways ultimately scary. Really - what if our own scientist good-guys actually did decide to take history in their own hands, and manipulate our out-dated reptilian impulses (think Trump) - supposedly for the universal good?
In the opposite direction, in 1979 I spent the year in Guatemala living with a Mayan tri...
As I mentioned in my recent blog on fiction becoming reality ("Science Catching Up With My Fiction"), I keep getting the shivers these days as more and more of what I envisioned a number of years ago (thinking I was writing science fiction), is already busting out in our current science news. I'm not very esoteric, growing up in a pragmatic ranching culture, but I must admit that my own experience indicates that we can somehow see at least vaguely into the future ... and write about it. And my scientific mind, which loved creating the far-out mood-modification broadcast equipment in my novels, f...
I've mostly done my best to work within accepted literary/genre formats in my recent fiction writing such as Higher Forces and Ten Percent Max. But with Murrieta's Leap, I took my own author leap and wrote that book in a unique tone, grammar, attitude, perspective and so forth. Some of my reviews have been very positive - but I just got one that socked me in the stomach:
(no name on review) "I live in the area in which this book is set, so its blurb captured me. Though I seek out fictionalized accounts of local Indian history (such as the excellent "Making the Reata), I'm not sure I can fi...
As those of you who've read Ten%Max and Higher Forces know, I mix emerging science with science fiction to project where we're going to be five years from now, and then ten - but those dates are getting closer and closer to reality. Regularly in the news, there are reports of breakthroughs in tech advancements that impact our inner experience, our thoughts, our moods - everything. A couple of days ago an NPR report stated:
"Elon Musk founded Neuralink, which is dedicated to increasing cognition with devices implanted in the brain. Bryan Johnson, the billionaire who founded Braintree, has also s...
Some of you will remember that way back ten years ago in Kauai, I wrote a crazy story, originally titled Finding Juaquin, that simply took me over as a writer for more than a year, generating a long wild non-genre novel that my non-fiction agent wouldn't touch, then generating a screenplay a producer optioned but wanted to gut all the deeper dimensions ... then - for ten years the manuscript lived in total darkness in a proverbial attic box.
Six months ago I found the manuscript, read it - and plunged into a massive rewrite that is now complete. Murrieta's Leap is just that...
My last few novels have dealt extensively with the looming tech potential to use bioresonance broadcasts to massage specific points in our brains that determine our emotional condition. I've even laid out details of the inventions that will accomplish this goal. With a majority of people in our society suffering chronically from either depression, anxiety, confusion, aggression, or PTSD, obviously it would seem a vast leap forward to invent tech that would control mood and emotion - which in turn would influence the thoughts we think and the actions we take. But hold on - outside of the proverbi...
We've just posted five feature screenplays that I've developed and written over the years but never found time to focus upon for long enough to manifest as films. Two of these scripts did go into production - but the projects fell apart as so often happens. I studied film making early on, in 1972 and 1973 at the original Doheny Mansion base of the American Film Institute - and ever since have been working to dramatize (and thus expose) the dangers of trying to supposedly improve the human experience through bio-tech innovation. Most of my original screenplays explore various explosive expression...
A recent worldwide WHO poll found that, as a species, we are suffering from uniquely high and chronic states of anxiety and depression. Tech has speeded up the pace of our lives drastically, and fixated our attention almost non-stop on tiny screens held in front of our eyes. Future shock has got us all in its grip. The cost of our chronic stress and anxiety is vast in terms of health, productivity, clear thinking and satisfying living - but thusfar the pharmas have come up with no successful drug treatment for the symptoms, let alone a cure. Even our blood pressure pills don't really serve us co...
