J.S. Morrison's Blog

I'm looking for a beta reader/critique partner to provide feedback on a new unpublished novel. Here are the details:

TITLE: The Pieces of My Self
GENRE: Adult dystopian science fiction
WORD COUNT: 94,000
BLURB: The novel explores the impact of memory on identity and humanity. Lillian Fray is an adjunct professor at a community college in Loumissala, a nation-state joined from the fragments of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that are still above water in 2174. Fray has an unexpected flair—even brilliance—for mathematics and cryptography. Neither helps her make ends meet as a single mother of two. When she’s offered a reward for solving a cryptogram tied to a murdered billionaire’s lost fortune, she leaps at the chance that could change her life. She does not know the danger involved. Others believe the puzzle contains a secret more valuable than money: the identity of a dictator’s missing granddaughter.
SENSITIVITY CONTENT: Some language, non-explicit sex, violence, macabre moments.
AUDIENCE DESCRIPTION: Adult lover of non-traditional sci-fi, detective, and adventure novels.
EXPECTATIONS: I want to know what is working and what's not. If you were to buy the book on Amazon, would you recommend it or not? If not. why not?
DEADLINE: One month to provide feedback.
AVAILABLE FORMATS: MS Word DOCX and PDF

Hi folks. I have a new book I'm working on (now in 3rd draft) and am seeking beta readers. You can reach me at grockmeister@gmail.com if you are interested. All beta readers get a mention in Acknowledgements.

If you're an author, I'm willing to do a beta swap.

Here are a few details about the novel:

TITLE: The Pieces of Myself (third draft)
LENGTH: 79,000 words
GENRES: Adult speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, soft science fiction, sci-fi mystery, robot fiction, AI fiction
TAGLINE: A robot. A cryptogram. A sovereign fortune. A lost identity.

BLURB:

Water—denser than the air powering wild hurricanes, thinner than blood congealing around southern politics. By the 22nd century, it unraveled the fabric of the Gulf Coast like a pulled thread, ripping away land faster than anywhere else in North America.

Lillian Fray, a professor at a community college and brilliant mathematician, is asked to solve a puzzle involving a cryptogram and the link to a sentient digital avatar. Her quest is fraught with racial politics and a hurricane tracking toward what used to be New Orleans. At stake is are sovereign fortune and the key to her own identity.

Thanks for your help.

Once upon a time, there was a country united by a Constitution. It was guided by the collective will of the people, each of whom had a right to vote. This united country suddenly fragmented into the land of Red and the land of Blue due to incompatible differences in how people understood the world.

Folks who lived in Redland lived by the creed of “God, Guns, and Trump.” It was not just any god—only a specific sub-species of Christian god, was “real”; all others were fake. It was not just any guns—only military assault rifles able to mow down dozens of people in a single pull of the trigger really counted. There were other guns, of course, but they were for wusses. And it was not just any politician that could lead them—it had to be someone named Trump; even though every other word out of his mouth was a lie. Lying was not a problem, because the world Redlanders lived in was imaginary. They were convinced that people who did not strictly adhere to their creed, or live in their world, prayed to Satan and ate children for lunch, after they raped them. These “others” deserved to die. They also believed only white people mattered, and everyone else needed to move to some other country unless, of course, they could provide cheap cleaning services or low-cost farm labor. They encouraged everyone to drink Clorox as a remedy for terrible diseases and believed that wearing a mask to avoid the spread of disease was a sign of weakness. The Constitution and institutions of the original country needed to be torn up or torn down because they failed to punish people who did not live by the Redland creed.

People who lived in Blueland were skeptics by nature. If they were told that something was “true,” they would often retort, “Show me the evidence.” Most Bluelanders based their opinions on what could be measured, demonstrated, or logically proven. They still believed in a democracy that included everyone, but now wondered whether there was room to accommodate people who meant them harm. When they encountered inhabitants of Redland, they often scratched their heads and thought, “That was weird.”

This tension between Redlanders and Bluelanders lasted until a spaceship landed in the capital of the formerly united country. The alien philosophers had come to help sort things out. They noted that the inhabitants had great potential. For example, some humans knew how to ride unicycles; others knew how to juggle balls and perform amazing tricks on skateboards; and still others could recite volumes of football and baseball statistics without using any crib notes. But everyone seemed unhappy and ready to go to war.

The aliens thought the human dilemma floundered on two dichotomies: “Us vs. Them,” and “Freedom vs. license.” If people drew the line between “us” and “them” too narrowly, then no learning could ever come from an exchange of ideas. If the line was drawn too broadly, then individual ideals might collapse in the cacophony of the commons. Similarly, if everyone had the license to do anything they wanted, the inevitable result would be a tyranny of bullies, and the domination of the weak or dispossessed by the strong and fortunate. On the other hand, defining freedom too narrowly meant curtailing the range of acceptable behaviors—a constraint on freedom.

After many months of debating a solution, the aliens finally concluded that retiring to their home planet to read Meg Cabot's chick lit books would be a better use of their time. And besides, there was already a great philosopher from Earth who seemed to have nailed the solution. His name was Charles Darwin—a dead guy, of course.

Writers like Kurt Vonnegut have used the universe, chance, Karma, etc., as active participants in plots built around character and the human condition. Longform fiction often has the “legroom” to make these kinds of connections. (See also, the various incarnations of “Fargo.”)

This week’s amazing random plot generator has the President of the United States denouncing “science,” the “elites” (people with specialized knowledge), and the existence of a severe global pandemic to curry favor with a voting base that seems antagonistic to truth and reality. This plot sets up a tragedy and morality play, wherein the universe delivers ironic comeuppance. The self-described “great man” is struck by the virus (which knows no politics) and has to rely on the elites (medical doctors and disease specialists), and products of scientific research, to survive a potentially lethal disease.

“And so, it goes.”

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

Writing of a novel usually begins with a premise—a “What if?” statement. The more stupefying, the better. It’s called “high concept.”

A lot of ideas come to me in the dead of night. I’m throwing this one out there for other writers to use, in case you have writer’s block.

Premise: In an election year, the President of the United States diverts $300 million in tax dollars allocated to the Center for Disease Control (CDC)—dollars meant to safeguard the health of Americans—into an ad campaign to “Defeat Despair” in COVID-19. And these ads rely on interviews from administration officials saying what a great job they are doing defeating COVID-19. The ads are intended to hide massive incompetence. The person charged with implementing this plan quits.

There you have it. Feel free to riff on this idea. If you need to cite a reference, go to:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump...

I’m sure this will be yet another page-turner.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

Not too many people remember Lamont Cranston, a.k.a., “The Shadow.” I knew the character by listening to vintage radio programs. He was a magician who was able to “cloud men’s minds.” Presumably, he was not able to cloud women’s minds. The fairer sex seems better equipped to distinguish reality from illusion.

The Shadow’s signature line was, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”

Which leads me to consider the possible premise of a new novel. Suppose the Shadow gets elected President of the United States? He would be the ultimate politician—able to make people believe things that were not true. He could create a distortion field around reality and morality, and make people believe weird things, like Nazis and KKK folks are good people, too. Like, Roger Stone (who recently said the President should invoke martial law if he loses the election in November) provides good, solid counsel and deserves to be exonerated for his crimes. Like, military professionals who risk their lives in the service of their country are losers and suckers.

Mandrake gestures hypnotically…dulling people's minds.

This should be a real page-turner.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

This is a great time for novelists seeking unique story material.

Imagine a scenario where the President of the United States uses religion as a prop, encourages everyone to break the law by voting twice, and says he is inclined to prevent federal funds from going to states controlled by Democrats. Imagine a naked effort by the top US elected official to break democracy, revert to lawlessness, and fracture the republic.

We could postulate in our novel that the lunatic autocrat has a magical power to cloud people’s minds, like “The Shadow” in the old radio series, making them believe that members of the opposite party are pedophilic, child-eating, Satan-worshipping monsters.

We could also envision a strange plot twist, in which state election boards throw out the President’s solicited and illegal double votes in the national election, resulting in a surprising and massive loss for the ruling party.

As I feverishly ready my author’s pen (or in this case, my trusty Apple PowerBook), excited by the possibilities of such a unique and crazy plot, I pause and think, “Too late. The plot has already been done.”

Well, maybe if I try hard enough, I can think of stories that are even more fanciful. Like talking fish.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

The commoditization of media allows everyone to be in their own mind bubble. Even more fantastic, it has become possible to construct reality-distorting lenses on a large scale, able to infect many brains with delusional patterns of thinking.

Take the national identity and the national will of the USA, for example. The current president is attempting to build the world’s largest bubble pipe. The project requires using all the powers of office to distort reality.

The approach—create an alternate reality of who we are, how we decide, and the “indeterminacy” of the election process.
• Stop the census early to ensure the undercounting of people living on society’s margins. This distorts the reality of who we are as a nation.
• Hobble the US Post Office so it can’t function for mail-in voting. This suppresses the vote and distorts the will of the electorate.
• Avoid funding state efforts to work through the extraordinary challenges of elections during a pandemic. This allows the President to claim the election results are not accurate, undermining the integrity of our democracy. And since he has not provided any leadership on the pandemic, the looming election mess must be the fault of the states.
• Promote unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to make people believe in fanciful alternate realities.

The resulting mind bubble has blown bigger than life, mesmerizing a large chunk of the electorate with iridescent, shimmering promises of a white nationalist state, while failing to deliver any benefits except to large corporations and the top 0.1 percent. The antidote is for everyone who is still awake to push back with a thousand pinpricks.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

Individuals and groups may find reality threatening. I call this the “burden of reality.” The ocean is rising. Global temperatures are increasing. Cigarette smoke causes cancer. The USA is becoming more ethnically diverse. Guns account for 75% of all homicides. The USA has more homicides per capita than any European country, with the exception of Russia. The USA has the highest COVID-19 rate per capita of any European country, including the UK (but excluding Russia due to reporting issues). And so on.

There are many ways to deal with the truth problem:
• First, people can deny the reality by telling lies to themselves or others. This approach requires “blinkering” (I see no problem, hear no problem, etc.), evidence-free arguments, and arguments built around “the flag” and “personal freedom.”
• Second, there are ad hominem attacks that have no bearing on the integrity of the argument. (The person providing this data is a “leftist,” or “against God,” or “un-American.”)
• Third, people (and institutions) can systematically try to change the perception of reality by creating false statistics and by attempting to undermine the integrity of the data reporting system. (Example: we will stop data collection of the census early, so we count only those people who have phones, addresses, and want to participate; we will slow down the mail to make it more difficult or dangerous to vote.)
• Fourth, people can try to create false equivalences. Example: My method of determining COVID-19 treatment efficacy based on anecdotal or imaginary stories of Clorox use is equivalent to your method based on data compiled by professionals in accordance with specified criteria. Therefore, by not believing my data, you are biased.
• Fourth, people can apply the “Tooth Fairy” (or, with tongue-in-cheek, “Truth Fairy”) solution. A magical, spiritual, or alien being will rescue us from the burden of reality.

I used to believe in magic. But that was when I was five years old.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com

The period from 2016 to the present should be a treasure trove of scientific data about society and belief systems.

I know, I know…some people say we are in an era of anti-science, and the present US administration, which promotes ideas about demon sperm, the efficacy of injecting yourself with Clorox(R) to rid your body of COVID-19, and the alternative fact that children are immune to the virus are signs of delusion at the highest levels of government.
And yet—this is all grist for the science mill.

We need to understand how delusions can spread like a contagion.

The Industrial Psychiatry Journal defines a delusion as “A belief that is clearly false...” A person with a delusion “will hold firmly to the belief regardless of evidence to the contrary.”
There is anecdotal evidence that delusions are transmittable. Consider:
• The great Dutch tulip market bubble in 1636 that collapsed in 1637.
• The Salem witch trials in 1692, where an entire community was infected with the idea that witches live among us and need to die. (See also Joe McCarthy-era hearings.)
• Contagious laughter. For example, people laughing in a crowd when other people laugh, and they can’t hear the joke.
• Inaugural crowd size. Multiple people looking at two objective aerial photographs of inaugural crowds, convinced that the one with fewer people has more.

At stake is our understanding of human perception, and something called epistemology—How do we know? How do we understand? Why do we believe?

We urgently need some enterprising psychologists and social scientists to write grant proposals that will help clarify the mystery of contagious delusions.

John Morrison is the author of:
The Perfection of Fish
Website: https://vorpelword.com