Looking forward to my 2019 book
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Several years ago, after publishing my first novel, The Baron’s Box, I decided that I was going to try to publish a novel every year. Last year I barely got The Third Way out before the end of the year. I think that silly broken arm had something to do with my lack of productivity last fall. 😉
As we move into the summer season, it’s time for me to begin the final push on this year’s book. Although my latest, tentatively entitled The Hybrid, is still being reviewed by my critique group, it is time to begin thinking about its publication and marketing.
To begin that process, I’d like to get a cover designed but before I can do that the book needs a real title. When I did a survey of similar titles on Amazon almost everything “hybrid” was a paranormal/shape shifter/werewolf story. Since my story explores the interface between natural and artificial intelligence in the late twenty-first century that marketing space doesn’t seem right. So I’m considering other options.
I’m open to your have ideas. I’ll let you know when I decide.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this synopsis:
In the spring of 2091, 42-year old April Marshall is diagnosed with early-onset non-Alzheimer’s dementia. Devastated, she puts herself under the direction of Dr. Indresh Patel, a senior researcher in mind/machine interfaces at the Texas A&M Medical Center, Brain Research Center in Houston.
Dr. Patel doesn’t offer her much hope until he invites her to become his first patient in an experimental program. By embedding a Sentient Adaptive Matrix (SAM), a form of artificial intelligence, into her brain, he suggests he might be able to supplement her natural mental functioning and maybe even return her cognitive abilities.
It isn’t until the matrix is installed and activated that April realizes all is not what it seems, and the SAM is more than she expected.
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Published by DrMaryAnn
I am both a published scholar and an explorer of speculative fiction.
After running my own technical writing firm for almost twenty years, I went back to school and earned a doctorate in Religious Studies from Rice University in Houston. I currently teach Comparative Religion at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona where I exploring my unconventional ideas about the world, its people and their future.
As a recognized authority on the Afro-Caribbean religions, primarily Santería/Lukumi, I am the author of "Then We Will Sing a New Song: African Influences on America's Religious Landscape" (Roman & Littlefield), "Santería: Correcting the Myths and Uncovering the Realities of a Growing Religion" (Praeger) and "Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule: Santería Ritual Practices and Their Gender Implications" (University Press of Florida).
My most recent work is the novella "The Baron’s Box: A Story from the Bardo", the account of one woman’s journey through a surprising afterlife. After waking up on a shallow boat with no memories of her past, Sara discovers the Empyrean isn’t heaven and the Nether Realm isn’t hell, and the Bardo is at all what she expected. Her only hope is working together with Sam, her companion, to deliver The Baron Samedi’s box to his sister, Kore, the Queen of the Dead. Before Sam and Sara can receive the gift hidden in The Baron’s box, they must discover who they were, why they were thrown together on this journey, and, most importantly, what they mean to each other.
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