REVIEWS




PRINT! KINDLE! And now an AUDIBLE AUDIO BOOK!

"I laughed, cried, felt the urgency . . . the story will take you to another dimension of 'ahhh' moments of reflection and insight that will 'gotcha.' I could read this book again and again and get something more. I enjoyed i from the second I began to read."

"A thick slice of MaryAnn Easley pie. Oozing UFOs, sweet on science, and warm with fantasy. This veteran children's writer's many young fans should be satiated.....for now!"

Sunday, August 30, 2015

SPACE, TIME, ALICE & ME

There's space; there's time.

Space is the height, depth, and width around me as I sit at the kitchen table. Time is what I see on the wall clock as it ticks and moves me from the present into the future.

Space and time, however, are part of the same reality, and the sum of space and time equals the four-dimensional and all-important SPACE-TIME.

These are concepts I've tried to include in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT. As my protagonist, Allana Odette Blair, sits at her kitchen table with Mr. Zee, her science tutor, she experiences a glitch in time that plunges her (and me) into a journey filled with mathematical, philosophical, psychological ramifications.  

Time is something to consider.


There's a reason that I dedicated my book to Alice, who first fell down the rabbit hole. 

When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, she lands in a hallway that appears perfectly normal until strange things begin to happen; when my protagonist, sixteen-year-old, Allana, takes a terrifying plunge, she winds up in the mythical Land of Alon where strange things also happen. 

Carroll's Alice discovers a table with a key on top, but the key doesn't fit the locks to any of the doors in the hallway. My Allana discovers an ice cave with the final door that cannot be opened.


Alice finds a door behind a curtain. Allana finds doors that cannot be opened.

My main character is so confused by all that happens to her, she winds up in a mental facility. Carroll's Alice is so disoriented by the dislocation in time and space, she weeps a pool of tears.

Her tears, of course, are symbolic of something else. The word "tear" is spelled exactly like "tear," as in ripping apart, or "tear," as in rushing at a great speed.


What seems to be isn't; what isn't seems to be. It's all a puzzle.



Alice's journey down the rabbit hole creates a tear in time and she finds herself in a space located between reality & fantasy. In CHANGED IN THE NIGHT, Allana also experiences a rift in her world as she stands in a spot where ley lands intersect and vacillates between dreams and reality. 

Here in this space between reality and fantasy, the physical world changes in an instant; creatures and objects appear or disappear for no reason, and logical thought brings about only nonsensical answers.

When reality and fantasy intersect, the result is a crazy, mixed-up world where nothing is as it seems.

In this frame of reference, it's easy for Alice (and Allana) to doubt her own identity or wonder if she even exists at all.

Alice comforts herself by reciting lessons as things get "curiouser and curiouser." Allana resorts to ways to maintain her equilibrium as her dead brother lures her into a frightening game that reveals the awesome power of science and alternate viewpoints.

The sense of time in wonderland is endless, circular or static without beginning or end; it’s always teatime for the mad hatter. As the tea party moves around the table, the direction isn’t necessarily linear because time isn't linear.

Time does not go in a straight line. 
Stuck in 1952, Allana suffers from the confusing elements of time. As she holds her brother Jack in Abeyance, she, too, is unable to move forward. Time is the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall, the cuckoo clock over the kitchen table; abducted by aliens, it takes only an instant to be at the moon. 

Albert Einstein revealed that space and time, as physical constructs, must be combined into a new mathematical/physical entity called space-time. The equations of relativity show that both the space and time coordinates of any event must be combined together by the mathematics in order to accurately describe what we see.

Lewis Carroll attempted to demonstrate these ideas in ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Space consists of three dimensions, and time is one-dimensional, space-time must, therefore, be four dimensional.

And so it is believed that space-time is a continuum. As far as we know, there are no missing points in space or instants in time. Both can be subdivided without any apparent limit in size or duration.

Physicists consider our world to be embedded in this four-dimensional space-time continuum. All moments in history, all events, people, and places are described in terms of their location in this continuum.

Space-time does not evolve. It simply exists.

And down the rabbit hole we go!





Sunday, August 23, 2015

TRUTHS ABOUT ET

In doing research for my novel, I had to dig into unclassified files, Roswell, Project Blue Book accounts, as well as, Project Sign and Project Grudge. 

I also researched old newspaper accounts of UFO sightings from the era of my story.
I sorted through valid and wacky information on UFO encounters. 

I've read too many UFO books and articles to count, reviewed testimonies by astronauts, pilots, abductees, and eyewitnesses. I joined the Planetary Society, attended UFO meetings, visited the Giant Rock area, spent time in the Integraton. I talked with UFO buffs. This, after all, is fascinating stuff. 

I wanted every instance of UFO encounters in my book to be based on true events. In the process of watching thousands of hours of documentaries, reading dozens of books that included authors Stephen Hawking, Edward J. Ruppelt, Edgar Mitchell, and Stanford T. Friedman, I  discovered Robert Salas.

In his book, Unidentified: The UFO Phenomenon, Robert Salas gives an account of his own alien abduction that occurred in 1985 while living in Manhattan Beach.

What you need to know about Robert Salas is that he's credible. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1961, flew target drones as a weapons controller, commanded intercontinental ballistic missiles as a launch officer, and worked as a missile propulsion engineer for the Titan III program. Then he worked for the FAA for nearly a decade.

Since the sixteen-year-old protagonist in my novel is abducted, I needed to know more about aliens. While I've seen UFOs, I've never met an alien face to face. All of the accounts I read jibed with what Salas had to say. I believe him. He's interviewed other abductees and talked to researchers and therapists, and he concludes that extraterrestrials . . .

1) are able to communicate directly to our minds via telepathic communication.

2) have the ability to control or affect the human neuro-sensory system (paralysis, pain control, etc.)

3) can affect human memory of events.

4) can understand our DNA makeup.

5) are able to understand our most technical equipment and concepts, such as, nuclear weaponry.

6) are involved in an active genetic manipulation or hybridization program.

While I've seen UFOs, I'be never met an alien face to face. Therefore, I relied on eyewitness accounts.



These above beliefs are based upon a wealth of testimonies and documentation. Robert Salas, however, speculates about other truths regarding extra-terrestrials.

1) ETs are able to tweak us so that we have psychic abilities.

2) They are able to manipulate certain abductees through some form of mind control.

3) They want to improve our species by raising our human consciousness.

4) They might be training us to qualify for inclusion in the cosmic community of intelligent life.

It's the last two suspicions that hooked me. 

Perhaps we are still evolving, as we have been evolving for thousands of years. 

Wouldn't it be a relief to know that it just might be possible to evolve into beings far better than ourselves, less destructive, more unified and more compassionate? What if we eventually become responsible stewards of Earth? What if science is used go construct rather than destruct and we lived in harmony and peace and forever?  What if . . .?

Isn't that what God intended? 




Tuesday, August 11, 2015

TIME TO PARTY!

If there's a good time to celebrate, it's upon completing a difficult writing project. My latest novel took a long, long time to finish. While my previous books took 2-3 years,  CHANGED IN THE NIGHT took more than six. Why? 

First of all, this story is complicated. It takes place in 1952 after UFOs appear over the White House, but the backstory
begins December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. On that day, her sixth birthday, Allana Odette accidentally kills her twin brother in a duel while playing war. 

Over ten years later, Allana is considered unstable. Still suffering from grief, she claims to see her dead brother who taunts her into dangerous games so that it becomes difficult for Allana to separate her dreams from reality. She's a bit like her uncle, a pilot who chased a UFO and had to retire from the Air Force in disgrace; therefore, when Allana is visited by aliens and brutally marked, she is disbelieved and diagnosed with AIWS, the little known Aluce in Wonderland Syndrome.

Okay, all that took research. But that's not all. There are the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II, the lifestyle and attitudes of 1952, the psychology, philosophy, and politics of the time, the Cold War and the arms race, the different views of religion and science, the theories about energy, interconnectedness, time, space, and other dimensions.  All of that had to be studied and included in the story.

A forest Allana paints on the walls of her room to keep Jack out inadvertently opens a portal to other dimensions while an ancient oak is where the story of Alon, a mythical land the twins created as children, begins and ends. And, of course, there's Allana's abduction, her stay in a mental facility, the paranoia and. . . well, you get the idea. In painting a world where nothing is as it seems, I created an incredible journey for myself and my protagonist.

So now that I've pulled all these threads together, my friends, family, students, fellow writers, co-workers, editors, supporters, creative souls, and readers are joining me to celebrate another milestone in my writing career.


Saturday, August 8, 2015

WE ARE ALL CONNECTED!

What I realize  after writing CHANGED IN THE NIGHT is how we are all  so connected. I've always known this, of course, but during the writing of my latest novel I focused more on the inter-connectedness between all humans and all living things. 

This connectedness should come as a relief because it means we're in this together and this thing called life is a group effort.  Our individualism and big egos cause us trouble.  Our stubborn adherence to the status quo and to old belief systems get in the way. We can't see the whole picture and how we fit into the scheme of things.  We think we're the highest form of life in the Universe. We think we have all the answers. We maintain that we know what we're doing.

The truth is, however, we don't have a clue!
E=MC2. WE ARE ENERGY. EVERYTHING IS ENERGY. ENERGY IS EVERYTHING. WE ARE ENERGY.

Your guess is as good as mine, because we are only human and that means we suffer from the human condition. We have that selfish desire to be on top, the one in charge, or the one with the most money or power. 

We want immortality and maybe we already have it since we're energy and everything else is energy too. But no, we want to be #1, the best of the bunch, the top dog.

To do so, we must obliterate the competition.

How idiotic is that?


We're human. We see with only two eyes, hear with only two ears, and there are other species on this planet do better than that. We're creating artificial intelligence that will probably do better and more efficient on keeping the planet green and flourishing. 

We're at a disadvantage. With onto two eyes, we can't even SEE ourselves, for goodness sake. unless we look into a mirror. We can't see behind or all around us at once. We have to ask someone, "How do I look?" and rely on their judgment.  The truth is, we are no better than the ants the sidewalk or the bees in the hive or the rabbits getting into our gardens.  In fact, they seem to work better as a collective whole than we do.

To sum up,  we are no better and no worse than other living beings on the planet,  and we're certainly no better or worse than other life in the Universe. We know we're born and we die and sometimes we might feel a "presence" but that's about as close as we come in being part of the intricate fabric of this Universe.

In fact, this incredible lack of concern for our fellow human beings is rather off-putting. We blow things up, literally and figuratively. We tear down each other, one way or another, and we sabotage our own best interests.

In the best case scenario, we're pretty darn self-destructive.  

Maybe it's time we let go of the idea that we're so very special. Wouldn't it be better to take care of each other instead of being all out for ourselves? Why not concentrate on giving rather than receiving? How about forgiving instead of holding a grudge?  Why not try being warriors for peace instead of storming into one war after another in order to show off our weaponry or take revenge.  We are shocked when other species eat their own kind, but we do it all the time, don't we?



It's just a thought, but could this be the message aliens from somewhere in the Universe or other dimensions are trying to tell us?

It's just an idea, but shouldn't we love each other instead of hating? We are, after all, human beings and part of being "human" is caring, isn't it? And don't we feel really good when we actually sincerely help someone else?

This interconnectedness is something to think about. And write about. And I did in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT.