BOOK DISCUSSION & STUDY PROMPTS

Book Discussion & Study Prompts

1) Find Hidden Meanings: A literary element often used by authors is symbolism. An object, event, animal, color or words spoken by a story character can have a deeper and more significant meaning. A chain, for example, might mean a union or connection between two people, but it can also mean imprisonment. CHANGED IN THE NIGHT has many such symbols throughout the book.  Find five symbols. Then choose three symbols to analyze and discuss.

2) Forgotten History: Events, like the Holocaust, 9/11, the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Sandy Hook school shootings, Hurricane Katrina, ISIS beheadings, and space journeys to the moon fade in memory as time goes on. Using examples found in the CHANGED IN THE NIGHT and other sources, discuss American life during the mid-20th century. Consider how people communicated with one another, prepared family meals, and spent leisure time. Then analyze, compare, and contrast American life in 1952 to the way things are today.

3) Relationships: Everyone handles personal trauma and loss in a different way. Consider the various issues Allana and her mother are each dealing with and select three of the most important. Then analyze, compare, and contrast how Allana and her mother deal with these specific problems in different ways.

4) Truth of Lie: An unreliable narrator does not tell an accurate or credible story, and this might be due to maturity level, past experiences, or mental state at the time of the telling. CHANGED IN THE NIGHT is told in the first-person point of view. Analyze Allana as a narrator. Does she tell contradicting stories or offer incomplete explanations? Or is she completely honest with the reader. Find evidence in the novel to support her reliability or unreliability as a narrator.

5) Beliefs: Each character in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT has a different view about life. Why do you think this is true? Give two reasons. Find an example or provide a quote from the book that demonstrates opposing points of view. Relate a personal experience from your own life where you and someone else had a strong different of opinion. How did it affect your relationship?

6) Energy: Albert Einstein said, "Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics." What does this quote? How does Einstein's view relate to events that take place in the CHANGED IN THE NIGHT?

7) UFOs: Unexplained phenomena in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT is based on government disclosures, reported events, and interviews with abductees. Some people claim to have been abducted by aliens; others say they have seen UFOs. Many people, however, think such disclosures are bogus or farfetched. What do you believe? Are you for or against the proposition that alien life exists? Based on evidence from at least three reliable sources, prepare an valid argument with three supporting points to prove your thesis.

8) Science 1: Physical laws governing matter, space, and time are discussed throughout CHANGED IN THE NIGHT. Review these scientific theories, and then identify and discuss at least two physical laws.

9) Science 2: The scientific method is a way for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. Science, however, can be a double-edged sword. Identify at least three ways science has improved our existence on Earth. Then provide evidence that science has also been detrimental in an equal number of ways.

10) Aliens: Knowing for certain that we are not alone in the Universe would affect our belief systems, politics, traditions, communication, military, education, and global economy. Prepare a Presidential announcement to inform the public without inciting panic about aliens among us and cite three specific ways life will immediately change. Then change your point of view and prepare five pertinent questions for the press conference immediately following the announcement.

11) War: Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." What did he mean by these words? Starting with the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the cause, list the effects that take place in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT.

12) Story-time: Stories are told and retold to entertain, explain, inform, and teach. We use stories in jokes, poetry, and games. Discuss a story from your childhood that made a lasting impression and explain why. Describe ways stories are being told today. In what ways are stories beneficial? In what ways might they be harmful?

13) Dreams: Dwelling in the past or longing for the future are examples of being in the dream state. Many people, especially in today's media-filled world, seem to slog through life that way. In CHANGED IN THE NIGHT, Allana has her own difficulty separating reality (fact) from fantasy (fiction). There are, however, people who manage to connect to reality and the present moment. Why are they more alive than others in the present moment? Describe three instances when you felt especially alive, and then analyze the reasons why.

14) AIWS: Allana suffers from the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. If you're unfamiliar with Lewis Carroll's 1865 classic, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, review or research the story, themes, symbols, and motifs. Then compare and contrast similar or common ideas found in ALICE IN WONDERLAND and CHANGED IN THE NIGHT.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM ALBERT EINSTEIN

During the research for CHANGED IN THE NIGHT, I discovered that Albert Einstein was not only a brilliant physicist but also a philosopher.

Here are twelve quotes from Einstein that closely connect with ideas touched upon in CHANGED IN THE NIGHT:

 1) You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

 2) It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

 3) The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

 4) To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

 5) Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

 6) There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

 7) The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

 8) That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

 9) All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

10) A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

11) We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

12) You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Q&A: MARYANN EASLEY

An Interview with MaryAnn Easley, author of CHANGED IN THE NIGHT now available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

TT

Q: You've mentioned that CHANGED IN THE NIGHT is an allegorical tale of grief and redemption. What do you mean by that?

A: Allana has been suffering from guilt and grief ever since she accidentally killed her twin brother Jack more than a decade before. She's unable to move on in her life and is unwilling to let go. She holds Jack in a symbolic place called Abeyance. I think anyone suffering from grief is in a similar situation. There is never any closure when it comes to grief. There is only the grief and our relationship to it. Eventually, we must let go, but it doesn't mean there's closure.

Q: She must have been very young when she killed her brother. What happened?

A: On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday and time stopped on that day that will "live in infamy." That particular Sunday also happens to be Allana's sixth birthday. She makes play swords out of yardsticks while her parents gather at the church to discuss the horror of the day. Once released to play in the park, the children duel. Allana lunges, Jack loses his footing and falls, striking his head. His death is the backstory of CHANGED IN THE NIGHT. Nothing is the same after that day. The inciting incident is when she is visited in 1952 by aliens and marked.

Q: UFOs appear over the White House in your story. This is 1952 and five years after the Roswell incident. Is the White House event fact or fiction?

A: Fact. You can look up the newspaper headlines. Harry Truman was President at the time.  I pored over the newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts, the air traffic controller's comments and the followup interviews of pilots who tried to chase the UFOs. Every UFO incident in the book is based on fact. I didn't make any of that part up. Even when Allana is abducted and taken to the moon, I based the event on eyewitness accounts of abductees.

Q: Have you ever seen a UFO?

A: Yes, while traveling north along the coast on my boat. It was night and I saw at least four unidentified flying objects and they flew in ways no airplanes or helicopters could possibly fly. I know a pilot who chased a UFO while in the military, just as Allana's ace pilot uncle does in the story. UFO encounters are more common than anyone thinks.

Q: Do you honestly think there's a government coverup?

A: Probably.

Q: If UFOs are so common, why don't more people report seeing them more often?

A: People don't look up. We are all too busy studying the screens on our devices. We're heads down, focused on the mundane things in life. We need to look up at the sky more often than we do. Those who do see them are reporting them on social networking. People are aware of what astronauts have seen on the far side of the moon and seen the photos from NASA.

Q: All your other books are for children or young adults. What audience is this book for?

A: For the intelligent young person who thinks, I suppose, but also for adults. The book can be read on several levels. Like Judy Blume, I really never intended to write for young audiences. I AM THE ICE WORM just happened and many adults as well as young people read the book. The same is true for many of my books that followed. This book is by far the most complex and difficult I've ever written. 

Q: It seems many of your other books are based on some of your real life experiences. How about this one?

A: That's true. I taught in the Alaska bush and three of my books are based on living there. I lived on a sailboat and fished commercially for salmon and one book is based on that experience. I taught on a USMC base and one book is based on that part of my life. The stories are all fiction, but the facts behind the stories are based on actual events that have happened in my own life. 

Q: But not this book?

A: No, it's not based on my life, but it's filled with all sorts of ideas that have been marinating in my head for a long time, ideas about science and religion and the interconnectedness of al living beings and how humans don't seem to be fully evolved as yet. I had three teen readers in Chula Vista look at portions of a draft, and I was amazed by their insight and intelligence. If thirteen and fourteen-year-old kids are anything like Alondra, Priscilla, or Ambar, then they can handle the subject matter and the other complexities in the book. I'm grateful for the feedback and suggestions from my teen readers. So when you ask what the audience I'm aiming for, I would say the book is for teens and adults. I used to teach middle school and I've put discussion prompts in the book for classes and book clubs. I would use this book in eighth grade. Maybe seventh. There's a lot to consider and discuss, and the prompts tie in with the state standards and common core. And I think adults would find it of interest too. 

Q: What did you learn during the research and the writing of CHANGED IN THE NIGHT?

A: Oh wow, I learned a lot! I learned about the space-time continuum, about the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about E=mc ² and Einstein's theory of relativity. I learned about the Cold War and arms race and how UFOs were seen in the Korean conflict. I learned how everything is energy, you and me, the table we're sitting at, the chairs we're sitting in, and how everything is energy and interconnected. That interconnectedness of all living things should bring about peace. We should be living with compassion every minute of our lives. Unfortunately, it seems we're more divided than ever.

Q: What's the most memorable thing you learned from doing all that research?

A: By far, the increased awesomeness of nuclear power. I was sickened when I discovered details about the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I viewed film from that time, read eyewitness accounts, and listened to testimony of survivors. This knowledge affected me tremendously because I tutor Japanese students now, and they are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the Japanese people who endured that devastation. I want to apologize to them over and over. How can we be so cruel to one another? We are all one. When will we realize that? Always before, the easy answer to dropping the atomic bombs in Japan has been "well, it ended the war and saved thousands of lives, didn't it?" Maybe so, but I'm totally opposed to nuclear weapons now. Even some of the creators of the bomb regretted opening that horrible Pandora's  box that will lead to the end of the world. Some suspect nuclear bases on the moon and the ramifications of that is too much to even think about. I have a Japanese boy in the story, Eiichi Nakamura, who spent part of his childhood in Manzanar during the war, and I put him in the story on purpose. In 1952, the residue from tha war still remained even though we were in the Korean "conflict" and our former enemies were considered "alien." There's an attraction that cannot be denied between Allana and Eiichi, and yet there's that lingering doubt. Is my enemy really my friend? In killing my enemy, do I slay myself? We are all part of the human race, all interconnected. Why do we insist on killing one another?

Q: Sounds serious, but you've compared your book to ALICE IN WONDERLAND. In what way are the stories alike?

A: Both books are pretty serious, if you really think about it. Both are about the time-space continuum. Lewis Carroll was brilliant in the creative way he demonstrated how time works. I had no clue back when I first read the book as a child or even during later reads. I was only interested in memorizing Jabberwocky, the "'Twas brillig" bit and really didn't understand the events at all. I've had to live this long to really figure it out, and believe me, I went down the rabbit hole when I got into the time-space-other dimensional-quantum physics stuff. Whew! My head is still spinning. I am so grateful to Lewis Carroll for the story and for the title CHANGED IN THE NIGHT that I dedicated my book to Alice. And to my brother Jack, of course.

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!

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? 

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.