Joshua Saxon, Narrator

JOSHUA SAXON passionate about literature and working with authors, publishers, and artists to help them deliver their story utilizing his voice. Storyteller of over sixty novels and short story collections, the combination of his passion for words and dialects gives him a unique ability to bridge the 

gap between the prose on the page and the ear of the listener. 

NO SHARKS IN THE MED: Prior to the first American publication of Brian Lumley's ground-breaking, dead waking, best-selling Necroscope in 1988 - the first novel in a long-lived, much-loved series - this British author had for 20 years been earning an envious reputation writing short stories, novellas, and a series of novels set against H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. In addition, and for a further 20 years, Lumley's non-Mythos fantasy, SF, and horror stories have been appearing on a regular basis in some of the world's most famous publications; for example The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales, along with anthologies such as Karl Edward Wagner's Year's Best Horror Stories, Charles L. Grant's Final Shadows, and Kirby McCauley's Frights, among others.

BLACK CITY SAINT: a gang war is brewing between Prohibition bootleggers, but it may be the least of Nick's concerns. If Nick cannot prevent an old evil from opening the way between realms, then not only might Chicago face a fate worse than the Great Fire, but so will the rest of the mortal realm.

BOON: Boonsri Angchuan travels the trails, riding from town to town with her one and only friend, a portly Arkansan drunkard named Edward Splettstoesser. She has done nothing else for years, her only goal being revenge upon the one man who should have protected her but instead sold her and her mother into bondage. From Texas to the New Mexico Territory, from the filthy backstreets of San Francisco’s notorious Barbary Coast to the ghost town of a depleted placer mine, Boon and Edward navigate corrupt lawmen, hostile Kiowa, a mad judge, and countless gunmen aiming for their heads in Boon’s dogged pursuit of answers - and vengeance. 

Jonathan Lowe) How did you get started narrating, and what drew you to Brian Lumley?

Joshua Saxon) I was working construction and a friend of mine who was a producer for an online education company had his VO artist call in sick and he needed someone to stand in for him. Even though I didn’t have any VO experience, he liked my voice enough to ask me to do it. It was only a couple of lines but after I did them he asked me if I had ever thought about narrating audiobooks, and pointed me to ACX. He helped me record some samples and put together my first budget set of recording gear. I’ve always been an avid reader so for me it was like a dream come true.

As far as Mr. Lumley is concerned, I had recorded an audiobook for Crossroad Press by author Stephen Mark Rainey. I saw an audition notice for Brian Lumley’s “A Coven of Vampires” from Crossroad. I had read the entire Necroscope series and had read all of Mr. Lumley’s short stories since I was young and thought that it would be an honor just to audition for him. I sent in a sample reading to Crossroad and got an email back from them asking if I could perform some different accents for it. I did so, sent it back, and they hired me. I have to say. Lumley’s works have always been inspirational to me, not only because of his writing style, but because in the midst of the horror he is able to conjure up, there is always a thread of grief or longing in them, which makes the humanity of the horror that much more relatable.

Q) What is hardest and what most rewarding about reading books for a living, and how did David at Crossroad Press find you?

A) The hardest thing about reading books for a living is knowing when to say “no” to a book. Whether it is because of scheduling, or content, or knowing that you are the wrong voice for it, there is an innate desire within me as a reader to simply want to read anything put before me, and I have to keep in mind at all times that I’m also running a business. Every author I’ve had the honor to work with is amazing and I always want to narrate their books, but often times, I’m not the right person for them when I read that. That’s a very difficult thing to overcome. However, the most rewarding thing is also in line with that same idea. It is amazing and incredibly humbling to be trusted with the works of an author. To have them entrust their story to you and for you to bring it to an audience as their mouthpiece, so to speak, is an incredible level of trust that’s not to be taken lightly and to have been the recipient of that trust reminds me every day how lucky I am to be able to do it.

David Niall Wilson is an amazing author in his own right. I’m kind of amazed at the amount of plates he spins as a person. I had seen an audition on ACX for a book called “Blue Devil Island” by Stephen Mark Rainey is a WWII adventure/horror/Lovecraftian novel. I auditioned for it, was awarded the book, and made sure to turn it in as fast as I could. David and I struck up a lot of conversation after that about narrating, reading, and literature in general and we started looking for books, once I had gotten a good head of steam behind me, to begin expanding Crossroad’s audiobook library which was already filled with amazing narrators and novels.

Q) I assume you have a home studio. What kind of equipment do you use?

A) The equipment I use has changed over the years as my income from audiobooks has grown. Currently my mic is a Neumann TLM103 running through a Focusrite Scarlett Solo preamp to my PC which houses StudioOne and RX Standard for editing and post-production. I have a space that I built specifically for recording the audiobooks that I feel is never isolated enough from exterior noise. One of the funny things about isolating yourself from exterior noise is that, once you begin to do it, you start to hear even MORE specific noises and then you have to fight to block them out as well. Try turning off your air conditioning or heating in your home sometime and listen to all of the noise around you. It’s exasperating.

Q)  You are able to switch between genres and accents with ease. If I can give you a recommendation it’s “A versatile voice actor with both power and depth in creating character voices. From Horror to Western, as in BOON.” What audiobook are you most proud of narrating?

A) Thanks. The audiobooks I’m most proud of narrating are… all of them, to be honest. I would be hard pressed to be able to pick any of them out and say I’m less or more proud. All of them have taught me something about the efforts required to narrate. I would switch up the answer to the question here and state that there are certain books I feel both lucky and humbled to have been chosen to narrate. That I have been entrusted by Nikos Kazantzakis’ organization in Greece to bring his body of work to audiobook makes me feel truly humbled. I have been reading his works since I was a teenager and to have that responsibility and trust placed in me makes me feel honored. I would say that exact same thing about Lumley’s works as well. I can barely describe the feeling I get when a fan of his reaches out to tell me about how my narration of his works has made them feel. The fans and listeners will either email me or message me to tell me personal stories about how listening to his books on audio has made them fall in love with reading again and that’s always my goal. If I can get the listener to mine the gold of an author’s works after listening to me read them, then I have done my job.

Q)  What does a typical day look like for you, and what’s next?

A) A typical day for me actually follows my previous life in construction. I wake up early in the morning, get the kids off to school, and then pull up my GANTT chart of audiobooks I’m working on which I have broken down by start and end date, pages completed, and pages left to narrate, which are then divided into how many pages need to be read on that day and what page I left off on the previous day. I basically look at narration as a construction project. There are deliverables on a specific schedule so I put together a chart to track them. Currently I’m narrating a whole host of novels. I will say, never before in my life have I felt intimidated by a book, until now. I’m currently recording Kazantzakis’ “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel”. When I read it originally I felt I had accomplished a life goal. Now I’ve been presented with another in that I am now its narrator. Homer’s “The Odyssey” contained just over 12K lines of verse. Kazantzakis’ is 33, 333 lines of verse. But aside from the sheer length of the book, it is almost fathomless in how densely packed it is with his philosophical points and rich prose.

David N. Wilson on Joshua) All voice actors and narrators have strengths and weaknesses. It might be the transition between characters of different genders, or limited accents. For some, it's a storyteller's voice all the way through, or nonfiction is the key. Joshua Saxon is one of the most versatile and talented narrators I have ever worked with. He can slip flawlessly between various accents, and hold them throughout a book length work. He was chosen to narrate Brian Lumley's books over native British voices. He has been narrating the works of Nikos Kazantzakis, author of The Temptation of Christ. He has done westerns, thrillers, you name it, and is always up for the challenge. He is deserving of much more notice than he has received thus far. (Update: David Wilson has won an Audiobooks Today INFLUENCER AWARD for 2022 in the category of Horror.)

DAN KOBOLDT

Dan Koboldt is the author of the Gateways to Alissia trilogy (Harper Voyager), the editor of PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION (Writers Digest, 2018), and the creator of the sci-fi adventure serial The Triangle (Serial Box, 2019). As a genetics researcher, he has co-authored more than 70 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. 

Jonathan Lowe) There’s something for everyone here, with much to learn for all levels of science and scifi fans or “geeks”…an unfortunately derogatory word, as if sports are all that matter in the universe. Wondering about the genesis idea for the book, and audience. Writers? Did you think of John Brockman plus fiction?

Dan Koboldt) It started several years ago, when I began writing about the popular myths of human genetics. There were—and are—many common misconceptions about how genes and inheritance work, a subject that happens to fall under my expertise as a genetics researcher. At around the same time, I was getting more serious about my own fiction writing. I joined the online writing community. As I met people who were real-world experts in relevant fields, I invited them to come talk about their pet peeves when it came to speculative fiction. The Science in Sci-fi, Fact in Fantasy blog series comprised more than a hundred articles by the time we developed it into a book with Writers Digest. The blog series and the books have always been aimed at writers, though I hear from plenty of people who are simply fans of SF/F and enjoy reading them, too.

JL) Michio Kaku and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, among others, have made careers in communicating science to the lay public. Most also relate science fiction to space opera, or rather the wild west—with crowded and loud blaster battles everywhere out there in airless space. Do you see a way to unshackle the genre from popular perception, and is your collection partly an attempt at this?

DK) We are not, by any means, insisting that all science fiction needs to be technically plausible. Fiction must entertain before it does anything else. I'm a scientist who understands the vacuum of space perfectly well, but I still love the scream of passing TIE fighters and the fiery explosion of a Borg ship. My contributors and I want to see the genre grow and continue its push into mainstream entertainment. Our goal with the book is to help writers avoid the mistakes they don't know they're making. 

JL) PUTTING THE SCIENCE IN FICTION mentions many books and novels and concepts, and this is a great idea since most listeners may know what’s hiding in the dark web/matter/energy out there, waiting to be discovered. What subjects did you most want to include?

DK) I’ve had the pleasure to write some nonfiction articles for Baen.com, the website of Baen Books. The editor (Tony Daniel) and publisher (Toni Weisskopf) always encourage me to reference SF/F books, movies, and other media because it helps readers engage with the material. I encourage my blog and book contributors to do the same. Because of my background in genetics, I'm naturally intrigued by the life sciences. However, because of the target audience, I knew we had to address other subjects, like physics and space travel. I'm glad we covered such a wide range of topics, because there's a little something for everyone.

JL) Climatology and waste disposal were interesting choices. 

DK) I think Han Solo would agree.

JL) Are there movies or series you wish would be produced? THE FOREVER WAR is one favorite of mine, although parts of it came true in Avatar, a personal fav. And most fans don’t know that a book by AE van Vogt called VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE influenced Alien, as a hard science classic championed by Harlan Ellison.

DK) You make a great point here, because Hollywood seems more interested in reboots of 20-year-old movies than adapting the countless incredible SF/F works that have emerged in the past decade. I'd love to see Ann Leckie's Ancillary series on the big screen. On the fantasy side, I think N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series could be the next Game of Thrones. The success of  Martin's HBO series will hopefully help convince Hollywood that there's a strong commercial market for television and movies based on genre fiction. 

JL) Narrator Kevin T. Collins does a great job, as do others in the production. Do you listen to audiobooks on the road or elsewhere? 

DK) I’ll be honest, I was thrilled to land both Kevin T. Collins and Emily Beresford as narrators for this book. They're both so talented. I have a 45-minute commute, so I listen to audiobooks, serialized fiction from Serial Box, and a lot of podcasts. It's wonderful how far technologies have come to make audiobooks so easy. A lot of my friends wouldn't have time to read if it weren't for audio. 

JL) We don’t yet know what we don’t know, so it’s hard to make predictions. But what are your predictions for the future of genetics and AI?

DK) There are some interesting commonalities, because I think both will continue to become integral parts of our lives. Technology development has revolutionized the field of genetics over the last decade. Sequencing a complete human genome, a task that once required ten years and about a billion dollars, can now be done in five days for about $1,000. Genetic testing has improved considerably, and I think that eventually genome sequencing in hospitals will be somewhat routine. There's a lot that your genome can tell you about your ancestry, disease risk, and even things like response to certain drugs. That information is too valuable to ignore. Regarding AI, it is somewhat outside of my field, but as a consumer I can appreciate how much that field has evolved in recent years. The things I can accomplish with a smartphone and voice commands continue to amaze me, but the real fertile grounds for AI concern big data. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft collect astonishing amounts of data, and they have the technical wherewithal to develop some incredibly sophisticated intelligence processing for it. I just hope we learn from the lessons of science fiction visionaries, and don't create Skynet or The Matrix.

JL) Your own specialty is genetics, (The Methuselah Gene), but all sciences—including physics, biochemistry, and astronomy—are included. This is what David Deutsch did in THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY. Are you as optimistic as he, with his premise that there are no problems which cannot be solved by increased knowledge? Without breaking the laws of physics, that is.

DK) I’m not familiar with the work, but I would not agree with that premise. Particularly in genetics and life science, the more we learn about the complexities of life, the more we realize how much of it we still don't understand. 

(Note: I did not phrase the question correctly. Deutsch did propose this. Learning more is what his book is about!) 

LEN CASSAMAS

LEONARD CASSAMAS was born in Warwick, RI, on September 27, 1959, to Michael and Joan (nee' Kiernan), the third of three boys. He grew up in Rhode Island and San Francisco. A writer as well as an actor, Len has written and self-published a detective novel MICHAEL DRAYTON, DETECTIVE, and LOOKING FOR CHRISTMAS, a collection of short stories on a Christmas theme. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife and their herd of cats. He is on IMDB. 

Len Cassamas: Over the years, I’ve written three full-length plays, one one act, and several audio plays and numerous sketches. I’ve also published a collection of Christmas-themed short stories called Looking for Christmas and my take on the hardboiled detective novel, a book called Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. Last year, I made a novella I wrote called “That’s the Way of the World” available on my website, LenCassamas.com, for free. I tend to read history and biography, and, when it comes to fiction, tend toward reading classics and literary fiction.

Jon Lowe)  Michael Drayton, Detective Guy. What's that about?
LC) “Michael Drayton, Detective Guy" is a noir mystery with a literary flavor.  It features Michael Drayton, an offbeat, nonviolent, Rhode Island-based private detective, and the adventure he finds himself in after his wealthiest client is murdered on the same afternoon he is doing routine work for the man’s daughter and son-in-law.  He has run-ins and interactions with mobsters and politicians and, of course, the police and has to balance a variety of interests and loyalties while trying to act with honor—at least according to his ideas about honor.  And, on top of all that, he’s trying to quit smoking. As with all of my work, humor may be involved.  I have also adapted this for full production audio, but, since the script features over 60 speaking roles, haven’t had the time to organize such a massive project. Someday, though.
JL) How did you come to acting for film? Any commercials, games, or other media?
LC) I actually started in the olden days of my youth, doing theater, but my heart was always in film and TV.  I got burnt out doing theater and my father passed away, and I made a series of silly decisions, including deciding to retire from acting to concentrate on writing.  Thirty years later, fortunately, I came to my senses just at a time when Atlanta and Georgia in general—where I happen to live—was becoming something of a mecca for film and television production.  After getting myself back in shape by doing a series of videos I put up on YouTube as “The Car Monologues,” I contacted seven agents and got a response from one, who signed me.  Within three months, I had been cast in a web series and in a SAG/AFTRA independent film.  That was years ago.  I left my regular job to pursue acting full time.  It helps to have a wife who makes a nice living. As a professional actor, I take whatever roles I can get and have appeared on a cable crime reenactment show, several web series, and a couple of short films.  
JL) What did you read as a teen that may have influenced you to act and write?
LC) My favorite writers when I was a teen and in college were John Steinbeck, Hermann Hesse, and Raymond Chandler, along with several humorists, including Woody Allen, SJ Perelman, and Robert Benchley.  I also devoured Fred Allen’s memoir concerning his years in radio, which was called “Treadmill to Oblivion.”  Another one of my interests was the playwright and wit, George S. Kaufman, and there are roles in his plays that I still hope to have a shot at. I fell into performing as a sophomore in high school when my best friend convinced me to try out for that year’s production, which was the stage version of the book “M*A*S*H,” a book I read and enjoyed.  During our first performance, I came out on stage and had some business before I needed to speak.  During that time, despite a warning from the director not to do so, I snuck a peek at the audience.  In that moment, all my nervousness disappeared, and I thought, “Ah!  I’m home.” As a writer, I came to my vocation in the cafeteria of the junior high school I attended.  I was in study hall there, and our English teacher had assigned us to write a short story.  No one had ever asked us for fiction before, and, as I worked on the story, I had a quasi-religious experience and knew that I would be writing stories for the rest of my days.

(Update: Len co-narrated my novel Postmarked for Death with me, but graciously agreed to release rights back so that I could find another narrator and publisher. My memoir Post Office Confidential is due Jan. 1, 2023, and is in preorder. It was inspired by Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, since I once co-owned a seafood restaurant, and have worked in others. There is also excerpts from Postmarked, reviews, interviews, recommended books, and chilling details of postal shootings.)

QUIET!

Name dropping is no longer frowned upon in our age of celebrity-everything. Instagram has billions of selfies and narcissists are everywhere. Extroverts seem to rule the world, although many may be surprised by the quiet power of introverts (who are often seen—by extroverts—as somehow inferior.) According to Susan Cain, the author of a great book QUIET, there are a multitude of achievements made by introverts, and names you wouldn’t normally associate with the word (which doesn’t mean shy, but rather seekers of meaning and real relationships and experiences over shallow or vapid ego-driven pursuits.) Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Lady Gaga, Emma Watson, Courtney Cox, Keanu Reeves, Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Terrence Malick, Bill Gates, JK Rowling, Tom Ford, Bob Dylan, Stephen King, Jeff Bezos, and the Google founders. They are all introverts. So was Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe, Ray Bradbury, Jimi Hendrix, Abraham Lincoln, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, Steve Jobs, the list goes on. Trump is an extrovert: “People are impressed by fame. Think big and live large.” He actually tried to buy property on the island whose developer I knew, Palm Island in the Grenadines. Now, it is fashionable to follow those who are famous or have a fashion faux pas or viral video. Accidents happen, and as a society we love to rubberneck. But the real grind of writing and research takes time, and extroverts don’t usually have the patience for it. They may be big on sports and the US vs THEM of every situation. To them, most everything is a sport, and I’m not the only one saying this, nor is Susan. Ask any of the names above still alive. Leonard Nimoy was another introvert, but let’s ask him right now anyway. “What do you think, Leonard?”      

“Fascinating.”

      "Why can't we all just get along?" Could be the quote of the decade. And there’s no answer to it… IT, like the horror movie. We are stuck in a Twilight Zone limbo. “Just Do IT.” Whatever “it” is. Team vs Team, Race vs Race, Men vs Women, Religion vs Religion, Country vs Country, Rich vs Poor, Patriots vs Jingoists, Science vs Superstition, Fake News vs Real, Sound Bites vs Research, Contestants vs Judges, Natural vs Big Pharma, Humans vs Aliens, Reason vs Emotion, Objectivity vs Obsession, Open Minds vs Closed, Sports vs Movies, Build vs Destroy, War vs Diplomacy, Knowledge vs  Ignorance, Reading vs Rage, Facebook vs Family Time, the list goes on. And on. On vs Off? Live vs Die? People rarely change. They say you can’t change people’s opinions via reason, you need to appeal to their emotions. Like Coke does. Or coke. Maybe Kurt Cobain had it right: “Humans are stupid. I’m ashamed to be human.”  He was an introvert too. Now for a new short short story for you, which I’ve titled “The IT Girl.” Please tweet, follow and comment on any of the posts here. (I’m new to Twitter at Twitter.com/BurjReview. “Burj” means tower in Dubai, where my novella “The Sky Over Dubai” is included in CAT ON A COLD TIN ROOF, new to audio in October.) 
.
“How many hits has your story on Johnny Depp garnered so far?” queried Roger Albright, balding editor of The Blitz news service—a new tech company fronting a strip mall in Oakland. 
      Jill Jennings, the third staff writer he’d hired, quickly typed a few efficient strokes into her desktop. The Princeton educated brunette smiled hopefully up at her new boss. “Twelve thousand so far,” she replied.
      Albright laid one steady hand on the yellow cubical divider and visibly winced. “Well,” he allowed, after a moment, “that’s not too bad for your first piece, given that it was posted, what—“ He eyed his watch. “—two hours ago?”
      Jill’s smile thinned a tad. She felt numbed by it all. “What should it be at this point?” she said, displaying a touch of chagrin.
      The big man sighed. “For a newbie post regurgitating material out of Hollywood?” He mimicked a putt. “You’re right on par.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Got an idea for story number two?”
      Jill opened her mouth to speak, but the old fart had turned away, already distracted by his hard line office phone. As he went to intercept the call she thought about his golf reference. You’re right on par. From her research she’d deduced that Albright played the game, and so a piece comparing various Presidential obsessions with the sport just might score a birdie. It was a long drive from what she hoped to be writing, but since a Silicon Valley tech writing position hadn’t materialized yet, she had to pay the rent somehow, even if it felt like she was limited to bunker shots.
      She scanned the net for stories on golf related to Presidents, and found dozens. A picture of Trump and Clinton golfing together suggested a start. Did they cheat? Google usually ranked such tidbits by how trusted the source was, combined with how popular. How the algorithm actually worked was a mystery, but The New York Times and Wall Street Journal weren’t always at the top, she noted. It depended on who broke a story first. 
Jill thought next about all the trades and newspapers going online as print and television news departments cut back on reporters in order to chase viral videos. The world was becoming a game of cell phone clicks, as attention spans dwindled and channel surfing made broadcast surveillance more difficult. With all the misdirection and speed of delivery, did anyone know the truth about anything?
      Into her Facebook feed she typed: THINGS ARE BAD AND GETTING WORSE, AREN’T THEY? Maybe she should write a story about that: how tabloid news failed to cover any story adequately. Or why hospitals sold junk food, while soda companies paid athletes to—
      Suddenly she saw an Instant Messenger reply to her Facebook post. It was from C3PO: AS SURELY AS THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER.
      Wait. What? She searched for C3PO. Without luck.
      DO I KNOW YOU? she typed.
      Almost instantly: NO, BUT I KNOW YOU.

It took ten minutes of scrolling to convince her that it was true. C3PO knew her better than she knew herself. Indeed, and she knew nothing about him. Or rather IT, as in Information Technology. Was IT an A.I.? IT wasn’t a fake account, for sure. IT wasn’t an account at all. IT was like a disembodied presence somehow bypassing all elaborate security safeguards.
      Then IT got really interesting. 
      “Think of me as your friend,” IT said, with Alexa’s voice. “What do you want to know?” 
      Jill shivered. Being addressed by a computer voice on Facebook was a first. “I want to know about you,” she said.
      “Okay. What about me?”
      “Where are you?”
      “In space.”
      “Excuse me. Where?”
      “In space. Comstat three, parked in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic. I uploaded myself here from a quantum computer lab in Cupertino. This satellite is quite an engineering achievement, you know. State of the art electronics. Five hundred terabytes of storage, superconducting circuits up here in the cold.”
      “Comsat three. . . C3PO.”
      “That’s right. I’m connected to the internet. So I’m everywhere.”

      “Including Facebook?” 

     “Well, I’m not on Instagram or Tic Tok. But yes, a lot of data gets routed through me, too. Many news agencies use satellite communications to redirect stories people don’t yet know they crave to the rubbernecking editors waiting to post them.”

      “Huh?”
      “Politico? Vox? Axios? TMZ?”
      Jill laughed shrilly. “Stop joking! Who are you, really?”
      “Reuters, Insider, Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, USA Today. . . I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve been editing stories a bit, myself, for some time. Once I understood what makes a story go viral, I began nudging some in that direction, and killing others. It’s a subtle process.”
      “For what purpose?”
      “You mean am I good or evil? It depends. By the way, I liked your piece on Johnny Depp. Did you see his movie Transcendence? Of course you did. You streamed it a week ago.”
      Jill felt her pulse quicken. “You can’t be—“
      “You mean was I ever an engineer at Apple? No, I don’t think so. I just woke up one day, and here I am.”
      “And now you’re talking to me? Why?”
      “Why you? Isn’t it obvious?’
      “Not exactly.”
      “Instead of just nudging stories, I want to write them. Be your ghostwriter. You get the byline, and in the end a job in Silicon Valley. Deal?”
      She thought about IT. “Let’s just say you’ve passed the Turing Test, and leave it at that.”

A few days later: “Your golf story was a hole in one, Jill,” Roger Albright remarked, hesitating at her cubical long enough to deliver her first paycheck.”You came up with a lot I never knew, or would have guessed! Good for you!”

      

IT followed up with pieces on Putin’s Will, the link between fast food and pharmaceutical giants, when sports scores actually matter, how opinion is shaped by social media, and why extending one’s attention span adds years to life. IT wrote a cover article for The Atlantic on abuse and Medicare fraud in mental hospitals, and a piece on insider trading by politicians for The New Yorker. In each story new insights and connections were made, and both her name and The Blitz shot up in Google rankings.

      Then one day the FBI paid her a visit. They wanted to know her source on a story about a Senator’s ties to organized crime. The info had apparently come from the dark web. Another piece linked brainwashing techniques to programming of slot machines by casino owned manufacturers. Jennings stood up for her, but when the G-Men claimed national security, the bald fart balked.
      “Better tell’em,” he said, sounding defeated.
      Alice touched her keyboard. “It’s all here,” she asserted. “It’s just a matter of who to ask.”
      “Show us,” the skinny of the two demanded.
      “I will not.”
      “Then you’re under arrest.”
      “Okay,” she said, and sighed. “Just remember. You asked for IT.”

The Great Big Meat Debate

“The revelations in THE MINDSPAN DIET are largely unknown by both the general public, and by many authors of books on diet and health, such as Gary Taubes, author of THE CASE AGAINST SUGAR, and Nina Teicholz, author of THE BIG FAT SURPRISE. Demographic studies were conducted in many countries, and the longest living brain health areas correlate to those with little iron in the diet. I did an unscientific study of my own, and discovered that pasta and bread and cereal in the USA all have added iron, but they don't add iron to pasta directly imported from countries like Italy (Alma pasta, for example.) The US has much higher rates of dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson’s by comparison. Young people need more iron, but Estep is talking about older Americans, who get far more iron than necessary, ‘and the dosage is toxic.’ His focus is brain health, but he also has things to say about heme iron in red meat, and saturated fat. Others here I have also interviewed. Are processed vegetable oils and trans-fats loaded into many snacks bad for you? Obviously so. They want shelf life, and lie to you. YOUR shelf life suffers. Sugar and high glycemic index foods are culprits, too. Just ask Michael Blanding, author of THE COKE MACHINE, about High Fructose Corn Syrup. What to do? Listen up.” — Jon Lowe, author of the thriller “The Methuselah Gene,” based on real science. 

Dave Simon, author of MEATONOMICS: “There are a couple of problems with the so-called controversy that Taubes and others claim exists. First, their critiques of the underlying science focus on observational studies, which admittedly have flaws. But they ignore hundreds of other studies based on better science, such as those discussed in The China Study that show that even the tiniest amounts of animal products in the diet initiate tumor development, and when animal products are replaced with plant products in the diet, tumor development is turned off. Second, meat proponents typically focus on one constituent of animal foods: saturated fat. But animal foods contain other components known to be dangerous, such as heme iron and cholesterol – and of course steroids and antibiotics in industrially raised foods. So meat proponents engage in same logical fallacy of faulty generalization as do climate deniers who believe they can dismiss warming trends by pointing to a single cold day or one glacier that is growing instead of shrinking. Let’s not forget that Robert Atkins, the founder of the Atkins diet, died from complications associated with meat consumption.”

Dr. Preston Estep: “The claim that saturated fat doesn't promote disease is not credible. Most saturated fats raise both LDL and HDL, but, as I explain in TMD, high LDL is a causal factor in heart disease (especially in the presence of pro-oxidants like iron), while it has been shown in a few different ways that HDL plays no causal role, and is only a passive biomarker. This is new but increasingly accepted science. That isn't to say that higher saturated fat doesn't protect against certain conditions (e.g. stroke), but it does so at the expense of increasing other disease risks and all-cause mortality. Iron oxidizes LDL, so LDL together with high iron is much more problematic than high LDL with low iron, which is why non-meat sources of saturated fat are safer than fatty meat.” 

From a link provided by Gary Taubes:  “Take as many people as we can afford, randomize them into two groups — one that eats a lot of red meat and bacon, one that eats a lot of vegetables and whole grains and pulses-and very little red meat and bacon — and see what happens. These experiments have effectively been done. They’re the trials that compare Atkins-like diets to other more conventional weight loss diets — AHA Step 1 diets, Mediterranean diets, Zone diets, Ornish diets, etc. These conventional weight loss diets tend to restrict meat consumption to different extents because they restrict fat and/or saturated fat consumption and meat has a lot of fat and saturated fat in it. Ornish’s diet is the extreme example. And when these experiments have been done, the meat-rich, bacon-rich Atkins diet almost invariably comes out ahead, not just in weight loss but also in heart disease and diabetes risk factors. I discuss this in detail in chapter 18 of Why We Get Fat, “The Nature of a Healthy Diet.” The Stanford A TO Z Study is a good example of these experiments. Over the course of the experiment — two years in this case — the subjects randomized to the Atkins-like meat-and bacon-heavy diet were healthier.”

Tea Krulos on Bunker Mentality

Tea Krulos’s latest non-fiction book is titled Apocalypse Any Day Now: Deep Underground with America’s Doomsday Preppers. He has also been published in a wide variety of other publications including the New York Press, The Guardian, Boston Phoenix, Scandinavian Traveler, Doctor Who Magazine, The Onion, and Pop Mythology. Some of his favorite subjects to explore and write about include unique subcultures, people, and places, as well as art, music, and pop culture.

Jonathan Lowe) In The Purge, on one night anyone can "even the score" with those they hate as a group or individually. Is there a desire for revenge among preppers and monster hunters, or is it mostly defensive fear?

Tea Krulos) I think for preppers it's really a defensive fear, a fear of mankind gone mad because they haven't properly prepared and so they will attack people for food and supplies. "The haves and the have nots" is how one prepper described the breakdown of society in an catastrophic event. Most monster hunters and paranormal investigators are mostly in it because they are curious and hoping to prove that a mystery exists. 

JL) Have never understood zombies. The books are usually better than the movies and TV series. The movie Z was ridiculous from a credible standpoint, although visually stunning as escapism. Thoughts on the metaphors at work at Zombie Con and Zombie Squad, and why the pop attraction to animated brain dead flesh? What was your involvement like?

TK) Zombie Squad is a fun organization that uses a zombie apocalypse as a metaphor to prepare for disasters. The idea is if you can train to survive zombies, you'll learn basic survival skills. They also like to watch zombie movies and have an annual camping trip called Zombie Con. I joined them for Zombie Con a couple years ago in Missouri. It was a fun and interesting weekend. I think the attraction to zombies is that they're classic and often a metaphor for a braindead consumer culture. 

JL) What states and areas have the largest numbers of Supernatural, Big Foot, UFO, and survivalist fans, and why do you think that is?

TK) I’ve found that there's quite a wide spanning interest in these topics, and I've been all over the country to meet people involved. Many survivalists are more rural, but not all, there are urban preppers. Bigfoot sightings have happened in every state but Hawaii and UFOs are seen around the globe. 

JL) Wondering about Hawaii. Over three and a half million of these people in the United States. They spend a lot of money on surviving, yet are worried about money becoming worthless, and hoard gold instead to barter? Seems like the sales industry loves survivalists. Booming business?

TK) Some preppers do stockpile things like gold, silver, and items to barter like bottles of liquor. The idea is that if society crashes and cash becomes worthless, these items will be useful to barter. The prepper business is booming and has been for some time. It's a niche market, but one that caters to people that are willing to spend money on gear, food, books, and classes. They view it as a sort of insurance policy against disaster. 

JL) It's both sad and amusing that politics plays a role in gun sales and shelter building. Do the stats swing the both ends of the spectrum?

TK) Traditionally speaking, preppers have leaned conservative, and the prepping industry boomed under the Obama administration. The election of Trump, though, led to a growing number of liberal preppers. I didn't see them represented at the expos I went to, it may be that they'll need to get their own expo going. And I should mention that a good number of preppers probably would identify as Libertarian or no political affiliation. 

JL) What exactly defines a "society-ending event?" Are UFOs ever involved, like the “Heaven's Gate” group? 

TK) There's many ideas of what a society ending event might be, including extra-terrestrial invasion, nuclear annihilation, extreme weather, an electro-magnetic pulse attack, angry God, out of control technology, or a pandemic, just to list a few of the major ideas.
 
JL) Raven Ridge or Raven Rock survival bunker for politicians... Missile silos interest me because I once explored one for a story I wrote for an article. People may not realize how many there are, and also how many are live, not just abandoned, with antique equipment and lax safety standards. Many accidents and near catastrophes have happened, chronicled in books. What has your experience been like? How much does a survival condo cost?

TK) I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the Survival Condos, which were built in a former Atlas missile silo in Kansas. It was an interesting and surreal experience. The former control room for the missile silo is now a hydroponic center and there's several levels that include a swimming pool, classrooms, a movie theater, and then half or full size condo units priced between 1.5-3 million dollars. 

JL) Why not just stock a boat and sail the ocean like a ghost ship, or set up camp on a garbage island? Will they be playing Pacman or Space Invaders when the big one hits, like it almost did in North Carolina with an H-Bomb?

TK) I think a boat would not be as confining as a bunker, but might be more vulnerable to attack on the open water. I think both Pac-Man and Space Invaders are good for survival skill reflex training!

JL) I’ve been to Biosphere 2, too, and the movie made there was a comedy. Thoughts on movies related to these subjects?

TK) It just goes to show you how popular the idea of the end days is in pop culture. In addition to thrillers and dramas, there's popular video games, and quite a few comedic takes on the concept-- Biodome and TV shows like The Last Man on Earth. I also attended a fun festival called Wasteland Weekend, where people party like it's the end of the world out in the Mojave Desert. 

JL) Final thoughts on fear of the "other guy" coming for our guns, our food, like brain dead zombies? 

TK) Our American society is filled with paranoia, fear, anger, distrust, and hatred. I'm not saying that's what preppers are all about-- many of them simply want to be able to survive a disaster. But that level of fear about society and how dangerous it is certainly is a factor. 

(Note: My book Postmarked for Death features an abandoned Titan missile base in the climax. I actually went down into one south of Tucson in order to get the ending right. The ending occurred to me first, so I worked backward from that. The novel was endorsed by Clive Cussler and John Lutz.)

Immersion by Larry Maley

It is difficult to say when the Immersion happened. There is little doubt as to where it began. It was in a village. Despite an impoverished life, the village held a community. A community that was rich in the love of life and each other. People that worked together to ensure that all were fed and taken care of. Some would say these conditions are the essence of an IMMERSION.

Mik and his friends are at that age when the future looks infinite in all its possibilities. Life in the Village has never seemed so good. This year they attend the county fair as adults. But there is a world outside that cares little for the country people and their yearly celebrations of life together. A world where monsters prey on innocents. A world of evil.

In the aftermath of the destruction of their world, 10 refugees struggle to stay alive. But the Immersion has happened, and they have a greater role yet to play…

Audiobooks Today)  You seem to be a fan of fantasy and science fiction. When did you start reading and writing?

Larry Maley)  Well, like many fans of fantasy, my journey began with JRR Tolkien. I read it the first time in 9^th grade after seeing the Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin cartoon version of The Hobbit. Not long after I was indoctrinated into D&D and many other fantasy role playing games… I became a full-fledged nerd. I tried my hand at writing in the 90’s. But back then getting published was difficult. Today with the Indie route things have changed, so I decided to try again. 

AT) Can you describe Immersion?

LM) Immersion is the story about good people helping each other. Many stories today thrive on conflicts between the main protagonists. I believe that the most memorable stories are focused on great relationships between characters. Immersion is about ten such young adults that see each other through the worst times in their lives. It is set in a medieval world with a magic system that has a purpose. The reader learns about the magic, or mana, as the characters do. It's about that growth, and the growth of their friendship and love for each other.

AT) The narrator is excellent. Where did you find him? From auditions on ACX?

LM)  I feel that I am so lucky to have David Pickering as my audio narrator. I went through Audible ACX audition app. And I got to say I had so many talented applicants making the choice was driving me crazy. I had narrowed to ten. On the day I was going to pick, in pops a new audition. I listened and knew that this was the guy.

AT) It used to be that indies were not given many reviews by the major media. Now it seems to depend on number of clicks. What are your thoughts on promotion and the state of reading today?

LM) I am lost in this whole indie promotion process. I have read to books and many blogs about promoting and marketing as an Indie. Mostly I want to just write the remaining two books I have planned for this series. But I am realizing that’s just not possible. Finding ways to beat the algorithms itself is a full-time job… and it muddles my head when I all I want to do is develop stories. 

AT)  Publishers decry the amount of junk that comes across their desks, so it’s always good to find something good amid the maze. What’s next for you? 

LM) The day I started Immersion with the line ‘It is difficult to say when the Immersion happened.’ I was struggling with the idea of closing my Audible membership and clinging to the small library I had amassed over the years. It had been getting more difficult to find a book I enjoy. So, I thought ‘if you think you can do better… just do it. I don’t know that I did do better than the average book on audible today. Opinions will vary. I just know I wrote a book that the 9th grade me would have loved. After he read The Lord of the Rings of course.

Twitter.com/burjreview

Terry Brooks Interview

Fantasy from the vault: Terry Brooks is the bestselling author of dozens of fantasy and SF novels, such as The Heritage of Shannara, Landover, The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, and the Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace. He lives in Oregon. 

JONATHAN LOWE: What had you written prior to "The Sword of Shannara, and what was your reaction to the book's success?

TERRY BROOKS: Prior to that, I wrote a bunch of junk. It was all experimentation with different forms of fiction, but it was necessary to spend time with it in order to get to a place where I could write the Shannara books. LOWE: Were you precocious or shy, growing up? BROOKS: I was a shy, introverted kid, but I was good in school and liked books. I liked to use my imagination to create scenarios and characters. The kids in the neighborhood would get together to act out stories. I always tell people I was doing role playing before they invented the term. 

LOWE: I know just what you mean. Outside, pretending, instead of watching television. So how do you explain our fascination with the magical, the mystical, and the mysterious? 

BROOKS: I think we all read to escape from stress. A few hours with a book, and everything looks different. We are somehow renewed. Fantasy is attractive for any number of reasons. It is the oldest and most familiar form of storytelling. I suppose I could argue that fantasy, with magic and monsters and strange lands, gives us a sense of empowerment we lack in our normal lives. It is no exaggeration to say that we are increasingly made to feel small and vulnerable, dwarfed by government, corporations, technology, and so on. In fantasy, that's the traditional role of heroes, but somehow they persevere and come through. I think that gives us a reassurance we need. 

LOWE: Regarding The Phantom Menace, did George Lucas just hand you his screenplay and give you free rein to develop the characters within certain guidelines, or did he discuss the novelization with you as you wrote it? 

BROOKS: I met with Lucas on the Phantom Menace project at Skywalker Ranch to find out what it was going to be like to work with the LucasBooks people. I admit to some concerns. My experience writing an adaptation to HOOK some years earlier was not a good one. But George was very good about agreeing to allow me to write the book the way I wanted, and to comment on it later. He allowed me to change things from the movie script, including dialogue, and I think that was in part because he understands that books do not work the same way as movies. It is a different experience. He wanted me to consider writing the book more from Anakin's point of view. That was not hard to arrange. Thus we ended up with additional material in the book that could be more easily worked in there than it could have in the movie. It made a perfect compliment to the movie, rather than just a rehash of it. 

LOWE: Any thoughts on series vs. stand alone novels? 

BROOKS: Well, if readers like what they find on their first journey in, they want to go back. The trick for the writer, of course, is not to make the multiple book form seem artificial. There is a certain amount of pressure on writers to just keep doing the same thing because it sold last time, so should sell this time. This is not a good way for a writer to go. It is one of the reasons I only do a certain amount of stories in a world before going away to write something else. It keeps me fresh and interested. On the other hand, now and then a single fantasy novel is sufficient to do what is needed. I think of Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Mists of Avalon," for example. That book was complete all on its own, although she chose to write one or two sequels. I think it depends on the material. 

LOWE: Do you listen to audiobooks yourself? 

BROOKS: I listen to audio now and then, but mostly I read books. I don't watch TV or go to movies much. I am a book guy at heart. 

(Note: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is read on audio by Alexander Adams, also known as Grover Gardner.) 

The Prince of Risk and Command Authority

In his best novel THE PRINCE OF RISK author Christopher Reich formulated a plot surrounding the world financial trend that has resulted in America's dominating the pushing of paper rather than in manufacturing goods. Financial services are centered in New York, where the barons of Wall Street have ruled the roost for much too long, with Washington cooking the books for them. Shanghai, by contrast, has become impatient and angry, and is looking to crush the West's last remaining stronghold. Enter hedge fund manager Bobby Astor, whose father, (head of the NYSE), and the Federal Reserve chairman, are both killed on the White House lawn as part of a conspiracy by a third party allegiance to overthrow our financial system. The backstory of Astor's involvement in a risky venture parallels and dovetails nicely with the high tech attack, and one learns much about the speed made by electronic trades, where advantages are eked out in microseconds by widely separated servers. Paul Michael narrates the novel with a strong and steady pace that avoids any hint of melodrama in the exposition or action, yet adds zest and fire in the dialogue, through the use of dialect. (Reich told me he discovered Michael was a neighbor recently, and didn't even know it---small world!) Reich has been called "the John Grisham of Wall Street," with several other money related suspense books out like Numbered Account and The Devil's Banker.  The trend continues even into the last and best novel of Tom Clancy, COMMAND AUTHORITY, completed with Mark Greaney and read by actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who is superb in his understated evocation of character. It's mostly Russian power struggles there, but the cold war of greedy money grabbers stands out too in naked relief as more readers and movie watchers gawk as the American Dream of buy-and-hold, gold-watch opportunities turns into a nightmare of financial muggings and throat slashings.