It’s perhaps a cliché to say one person can make a huge difference in your life—except in the case of someone like Mrs. Lee, my sixth-grade homeroom and English teacher at Sagamore Hills Grammar School in Atlanta. She changed mine, profoundly, by making me the class playwright and short story writer. In my clumsy but passionate initial attempts at writing, I discovered my calling. Now that I’ve published my speculative fiction novel The Cloud (details at www.thecloudnovel.com) I hope I can find my beloved teacher. I’d like to hug and thank her with tears of gratitude in my eyes.
My passion for writing eventually landed me in Oxford and London, England, where I earned a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University, on the strength of my short stories. I won a full scholarship for two years of study there; then returned to the U.S. with a thick English accent to pursue a career in journalism and advertising in Atlanta, Miami, and L.A. Eventually, in 2019, my novel The Cloud won First Place in the science fiction category in the San Antonio Writers Guild 27th Annual Writing Contest. That won me representation from Hollywood literary manager/producer Ken Atchity of Story Merchant Books and Atchity Productions.
Ken loved the The Cloud because it’s speculative fiction exploring frightening possibilities about the future implicit in today’s world. The dramatized events are conceivable, even probable, in my unspecified future. The science and technology I dramatize are already in use or under development: VR, mind control, psychic powers, 24/7 surveillance, disease reversal tech, cryogenics, nanobots, and a global revival of patriarchal political oppression. These elements make The Cloud a spiritual descendant of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and her stunning 2020 sequel, The Testaments; George Orwell’s 1984; and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
The Cloud emerged from three key events in my life. 1) My 8 ½ years living in Los Angeles during the Great Recession of 2007-2015, where I worked as a copywriter for ad agencies and Fortune 500 companies developing groundbreaking biotechnology and AI-driven computer tech. 2) A failed romantic relationship with a beautiful Asian electric violinist and operatic vocalist I met in L.A. To heal that relationship, I split her into two characters in my novel: the femme fatale Mitsuko and the female protagonist, Kristina--the two women fighting for the soul of my male protagonist Blaise Pascal VII. 3) My three years working for a Fortune 500 commercial real estate company that builds cities of the future worldwide for the top 10% only. My rage against that trend gave me the fire in the belly to write my novel. I front-load my story with plenty of thriller elements--action, suspense, violence, and sexual intrigue--but it's essentially a novel of ideas, a cautionary tale about a future I hope we can avoid.
Beyond my first novel, my goal is to write The Cloud trilogy, a mythological epic further exploring in novels two and three a possible future for an earth threatened by global warming, horrific wars, global pandemics, and political oppression. Against this possibly fatal reality, I’m fashioning a story fueled by the passion, courage, relentlessness, and vision of three powerful protagonists and wounded healers—one male and two female. I’ve also written a pilot script for the TV series adaptation of novel one—which Ken Atchity is developing—and plan to work as a staff writer/producer on the series.
