Archives for category: Fiction

11.19.13cube

I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, went to school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and, upon graduation, migrated to San Francisco, California. There I lived for five years and then migrated to the East Bay where I’ve lived ever since.
When I was working in downtown San Francisco, I often saw a punk Chinese-American bicycle messenger, complete with tattoos and a colorful Mohawk. A young woman, no less.
The late, great Herb Caen, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, was fascinated with the bicycle messengers, who had their own subculture. Caen frequently reported on the exploits of his favorite bicycle messenger, which made their way into “The Oniomancer.”
I myself saw a convocation of bicycle messengers outside of a fancy grocery store at a little park behind the Embarcadero Center, a huge office complex built by the Rockefellers and resembling Rockefeller Square in New York City.
So all that detail was brewing in my head. I knew I had a story to tell, but what?
Turns out Tom knew an artist, a kind of down-and-out guy, who had a knack for finding valuable things. Without a metal detector. He would just walk down the city street and—lo!—there would be a diamond brooch at his feet. I’m serious.
After I learned about his amazing gift, I began to find things myself. A fourteen-gold charm of a Chinese ship in San Francisco’s Chinatown. A sterling silver Mercedes Benz car key-ring on Broadway. Really.
I began to research this little-known talent and came across the answer in the Encyclopedia of Occultism: Oniomancer. The talented person is called an Oniomancer.
I knew I had my story, then.
A word about Chinese-Americans (in this troubled time): We’ve had many delightful Chinese-American acquaintances in San Francisco and many delightful neighbors in the East Bay.
But like families of every race and ethnicity (Tom is an eighth Cherokee Indian, I’m a Croatian American), Chinese-American families have their own problems. Around the corner from our apartment on Telegraph Hill lived a traditional Chinese family. At night, we would hear Mom and Dad screaming at the kids and (ahem) beating the crap out of them.
I wondered what sort of serious rebellion the Chinese-American bicycle messenger Girl with the Pink Hair must have gone through.
Please join friends, readers, and fans on my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 and help me after the Attack. I’ve posted delightful new stories and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie reviews, and more exclusively for my heroic patrons! I’m even offering a critique of your writing sample per each submission.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

CHROME.MED.295.KB

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2019 by Lisa Mason.
Cover, colophon, and art copyright 2019 by Tom Robinson.
All rights reserved.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bast Books Ebook Edition published July 9, 2019.
Bast Books Print Edition published August 13, 2019.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address:
Bast Books
Bastbooks@aol.com
Thank you for your readership! Visit Lisa Mason at her Official Web Site for her books, ebooks, screenplays, stories, interviews, blogs, cute pet pictures, and more. Enjoy!
Strange Ladies: 7 Stories
“Offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.”
—The San Francisco Review of Books
“Lisa Mason might just be the female Phillip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason’s stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….a sci-fi collection of excellent quality….you won’t want to miss it.”
—The Book Brothers Review Blog
“Fantastic book of short stories….Recommended.”
—Reader Review
“I’m quite impressed, not only by the writing, which gleams and sparkles, but also by [Lisa Mason’s] versatility . . . Mason is a wordsmith . . . her modern take on Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland is a hilarious gem! [This collection] sparkles, whirls, and fizzes. Mason is clearly a writer to follow!”
—Amazing Stories
Summer of Love, A Time Travel
A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year
A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist
“Remarkable. . . .a whole array of beautifully portrayed characters along the spectrum from outright heroism to villainy. . . .not what you expected of a book with flowers in its hair. . . the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.”
—Locus Magazine
“A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“Brilliantly crafted. . . .An engrossing tale spun round a very clever concept.”
—Katharine Kerr, author of Days of Air and Darkness
“Just imagine The Terminator in love beads, set in the Haight-Ashbury ‘hood of 1967.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Mason has an astonishing gift. Her characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.”
—Analog
“A priority purchase.”
—Library Journal
The Gilded Age, A Time Travel
A New York Times Notable Book
A New York Public Library Recommended Book
“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify Mason’s position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Rollicking. . .Dazzling. . .Mason’s characters are just as endearing as her world.”
—Locus Magazine
“Graceful prose. . . A complex and satisfying plot.”
—Library Journal
Celestial Girl, The Omnibus Edition (A Lily Modjeska Mystery)
Passionate Historical Romantic Suspense
5 Stars
“I really enjoyed the story and would love to read a sequel! I enjoy living in the 21st century, but this book made me want to visit the Victorian era. The characters were brought to life, a delight to read about. The tasteful sex scenes were very racy….Good Job!”
—Reader Review
The Garden of Abracadabra
“So refreshing! This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”
—Goodreads Reader
“Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy….I want to read more!”
—Reader Review
“I love the writing style and am hungry for more!”
—Goodreads Reader

April 2020 Excerpt:
10
At The Nepenthe Club
Luna Lightfoot prowls down Seventh Avenue, heading for the Ucayali Building, a pounce in her step, an invitation stored in the Archives of her Tatt. She can’t wait to see what the invite will bring.
Ucayali Corporation is the largest retailer of consumer goods and services on Chrome, the Moon, and Earth. Free two-day delivery on all the worlds with a Ucayali Supreme monthly subscription. The retailer operates on the Instrumentality and out of brick-and-mortar locations worlds-wide. The Ucayali Building is the most spectacular highrise in all of Chrome City, surpassing in magnificence even Emirk’s compound of skyscrapers. And in the penthouse of the Ucayali Building, atop fifty adamantine stories, awaits Lightfoot’s destination. The Nepenthe Club.
An invitation, a destination, and a meeting she wouldn’t miss for all the free-trade credits on Chrome.
She yawns, impolitely baring her fangs to whomever cares to gawk. A rowdy, vicious-looking pack of hyena Blends swaggers past and leers, ugly-doggish jaws agape. They’re decked out in criminal gang colors. Drunkenly chuckling.
They move on at the sight of her fangs.
That’s right, carrion cryptids. Mess with me and I’ll rip your freakin’ throat out.
Though of course she has never made a kill like that. Ever. And never would.
It’s the crime that counts, the Blends like to say, not the thought-crime.
The nocturnal niche is newly born. The sun sinks through the crystal-clear synthy atmosphere into the stark curve of Chrome’s horizon. The neighboring Moon looms large and silvery and pockmarked. Earth floats far away in the twilit sky, a distant wispy blue orb. How can people from that tiny orb pose such a threat to Chrome? But they do. They’re human beings and they do.
What a day. Lightfoot is drowsy and disgruntled from a restless, unsatisfying day-sleep. Her nerves have been on edge since she went to bed at sunrise. She kept waking up at the least little sound. The rumble of the recycling trucks emptying the bins in the alley behind Cave Cove. The wail of an ambulance carting accident victims to St. Francis Hospital. Someone’s radio on a bicycle blaring a lupine tune on Chrome’s hit parade.
She’s more stressed out than she cares to admit.
The most important advancement for every Blend on Chrome to come along in two centuries. Since Liberation Day.
What on Chrome could that be? What had the murderer meant?
When she had awakened in the late afternoon and tapped her Tatt, she discovered a messenger-icon waiting for her on the Instrumentality. The messenger-icon—a pigeon in a jaunty blue cap and gold-braided uniform—held out a sealed envelope, which Lightfoot opened with another wave of her Tatt.
Well, what do you know?
It was an invitation from Dom Swifty Panterr to join him for cocktails at the Nepenthe Club. “To discuss your impressions of Bunny Hedgeway’s Jamboree,” the messenger-icon dutifully cooed. “Was it a brilliant social success or the boring same-old? Cocktails Around Chrome has asked Dom Panterr to relate his account. He would greatly appreciate your cultured opinion.”
Lightfoot had laughed out loud. Winked her acceptance at once. Dismissed the messenger pigeon. The criminal kingpin, critiquing Bunny’s party for a society show after a murder was committed? In a million years. Maybe.
What is the real reason for Panterr’s invite? Try this. If anyone has moles planted deep in the Chrome City Police Department, Dom Panterr does. Lightfoot guesses he obtained insider lowdown from an informant. And tracked her, Lightfoot, through the Instrumentality. Therefore the messenger pigeon. Winks delivered on the Instrumentality aren’t as secure as a private wink, not even on Chrome. Or so the rumors say. And Lightfoot has not bumped Tatts with Dom Swifty Panterr. Therefore the pretense.
He wants to see her.
She definitely wants to see him.
Striding down Seventh Avenue, Lightfoot glances over her shoulder, more wary than her usual vigilance. Every species of Blend mobs the City in the interstices of the diurnal niche and the nocturnal. Diurnal Blends trudge home from their day-jobs, bound for their boroughs. Nocturnals, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, head off to their night-jobs or for an evening’s entertainment.
But everyone on Chrome is half human, too, and human beings notoriously live in every ecological niche. Dwell in hot climes and chilly. Function in the day and the night. Both predator and prey lurks in their chromosomes.
A pair of genets, their black-and-silver hair sweeping over their elegant shoulders, stride fiercely among a crowd of tittering chipmunks. Genets are predators. The chipmunks give them a wide berth.
Pert pastel dresses on the chipmunk ladies. Natty suits and bowties on the gents. Their little round faces giddy. Stripes of white and sable-brown rim their big, dark eyes. Chipmunks and squirrels do well in Chrome City’s banking business with their ancestral beast’s instinct for gathering and hoarding. Some are off to a dinner date and a movie, staying up in the nocturnal niche. But not too late.
Lightfoot smiles at the chipmunks but she greets the genets, brandishing her hand. Unsheathing and retracting her claws. She likes genet Blends, with their feline attitude. The genets grin, return the predator’s greeting. Brandish their hands. Retractable claws, way to go.
Not for the first time, Lightfoot admires the revolutionary beauty of Chrome. Viverrids and rodents mingle in the city without fear—not too much fear—because everyone has plenty to eat. Food is the first law of the jungle. Every Chromian should thank Emirk for the Vats and their GMO bounty. At least that.
One great big happy monstrous mutant cryptid half-human family, that’s Chrome.
Sort of happy. Sort of one great big family, each Blend engineered with a genetic heritage, not out of choice. Every Blend exiled on this planetoid for as long as Chrome exists.
Lightfoot shrugs. She can’t worry too much about happiness. Maybe happiness is overrated. Or maybe happiness is something you don’t know you’ve got till it’s gone.
At the corner of Seventh and Broadway, she strides up to the Ucayali Building. Pads past the exterior Security Eyes into the lobby. A luxurious cavern of rose-pink marble, the lobby boasts sustainable teak plank floors. Polished bronze fixtures. Abundant potted palms, dragon trees, and morning glories set the mood for a rainforest theme, recalling the corporation’s name. The Ucayali is the main tributary of that gigantic South American rainforest river down on Earth, the Amazon.
Lightfoot admires the display of Ucayali’s interworld wealth. The front desk where she has to check in strobes with security icons quite a distance away across the plank floors.
Can I stalk to the front desk without being seen?
Her pride in her puma talents took a serious blow when Xander King and Chan O’Nally informed her she was seen on Bunny Hedgeway’s rooftop. I don’t think so, she had said. Think again, the cops had said.
She was seen. Why else has Panterr summoned her?
She drops to a puma crouch. Stalks around a potted palm. Crouches, freezes motionless when a Security Eye swivels toward her. Stalks again, swiftly, stealthily. On silent puma feet. Reaches the front desk and startles a big-eyed screech owl smartly clad in a scarlet uniform.
“Hootenanny!” he exclaims, looking up from his monitors. “Where did you come from?”
“The front door,” she says and preens, pleased with herself. I haven’t lost my touch. She gives her name, presses her thumbprint on the ID pad. Asks him to inform Dom Swifty Panterr upstairs that Luna Lightfoot has arrived.
She nods to the elf owl staffing the elevator. Steps into a mirrored cab larger than her bathroom.
Going to the top?” the owl chirrups, winking his round yellow eye.
“Am I ever.”
At the entrance to the Nepenthe Club, a pretty hat-check gal informs Lightfoot she’s got to leave any weapons on her person in the cloakroom. The hat-check gal wears a neon nametag at her slender throat that strobes “Millie.” Little multicolored wings flutter on her bare shoulderblades.
“Millie,” Lightfoot tells the butterfly gal, “I am the only weapon I need.”
She steps through the Art Deco wickets of a metal detector. And she’s in.
All of Chrome City sprawls out around her. Lightfoot’s golden eyes widen at the cityscape.
Fifty stories up is high enough on a clear spring night to admire the towers topped with pyramids or domes or statues of the animal-headed gods and goddesses of Earth’s antiquity. There’s the Chrome City Chamber of Commerce. The Capitol Building and Capitol Plaza. The Chrome City Police Department Main Station. The blood-blue spires of the Emirk Corporation Building, the Emirk Intelligence Agency Tower. The emerald-green spires of the Bank of the Worlds Building. Hundreds of Earth embassies identified by glow-lit flags, many of them stacked one upon another in multicolored amalgamated blocks. They are locally staffed by hired Blends and by icons communicating through the Instrumentality. No human ambassadors are stationed here. Not for more than three days.
Lightfoot sniffs disdainfully. For any Chromian, Earth embassy work is a plum prize. Staffers tend to be chosen for the predominance of their human physical attributes.
There’s no accounting for taste, the Blends like to say.
Gigantic Eyes all over downtown blink nonstop ads for Cola, Diet Cola, Chocolate Cola, Coffee Cola, Cherry Cola, Termite Cola, Blood Cola.
Lightfoot has tried Blood Cola. The stuff is disgusting. Give her a Carnivore’s Bloody Mary any time.
But enough of the spectacular views outside.
Behold the Nepenthe Club!
Walls of curved glass hold the massive round room in a transparent embrace. Bar stools and banquettes of black-and-scarlet faux-leather flash glimmers of steel and rose-gold in rivets and rails. Imported walnut adorns the tabletops. Antelope Blends in sequinned costumes circulate among the dining tables and gaming suites, offering silver trays of illegal tobacco and soot.
Lightfoot trails her enraptured gaze over the most powerful predators on Chrome.
The white tiger sprawling in a corner booth is Tiaga Tigri Tremaine. A well-muscled specimen with sky-blue eyes in a masculine alabaster face framed by dark feline stripes around his eyes and cheekbones. The tiger slams the innards out of his opponents on Chromian football fields. Too bad he’ll never get the chance to compete against Earthians. Now there would be a match to watch. Tiaga Tigri mangling human athletes into a bloody pulp.
Lightfoot sighs. Tiaga Tigri. What a manimal.
The wolf seated at the bar, the one with the crafty gray eyes, high cheekbones, and hairsprayed coiffure? She is Peachy Lupster, a high-ranking official in the Bureau of Canine and Canid Affairs. She keeps her fangs filed, her face, arms, and legs waxed, and her tail well concealed in specially tailored dresses. Peachy strives for that all-important human look coveted by Chromian bureaucrats. But she can’t quite conceal her inner pack animal. Which is just as well. Maybe her inner pack animal is why she’s so successful in Chromian politics.
Peachy lets loose a belly laugh that would freeze Lightfoot’s blood in a deserted alley.
That’s a wolf. Prime womanimal.
And, at last, there’s Panterr in his customary tuxedo, minus the mask he sported last night at Jamboree. He holds court at a table of predators while he—Lightfoot notes—surrounds himself with gazelles. His specimen of choice? They’re tall, tall girls with big, glancing eyes and impossibly skinny faces. Their long legs are impossibly skinny, too, in skin-tight leggings leaving little doubt just how skinny they are.
Lightfoot hates gazelles.
You’d think that prey Blends would steer clear of a notorious predator. But maybe that’s the attraction. Aside from other attractions such as Panterr is fabulously rich, incredibly handsome, physically powerful, and dangerously criminally inclined.
Dangerous, Lightfoot reminds herself.
She slinks to his table. This is too fine. Panterr was first on the list of Chromians she wanted—needed—to talk to about what happened last night. But she had no idea how to contact him other than a public wink forwarded by some anonymous receptionist at Panterr Enterprise. Now he has invited her? Too, too fine.
“Luna Lightfoot,” Panterr says, rising to his feet. He pushes away the gazelle clinging to his arm, strides around the table to take both her hands in his. He unsheathes his claws, pressing the lethal tips against her palms. She boldly returns the predator’s greeting. “Cage free to you, puma lady. You look lovely. As always.”
The gazelle pouts. Trots off to the gaming tables.
His fierce eyes could melt metal with their heat. He wants something from her. Excellent. She wants something from him, too.
Reciprocity is the key to every relationship, the Blends like to say.
***
To discover the scintillating conversation between Lightfoot and Panterr, what is revealed, what concealed, and where they go to next, join my other patrons on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 and help me after the Attack. I’ve posted delightful new stories and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie reviews, original healthy recipes and health tips, and more exclusively for my heroic patrons! I’m even offering a critique of your writing sample per each submission.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

6.3.18.LADIESSMALL

Updated for 2020! Published in print in seven countries and as an ebook on eighteen markets worldwide.
As I mulled over my published short fiction (now forty stories), I found seven wildly different stories with one thing in common–a heroine totally unlike me. I’m the girl next door. I have no idea where these strange ladies came from.
In The Oniomancer (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine), a Chinese-American punk bicycle messenger finds an artifact on the street. In Guardian (Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine), an African-American gallerist resorts to voodoo to confront a criminal. In Felicitas (Desire Burn: Women Writing from the Dark Side of Passion [Carroll and Graf]), an immigrant faces life as a cat shapeshifter. In Stripper (Unique Magazine), an exotic dancer battles the Mob. In Triad (Universe 2 [Bantam]), Dana Anad lives half the time as a woman, half the time as a man, and falls in love with a very strange lady. In Destination (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), a driver takes three strangers from a ride board on a cross-country trip as the radio reports that a serial killer is on the loose. In Transformation and the Postmodern Identity Crisis (Fantastic Alice [Ace]), Alice considers life after Wonderland.
Five stars on Facebook and Amazon! “Great work, Lisa Mason!”
“Hilarious, provocative, profound.”
From Jeanne-Mary Allen, Author on Facebook and the Book Brothers Blog: “Kyle Wylde and I are thrilled to have found such a talented, dedicated, and brilliant collection of shorts in Strange Ladies: 7 Stories…Your style/craft is highly impressive.”
From the San Francisco Book Review: “Strange Ladies: 7 Stories offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.” http://anotheruniverse.com/strange-ladies-7-stories/
From the Book Brothers Review Blog: “Lisa Mason might just be the female Philip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason’s stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….Strange Ladies: 7 Stories is a sci-fi collection of excellent quality. If you like deeply crafted worlds with strange, yet relatable characters, then you won’t want to miss it.” http://www.thebookbrothers.com/2013/09/the-book-brothers-review-strange.html#more
And on Amazon: 5.0 out of 5 stars This one falls in the must-read category, an appellation that I rarely use.
“I have been a fan of Lisa Mason from the beginning of her writing career, but I confess that I often overlook her short fiction. That turns out to have been a big mistake! I have just read Strange Ladies thinking I would revisit a few old friends and discover a few I had missed. Well, I had missed more than I had thought, and I regret that oversight. This collection was so much fun! I loved each and every story and enjoyed their unique twists, turns, and insights. I thank Ms Mason especially, though, for the high note ending with the big smiles in Transformation and the Postmodern Identity Crisis. Uh oh, I guess I still am a child of the summer of love. Well played. You made me laugh at the world and myself.”
From Amazing Stories. com “I’m quite impressed, not only by the writing, which gleams and sparkles, but also by [Lisa Mason’s] versatility . . . Mason is a wordsmith . . . her modern take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a hilarious gem! [This collection] sparkles, whirls, and fizzes. Mason is clearly a writer to follow!”—Amazing Stories
5.0 out of 5 stars Great collection that will make you think
Format: Kindle Edition
“My definition of a good short story is one that you keep thinking about for days, and this book had several of them.”
Strange Ladies: 7 Stories (“A must-read collection—The San Francisco Review of Books). On Nook, Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo.
On Kindle at US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, and Netherlands.
Strange Ladies: 7 Stories is in Print in the U.S., in the U.K., in Germany, in France, in Spain, in Italy, and in Japan.
Join my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 and help me while I recover from the Attack. I’ve got delightful new stories and previously published stories, books excerpts, writing tips, movie recommendations, and more there for you with more on the way.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, worldwide links, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, round-tables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, and more!

 

2.4.18.CYBERWEB.1.28.18.SMLL.200

I just discovered two new five-star reviews of CYBERWEB while I was collecting the new print links. This book was originally published in hardcover by William Morrow, trade paperback by Eos, and mass paperback by AvoNova. Now a new trade paperback from Bast Books, CYBERWEB is the sequel to ARACHNE.
4.0 out of 5 starsDEEPER THAN DEEP
Format: Paperback
On re-reading CYBERWEB a year later, I don’t think my first review does it justice. The writer has peeled off the difference between conscious robots and flesh and blood man. Almost without fanfare the robots are provided with souls. Her mechanical characters are given both consciousness and emotion. Their only difference to man is in their composition. This becomes very clear when the outmoded Spinner character uploads herself into Patina’s flashy, lifeless bodywork.
I MUST NOW RATE THIS BOOK FIVE STARS.
The writer, thus, dives deeply into the unseen world that controls man’s apparent freewill existence. By using mainframes as purposeful beasts, seeking to control fleshy man, some very deep philosophical questions are posed. She leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks to this very entertaining and thoughtful story.
THE OLD REVIEW READ:
Mason leads her cyberpunk reader into the arena of sci-fi comics. It’s not possible for humans to grasp the feelings and desires of these robot characters but it’s still a lot of fun to try. She challenges your imagination to follow her characters’ avatars, cones, cubes and three headed chimeras as they flit in and out of cyberspace. But hard questions are run up the flagpole. Can bodiless people exist in this virtual world of telespace? Can a soul exist in a nonorganic body? Should robots be discarded like machines when a new model arrives? Can our culture continue to absorb the changes computer power is unleashing? Is our reality but an extension of the bits composing telespace? Even the questions of what consciousness might consist of and whether it is really an advantage to being born as flesh and blood. She makes no attempt to answer these questions but even considering them makes this book a very creative endeavor. You could certainly invest your time on a much less entertaining story. Also it is short and sweet.
5.0 out of 5 starsInteresting…pretty cool actually…
Format: Paperback
Cyberweb is a pretty nifty cyberpunk novel…lots of interesting ideas…I liked it…
So there you have it, my friends. One reader at a time…..
CYBERWEB is back in print in the U.S. at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1984356941
In the U.K. at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1984356941
In Germany at https://www.amazon.de/dp/1984356941
In France at https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1984356941
In Spain at https://www.amazon.es/dp/1984356941
In Italy at https://www.amazon.it/dp/1984356941
In Japan at https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/1984356941
Cyberweb is an ebook on US Kindle, BarnesandNoble, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
Cyberweb is also on UK Kindle, Canada Kindle, Australia Kindle, Brazil Kindle, France Kindle, Germany Kindle, India Kindle, Italy Kindle, Japan Kindle, Mexico Kindle, Netherlands Kindle, and Spain Kindle.
Join my other patrons on my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 for delightful brand-new and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie recommendations, and more exclusively for my hero-patrons.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

ARACHNE.1.28.18.SMLL

I just discovered these three new reviews of ARACHNE. Unlike a lot of authors, I don’t obsessively check my book pages. I’m too busy with other things, like trying to write new material. And trying to stay alive.
Anyhow, I’m of the “a watched pot never boils” school. If as an author you daily check your reviews and book sales, you’re bound to be daily disappointed.
There’s too much in life I’ve got to be sad and angry about. So I pretty much leave those things alone.
However! I was downloading the print links in seven countries for all my print books—and I found, to my amazement, these three new reviews of ARACHNE.
And I quote from https://www.amazon.com/dp/198435602X
5.0 out of 5 starsNot just cyberpunk as usual
“This is such an astounding book that I don’t know where to begin praising it. I first discovered ARACHNE back in the mid-90s only because I happened to stumble on the long out-of-print first edition in a used bookstore. I remember reading it with a growing mix of admiration and frustration. My final verdict back then: ARACHNE so completely transcended the normal hardboiled/cyberpunk categories that it was going to have to wait another quarter of a century to be recognized as the groundbreaking book it was. In fact it reminded me of Howard Aiken’s great aphorism about originality: “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea; if it’s original you’ll have to shove it down their throats.” How wonderful then to see ARACHNE back in print! Go forth, gentle reader, and buy a copy of your very own. I can’t promise you’ll like it … but I think the odds are good. Meanwhile I’ve got my fingers crossed that the rest of the SF world is finally catching up to Lisa Mason.”
4.0 out of 5 starsCyberspace Law
“Sarcastic robots, urban aboriginals, genetically-engineered beauty, soul-stealers, registered drugs…Lisa Mason manages to make these ideas and concepts flow in a fast-moving tale filled with action and meaning. Unlike a lot of cyberpunk, the reader doesn’t get bogged down in the technical jargon and slang…she somehow makes it more real. The concept of Artificial Intelligence coveting human consciousness is fascinating. What I really enjoyed was how Mason dealt with the legal ethics of corporate law…from a corporate lawyer’s view. Another great read from Lisa Mason!”
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and amazing
“Excellent and amazing. Few novels immerse so radically and easily in such a different reality that has familiar elements spun into future tech, with such style. Great characters, even the ones that are not biological! Highly recommended and very memorable. True to archetypes, too.”
I’ve always believed from the start of my writing career that science fiction, of all the genres including mainstream, had an obligation to present big ideas, a vision of the future, and meaning.
And not read like a book report, as a lot of science fiction does. No wonder people don’t like it! I’ve always believed in a lively tight style and, above all, characters you really want to care about as a reader.
To be honest, I don’t like being a quarter-century ahead of my time, either. And ARACHNE is still a quarter-century ahead of right Now.
Being too far ahead of one’s time makes it very difficult to make a living as a writer, y’know?
ARACHNE is in print in the U.S. at https://www.amazon.com/dp/198435602X
In the U.K. at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/198435602X
In Germany at https://www.amazon.de/dp/198435602X
In France at https://www.amazon.fr/dp/198435602X
In Spain at https://www.amazon.es/dp/198435602X
In Italy at https://www.amazon.it/dp/198435602X
In Japan at https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/198435602X
Arachne (a Locus Hardcover Bestseller) is also an ebook on US Kindle, UK Kindle, Canada Kindle, Australia Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
On Kindle worldwide in France Kindle, Germany Kindle, Italy Kindle, Netherlands Kindle, Spain Kindle, Mexico Kindle, Brazil Kindle, India Kindle, and Japan Kindle
Join my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 and enjoy the delightful and thoughtful brand-new stories and previously published stories, book excerpts, movie recommendations, and more for my hero-patrons.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, beautiful covers, screenplays, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

10.18.17.TGOA.BOOKS

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious, magical apartment building on campus.
She discovers that her tenants are witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards and that each apartment is a fairyland or hell.
On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up hitchhiking the day before.
Torn between three men—Daniel Stern, her ex-fiance who wants her back, Jack Kovac, an enigmatic FBI agent, and Prince Lastor, a seductive supernatural entity who lives in the penthouse and may be a suspect—Abby will question what she really wants and needs from a life partner.
Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between Humanity and Demonic Realms, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.
The Garden of Abracadabra is an ebook on BarnesandNoble, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
On Kindle in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and India.
The Garden of Abracadabra is in Print in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan.
“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”
Goodreads: “I loved the writing style and am hungry for more!”
Amazon.com: “Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy”

This is a very entertaining novel—sort of a down-to-earth Harry Potter with a modern adult woman in the lead. Even as Abby has to deal with mundane concerns like college and running the apartment complex she works at, she is surrounded by supernatural elements and mysteries that she is more than capable of taking on. Although this book is just the first in a series, it ties up the first “episode” while still leaving some story threads for upcoming books. I’m looking forward to finding out more.”
So there you have it, my friends! I’m delighted to announce The Garden of Abracadabra is in print and an ebook worldwide.
Join other patrons on my Patreon page and help me after the Attack. https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206. I’ve got delightful new and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie recommendations, and more for patrons!
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!
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9.6.17.TGA.1

New Review of The Gilded Age at http://sfbookreview.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-gilded-age-by-lisa-mason.html:
“The world of 2495 is at an unsustainable twelve billion population. Zhu Wong is a Daughter of Compassion, a group working to enforce the birth restriction laws. She is in jail awaiting trial when she is recruited by the Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications (LISA, I love the acronym) to t-port back to 1895 San Francisco. She accepts the deal. Her mission is to find Wing Sing, take her and the aurelia to the mission run by Donaldina Cameron. In 1967 Wing Sing’s daughter will eventually give the brooch to Chiron at the end of his stay in the Summer of Love project.
Zhu finds Wing Sing, but she doesn’t have the aurelia. They are captured by a Chinese gang. Zhu is bought away from them by Jessie, a madam, Wing Sing stuck with the Tong. Zhu does work for Jessie, but is more valuable as a bookkeeper so avoids becoming a prostitute. Daniel Watkins is the son of a real estate magnate coming to San Francisco to collect on debts. He is low on funds and is referred to lodging at Jessie’s where his life becomes entwined with Zhu’s. Somehow Zhu is attracted to this heavy drinking smoker who has distinct views of women. Despite herself and her mission, Zhu cares about Jessie and Daniel.
I loved the character of Zhu. Somehow I wasn’t repulsed by Daniel and Jessie. They are more a product of their environment doing what they can with their sense of right and wrong. Very enjoyable, I read the last two hundred pages straight through. This is definitely a stand alone novel, though Summer of Love is mentioned several times. I’ll have to read that one as a prequel rather than book one.”
And this is from Library Journal:
“The discovery of a golden brooch that should not exist in the 25th century prompts the Luxon Institute to send a young Chinese woman 600 years back in time. She arrives in San Francisco in 1895 to prevent the future from altering the past. This sequel to Summer of Love (LJ 6/15/94), seen through the eyes of an observer from the future, juxtaposes the tempestuous, sprawling milieu of boomtown San Francisco with its shadowy underside of prostitution and decadence. Mason’s graceful prose and her skill in orchestrating a complex and satisfying plot make this a solid purchase for sf collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This is from a reader:
https://www.amazon.ca/Golden-Nineties-Lisa-Mason/dp/0553373315
5.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic Read
By,Robin Booneon Published on Amazon.com|Verified Purchase
“Lisa Mason’s Summer of Love and The Golden Nineties both have this quality – you want to reread them as soon as you’ve read them. Her writing conveys an abiding love of San Francisco, and interesting bits of California history are woven into the storylines. The writing is so compelling that you feel as though time travel were a possibility. I hope she writes more of these San Francisco fantasies!”
And this is from Publisher’s Weekly
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-553-37331-8
“Mason’s sequel to Summer of Love is a delightful expansion of that work and a major step forward for her. The tale centers on Zhu Wong, a Chinese national whose lawyer plea-bargains her release from prison so that Chiron and his companions from the previous novel’s Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications can transport her 600 years into the past to find a macguffin called the aurelia. Once in San Francisco, 1895, Mason brings the environment and the times to life with her rendering of the city’s activities, especially its corruption. The several historic personages who appear–including Frank Norris, Jack London and Susan B. Anthony–are all given dimensions that reflect the rigor of Mason’s research without leaving the reader overburdened by minutiae. Zhu Wong finds herself embroiled in a world of decadence and prostitution; she sees friends and companions abuse themselves with such things as alcohol, cocaine and corsets. As with Karen Joy Fowler’s Sarah Canary, Mason uses the novel partially to explore the role of women in society. As Zhu grows to understand the hypocrisies of the 1890s, she becomes even less comfortable with the presumptions of her own time. She creates several “closed time loops,” apparent paradoxes that impede her mission–and, perhaps more important, thwart her own desires. Eventually she finds her way out of the time loops and in the process teaches everyone–including herself–a few lessons about life. Her bravura performance with this book should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify her position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.
And this just in from an Amazon.com reader
Buy It
By Uke Enthusiast
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
“One of my favorite books. I am delighted it is back in print. A thoroughly entertaining time travel story supported by vivid characterizations and settings.”
Book Description: The year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave girls.
Zhu Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice–stand trial for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour, Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading fortune.
And when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference between her own life or death.
“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.” The New York Times Book Review
“Graceful prose. . . .A complex and satisfying plot.” Library Journal
“Rollicking. . . .Dazzling.” Locus Magazine
“Should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify Mason’s position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.” Publisher’s Weekly
The cover, by San Francisco artist Tom Robinson, is styled to look like an 1890s billboard.
The Gilded Age is BACK IN PRINT! Order the beautiful trade paperback in the U.S., in the U.K., in France, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, and in Japan.
The ebook
is at BarnesandNoble, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords and on Kindle worldwide at US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, and Netherlands.
So there you have it, my friends
. Bantam Books, a division of Random House, published this as The Golden Nineties. Yes, I changed the title. I think the new title is better. (Wish I’d thought of it in the first place) This is the Author’s Preferred Print Edition.
Whether you’re a longtime reader or new, I hope you enjoy this classic!
Join my other patrons on my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/lisamasonfantasyandsciencefictionwriter?alert=2 I’ve got delightful new stories and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie recommendations, and more exclusively for patrons.
Donate a tip from your PayPal account to lisasmason@aol.com.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!
Please disregard any ad you see here. They have been placed without my permission.

4.22.17.SOLATTCOVER.BIG

I’m so thrilled this book is back in print! And as timely as ever! Bast Books has reported that the print book and the ebook sold in the U.S., the U.K., France, and Germany last month.
What readers say:
5.0 out of 5 stars I dig this book!
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2020
Summer of Love is a beautiful work of literature encapsulated within the science-fiction genre. It invites you on an emotionally jostling roller coaster ride.
Lisa Mason is a prolific author who weaves a time-travel story that delves into many underlying themes at a micro and macro level during the famous “Summer of Love” pandemic in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, in 1967.
The author also descends underneath the epidermis of the street’s kaleidoscopic and “groovy” ambiance to reveal what is and what is not through each character’s eyes — and whether or not we can rely on hope to wake us up the next morning.
I felt the characters (even the secondary ones), the moments, the sights, the sounds and the smells of the time. As if I myself was time traveling. I found myself not only reading but tasting each word; sometimes going back to read a sentence, a paragraph or a page again.
This is a novel I will not hesitate to recommend. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1548106119
“This book was so true to life that I felt like I was there. I recommend it to anyone.”
“More than a great science-fiction, a great novel as well.”
“My favourite SF book of all time, beautiful, cynical and completely involving….Unmissable!”
Brand-new 2018 review of SUMMER OF LOVE at http://sfbookreview.blogspot.com/2018/02/summer-of-love-by-lisa-mason.html
”Ever since the Save Betty project completed there has been degradation in the archives. The Luxon Institute for Superluminal Applications (LISA, still love that acronym) has determined that San Francisco in 1967 is a hot dim spot. They commission the Summer of Love project. Twenty-one year old Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco will t-port from 2467 to the summer of love where he is to find the Axis, a teenage girl from the Midwest will have important descendants, and protect her through the summer. This Susan Stein takes an alias, so Chiron has only probabilities to know if he finds the right girl.
In 1967 Susan receives a postcard from Nance, aka Penny Lane, who is in San Francisco. Her parents find the postcard, tear it up and burn it. She runs away that night and takes the name Starbright. She arrives hoping to see Penny Lane, but instead meets up with Stan the Man, manager of the Double Boogie band. She is invited to live with them in a house that is a constant party. She loves it, but a week later Stan hooks up with someone new. She meets Ruby again and Ruby takes her in. That first night Chiron saw an eye symbol by Ruby’s shop, decided to hang around there and Ruby let him sleep on the couch. He’s not sure that Starbright is the Axis, but there is a high probability.
Without being preachy major themes in the book include the environment, population control, women’s rights, and addiction. These were put into the setting of real life 1967. Street names referenced in the book exist and the Grateful Dead did have a concert there on August 22. I enjoyed the story without any nostalgic feeling, other than references to old Star Trek episodes and other SF works.
I really enjoyed the book. It was excellent and the first chapter or two set up encounters throughout the rest of the book. I loved all three of the main characters, Starbright, Chiron and Ruby.” By John Loyd
Book Description: The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.
San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.
Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.
With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a wise and feisty half-black, half-white hip entrepreneur, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?
A harrowing coming of age. A friendship ending in tragedy. A terrifying far future. A love spanning five centuries. And a gritty portrait of a unique time in American history.
The cover, hand-drawn by Tom Robinson, is styled to look like a 1960s psychedelic poster.
What the professional book reviewers say:
“Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.” The San Francisco Chronicle
“A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.” The Washington Post Book World
“Remarkable. . . .the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.” Locus Magazine
“Mason has an astonishing gift. Her chief characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.” Analog
“A priority purchase.” Library Journal
5 stars From the Readers
Calling All Fans
Amazon Verified Purchase
‘Summer of Love is an important American literary contribution that may very well have a strong and viable fan base. Where are you? Join us!
This novel is loads of fun to read. The majority of the characters are hippies from the 1960s who meet a stranger from the future who’s looking to save his world. This fellow, Chiron, needs to find a troubled adolescent teen named Susan (a.k.a. Starbright) for a very compelling reason. The book has a great deal to offer: swift action, lovable characters, spiritual insight, and well-chosen primary documents such as essays, poems, and news articles which round out the reader’s understanding of the worldview of the novel.
I think Summer of Love has excellent potential for a wider audience. I hope it continues to enjoy a healthy amount of sales in the used books market on this site. I wish even more for it to be in wider circulation. Some books talk about the sixties. This novel IS the sixties, thanks to the spirit and scholarship of its author. And, as one reader aptly put it, ‘the sci-fi stuff is just plain off the hook.’ Get a copy. Most people who have read it seem to respect it and enjoy it every bit as much as I do.”
New Reader Review! “Just checked to see if this book was on Kindle. It has been many years since I’ve read it but I remember it as one of my very favorite books. Time to go back and re-read it!”
New Reader Review
Kent Peterson
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Story
10 February 2015 – Published on Amazon.com
Verified Purchase
Summer of Love, A Time Travel is a fine story. Lisa Mason takes three interesting characters, a time traveller from a future 500 years hence, a 14-year-old midwestern runaway flower child, and hip shopkeeper and places them all in the fascinating place and time that was San Francisco’s Summer of Love, 1967.
Mason has certainly done her homework. You can almost smell the pot and patchouli, see the painted faces and hear the sounds of Janis and the Grateful Dead as Chi, Starbright and Ruby fight to hold on to what really matters at a time when everything seems possible and even the smallest things can have huge consequences.
The time travel plot is nicely (if a bit predictably) done and the glimpses from Chi’s future world are fascinating, frightening and ultimately hopeful. Starbright is 100 percent convincing as a confused, loyal, idealistic, moody teenager who really could hold the key to what is to come. And Ruby Maverick, the shopkeeper who reluctantly gives the two young strangers shelter and strength in a strange and wondrous time is strong and smart and the kind of friend you’d want holding your hand or watching your back when the trip starts going strange.
Summer of Love, A Time Travel is not a rose-colored look backwards. It’s is a kaleidoscopic look at a time of both darkness and light, of confusion and clarity. It’s scary and beautiful, a strange trip where maybe all you need is a little love and some flowers in your hair.
New Reader Review
Eos
5.0 out of 5 starsTime travel done right
20 August 2017 – Published on Amazon.com
Verified Purchase
This is a longtime favorite novel. Mason’s time travel tale is fascinating as both a tale of the future and of the past. I am delighted it is now available as a Kindle edition as my paperback copy is long past its prime.
New Reader Review
paula ferre
5.0 out of 5 stars… the last 20 years – it is such a great story.
26 September 2016
Verified Purchase
I’ve read this book 3 or 4 times in the last 20 years – it is such a great story.
Find the PRINT BOOK in the U.S., U.K.,  France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
The ebook is on US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, BarnesandNoble, Smashwords, Apple, and Kobo. On Kindle worldwide in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, and Netherlands.
So there you have it, my friends. Whether you’re a longtime reader or new to the book, I hope you enjoy this classic.
Join my other patrons on my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206. I’m offering brand-new and previously published delightful stories, book excerpts, writing tips, movie reviews, and more!
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

 

4.22.17.SOLATTCOVER.BIG

In the February 2020 Writing Tip on Patreon, I discussed the importance of the three-act structure for your screenplay, novel, or story as a means for maintaining narrative momentum and viewer/reader interest.
In the January 2020 Movie Review on Patreon, I gave a detailed analysis of the film Captain Marvel, which earned worldwide box office of over a billion dollars and made the screenwriter the hottest property in Hollywood. I watched the film twice, the second time with a stop watch and a notepad and pencil. The writer hit all the right marks.
And so should you. After you’ve finished a complete first draft (or second draft or tenth) and you’re still struggling to make the story move, consider analyzing the story with a three-act structure in mind.
In this post, I’m going to analyze my novel, Summer of Love, which remains my bestselling book (both in ebook format and as a trade paperback) after I first published it in the 1990s with Bantam Books (a division of Random House). The book was a Finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award and a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year.
Note
: For the Bast Books edition, I edited out some 20,000 words of youthful excess and the book is still 100,000+ words.
Some fans, the kind of reader who rereads the book every year (seriously) didn’t like the edits and complained about the deletions (which this kind of fan notices).
Some fans appreciated and loved the edits and sent me emails saying “Thank you for doing this.”
You can’t please everyone, as the Ricky Nelson song goes, so you as a writer must do what you know is right. Editing out the excess verbiage made the three-act structure become clear to me and also clarified the relationships between the three main characters. Editing was definitely the right thing to do, and the book is much better.
Now then.
Summer of Love has its own internal complex structure. I found seven key days over the historical summer of 1967 during which some notable celebration occurred.  Within those seven days, three point-of-view characters tell their personal stories and perspectives on the events.
So there are twenty-one chapters. The trade paperback is 404 pages long.
Susan Bell (a.k.a. Starbright) is a fourteen-year-old runaway to San Francisco, to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood where the Summer of Love took place.
Chiron Cat’s in Draco is a twenty-one-year-old time traveler from five hundred years in the future who has journeyed to 1967 on a vital mission to save the Universe.
And Ruby A. Maverick is a thirty-year-old, half-black half-white shop owner, a successful “hip proprietor,” who is a long-time resident of the neighborhood and the moral center of the story.
Act One is the setup of your main characters—where they start out in the story, a physical description of them, their motivations and goals, the initial obstacles set out for them, their initial physical actions.
Also, you should set up the location where the action takes place—but don’t get too hung up on this, you’ll have plenty of room to develop further location details as you go along. Also don’t get too hung up on physical descriptions of the characters—this too can be further developed.
In Act One, that’s a lot of material and complications to cover. Because an effective Act One should only be about 25 or 30 percent of the total length of the project. Act One should end with the plot spinning off in a new surprising different direction for your characters.
In Summer of Love, Act One is comprised of the first five chapters, ending at page 121, 29% exactly of the total length. (I’ll attempt to put as few plot spoilers in this analysis as possible!)
In Chapters One and Four, Susan arrives in San Francisco at dawn. She’s seeking her former estranged best friend, Nance, who ran away to the Haight-Ashbury a month earlier and sent her a postcard. Susan knows no one, has a limited amount of money. She meets a rock-n-roll band she idolizes and is seduced by their manager. She goes to live in the band’s communal house, works for free for them, and is sucked into the Haight-Ashbury life. She briefly meets Ruby, with whom she has a contentious meeting.
In Chapters Two and Five—(Note the book is internally structured on a round-robin between the three characters) Chiron also arrives in San Francisco via a time machine from the far future. He sets out on his vital mission, why he’s been sent here, and compares and contrasts 1967 with his own future time. Using a guideline, he seeks and finds Ruby at her shop, and is taken in by her. He works for a wage at the shop, lives in a room in her quarters above the shop, and sets about the investigative work he needs to do to accomplish his mission.
In Chapter Three, Ruby gives her personal view of the 1960s, her former relationship with the band’s manager, the idealism of the counterculture and also the corruption already beginning. She is suspicious of Chi and perhaps starting a new relationship with Leo Gorgon, a radical anarchist.
Chapter Six begins with a brief POV by Susan as she is betrayed by the band’s manager and wants to leave the band’s communal house, then switches to Ruby’s POV, as she encounters Susan again.
The plot spins in a new direction when the contentious meeting between Ruby and Susan becomes sympathetic. Ruby insists that Susan come to stay with her and Susan first meets Chiron, who wonders if she is the breakthrough he’s searching for to accomplish his mission.
Act Two, Chapters 6 through 16, involves mounting complications and difficulties for all the characters, and complications between them too, over that fateful summer. Also the community’s historical escalating violence and corruption. (No plot spoilers!)
Act Two ends when, again, you spin the plot and the characters off in a surprising new direction, which begins Act Three.
Act Three should only comprise 20% or 25% of the total project, during which you must accelerate the action and the fulfillment of the characters’ goals until you reach the denouement and conclusion.
Note:  I read a Booker Prize winning very long novel that dragged out Act Three so much, I no longer cared what happened to the characters at the end and skimmed through too many tedious pages to get to the freakin’ end, already. Don’t be that author.
To read my final analysis of Act Three of Summer of Love and to discover the very important Midpoint, please go to my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206
. Friends, readers, and fans, help me after the Attack. I’ve posted delightful new stories and previously published stories, writing tips, book excerpts, movie reviews, original healthy recipes and health tips, and more exclusively for my heroic patrons! I’m offering a critique of your writing sample per submission.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, blogs, roundtables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, worldwide links, and more!

ALEXA.CVR.MED.LARGE.5.17.17

I wrote this short novel, in my signature tight, bold style, in….well, several years ago, going over the text, editing the story over a few years. Bast Books published ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ALEXA in 2017. The heroine survives many, many disasters over her long life, including the Godzilla virus in 2071.
From page 187 in the print book: “Two weeks ago a wildly virulent myxovirus—dubbed “Godzilla” by media wags—had slaughtered ten million in China. Godzilla had wended its way over the ocean—no epidemiologist could explain how, other than the virus was airborne—and culled two thousand lives in our own Willow Grove.”
By the way, I named my heroine Alexa after Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich about the horrors of being imprisoned in a Stalinist gulag. Not the AI app.
“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” Voltaire said that.
From Goodreads came the first review of One Day in the Life of Alexa:
One Day in the Life of Alexa
, by Lisa Mason (Bast Books) incorporates lively prose, past/present time jumps, and the consequences of longevity technology. Kosovo refugee Alexa enrolls in a secret pilot program designed to extend her life span. Her best friend, Marya, is not accepted, but Marya’s infant aka “Little Monster” is. As the decades roll by, Alexa adapts to a life of constant measurement and surveillance. [Plot spoilers omitted] In reflection, the book is as much about the enduring trauma of war as it is about longevity technology, and in this it feels more like mainstream than science fiction. Mason’s skill as a writer sustains a quick, absorbing read with an appealing narrator and subtly powerful emotional rhythms (like the repeated refrain, “No matter how long I live, I will always remember this”)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35200314-one-day-in-the-life-of-alexa#other_reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Lisa Mason doesn’t disappoint us on that issue and gives us a look …
By R Bruce Miller on October 1, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
“Scifi is nominally about the future and the impact of technology on society. Lisa Mason doesn’t disappoint us on that issue and gives us a look at a desirable biotechnology with some serious long-term and unforeseen consequences. However, like all the truly great scifi writers, what she really writes about is you and me and today and what is really important in life. Alexa lives an improbable life and yet, somehow, is a very real everywoman. Solzhenitsyn would have appreciated the homage. Cats! Grow your own organic food! Yes, there is much fun to be had on this journey, but the message nonetheless is solid and important. I enjoyed every word even though this book spoiled my day because I had no choice but to read it in one sitting while drinking too much coffee.”
And here’s another five-star review, and then I’ll let you decide.
“[Alexa] finds her internal resource that allows her to survive many more days in a much more uplifting manner than poor Ivan Denisovich. Discovering where her strengths [lie] is not depressing but uplifting for this reader.” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711PP65J
“I truly loved Alexa. The homage to Solzhenitsyn was wonderfully well done. Your concept and characters were on the mark and very timely. Bravo!”
Book Description:
Alexa Denisovitch
, a refugee from Kosovo during the 1999 war, is just seventeen when she is accepted by GenGineer Laboratories as a Tester for Longeva, a revolutionary additive that may significantly extend her longevity.
But becoming a Tester has unintended consequences and Longeva causes devastating unforeseen side effects.
Confronting environmental, political, and personal perils of the future, Alexa must grapple with the tough questions of life, love, and death.
So there you have it, my friends. The novel is short, but I took a long time researching and writing.
One Day in the Life of Alexa is in Print in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan.
Now an ebook on BarnesandNoble, Kobo, Apple, and Smashwords!
One Day in the Life of Alexa is also offered as a Kindle ebook at US Kindle, UK Kindle, Canada Kindle, Australia Kindle, France Kindle, Germany Kindle, Italy Kindle, Netherlands Kindle, Spain Kindle, Brazil Kindle, Mexico Kindle, India Kindle, and Japan Kindle.
Join my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=23011206 help me while I recover from the Attack. I’ve posted brand-new stories and previously published stories, book excerpts, writing tips, an offer to edit your writing sample per submission, and more exclusively for my patrons. You can also make a one-time pledge.
Visit me at www.lisamason.com for all my books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, worldwide links, beautiful covers, reviews, interviews, blogs, round-tables, adorable cat pictures, forthcoming works, fine art and bespoke jewelry by my husband Tom Robinson, and more!