Colin Barrett: Blog

These two chapters finish Jack's talk with Richard, and reach its point.
Once again I jumped the gun with my comment Wednesday about how the word "nuclear" is properly pronounced; it doesn't come up in the story until chapter 34 (today). Sometimes I lose track of just what's in what chapter.
For my Republican readers, please don't take my cracks about the younger Bush too seriously. I admit to leaning Democrat myself, but I'll be blunt: Had I written this after Obama's accession to the Presidency, I'd still have no hesitation about referring to "that dipshit in the White House," and I suspect I'll continue to feel the same after we have another changing of the guard in 2016. I have no political agenda to push with my fiction, and mostly I steer clear of politics altogether. Along with religion, it's not, to me, a topic for either dinner party conversation or creative writing. I know there are lots and lots of people who take both terribly seriously. I'm not one such. If that's a failing, there are quite enough folks out there to make up for my lack in those areas.
Thanks to all those who've voted. The score continues to move steadily up, as has been my experience with the other novels I've posted on SOL. So far nothing has quite matched my experience with Eden, which started off with a cumulative score of 5.97 after the first couple of chapters and hit 8+ by the time I was done. But it's happened every time, to a lesser degree, and as it is with A.I. Evidently I'm something of an acquired taste.

Three chapters today, which I hope makes up for shorting you Monday. The three go together as pretty much of a piece.
If anybody's in doubt, this was written when George Bush the son was president. I think the references make that plain. Folks, the word is pronounced exactly as it's spelled. "Nu-clee-ar," not "nu-cu-lar." There are no little nucules wandering around out there in the atomic world.

Just one chapter today, and not all that long. I'll make it up to you later in the week, but this one stands alone whereas the later ones need companionship.
The question of identity has become of major importance in our contemporary world. Each of us is required to carry with us the baggage of our pasts, and woe betide he (or she, of course) who fails to trot out that baggage for inspection on command. Anonymity is both culturally and even legally suspect, and in many contexts is flatly prohibited. An unidentified person may not do much of anything in modern America or many other places. Of course, this obsession about identification has created the modern crime of "identity theft," whereby one person pretends to be another for what is meant to be profitable purposes. I wonder how long it'll be before children are required by law to be tattooed with evidence of their identities, à la the concentration camp tattoos of Nazi infamy. Yes, I know that's a bit of a dire prediction, but can't you see an invasive government selling it as "for your own protection?" Or something like it; perhaps instead we'll all wind up microchipped like our pets.

Well, I was a little premature Wednesday. This is actually the beginning of the new section. I've posted three chapters since they make up a sequence of sorts.
I think this answers a few of the questions I've had e-mailed to me. Readers have kept telling me Jack and Lisa were taking risks and would do much better to leave the country. I suppose that could have been managed, but how many of you would care for the idea of becoming a voluntary exile in your early 20s? Better, I thought, for them to hang in and prepare for the possibility of discovery.
Besides, moving abroad wouldn't be proof against what happened. One reader suggested that they might be happy in Sweden. Given that they both (like I myself) dislike cold winters, I beg to differ. Anyhow, let's say they'd followed my reader's suggestion and then Janet chose to vacation in Stockholm. Now, that could turn into a real international mess, one that even Spook might have trouble with.
Thanks again to my readers and all those who've bought the complete novel (as well as my other ones) on Amazon.

A new section starts today. The title may give you an idea that there's a change of direction ahead.
One reader wrote to ask me why Spook hadn't found a new identity for Lisa as well. I actually explained that a few chapters back. The problem was that it would have entailed some law-breaking on her part, whereas now Jack's the only one who's actually broken any laws (and that's of course kind of beside the point of why he's been pursued). But Lisa is squeaky clean, and that's going to be even more important with what's to come.
Thanks again to all those who continue reading. I'm still running around 10,000 downloads per chapter, which pleases me tremendously. We writers write to be read, as I've said before, and I love it that so many are reading my effort.