Lisa Mason's Blog, page 157

My Evil Twin

The next half-dozen students, in their thirties and forties, are men and women working night jobs or odd jobs, taking sabbaticals from jobs they dislike or taking unemployment. Their inciting incidents in midlife have changed their points of view, ended marriages, and estranged friends. And have led to this, the adventure of returning to college to study Real Magic. Two are nurses, one a security guard, another a bartender who boasts of using so much sex magic to seduce so many women, I have to wonder what he intends to do with his new schooling.

Bonwitch raises an eyebrow at me again and says to the bartender, “Thank you, Jigg. We are all here to learn.”

Time for me. I tell everyone my name and how, as a young teen, I summoned the fireflies. The serenity of that summer’s eve. My awareness of single-minded concentration. My love for my mother who–I’d suspected even then–was just beginning her long, slow journey into suffering and death.

A woman sitting opposite me laughs out loud. A bray of a laugh, mocking and condescending.

A beauty in her late twenties, she boasts perfectly tanned skin, a cascade of shiny hair, arrogant eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth set in a sneer. Tall and willowy, she shows off toned arms and legs in a bikini top and denim short shorts.

I’ve been known to wear the same getup, only to the beach, not to class. Our features are quite different–her hair’s straight, mine curly, her lips thin, mine curvy–but she’s like my twin. My evil twin.

“You find my story amusing?”

“Mommy Dearest named you Abby Teller? Man, I would never name my daughter after a kid who got murdered.”

“But I am Abby Teller.”

“The most famous kid in the World of Magic? I’m so sure. And fireflies? How stupid is that? Don’t you mean you caught some guy’s fly on fire?”

Bonwitch watches and listens and puffs on his pipe.

I wait till the hoots and jeers and disparaging comments of my fellow students die down.

“No, I was a late bloomer. At fourteen I was a bit too young for guys and their flies. My inciting incident was wonderful and inspiring. And the reason–one of the reasons–why I’m sitting here today. So who are you, surfer chick? Why don’t you tell us about your inciting incident?”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, my new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA is on Nook and Kindle!

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter”

On Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006R35608

On Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-garden-of-abracadabra-lisa-mason/1037524057?ean=2940013808232

From the author of Summer of Love, A Time Travel (a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) and The Gilded Age, A Time Travel (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book).

Visit me at http://www.lisamason.com for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, forthcoming projects and more.

We All Congratulate Julianne

Eighteen-year-old Tina, fresh-faced and zaftig in a flowing floral shift, raises her hand and tells us how her older brother had battered her since she was three. One day he was chasing her in her own bedroom and she turned, enraged, and stood her ground. The brother staggered across the room, as if shoved by an invisible hand, and plunged into her clothes closet. The door slammed shut and stayed that way for three days, despite Tina’s parents’ efforts to free him. She was thirteen, at the time.

The stocky young man sitting beside me–Josh, in his late twenties–speaks next. His uncle had been molesting him since he was seven. One day Uncle Bob took him out to the garage behind the house like he did when he craved little Joshie, and Josh rebelled. Something invisible yanked Uncle Bob into his nineteen-eighty Impala sedan and pounded the door locks shut. Uncle Bob couldn’t escape the Impala for a whole week, surviving on a six-pack of beer he’d left in the backseat.

I shake my head, amazed and troubled. Among the dozen other students in their late teens or early twenties, their life stories, their inciting incidents, are dreadfully alike. Child abuse, so much of it. Rage and sorrow, so much of that, too. And magic saved them. Magic changed everything. Magic changed their lives.

It didn’t matter if they had to keep their power a secret.

Bonwitch raises an eyebrow at me.

Now a regal woman with a streak of white through her silky black hair holds up her hand and tells us–thankfully!–a different story.

Julianne, a corporate attorney on the verge of retiring after thirty stressful years of a high-profile career, found herself diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer. Rage and sorrow again, but this time directed at herself. At the life she’d lived, the choices she’d made. After she moved past those emotions, though, she embraced her passionate, overwhelming desire to survive.

“I had plans for my retirement. I wanted to grow heirloom tomatoes. I thought about those tomatoes every waking moment.”

Julianne sought a second opinion before submitting to the ordeal of surgery and chemo. Her new doctor examined her and found no tumor. No metastasis. No nothing. The new doctor pronounced this a miracle. Julianne pronounced it her passion to grow heirloom tomatoes. Julianne says it was Real Magic. Now she’s eager to learn how to heal others with her power.

We all congratulate Julianne and wish her well.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, my new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

Who Wants To Go First?

21

“Magic is Real,” Professor Bonwitch tells our class. “Those in the World of Magic have known this truth since the dawn of humanity. You know this, too, or you would not have applied to study at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts, and we would not have accepted you.”

I lean forward on a teakwood bench, rapt at the words I’ve been longing to hear. Real Magic: no longer my shameful secret. No longer a part of me I need to suppress. Now I may embrace my true nature, celebrate my power. I don’t have to feel so alone in the quotidian world. Mama told me on her deathbed mastering my power is the key to my survival. It’s more than that. It’s who I am. It’s me.

I don’t take notes like the other students tapping on their laptops. I just listen, mesmerized by Bonwitch’s melodious voice.

“Throughout history, those in the World of Magic have been shunned or persecuted or exiled because of their power,” Bonwitch continues. “Often tortured and killed. Thanks to a more enlightened world, we can now teach what was once zealously confined to secret societies. But never doubt that prejudice and hostility toward us still exist today.”

Four teakwood benches, including the one where I sit, form a square on a patio in a garden courtyard. The courtyard is a labyrinth of paths and patios bordered by jungles of hydrangeas and dragon palms. Riverstone walkways beneath high arches lead in and out.

Surrounding the courtyard stands the college itself: turreted gothic buildings, the dark brick draped with ivy and inset with mullioned windows. Above rooftops of patinated copper rise ancient pines and eucalyptus, an arboreal shield for this, our inner sanctum of magic.

The honeyed sunlight of late afternoon beams down on us. A pitcher of iced tea stands on a teakwood table in the center of our square, along with bowls of lemon and lime wedges and turbinado sugar. Students crowd the benches–twenty-two of us, in all–and help ourselves to tea, quenching our thirst in the heat. I press an icy tumbler against my cheek and marvel. And listen.

“Now. Magic is a natural phenomenon subject to Fundamental Laws,” Bonwitch continues. “You will learn these laws so that you do not use your power angrily, fearfully, ignorantly, or unconsciously, but by precise application of proper procedures and your power. The heart is the gateway to Real Magic, but the head is the guide. You follow?”

Isaac A.M. Bonwitch is a tiny ramrod of a man with an aura of huge authority. He dresses nattily, professorily, in olive-green cords and a vest, a tan cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and brown suede Birkenstocks over bare feet. He’s pulled his long silver hair into a ponytail clipped in a brass barrette. His lean little freckled face glows with good health and his emerald-green eyes have a way of piercing everything he glances at. The bow of his mouth is punctuated by a meerschaum pipe, the carved bowl of which bears a tiny likeness of his own face. No pipe tobacco fumes foul the air but, every now and then, a puff of herbal smoke floats out of the bowl and forms arabesques around his head.

Bonwitch sits, legs crossed, on a teakwood chair in the corner between my bench and the next. Bonwitch! Isaac Bonwitch! The cross-street at Dwight Way where the college stands is named Bonwitch Street in his honor. Decades ago, he was the first student at the University to take his doctoral degree, summa cum laud, in Magic. Real Magic.

“And so, make no mistake. If magic is a natural phenomenon, then magic is also a neutral phenomenon. Like electromagnetism or the movement of subatomic particles. Magic propels the way electricity or atomic power propel. And like electricity or atomic power, the qualitative action of magic is decided by the medium through which it flows. Questions?”

“When you say ‘medium,’ do you mean someone who speaks with the dead?” asks the stocky young man sitting beside me.

“No, the medium, my friend, is you.” Bonwitch takes his pipe from the grip of his teeth. “That said, let us begin. Each of you experienced an inciting incident that confirmed you possess power. I want each of you to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself and your inciting incident. Who wants to go first?”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

Bodybuilder Or Gymnast?

Perfume wafts from his flawless white skin, the scent of vanilla and some sort of sweet spice. The perfume congests me the way incense does, but then the smokiness disperses, leaving only a candied scent like the odor of ether.

Bodybuilder or gymnast? Football player or ballet dancer? Great genes or great grooming?

He is–in a word—intimidating. His outfit a superhero costume fit for soft-core fantasy. He makes no move to shake my hand or touch me, but stands so close, invading my personal space, that his power easily pulses into me.

My spine just about smashes into the mailboxes. I’d step back if I could, but I can’t. Strangely, I don’t want to. Holy soft-core superheroes. What has come over me since I’ve blown into Berkeley? Is my post-Daniel rebound playing tricks on me? Or am I enjoying my new freedom?

Yes to all of the above.

“You are our new superintendent, Mistress?”

“That’s me.”

“Surely not. Surely your husband keeps a lady like you in a fine castle and showers you with gold and jewels.”

“No husband, no castle, no gold, and what jewels I own I’ve acquired on my own. I’m Abby Teller.”

“You may call me Lastor.” He pronounces his name LasTOR with such highfalutin snootiness I half-expect him to add a royal appellation. LasTOR, Prince of SpanDEX. “As our new superintendent, Abby Teller, you should know that vampires live at the Garden of Abracadabra.”

His lips curl in a snarl when he says “vampires,” his revulsion a palpable thing.

“Thank you, Lastor, I know.”

“You must take precautions, I insist. They are very dangerous creatures. Very ugly and very distasteful.” His eyes stray to my throat. “Your amulets are pretty, Mistress, but not enough to save you if you’re attacked by vampires.”

I have to sigh. “I’m beginning to understand that.”

“I am glad. I despise the undead. Once they were human, you know.” He trails his eyes over me in his quizzical way. “Have you heard that three hikers were found dead in Tilden Park this morning? Strange wounds. Unidentifiable wounds. The police believe it may be the work of vampires.”

Now I have to blink. “The media have released that information so soon?”

“Not exactly. I have sources of my own.”

“You work for the Berkeley P.D.? Or the FBI?”

“I work for no one,” he says with a supercilious sniff.

Hmm! What other sources could he have for such new and confidential information? Lastor smiles in such an inviting, beguiling way, though, that a titillated thrill tickles up my spine.

Sources? Who needs sources?

“You must come to the Revel at my abode atop this edifice tomorrow night.”

I smile at his choice of words. “A Revel?”

“Yes, nothing formal. A few drinks and dancing with my cousins and our friends. ‘Tis the High Harvest. Will you come?”

“I’ll try, Lastor, but I can’t promise. I’ve got a million things to do tomorrow. I just moved to the Garden of Abracadabra, and my new life has gotten kind of crazy.”

“Do try, Mistress. I am, as I say, in the penthouse. I would love to see you there.”

Fascinating, how a fantasy superhero in silver spandex dangles that particular love-word inside of five minutes.

I glance at my beat-around wristwatch. Oops! I’ve got to dash. No way will I be late for my first class at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

A Man Refined Into A Man

20

I step in the shower and step out, gingerly pat dry with a clean towel, and douse the scrapes and the scratches with hydrogen peroxide. Ouch, ouch, ouch, and ouch. No pain, no gain, it must be. Pain is good for you, right? Just, not all the time.

As I press Hello Kitty Band-aids over my wounds, grimacing and cursing, I keep seeing Brand and the girls, the bloody frenzy of punctures like a visual echo on their stiff, staring faces and bodies. Will I have nightmares? Could be, but mostly I am really, really vexed. It’s terrible, what happened to them. Terrible and weird. Who would do such a thing? And why? And what was that dangerous magic in the grove?

Hair air-drying into frizz, I pull on skinny white jeans and a long-sleeved, hot pink T. The outfit is a little too warm for the afternoon, but I don’t want to advertise my misadventures in Tilden Park to my new classmates. I step into hot pink ballet flats, clasp on my Eye and my Cross. I feel naked without my rings and my bangles and load them on.

I am ready to rock ‘n’ roll four blocks to Magical Arts and Crafts.

Except for one thing. I promised Pamela Qian that what happened at the Bank of America this morning won’t happen again. I intend to keep that promise. I fire up the iMac and the printer and whip out an announcement.

ATTENTION TENANTS OF THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

BESPELLED RENT CHECKS WILL BE RETURNED

A SPELL FEE OF $500 WILL BE LEVIED ALONG WITH ANY LATE FEES

THANK YOU   THE SUPERINTENDENT

I pack my tan canvas Ghurka bag with Blackfeet Indian pencils, a Moleskin, peppermint lip balm, Ray-Ban shades, a spiral notebook, my cell phone, my house keys, and my wallet.

Now I’m ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

I jog to the lobby with the announcement and two pieces of Scotch Magic tape. No way am I poking thumbtacks in the scarlet silk shantung. I reach above the mailboxes to tape the printout up, but I can’t quite reach high enough. Where are platform shoes when you need them?

As I stand on tiptoe, reaching again in vain, a voice behind me says, “Allow me, Mistress.” A brawny arm reaches clear over my head, plucks notice and tape from my hands, and mounts the printout on the wall. “Does that please you?”

The voice is honeyed, resonant yet deep, an impossibly masculine baritone.

“Ah. Sure.”

Another tenant of mine? I can’t meet them fast enough.

I turn and gaze up at a man refined into a man. An idealized man, as polished and airbrushed as the cover of a GQ. He towers over me, gazing down with a quizzical smile, his lips too full and too wide for the long hard angles of his face. So deep a brown are his eyes that the irises nearly match the glittering black of the pupils. Yet his brows and lashes are so platinum blond as to be nearly white. His silky platinum-blond hair spills around the bulky shoulders of a bodybuilder to a slender, almost feminine waist, to hips as lean as a gymnast’s.

I have no trouble discerning the definition of his muscles because he wears a silver spandex top so tight, his nipples jut through the fabric. The top is tucked in the waistband of silver spandex shorts so very tight, they leave little to wonder about and much to fantasize.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

You Can’t Be Too Careful. City Life.

I can’t stop saying, “Wow,” as I step back into the kitchen proper. Blue gloves pull open the fridge, proudly displaying housewarming gifts–a carton of milk, bottles of fruit juice and spring water, a wedge of white cheddar cheese, an enticing box of chocolates, and a very acceptable sauvignon blanc. A package of raw ground beef has been opened, some of the meat removed, and the plastic rewrapped.

“Yours truly has stocked some other victuals to start you out.” Twitch opens a cherry-wood cupboard. “Tins of tuna, that horse feed you call granola, and crisps. What you people call chips. Though yours truly must tell you, lass, if you ever et a proper chip, thick sliced, fried in lard, and doused in vinegar and salt, you would never call those flakes in a bag chips.”

“Twitch, this is fab.”

“Very good, lass. Yours truly is in Number Thirteen at the back of our floor, the west wing. On your desk you shall find a schedule of my hours, my phone, and my email address. You’ll also find a map of the building and grounds, the location of all the apartments and their floor plans, the library, the utility room, the staircases front and back, the service elevator, the mudroom, the mad room, and the dungeon. And, oh! Yours truly almost forgot. Please proceed to the aquarium.”

I follow him out to the living room where the aquarium bubbles on its shelf. I have to blink. The dazzling yellows, incandescent blues, and startling scarlets have dulled to a dirty silver. The charming dorsal fins, lateral lines, and ornamental caudal fins have shrunk into squat piscine shapes. And teeth. I’m quite sure I see the needles of tiny teeth.

“Twitch! What happened to the fish?”

“Ah, the wee ones have a habit of changin’ about. At the moment, they’re piranhas. This is when you must feed them a bit of raw meat.” He picks up the paper plate, pinches off and drops in ground beef.

The piranhas swarm around the bits of meat, needle teeth biting furiously.

“Mind, don’t even dip your fingertip in the water when they’ve gone piranha.” Twitch slides on the glass lid and adjusts the air filter. “Yours truly shall be pleased to clean the tank for you once a month, but you must feed the little devils their meat and the little angels their fish food every day.”

“I will.”

“Yours truly is off, then. Enjoy your day, lass. Do lock your windows and doors when the sun sets. City life. Can’t be too careful.” He claps his hands and calls out, “Come along, girls.”

From all over the apartment, the gloves fly to him and crash-land on the floor, poking and punching at each other.

Twitch claps his hands again. “Girls! Steady on. And forward march.”

The gloves obediently rearrange themselves into ranks of green, yellow, pink, and blue, marching smartly on their latex fingertips.

Twitch turns on his heel, his regiment of helping hands following, and lets himself out my door.

I close the open window and pull the latches tight. I lock the door locks from floor to lintel, including the serious chain lock. The sun is straying off the zenith, just after high noon, but you can’t be too careful. City life.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

Gloves

Green gloves push brooms across the floor, while green gloves hold dustbins. Green gloves wrap a twistie around the mouth of a garbage bag and carry the bulging bag through an open window, heading for the Dumpsters out back. A team of green gloves hoists the ravaged sofa out the window and down to the curb where the trash haulers—or the next twentysomething single guy with a trashed-out apartment—can pick it up.

Yellow gloves push sponges soaked with lemon wax across the swept floors, polishing the hardwood planks to a high gleam. Yellow gloves rearrange the most attractive of the lamps and the Welsh miners’ lanterns, while other yellow gloves carry ugly lamps and wax-spattered candelabras in disdainful yellow fingertips out the window. Yellow gloves fling overflowing ashtrays and rats’-nests of Post-its in a garbage bag. Yellow gloves rearrange the iMac, the printer/copier/fax, the landline phone, and the answering machine for the convenience of a southpaw like me. A yellow glove tickles the office equipment with a feather duster.

Now I stride to the bedroom where pink gloves rub jewelry cloths over the bed frame till the oxidized brass gleams like gold. Yes! That’s the way brass should look. Pink gloves roll up my sleeping bag and tuck in crisp white sheets around the mattress. Pink gloves fold the top sheet over a blue wool blanket and plump pillows in crisp white cases.

“Yours truly assumed you will wish to choose your own coverlet,” Twitch says, trailing after me. “Most young ladies do.”

“Yes, my quilts should arrive tomorrow with the rest of my things.”

“Very good, lass.”

In the kitchen, blue gloves pluck thumbtacks from Indian bedspreads, unfasten safety pins, and remove garlands of garlic bulbs from the tall, arched windows surrounding a breakfast nook. A glass door lined with locks from floor to lintel leads out to a wrought-iron café table and chairs promising alfresco breakfasts. The little slate patio is shielded from the parking lot by syringa hedges heavy with golden blossoms. Door and windows are well mullioned with runic designs.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

Twitch

I scream and stagger back and reach for the door, but I can’t find the doorknob.

The little man turns toward me from where he’s standing in front of the aquarium, the palm of his hand heaped with bloody raw meat.

“Goodness dear me, lass, yours truly didn’t mean to startle you.” He scrapes the meat off his palm onto a white paper plate, sets the plate next to the aquarium, and fastidiously wipes his hand on a paper napkin. He formally bows. “Yours truly is terribly sorry.”

He’s a runty little thing–shorter than me by three or four hand spans–but quite dapper in a pinstriped cutaway, trousers, and vest, a wing-collar and cravat, and a white dress shirt. The pale sliver of his face boasts the largest snout and the largest ears I’ve ever seen on any person. Above the snout sparkle tiny blue eyes, below a thin-lipped mouth set in an obliging smile.

“Whoare you?”

“Yours truly is Twitch, lass.”

“How did you get in here, Twitch?”

“Yours truly is the custodial man. Yours truly can get in anywhere in the Garden of Abracadabra. With proper authorization, don’t you know,” he adds hastily.

“I gave you no authorization to enter my apartment.”

“Ah, but the Owner did, lass. The Owner is most pleased you’ve signed on with us. The Owner is most distressed that the person who previously dwelt here left you with this disgraceful rubbish heap. The Owner says to me, ‘Twitch’”–he points to his skinny chest–”’you must lend the dear young lady a helping hand.’ Which yours truly is pleased to do. Yours truly hopes it pleases you.”

Now I see that the flying green things are gloves. Green latex kitchen gloves, each plumped out as if filled inside by an invisible hand.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

If you enjoy a work, please “Like” it, add some stars, write a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and spread the word to your reader friends. Your response really matters!

 

A Swarm Of Green Things

19

“I’m coming back here after sunset to question the vampires,” Kovac says. “Can you be home to let me in the building?”

“I’ll be home.”

“Good, thanks.” He takes a pen and a business card out of his shirt pocket. “Is ten-thirty tomorrow morning a good time to come down to my office and give your statement?”

“Nope. I’ve got a hot date with Mayflower Movers at nine in the A.M.”

“How about one-thirty?”

“Done.”

He writes the time on the back, gives me the business card, and holds out his hand for a farewell handshake.

Which I do not take. “My hands are filthy.”

“I’m not Brand, my lady magician.”

“Really, really filthy. And sweaty. And bloody.” Am I playing hard to get? No, I wouldn’t want to shake hands with me at the moment.

“I’ll see you later, then.”

“Later.” I climb out and watch him drive down Mirage Way till he turns the corner at Derby, and I can’t see the black BMW anymore. My lady magician? I wipe a silly smile off my face. Kovac is way, way off-limits. Kovac is the Law and this is a supernatural murder investigation. And wow has he got issues. With Rita Valdez. With the angry red aura from his knee to his toe. Why do I keep seeing his ocean-blues, gazing at me? My lady magician. Why should I feel so ridiculously pleased?

Because you’re a fool for love, I tell myself as I hike up the cobblestones and let myself in the building, misgivings brooding. I need to shower and bandage my wounds and dress for campus. I need to hike to Magical Arts and Crafts, register for the term, write a tuition check, and dash off to my first class. I need lunch.

The prospect of facing the pigsty Stanley bequeathed to me is not a happy one. Do I have time to run a broom over the floor? Not now, I’m running late. I hadn’t planned on stumbling on a supernatural multiple murder.

But how I hate a filthy house. Mama had always insisted on spick-and-span. I trudge through the lobby, through the archway, turn left, and trudge down the hall to Number One. No twists, no unexpected turns, no tricks. Thank you, Garden of Abracadabra. I unlock the locks from floor to lintel, brace myself for the mess, and let myself in.

Where I confront a little man and a swarm of green things swooping and darting all over my living room.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason. All rights reserved.

Buy the book for your Nook, Kindle, phone, or laptop!

Read the whole book!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. The publisher’s print edition is planned for late 2013.

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 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. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between good and evil, 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.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”

Whether you’re a fantasy fan or someone who simply enjoys an entertaining read, please give this book a try! On Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Abracadabra cover.

The Bantam classic is back, new and improved! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book. On Nook and on Kindle.

Fifteen five-star Amazon reviews

“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.”

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 feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, 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?

SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the gorgeous Summer cover.

The Bantam sequel to Summer, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL, aNew York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended book, is on Nook and on Kindle.

“Dazzling. . . .rollicking.” Locus Magazine

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.

THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the lovely Gilded cover. It looks like an 1890s handbill!

The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes my month-long blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years. Here’s the fantastic Child cover.

New! HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her. On Nook and on Kindlefor 99 cents. Here’s the Hummers cover.

New! My thriller, SHAKEN, is an ebook adaptation of Deus Ex Machina published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death. A list of Sources follows this short novel.

SHAKEN is on Nook and on Kindle. Here’s the Shaken cover.

THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is on Nook and Kindle.

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by my favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. I include in the ebook an Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s actual lives and a List of Sources. Here’s the Hysteria cover.

EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that also included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady. Here’s the Mystery cover.

DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), which included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is on Nook and Kindle. Five-star Amazon reviews.

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her? DAUGHTER OF THE TAO is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tao cover.

For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, my script for a producer looking for the next Galaxy Quest or Men in Black that evolved into a novella, is on Nookand Kindle. Here’s theUFO cover.

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?

For something very different:TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and on Kindle. I’ve included a List of Sources with this title. Since I’m a novelist, the screenplay has a bit more description than you’ll find in other scripts. Tesla’s story is fascinating, sort of a secret history of corporate America. Give it a try!

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.

TESLA is on Nook and Kindle. Here’s the Tesla cover.

For a short erotic novel, you should try Eon’s Kiss by Suzanna Moore on Nook and Kindle. This has a paranormal hero who is not a vampire or a werewolf. If you’re looking for something sweet and erotic to read, check it out! Here’s the Kiss cover.

On the eve of what Jenna Coltrane believes will be Brett Becker’s marriage proposal, tragedy strikes her life—not just once, but twice. In the midst of trouble, she encounters Eon, a regal young man unlike anyone she’s ever met before.

With him, she enters the magical world of the Arbor, discovering love, passion, and beauty beyond her wildest dreams.

Jenna is swept up in a struggle for survival between human greed and the Arbor, a struggle in which her love for Eon and her very life are at stake

Forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation improving upon my early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb, and much more.

For all my science fiction and fantasy books, stories, screenplays, and forthcoming news about print books and ebooks, visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site. I thank you for your readership!

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