Lisa Mason's Blog, page 162

A Credit Card Check From Mom

The crowd parts, and a reedy young girl sidles to the side of the bed. With her sallow little face and lank pale hair, she could pass for your classic virgin peasant girl in one of the old stories, complete with a denim shift, funky boots, and a ragged knapsack. “Maybe I can help?”

Jake pats the bed. “Come closer. What’s your name?”

“I’m. . . .I’m Becky.”

“How can you help me, pretty Becky?”

“I’ve got, like, a credit-card check? I found it in the mail today before Mom got home from work? Her credit line is, like, eight thousand dollars?”

“Child! You can’t forge Mom’s signature. Can you?”

“I, like, don’t have to? She gave me my own card. I can sign for things myself. Should I write the check to you, Jake?”

“No, no, child. I’d have to clear that through our bank, which could take days. Abby Teller needs her money tonight. Why don’t you write a check for eight thousand dollars to the Garden of Abracadabra with a note that the sum covers the rent, etcetera for Number Twenty-seven.” He smiles slyly at me. “Then you owe me one thousand, three hundred, thirty-three dollars, and thirty-four cents. I’ll take that in cash.”

He holds out his hand.

I smile slyly back. “After the check clears, Jake. After the check clears.”

Becky pulls a felt-tip pen from her knapsack, writes the check, and hands it to me, along with the credit card company’s letter congratulating Mom for being such a valued customer with a credit line of eight thousand dollars.

I examine the documents. Check and letter look authentic. The letter, of course, doesn’t state how much of the credit line is currently available. Well, hell. I only hope Becky can dream up a plausible explanation that will satisfy Mom, but I doubt it. Maybe Mom can work something out with the fraud department.

In which case, Scorpio Rising will owe the Garden of Abracadabra three months’ back-rent, and I’ll have no choice but to evict them.

Great work, if you can find it.

Jake pulls her down on the bed. “Come sit beside me, child.” He grins, and fangs pop out from his satyric lips. “What did you say your name was?”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA! 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. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Says A Trembling Voice

“Are you really? A pretty child like you?”

“I am, and I need a check from you.”

“Of course you do. I’m so glad you’re our new super. I’m so glad you’re not dead. The famous Abby Teller! I expected no less of Abracadabra. Stanley was such a freaky unfamous little bore.”

Jake turns my hand over, widening his eyes at the puncture wound on my thumb. His tongue flicks out and licks, a sensation like the touch of dry ice, sticky and absolutely freezing.

The sensation pierces me, a subzero dagger igniting the peculiar heat dry ice imparts. A desire to surrender my living heat, to assuage the freezing cold, nearly overcomes me.

I don’t think so. I yank my hand away, perform an excruciating sit-up over his thighs, and spring to my feet. I pull the paper tape from my handbag, hurl the scrap at him. “I need a check for this month’s rent, plus the prior two months, plus late fees. That comes to six thousand, six hundred, sixty-six dollars–”

“And sixty-six cents,” Jake finishes wearily, glancing at the paper tape. “So many sixes. That’s awfully devilish of Abracadabra. And if I don’t give you a check tonight?”

“I’ll start eviction proceedings tomorrow.”

And send the Vice Squad, I want to add. But hold my tongue.

“Child, I regret to tell you I simply haven’t got the funds. You know how record companies are. Vampires, vampires, every one. Scorpio Rising is waiting for a royalty check. The Black Album is selling and selling, even after all these years. But if we must wait for a check, sadly, so must you.”

“Sadly, I need a check from you tonight. I saw plenty of money changing hands in your living room.”

“Oh, that. Our fans’ donations merely defray the cost of beverages we provide for free.”

“Right now, Jake.”

Jake rolls his undead eyes and heaves a theatrical sigh.

“Children,” he says to the crowd in the room. “Who’s got an extra donation tonight? We need to raise seven grand, give or take. It’s for a good cause.” He thinks again. “It’s to save the Earth.” He picks up an ashtray from the nightstand and sends his version of a collection plate out into the crowd.

The blue-jeaned guys and gals dig deep in their pockets and backpacks, eagerly unearthing their hard-earned doubloons. The ashtray passes around the room and returns to Jake. He counts out two hundred dollars and twenty-seven cents.

“Do-NA-tions, children!” he screeches in his infamous falsetto. “This won’t do! This won’t do, at all!”

“Jake?” says a trembling voice from the back of the room.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA! 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. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Get In Bed With An Undead Disco Superstar

Just what I want to do my first night in Berkeley. Get in bed with an undead disco superstar. I decide to humor him for the sake of the job and perch on the edge of the mattress, gripping my Eye and my Cross. “I’m Abby Teller.”

His hand whips out, seizes my wrist, and yanks me flat on my back. My spine arches over his thighs. His supernatural power makes Brand’s bold magic seem feeble. I feel as if I’ve been seized by a force field, vast and relentless.

I brandish my Eye and my Cross so fiercely, I nearly tear the chains off my neck. Jake takes one look and shrugs, as if my magically protective amulets trouble him not at all.

Am I scared? Witless, but more than that, I am vexed. Why should the undead wield such power in the world of the living? Me, I’m alive. I’m a magician with human magic. I’m in charge of this world, night or day. “Let go of me.”

He doesn’t let go. “Abby Teller. Such a tragic name.”

“Why tragic?”

“Once upon a time there was a little girl named Abby Teller from a place called Buckeye Heights. The little girl died. Everybody knows. You can’t be that Abby Teller.”

For the first time since I’ve entered Number Twenty-seven, a chill–a truly chilly, truly arctic chill–shivers down my spine. This monster is a denizen of the World of Magic? This monster has heard the strange rumors about me? But how? And where?

“Yes, I’m that Abby Teller, and I’m not dead.” I’m getting kind of tired of repeating myself and freaked out by the notion that people think I’m dead. Just what did Mama not tell me? I take care not to look too closely in his eyes of blue ice. I pulse out a spark of my power and am exceedingly pleased when he shrinks back. “I’m your new super.”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA!

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. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Jake

I jog down the hall till I reach the door to the spacious master bedroom. Hundreds of guys and gals in jeans and backpacks, each clutching a silver-tone token, wait with fervent, reverent expectation around a king-sized bed.

I push past them.

“Hey, man, you gotta wait your turn.”

“Trust me, I don’t.”

I’m the new super, I keep telling myself. I took this job to work my way through school. I’m the new super. I push my way to the side of the bed.

10

He loafs on black satin sheets, propped up on black satin pillows. He looks exactly as he looked in the iconic photograph. The big, bony face sun-baked to the shade of a walnut shell. The high creased forehead, the parentheses of wrinkles creasing his cheeks from nose to mouth. His pompadour, brows, eyelashes, and goatee are such a pale blond they look maggot-white against his skin. He wears black leather jeans, black leather wristbands, and nothing else. His bare feet are oddly small and dead-white, the toenails polished—surprise—jet-black.

His eyes of blue ice take their measure of me, and he grins, fangs popping out from his satyric lips. “Jumping the line, child?”

“No, Jake. I really need to see you.”

“So eager for Jake? Can’t wait? I love a child with spirit. I’ll forgive you, but just this once.” He pats the bed. “Come and lie beside me. What’s your name?”

–Read THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA in its entirety!

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

I Should Run Screaming

She strokes his cheek, then playfully slaps him. She smirks at me, scoots down on the couch, and repositions her lips. Out curve the fangs, which she sinks into his thigh.

The young man screams sharply in pain, then groans, low and delirious, with pleasure.

Whoa. Whuff. I’m having a little trouble breathing. I pull my Eye and my Cross from the neckline of my dress. I wish I was wearing one of Stanley’s garlands of garlic bulbs. Maybe three or four.

I catch the arm of a Staff Person carrying a huge copper tray laden with joints and opium pipes. “Where’s Jake?”

He/she jerks a thumb in the direction of a smoky hall leading off the living room.

Excellent. Now I’m getting somewhere. I stride past the open door of a bedroom. Upside-down Day-Glo pentagrams add festive touches to the jet-black walls. A water bed undulates, liquid sloshing inside the bed frame beneath the weight of two bodies grappling.

A water bed. A water bed. Are those loathsome bedroom furnishings of the nineteen-seventies permitted at the Garden of Abracadabra? Most landlords forbid them since they have a nasty habit of splitting their seams and flooding perfectly nice apartments. I make another mental note to check the lease.

Those have to be the frostbite-blue curls Cuddles was famous for. I brace myself for the same scene I witnessed on the black leather couch.

No such luck.

Eyelashes fluttering over half-closed eyes, Cuddles presses her mouth to the plump naked belly of a girl so young, her breasts haven’t quite developed yet, though the rest of her has layered on fat.

Cuddles becomes aware of me watching. She rips her fangs out of the girl’s belly and rears up like a cobra about to strike. The vampire hisses. Hisses.

The girl starts screaming, then bursts into wild, sobbing laughter. Dripping puncture wounds dapple her arms, her belly, her thighs.

I should run screaming myself, but I don’t. No, I intend to get what I came for, get out of Number Twenty-seven alive, and consider my options. A visit to the Berkeley police seems in order.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

She Snarls

I stride past a black leather couch. From my recollection of the iconic photograph, I recognize the orange-pesticide-colored mane belonging to Flame. She wears a halter top baring her cleavage and expensively ripped jeans as she perches on the couch and bends over a man lying beside her.

He’s young and naked, and Flame presses her mouth against the swell of his chest, her lips wide over his nipple. She sucks and sucks as if she’s feeding on breast milk. She swallows, the muscles of her throat working hard, her eyes squeezed shut, her expression one of total concentration. She strokes his cheek with one hand, his erection with the other.

With each of her swallows, the young man groans half in pleasure, half in pain. Puncture wounds dapple his chest and belly and muscular thighs. His skin shines with spit and blood.

Flame’s eyes flip open and meet mine.

Instinctively I avert my eyes from that flat black predatory gaze.

She releases her lips from the young man’s chest and yanks her fangs out of his flesh. She rears up, rears back, and snarls. Snarls. The tips of her fangs retract, but not before they drizzle blood all over her lips and chin and breasts.

A pair of fresh puncture wounds in the young man’s chest leak blood, and he cries, “Oh, Flame, please don’t stop!”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

One Tune, And One Tune Only

The Odd Person steps back into the darkness.

I barge in and gasp.

They’ve painted or plastered the walls a jet-black as sparkly as the patent-leather of Esmeralda’s high heels. Neon signs depicting daggers and skulls glow in the gloom. Hundreds of black-clad, heavily pierced and tattooed people dance with thrashing abandon on a sparkly jet-black floor that fills the entire living room. Overhead, a spinning glass ball faceted with tiny mirrors casts dizzying points of light.

One tune, and one tune only, plays over and over and over. Guess which?

I gag on cloying incense that can’t quite conceal the stench of hard booze, crack cocaine, marijuana, and a sickening metallic sweetish odor I can’t identify.

I look around for the Odd Person but he/she has abandoned me. I’m crushed. Guess I’ll have to find Jake on my own. I thread my way through the crowd past a mirrored bar where topless bartenders dispense drinks and collect cash or swipe credit cards. A floppy-haired boy growing peach fuzz where he’s hoping one day for a mustache clings to a girl in pigtails. The two teens tipple from a tequila bottle, weaving on their feet, eyes fuddled. Not good. Not legal, either.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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, check it out! 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Welcome To Our Party

An Odd Person the size of a refrigerator smirks in the doorway. I say “Person” because I can’t quite identify a gender. And “Odd” because he/she gazes at me out of thickets of false eyelashes in a fleshy face greased and powdered the color of chalk. The lipstick, the nail polish, the waist-length cornrows, the laced and riveted clothes–all of it black, black, black, and black. Multiple piercings on ears, nose, and nipples–I still can’t quite identify a gender even after an eyeful of the nipples–and tattoos of screaming skulls complete the Odd Person’s fashion statement.

“Welcome to our party, darling,” he/she shouts in my face. The Odd Person pulls up his/her lips in a grin of even, white teeth and offers me a token. It’s a cheap plastic skull and crossbones the size of a quarter embossed with a silver-tone number. “The suggested donation is twenty dollars or however much your heart moves you to give.”

“I need to see Jake.”

“Everyone needs to see Jake, darling, and I need to see your ID.” The Odd Person squints at the token. “You’re Number Three Hundred Eighty-four.”

I don’t take out my driver’s license. I don’t take the token. Donation? When Death Valley freezes over. I make a mental note to check the lease for rules about tenants conducting a business and receiving customers in their apartment.

“No, I’m Number One, and I don’t need to show you my ID. I’m the new superintendent and I need to see Jake. Right now, pal. I need for you not to give me a runaround or you, Scorpio Rising, and your party are so out of here. You savvy?”

“One moment, please.”

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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, check it out! 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Dead Silence Reigns

I climb three stories of stairs up the spiral staircase, heading for Twenty-seven. I’m reasonably fit from jogging and weightlifting, but I’ve planted my butt in a bucket seat for four very long days. By the time I reach the third floor, I’m huffing and puffing and massaging my knees.

Labyrinthine halls stretch before me, pools of light and pools of darkness. I sally forth in what turns out to be the wrong direction, turn back and stub my toe on a wall looming just around a corner. After another twist and a turn, I find my way to Number Twenty-seven.

Dead silence reigns outside the door. Whatever else they may be, the tenants are quiet. Which is commendable. Maybe collecting the check won’t be too difficult, after all.

I rap my knuckles on the door and wait. I wait long enough to recollect the iconic photograph of Scorpio Rising on the cover of The Black Album. Jake, Flame, and Cuddles, in various stages of undress, posing on the hood and the roof of a black Rolls Royce painted with lurid licks of orange and yellow fire.

Now the door flips open and the semi-techno-pop, semi-bubblegum-pop, obnoxiously addictive beat of “Disco Divin’” strikes me in a wall of sound so deafening, I have to clap my hands to my ears.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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, check it out! 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!

Nikki Tesla

The man turns around, not Stanley. He’s as unStanleylike as another twenty-something guy could be. A beanpole, he stands head and shoulders above me, his long limbs stick-thin. He’s tucked a long-sleeved white shirt into neat gray trousers and slung an expensive leather backpack over his shoulder. His bushy black hair, eyebrows, and mustache play up his pallor. Peculiar eyes glow in his long, bony face, the irises swirling with streaks of color like the splash screen of some exotic software.

His bicycle isn’t an oily, mud-encrusted three-speed but a sleek silver mountain bike with a dozen gears. Not the same bike as Stanley’s. Not the same bike, at all.

He grins, a very friendly, very human grin. “Stanley flew the coop, did he?”

“He couldn’t skip out of the Garden of Abracadabra fast enough. I’m Abby Teller, your new super.”

“Are you serious? I thought Abby Teller was dead.”

I’m not at all used to the reaction and the why of it still eludes me. “You must be someone in the World of Magic. I am Abby Teller, and I am not, repeat not, dead.”

“Awesome, Abby.” He looks me over the way Esmeralda did, curiously, a little suspiciously though not nearly as spooked as she was. He locks his mailbox and stuffs his mail in a pocket of his backpack. “I’m Tesla in Thirty-nine. If that antique iMac in your office ever bugs you, give me a call. I’m an electronics wizard.” He adds in a gloomy voice, “It’s my curse.”

Tesla wheels his bicycle across the lobby, heading for the staircase, weariness in every thump of his footsteps. He hoists the bicycle under his arm and climbs the stairs.

The electronics wizard is cursed? But how? And why? I make a mental note to give Tesla a neighborly call tomorrow or the day after. He and I, we should talk.

–From THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Book 1 of the Abracadabra Series, my big new urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A 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, check it out! 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 Kindle for 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 Nook and Kindle. Here’s the UFO 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!