My new novel is in my publisher’s inbox

I’ve been over every word at least five times, more than 130,000 of them. I’ve reviewed over 150 writing samples from other authors in exchange for feedback. I’ve walked around my neighborhood imaging a creature mutated by aliens that lurks in Florida’s underground waterways.

And still, I needed a deep breath before I hit “send.”

A few days ago, I sent my new novel “Silence the Living” to my publisher Silver Leaf Books. This will be my third published book.

This is a science fiction thriller, and the sequel to “Mute.” I’ve written it in a way where you don’t have to read the first novel to understand “Silence the Living”, but the plot of the second book will of course be a spoiler to the first book. So if you have not yet experienced “Mute”, now is a good time.

“Mute” started as a murder mystery and became more scifi as the story went on while a relationship between Monique “Moni” Williams and Aaron Hughes developed. In “Silence the Living”, the mystery has been unlocked and the characters must deal with moral dilemmas and grave danger.

The last active trace of the alien microorganisms that invaded Earth lives within Moni’s body. A drop of her bodily fluid will contaminate any human or animal, turning it into an alien-controlled beast with the goal of transforming part of our planet into an alien habitat. The aliens in her bloodstream are rapidly altering Moni’s body. She’s lost her voice, but gained telepathic powers to overhear thoughts from nearby minds and to plant her thoughts into the heads of both humans and animals.

The changes are also physical. She chugs gasoline like beer. Her saliva is so acid that she can suck a bar of iron like a popsicle.

Despite the obvious dangers of Moni staying near people with such a highly infectious condition, Aaron refuses to leave her side. The marine science student wants to help her evade the government’s efforts to capture her and he’s looking for some way to restore her humanity so they can be together. Moni and Aaron’s love grows stronger, but he risks his life every time he touches her.

Moni and Aaron flee their native Florida for the southern New Mexico desert because there’s few people and virtually no water. Yet, they can’t run forever.

A pivotal scene in "Silence the Living" is set in the Kilbourne Hole volcanic maar in New Mexico. Credit: Dicklyon

Brevard County Sheriff Officer Nina Skillings was just discharged from the hospital after suffering facial injures she blames on Moni. She teams up with FBI Agent Cam Carter to chase Moni across the country, and she won’t bother for a pair of handcuffs.

Meanwhile in Florida, a sadistic mutant lurks in the underground waterways hunting people. Offbeat environmental scientist Harry “Lagoon Watcher” Trainer believes it’s connected to the alien invasion and he’s determined to pursue it through the watery depths beneath the state’s limestone surface. In this dark maze of underwater caves, the air is far away, but terror is always near.

The pursuit of the mutant in "Silence the Living" takes place in North Florida's Peacock Springs. Credit: Barbara am Ende.

“Silence the Living” is a creature thriller wrapped around a tortured romance.

Side note: I drew inspiration for this novel from the metal band In This Moment, in particular, the album “A Star-Crossed Wasteland.”

Silver Leaf Books should publish “Silence the Living” sometime in 2018. My publisher is currently working to release over a dozen books this year, so that is why I need to wait.

In the meantime, I am considering book cover ideas - possibly involving snakes - and a marketing plan that doesn’t suck.

Oh, and I’m also working on yet another novel. I just can’t stop writing.

Eight ways the iPhone has changed society in 10 years

On June 29, 2007, the day the iPhone first went on sale, it would have been hard for anyone to imagine the monumental impact the device has had on society, even now-late Apple CEO Steven Jobs.

Ushering in the smart phone era has changed the way people interact, and perhaps even re-wired the brain. It has played a part in everything from love to war to politics to crime.

This won’t be the only blog today list on the 10-year anniversary of the iPhone, so I’ll keep with the theme of my latest novel and focus on the way these pocket-sized computers have transformed social interaction. Why am I listing eight ways instead of 10? Because in the age of mobile news, who has the patience to scroll down a 10-point list?

No more privacy in public

I hear a lot of prior generation athletes talk about the wild times they had on the road, partying and drinking and saying outrageous things in bars. Rarely did any of the details come to light, and when they did, it was based on memories, not proof.

Now, anytime something remotely controversial happens, it’s often captured on a camera phone. If there’s a pro athlete or celebrity involved, that’s almost a certainty. So people can’t simply mouth off without consequences.

The language of emojis

The emoji was created in 1998, but it didn’t take off as an common part of language until the smart phone. Text messaging, Facebook and Twitter are arts of the written word. Emojis says things that words can’t quite say, or they emphasize the meaning of sentences.

Unlike words, emojis can’t be translated into vocal language. There’s also unregulated and unlimited. No 26 characters here.

I’m still waiting for the first all emoji novel.

Constantly plugged in

People used to access the internet mostly at home or in the workplace on a desktop computer, or on a bulky laptop at a rare WiFi hot spot. Now the vast majority of the country has wireless internet access through a cellular network, and websites have been configured for mobile views, which is the fastest growing segment of traffic.

The good news is people can work and stay plugged into information remotely. No more sneaking out of the wedding to check the score on the TV at the bar. There’s no reason to drive around looking for a restaurant or a gas station.

The bad news is work has become inescapable. No matter where you go, people can email you and text you. People with important responsibilities are expected to respond no matter what. So it’s harder to truly unplug.

Instant information

I started journalism in college, writing for the Miami Hurricane student newspaper and then as an intern at the St. Augustine Record in 1999. There’s been a huge change in the expectations for news delivery over the years, especially since the smart phone era began.

People used to receive a brief overview of the day’s news during the evening telecast, and then a more detailed analysis in the next morning’s paper. Now, not only is the morning paper full of old news, so is the evening telecast. First people expected websites with stories updated regularly, hopefully within an hour of breaking news. That’s no longer good enough. With mobile phones in hand, people scroll Twitter and Facebook for instance news - reports within seconds of events, or even live streaming video.

Social media works so fast that some traditional news sites simply embed a social media feed about an event instead of writing a story (which I find highly annoying).

The drawback here is accuracy. The faster a reporter works, the easier it is to make mistakes. It can take time to verify information, but the pressure of instant news doesn’t allow for any delays.

Forever documenting the moment

Having a camera phone at all times allows people to capture every moment of their lives, but is capturing the moment the same as living in the moment?

At concerts and sporting events, especially in Miami, a huge amount of people are on their phones. Are they truly engaged in the action? Or are they trying to create a video to shows off to their jealous friends? A football games, some people are so distracted by their fantasy football league that they aren’t into the game in front of them.

Entertainment is personal

A decade ago, most home entertainment was spent in front of the TV screen or video game console. A family might be watching the same show on one set so they could share their experiences, or some family members might segment into different rooms to view their favorite programs.

Now, the TV is no longer king. Nielsen says that TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds has declined 39 percent since 2011. It also fell sharply in the 25-34 age group. That’s because millennials are spending more times on smartphones than watching TV.

So now family members can sit in the same room, and all be occupied by their individual devices - watching shows, playing games, surfing the web. They are together physically, not socially.

Shopping assistant

The smart phone has made it easier than ever to buy things no matter where you are. That’s great for the sake of convenience, no more trips to the store for one thing - as long as you can wait a day or two.

For compulsive shoppers, that means there’s no escape.

Redefining intelligence

In my high school and college years, certain classes focused on memorization. If you could memorize historical or scientific facts, etc, then you were smart. Even today, many game shows center around memorizing and repeating facts.

Under that definition of intelligence, anyone with a working smart phone is a genius. They can pull up any historical information, scientific fact, pop culture reference, spell perfectly, master geography, and solve the most common math problems. What’s the point of memorizing all of that when the information is one second away in a pocket-sized device? And why are many classes still structured as if smart phones were never invented?

So what’s it mean now to be smart. Perhaps the new intelligence means the ability to separate real information from fake news.

How many people need to die on Facebook Live until tech giant pulls the plug?

Sadly, people are murdered and committee suicide every day. Few of these incidents attract the global spotlight. That’s where Facebook Live and other instantaneous social media platforms come in.

Steve Stephens gained his 15 minutes of fame by fatally shooting complete stranger Robert Godwin, 74, in Cleveland live on Facebook. In Thailand, Wuttisan Wongtalay hung his 11-month-old daughter on Facebook Live before killing himself on the same platform.

Would these crimes, and many before them, have occurred without a global platform to broadcast these murders? These videos were viewed hundreds of thousands of times before Facebook pulled them. It appears that Stephens wanted to draw attention to himself as he dealt with personal problems. Shooting someone in anonymity would be another murder among hundreds every day. But a murder on Facebook Live, that put Stephens’ face all over the world.

That’s why live social media has become more frequently used by young people to broadcast suicide. Drawing more attention to their deaths has a greater impact on the people they blame for their suffering.

I anticipated this trend in my novel Famous After Death, where Miami teenagers commit murders in creative ways and post them online. In my story, most of these murders were recorded and posted soon after without the teens identifying themselves, but several of the crimes occur online in real time - similar to Facebook Live.

The question for Facebook, one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world, is what it’s prepared to do about it. After Godwin was murdered, CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to improve the monitoring of videos on Facebook Live. Right now the company depends on users reporting questionable content. It’s working on artificial intelligence, but that could be years away.

Until a better system is in place and Facebook Live can’t be effectively policed, Zuckerberg should consider taking it down. The world will survive without Facebook Live, and so will the company. It’s a nice feature, but it’s not a crucial part of the website.

What can’t be replaced is the lives of people like Godwin.

Of course, Facebook makes plenty of money off these videos. There are more than 8 billion daily views of Facebook videos. Mobile video advertising is a multi-billion dollar market. So there are financial incentives for Facebook not to back down.

This isn’t only a Facebook problem. Platforms like YouTube, Periscope and Snapchat have been used to promote violence. In some cases, terrorist groups have posted propaganda videos on social media that went unchecked for months. This issue has caused YouTube to pull paid advertising from certain categories of videos, since advertisers didn’t want to run the risk that their ads would run alongside offensive videos.

Facebook Live has the potential to be a great platform. I wish politicians would broadcast all their meetings live on social media instead of striking backroom deals.

But until Zuckerberg and Co. can police it, one murder is too many.

A new wave of viral violence begins with brutality on live stream

As social media evolves to become more instantaneous than ever, viral violence has once again hijacked the ride.

Why wait five seconds to post a video of your life? Services like Facebook Live and Periscope provide a real-time look at what’s in front of your face. With instant audience metrics and feedback, they make life like a mini TV station. What more can the host do in that moment to grow an audience and go viral?

Four teenagers in Chicago found a way to juice their Facebook Live viewership past 15,000. They kidnapped a mental disabled teenager they went to high school with, tied him up, mercilessly beat him, cut his scalp with a knife, and taunted him with racial insults. The victim was white and the attackers were black, so this might be classified as a hate crime.

The video went on for 30 minutes on one of the suspect’s Facebook Live page, with viewership building as the seconds tick by. Facebook removed the video after the four suspects were arrested.

This story has some strange parallels to my novel Famous After Death. In my story, the teenagers are also abusing victims for the gratification of an online audience. However, they mostly posted the videos after the fact, using public wifi and a device that couldn’t be traced directly to them, and they didn’t put their faces in the video. When there is an attack in my book that is filmed live on the internet, it’s the victim’s camera phone being used for the live broadcast, not the attacker’s phone. They don’t want to be caught!


With these suspects in Chicago, they acted with zero regard for evading capture. Not only did one suspect post this on a Facebook profile using a personal device, they all appeared in the video. You know, just to make sure there’s no doubt. Yet, like the characters in my novel, there was a pack mentality. Get a bunch of people together with bad intentions and a camera, and the watch their aggression multiply.

Were these teenagers so proud that they could beat the poor guy that they wanted to show the world?

Here’s the other thing that gets me. Did any one of the Facebook Live viewers bother calling the police?

Violence can’t go viral unless an audience supports it.