Beauty Pill ~ Just in Time for March
I’ve been looking forward to March, 2019 for the last eighteen months, because that’s about how long I figured a story like Beauty Pill would take. I didn’t think a contemporary novel would require much world building – now is already here, isn’t it? – but all the pieces have to be put in place for the reader to find it believable, and I wanted to believe it too.
“This story has everything,” the narrator says in her best Pussy Riot accent. “It has corruption, politics, faux science, and sex. It plucks at the deepest hearts of women in Southern Oregon.”
I’ve been writing novels since the last millennium, and got serious about it in 2010. Three of my books are science fiction: Halcyon Dreamworlds, Savage Genesis Book One, and Next History. I also wrote an amateur sleuth mystery, Angle of Attack, which is closest in style to Beauty Pill. I have another novel nearing completion. It’s sci-fi, The Hidden Perils of Suicide. That story examines issues around immortality, a post-biological future, and a robot AI that takes over the world. You can find more on these stories at Baldwin-Books.Com.
Beauty Pill is not from my science fiction mindset. I made sure the title was no magical promise, and to center it in the here and now, I gave the lead character a serious dilemma: she fears what happens after love. The story became the character study of a damaged protagonist, Cathy, and why she’s drawn to the promise of everlasting beauty from a pill. It’s about how she handles the times in her life when she is fooled.
Mostly the book is aimed at the cruelest fiction perpetrated on American women: personal beauty as a measure of human worth.
In the end, I really liked Cathy and Ferg. I was sorry to say goodbye. I wish them well, and hope you feel the same.
The Girl Who Hated Love
A hard-luck Oregon TV weather girl takes a desperate shot at redemption when she joins the clinical trial for a miracle drug. The glitzy brochure is a sales pitch, but her call reaches a university grad student with a secret agenda.
“This story has everything,” the narrator says in her best Pussy Riot accent. “It has corruption, politics, faux science, and sex. It plucks at the deepest hearts of women in Southern Oregon.”
Having a baby was too terrible a blow for Mother. How could the universe be so unkind?
So Mother invented her daughter’s surname from a time when she liked Scotch whisky, and wrote that fictitious name in the ‘father’ box on the birth certificate. She used the name of her favorite Scotch. Macallan.
Locked in a psychological cage match with her narcissist mother, Cathy Macallan’s only solace is a cameraman at the station, who questions the “high” she gets from the trial drug.
Suspicious, Cathy lures the drug trial’s admin into a live TV interview where all the chips are down. She needs to know if Beauty Pill is real.
Halcyon Dreamworlds">Halcyon Dreamworlds
Amid gritty realities of 2029 Amerika, the class war between the elite rich and the masses rises to blinding rage. This battle is most intense within the avatar universe, Halcyon Dreamworlds.
The Dreamworlds is a permissive online rave with the morals of a beer commercial… where your avatar can mosh with millions of fellow addicts in secret lives of uncaring lust.
But when an elite mastermind corrupts your private heaven with an electronic mind-meld wired to your neocortex, you’ll be doing exactly as he tells you… in real life. And as you fritter away each passing nanosecond, your next instruction could be: go die.
MMORPG, LITRPG, or virtual reality? For you Dreamworlds ego-slaves, there’s nothing virtual about it.
Reviews of Next History
Recent reviews…
What a Find – Absolutely AWESOME book!
I was looking for escape fiction, and while the book provided that, it is so much more. It made me think, and it is changing my life. If you want to know the deepest secrets of the universe, this book won’t spoon feed you, but will give you lots of terrific hints. Look over there! Consider this! What would you choose? And last, best, what will I choose?
Most important for me in a book of fiction is the characters. They have to be real people, and they have to make me care about them. The author created characters different than any I’ve seen anywhere, and many of them are folks I want to know better. (Of course, some of them are bad guys I want to squish between my thumb and forefinger.) Now I need to find another book by Lee Baldwin!
~ Maggie Uh-O, on Amazon
A Unique Voice in Story Telling.
Next History is humorous, a cliff hanger, a marvelous love story, and perfectly executed.
I usually dislike reviews comparing authors but Sheri Tepper comes to mind. Not in style but in subject matter and Mr. Baldwin’s heartfull take on subjects usually shied away from by those less brave.
~ Ernie Smitty (Orygun), on Amazon
Thank you for hope…
The reading of this book reinforced beliefs I have held for some time. Thank you for hope. I loved the book…~ Dragonviolet, on Amazon
A struggle between the divine feminine and the patriarchy…
…a surprising theme for a science fiction novel.
The descriptions of the “dreamtime” are lyrical and sensuously enjoyable, sometimes funny. The whole world is hallucinating… beautifully written with insight and subtelty. The action is fast and totally engaging.
Tharcia is a lovable character, her struggle is heartbreaking…
~ Karuna Chapman on Amazon
Underneath Next History
What Is Next History Made Of?
Next History, what’s it about? Alternative history, alternative futures, contemporary fantasy, epic science fiction… how would you categorize Next History? The narrative takes on themes around the nature of reality, of God and the Devil, of supernatural beings we sometimes understand as angels, and drives us face to face with the power humans are now developing from emerging consciousness.
Next History is based on contemporary philosophy and spirituality, such as from Deepak Chopra, Eben Alexander, Jack Kornfield, Caroline Myss, Ervin Lazlo, Alan Watts, Andrew Weil, Marianne Williamson and others.
I got the idea for Next History from a single question. What if we received a clear and accurate history of our beginnings, a history not manipulated by political ambition or belief? This led me to rewrite the story of the mythical Lilith into a tale that could provide hope. After all, do we actually know the truth? Do we?
What a Find – Absolutely AWESOME book!
I was looking for escape fiction, and while the book provided that, it is so much more. It made me think, and it is changing my life. If you want to know the deepest secrets of the universe, this book won’t spoon feed you, but will give you lots of terrific hints. Look over there! Consider this! What would you choose? And last, best, what will I choose?
Most important for me in a book of fiction is the characters. They have to be real people, and they have to make me care about them. The author created characters different than any I’ve seen anywhere, and many of them are folks I want to know better. (Of course, some of them are bad guys I want to squish between my thumb and forefinger.) Now I need to find another book by Lee Baldwin!
~ Maggie Uh-O, on Amazon
A Unique Voice in Story Telling.
Next History is humorous, a cliff hanger, a marvelous love story, and perfectly executed.
I usually dislike reviews comparing authors but Sheri Tepper comes to mind. Not in style but in subject matter and Mr. Baldwin’s heartfull take on subjects usually shied away from by those less brave.
~ Ernie Smitty (Orygun), on Amazon
Thank you for hope…
The reading of this book reinforced beliefs I have held for some time. Thank you for hope. I loved the book…~ Dragonviolet, on Amazon
Beneath it all…
is a struggle between the divine feminine and the patriarchy, a surprising theme for a science fiction novel.The descriptions of the “dreamtime” are lyrical and sensuously enjoyable, sometimes funny. The whole world is hallucinating…. beautifully written with insight and subtelty. The action is fast and totally engaging.
Tharcia is a lovable character, her struggle is heartbreaking…
~ Karuna Chapman on Amazon
Why Next History?
Why Have a Book Called Next History?
A single question drove me to write Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow.
What if we found a completely accurate history of our beginnings, an unbiased record that was not passed down verbally, not reimagined in every telling?
I started looking at creation myths of many cultures, located the first feminine archetype, and found scholarly input that became an energy source for every writer’s favorite question: What If?
The answers created turmoil. They pushed some of the characters toward God. Some were driven in desperate search for a demon or an angel that could redeem them. The young female protagonist is prepared to settle for death, to throw away all her money for a single chance to see her mother again. She is driven, yet too realistic to think a Devil could possibly exist. And she laughs at the idea of a bargain with God.
One thing I learned in the writing, it is the intensity of a character’s quest, not what is it, that makes the story move.
Along the way I saw an important flaw in the history and mythology around the archetypal Lilith, the first female created in Babylonian and Hebrew mythology. Did I use that? Oh yes I did.
Next History weaves big-iron predictive knowledge, a plugged-in world population, Sumerian creation myth, and a demonic presence with a hip sensibility to launch us beyond the hyperdata age toward a shifting and dangerous event horizon.
The story is a head-changing whirl toward a future world so outrageous, the survivors
will be forced to adapt, or die.
Jacket Blurb
Exquisite and resourceful Tharcia, at risk in a world where
instinctive drives have been unleashed, seeks her mother for
a final throwdown.
Her only difficulty is that Mom is dead.
Through her peculiar mix of technology and magic, Tharcia ensnares
a strange entity in a geometric prison. It is not her mother.
When Tharcia unearths an enchanting oracle from her deepest being,
her life, and the future of humanity, is about to be reprogrammed.
Will there be a collective, agonizing dive into chaos and depravity?
Will Tharcia reveal humanity’s true purpose?
Or, will nothing change at all, except for the dark fate
of one luckless girl?
Find out for yourself. I felt in the end that I had a story worth telling. It brings up the most important question humans ever face: Who am I and how do I matter to the universe? The answer belongs to you.
Next History and Pope Benedict
Matthew Fox on Benedict’s Papal Legacy and why it makes Next History relevant
Recently, NPR’s Amy Goodman interviewed excommunicated priest and author Matthew Fox on the legacy of Pope Benedict for the Catholic Church. Some of Fox’s remarks go to the heart of why I wrote Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow, why I saw an important flaw in the history and mythology around womankind, and the archetypal Lilith, the first female created by God in Babylonian and Hebrew mythology.
Here’s Fox on why he was excommunicated:
“Number one was that I was a feminist theologian, he said. I didn’t know that was a heresy. Number two, I called God ‘Mother.’ Well, I proved that all kinds of medieval mystics called God ‘Mother,’ and so does the Bible, although not often enough.
“Number three, I prefer ‘original blessing’ to ‘original sin.’ Jesus never heard of it; no Jews ever heard of it. And they accused me of not condemning homosexuals, which of course I do not.
“They’re really Rorschach tests about what really freaks out the Vatican. And, of course, above all, it’s women and sex. And that is the agenda. Whenever there’s fundamentalism and fascism, it’s about control. That’s why the Vatican, the Taliban and Pat Robertson have this in common: They’re all freaked out by the possibility of bringing the divine feminine back, and with it, of course, the equal rights of women.”
Fox’s ‘divine feminine’ remark resonated with me, because the construction of Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow originated with a single question: What would it be like if we discovered a crystal clear record of our creation times, historically accurate and not mythologized or distorted by politics? I discovered that the Akashic Record could fill that need. How could humans find out about the Record in large numbers? The whales could deliver it.
The Whales? Oh yes, I forgot, it’s science fiction.
OK suppose all that stuff. What would we find out? Among other things, we might discover that the goddess feminine in the form of the mythical Lilith has been smeared and degraded since about 2300 BCE, beginning with the stories the Levite priests told about her.
Prior to that Lilith was revered for hundreds of thousands of years as the source of abundance, the font of human life, health, healing and wisdom. My pet theory is that some males cannot live with the jealousy.
Next History in the end is the story of how Lilith comes to be alive on Earth again, how women the world over rise in waking consciousness of the feminine divine and come to be seen as the equals of men in every way. Equals, not superiors, it’s how women roll. Too bad it has to be science fiction, but this is a small seed I wanted to plant for whoever reads the book.