Dwight Advances to Top 100.................. How you can help.

2009-04-19T22:01:00.001-07:00

On April 15th, I learned that my novel THE PROSPECT OF MY ARRIVAL has advanced to the Top 100 novels in the Amazon contest this year! So we're coming down to the home stretch. I also got an excellent review from Publishers Weekly, which is the very first review of the complete novel in its 2009 form. So I'm happy that the entire book worked for the reviewer -- from beginning to end. See the review below:

From Publishers Weekly

In the fascinating and engaging near-future world of this novel, scientist Trish Mesmer is pioneering a project that will allow recently-conceived fetuses to experience the real world and decide if they want to be born. The first subject of the Pre-Born Project (and the book’s narrator) is named Prospect, and he’s implanted with a chip called a CyberSavant while in the womb that provides him with basic language skills and information about society. His consciousness is then implanted in a human body, and he’s sent out into the world to spend time with Referrals, people chosen to give him a sense of what the world is like. As he meets these people (who include his actual parents, an orphan, a conservative businessman who opposes the entire Pre-Born program, and others), he learns about romance, sex, and death, and discovers secrets about his future family, Trish, and his assorted Referrals. Prospect’s strong, innocent voice carries the novel as it ranges from touching to satirical in its exploration of the nature of humanity.

HOW YOU CAN HELP (A STRATEGY FOR WINNING)

Now is the time to read, rate and review my excerpt from my novel!
After you've read the excerpt, write a paragraph about what you thought about my book. Ratings of 4 and 5 stars have most weight. Keep a copy of your review, because if I make it to the Top 3 on May 15th -- Amazon will erase all the reviews and zero everything out. So you can repost your review at that time. The public vote is what determines which of the Top 3 will win the book deal with Penguin and $25,000.

Last year I came inches from winning. This time, I'd like to take the prize home! It's all in your hands. Currently I have about 45 reviews. If I could get 100 reviews per week, that would give me an edge. I think the winner last year had about 300 reviews/votes. You could help kick off a viable writing career for me! Thanks for your support. Hope you enjoy my excerpt. (You can either click on the link below to access the excerpt, or you can scroll down in this blog and you'll see the whole excerpt is included. If you read it in the blog, then go to this Amazon link to write your review. Scroll down on the Amazon page for Prospect to CUSTOMER REVIEWS. In the right margin is the button CREATE YOUR OWN REVIEW.) Thanks again for your support. A big thanks to fellow writers/supporters of my book at ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards) and at Authonomy.com. Thanks also for the sense of writers community you create, and for all the diverse and exciting novels you have written.

Prospect of My Arrival
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UG3D2A

Dwight

THIS IS THE EXCERPT TO BE REVIEWED & RATED

2009-03-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Read the excerpt, then go to the contest site to write your brief review comments and rate it. You don't have to write more than a good paragraph.

If I'm lucky enough to make it again to the Top 3, I'll ask you to vote for me one last time to win the book deal. So it's a good idea to keep a copy of your review on your computer.

Thanks,
Dwight

EXCERPT from Prospect

1. About My Name

I have been given the name Prospect because people have high hopes for me. I have high hopes for myself too, but right now I'm just staring out the windows of Trevor Gruehling's penthouse suite, watching the steady sweep of headlights across Lake Shore Drive. I must say, it's pretty high up here on the 56th floor. But a high view and a high hope are two different things. Don't ask me how. Don't force me to compare and contrast. I can't do it right now. I'm too worn out from a great night of dancing at Hallucination. Upstairs, Trevor and Kitty have jumped into the shower of the master bathroom. I jump into the shower downstairs because I need to remove the scent of smoke and alcohol that clings to my skin.

A chrome spiral staircase connects the main floor to the upper one. It reminds me of a big strand of DNA. Once I'm out of the shower, I feel new. I open a window. The gentle hush of traffic is surprisingly soothing. It is like putting a seashell to my ear but instead of hearing an ocean -- I hear a city and all its voices.

I hear a door swing open. "Prospect, you rat bastard!" shouts a voice from the floor above. "Are you stealing stuff down there? I've got security cams everywhere." He laughs.

"Why would I do that, Trevor? All I have to do is ask nicely and I'm sure you'll just give me things."

"Yeah, right," he says.

I sit on the endless leather sofa in Trevor's sunken living room. The sofa encircles the room. From just about anywhere you sit, you can watch the three huge plasma TV screens flicker with activity.

On the first TV screen, women on the Home Shopping Channel are modeling an ugly dress at an attractive price…and business is booming. 23,762 SOLD! The two women, identical twins, wear the same dress but in two different colors: chocolate mousse and butterscotch.

On the second screen, a man in uniform shouts words in another language as he raises a large silver sword in the air. Below him, a blindfolded man kneels on the ground. The young man pleads in English: “I’m a father! I’m a husband! I’m human…like you!” He lists all the things he is, as if the list will protect him. It doesn’t. The uniformed man swings the sword and slices off the man’s head in one solid blow. The head falls to the ground like a ripe piece of fruit. The rest of the body falls a few moments later.

But I have to say it is the third screen that fascinates me the most. For it is on this screen that I witness the delicate growth of a human fetus. And then the baby is born and her body ripens into a healthy teenager with the hopeful beginnings of breasts. A cell phone floats down gently into her hand like a new appendage. Through the miracle of time-lapse photography -- I now see her body wrinkling, her brunette hair going undeniably gray, her spine curling into a question mark. And then she is dead. A thousand rose petals rain down upon her. It is so sad, I have to turn all the TVs off just to stop thinking about it.
*
I think back to what Trevor had told me in the car as we drove away from the nightclub. How enraged he was the first time he first heard about the Pre-Born Project. The notion of scientists again playing God, allowing an embryo to decide its own destiny. That was sacrilege. Not that Trevor was a church-going man. The thought of a pre-born looking at the world for the first time with an infinite sense of wonder -- this stirred in Trevor a curious mix of jealousy and longing.

I told him that I was sorry he'd lost his sense of wonder (he'd had it surgically removed!), and that if there was anything I could do to make up for his loss -- I'd consider it. And that's when Trevor mentioned the one thing that I could do.

"Prospect, my man, I'd like you to seriously consider quitting the Pre-Born Project," he said.

"Why?"

"Man does not have the right to control the destiny of future generations. Translation: Stop fucking with God's perfect plan."

“I'm not trying to -- do anything to anyone's plan," I told him. " I'm just trying to do the right thing.

Trevor laughed at me. ”God has already DONE the right thing…by inviting you into this world. Who the frig are you to turn down his invitation?”

“Trevor, what would you do if I told you that I’d already made up my mind? That I plan to continue with the project?” I studied his face, but it went blank.

“Then…my pre-born friend…I’d have to kill you.” And Trevor smiled a smile that made him look both happy and not happy at the same time.

*

But even now as I stand at the window watching cars zoom along the Drive, I know my answer. I can't withdraw from the Pre-Born Project. I'm too far into it to walk away now. I'm too, what's the word...invested. My thoughts are interrupted by a voice. "Prospect, aren't you coming to bed? Kitty and I want to tuck you in." I hear more giggling upstairs. Like the giggling of small children.

"I'll be up in a minute." I go to my knapsack and retrieve my toothbrush and paste. I don't mean to be rude by keeping my host waiting. As I brush my teeth, I wonder why my presence is being requested. The answer lies at the top of that spiral staircase. I carefully climb the steps, moving toward where the giggling is coming from. I pause for a moment on the stairs.

"Well don't stop now, Prospect, your public awaits you," he says. "Tomorrow, we'll talk about politics and art and where society is headed. But tonight – well, there's a lotta love in the room tonight."

There's that word peeking out at me again. Love. "I don't feel anything," I reply to Trevor.

"Are you sure?" he says. "Love is very magical. I'm definitely feeling something." And now the two of them are laughing hard, like they are tickling each other. Kitty lets out a yelp.

*

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The real story begins earlier than this. Work before pleasure -- isn't what they say? After all, before man invented sex, he invented the five-day work week. And before there was a Trevor, there was a Trish.

2. Trish Mesmer

“I was troubled by the rise in cultural vulgarity: mean-spiritedness, violence, really bad taste. Where is it all coming from and when will it end? I wondered if a baby was born by her own choice rather than by the choice of others…would such a baby grow up to be a happier adult?
Would such willful intention lead to a happier, more well-adjusted, society?"

-- Trish Mesmer, scientist
Application to the MacArthur Foundation
2/1/2025

We gather in a blinding white room accented only by a single orange tulip that rises like a flame from its vase. A large pitcher of iced tea and a bowl of lemon wedges rest on a table. We are in a special ward of Infinity Medical Center in Chicago off-limits to the public. But inside, there are just the three of us: one me and two she’s. One woman lies in bed sleeping like a queen, propped up by pillows. The other woman in a crisp white lab coat guides me gently into the room. She sits me down on the bed.

"Hello, Prospect," whispers the woman in white. "I'm pleased to meet you. My name is Trish Mesmer. I'll be your facilitator for this beautiful experiment." She shakes my hand. "The year is 2025, a great year to be alive." Trish has reddish blonde which she wears in a short style with bangs that fall softly about her face. It draws you into her kind blue eyes. She cradles a clipboard in her arm. She could be a kindergarten teacher. "And this lovely woman resting here…well, she's your mother." The woman who is my mother is smiles at me. She has almond-shaped eyes and she blinks them at me as if to say hello. I blink back at her.

Trish gently pours iced tea into two glasses. As the tea pours, almost in slow motion, the words pour from Trish also. "My father was a science teacher. I adored him. Ever since I saw him make a hard-boiled egg disappear into a Coke bottle -- science experiments have intrigued me." She laughs a high-pitched laugh like the ringing of a bell. "These days, scientists are making amazing discoveries, Prospect." Her eyes now fill with water...that's how much feeling she's feeling. "So I devised an experiment of my own. And you, Prospect, are a very important part of that." Again the bell-like laugh.

I drink my iced tea as my facilitator goes on. It's sweet and cool. I like it very much. Trish says I will have the chance to meet a range of people from all walks of life…to help me make up my mind. These people (she calls them “Referrals”) will help me get a taste of the world. By the end of the experiment, I'll either choose to be born -- or I'll choose to be returned to the gene pool. No hard feelings.

“Trish, if I return gene pool…does that mean I’ll never be born? That I’ve given up my chance forever?”

“That’s a great question, Prospect.” Now Trish scribbles something onto her clipboard. I try to read what she’s written but she holds the board at an angle away from me. “To be honest, science isn’t sure on that one. We think it means you go back into the pool of possibilities. One of those possibilities is that you can be born at another time. But this is still uncharted territory.”

Trish's face looks calm so it makes me feel calm. I look at the door. I sense that once this conversation ends, my day in the world will begin and I will walk out that door and I’m not sure what will happen after that. She scribbles again on her clipboard.

“If I haven’t been born yet, how is it that I can walk and talk? How is it that I can think these thoughts and feel these feelings? And whose body am I in and where did it come from?” Now I have set off a storm of scribbling. Trish’s hands cannot move fast enough to capture whatever it is she is trying to capture. She seems delighted.

“Again, excellent questions,” she says. “I’ll make you a deal. You can ask whatever questions you want to…but I’ll only answer the ones I think will be useful to you. How is that?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Absolutely not.” She laughs. I laugh too because Trish is being so honest.

“Now to answer your question ...there’s a reason you can speak so well and do all those different things. We’ve inserted a powerful microchip in you called a CyberSavant. While you were in your mother’s womb, it empowered you with the gift of language. It downloaded some basic starter information into your brain; played little movies in your head, showing you the highlights of human history, basic customs, where to get a really good cup of coffee. But it's not that same as experiencing things firsthand. It's the reason that people will think you’re both innocent and well-informed at the same time. There are gaps in your knowledge. Watch out for those gaps. They can get you in trouble…” Something something, whatever whatever. And after a while, I can’t really absorb any more information. I tell Trish that I need to take a nap. And I close my eyes and she is gone.

When I wake, there is a note on the table for me to come see Dr. Mesmer in her office. The doctor’s office is full of interesting things to look at. There is a clear plastic model of a pregnant woman that lets you see the little baby growing inside her. In one corner of the room stands a flip chart sketched in with my Referral schedule, the start dates and end dates marked in fluorescent colors. A few laptops shimmer with text and colorful pie charts on a coffee table.

“Hope you had a good rest,” she says.

“Yes, thank you.” She pours me a cup of hot coffee with cream and sugar.

"Have some coffee." I do. It’s delicious.

"Now just because a computer chip was implanted in you -- that doesn't really make you a genius," says my facilitator. "At the end of the day, Prospect -- you're basically book-smart and experience-stupid. You know a little bit about a lot of things…and not a whole lot about anything." Her blue eyes are kind, but they are also very serious. She wants me to pay attention.

"Can you give me an example?"

"That cup of coffee in your hand," she starts. "It's good isn't it? But you didn’t know until a few moments ago that you'd like it. Until you experienced it yourself. Do you follow me?"

"Yes. You've made me thirsty for more coffee!"

"No," Trish frowns. "The point is, Prospect, you must go out and get some experience under your belt. Then come back and we'll have something to talk about. Find something -- or someone -- you can love. Something that will love you back. Because without it, you will starve in this world. You will shrivel up and die faster than if a bullet had struck you down." And with that Trish vanishes into the hospital hallway without even looking back. Not even a tiny glance. Her whole body moves with purpose toward the next important moment ahead of her. Like a magnet is pulling her.

I jot a note to myself on a piece of paper: FIND SOMETHING I CAN LOVE. I fold the paper again and again till it is small and hard like a stone. I put it deep into my pocket where it falls past candy wrappers and rubber bands. But I can't waste another minute wondering what those five words mean. I have to be on my way…for now something is pulling me too.

*

I'm going outside. I have never been outside before. I turn the doorknob and it opens.
Wandering around the first floor, I see many people waiting in the waiting area. But it is the gift shop that pulls me toward it with its bright lights and rich aromas. Inside, there are so many sweet-smelling flowers and candies and "Get Well" balloons to choose from. But the thing
I like is how the paperweight feels in my hand. Solid. If I ever get lost, I can show it to the bus driver and he will know how to bring me home. I buy the paperweight and the lady puts it in a nice plastic bag. The bag is clear so everyone can see what I have purchased and want to buy one for themselves.

Moving through the hallway I turn and see a man in his thirties looking back at me. The man is none other than myself. I am a mixture of races, though I couldn't begin to tell you which ones. I am more brown than white. My eyes are almond-shaped like my mother's. A stylish goatee on my chin only adds to my dapper look. And on my head, there is a navy blue baseball cap which bears the single word EVOLVE. “Hello,” I say to the fellow in the mirror. And the man in the mirror says “Hello” back to me.

At the main entrance, people are coming and going. They move at different speeds. A young woman pushes on the metal handle of the door as she walks through it. I push too, and out I go also. It is bright and sunny. As I make my way down the street, I try to look like everyone else. Like I have been walking down sunny streets all my life.

The bus stop is right at the corner where Trish said it would be. As I wait at the bus stop, I pull out the letter she has written to me.

Dear Prospect,
Your first Referral is none other than your mother…Rebecca Little-Boulanget (pronounced boo lan JAY). Like many Americans these days, she is multi-racial -- of Japanese and African ancestry. There are still uni-racial people in this country, but ironically they now have become the new minority.

I should share with you that you are not the first child in the Boulanget family. They had a daughter once named Joyce who ran away from home and was never seen again. If she’s still alive today, she hasn’t made any attempt to contact your parents. She was a difficult child. The last time they saw their daughter, she was 13. An unlucky number, any way you slice it.
Trish

I have a sister. Such big news for such a short note. I read the note over and over. Finally I fish my cell phone out of my pocket and dial. “Trish,” I say into the phone. “I just read your note. If I have a sister -- I want to meet her face-to-face. Call me.“

3. A Family Tree To Climb

Just as my bus arrives, my cell phone rings. I climb onboard and take a seat near a window. I flip open my phone. “Hello, Prospect,” says the voice on the phone. "How are you today?"

“I'm on a bus!"

“Great. So you want to know more about your sister Joyce. Maybe when your first Referral is complete, we can talk more about her. Would that be all right?” she asks.

"I just want to know why she ran away. I just want to know what happened to her."

She sighs. "We'd all like to know the answers to those questions. But, trust me, this a bigger subject than we can cover by phone. We'll talk afterwards. I hope you enjoy your first Referral." And she hangs up. Just like that. If my sister is alive, I wonder why she hasn't introduced herself and why hasn't my mother mentioned her to me.

My mother. She loves me I think. It is her job. The truth is -- it's easy to love a baby who hasn't been born; it hasn't made any big mistakes yet. Give the kid some time. Still, it's a nice feeling to have a mother, a family. To come from something. A family tree to climb. To have people who are looking forward to your arrival. But as important as it is to come from a good place — it's equally important to have a nice destination. I know that just beyond my mother's loving touch...just outside Infinity Medical Center...is a world. I've seen it on TV, the one in my head. Something about what I see -- it makes me shiver. I try to shut it off, but I can't. It's always there. It won't go away.

The world.

Suddenly I realize I have not been paying attention to where I was going. I don't know where I am. I am scared. I call Trish. "I'm lost, Trish. Can you help me?"

"Prospect, please don’t take this the wrong way, but your phone is only to be used for emergencies. If you keep calling me, you won't be in the present moment. The truth is: I can help you. But it's better if I don't," she says. "Being lost is a natural part of life. Did you know that the average adult spends one third of his or her life being lost?” She lets out a laugh. She is deeply tickled. “If I told you where you were, I'd be denying you the pleasure of finding your way." Again with the laugh.

Though we are talking on the phone, I picture Trish's mouths moving, her red lips opening and closing. Like little red gates. When I glance out the bus window, all the houses and streets blur together. "Delaware is next," the driver announces over the speakers. "Transfer here for the purple line." But Delaware is not the street I want. This world is not the world I want. Trish's father was a scientist who did magic tricks with glass bottles. But I am on a bus hurtling toward nowhere. It doesn't seem fair.

Maybe this being born idea isn't such a hot idea after all. Trish speaks again. "Now if you continue to call on your cell phone -- I'm going to have to screen your calls and let them go to voice mail." Her voice sounds a million miles away. "Now go out and have a great day!" I hear her cell phone snap shut. Like a door closing. Like an egg disappearing into a bottle.

*

I ask the bus driver for help and, to my surprise, he gives it to me. He drops me off very close to the home of my first Referral. When I come to my parents' address, I press the doorbell. A hand pushes back the café curtains on the door. "Roberto, he's here!" says a voice in the house.
The door opens and there is my mother. She is a smart woman. I can see that in her eyes. She wears a simple dress with polka dots of many colors. She stands there in the doorway looking at me like I am a present she has just unwrapped. The handsome man with caramel-colored skin standing next to her is my father. "Hey, Mr. Man," he says. We shake hands. "We've been expecting you." He smiles.

"Yes, I'm sure you have," I say. And I think I just made a little joke, because father laughs and I laugh with him.

"I'll let the two of you get to know each other better and do your Referral business," says my father. "I'm what they call…a peripheral Referral. But once you get to know me, I think you'll see there is nothing peripheral about me." And off he goes.

My mother leans close to me. "Prospect, we would love love love for you to be born. But please keep in mind -- that you aren't part of the family yet. Do you understand?" I nod.
The woman who would be my mother smiles at me. She isn't being rude; she is only trying to be clear. "Let me show you to your room. You can take a nap after your long bus ride," she says. "Then you can come down and I'll make a snack for you. How does that sound?"

"Great," I say. Because that’s exactly the way it sounds. Great.

4. She's Nobody Now

We walk up the stairs of my parents' house. The walls are filled with pictures of my mother and father at various times in their lives. Some are from before they met, mother explains. Some are from their wedding day. I see faded pictures of what looks like my parents as babies themselves. One particular picture strikes me. It's not a photo, but a painting. My mother, my father, and a girl. "Who is that girl?" I ask.

"Oh!" My mother seems surprised. "I thought your father took that picture down. She was just a girl. A girl in the neighborhood." Mother lifts the heavy picture from the wall and places it in a corner of the room. "She's nobody now."

"I see," I say but I really don't see.

"This is your room here," says my mother. "Make yourself at home. Okay?"

"Okay." My mother chimes in: "If you need anything…if you want to talk to us, if you want to be left alone...if you're too cold, if you're not cold enough. Anything at all…we're right downstairs in the living room watching TV," my mother says. She pulls down the window shade. And what a room it is. The walls are wallpapered with a scene of an amusement park dominated by a huge Ferris wheel. When she flips off the light switch and closes the door, something magical happens. The ceiling light goes off, but at the same time the huge Ferris wheel which dominates the amusement park on my wall -- lights up. Little lights carefully imbedded into the wall form a hoop of white light, a halo. And if I lie in bed and tilt my head just so -- I can almost picture myself in one of the tiny cars on the Ferris wheel…rising, rising. Through my door, I can hear my parents chatting in the living room. A program is on TV in the background.

*

I am standing on the edge of an enchanted forest. Trees tower over me. They whisper secrets to each other. It is night. A car moves along a road, its headlights searching, shimmering, in the dark. “She was only 13,” says a voice from somewhere deep in the forest. I walk into the woods toward where the voice is coming from. “An unlucky number. Any way you slice it,” the voice continues. Finally I come to a clearing and see a bed. My parents lie in bed talking. Dead leaves fall over them. I'm confused. What is their bed doing in the forest?

“We weren’t in our right minds,” says my father.

“She was just a teenager, Roberto,” says my mother. “She had barely arrived in this world.”

“Where do you think she is now?”

“Maybe she’s back,” says my mother.

“Back where?”

“To wherever she came from.”

“She came from us, Rebecca.”

“No, you know what I mean. Maybe she returned to the elements. Everybody recycles these days. Donates their bodies and souls to science.” From the road, I hear a car turn off its motor. The bed in which my parents had been lying has suddenly disappeared. There are just leaves scattered on the ground.

And now a car with the shimmering headlights rolls to a stop at the edge of the forest. A car door swings open and out steps my mother! “Get out of the car, Joyce,” she says sternly to a shadowy figure in the back seat, but no one emerges.

“Make me,” says a tough girl’s voice. Then the girl's head peeks out of the car. She spits in my mother’s face. My mother reaches into the back seat and yanks the girl out. The girl is dressed for the summer in a too-short dress.

My mother looks at her with sadness in her face. “This is as far as we go together as a family. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“We were never a real family. We were a faux family. We were majorly fucked up.”

And now my father emerges from the car. “We gave it our best shot, Joyce,” he says. “I’m sorry you can’t see that. You’re too old to abort; too young to join the marines.”

“This is child endangerment. I saw it on Nightline. When I find my way back, I’m going straight to the police.” She is a clenched fist of a girl. If there is a tender heart inside her, she keeps it well-hidden.

“No you’re not,” says my mother with confidence.

“What makes you think I’m not going tell the world how you abused me?”

“Give me your cell phone, Joyce.”

My father holds her down as my mother empties the girl’s pockets. Her cell phone, her wallet, her Hello Kitty coin purse. And off the girl walks into the dark, starless night...wearing yellow flip-flops on her feet. Everything fades slowly to black.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” says a voice in the forest. I recognize it as my father’s voice. He is in bed again in the forest. My parents lie side by side, staring up at the blinding moon. Who could sleep with such a nightlight as that?

“You mean the part about how we drugged her and suffocated her?” asks my mother.
“Yes, that part.”

“We aren’t monsters, are we, Roberto?”

“We aren’t social workers either.”

“That child, that anti-child – it did not come from us, Roberto. I would not have killed something that came from us.” And now a breeze shakes the branches of the trees above them, burying my parents once again in a million leaves.

*

When I open my eyes, I see I am lying in my bed. The Ferris wheel on the wall glows in the dark. I sneak downstairs toward the living room. My parents are watching TV in the living room, deep in conversation.

But when I enter the living room -- they stop talking, and I haven't started talking, and so there is this funny silence. And so the TV talks for us. The TV fills in the blanks that we can't fill in for ourselves. And for a moment, everything in this house almost seems normal. Almost, but not quite.

# # #

NOTE: AFTER READING THIS EXCERPT, REMEMBER TO CLICK THIS LINK TO WRITE YOUR REVIEW AND VOTE. THANKS.

2009 Amazon Novel Contest

Dwight Advances to Top 100.................. How you can help.

THIS IS THE EXCERPT TO BE REVIEWED & RATED

Second Time's the Charm