Today I am delighted to start the new year by welcoming not one but two authors to the blog: Robert Lanza and Nancy Kress. They have co-written Observer, which is published on January 10th. Before we meet them, I thought you might be interested to read some praise for the book which is available ahead of publication! I think it will whet your appetite to find out more.
"Nancy
Kress is one of the greatest living science fiction writers, and her
particular talent for telling stories about people on the cutting edge
of science tipping into something new and marvelous is perfectly suited
to the ideas that have come to Robert Lanza in the course of his groundbreaking scientific research. Together they've written a startling, fascinating novel."
―Kim Stanley Robinson, New York Times bestselling author
"Real science and limitless imagination combine in a thrilling story you won't soon forget."
―Robin Cook, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Lanza,
a pioneer in the fields of stem-cell and cloning science, makes his
mind-blowing theory of biocentrism the focus of this brilliant
Crichtonesque thriller, coauthored with SF veteran Kress ... The authors
imagine what the implications of that would be, integrating them into a
page-turning plot complete with betrayals, violent deaths, and
difficult moral choices."
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Robert Lanza
has taken the gigantic step of incorporating his ideas into a science
fiction novel with Nancy Kress. This brilliant book will take you deep
into quantum physics, where these often-complex concepts are illuminated
through a riveting and moving story."
―Rhonda Byrne, #1 New York Times bestselling author, The Secret
First of all, welcome to Books, Life and Everything, Robert
Would you like to start by telling us a little about
yourself and how you started as a writer?
Actually, my scientific career long preceded my work as a
writer. As a young student I worked with
noted scientists, such as Jonas Salk, BF Skinner, as well as a few Nobel
laureates along the way. By the turn of the millennium, I was carrying out stem
cell and cloning research (which received a very public slap on the wrist from
two US Presidents and even the Pope—not to mention two Senate hearing on my
work :)
Although I’ve edited and/or written over 30 nonfiction
books, they were mainly textbooks for scientists and professionals. My real
interest in writing stems from my interest in the nature of reality, which goes
way back to early boyhood. My home life was less than the Norman Rockwell
ideal. As a child, my parents didn’t allow me to hang around the house unless
to eat or sleep. I was basically on my own, and for play I took excursions,
walking for miles deep into the forests of eastern Massachusetts, observing
nature like Emerson and Thoreau did (two other transcendentalists who grew up
just a few miles from me). There I followed streams and animal tracks. I
visited places that teemed with as much life as any city -- snakes, raccoons,
turtles and birds all caught my attention. My understanding of nature began on
those journeys. I rolled logs looking for salamanders and climbed trees to
investigate bird nests and holes in trees. As I pondered the larger existential
questions about the nature of life, I 6 began to intuit that there was
something wrong with the static, objective reality I was being taught in
school. The animals I observed had their own perceptions of the world, their
own realities.
Indeed, my first science project―“Animals”―included souvenirs
from these various excursions: insects, feathers, and bird eggs. It won me
second place behind my best friend's project on “Rocks.” Even in fifth grade I
was convinced that life―not material and rocks―was the cornerstone of
existence. It was a complete reversal of the natural scheme of things taught in
our schoolbooks―that is, atoms and physics at the base of the world, followed
by chemistry, and then biology and life. This fascination with the nature of
life infused my entire career, leading me to the very frontiers of biology and
medicine. Later, as a scientist, I began to put my thoughts on paper. In fact,
I wrote a book proposal on the idea in my early 20’s. One prominent agent told
me I was trying to “slaughter the sacred cow.” Another agent told me that it
was the kind of book you write at the end of your career, not the beginning.
His advice was to “go build your career” and that I should write the book after
I became successful. It turned out to be prophetic advice.
Actually, my scientific career long preceded my work as a
writer. As a young student I worked with
noted scientists, such as Jonas Salk, BF Skinner, as well as a few Nobel
laureates along the way. By the turn of the millennium, I was carrying out stem
cell and cloning research (which received a very public slap on the wrist from
two US Presidents and even the Pope—not to mention two Senate hearing on my
work.
Tell us about your
latest book without giving the plot away.
My latest book OBSERVER is co-authored with Nancy Kress, the
8-time Nebula and Hugo award-winning author (regarded as one of the greatest
Syfy writers alive). OBSERVER confronts
the space between biology and consciousness—between the self and what we assume
is reality. It asks the question: If we
can alter the structure of reality, should we?
OBSERVER takes you on a mind-expanding journey to the very
edge of science, and quantum physics in particular—and challenges you to think
about life and reality in startling new ways.
Caro, the book’s main character, is a brilliant young
neurosurgeon whose career has been upended by controversy. Broke and without a job, she accepts a
mysterious proposal from her great-uncle, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist she
barely knows.
Her great-uncle—Sam Watkins—has invested an untold amount of
money to build a medical facility in the Cayman Islands.
He’s very sick, but the technology he is developing isn’t
for the cancer surely killing him. It is to offer life of an altogether
different kind. Helped by an eminent physicist, they have gone far beyond
curing the body to developing a technology that could solve the riddle of
mortality ... and give Sam a new life of a truer kind!
They are on the verge a humanity-altering discovery, which
throws Caro into danger—and love—that she could never have imagined possible.
How fascinating! Now it's time to meet Nancy Kress. Welcome!
Would you like to start by telling us a little about
yourself and how you started as a writer?
I began writing out of desperation. I was the mother of a toddler, pregnant with
my second baby, living far out in the country with no car and no neighbors my
age. The internet hadn’t been invented
yet. Daytime TV was unwatchable. In order to have words with more than two
syllables and not presented by Big Bird, I began writing while my toddler napped. It was a few more years before I took this
hobby seriously.
If you didn’t write,
what would you do for work?
Before I married, I taught fourth grade. In later years, I taught high school, then
college, and now creative writing workshops for adults. If I hadn’t started writing, I guess I would
have stayed a full-time teacher. What
I’d really wanted was to be a ballet dancer, but as my teacher told my mother
when I was eleven, “She lacks rhythm, coordination, flexibility, musicality,
and she’s too tall.” I still lack all
those things. Plus, I have it on
reliable authority that dancers do not go to bed at 9:00 p.m.
What are you interests apart from writing?
I play chess. Badly.
What is your favorite
childhood book?
I loved THE BOXCAR CHILDREN, which a teacher gave me to read
in the second grade. Kids living alone
without adults! Having adventures,
earning food money by mowing lawns, being inventive and flourishing! That was probably my introduction to fantasy
literature.
Tell us about your
latest book without giving the plot away.
Talented neurosurgeon Caroline Soames-Watkins has an
impossible choice. After a vicious,
prolonged, and unjustified internet campaign against her, she is jobless,
broke, and the sole support of her sister and two nieces, one profoundly
disabled. She can search for a lesser
hospital post—or she can accept an offer from her great-uncle, a Nobel Laureate
who disappeared fifteen years ago to run a mysterious facility in the Cayman
Islands doing research into the nature of consciousness, reality, and life
after death. In the Caribbean Caro finds
a lot more than she bargained for, including murder, love, and compelling science that tests her
understanding of reality.
What are your
writing routines and where do you do most of your writing?
I write in the early morning. The very early morning, due to an inability
to sleep past 5:00 a.m. This makes me a
dud at parties, but is a good time for fiction.
The world is hushed and dark. Not
even the dog is awake, and my husband, a night owl, will not rise for
hours. I drink my first cup of coffee
while making my on-line chess moves, brew a second cup, and settle down to
work.
After that, the
day is all downhill.
How do you go
about researching detail and ensuring your books are realistic?
I read, research on-line, and talk to people (I collect
scientists like lepidopterists collect butterflies). For OBSERVER, I read memoirs by
neurosurgeons, taking notes and absorbing this (to me) alien world. I discovered what actual doctors think of as
the dangers and rewards of their profession. I discovered the range of
neurosurgery, from the “easy” removal of a meningioma conveniently located
outside the brain and away from major cerebral arteries and veins, to the long,
risky operations battling multiple traumas or deep-seated glioblastomas. I also discovered that some neurosurgeons
write much better prose than others
How do you select
the names of your characters? Are they based on anyone you know?
Names are important to me.
A name suggests a certain type of person in my mind, a wordless feel,
and I can’t write point-of-view characters until I have their perfect
names. For secondary characters I’m not
so picky. I just slap a moniker on them
and then later do a global search-and-replace to make sure I haven’t called the
same character Betsy, Beth, Betty, Liz, and Paula. Very seldom are my characters based on real
people, although—like all writers—I will use observed details from life to
embellish my fictional people (“May I borrow your mustache?”)
Do you have any
guilty pleasures which stop/ help you write?
Stoppers: Chess and reading other people’s books, both
easier than writing my own.
Do you have any
other writers as friends and how do they influence your writing?
Most of my friends and my husband are all fiction writers. A few act as my beta readers, reading an
almost-final draft and then giving me feedback on what works and what needs
changing. And I, of course, do the same
for them. We also recommend books to
each other to read: “Look how relentlessly he maintains tension in this
one? Let’s talk about how he did it!”
If you could tell
your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
The trajectory of most writer’s careers are not steadily
rising x-axes. You will have hits,
ho-hum books, and outright failures.
While you’re writing books, you won’t always be able to tell which is
which, and when they leave your hands, you have very little control over the
spikes and pits of your career line.
Success or failure is in the hands of your agent, editor, publisher,
reviewers, and of course, the reading public.
So, Younger Nancy, cultivate resilience, and write what sparks with you,
because the sparks may die, smolder as embers, or burst into flame, and none of
those fires predict success or failure for the next book.
Do you believe in
writer’s block? What do you do to break its spell?
I don’t get classical writer’s block, which is being unable
to work on a piece you’ve already begun due to psychological factors. When I’m reluctant or downright unwilling to
work on something, invariably it’s because I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere
with the plot or characters. Then I have
to go back to the last place I wasn’t reluctant, figure out what went wrong,
and dump everything past that point.
It’s painful to toss out 30,000 words, but that’s what occasionally
happens. One the decayed tooth is out,
the pain lingers, but my reluctance to
write disappears.
It's been a real pleasure to have you on the blog today and may I send you every good wish for your book?
About the Authors
Robert Lanza
Named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People," Robert
Lanza is a renowned scientist and author whose groundbreaking research
spans many fields, from biology to theoretical physics. He has worked
with some of the greatest minds of our time, including Jonas Salk and
B.F. Skinner. A U.S. News and World Report cover story called him "the
living embodiment of the character played by Matt Damon in Good Will
Hunting" and described him as a "genius," a "renegade thinker," and
likened him to Einstein. He is the father of Biocentrism, the basis of
Observer, his first novel. He has been pondering the larger existential
questions since he was a young boy, when for play he took excursions
deep into the forests of eastern Massachusetts observing nature (like
Emerson and Thoreau, who grew up just a few miles from him). This
fascination with the nature of life infused his entire career, leading
him to the very frontiers of biology and science.
You can follow Robert here: Twitter | Facebook | Website
Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-five books, including
twenty-seven novels, four collections of short stories, and three books
on writing. Her work has won six Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, a
Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent works
are a stand-alone novella about genetic engineering, Sea Change
(Tachyon, 2020) and a science fiction novel of power and money, The
Eleventh Gate (Baen, 2020). Her fiction has been translated into nearly
two dozen languages including Klingon. She has taught writing in
Leipzig, Beijing, and throughout the U.S. Nancy lives in Seattle with
her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead.
You can follow Nancy here: Facebook | WebsiteBook Spotlight: Observer
If we can alter the structure of reality, should we? In Observer,
scientist Robert Lanza, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential
People, is joined by Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Nancy Kress to
confront the space between biology and consciousness.
Dr. Caroline
Soames-Watkins's star has been on the rise. But when she accuses a
superior of sexual misconduct, the Twitterstorm that follows upends her
career. With few professional options and an impoverished sister with a
disabled child to support, Caro is willing to consider a mysterious
proposal from her great-uncle, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Samuel
Watkins. Sam Watkins has invested untold sums of money to build a
medical facility in the Caribbean. But he is very sick and in urgent
need of a surgeon to perform a unique procedure developed at his island
compound. The procedure isn't for the cancer surely killing him. It is
to offer new life of a truer kind. Helped in his mission by the eminent
physicist George Weigert and the young, charismatic tech entrepreneur
Julian Dey, Sam has gone far beyond curing the body to develop a
technology that could solve the riddle of mortality for the soul. Though
wary of the project's secret aims, Caro signs on for the chance to
secure a future for her sister and herself. What she encounters is
something so much more profound than she ever could have anticipated. It
will put her on the precipice of a humanity-altering discovery. It will
lead her to a level of interpersonal connection that she thought was
only for others. And it will throw her into a kind of danger she never
imagined. Joining a fascinating and relatable cast of characters with a
mind-expanding journey to the very edges of science, Observer will
thrill you, inspire you, and lead you to think about life and the power
of the imagination in startling new ways.
Book linkS Amazon UK | Amazon US
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