Woah is me, it’s been that long already?! It’s such a shock that I simply had to write a post about it on the actual day of the anniversary. As of today, it has now been four years since the release of An Absolute Mind. My sci-fi novel of a young woman with an incredible cognitive ability making the decision to demand change for the betterment of the future has been around this long already, and even after all this time, it’s still keeping me occupied.
This past year, I’ve continued both making edits and submitting the screenplay adaptation of it to different competitions and other such opportunities. While there still haven’t been any successful bites made of it, it did become a quarterfinalist in this year’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Screenwriting Competition from ScreenCraft. That was the first time I made it past the first stage in a competition like that, and even though I didn’t advance beyond that, the fact that it was recognized in that way at all means something to me.
Also in that time, work has continued on the follow-up to An Absolute Mind. Although progress has been a little slow due to the pandemic and everything else happening in this crazy-ass world, I can definitely say for certain that I’m, for once, taking advantage of NaNoWriMo to really get some meaningful work done on it.
At the time I released this particular novel, it was a week after I watched in horror over my country electing Donald Trump into office. To now be writing on this anniversary about a week after Joe Biden has been declared president-elect is an incredible feeling. I went about the early days of this dark era, finding the means to celebrate this novel that was suddenly about to become more scarily relevant. To look forward to a future where things will actually start getting better for our country with new leadership being sworn in in just two months has me wondering what it will be like to go about this new world, with this novel of mine in tow. The way I see it, after everything that we have been through this year, I think there’s room for improvement on it, actually.
I wrote An Absolute Mind five years ago. The circumstances in our country and in this world were vastly different back then. Face it, Barack Obama was still in office at the time! Not to say that there weren’t problems. Mass shootings were just as much of an issue then as they are now, California was experiencing a major drought, and Black Lives Matter was already two years in since its establishment. But when the aftermath of the novel’s release has involved swearing in a corrupt human being as Obama’s successor, mass shootings and police shootings of Black people continue, California experiencing wildfires of the worst kind in recent memory, and a pandemic that has claimed over 240,000 lives in this country as of this writing, it makes 2015 appear almost like a distant memory.
As intricately detailed as An Absolute Mind already is, if the lessons from this year can be weaved into the context of its follow-up, then perhaps I can do the same for the original one. As I rework my path as a writer, maybe I can make space to do just that.
In the mean time, if you haven’t already, you can purchase An Absolute Mind from mainly wherever books are sold; including but not limited to Amazon, Arkipelago Books, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and Smashwords. If you’ve already read it, then I’d really appreciate it if you can leave a review on it for either the vendor you bought it from or for the book’s Goodreads page. Your review will make it easier for other people to find the book and depending on what you have to say, it just may help me grow as an author.
An Absolute Mind has been a vital presence throughout the last four years of my life. Let’s see how my relationship with it can continue to evolve as we all go forward into this new, and hopefully peaceful, era.
Lola By The Bay 