It has been a long time, 5 years since I posted. Five Years? What have I been doing, or working on for Five Years so as not to post?
I'm was still working on Brewmaster of Arabia, my third novel that believe it or not, I first started writing, if my computer file dating is correct, in 2002. It really took off in 2012 when I started putting more ideas together and showing it around. Showing it around also showed me lots of flaws, which I tried, really, I tried to correct but all my advisors and readers told me it was just too confusing.
So in 2020, I decided to rewrite the entire book. Last month, I had a final edit and with the support of enthusiastic beta readers, I'm shopping it to agents.
Here is a quick synopsis:
Glen and Doris Bailey met in a Junior College Star
Trek fan club and their relationship took off. Glen’s father lost his job in
food processing after the plant where he worked, closed and moved to Mexico,
setting off a life-long prejudice against Mexicans. His father manages to
inherit a local bakery and the entire family helps run it. Glen developed a new
commercial and successful yeast for a particular Portuguese style bread that
was licensed to bakeries across the United States. Glen takes over the business
and with his wife, Doris, and they run it day to day for years. A mix-up of
yeasts and magic mushrooms in the laboratory, brings a Mexican Independence Day
fiesta to an unusual comic conclusion while alerting a United States national
security agency to a targeted application of hallucinogens at the festival.
The US government planned to give hallucinogenic
compounds to select groups of repressed people in the middle east to foment
revolution and Glen unintentionally figured out a way to tactically dispense
these hallucinogens at the Mexican Independence Day festival. Glen and Doris
embark to a space station on the far side of the moon where scientists work in
secret to advance the government’s objectives. Once again, a mishap in the lab with
hallucinogens unintentionally given to people resulted in a potentially dangerous
outcome. Glen and Doris are reassigned off the station and back to Earth.
The Bailey’s are deeply involved in the starting the Arab
Spring uprisings of 2010, along with a famous 1994 Mexican revolutionary who was
also a US government agent. They escape the middle east turmoil and land in
Mexico. The revolutionary, Subcomondante Marcos, led them from Libya to spend
possibly the rest of their lives in Mexico. Star Trek, racism, the opportunity
to live in space and mycology pave the way into this, decade’s long tale of two
unlikely people having influence on world affairs.
