Fulton Books author Jesse Rosenbaum has completed his most recent book “The Condemned”: a chilling novel that follows Michael and his endless strings of nightmares that horrify and push him to the brink. With each passing dream, he gets closer to the dark figure who has brought him to these horrific dreamscapes while seeking answers and unraveling the mystery of his role in this dark figure’s plot.

Jesse writes, “I keep having these dreams. At first, I figured it was stress, being that it’s my last semester in college, but they just keep happening. The places I find myself…the things I see are just horrific. I see all these people, many of which are crying out, screaming in agony. The others that I see are dead, displayed or lying in gruesome and grotesque ways that make my stomach turn. There is this overwhelming sense of despair that just weighs down on me. The hopelessness that I feel from these tortured people is thick in the air and clings to my body.

In every dream, I see this…figure. I’m drawn to it by some unknown desire, but regardless of how close I try and get, I can’t make out what it looks like. It’s wrapped in shadows, hidden from the light. And each time I see it, my mind screams to run, but despite my best efforts, I can’t. I stand there frozen with fear, surrounded by all this anguish, torture, and death, but this figure’s voice cuts through all the misery. Its voice is clear and surprisingly soothing as it says to me, ‘I will become of your world.’ With each dream, I feel this figure pull me closer. It needs me for something, but what? Why does it keep showing me these things?”

Published by Fulton Books, Jesse Rosenbaum’s book is a suspenseful tale that will draw readers into the shadows of Michael’s nightmares and where they further take him. Here, in his story, Michael will face a bunch of encounters that could change his life. Will one of these encounters save him from his long, unending agony?

Targeted Age Group:: 13 and up

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I read Richard Matheson's, I Am Legend, when I was twenty and his story along with his selection of short stories, inspired me to want to elevate my love of writing poetry to writing something more long form. Over the next year I started to write, The Condemned. That was back in 2001, but two years later, my great friend Mark, was killed by a drunk driver. He and I were working together on other projects and his death caused me to stop writing. Doing it without him felt hollow. It wasn't until 2019 that I finally decided to try and get this story out into the world. With my publisher, Fulton Book's help, I have finally achieved my dream of becoming a published author.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
My characters were based off of my friends and other people I met in and outside of college as I was a sophomore in college when I started writing The Condemned. The main character, Michael, was how I channeled a lot of myself along with some personal struggles that I was facing at the time. Michael's friend Tom was an amalgamation of my closest friends at the time.

Book Sample
This time, Michael’s dream brought him to dunes of snow and mountains of ice. He walked along a path and saw the bodies of men and women of all ages lying face down and up in the snow. Some were frozen stiff like they had been there for a long time and even some with the look of fear frozen on their face. He took notice of all this, but he didn’t recall seeing any children. Some of these people seemed to have simply frozen to death, while others appear to have been slaughtered and were laying in pieces. There were spots of red snow across the ground. As he continued along, he saw something moving on some of the bodies lying near the path that he was walking on. On close inspection, he saw that spiders were laying eggs in the open wounds of many of the bodies. He felt sick when he saw the eggs hatching in one man’s exposed throat. They crawled out the wound and moved down his corpse quickly as if the spiders were moving across the body like a thick fog rolling along that hugged the ground. He watched on as some of the spiders stayed on the bodies and began to eat the flesh in the open wounds. Others scattered off into the snow.
Michael continued onward. Then he noticed the trees in the distance. As he came closer, he noticed that there were yet again limbs hanging in trees and various human organs lying at the roots below. He couldn’t identify them all, but he could tell what the intestines, lungs, and heart looked like. The cold kept the smell from being very strong, but even then, it wasn’t enough, he could still smell the decay and rot; the iron in the blood spilled was fragrant as well. The branches of the tree were covered in blood, but it wasn’t dripping down to the ground. He felt his stomach spasm at the sight of it all. His face cringed as he turned away. He hunched over and began spitting out the warm saliva that was now forming in his mouth in an effort to stop the vomit from coming. He wiped his face and caught his breath.
“Where am I?” Michael shouted as he stood up.
Then he heard the figure’s voice, “You are in the place where the lost souls dwell.”
This time, he could definitely tell that it was a man’s voice. The figure suddenly appeared and was about ten feet from Michael, if he had to guess. Even at that distance, he couldn’t make out the figure’s face. The man stood there, as once again the light did not touch upon his face, but his clothes seemed just a bit more visible this time. He could tell that he seemed to be shrouded in a garment made up of various shreds and patches of dark black and grey fabric. It covered him entirely like a cloak, which made it very difficult for Michael to make out his body structure. However, Michael could tell that the man was about six inches taller than he was, which would make him about six feet, four inches tall.
Michael responded, “Lost souls? You mean purgatory?”
“If that is what you wish to call it, Michael,” the figure replied.
Michael stared in surprise. “How did you know my name?” his voice was full of inquisition and confusion.
“I know a lot about you, Michael. I have been watching you for quite some time now.”
“You’ve been watching me? Why me?” Michael’s voice cracked at the end. Now he was not only confused but frightened as well. He tried to move closer to the figure, but when he took one step, it was as if he had become frozen. He was filled with a feeling of utter dread. He was so scared he began to urinate on himself.
The dark figure replied, “I need you to help me. To help me leave this accursed place, I do not belong here. I was never meant to be here. I shall become of your world.”
Michael felt the warm liquid fear running down his leg. “I-I don’t understand.”
“In time, I will help you understand, but for now, you must go.”
Before Michael had a chance to respond, he woke up back in his bed, but this time, he wasn’t sweating, and he wasn’t out of breath, but he jumped out of bed suddenly with a sound of annoyance. His bed was soaked in urine.

Links to Purchase Print Books
Link to Buy The Condemned Print Edition at Amazon
Link to Buy The Condemned Print Edition at Barnes and Noble
Link to The Condemned Print book for sale at Powells

Links to Purchase eBooks
Link To Buy The Condemned On Amazon
Link to The Condemned on Barnes and Noble
Link to The Condemned for sale on iBooks
Link to The Condemned eBook for sale on Kobo

Links to Author’s Social Media:
Facebook
YouTube
Goodreads

Author Bio:
I was born in Dunellen, New Jersey, raised in Green Brook, New Jersey and I now live in Vero Beach, Florida.

To my earliest recollection, I have had a love for horror since I was two years old. My parents, for some reason, used to let me watch Stanley Kubrick film of Stephen King's 'The Shining'. I used to watch that tape over and over. They probably regretted that decision when one day when I was two or three, I put a yellow plastic baseball bat through the back window and said, "Mommy, I'm home!"

I loved to read as a child and spent a lot of time in the library researching the paranormal and supernatural. In high school, during my sophomore year, I started to write poetry due to a class assignment. I wrote a lot of poetry through high school into college, but had wanted to do something more.

By the year 2000, I had decided that I wanted to try to write a story like one of my favorite authors Richard Matheson or Stephen King. My debut novel, The Condemned, is that story. Shortly after that decision, in 2001 I had met a friend in college, who's name was Mark. We connected immediately and shared a love of writing. We worked on a few projects together, which sadly never came to fruition because in 2003, Mark was killed by a drunk driver. From there the wind was just completely taken out of my sails for writing. I would dabble in it over the years that followed, but it never felt right to me, not without my friend.

In 2019, I decided I was going to finally do something with my stories, so here we are. I'm very happy and honored to share my stories with you all. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have writing them.

Author Home Page Link

The Creators by Rick Moskovitz

A teenaged Natasha Takana seeks to decode the remainder of the hidden DNA code that became the basis for a new religion reviving Creationism in A Stand-in for Dying. Her quest takes her on a voyage to a parallel dimension to learn the fate of the Creators’ civilization. In the course of successive visits to their watery world, she finds herself transformed, a bridge between our world and theirs.

The conflict between Ganymede and Mandala, the warring factions of Brink of Life is rekindled, sweeping Natasha into the middle of it in a pursuit that crosses the boundaries of worlds and time.

Targeted Age Group:: Young adult and adult audiences
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 3 – PG-13

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
This is the final installment of The Brink of Life Trilogy, drawing from characters and plot lines of the previous books. I wanted to develop the concept introduced in A Stand-in for Dying of the role of an intelligent entity in creating the human genome. My imagination led to a dying civilization in a parallel dimension. As I envisioned what key might unlock the mystery, a musical key came to mind.

Voyages across dimensions to both alternative pasts and alternative futures verge on the metaphysical and stretch the imagination. While I anticipated that The Creators might evoke more skepticism among my readers than the earlier books, I enjoyed the freedom of letting my imagination ride. The Creators was the most fun to write.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Most of the characters in The Creators evolved from characters in A Stand-in for Dying and Brink of Life. Natasha Takana was introduced in A Stand-in for Dying as a child with some extraordinary qualities. Envisioning her as a teenager, therefore, presented enticing possibilities. Her mother, Corinne Takana, was a champion of the natural course of life in A Stand-in for Dying. The Creators enabled me to complete her story’s arc.

I also enjoyed the chance to delve into the backstory of one of the villains of the earlier tales, to explore how he had turned to the dark side, and to provide an opportunity for redemption. As in Brink of Life, the interplay between body and mind informs many of the characters’ identities.

Book Sample
Lara clung tightly to her daughter Macklyn as the ground rumbled and rolled beneath her feet. She’d come so far to save her. How could she lose her now? But the man before her and his dreadful glowing machine held all their lives in his powerful hands.

Once she’d revered him, but that was another life, another time. He’d envisioned a utopia no longer ruled by death and built this machine to bestow eternal youth and boundless knowledge and wisdom upon a grateful population.

But now the machine had evolved into a device of astonishing power that could extinguish all life in the blink of an eye and unravel the fabric of the universe. This man had the power either to stop it or to make it happen. Which would he choose?

Lara looked beside her. Natasha Takana balanced like a surfer as the ground roiled with waves of increasing amplitude. Natasha’s face was composed, but her eyes betrayed her comprehension of what she saw. The conductor was moving the symphony to its finale. When the last notes were played, there would be nowhere left to go.

Lara looked back at the man. He turned to face her, his blue eyes sparkling with resolve.

“Leave now!” he commanded. “This isn’t your fate.”

The door to the room swung open. Still gripping Macklyn in her arms, Lara and Natasha fled, trying to outrun the swelling ground and crumbling pavement behind them. This world was doomed. Would they find the portal, if it still existed, to their own world in time to save them?

Links to Purchase Print Book version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Print Edition at Amazon
Buy at Barnes and Noble

Links to Purchase Audiobook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Audiobook at Amazon
Buy Audiobook at Audible
Buy Audiobook at iTunes

Links to Purchase eBook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy this eBook On Amazon

About the Author
Learn more about the author on their website
Follow the author on Amazon

Follow the author on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube Channel

All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.

Brink of Life by Rick Moskovitz

A woman plunges into consciousness in the midst of what seems like someone else’s life, sending her on a quest to discover who she is and to craft an identity that makes sense within her current circumstances. As she digs into the mystery of her life, she uncovers a top secret government organization plotting world domination and a clandestine vigilante organization dedicated to destroying it and is caught between these warring factions. Nobody in her new world is exactly who they appear to be, including herself. Identity, she learns, is complicated and inseparable from the body in which it resides.

Targeted Age Group:: Adult audiences
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 4 – R Rated

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
This is a sequel to A Stand-in for Dying, a science fiction novel about the quest for immortality in the Twenty-first Century. Brink of Life offers a deeper dive into how the interaction between body and mind determine identity and behavior, which was one of my special interests during my career as a psychiatrist. Writing Brink of Life allowed me to play with these ideas within the framework of a fast paced science fiction thriller.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Some of the characters evolved directly from characters in A Stand-in for Dying, responding to readers’ requests for more background about those characters. Others arose naturally from the relationships I imagined that my primary characters would have. And still others sprung to life in my imagination from the tapestry of impressions of people I’ve encountered. The interplay of body and mind provided a guiding framework for my characters’ behavior.

Book Sample
“Tap, tap, tap.” The sound was coming from somewhere on the ground floor. “Tap, tap, tap.” The rhythm was deliberate. The series of taps came at regular intervals, separated by half a minute.

She descended from the bedroom and moved softly around the perimeter of the house, listening. “Tap, tap, tap.” Now louder as she approached the kitchen. Upon entering the kitchen, she noticed a service door she hadn’t seen before that opened to the side of the house. The tapping got louder and more insistent. She walked to the door.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

“Connor.” The answer was unhelpful. The name meant nothing to her.

“Petra, it’s Connor,” the voice insisted. “Please let me in.”

So at least he knew her. And he was addressing her with a familiarity that implied friend, not foe. He could be another clue to her identity. She considered the risk, then commanded the door to open. She heard a deadbolt slide and the door swung open. A young man rushed inside and gestured for her close it.

Connor appeared in his early twenties, around the same as her biological age. Six feet tall and slender, but muscular, he had sculpted features, blond hair, and blue eyes.

“Gorgeous,” she caught herself thinking, then felt something peculiar about her reaction. Why shouldn’t she find this man attractive?

“Thank God you’re safe,” Connor said and moved in to embrace her. She instinctively backed away and he stopped short.

“Why didn’t you come in the front?” she asked.

“The surveillance,” he replied. “I don’t think it’s safe for us to be seen together right now.”

“Why not?” she thought, but deemed it prudent not to ask. She was not ready to expose her ignorance or her vulnerability to this man.

“Some questions have been raised about Arlo’s death,” Connor said, answering her unspoken question. “If people knew about us, we might come under suspicion. And I no longer have a legitimate reason to be here now that he’s dead.”

“So we’re lovers?” she thought and found the idea oddly delicious. She regretted for a moment fending off his embrace. She relaxed her posture to appear less defensive. The maneuver had the desired effect.

Connor approached her again, placed his hands on her shoulders, and brought his face close enough to hers that she could feel his breath. She moved into the kiss. His lips were soft and moist. She was lost in his embrace, feeling her whole body responding to his touch. Yes, they must be lovers. And yet…again something off about her response…like she’d never been with him before…or perhaps with any man.

Links to Purchase Print Book version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Print Edition at Amazon
Buy at Barnes and Noble

Links to Purchase Audiobook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Audiobook at Amazon
Buy Audiobook at Audible

Links to Purchase eBook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy this eBook On Amazon

About the Author
Learn more about the author on their website
Follow the author on Amazon

Follow the author on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube Channel

All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.

Shared Madness by Rick Moskovitz

A psychiatrist treating a psychotic patient descends into madness and finds himself at the nexus of a deadly plot. Can he trust anyone in his struggle for survival and his quest to regain his sanity? Can you guess who murdered his patient and what drove him mad? Share his hallucinations and terror through his eyes and try to unravel the mystery.

Targeted Age Group:: YA and Adult audiences
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 3 – PG-13

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
As a psychiatrist, I often struggled with competing ethical and legal responsibilities. In the course of providing treatment to relieve distress, I was expected to keep whatever my patients told me strictly confidential. At the same time, I was entrusted with preventing harm. Some patients posed the risk of harm to themselves, some of harm to others, and still others offered information about people around them who posed danger to them or to others. The responsibility to prevent harm was further complicated by my limited influence upon my patients’ fate.

Balancing the duty to maintain confidentiality with the duty to prevent harm and walking the often fine line between them caused me many a sleepless night. And the severity of the dilemma was directly related to the magnitude of potential harm that I envisioned.

The seeds of Shared Madness, originally titled Folie a Deux, arose out of this ever present burden and the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. What if, I imagined, a patient were to share with me information about a possible future terrorist attack? And what if this information was shrouded in sufficient doubt that the consequences of withholding it weren’t clear or compelling? Would the potential magnitude of an unlikely event be enough to breach the confidence of a patient and perhaps even put that patient in legal or physical jeopardy?

I framed my story against a backdrop of a psychotic patient who heard voices and experienced delusions of persecution that altered his perception of reality. What might a psychiatrist believe about a tale of treachery told by someone with such an unreliable and distorted view of his world? And it occurred to me that if the doctor was also hallucinating and delusional, assessing the validity of the threat would become even more daunting.

I wrote a half dozen chapters starting in 2005 along with some character backstories, got stuck and filed it away while I continued to practice psychiatry. After retirement from practice, I turned again to writing, veering into science fiction, and completed the Brink of Life Trilogy in fits and starts over much of the past decade. The blank canvas of the future fed my imagination and the stories began to flow with increasing ease.

In the fall of 2019, I stumbled upon the nearly forgotten file of Folie a Deux. Having drawn my trilogy to a close and honed my storytelling craft, I embraced the project with new confidence. And I brought to the task a new perspective, venturing into the first person, writing entirely through the eyes of my protagonist, and balancing the constraint of that limited perspective with the freedom of living in my character’s head and experiencing his world fully. The story grew organically, expanding beyond its original framework into a full blown thriller.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
My main character, a psychiatrist, is a reflection of my career experience, although he is only my alter-ego when explaining how the mind works. The ethnicity of my other characters was dictated by their roles in the story. And since OCD is one of my special areas of expertise, writing about a character with OCD was both natural and fun. I would also consider Maine, one of my favorite places, almost as a character. The chapters set in Maine that included the character Otis were written during a vacation there. Ayuh.

Book Sample
“Wake up, Zack.” My eyes flicked open. I’d been in a deep sleep. The voice must have been the tail end of a vivid dream. I tapped my phone to see the time: 2:35 AM. I closed my eyes, took some cleansing breaths, and drifted back to sleep.

“I told you to wake up.” A woman’s voice. Loud, insistent. This time, I got out of bed and turned on the lights. I’d have to awaken fully to purge the thread of this dream from my consciousness. It was still three hours before it was time to get up. I went into the kitchen and poured a cup of milk.

“You know she likes you.” The same woman’s voice. It had to be coming from my phone. A butt call or a video playing in the background. I looked at the screen. It was dark. I tapped the phone. Nothing was open. I turned it off.

“You think she’s hot, too.” Someone was playing a horrible prank. I valued my privacy and didn’t have any of the listening modules that people put in their homes to interact with their devices. The only other possibility was my computer. I shut it off, too.

“You can’t just turn me off. I’m part of you.” She laughed. “I’m under your skin…just like she is.”

“Shut up!” I screamed. “Get out. Whoever you are.” But there was nobody in sight. I went from room to room, turning on all the lights. I was alone.

“He’s right, you know. You and Jamilah. In your head, you’ve already screwed her.”

My hands were trembling. Sweat was dripping from my armpits down my sides and from my forehead into my eyes, clouding my vision. My legs began wobbling, which made my whole body shake. I struggled to catch my breath and felt pressure like someone was pressing a blunt object against the center of my chest. I felt like I was dying. No, not dying…a panic attack. I’d never had one, but I’d heard many patients describe the symptoms. That’s what it was. The voice was just an embellishment, fashioned by my conscience.

I began to count my breathing to slow it down, then focused on its rhythm. The trembling stilled. The pressure released. My vision cleared. The voice was gone. I finished drinking the milk and went back to bed. The next sound I heard was the rippling alarm sound on my phone, telling me it was time to get up.

I shook off sleep and got ready for the day. The disturbance in the night left me more fatigued than usual, but I was grateful that the voice was gone.

All I could think about during my rounds in the hospital was whether Joe would show up at my office that afternoon. When I got to the office, I checked his appointment time: Two o’clock. I finished seeing my first patient of the afternoon and looked in the waiting room. He wasn’t there. I went back to my office and watched the clock, waiting for my receptionist to signal his arrival. By 2:30 I began to despair that he’d ever show up.

“What did you think?” said a voice that seemed to come from across the room. “Why should he trust you? You want to screw his wife.” My breath stopped short. I felt as though I was being strangled.

“Another panic attack,” I thought. Then I heard laughter.

“Think what you want,” said the voice. “I’m not just part of your panic attack.”

Links to Purchase Print Book version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Print Edition at Amazon
Buy at Barnes and Noble

Links to Purchase Audiobook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Audiobook at Amazon
Buy Audiobook at Audible
Buy Audiobook at iTunes

Links to Purchase eBook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy this eBook On Amazon

About the Author
Learn more about the author on their website
Follow the author on Amazon

Follow the author on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube Channel

All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.

A Stand-in for Dying by Rick Moskovitz

In a near future world on the brink of environmental catastrophe, a mysterious woman brokers an anonymous pact between two men for the older man Ray to inhabit the younger man Marcus’s body when he dies in exchange for a fortune and access to vast knowledge. The consequences for both men evolve over the ensuing years. When Ray finds a way to exchange identities while still alive, both men struggle to navigate their new lives and relationships while under attack by Ganymede, the architect of the consciousness swapping technology, and the Tribe of 23, a human supremacist organization that has targeted Marcus because of his and his wife’s advocacy for AIs to have equal rights with carbon based humans.

Their moral and emotional development is informed by the resourceful women who love them, one an accomplished journalist, the other a teacher who guides AIs to perceive and feel human emotions.

Targeted Age Group:: Adults 18 and older
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 3 – PG-13

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
As I watch the current generation of young adults assume their leadership roles in our culture, I see once again the youthful illusion of immortality and invincibility, this time with a twist. The Singularity, predicted by Ray Kurzweil, is close upon us and with it the prospect, at least in the eyes of the young, that life everlasting is in their grasp. And I wonder, given the temptation to extend life indefinitely, how the choices will be made and at what price the reality of immortality might come.

Over the past couple of decades, major advances in artificial intelligence have indeed occurred. And medical science is hot on the trail of the Holy Grail of radical life extension without considering the consequences. The longer we live, the greater the competition for ever scarcer resources. And the longer each of us lives, the greater our carbon footprint. Extending the lifespan for some can mean extreme deprivation for others and a sharper divide between the wealthy and the poor. And it could accelerate the exhaustion of the resources necessary for our species and every other species to survive.

A Stand-in for Dying is about our greed for life and the unintended consequences of pursuing immortality. It is about how the finiteness of life lends life its meaning and makes it precious. And it is ultimately about how we make choices about power, wealth, and fame and about life and death that shape our destiny and character.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
As a psychiatrist, I have witnessed the vast array of human aspirations, quirks, and frailties and have become a keen observer of my own. I have also observed the connection between formative early experiences and trauma and the peculiarities of personality. My characters struggle to overcome the stumbling blocks of their pasts while addressing the challenges presented by the choices they've made as adults. And their dance with conflict is inspired by mine.

Book Sample
Lena was never happier than when she was working. She loved meeting and interviewing creative people, then lovingly crafting verbal portraits of what made them beautiful to her. Now that Ray no longer depended upon her presence to feel secure, she was free to resume her work and develop her craft.

“I have a new assignment, Ray,” she said one day upon returning home, “and I want you to come with me this time.”

Ray was intrigued. Lena had never before invited him for a glimpse of her personal world. This was new territory in their relationship.

“Why now?” he asked. “What’s so special about this one?”

“She’s an artist,” Lena replied, “no, more than just an artist. She has some very special talents. For one thing, she’s a synesthetic.”

“You mean her senses bleed together?”

“Yes. She visualizes sounds and she hears what she sees. Even the textures of things she touches transform into music and pictures. She’s an extraordinary talent. I’d like you to meet her.”

When Ray and Lena arrived at the artist’s studio the next afternoon, it was like walking into a fantasy world. They were completely immersed in color and sound, which seemed to blend so synchronously that it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began. Even the boundaries of their bodies melted into the surrounding space.

The artist led them outside into a lush garden where their senses were sufficiently freed to permit a dialogue.

“Ray, meet Haley Sellica,” Lena said. “Haley, this is my husband Ray.”

“Delighted to meet you,” said Haley, extending her hand and making eye contact. Her hand was soft and warm, but her handshake was firm and assertive.

Haley was pleasing to the eye, but not beautiful in the conventional sense. She looked in her mid-thirties. Her skin was clear and smooth, her hair somewhere between sandy and brown, pulled tightly back in a ponytail and secured by a plastic clip. She was dressed plainly in a white, men’s button-down shirt, at least a size too big and hanging over khaki twill pants that looked as though they’d been washed a few too many times. Both garments, speckled with multi-colored paints, hid a body that was trim and healthy, but as nondescript as her dated clothes. Her whole appearance seemed incongruous for someone so attuned to creating beauty.

Haley read the question in Ray’s eyes. “You’ll have to forgive my appearance,” she said, passing a hand down the front of her body and smiling. “I try not to upstage my work.”

Ray listened intently as Lena conducted her interview. He hadn’t heard her work since they’d first met and he’d been her subject. He was as fascinated to hear how her technique had evolved as to learn about the woman they’d come to see.

Haley had long been aware of her special gift, but she didn’t always know that everyone else experienced the world differently. When she’d created her first painting, everyone around her knew right away that she’d be capable of transforming the world of art with a unique vision. When she’d composed her first sonata, they realized that her talent was multi-layered and her potential limitless. She was given every possible tool to nurture that talent.

When the interview was done, Haley led them back into her home for a more detailed tour of its contents. This time, the first thing Ray noticed went beyond the sights and sounds. As he walked through the rooms, he became attuned to their aromas, which he inhaled deeply, arousing a medley of emotions evoked by his sense of smell. The aromas flowed and shifted with the visual images and the music, reproducing with remarkable fidelity the artist’s synesthetic perceptions.

Across one wall was an expanse of shimmering butter yellow canvas, accompanied by the subtle hum of a sweltering afternoon, and the smell of fresh sweat mixed with honeysuckle blossoms. Standing before it, Ray felt a deep sense of longing for something that felt like a lost memory, but had never been part of his actual youth. Crossing the threshold into another room, he found himself looking at swirls of black, accompanied by a deep base cadence, and the smell of charred flesh. Ray felt a flash of the horror that he’d experienced on the day of the fire, but it vanished as soon as he’d moved on to the next image. None of the emotions evoked by the pieces lingered beyond the physical boundaries of the work.

Even in the vast database of Ray’s MELD chip, he’d never experienced anything with the evocative power of Haley Sellica’s art. He was grateful to Lena for allowing him to accompany her to the interview and understood why she’d chosen to do so.

“She’s amazing,” Ray said when they were on their way home. “The genius of a savant without any of the deficits. Warm, witty, emotionally complete.”

“I told you it’d be worth coming to meet her. It’s something you have to see for yourself to believe.”

“She’s a perfect example of why SPUDs will never be like us,” Ray said.

“Huh? That was out of left field, Ray. What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Just look at what she’s done. Creating art requires an appreciation of the senses. And art that speaks to people like hers does requires an understanding of human emotions and experience. No machine could ever produce that kind of work.”

‘Perhaps you’re right, Ray,” Lena said. “Would you like to come back with me for the followup interview?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Lena’s first interview had focused on the artist’s work. When they next returned to her studio, Lena’s focus shifted to her personal life.

“Tell me,” Lena asked, “who is important in your life.”

“Why, you are for this moment…and your husband. You have my undivided attention for as long as you remain in my home.”

Lena was thrown by this odd response and rephrased her query. “Is there anyone more permanent in your life? Have you ever been in love?”

“Oh, no,” answered Haley. “I’m completely devoted to my work…and of course to my Creator.”

“So you’re religious?”

“Religious? No, not really. I’m not even sure what that means.”

“It means belief in a higher power, a supreme being that created us and the world.”

“So you believe you were created, too?” answered Haley, wrinkling her brow. “What is your Creator’s name?”

“Why God, of course.”

“Mine’s Gideon,” said Haley without looking up. “He’s only made a few of us.”

Ray and Lena looked at each other, each searching the other for clarity. Ray spoke next.

“How many of you are there?” he asked.

“Five altogether. I have two sisters and two brothers. I’m the youngest.”

“And how old are you?”

“Six hundred seventy-two days, twenty-two hours, and seventeen minutes.”

“So Gideon is a person and you’re…”

“An artificial intelligence. What you people would call a SPUD,” replied Haley. “Didn’t you know? How many humans can do what I do?”

Lena grinned. Ray’s logic had been turned on its head. The reddening of his face and neck betrayed that he’d come to the same conclusion.

On the way home, Lena couldn’t help but rub it in. “So SPUDs can’t be as creative as people. Do you still believe that?”

“OK, Lena. I get it,” Ray said. “I’m going to have to rethink a lot of what I believe. Be patient with me. I’m still a work in progress.” He flashed her a grin. She smiled back. “So what are you planning to write?”

“Her story is remarkable even if she weren’t a SPUD,” answered Lena. “She’s not secretive about it, but I think that people will appreciate the magic more if they think she’s human. It’s like she said. She doesn’t want to upstage her work. Neither do I.”

Links to Purchase Print Book version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Print Edition at Amazon
Buy at Barnes and Noble

Links to Purchase Audiobook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy Audiobook at Amazon
Buy Audiobook at Audible
Buy Audiobook at iTunes

Links to Purchase eBook version – Click links for book samples, reviews and to purchase
Buy this eBook On Amazon

About the Author
Learn more about the author on their website
Follow the author on Amazon

Follow the author on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube Channel

All information was provided by the author and not edited by us. This is so you get to know the author better.