Mindscapes available for 60% discount through 1/18/2014

 
The kindle version of my new short story collection is available at Amazon.com through January 18 for $1.99 – 60% off the regular $4.99 price. The book can be borrowed free of charge the next 90 days by Amazon prime members on their Kindles. A paperback version is also available, and an audiobook version is in production and will be available by June 2014 through Audible, iTunes and possibly Amazon. PLEASE NOTE: eight of the ten short stories in this collection were available in my Book of Dreams 2e. Anyone who has that collection should NOT buy this retitled, expanded collection at the full price as it has only two new short stories that are also available separately. A description of the book from its Amazon.com page appears below:

This book is a compilation of 10 science fiction and speculative fiction short stories by the author from his two previous short story collections, Book of Dreams and Book of Dreams 2nd Edition, as well as two new stories written in 2013. Its scope extends from the innermost dimensions of the mind to the outer reaches of the universe, focusing from diverse perspectives on some common themes as to the meaning of life, the superlative strength and wrenching weakness of the human spirit, the power of love and the exquisite pain and ecstasy that flesh is heir to in its perpetual struggle between the duality of human nature that reflected both the divine and the profane.
In very broad outline, the ten stories involve the following themes:

If necessity is the mother of invention, could humanity use present technology to find a way to propagate its seed when faced with the certainty of an extinction-level event in less than two years’ time?

What really caused the catastrophic failure after the first full-scale test of the Large Hadron Collider? Motivated, ingenious terrorists are about to try their own field experiment to replicate the classified results of the test on a large scale using two suitcase nukes and a modified jetliner in an attack that, if successful, will eradicate all life on earth, destroy our corner of the universe and, in time, give birth to a new addition to the multiverse.

If we could communicate with the other sentient, intelligent species with whom we share our planet, what vital lessons might we learn from them and they from us?

In a not too distant future in which all human beings on earth are connected and integrated into a single neural net, what price might be exacted for one wishing to opt out?

Egyptologists and historians have long debated the riddle of the Sphinx–its true origins, its too-small human head and the pharaoh it was intended to represent. What if the riddle could be revealed live, in prime time, to an attentive world-wide audience upon the excavation of a chamber buried stories beneath its right paw?

What price would you pay to revisit a crossroad in your life when you had made a terrible, life altering mistake? Would you give up an unfulfilled life for the chance of virtual happiness in an alternate reality?

Would you sacrifice everything if you could attain absolute knowledge? If so, could you live with the knowledge you attained?
It is said that no man is an island, but what if even the least among us is a god in his/her own right?

If an alien visitor offered you a lifetime of health and the gift of telepathy for a small service, would you be quick to accept?

If we purportedly use only a small fraction of our brain’s capacity, what possible purpose does the apparently unused portion serve?

Above are some of the questions raised in this collection of science fiction and speculative fiction short stories that explores the interrelationship between dreams and reality, the nature of reality itself, and the dangers attendant to the single-minded pursuit of wish fulfillment that all too often results in unexpected and unwanted consequences.

The author is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business and has previously published seven non-fiction books through traditional publishers. His business law and legal environment textbooks have been used in colleges and universities throughout the United States since 1993. He has also published a book of poems and the two previous noted books of short stories since 2011.

Dear Victor,
I have suggested your lovely work to several friends of mine.  I know they would love it.   I think they have downloaded it but not gotten to read it yet.  
My ego is so fragile.  It does not matter  how long it has been, the hope is still there that someone will see my visions and enjoy my little stories.  Your stories are beyond good.  They are beyond excellent.  They are unique.  That is my highest praise.  You are one of a kind.  It takes a person to get off their dead ass and read something wonderful and not just the same old stuff that they know word for word.
Love Betty

Dear Betty,

You are beyond kind. Thank you!

I know your words reflect your generosity of spirit, kindness and enormous heart much more than the intrinsic value of my work. But I also know you mean what you say, which is why your words are such a cherished gift. Thank you! Truly.

Although our stories are very different, I think they are not dissimilar in one very important way: they are unique expressions of our singular view of the world. I love your stories because they are not cookie cutter formulas or sugar coated tidbits meant only to entertain for a moment like a mouthful of cotton candy that dissolves to nothing in one's mouth before we can even taste it and leaves behind nothing of substance. Your stories are wonderfully atypical, full of goodness and meaning, not spun sugar, and when absorbed they stay with you. Whether they involve a helpful dog, a kindly dog owner, charming cameleons or a gun-shy mother frog desperately trying to save her children from drowning but afraid of trusting a helpful Woofer to get them to safety, they are really about us, with your characters reflecting the strengths, weaknesses, dangers and miraculous discoveries of any journey through life--if we lift our eyes from our feet as we follow our path and simply look around with an open mind and a receptive heart.

We write different stories, but when you peel back the layers of the onion in which we deliver them, the central core is not very different. They will convey messages about what it means to be human, about our strengths and weaknesses, our moments of unbridled joy and of unbearable agony, of our aspiration to be more than we are and our disappointment that can turn to despair when we are unable to rise above both our self-imposed and natural limitations.

We may touch on common themes--but we do so in our unique way. We have a clear voice that some will no doubt find grating like a foreign tongue in the ears of a xenophobe. But some will hear the music, understand the lyrics and dance along with us while humming along. And that is as it should be. I won't sing with another's voice just to get more people to come to the dance. I know neither will you. A chorus of six billion people may make a glorious sound. But I much prefer the solitary voice singing in the wilderness like yours, and, maybe even mine.

1/23/2014


                             Victor..

                                       Have you ever used www.wordpress.com It's used to create
                      a blog, I did it and I pasted in my writing site and my ar/photography site.
                      It's easy to use and set up, it liks to search site, try it.

                                                            Joe

Dear Victor,
I am speechless.    
Love,
Betty

Joe,

I do use Wordpress. In fact, I maintain my blogs in both Wordpress and in Google's Blogger (blogger.com) that is also free and simply link them to my main web page at victordlopez.com. It is easier to post to both of these free services than to have to use my not-user-friendly process to post directly to my own web page. I have not had the time to set up a true blogging system at my web page so use this as a perfectly usable workaround.

I don't blog as often as I'd like--just like I don't post here as often as I'd like either (or in the many other places I used to). There are things that I must do that prevent it. When I retire in 2058 at the ripe old age of 101 maybe that will change.  

If you set up a Blogger account, you can post your Wordpress blogs there as well and perhaps reach a new audience. I do that--the blogs largely mirror each other, especially as to the book related postings which these days are the bulk of the little I still post.

Betty,

What you are is WONDERFUL! I know that people who never agree with anything I write will universally agree with that.