The Gilded Age

July 14, 1896

Bastille Day





15

The View from the Cliff House

“To a cold bottle and a hot bird,” declares Jessie Malone, raising her glass of Napa champagne and tucking into her traditional Bastille Day breakfast at the Cliff House.

Zhu rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but she has to smile. Jessie isn’t one to make understatements, and her breakfast offers more than a whole roast turkey. There’s a saddle of venison, a ham baked in plum preserves, and a second turkey. Jessie insisted on ordering two hot birds so that she, Zhu, and Daniel won’t quarrel over who gets the choicest cuts.

“Viva la Bastille Day!” Jessie says, clinking her glass against Daniel’s, tossing bubbly down her throat. “Here’s to you, Mr. Watkins, and good luck to you.”

“Good luck to us all, Jessie,” Daniel says and sips slowly at his first glass of champagne. He darts a guilty glance at Zhu, sets his glass down.

Excellent. He’s not only learned to internalize guilt, but learned the pleasures of moderation. She smiles her encouragement and adds, “And especially good luck to Hope.”

“To Hope.” Daniel raises his glass, sets it down again.

Zhu cradles their newborn daughter in her arms. Hope stirs in her blanket, then settles down into the dreamless slumber of infancy. Her tiny perfect golden-white face is peaceful, her black hair escaping from her bonnet in wisps.

Zhu tries not to judge these people of the past as she gazes out at the view from the Cliff House. How she wishes Daniel and Jessie would change their self-indulgent ways. How she’s tried to change them, advise them, threaten them. How she wishes Daniel would settle down, spend more hours pondering the stories he wants to tell with moving pictures rather than squandering those hours on smoking and drinking. How she wishes Jessie would give up the biz for her own health and safety, and take off her corset for the same reason.

Yet when Muse downloaded a report, Zhu discovered that the international flesh trade is alive and profitable in her Now and—to her astonishment--covertly supported by the World Birth Control Organization. Huh. Okay. There must be some twisted logic in that alliance from hell.

And this is the Gilded Age. Of course Jessie and Daniel are going to eat, drink, and be merry till they die. They’ll never know Prohibition, the regulation of narcotics, protection against STDs, tests for cholesterol and high blood pressure. Those things will come long after they’re gone. So why should they change? Just because Zhu—their little lunatic telling tall tales about the future—informs them they’ve got high-risk health habits? H. G. Wells entertains them with tall tales about the future, but he never advises them to give up their profligate ways. Nor does Mr. Wells ever speculate when the cures for syphilis and lung cancer will be discovered.

But that was never the object of her project—to change anyone of the Gilded Age. The resiliency principle makes sense to her now. Some things never change.

Till they do.

Oh, Zhu has made some difference. Jessie and Daniel have changed for the better. But this is their Now and their world, not hers. In the days since giving birth to Hope, Zhu has felt an alienation growing inside her like a dark flower. A disengagement. A turning away from this world. A turning away from the Gilded Age.

As if her project truly is done in this Now. As if her Now is summoning her home.

She watches the shifting Pacific Ocean unmarred by drilling rigs, hydroplexes, seaworld domes, megatankers, and the great sea walls erected when the coastlines flooded during the brown ages, all those artifacts of modern civilization already timeworn in her day. Now pearl gray in the late morning light, the virginal sea stretches out to an azure horizon, empty and pure. Just the sea, gulls wheeling, a colony of sea lions sunbathing on the rocks, and the good fresh smell of brine unsullied by toxic fumes. The timeless view fills her with melancholy, a sense of her own transience.

The Cliff House, newly rebuilt after a catastrophic fire and reopened by Mayor Sutro in February of this year, boasts an ocean view from all five of its stories. Tourist concessions selling hot roasted peanuts and trinkets for a penny line the first story. An art gallery graces the second story. How San Franciscans love their art galleries, Zhu thinks. The rest of the stories of the Cliff House are devoted to eating, drinking, and dallying. Plenty of private suites for amorous affairs. The turreted chateau was to be styled after San Diego’s inestimable Hotel del Coronado, but the architects, Mr. Lemme and Mr. Colley, have given the place its very own rococo character. Mr. Ambrose Bierce has pronounced the new Cliff House a monstrosity, but diners celebrating Bastille Day find the view and the food and the drink very fine indeed.

Changes. Things always change from moment to moment. Isn’t that what Zhu has pondered from the very start of the Gilded Age Project? At the most basic quantum level, reality is no static thing, but a flux, an incessancy, a great trembling. Spacetime spins; it ebbs and flows. In cosmicist theory, reality is One Day, existing for all eternity. And yet reality is like a beam of light, swirling with infinite worlds.

It’s a paradox, inscrutable, Zhu knows that now. If it weren’t for that paradox, she wouldn’t have been able to t-port to the past. Or return to her future?

Changes. The first Cliff House burned down to the ground. Where Zhu sits now with her daughter Hope is its second incarnation. When Muse whispers in her ear that this Cliff House will also burn to the ground in just a few short years, she tells the monitor to shut up. She doesn’t want to hear it.

More changes. Jessie finally went to a doctor who told her what she already knew from Zhu. That she’s got to cut down on the drinking or her liver will bust. Jessie proudly proclaims that she’s reduced her intake of champagne from twenty bottles a day to three, plus a brandy nightcap. Well, two brandy nightcaps. As a result of this regimen, she’s slimmed down two whole dress sizes in a mere three months. “Mr. Worth is showing the cinched waist for the fall,” Jessie says. “Sure and it’s a good thing I dropped some of that lard.”

And more changes. Daniel has started drinking again, though he says this time he can control himself. So far, he takes a bottle of wine with his dinner and that’s all. Still. Zhu shifts Hope to her other arm, displeased with Jessie’s toasts. Champagne for breakfast. That’s a throwback to Dupont Street. Daniel really ought to stay sober for breakfast.

But it is Bastille Day, and Daniel is leaving for Paris.

The dining room is draped with red, white, and blue bunting, sprays of white and red carnations, bowers of smilax, and hundreds of flags of France, California, and the United States. On the deck, a string quartet plays the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty.

“The fall of the Bastille is France’s Independence Day,” Jessie explains to Hope as if the newborn understands her perfectly. Jessie’s words are slurred; she’s tying one on already. The baby wakes and squeals, and Jessie says, “Aw, lemme hold her, missy.”

Zhu hands the baby over. Hope’s eyes, when she opens them, are green. Though it’s still hard to tell, not gene-tweaked green. Could Zhu have passed on her gene-tweak to her child? Yes, but the odds are against it. Gene-tweaks are resilient in the recipient, but weak in genetic descent. No, Hope’s green eyes probably come from the deep sea eyes of Daniel’s mother, from some atavistic gene running through the maternal side of his family. From Hope’s Caucasian ancestors.

The ambiguity is not lost on Zhu. Whose green eyes? Hers? Or Daniel’s mother’s? Under the resiliency principle, we could become the Cosmic Mind, Chiron told her. We could change the details, and it didn’t matter. The outcome we wanted still happened.

Is that why Zhu had this baby? The birth was quick and easy, over almost as soon as her labor began. She’d never planned on having a baby, certainly not during the Gilded Age Project. Definitely not in her own time. She is a Daughter of Compassion, a woman not permitted to bear children. A woman who believes that having a child in her time imposes an untenable burden on the future. That having a child outside of the law is immoral. She accepted that a long time ago. The Cause is her purpose in life. Kuan Yin nourishes her devotion.

At the sight of her baby cradled in Jessie’s arms, a shudder of joy ripples up Zhu’s spine so intense that it’s painful. But the joy—and the pain—are distancing, and she feels a peculiar disengagement from the child. Hope isn’t her baby, not really. Hope doesn’t belong to her, she belongs to destiny. Zhu has merely been the means through which Hope could come to life. Zhu is an instrument, a medium. Not the guiding principle of Hope’s life to come.

Daniel lights a cigarette, stubs it out at Zhu’s sharp glance, and takes his infant daughter from Jessie’s arms, cradles her. He’s promised to cut down on the smoking, too. He’s promised they’ll marry when he returns from Paris. “You know how much I adore you, my angel,” he says. “You saved my life.”

So she did. But Zhu knows better. They will never marry. That is not Daniel J. Watkins’s destiny. He wrote to the Lumiere Brothers in Paris, who were delighted to welcome a young American interested in their moving pictures. One day he will work with Thomas Edison, he will go to Los Angeles, he will meet Charlie Chaplin—the actor, not the painter of broken-backed nymphs. He will make the moving pictures he loves.

Muse doesn’t have to show her the Archives. Zhu has had a premonition.

Daniel has had a premonition, too. He’s left the Stockton Street boardinghouse in a trust to be managed by the Bank of California for the benefit of Hope, together with the proceeds from the foreclosure sale of Harvey’s poolroom. “Just in case something should happen to me on my journey,” he says. He’s taking with him only the proceeds from the sale of the undeveloped lots in the Western Addition. “But never fear, my angel, I shall return within two months,” he says.

But he won’t. He doesn’t see it yet, but Zhu does. Daniel J. Watkins has settled his affairs in San Francisco.

“So your old man is finally giving you some respect,” Jessie says to Daniel now, carving meat from the turkey breast and handing him a plate. “Ten thousand dollars in seed capital?”

“Isn’t that grand? Father believes the moving picture business has huge potential. Mr. Edison isn’t quite so sure, but Father is nuts about the notion.” Another guilty look for Zhu. She’s heard all about his condemnation of his father, all about his father’s abundant flaws and crimes. Yet the tug of blood is powerful. Zhu—an abandoned skipchild—has never known that tug herself, though she can see it plainly in Daniel. The son still craves his father’s respect, welcomes the old reprobate with open arms if only his father will give him that respect.

Zhu pats Daniel’s hand. “If your father decides to invest in the moving picture business, he won’t regret it.”

Jessie and Daniel both lean forward, hanging on her words. Do they believe she knows a thing or two about the future, after all? Would they take investment advice from H. G. Wells? Or has Zhu proven a higher degree of reliability? The thought makes her smile.

She hears the famished cries of gulls descending on buttered popcorn scattered on the rocks by tourists, and Donaldina Cameron sweeps into the restaurant with Eleanor Olney and a bevy of her girls. The girls, neatly dressed in gray cotton smocks, their black hair and black eyes shining, smile with wonder and delight. They seldom see such luxury, plus a view of the ocean. Nine Twenty Sacramento Street depends on charity, after all, and the mission doesn’t have a lot of money. Nine Twenty Sacramento Street will never have a lot of money—Zhu knows that from the Archives—but Donaldina Cameron will manage, survive, and even thrive for all the ninety-eight years of her life. She will never waver from her Cause again.

“Here you go, Miss Holy,” Jessie says with all due sarcasm. “The gentleman has got another kid for you. Try her on for size.”

Daniel holds out Hope.

And Cameron takes the baby from Daniel’s arms while her girls eagerly crowd around her. Cameron’s stern Scotch face is transformed, radiant with love. Despite the streak of white hair and her austere appearance, Donaldina Cameron is not yet thirty. She’s younger than Zhu.

“Ah, another one of my daughters,” Cameron murmurs, “that’s what she is.”

“Your daughters?” Jessie snorts.

“All these girls are my daughters,” Cameron says as the girls cluster around their Lo Mo. She gazes at the baby. “Sweet heavens, she is beautiful. Those green eyes.”

Jessie rolls her eyes at Daniel. “Shall we go outside on the terrace, Mr. Watkins? I need some fresh air. Sure and I do believe she’s about to kidnap another kid right out of her father’s own arms.”

Daniel rises, takes Jessie’s elbow. “I do believe I need a smoke in the open air.” They stroll out onto the deck.

“Donaldina Cameron?” Muse whispers, the monitor’s voice hovering above Cameron and Hope.

“Good heavens, is that your guardian angel again, Miss Wong?” Cameron whispers.

“I guess so,” Zhu says. Good old Muse, up to its tricks.

“This is your Cause,” Muse says in a high, clear voice. “And your Cause, Z. Wong.”

Muse downloads the file, Zhu.doc.

Alphanumerics strobe, and the directory flashes across her peripheral vision. Forty GB, damn! A trickle of dread spills down Zhu’s spine. Is another reality manifesting before her eyes?

Her left eye is scratchy and, in less than a second, Muse downloads the file through her optic nerve, and projects the holoid. The luminous blue field pops up in a corner of the dining room.

The little girls and Miss Olney stare, goggle-eyed, but Cameron watches calmly, rocking Hope in her arms.

The scene in Golden Gate Park unfolds—the young man with the painted face, the barefoot girl. The anonymous Chinese woman pushing the wheelchair, an elderly Cameron smiling at the park, at the people, at Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco. Cameron waves to him, reaches up to her collar, unpins the aurelia, and hands it to her companion. And the elderly anonymous green-eyed Chinese woman walks across the grass and gives it to Chiron.

Now Zhu unpins the aurelia from her collar and cups the brooch in the palm of her hand. The tiny golden woman with jeweled butterfly wings poises there, as if ready to fly away.

The holoid shifts, the park fades, and Chiron sits before them in the room like a cloud, gazing steadily at his unseen audience.

Is he alive or dead?

“He’s alive,” Chiron says.

Zhu’s heart begins to hammer, her breath catches. “Muse, what’s going on?”

“The new file appeared spontaneously in my directory, Z. Wong,” Muse says. “I have no explanation.”

“The little green-eyed boy is alive,” Chiron says in the holoid. “The Night of Broken Blossoms is over. The Prime Probability has collapsed into the timeline. The boy was a Quantum Probability, Zhu the one who tipped those probabilities, like spinning a coin on its rim. The Gilded Age Project has always been about Zhu, not about some trinket. Zhu has closed one Closed Time Loop and stabilized another. The past affects the future, but the future also affects the past. We have witnessed, and we have made it so.

“Is the boy related to Zhu?” Chiron continues. “Is she his great-great-grandmother?

“Well, he has green eyes. His lineage is from old San Francisco. Is he a descendant of Zhu’s daughter? I wish I knew for sure, but I don’t. I’m sorry. That information is lost to the Archives.

“Come back to us, Zhu. You are not the woman I will meet in Golden Gate Park, of that I am sure. You belong here, in your Now. Come back. You’ve got work to do. You’ve got the Cause, and now you’ve also got a family. A family of your own. The little boy probably is your great-great-grandson. We cosmicists are chastened. You’ve shown us that the great principle of the Cosmic Mind is love. You were never destined to murder your own grandson.

“Now listen carefully. We’ve installed a tachyonic shuttle at Point Lobos, on the rocks below the old site of the Cliff House. Yes, the rocks are still there. And I promise you, it’s the last tachyonic shuttle we will ever use.”

The holoid vanishes. The luminous blue field hovers before them for a moment, shrinks to a point of blue light, and disappears.

“But how can I leave my baby?” Zhu whispers. “How can I leave Daniel?”

“You already have,” Muse says. “Hurry.”

Donaldina Cameron takes the aurelia from Zhu’s hand. “I’ll keep her safe her whole life and I’ll keep this for her. For the young man with red hair in the park. I won’t forget. I know exactly what to do.”

Out on the deck, Jessie laughs at some joke Daniel has told.

Cameron takes Zhu’s hand. “Do you want to say goodbye to them?”

Zhu shakes her head, and bows to kiss Hope’s perfect little forehead. The baby reaches up, giggling, and touches her cheek.

“Then hurry,” Cameron says.

Zhu turns and walks away, taking the stairs. She steps out of the Cliff House into a cold sea breeze. Life follows birth, death follows life. The past affects the future, that is the natural order of the Universe. Yet in the One Day that is reality, sometimes the future creates the past and life follows death. Zhu climbs down the rocks, searching for the portal that will take her home.

About Lisa Mason

A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Literature, the Sciences, and the Arts, and the University of Michigan Law School, Lisa Mason is the author of eight novels, including SUMMER OF LOVE (Bantam), a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book and Philip K. Dick Award finalist, and THE GOLDEN NINETIES (Bantam), a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book.

Mason published her first story, “ARACHNE,” in Omni and has since published short fiction in magazines and anthologies worldwide, including Omni, Full Spectrum, Universe, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Unique, Transcendental Tales, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Immortal Unicorn, Tales of the Impossible, Desire Burn, Fantastic Alice, The Shimmering Door, Hayakawa Science Fiction Magazine, Unter Die Haut, and others. Her stories have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.

Lisa Mason lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, the renowned artist and jeweler Tom Robinson. Visit her on the web at Lisa Mason’s Official Website, follow her Official Blog, or e-mail her at [email protected].

THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series, Mason’s urban fantasy, is on Nook and on Kindle. A print edition is planned for late 2013. Also available in affordable installments as THE GARDEN OF ABRACADABRA TRILOGY on Kindle, Book 1: Life’s Journey, Book 2: In Dark Woods, and Book 3, The Right Road, and on Nook, Book 1: Life’s Journey, Book 2: In Dark Woods, and Book 3: The Right Road.

At her mother’s urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious, magical apartment building on campus. She discovers that her tenants are witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and wizards and each apartment is a fairyland or hell. On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. One of the victims is a man she picked up hitchhiking the day before. Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation and torn between three men, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing war between Humanity and the Demonic Realms, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.

“So refreshing. . . .This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”



The Bantam classic is back! SUMMER OF LOVE, A TIME TRAVEL (a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book) is on Nook and on Kindle.

Nineteen five-star Amazon reviews

“Summer of Love is an important American literary contribution.”

“This book was so true to life that I felt like I was there. I recommend it to anyone.”

“More than a great science-fiction, a great novel as well.”

The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.

San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.

Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away from the straight suburbs of Cleveland to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.

With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?



New!Summer of Love Serials 1 through 7 are now exclusively on Kindle for free! Summer of Love, Serial 1: Celebration of the Summer Solstice, Summer of Love, Serial 2: Festival of Growing Things, Summer of Love, Serial 3: A Dog Day, Summer of Love, Serial 4: Rumors, Summer of Love, Serial 5: Inquest for the Ungrateful Dead, Summer of Love, Serial 6: Chocolate George’s Wake, and Summer of Love, Serial 7: A New Moon in Virgo.

The Bantam sequel, THE GILDED AGE, A TIME TRAVEL (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book) is on Nook and on Kindle.

The year is 1895 and immigrants the world over are flocking to California on the transcontinental railroad and on transoceanic steamships. The Zoetrope demonstrates the persistence of vision, patent medicines addict children to morphine, and women are rallying for the vote. In San Francisco, saloons are the booming business, followed by brothels, and the Barbary Coast is a dangerous sink of iniquity. Atop Telegraph Hill bloody jousting tournaments are held and in Chinatown the tongs deal in opium, murder-for-hire, and slave girls.

Zhu Wong, a prisoner in twenty-fifth century China, is given a choice--stand trial for murder or go on a risky time-travel project to the San Francisco of 1895 to rescue a slave girl and take her to safety. Charmed by the city’s opulent glamour, Zhu will discover the city’s darkest secrets. A fervent population control activist in a world of twelve billion people, she will become an indentured servant to the city’s most notorious madam. Fiercely disciplined, she will fall desperately in love with the troubled self-destructive heir to a fading fortune.

And when the careful plans of the Gilded Age Project start unraveling, Zhu will discover that her choices not only affect the future but mean the difference between her own life or death.

“A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.” The New York Times Book Review



Mason’s thriller, SHAKEN, an ebook adaptation of “Deus Ex Machina” published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, republished in Transcendental Tales (Donning Press), and translated and republished in Europe and South America, is on Nook and on Kindle.

Emma “J” for Joy Pearce is at her editorial offices on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco when the long-dreaded next Great Earthquake devastates the Bay area. Amid horrific destruction, she rescues a man trapped in the rubble. In the heat of survival, she swiftly bonds with him, causing her to question her possible marriage to her long-time boyfriend.

But Jason Gibb is not the charming photojournalist he pretends to be. As Emma discovers his true identity, his mission in the city, and the dark secrets behind the catastrophe, she finds the choices she makes may mean the difference between her own life or death.

A List of Sources follows this short novel.



The Story That Sold To The Movies. TOMORROW’S CHILD began as a medical documentary, then got published in Omni Magazine, and finally sold to Universal Pictures, where the project is in development. On Nook and on Kindle.

A high-powered executive is about to lose his estranged teenage daughter to critical burn wounds and only desperate measures may save her life.

The ebook includes Lisa Mason’s blog, The Story Behind The Story That Sold To The Movies, describing the twists and turns this story took over the years.



HUMMERS was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, chosen for Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 5th Annual Collection (St. Martin’s Press), and nominated for the Nebula Award.

Exclusively on Kindle for free!

Laurel, in the terminal stages of cancer, is obsessed with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Jerry, her homecare nurse whose lover is dying of AIDS, gives her a surprising gift. A hummingbird feeder. As Laurel comes to grips with her own death, she learns powerful and redeeming lessons about Egyptian Magic from the hummingbirds that visit her.



THE SIXTY-THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF HYSTERIA, published in the acclaimed anthology, Full Spectrum 5 (Bantam), which also included stories by Neal Stephenson, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jonathan Lethem, is exclusively on Kindle for free!

The year is 1941, and Hitler’s armies have swept across Europe. Nora, a budding young Surrealist artist, has fled to Mexico with B.B., a much older and acclaimed Surrealist playwright down on his luck. Hundreds of European artists and writers have formed a colony in Mexico City, and Nora befriends Valencia, a fellow Surrealist artist and refugee. Together the friends explore Jungian psychology and the power of symbols in their Art. But Nora is plagued by an abusive relationship with B.B. She embarks on a harrowing journey deep into her own troubled psyche.

The novelette was inspired by Mason’s favorite Surrealist artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. An Afterword describing Carrington and Varo’s lives and a List of Sources are included in the ebook.



EVERY MYSTERY UNEXPLAINED, published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), an anthology that included stories by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kevin J. Anderson, is exclusively on Kindle for free!

The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his father, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death, for which he feels he is to blame. He learns to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt and to assume his place at center stage as a magician in his own right with the help of a mysterious beautiful lady.



DAUGHTER OF THE TAO, published in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn (HarperPrism), that included stories by Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Sheckley, and Ellen Kushner, is exclusively on Kindle for free!

Sing Lin is a mooie jai, a girl sold into slavery at the age of five to a wealthy merchant in Tangrenbu, the ghetto of her people in the new country across the sea. One lucky day, while she is out shopping by herself, she meets another mooie jai, Kwai Yin, a bossy, beautiful girl two years older. Kwai has a secret. Before she was sold into slavery, she had a Teacher who taught her about Tao Magic.

But Sing watches Kwai succumb to the terrifying fate of all slave girls in Tangrenbu.

Soon Sing is destined to go to the same fate. But will her invocation of Tao Magic save her?



For something fast and fun, U F uh-O, A SCI FI COMEDY, Lisa Mason’s script for a producer looking for the next “Galaxy Quest” or “Men in Black” that evolved into a novella, is exclusively on Kindle for free!

Nikki and Josh really want a child but have infertility issues. Gretchen and Mike have the same problem. When Nikki meets Gretchen at the Happy Daze Family Clinic in Pasadena, they discover that they share a love of music and have asked for a donor with musical talent. Nine months later, they give birth to very unusual babies and, seeking an answer to why the kids are so special, they meet again at a pediatrician’s office. And the search is on: who—and what—is Donor Number 333?



For something different, TESLA, A WORTHY OF HIS TIME, A SCREENPLAY, which was read by the producer of “Aliens” and “The Abyss” and is currently under consideration at another L.A. producer, is on Nook and Kindle. A List of Sources is included in the ebook.

Genius. Visionary. Madman.

Nikola Tesla (1856--1943) was the pioneering genius who invented the AC electrical system that powers our world to this day, as well as radio, remote control, the automobile speedometer, X-ray photography, the AND logic gate that drives all our computer systems, and countless other devices and precursors to devices such as cell phones, television, and the Internet that we so effortlessly use today.

Strikingly handsome and charismatic, fluent in half a dozen languages, mathematics savant and master machinist, a reed-thin perfectionist who quoted poetry like a Victorian rapper, Tesla became one of the most famous men of his day. Friend of tycoons like John Jacob Astor and Stanford White and celebrities like Mark Twain and Sarah Bernhardt.

Yet Tesla was an intensely driven and lonely man, beset by inner demons, and cursed with a protean inventive imagination a century ahead of his time. He died in obscurity and poverty and, to this day, his name is not widely known. How did that happen?

Blending historical fact with speculative imagination, Lisa Mason explores the secrets of the Inventor’s inner life and his obsession with Goethe’s Faust set against the backdrop of sweeping technological changes at the turn of the twentieth century that have forever changed the world.



New! Lisa Mason’s romantic suspense, Celestial Girl, A Lily Modjeska Mystery, will be on Nook and Kindle at the year’s end.

Strange Ladies: 8 Stories, a collection of stories published in magazines and anthologies worldwide, will be on Nook and Kindle in early 2013.

Also forthcoming is The Quester Trilogy, an ebook adaptation of Lisa Mason’s early cyberpunk classics, Arachne and Cyberweb.

For news about print books, ebooks, and more, visit Lisa Mason’s Official Web Site and Lisa Mason’s Blog. Visit me on my Facebook Profile Page, on my Facebook Author Page, on Goodreads, on LinkedIn, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

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