Practicing to Be Lightning

Speculative fiction this time, and a long time coming. I can’t promise never again to release two books in four months–like mesquite bushes, books have deep roots, and the writer can’t always control when the visible part makes it to daylight. But I can tell you it’s been a journey.

For years I’ve been thinking about mining my thirty years of hike notes–about 600 hikes–for the setting for a novel. From the malpaís and beyond, through a portal to another world that is also this world–think Venn diagram–here it is.

About:

For Ben, reality is crumbling …

Pursued by a whistling killer through flash flood, rockfall, and storm, under a sky where even the stars have gone mad, skeptical scientist Ben and intuitive Zuni artist Trace flee across an uncanny desert wasteland, fighting to climb what is surely a mountain—or is it a cloud? 

Ben thinks he’s the rescuer … until he isn’t. Trace has a GPS … kind of. But lovers and nightmares hunt them on the paths of their very neurons. Prisoners of their disastrous pasts, can they escape? Does anyone ever escape?

On an ancient earth where the land itself is alive, Practicing to Be Lightning plunges you into a terrifying quest where the lines between reality and imagination blur, and survival means confronting not just raw nature, but the wilderness of the soul.

And praise:

“A breathtaking book.” —Connie Willis, SFWA Grand Master, winner of eleven Hugo and seven Nebula awards

“A heart-stopping quest through a dangerously beautiful landscape toward a mysterious destination pairs with vivid portrayals of irrational evil and irresistible human kindness.  A fine read.” —Anne Hillerman, author of the best-selling Leaphorn, Chee, Manuelito mysteries

“A good book bridges worlds. A great book drops you into its own. Practicing to Be Lightning is a great book. We can’t help but follow its call into the landscape of the malpaís, all sharp edges and sheer drops, as perilous and beautiful as our inner selves.” —Zach Hively, Reading the West Book Award-winning author of Desert Apocrypha

“In order to understand the truth, you need more than one way of knowing. What Betsy James does here is to meld two ways of thought—science and religion—into a better description of what the world really is.” –Dr. K. Kitts, retired NASA scientist

More in the sidebar … –>

… and an excerpt here.

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