What a party! Unforgettable! It was Dec. 31, 1999.

Cue Prince:

“They say, 2000-00, party over
Oops, out of time
We’re runnin’ outta time
So tonight we gonna party like it’s 1999”
— Prince, 1999

This party took place in an airplane hanger strung with lights at a compound in the woods. I was wearing a black velvet hoodie bought specially for the purpose, because what do you wear when you want to look fancy on New Year’s Eve, but will also be outside in the cold? Sometime before midnight or possibly after, a bunch of people including my spouse, jumped naked over a bonfire. Surrounded by friends old and new, we escaped the perils of the changing clock into the aughts. In the morning, voice husky with reverie, and possibly retelling some story having to do with eating a straight habenero or a ghost pepper, Jim sang Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash.

We all joined in. 

“Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire
I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire
The ring of fire”
—Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire

The following New Year’s Eve, those of us still bound to the Earth would be on a coast watching the sun rise over the ocean. Instead of enjoying reverie, we’d be reflective. Thoughtful and sad.

Y2K entered peacefully those first days. The foretold technological collapse, computer systems scrambling air traffic control and a host of other systems we took for granted, did not come to pass. People had prepared and worked  to prevent chaos, but those early days it felt like good fortune (and a lot of unnecessary worry). My spouse and I got up as usual and went to work.

A month later, Jan. 31, 2000 we would get a call in the middle of the night. After some sleepy hesitation, we would get up and travel south to our friends’ home. Alaska Airlines Flight 261 had gone down into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. There were no survivors.

A group of friends returning from Mexico for a trip to celebrate their 30th birthdays were on it. Jim was a flight attendant on Alaska Airlines. They were college friends of college friends. An older group of friends we were just getting to know better, close friends of our close friends.

We gathered together after that. We grieved. There was a wake. There was an emptiness and an absence that remains. There are annual gatherings at a pub in the University District.

Grief doesn’t go away over time. You walk with it until it becomes bearable. The heaviness sinks into your cells. In many ways, it becomes more penetrating over time. I’ve thought of those friends at all of the marriages, births of children, parties, and milestones over the years. Years of loss and thoughts of what might have been.

On the last night of 2000, walking on the beach we talked about what we wanted in 2001. I said aloud that I wanted to write a novel. I told myself a story about how art had been lost in the world with the absence of those friends and I felt called to add my art. That was my story anyway.

It was an urgent call, but also a persistent call. It began a long journey in which I began to write my first novel Sync Chrome City.

That first novel was a challenge. I didn’t know if I could do it. I had to develop a writing habit. I started writing on my lunch break when I worked at Edmonds Community College in public relations. I would take out my laptop and think about characters or write a scene.

I wanted more time to write, but I lacked the stamina to write for hours. I was plotting and creating bit by bit. I had a process, but I didn’t know it yet.

I had to develop a habit of writing. I read and listened to a lot of writing advice. Write. Write every day. Writer’s write. I began to do this.

I did not “always want to be a writer”. I was an avid reader more than anything. I had written some stories, writing was a way I knew how to express myself and it was my profession. I went from college essays, to newspaper stories, to press releases. 

Novel writing was different. It was artistic. It was creative. I was in awe of those things. I worshipped authors — so how could I be one?

Still, determined, motivated, inspired, and perhaps sad and afraid, I began. I read books about how to write. I took Certificates in Popular Fiction at the University of Washington. I judged a Pacific Northwest Writers Association competition.

Along the way, I also developed a passion for what I wanted to write, my contribution. I wanted to write science fiction that would inspire the future. I wanted to write optimistic science fiction that would envision the world we wanted. Instead of dystopia, I wanted to write utopias. Later, I would find others writing in a similar way who shared this vision and I would feel less alone.

Sync Chrome City was set on a college campus. It was about a group of college friends. My spouse and I met at college and I fell in love with him at first sight across the floor at an 80s dance held in the Viking Union lounge at Western Washington University. That’s all in there. 

I was also worked at a college as I wrote. As I struggled to turn characters and ideas into a readable plot, I drew on some of  the natural rhythm of college life – the stress of finals, the desire to graduate, the uncertainty of what would come next. 

I really wanted to write science fiction. I was an avid Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein reader as a high school student then jazzed on William Gibson’s Neuromancer right before going to college and later Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. In college, I began to look to women authors and this led me to Atwood, Willis, Le Guin, Tepper, and Butler. I connected with their works.

Because I do things the hard way, I wanted to make sure there was science in my science fiction so I went on a reading binge about neuroscience and psychic abilities.

I wanted a book about change for the better, but I wanted that change to come not from technology, aliens, or devices. The change would come from within ourselves. We would change. Sync Chrome City is about humanity changing our minds. It’s about us deciding to be together. It’s about connection.

Read more about Sync Chrome City and buy the book.