1. Tell me a little bit about your book 'Legitimate Power'.
After reading ancient texts like Popl Vuh and the Indian Vedas, I always wondered about man’s ancient and enigmatic past. Could one of those lost civilizations have produced a quantum computer? Or perhaps someone else may have left behind such a device? All are tantalizing possibilities, which developed into a plot for Legitimate Power.
On the outskirts of Jerusalem, a person digs up two ossuaries and finds a strange orange crystal the size of a smartphone able to repair itself when scratched, and turns into a perfect mirror under laser light. Needing money, he sells it to a local merchant, who puts it on the shadow gem market. Suspecting that it is not natural, Dr. Morrison, a part-time mineral collector, purchases the crystal and discovers that he has a quantum computer device that could revolutionize the information technology industry—if it could be made to work.
A Chinese official, also indulging a hobby in rare minerals, thwarted that his bid failed, realizing the crystal’s special nature, sends a Second Bureau operative to get the crystal from Dr. Morrison using whatever means necessary. A trail of murder leads Israeli authorities to the crystal…and they send a Mossad agent to retrieve a national treasure. Learning of the crystal’s existence and its potential, the American government becomes involved, resulting in a collision of conflicting interests, leaving Dr. Morrison to pick up the pieces of his shattered life.
I don’t explore the origins of the crystal in the book, content to leave that to the readers’ imagination.
2. If you had to write this one all over again, go through the whole editing and publishing process from the beginning again, is there anything you’d do differently?
I don’t believe that I would approach the editing and publishing phase differently, having gone through these things with my other books, but like most writers, I might consider rewriting or adding elements to the book. Perhaps a prologue chapter giving some details how the crystal came to be buried in a Jerusalem hillside, and about the people who buried it? A little more material about Dr. Morrison’s struggle to produce a quantum dot pigment? I don’t know. There are lots of possible avenues that could have led to a larger work, but I am fairly satisfied with what I have written. There is a point of diminishing returns where further fiddling will not add anything substantive to the work, except contribute to the author’s frustration, and I don’t want to go there. That effort would simply keep me from starting my next novel.
Read more of this interview.