I recently had a reader approach me after reading Half Way Home. She was perplexed and wanted to know what my views on abortion were. Her confusion, I believe, stemmed from the overall progressive nature of Half Way Home (i.e. environmental issues, homosexuality, animal rights, mineral plunder). How, then, could I end the book with a seeming call for the celebration of life? How could I make, from first chapter to last, such a villain out of the A.I. that attempted to abort the colony, and seem to lambast the procedure itself?

The answer to that lies in the distinction between a philosophical love of freedom, and the blind acceptance for what one does with that freedom.

For instance: I am a huge fan of Democracy. Giving a people the power to vote for their representation, and thereby shape the framework of their own social contracts, is one of the great inventions in human history. There are few things I’m more in awe of than this recent social development. Now, does that mean I support the votes individuals cast with that freedom? Of course not. Hitler was voted into office (granted, he gradually usurped more power than the people vested in him). Closer to home: I disagree with the votes cast for most of our Senators each election cycle. And yet, I applaud the right to cast those votes.

This distinction is important. After the French Revolution of 1848, which resulted in universal suffrage (which, naturally, didn’t include women), there came a vote. The results were not what the revolutionaries wanted. The people voted for a conservative government, not vastly different from the one they had before. Rather than deal with the blow and prepare for future elections, there were more revolutions, which pushed the populace further and further to the right until one Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as a more tyrannical ruler than those usurped.

England went through a similar ordeal during their civil war and the nasty rule of Cromwell. In both cases, there was a philosophical love of human freedom, but a rejection of what they used that freedom for.

Another fun example is Capitalism. Capitalism is to property what Democracy is to politics. Despite the recent abuses heaped on Capitalism (largely coming from those too lazy to look up the definition of the word), all it stands for is human economic liberty. The freedom to own stuff. The freedom to trade stuff with other people. The freedom to enter into binding contracts. That’s it. Not to get too far off the point, but what Enron did was the opposite of Capitalism. Any violation of human economic liberty cannot be used to rail against Capitalism. That’s like using the crime of robbery to invalidate Democracy. It’s a bizarre of using the opposite of something to denigrate that something. Weird, eh?

Okay, back to the point: I support Capitalism. How can you not, once you know what the word means? However, just as with Democracy, I do not blindly support what one does with their economic freedoms. I shake my head at these nimrods who buy houses approximately ten times larger than they need. I feel outright pity for professional athletes who blow their millions and are destitute within seven years of retirement. I have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who can’t make the payments on their second home, or feel weighed down by their private yachts. I see waste all around me, and it all runs counter to my own tastes. And yet … I support the freedom those people exhibit to make these (subjectively speaking) bad decisions. I don’t have that weird self-esteem issue where I need everyone to conform to my standards (a fault of the Left and Right). I’m just happy we live in an era where more and more people enjoy these freedoms.

Now, let’s talk about abortion. If you follow the pattern above, you might guess that I’m pro choice. And you’d be correct. Oddly enough, it’s people on the Right that also applaud the two items above, but they loathe the idea of aborting a human fetus. An ideological inconsistency they could avoid if they learned to distinguish between a love of freedom, and the blind acceptance of what those freedoms are used for.

What strikes me as odd with most pro-choicers is that they verge on being pro-abortion. If there’s any doubt: abort. Perhaps this stems from the Left’s general intolerance of humanity; it’s hard to say. For me, the issue comes down to individual choices, just like votes and economic decisions. If a woman is having her eight abortion because she keeps having unprotected sex, and is the sort of person to just deal with problems later rather than employ a bit of foresight, I say that person is an idiot. I am still pro-choice, but I think her choice is bunk. Likewise, if a woman decides to have an abortion because she and her boyfriend are having a fight, and she thinks the best way to get back at him is to prevent their child from being born … again, I think that’s a pretty bad call. Same goes for a couple that has decided they want kids, and then a woman gets cold feet and aborts a planned child without first telling the husband she’s going to do so. Not as black-and-white for me, but also not a fan.

Those are hard to come up with, admittedly, because I can think of a legion more instances were abortion seems like the right call. Beyond the obvious cases of rape, incest, medical risk, fetal abnormality, genetic risk, imparted disease (AIDS, for instance), there are the millions of cases where having a child is going to do harm to both parent and offspring. It does no good for a woman  to have a kid if she isn’t economically, emotionally, or socially prepared. It does a disservice to the potential, future kid she could have in better circumstances.

The issue, then, in Half Way Home, becomes this: is the abortion procedure of any Colony okay? Is it okay in the specific example detailed in the book? I would clearly vote “no” for the latter, and lean toward “no” for the former. Do I celebrate life? Absolutely. But I don’t see how having a child in a manner that ruins two (or more) lives is a celebration of it. That seems to be a blind acceptance of the same decision, no matter the circumstances or outcome. Nor do I see the rationale behind applauding the ending of every life, even where it has almost nothing but the potential to be something beautiful. That sounds like more blind fanaticism.

Here is the guiding principle that gives these disparate ideas their consistency: I celebrate choice. I celebrate freedom. And I compartmentalize that love so that I may loathe the stupid shit people do with them.

One of my favorite phases of the book-creation process is creating a cover. It’s also one of the most difficult. It’s worse than staring at a blank canvas, because the end result can’t be anything; it has to be a very specific something. While going through this process for HALF WAY HOME, my wife stumbled upon a photograph on DeviantArt. It blew us away. It was haunting and mysterious. Gritty and primal. Young and mature. Dirty and innocent. It was a photograph of contradictory juxtapositions. The mood of the shot teetered, unbalanced, just like the plot of my story. It was perfect, so I contacted the artist to see if I could use it.

Nadia Huggins lives on the island of St. Lucia, down in the Caribbean. She is young, bright, and talented. She agreed at once to her work being used for HALF WAY HOME, and she also agreed to tell me more about herself and her photography (the cover shot in particular). Between each response, I’ve added one of her photos. So, please, take your time. Scroll slowly. And enjoy.

Me: What got you interested in photography?

Nadia: I think one of the first times I really started taking an interest in it was when one of my best friends bought this really cool waterproof point and shoot camera from canon. We used to fill it up with black and white film and just shoot whatever we found fascinating around the island. Prior to that I used to mess around with my father’s digital cameras, which he wasn’t too keen on because he thought I had a knack for “destroying things” (only because I had a track record of making the printers malfunction). My interest started to grow very quickly and I started exposing myself more and more to the art form. Digital cameras were much cheaper to use at the time and still are so i’ve stuck with them since.

Me: How long have you been doing what you would consider “serious” photography?

Nadia: For the last 4 years I started taking what I do a bit more serious. However, I have been trying really hard to preserve that love and excitement I have when I do it casually. Its so easy in this field to get caught up with the “seriousness” and drain the fun out of it. The minute I feel that happening I usually have to take a break.

Me: What kind of equipment do you use and what kind do you dream about owning?

Nadia: I have a nikon D80, also I really like to work with natural light. However, I recently bought an external flash so i’ve been experimenting with that quite a bit. I really want to start learning a lot more about lighting, I think my images will evolve in really interesting ways when I really understand how to apply it. I would love to own a hasselblad one day (hopefully sooner rather than later). I want to see a certain level of quality in my images, lately I’ve been trying to pay more attention to that.

Me: What’s the most surprisingly wonderful photo you’ve ever taken? You know, that shot that should’ve been a decent pic, but ended up blowing you away?

Nadia: I think one of my favourite images to date is passenger. It was one of those moments where I was just casually shooting, but when I was going through the images for some reason that shot jumped out at me. It wasn’t anything spectacular on its own, but I felt it had potential to become more after the post processing and I think I was successful in achieving what I wanted.

Me: Who, if any, are some of your favorite photographers?

Nadia: One of the most striking images I have seen is Oppedette by Dieter Appelt. This photograph still moves me deeply, I even tried to pay homage to it adding my own twist. I also really enjoy Steve Mccurry’s work, I just think he has an incredible eye, I am in awe with the way he works with colours and how he composes his shots. Some other photographers I really love are Holly Bynoe, Floria Sigismondi, Gregory Colbert, Storm Thorgerson and Pavel Kiselev.

Me: Do you leave the house with a mind to stage and capture great shots, or do you carry your camera with you and snag whatever presents itself?

Nadia: There are certain shoots I do where I visualize the concept beforehand and then get all the elements together and go out and shoot. A lot of times these ideas come just before I am about to go to sleep so I try to keep a journal close by to write it down. Also I try to walk with my camera everywhere, you never know what could happen. I think a lot of my work takes shape and develops its mood in the final edit of the image. I really enjoy post processing.

Me: The photo series used on the cover of Half Way Home is simply startling. What can you tell us about that shoot? About the model? About the tree and the building it’s snaking up?

Nadia: Well I shot that around 2005 in St. Vincent using one of my close friends as the model. She was away studying, but every time she came home we would go to this one particular beach which is a black sand beach (you might notice from the sand on her legs in the photograph). We were walking up the beach and I noticed this old wall with a tree growing against it. I don’t think I have seen anything as incredible texture-wise to date. I just had a good feeling about it, the natural colours and textures were just so beautiful. Her first instinct was to climb it while mine was to capture it, I think it turned out pretty well in the end. It was definitely one of the moments where before I even reviewed the images I knew they would have been powerful. It had the right combination of everything happening.

Me: Where would you like to go with your art? Do you have any ultimate dreams?

Nadia: That’s a tough question. I know right now I am just trying to enjoy what I do and hope it evolves into something greater eventually. I’ve been trying to go with the flow and see where my love for it takes me. On a commercial level though, I would really love to do work on album covers, but I’m not sure where the future of this lies.

I’d like to thank Nadia for taking the time to answer a few questions. I’d also like to thank her for sharing all her amazing photography with the world. It was almost impossible to choose just a handful of shots to sprinkle into this post, so I highly recommend you visit her Flickr account and scroll through the rest. It’s amazing to me that a young photographer could have already assembled such a diverse and powerful portfolio. If any of her shots move you, please leave a comment so she can know. Or go to DeviantArt and get a print of one of her images.

Ruby wants to know what the story is about in order to better judge the mood of the covers. Here you go, Ruby:

In the distant future, planets are settled by vat-grown colonists. The expense of sending generations of humans on several-hundred-year journeys is too much, so they instead launch 500 human blastocysts and an automated collection of machines to raise them and prepare the landing site for them.

This process normally takes 30 years if the planet is found viable. If it’s found unviable, the colony is aborted immediately. The odds are roughly 50/50, which is pretty outstanding considering the prize for the sponsoring country: owning a planet, all its resources, and a launching pad for more conquests.

50/50. A coin flip. Except, nobody took into account a third alternative: a coin that lands on its edge and remains there, teetering and precariously balanced. Half Way Home is about just such a planet. A place half way between viable and abort. Our protagonists are awakened at age 15 with only a portion of their training complete. Their colony is on fire — a fire it purposefully started — but now it’s trying to save itself. The abort procedure is being … well, aborted.

Less than sixty kids survive that first night. They are the colony rejects. The lowest on the hierarchy. They would have been the last to be woken up. Unfortunately for them, the abort sequence goes the same direction. Now they need to do more than merely survive, they need to find a way to ensure future generations have a chance. But first they must convince the colony AI that they even have a right to live. And if they can get beyond that, they might find their worst enemy isn’t their new home, or the circumstances that led to their near-death. It may be each other…

Can you believe it was a year ago that I set out on this wacky writing endeavor of mine? A whole year. Seems simultaneously eternal and brief, somehow.

During that time I’ve done some silly promotional stunts. I’ve unveiled a proof copy live via webcam. I did a hunt-and-seek giveaway over three websites. I even enlisted one of the most evil men in history to pimp my stories. I’ve been dumb enough to get on stage and read from my book, and brave enough to attend book-clubs consisting of women wearing hats.

As I enter my second year of writing for a pittance, I’ve vowed to make those former stunts look positively sane by comparison. This year, I want to expand on how much you, the reader, can get involved with these books of mine.

When the first Molly Fyde book was being put together, one of my favorite parts of the process was getting future readers involved with the cover design. Thanks to the input of interested fans, the book’s face went from hideous to comely. It then went on to win a Covey Award for most eye-catching cover.

For my upcoming book, HALF WAY HOME, I want to ratchet up the insanity. I would like to give readers a chance to become a part of the creative process. 25-35 readers will get a rough copy of the book at cost + shipping (~$10 or so). They will then be able to contribute in one of several ways:

1. Nit-pickers. Some of you probably love nothing more than picking nits. See a plot hole that drives you nuts? Take umbrage with my made-up science? Hate my characters’ names? Pick away.

2. Grammar Nazis. Pretty self-explanatory. And yeah, you people will actually have a purpose in life. For once.

3. Armchair writers. Think you could come up with a better ending? Wish my dialog could be tweaked? Wonder why I killed so-and-so and not so-and-so? Here’s your chance to let me have it.

4. Reviewers and blurbers. The copy all of you are getting will be considered an Advance Reading Copy. If you read it and absolutely love the story (most of you will), you can go ahead and review the book as-is. This is how blurbs get on books before they are officially released. Go create a blog named “Chicago Times Tribune” and write something up. These other fools might get a paragraph hidden within the folds — your words will shine on the cover! Once you’re done, spend your time in the forums arguing against all the changes everyone else wants to make.

So, that’s the idea. A book with one author, but dozens of guiding hands. Sound crazy? It’s actually how most of your favorite books are created. Agents, editors, associate editors, publishers, spouses, art directors, interns … a dozen people might influence the final product. But this will be done out in the open, right in my forums. You’ll have a physical copy of the book to mark up, a piece of literary history. Your name and contributions will be listed in the acknowledgments. And depending on your level of involvement, maybe you’ll get a few copies of the final product at cost so you can brag to your friends.

How will it all work, exactly? That’ll be up for us to decide as we go along. So let’s start with three threads: A sign-me-up thread for volunteers and general discussion, an argue-over-the-cover thread for Photoshop Phanatics, and a change-this-or-else thread for requests for modifications.

See you in the forums!