If you know much about my writing you're probably aware that most of my published work has been contemporary YA, very realistic stuff similar to things that might well have happened to you or someone you know. I've also written two sci-fi eco-thrillers, a novel about a twenty-year-old who goes into a state of collapse after the love-of-her-life boyfriend dies, and a book about a ghost girl tethered to a grieving teenage boy.

What you might not guess from all this is that I'm a sucker for a good alien story—a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files, Stargate Atlantis, Falling Skies, V (both the 1984 series and 09 remake), Invasion (such an amazing show—can't believe it was cancelled after only a single season!), Doctor Who (more on that here) and Torchwood. Likewise, when a cool alien flick rolls up at the Cineplex, I'm there. Below are some of my personal favourites from over the years.

* Monsters (2010)
Directed and written by Gareth Edwards
Anything but your typical alien invasion picture or boiler plate aliens. "Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border."

* The Abyss (1989)
Directed and written by James Cameron
When a diving team search for a lost nuclear submarine they encounter something more. A terrific cast (Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn) and highly original—-almost whimsical—-alien species make this underwater drama one of a kind.

The Abyss

* Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Directed and written by Steven Spielberg
A group of strangers are inexorably drawn toward an encounter with intelligent alien life in Spielberg's iconic follow-up film to Jaws.

* Starship Troopers (1997)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven; screenplay by Edward Neumeier, based on a book by Robert A. Heinlein
Bug-squishing fun. In the near future humanity battles giant alien insects. One of the noteworthy aspects of the film is the comprehensive gender quality we observe in the military.

* Alien | Aliens (1979/1986)
Alien directed by Ridley Scott; written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett Aliens directed and written by James Cameron
The alien(s) of the title are horrific to look at, all endless sets of teeth and seething acid. If possible, they seem even more single-minded than Daleks. Exterminate!

* District 9 (2009)
Directd by Neill Blomkamp; written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
That rarity amongst modern action films, one that's as intelligent as it is gripping. Alien refugees are housed in South Africa's District 9, a makeshift ghetto. But when a human government operative begins to mutate into an alien creature, the fragile relationship between the refugees and their hosts explodes.

District 9

* Signs (2002)
Directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan
The crop circles that appear in the fields of a family farm are just the sinister beginning. In Roger Ebert's review of the film he writes, "M. Night Shyamalan's 'Signs' is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air."

* Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Director by Philip Kaufman; screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on a book by Jack Finney
Humans are systematically replaced by aliens who stealthily duplicate them. If you've seen this particular adaptation no doubt Donald Sutherland's other worldly howl is etched in your memory forever like it is in mine.

* Prometheus (2012)
Directed by Ridley Scott; written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof
I didn't group this with the other Alien movies above because Prometheus is a very different sort of film. For me the creation of the alien wasn't the most interesting element about this one—the glimpses at humanity's creators were.

* War of the Worlds (2005)
Directed by Steven Spielberg; screenplay by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, based on a book by H.G. Wells
Relentless, terrifying and realistic—humanity struggles to survive an alien onslaught.

War of the Worlds

At one point, for several months after finishing Come See About Me, I considered writing another book focused on a main character in his or her early adult years. I had a couple of ideas floating around at the time — one centred around an eighteen year old guy recently out of high school and who would've been in university if not for other issues in his life, the other was about a twenty-year-old girl who leaves college to help take care of her older sister's young kids when her sister is struck with cancer. Although I've penned more young adult fiction than anything else, the characters I'm interested in writing about aren't solely ones that fit comfortably in the young adult range and actually extend from twelve to twenty-two or so. That could mean delving into middle grade, young adult or new adult fiction, except that I don't really buy into new adult as a viable category that exists outside of romance fiction anymore.

Nearly all of the new adult books I've seen reviewed or even mentioned fall into a very narrow type — steamy romances between 18 - 25 year olds. I know there surely must be other books dealing with a wider variety of subjects that either aren't garnering anywhere near the same level of interest as the heated romances or perhaps are simply sitting on hard drives because writers don't know quite what to do with them. Then there are novels (not many) that deal with college-age protagonists but have been published as young adult fiction - e.g. Something like Normal (Trish Doller), Just One Year (Gayle Foreman), Love Story (Jennifer Echols).

Personally, I'd love to read more books about young people who have left high school behind and are beginning to make their way into the world of adulthood. It's a time of countless possibilities — education, careers, emotional growth to name a few — yet the novels being published as NA for the most part only seem to explore love and sex, and explore them in a very similar manner at that. There's nothing wrong with romance, of course, but currently there doesn't seem to be much room inside NA for stories that don't focus heavily on sex and love, and which seem to see the subject through a very similar lens to one another.

Maybe that wouldn't really matter if the area outside the NA umbrella wasn't largely a dead zone for books about 18 - 25 year olds. If there were ample space for those characters within adult fiction, for example. When I first sent out Come See About Me I considered it an adult book. Then traditional publisher after traditional publisher told my agent Come See About Me's main character, Leah, and the treatment of her situation was too young for adult fiction and too grown for YA, and I figured it must be new adult fiction instead. Where else could the book possibly fit?

Right now it doesn't fit anywhere, as far as I can see — neither in terms of traditional publishers nor the indie publishing scene — and neither would the other novels with slightly older than YA characters I would've written if there were a place for them.

I wish this wasn't the case; I wish NA had been the answer, a space for those characters to comfortably exist. But it isn't. Not the way the genre or whatever you want to term it stands now.

For now, I've stopped thinking of Come See About Me as new adult fiction and, for lack of an approachable market, will leave similar endeavours to writers with either better luck or greater adeptness in carving out a place for stories about 18 - 25 year old characters that don't fall inside the confines of the current new adult mold.

Sadly, I missed the Toronto International Film Festival this past September because I wasn't capable of standing in line for more than ten minutes (the damn plantar fasciitis and patellofemoral syndrome--—yep, still!). Plus, If you have trouble with your knees you'll know how uncomfortable it can be to sit with them bent for any length of time. But I've still been going to the movies; I just fidget like CRAZY throughout, straightening my legs every fifteen minutes or so. Let me apologize here for anyone I might've driven bonkers (I swear I typically try to pick an otherwise empty row) with my cinema-restlessness!

But what I really want to say is that Australian end of the world flick These Final Hours is exactly the kind of gem I go to the festival to discover, a film you otherwise might miss because it doesn't have a big budget, a wide-release or tons of promotional $ behind it.

What it does have going for it are wonderfully convincing performances from Nathan Phillips (James) and Angourie Rice (Rose) as its central characters and a compelling plotline which begins with the destruction of Western Europe and North America—after the Atlantic is hit by a meteor—and is destined to end with the frying of Australia in twelve hours' time.

Our setting is Perth, Western Australia looking every inch the last outpost of a fast-vanishing civilization. As the film kicks into gear, society rapidly unspooling, James's only plan for the end of the world is to face the moment out of his head so he won't feel the pain of annihilation. But en route to his own personal oblivion, James stumbles upon a situation he can't ignore, rescuing Rose from reprobate abductors.

With the clock ticking down a lifetime shrinks down to hours. As James deals with the hardest questions, we are forced to ponder them ourselves. How do we say goodbye? At the very end, who and what still matters?

If you admired Miracle Mile and Melancholia and are intrigued by the idea of a film that plays like the flipside of On the Beach, These Final Hours is for you, an entirely realistic but not heartless rendering of the end of life on our planet seen through the eyes of one man.

* Toronto Star Review

* Guardian Review

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing should be arriving in Canadian bookstores within the next week or so and I'm excited at the thought of encountering it out in the real world. It's a strange but good feeling when the characters and situations that had previously only been living in your head (and Word document file!) leap into the outside world.

To celebrate the book's release I'll be doing a blog tour that starts at the end of the month. I hope you'll stop by somewhere along the way! You can click the banner for details regarding when and where I'll be.

Meanwhile, during the last few days one of the stories the media has been buzzing about is the leak of nude photos of several famous Hollywood actresses. These kinds of "leaks" don't just happen to famous women, and they shouldn't happen at all. They're a violation, a crime. But in response to this crime, ridiculous articles like this one from Fox news advising stars who want to take nude photos with getting hacked to never upload them online or, better yet, use a Polaroid have sprung up.

Why not go a step further and advise women never to be naked in the first place? And definitely not to have sex! Because if it's discovered that any of us are 1) naked under our clothes, complete with female bodys parts and 2) engage in sexual activities—well, then it's open season. It's our fault simply for being women in the first place!

Roxanne Gay sums the problem up in her Guardian article, "This is what we must remember. Women cannot be sexual in certain ways without consequence. Women cannot pose nude or provocatively, whether for a lover or themselves, without consequence. We are never allowed to forget how the rules are different for girls. I suppose we should be grateful for this latest reminder."

Time Magazine offers this logical analysis of the victim blaming: "So why are people so quick to point the fingers of blame at the women who are victims of the hack? It’s likely because it’s easy — far easier than blaming a culture that nurtures this kind of misogynist attack — and also because it makes people feel safe."

While many people (including Seth Meyers) are well aware that blaming the women whose privacy was criminally invaded is unjust

culturally, we continue to face an enormous problem. One that all women potentially face as large segments of society cling to damaging double standards. This is partly what The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing is about as main character Serena and several of her friends fall afoul of the thin line of acceptable sexual behaviour they are supposed to display as girls. Actually, instead of thin line we could more accurately call it an impossible line, one where you can garner negative attention for being considered attractive as well as not not attractive enough, one where sexual acts are encouraged and cheered one one hand and then condemned, the girls taking part in them termed sluts and hos, on the other.

A study published in the Journal of Children and Media in June found that adolescent boys judge teenage girls whether they sext or not, calling teen girls who send sexts “insecure” or “slutty” and  and labelling ones who don't as “stuck up”and prudes. Meanwile "boys were virtually immune from criticism regardless."

How do you discover your authentic sexual self in a culture that's not-so-secretly hostile towards you, glorying in dictating and policing your sexual behaviour in the most illogical and—now public—of ways? This is one of the challenges facing young women today. Prejudices of the past mingling with ominpresent technology.

We can help girls and young women by letting them know we're on their side, that there is nothing shameful about their naked bodies or sexuality, but that who they share those things with should always be their choice. That means instilling these same values in boys—respect for girls as their equals— again and again and again until they, and we all, have incorporated them to the point that things like revenge porn, slut-shaming and sexual bullying become rarities.

In some ways I feel like I've been living this summer inside of a bubble. It seems strange not to be getting out for the long walks that were common for me up until last winter. I hope someday I can return to those, although never ever to the evil manual treadmill that I hold responsible for my current knee and feet woes (they require more force so put extras stress on your joints over the years)!

But I've been sitting outside when I can—a friend and I hung out by the lake for a good two hours this past Saturday afternoon, and each week Paddy and I've been hitting the Tuesday evening performances by the Oakville Wind Orchestra.

Several years before I moved to Oakville I worked with a woman who lived here. I can't remember exactly what she told me about the place except that she spoke of it in glowing terms. So much so that when Paddy and I decided to leave Ireland for Canada (man, was I homesick!) I was sure that Oakville was the place we should ultimately head for. Since then we've both fallen ever more in love with the town because of things like the lovely lakefront parks, the picturesque downtown streets, the jazz festival, the summer wind orchestra times, and the GO Train system (which makes it easy to get into Toronto whenever you like).

So if you don't know Oakville but happened to read about it in my new adult book, Come See About Me, I swear I'm not just making Oakville sound good, it truly is a terrific place to live.

Anyway, the below photos of Oakville were all taken yesterday but pretty much sum up most of my summer (I've also seen a fair amount of movies—another sitting activity—but the cinema is no place for taking pictures!).

Often we follow wind orchestra night with from one of a handful of places in the area. My favourite flavours are pistachio (La Dolce Vita on Lakeshore makes their with pistachios from Sicily) and lemon vanilla custard, but last night's chocolate orange was scrumptious, as was Paddy's scoop of Ferrero Rocher.

Good evening, moon. I will miss these long, balmy evenings with you.

Hanging out by the water's edge, watching the boats go by...

and wondering precisely what the not-so friendly ghost does. I'm guessing with a title of 'not-so friendly' he or she is just a little on the cranky side rather than being a full-blown horror meaning there's probably nothing to fear.

Of course, in the run up to the September first release of The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing I've also been doing things like looking at copy-edits and page proofs. There'll be a blog tour shortly after the release. I'll post details when I have them. In the meantime Canadians can enter to win 1 of 5 copies (international giveaway to follow!).

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing

by C.K. Kelly Martin

Giveaway ends September 10, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

In restrospect, paying a visit to the Toronto Zoo at the end of March—when my plantar fasciitis was already a chronic problem and my knees even unhappier than my feet—wasn't the brightest idea. But fourth month old Humphrey beckoned. How could I resist?

And he was adorable. Have a look:

If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at Humphrey's video album clips of his early days. Here's one of my favourite videos—Humphrey's first steps:

And here are Humphrey's parents in the water (family friend hanging out on the rocks in the background).

If you've ever been to the Toronto Zoo, you'll know it's huge. 2.87 km² to be exact. Paddy and I didn't walk all of it that day at the end of March, but we didn't exactly take it easy either. Seeing the pandas was another must. I hadn't laid eyes on pandas in person since the last time they were at the Toronto Zoo, way back in 1985.

This time around a wide-eyed little girl in a stroller was peering at the pandas at the same time as we were. I'm not sure how old she was, definitely not more than a year, but her mother informed us that she had a beloved plush toy panda at home and now couldn't believe her eyes. Indeed, awe lit up this little girl's face like a sunny July. Yes, pandas are REAL. There is true magic in the world.

Magic and beauty like the stunning white lions, and all sorts of intriguing creatures from Australia's Kookaburra to a brand new mountain gorilla baby.

So I'm not the least bit sorry I went to the zoo at the end of March, but I couldn't do it now. For the last six weeks or so twenty minutes of standing/very ginger walking has been my absolute maxium, which meant I had to cut the Dublin trip short. As it was, the majority of my holiday looked much like this, and I've been spending countless hours in the night splint sock since returning to Canada too.

Yep, I'm pretty much housebound. But I'm very grateful for the time I had visiting with family and friends while in Ireland, and am already looking forward to the next trip. In the meantime I'm continuing to do battle with plantar fasciitis, tendonitis and patellofemoral syndrome. My latest weapon is orthotics. Voila the molds of my Frankenfeet

which were used to produce some incredibly hard custom insoles designed to correct my specific feet imbalances. Luckily, I can still type and so none of this will interfere with revisions on The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing that I'm expecting later today.

Me and my Frankenfeet will be back online once I'm done editing. Meanwhile, If you happen to visit the Toronto zoo, please give Humphrey my love!

Whoah, my contemporary new YA, The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, is now up for pre-order at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Indigo/Chapters, the Book Depository and Barnes and Noble. Release day is only 105 days away...September 1st!

Here's the catalogue copy: Losing weight over the summer gains Serena some popularity, but it also means discovering first-hand the pains of being a fifteen-year-old girl in a world that both sexualizes and shames young women. After narrowly avoiding exploitation in a shortlived relationship, Serena aligns with a new friend who was the victim of an explicit image that was shared at school. When Serena finds herself in a relationship with a new guy, she is surprised to find a different set of expectations. But have her previous experiences damaged her too much to make it work? As Serena struggles to find who she is as opposed to who she is expected to be, she begins sighting Devin — her older brother who disappeared months earlier.

Out September 1st!

The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing by C. K. Kelly Martin
Dancing Cat Books, 2014
1770864113 (ISBN13: 9781770864115)

More info coming soon!

It's that time of year again—the season when sun and warmth return to the land, and when Canadians look forward to receiving Prime Minister Harper's annual Easter card in the mail. As has become tradition, I've scanned in the Prime Minister's Easter card so Canadians who happen to be out of the country or who didn't receive their greeting (possibly due to the phasing out of Canada Post!) before the holiday can have a look.

Maybe it's just me but this year's card seems to contain a certain ennui, perhaps a sense that Stephen's time at the helm is fading. Nonetheless, professional that he is, Steve-o still showed up for the Easter photoshoot. He clearly doesn't want to let Canadians down——except when it comes to human rights, the environment, gun control, job creation, and other, er, trifling matters.

View Easter cards from other years:

2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2013

Now I know why Frankenstein's monster usually looks so miserable. It's not existential angst or loneliness, not even body image problems. Nope, none of that. What's wrong with Frankenstein's monster is foot pain. Specifically, plantar fasciitis.

Mayo Clinic definition: "pain and inflammation of a thick band of tissue, called the plantar fascia, that runs across the bottom of your foot and connects your heel bone to your toes."

I can tell by the look in his eyes. This guy is in physical agony.

No doubt all his joints ache. But the soles of his feet, they're in excruciating pain. He feels like gravity is pummelling his soles into the hard ground beneath his feet. If he sits down, for a few minutes of relief, his feet howl at him when he rises again. But staying on his feet for more than a handful of a minutes at a time is a problem too. The pain is more or less constant.

When he's sleeping the stabbing pain wakes him at least once a night, and makes it difficult for him to fall asleep in the first place. Granted, he probably wouldn't sleep like a log anyway, because of the other issues I mentioned, like the existential angst and feelings of alienation. But it's the feet——the plantar fasciitis——which is Frankenstein's monster's numero uno problem.

How do I know this? I recognize that haunted PF look in his eyes because, man, I'm feeling that Frankenstein's monster foot pain big-time. For the first while——and by that I mean, like, the first year——the foot pain didn't interfere with my life very much. My heel hurt a little when I got on my feet after a period of sitting or sleeping and then the pain swiftly disappeared. My doctor suggested I wear supportive shoes at all times, even indoors (staring at this full length photo of the monster, I seriously think he needs to get his hands on some New Balance running shoes!) and I did.

But that didn't help. Instead the pain got worse. Then my knees started to hurt too. Not a lot and not often. But enough for me to return to the doctor, who diagnosed patellofemoral syndrome (runner's knee) on top of my plantar fasciitis. She prescribed physiotherapy, and off I went, happy to hear from my physiotherapist that I should begin to feel better in 2 - 3 weeks and be back to my old self in 8 - 10. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and instead my condition got exponentially worse. After 5 weeks I was advised to drop the physio, and now, about a month afterwards, I'm at a place where the last two weeks have been the worst yet.

The arches of my feet are in severe pain. They're most comfortable when I'm lying down, but even then they feel stiff and achy, like someone else's feet have been roughly attached to my body. Sometimes darting pains wake me up at night. During the day, I can't be on my feet for more than a handful of minutes at a time before the pain becomes unbearable. Sometimes the pain is so bad I'm driven to tears and chills. My knees can't handle stairs and feel like they're being sliced into if I squat or bend at the knee at all, or even sometimes if I don't. My calves are so tight that they feel as though they're about to snap and my IT band is a mess too. My normal gait doesn't exist anymore. I limp and wince.

Just yesterday I began seeing a sports doctor who says my severe case of plantar fasciitis gave rise to patellofemoral syndrome in both my knees and has affected my whole kinetic chain, hence the pain in my legs, thighs, calves and, well, just about everywhere from the waist down. I was also diagnosed with this mouthful of a condition: Flexor Hallucis Longus tendinopathy. Lovely, huh? Now I'm going to be trying a number of things she's suggested——some of which will have to wait until I get back from my upcoming trip to Ireland (during which I will be spending more time sitting down than anything!) because orthotics and night splints need to be broken in gradually.

But these ongoing health issues have been crowding my life since December/January and are some of the reasons that I haven't been online often. I'm almost as tired and beleaguered as Frankenstein's monster looks in the top photo! So once I kick this thing I'm determined to search out the poor monster, share my weapons of choice against planter fasciitis and finally, finally bring him some much needed peace.

Additional reading on the condition:

* Everything you need to know about Plantar Fasciitis
*  Plantar Fasciitis article at Sports Injury Clinic.net
*  Plantar Fasciitis -- the most maddening injury in sports
*  Plantar Fasciitis overview at Patient.co.uk
*  Plantar Fasciitis Prevention and Treatment
*  No Consensus on a Common Cause of Foot Pain

I've just come from a rather long appointment with my GP. Cost to me: FREE. Then follow-up blood-work. Cost to me: FREE. Next, multiple X-rays at the local hospital. Cost to me: FREE. When I can get an appointment with the sports doctor I've been referred to that will also be FREE.

All thanks to Canadian socialized medicine!

Meanwhile Stephen Harper's Conservative government is trying to sabotage "the Health Accord that protects equal care for all Canadians" by quietly "cutting $36 billion over 10 years and breaking the pact that all Canadians should get equal care, no matter what province they live in."

"By pulling out of the agreement, cutting billions in transfers, and letting standards fall across the country, Prime Minister Harper will undermine our public health system.

If he succeeds, cash-starved provinces will face intense pressure to let America’s titanic for-profit companies buy into our system and give us worse care for higher prices."

You can begin the fight for our health care system by emailing your Member of Parliament, Prime Minister Harper and and Health Minister Rona Ambrose via Lead Now.

Then please pass this message on to everyone across the country. A whopping 94% of Canadians "support public —not private, for-profit— solutions to making the country's healthcare system stronger." We can't let Harper gut our treasured healthcare system.

Yes, February made me shiver. This winter has been unusually brutal, extremely cold and snowy with very few breaks. And I can't believe we lost Philip Seymour Hoffman and Harold Ramis before their times. Such sad news.

This month I also started going to physio for knee and arch woes (ouch!). My dad's furnace broke down and had to be replaced and my mom was in her third snow-related car accident (thankfully she's fine but her car was totalled) within six weeks. So February hasn't been the best of times, but neither has it been the worst of times and I wanted to blog about some of the good things that happened this month before it gets away from me.

Things like Paddy having Valentine's Day off which allowed us to spend the day together. We spent part of it tromping around Oakville in the snow. Indeed the laneways were such a wintery white that the town nearly appeared like someplace else.

Below you can see Oakville's " Homecoming Trail" looking ever so pretty in the snow. If you gaze closely enough you'll see the pier jutting off to the left. Even years after writing Come See About Me the location always make me think of Leah and Liam!

I felt a bit sorry for this reindeer buried under layers of snow in a Christmas arrangement outside a local business. Surely with the holiday long behind us the reindeer should be off duty by now and allowed to go on its merry way?

Wonderful Canadian author Monica Kulling (who penned the Mister Dash books and the Great Ideas series) very kindly sent me a copy of her beautiful new picture book, The Tweedles Go Electric this month. Thanks so much, Monica! The Tweedles have already garnered a glimmering star from Kirkus which described the book as, "A fine joke, well-delivered, and as clever as it is timely."

And here's what I had to say on Goodreads:

"The clever Tweedle family are bound to attract a slew of young fans with this infectiously fun and visually fetching tale. I wanted to jump into the book the way Mary Poppins and her young charges did with chalk drawings, and stay there awhile."

Don't you just love the Tweedles' spiffy green electric automobile? Every time I look at the cover I like to pretend I'm the woman on the Penny Farthing bicycle.

I couldn't possibly talk about February without mentioning the fantastic Blue Rodeo gig Paddy and I caught at Massey Hall on the 20th. If you live in the GTA you'll remember that day as the one we caught unexpected late afternoon/rush hour snow which turned to evening rain. But what better way to spend a rainy night than watching Blue Rodeo play most of the tracks from their new album, In Our Nature, as well as old favourites like Rose Coloured Glasses and 5 Days in May? You can take a look at the entire setlist here.

We were fortunate to have fourth row centre tickets and from my seat I had a good view of one of the security folks singing along with Head Over Heels (he knew all the words) in the centre aisle.

Below are a handful of concert shots I took on the night, and to hope that the rest of the month will be as much fun as the Blue Rodeo show would be wildly unrealistic, but at least I have The Tweedles and their world to keep me company. There's no snow where the Tweedles live, I've noticed, and no chilly temperatures. No need for snow tires or outerwear any heavier than a blazer!

 I'm currently awaiting a revision letter for my new contemporary young adult book, The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, and getting ready to leave the future behind me, at least for now (science fiction is far too captivating for me to make the goodbye permanent!). As you can see, I made a few cosmetic changes to the website to reflect the return to contemporary fiction. But before I completely leave 2063 and the U.N.A. in my wake, I wanted to discuss some of the science behind Yesterday and Tomorrow. Many of the forces that define the North America of 2063 in Yesterday and Tomorrow — global warming, nano-medicine, the ubiquitous presence of full immersion virtual reality, and the widespread replacing of human workers with robots or other technologies — are highly possible given where we stand today. As the rate of technological change and climate change increases, we're in for a wild ride.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, by the twenty-first century I expected many changes that haven't come to pass — flying cars, much more extensive space exploration than humanity has actually accomplished, sophisticated robots (or should I say Replicants?), and cures for countless deadly diseases that still plague us. Meanwhile things I never expected have either greatly impacted our daily lives or loom large just around the corner. I'm chiefly talking about two things — how intertwined our "real" lives have become with the Internet and other technologies, and the enormous threat climate change presents to most living things on our planet. Bizarrely, even now that the threat is well recognized, we've barely begun to respond to the problem, and procrastination will only make our future direr.

CLIMATE CHANGE

In March the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report on global warming. A draft of that report was leaked in November 2013 and stated that, "Many of the ills of the modern world - starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease - are likely to worsen as the world warms."

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger. Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

A recent University of Hawaii study projects that world temperatures will be off the charts hot come 2047, with various cities reaching the boiling point much sooner. Kingston Jamaica will be likely be permanently off-the-charts hot in just a decade with Singapore following in 2028, Mexico City in 2031, Cairo in 2036, Phoenix and Honolulu in 2043, San Diego and Orlando, Florida in 2046 and New York and Washington in 2047.

According to study author Camilo Mora, "the 2047 date for the whole world is based on continually increasing emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gases. If the world manages to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, that would be pushed to as late as 2069. But for now, the world is rushing toward the 2047 date."

ROBOTS

We could call it the next industrial revolution and it's already under way. You can see it in stores and airports in the form of self-check-in/out terminals, in Amazon's Kiva warehouse robots, machine driven commuter transport like Vancouver's Skytrain, and the imminent closing of most London tube system ticket offices in favour of direct payment via contactless bank cards. Google has "just purchased Boston Dynamics, a company known for building walking robots for the military" and says "it wants to build a robotic army for the manufacturing sector."

Google and numerous car manufacturing companies have been working on self-drive car technology. "Rice University computer science professor Moshe Vardi says that in 25 years "driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy. So there go many of the approximately 4 million driving jobs out there. Same for sanitation, and those are just a couple examples of how physical jobs will be replaced."

A recent report from the Oxford Martin School's Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology concludes that 45% of American jobs are at high risk of being taken by computers within the next two decades. The authors of the study "believe this takeover will happen in two stages. First, computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable fields like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative support. Jobs in services, sales, and construction may also be lost in this first stage. Then, the rate of replacement will slow down due to bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such as engineering. This 'technological plateau' will be followed by a second wave of computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and engineering, and the arts at risk."

VIRTUAL REALITY

Most of us already spend quite a bit of time in an alternate reality known as the Internet, or immersed in increasingly realistic videogames.

According to eMarketer's estimate of media consumption among U.S. adults, average time spent with digital media per day was set to surpass TV viewing time for the first time in 2013. "The average adult will spend over 5 hours per day online, on nonvoice mobile activities or with other digital media this year, eMarketer estimates, compared to 4 hours and 31 minutes watching television."

Because eMarketer estimates all time spent within each medium (for example if someone spends an hour watching TV while also multitasking on a tablet, the time would be counted as spending an hour with TV AND an additional hour on mobile) the overall figures are sky high. U.S. adults spent an average of 11 hours and 49 minutes with media each day in 2012, and were forecast to spend 12 hours and 5 minutes with media in 2013.

In terms of gaming, full-body virtual reality has arrived with Virtuix Omni and virtual reality headset Oculus Rift. Palmer Luckey, Oculus' founder, says, "I think in a few years, maybe a few decades depending on how lucky we are, we'll be able to get Matrix level virtual."

Given the above info, inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil's belief that, "by the early 2020s we will be routinely working and playing with each other in full immersion visual-auditory virtual environments. By the 2030s, we will add the tactile sense to full immersion virtual reality" doesn't sound at all far-fetched.

Kurzweil posits that, "There will be limited ways of adding the tactile sense to virtual and augmented reality by the early 2020s, but full immersion virtual tactile experiences will require tapping directly into the nervous system. We'll be able to do that in the 2030s with nanobots traveling noninvasively into the brain through the capillaries and augmenting the signals coming from our real senses."

NANO-MEDICINE

Kurzweil also says, "in 30 or 40 years, we'll have microscopic machines traveling through our bodies, repairing damaged cells and organs, effectively wiping out diseases. The nanotechnology will also be used to back up our memories and personalities...The full realization of nanobots will basically eliminate biological disease and aging."

We have a ways to go before reaching that Star Trek level of healing but clear progress is being made. "Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed nanoparticles to target artery walls around the heart and release small quantities of drugs on a timed basis decided upon by a doctor beforehand."

"South Korean scientists are developing a new treatment for cancer that will be more efficient and less harmful than chemotherapy. A team at Chonnam National University has developed nanorobots that can detect and treat cancer cells in a way that avoids the harmful side-effects of modern drugs." Imagine, no more chemotherapy!

So if you were ever curious about where my ideas for 2063 U.N.A. society came from — here are the roots of the Bio-Net, gushi, robots workers creating mass human unemployment, and climate chaos rendering areas of North America almost uninhabitable. Roots that are firmly planted in the world of today.