Trigger Warning Sample Chapter

1

It’s really depressing how even small pieces of good fortune are followed so often by their reverse.

I had plenty of opportunity to contemplate this universal truth as I sat, stood, and walked through the interminable orientation process for my new job at Crimson College. I had spent all of the spring semester trying to get this job, and all summer making plans for what I would do when I started it. But now that I was finally here, I was hoping that this portion of the job, at least, would be over. And the future wasn’t looking too good either.

In marked contrast to my previous faculty jobs, which had been notable largely for their professional neglect, my current position as a VAP (Visiting Assistant Professor) of Russian involved a multiday onboarding process. Over the previous two days I, along with the largest and most contingent-heavy group of new faculty in Crimson College’s history, had toured the campus and the dorms, done several exquisitely humiliating team-building exercises, and attended lectures and orientation sessions on the library, IT facilities, campus security, and the zeitgeist of the current crop of undergrads.

Which apparently was stressed out. We were given several training sessions on how to recognize drug abuse, binge drinking, suicidal ideation, and potential warnings that a student was about to flip out and commit a mass shooting. As part of that, campus police did a short session on what to do during an active shooter event, from which I gathered that if anyone did come strolling into your classroom with their finger pressed down on the trigger of an AR-15, you were well and truly fucked.

“Nothing,” we were assured by several different deans, “like that is going to happen at Crimson, of course, but it’s always better to be prepared. Everyone is very happy here. The worst we have to deal with is the Gang of Six.”

The first dean who brought up the Gang of Six then skipped on merrily to talking about town-and-gown outreach without seeming to notice the excited murmur that went through everyone at the sound of this intriguing name. The second dean who mentioned it hastily corrected himself and refused to answer any questions about it. By the time it came up again, during the session with campus police, everyone was burning with curiosity, and when the particularly mousy-looking dean who had dropped the name tried to pretend that she hadn’t said anything about it, several of the new faculty members insisted that we be informed what was going on.

“It’s an anonymous group with an anonymous website,” said Brian Michaels, the chief of the campus police force, when the mousy dean gulped and refused to say anything more. “We’re keeping an eye on them.”

“Are they making death threats? Planning mass shootings?” demanded several voices at once.

The mousy dean gulped again.

“No,” said Brian Michaels. He was a big burly man in his fifties, with pale blue eyes, the kind of skin that puts the “red” in “redneck,” and hair that had once been blond now going to gray and buzzed almost completely off. If I had to guess, I would have said that he wasn’t much for book learning, but that he was clever and shrewd about “real world” things. I had the impression that he was having a hard time not snorting or rolling his eyes.

“They,’re, uh, how shall I put this, writin’ blog posts about social justice issues,” he said. “We have no reason to believe that they pose any threat of violence at all. But they’ve expressed some, uh, discontent with certain aspects o’ campus life, so the college administration has decided to keep an eye on ‘em. We always get a few unhappy customers—the Men’s Protection Alliance has been blatherin’ on for months now—but they never actually cause trouble.”

This led to a fierce debate amongst the incoming faculty about the ethics of monitoring student groups and student social media activity, and for a moment it looked like a shouting match might break out between someone from the B School (business) and someone from English, until Brian Michaels broke it up and told everyone we needed to finish up, because we were on a strict schedule, and he wasn’t going to get in trouble for making us late for our next training session.

The day was capped off with an outdoor picnic where we hobnobbed with two fresh deans, the Provost, and the President. That had been so much fun I had seriously considered bursting into tears afterwards, and wondered why I had ever agreed to take this job. Oh right, because I needed the money.

Now, at quarter past eight in the morning, I was pushing my way through the Georgia August heat in search of Lee 032, where the mandatory diversity and inclusivity training was scheduled to be held.

I had parked in the faculty parking area on the far side of the athletics center and hoofed it past the tennis courts, around the outdoor track and the football practice field, over the beach volleyball area, filling my shoes with sand in the process, past several dorms, and across the back quad to Lee, the main administrative building. Which may or may not have been named after Robert E. Lee. The college was cagey on that subject.

Sweat was trickling down my sides, soaking my bra and panties, by the time I found an open entrance to Lee. The chill of the air conditioning hitting my wet clothes was welcome at first. By the time I had circled the first floor twice and found the stairs to the basement, where Lee 032 was housed, I was feeling distinctly chilled. And I still had four more hours in here to go.

Lee 032 was a windowless basement space that looked kind of like a church rec room. Round tables, laid with tablecloths in Crimson College colors (crimson and cream, a combo that looked sort of but not exactly like Harvard’s), had been set out around the room.

“There are name tags and place cards.” A woman in a uniform-y non-uniform of a crimson blouse and cream pencil skirt stopped me at the door. Her name tag said Tanika Scott, Assistant Dean of Faculty Development. She looked at a table diagram in her hand. “What’s your last name?”

“Halley,” I told her. “Rowena Halley. Russian.”

“Goodness! That’s not something you hear every day. Welcome to Crimson, Rowena. Here’s your name tag. You’re at table four. Over there.”

I took the name tag and followed her pointing finger to a table in the back corner of the room. The back corner was fine with me. Maybe I could catch a brief nap or at least check my email while I was there.

Another woman was already sitting there, scrolling through her phone. She was tall and fit and looked about my age, so mid-thirties, and had weathered skin and dark blonde hair that had been cut in a very short pixie that flirted with the boundary between attractively gamine and aggressively mannish.

Lesbian, ex-military, I guessed.

“Oh hey,” she said, looking up from her phone as I approached. “Take a seat.” She pulled out a chair for me. “Mel,” she said as I sat down. “Well, Melissa Wilson, but everyone calls me Mel. Arabic.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Rowena Halley. Russian.”

“Nice. Oh hey, are you at our table too?”

A short, slightly plump woman was hovering uncertainly behind me, like she wanted to join us but didn’t quite have the nerve. She was wearing big glasses, an oversized blouse and maxi-skirt, and was the only black person in the room other than Tanika Scott and the woman standing in the background wearing a caterer’s uniform.

“I think so,” she said diffidently. “I’m, uh, Chloe. Chloe Taylor. Chinese.”

“Well don’t just stand there, take a seat,” Mel told her. “And welcome to the torturers’ and terrorists’ table.”

I laughed. Mel winked at me. Chloe swallowed and sat down without looking at either me or Mel. Up close, I could see that her big glasses hid beautifully clear smooth skin, marred only by scars on her temples, presumably from a lifetime of aggressive hair straightening.

I had just opened my mouth to say something comforting to her when my phone pinged at me. I glanced at the screen, and my heart skipped a beat. It was a WhatsApp message from Dima.

“Everyone turn off your phones, please!” a heavyset woman called out in a singsong voice. “And welcome to Crimson!”

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Campus Confidential Sample Chapter

1

They say knowledge is power. Those people must never have gotten a PhD.

Case in point: the way I sidled into the room my first day at my first job. If my power corresponded to my knowledge, I would have stridden in like a conquering hero. But my knowledge of the sigmatic aorist or the Onegin stanza only seemed to weigh me down as I slithered into the faculty meeting room, smiling like a meek little idiot and wishing everyone would stop staring at me.

“You must be our new Russianist. Rowena Halley, right?” The speaker was a big bear-like man, a rarity in a foreign language department, where the faculty tended to be mainly female and inclined to the childish or the wizened. His joviality, though, had the manic edge common in academics, honed through decades of politically correct bullying into a weapon capable of inducing suicidal depression in everyone who encountered it.

“Yep.”

“They say you’re from Georgia.”

Now everyone was staring at me, like they’d never seen anyone from Georgia before. Which was all too possibly true.

“Originally,” I said.

The all-white group did a collective grimace as they bit down on their reflexive desire to berate me about racism and segregation. No doubt it was coming.

“But I did my PhD in Indiana,” I continued, triggering another collective grimace at the mere thought of the Midwest.

“Indiana…” said the bear-like man. “That must have been…different. Was it the first time you saw snow?”

“I lived for several years in Moscow. So no.”

“Moscow! I bet you have lots of opinions about Putin!”

There was a chorus of titters.

“Is what they’re saying about police harassment true?” continued the bear-like man, his eyes avid. “It must not be safe to be an American there these days, is it?”

“It’s at least as safe as it is here in New Jersey,” I said, and sat down on the one remaining empty chair, between a woman who was vaguely familiar to me from my Skype interview for the position, and the only other man in the room. The woman was wearing chunky gold earrings and a thick necklace that hinted enough at Central America to leave her open to accusations of cultural appropriation, so even though I couldn’t remember her name, I was guessing she was from the Spanish program. The man was slender and had bristly dark-blond hair, dark-blond stubble covering his face, and looked like he hadn’t yet turned thirty.

“Good to see you again, Rowena,” whispered the woman, but didn’t remind me of her name. The man gave me a sideways flicker from his eyes, and then went back to looking straight ahead, stony-faced. His left leg, though, was quivering slightly under the table, hidden from everyone except me, as if he could barely contain his pent-up energy and desire to be out of this room.

There was an awkward silence, and then printed agendas were handed around and the meeting broke out, starting with pointed introductions to the one newcomer—me.

The bear-like man was John Greene, Associate Professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Modern Languages. Of the other fifteen faculty members there, eight also taught Spanish, and three taught French. The Spanish instructors kept inserting bits of Spanish into their speech, some with better accents than others—John Greene’s was particularly shaky—causing the French instructors to laugh sycophantically and nod to show that they, too, spoke a Romance language.

Aside from the Romance contingent, there was one German instructor, one Chinese instructor, one Arabic instructor (the man sitting next to me), and me. We all sat in nervous silence as the Spanish contingent discussed business that had nothing to do with us and swapped in-jokes, with John Greene occasionally making little digs at Georgia until he got caught up in an argument over something that everyone kept referring to as “C. Diff.”

“Why is everyone talking about c. diff?” I whispered to the woman sitting next to me. “Was there an outbreak of diarrhea here last semester?”

She gave me a weird look, but got distracted by the argument over whether or not the Department of Modern Languages was adequately supporting C. Diff’s mission.

“It’s the Committee for Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Fairness,” the man to my right whispered, bending close enough that I could feel his stubble brush my ear. “C-D-I-F. It’s a student-faculty collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative to increase the presence of under-represented minorities and engage in town-and-gown outreach in order to encourage local members of the community, especially potential first-generation college students, to apply to TLASC.” He delivered the words in an inflectionless whisper, but when he broke away, his whole body was now quivering, I assumed with suppressed laughter.

Meanwhile, an argument had broken out between a Spanish and a French instructor over item three on the agenda, the cross-listing of survey literature courses with tempting titles such as “French Neoclassicism: An Introduction” as comparative literature, or CLIT (pronounced See-Lit), classes.

I looked down at the agenda to confirm my suspicions of the spelling of the course identifier, and then sideways at the woman sitting to my left, but she sat there impassively. If she had ever found it amusing to teach classes labeled CLIT 101, those days had long since passed. The man to my right was running his hand over his face, maybe from tiredness, maybe because his stubble itched, or maybe from the desperate need to keep from exploding with mirth. I fought the urge to ask if Introduction to Differential Equations was labeled DICQ 101 on the course bulletin, and narrowly won.

The argument was settled in favor of foreign language instructors teaching courses cross-listed as CLIT 101 as they apparently always had in the past, but with a motion to request that the courses be listed as FORL first and CLIT second, instead of the other way around, as they currently were.

“After the latest curriculum survey they’re obviously planning to reduce the foreign language courses as much as possible, maybe phase out the requirement altogether!” said the French instructor who had been arguing in favor of getting the courses listed as FORL first and CLIT second. “We need to remind them that we’re still here!”

“Which is why we want to get in on the CLIT listings!” cried the Spanish instructor who had been arguing against her. “Raise our visibility!”

“I’ve heard they’re thinking of cutting the CLIT program entirely,” put in a third person, a bird-like woman whose tiny stature was balanced out by a large mane of wispy, hay-like hair that appeared to have last been brushed sometime back in the Bush administration. The first Bush administration. I couldn’t remember her name or what she taught, but odds were it was Spanish.

There was a vociferous outcry against the perfidy of budget cuts aimed at foreign language programs, which united the room long enough for us to move on to the next item on the agenda: the promotion of our LCTL (pronounced “Lictle”) program.

“Now, I know you haven’t been here long, Rowena, if I may—you don’t mind if I call you Rowena, do you? I know how touchy some new PhDs can be, especially young women, about being called by their first names—of course you have to stand up for yourselves, I understand that, and in the classroom you should, but here we’re all not just colleagues, but friends—but you must have talked about growing our LCTL program during your interview? In fact, that’s part of why we hired you, isn’t it?—because you had some really good ideas for outreach and development for our LCTLs, which is something we really want to do; the Provost has named it a priority, and anything the Provost wants that might raise the profile of foreign languages on campus, well, we want to get behind that, and it’s always so exciting to bring in promising young scholars, even from places like Indiana; I mean, maybe you have some great ideas you’ve gotten there that you can share with us”—there was a reflexive giggle from a number of my new colleagues at the thought of great ideas coming from Indiana—“and so, why don’t you and I, Rowena, meet after this to talk about some of those ideas, just the two of us, to really hammer out some plans?”

John Greene fixed me with a bright stare at the end of his speech. I smiled weakly back. Before I could say anything, we had moved on to item five, the cut in the office supplies budget and how this would force us to act in a more environmentally responsible manner by not printing out so many handouts (the man to my right looked down at the printed-out meeting agenda, caught my eye, and then looked swiftly away, rubbing his hand over his face once again) and then briskly to item six, student mental health reporting.

“After what happened last semester”—there was a pregnant pause, during which everyone, even John Greene, appeared to shrink a little in their seats—“the Office of Student Wellness has instituted a new protocol for notifying them and the authorities of students who appear to be a danger to themselves or others. There was some question over whether the new mandatory reporting rules violated FERPA, but it was decided last week that they are in fact FERPA-compliant, so everyone will need to do the online training seminar prior to the start of classes, which I don’t need to remind you is in two days’ time. Rowena, you’ll have to do your regular FERPA, Title IX, and Health and Safety training at the same time. It’s all online; shouldn’t take more than an hour or two, but it has to be done before classes start or we could be facing a potential lawsuit.”

Now John Greene did wait for me to promise that yes, I would complete the FERPA, Title IX, Health and Safety, and Student Wellbeing training within the next 48 hours.

There was some grousing about more mandatory online training, and a little tiff between two Spanish instructors, but no further explanation of what had happened last semester, and with that, my first faculty meeting as a real professor was over.

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What happens when thrill-seekers lose their thrill?

Hello!

I’m hustling to get this newsletter out before what may or may not be the Ice Apocalypse hits my part of the world. We may or may not lose power, lose water…exciting times!

The AI horror story has gone back to the co-author, who’s going to look at it soon. Meanwhile, I wrote up another quick bonus story for my Doctor Rowena Halley Kickstarter.

(Check out this collection of Romantic Suspense Kickstarters, including mine!)

The bonus story will be posted in the Kickstarter prelaunch updates shortly. You can access it and all the other bonus stories by following the prelaunch.

This particular story is a little snippet from John, Rowena’s older brother. Writing John is always a blast–there’s something about him that just flows so beautifully from the keyboard. In this case, I was also inspired by listening to Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails by Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead. Swofford talks about how, after being in combat, the only thing that didn’t get old fast was having affairs (he put it as “lying about sex”).

That resonated with John’s character so, so clearly, so I tried to focus on that in this story–and how even lying about sex might be losing its thrill. But does John discover an even bigger thrill at the end?

I guess we’ll find out soon! In the meantime, here’s an opening snippet:

***

“Are you even listening to me?”

She hasn’t had her roots touched up in months. She’s not even trying.

“Hey! Earth to…you. I thought you wanted to have a little fun. Are you listening to a word I’m saying?”

The bottle blonde on the bar stool next to John snapped her fingers in front of his face. He started, a little more twitchily than he would have liked, almost spilling his Guinness.

“Yeah.” He pulled his thoughts back from their morbid contemplation of his date’s undyed roots. “Yeah, of course I’m listening, uh…sugar. And I’m having a great time.”

He flashed her his best smile. She gave him a doubtful look in return.

Damn! She’s not as dumb as she looks. This is looking like a long-ass date.

***

I am pleased to report that it is, in fact, a short-ass date, but full of drama and excitement. Follow the Kickstarter to find out how it ends! And, of course, do check out these upcoming romantic suspense campaigns, including mine, for more thrills and spills 🙂

If you’re in the path of Winter Storm Fern, or any other disaster, stay safe this weekend, and happy reading!

Sid Stark

Generative AI: Harbinger of utopia or apocalypse?

Hello, and happy 2026!

I hope the year is starting off well for you. Of course, there’s a lot going on the world right now. Much of it not very positive. But this is where we all get the chance to step up and be counted when it counts, right?

Before I jump into my main topic, I wanted to let you know that I’m participating in this collection of current and upcoming romantic suspense Kickstarter campaigns. It’s a small, tightly focused group, so if it sounds like your thing, check it out! I’ve already backed one of the campaigns.

I made the graphic and that’s supposed to be Rowena running away from the bad guys (why not do some self-promo if you’re doing most of the work, right?). By “made the graphic,” I mean that I took a stock photo and did some stuff in Photoshop and InDesign to turn it into a banner.

The stock photo caused me some soul-searching, because it had a “generative AI” tag on it. At this point, most of the stock images I’ve looked at have “generative AI” tags, and the ones that don’t were obviously made with GAI, just less well than the ones made by professionals. This caused me a certain amount of doubt and mental anguish, since I try to avoid using stuff that’s been made by GAI for a variety of reasons, including the possibility of ending up on the wrong end of a lawsuit one day. However, it is rapidly becoming ubiquitous.

And, of course, there’s the psychological/sci fi horror story that I’m cowriting that was inspired by a friend’s brush with AI psychosis. Instead of deleting the guilty chatbot, she decided to write a terrifying story about him (“him”!) and using some of his (“his”!) responses in the text. So if/when we succeed in publishing this tale of terror, I will be the author of a work co-written with GAI.

What about you? What’s your thoughts on GAI? Do you use it regularly, and if so, for what? Opinions on it are so divided and divisive that it’s hard to get a sense of how most people actually feel about it. For me, so far it’s mainly been a scourge that has required me to radically redo most of my assessments in order to forestall widespread cheating of the most baldfaced sort. Frankly, I’m an AI pessimist. But the future is, well, the future and therefore inherently difficult to predict.

Let me know what you think, and here’s that link for the Kickstarter collection again!

“Terminal Degree” is up for preorder!

Hi All!

Well, after a couple of busy months, I’m excited to announce that Terminal Degree is finally available for preorder! Yes, at last, it’s (almost) here! The official release date is December 31st.

Funnily enough, it starts on December 31, 2016, at a time when the US was in a state of doubt and confusion during the interregnum period between the election of Donald Trump and the start of his administration. And where do we find ourselves now? That wasn’t what I was consciously expecting when I was actually writing the book, but art is often smarter than logic that way. The book is about a lot of things, but one of them is what it’s like to be living in modern-day America, and, well, I guess we still have a lot of the same problems.

Anyway, the cover and blurb are below, and the link to preorder it is here. And if you’re not on my ARC team but you’d like to be, reply to this email and I’ll add you. I’m planning to send out the ARCs in a couple of weeks, so a month before the release. Hopefully I’ll be finished at least with the recording of the audiobook by then–I’ve had some annoying technical difficulties that have delayed me. I now have a new, more expensive microphone, and have been hard at work recording as much as time and my throat permits (doing John and Dima’s voices tends to frack up my vocal cords, and they both feature heavily in this book).

Cover and blurb below!

Rowena Halley has hit a dead end. Will it leave her dead?

Russian professor Rowena Halley is at the end of her money, the end of her job contract, the end of her romantic hopes…the end of her tether. And just when she thinks she can’t take any more, she gets dragged into not one, but two sticky situations by her nearest and dearest. Her friend Mel needs her help dealing with a scammer, and her long-lost paternal grandparents want her back in their lives—with cultish strings attached.

But Rowena has even bigger problems. Her ex-fiancé, opposition Russian journalist Dima Kuznetsov, comes to America, bringing old history and new danger with him. Rowena wants to believe they have a future as a couple. The mercenaries and hitmen Dima has been tangling with over the years could mean they don’t have a future, period. And revelations about Dima’s most recent deal with the Devil cause Rowena to doubt their chances to make a life together, even if they do survive.

Rowena wants a happy ending for everyone. But with this many bad guys mad at her, the ending she’s most likely to get is the terminal kind.

Content warning: This book contains an Air Force veteran, an officer in the Marines, and an ex-member of the Russian OMON. The language is accordingly salty.

***

There you have it! This book has been a long time in the making (and is, fair warning, accordingly long), but I’m glad it’s finally almost ready to go out into the world. Here‘s the preorder link again, and please let me know if you’d like to join the ARC team!

Happy reading,

Sid Stark

Just two more days! My entire catalogue free on Smashwords!

Hi All!

I’m writing to you from a rather rainy day here on the East Coast. This spring seems determined to make up for the warm, dry autumn we had last year by being cold and damp. Not snowy, you understand: there’s been zero snow. But there’s been a lot of chilly rain. Today at least has had the grace to be reminiscent of a nice soft day in the British Isles, so I’m hoping that it will do my garden some good.

I had great plans to have a first draft of Terminal Degree, the last book in the Rowena Halley series, done by now. Hahahahaha! While the words have flowed pretty easily, tying up all the threads of the previous books means that it will be pretty long. AND I’ve gotten sucked into a super-secret side project which will probably never see the light of day, but which has taken up a lot of my writing time.

(Never fear: I’ll try to incorporate bits of the super-secret side project into my main stories if I can’t publish it, so it won’t go to waste).

However, I have brought Rowena and Dima all the way from January to March. Their relationship is still a giant question mark hanging over their heads, though, and Dima has to set off on his own super-secret side project. I’m including a little excerpt from the March section here to whet your appetite 🙂

But first! All my books are free this week only on the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale! Check out the main page here and my personal page here.

And now, at long last, another tense exchange between Rowena and Dima:

***

Dima left early the next morning. He knocked on my door before dawn. When I opened it, he stood there for a long time, looking at me.

“Come in,” I said.

He shook his head. “If I come in, I’ll never leave. I’d better go. I’ll try to let you know I’m okay, but I don’t know how often I’ll be able to be in touch.”

“Try to contact us if you can,” I told him. “We worry. A lot.”

He took a deep breath in and out. “Then I’ll try.” He smiled bleakly. “I must be getting old. This is the first time I don’t want to go on an assignment. I used to thirst for this kind of thing like the water of life. But now I just want to stay here with you and Mama. Some new stage of life, or something like that.”

“I think Pushkin said something clever about that, but I can’t remember it,” I said.

“Yeah…blessed is he who…I can’t remember the rest, either. Anyway.” He shifted from foot to foot. “I’d better go.”

“Come back soon,” I said. “You owe me, remember?”

Something flared in his eyes. He was—deliberately, I thought, with effort—not smiling, but the dimple on his left cheek flexed into view for a second. I could tell, as surely as if his body were mine, that warmth was spreading through him at the memory of last night. “And you always collect on your debts, is that you’re telling me?”

“I intend to collect on this one,” I said. “As God is my witness, I intend to collect on this one.” I’d meant it to be a joke, but it came out as a solemn vow.

“Then pray for me, Inna. Pray for me, and I’ll return.”

“I will,” I promised.

He reached out. His hand hovered in front of my face for a moment, before one finger brushed my lips, soft as a butterfly. He inhaled sharply and pulled his hand away.

“Go with God, Inna,” he said.

“You too,” I told him.

He turned and left. I watched him walk down the stairs and into the pre-dawn semi-darkness. He held the hand that had touched my lips over his mouth the whole way, as if restraining a desperate cry of despair—or inhaling every last atom of a scent only he could sense. Then he was gone.

***

You will be the first to know when Terminal Degree is finished. Meanwhile, you can pick up all my books, plus many others, in the Smashwords Read an Ebook Week sale! Happy reading!

Sid

Alexei Navalny: What was it all for?

Hi All,

As you no doubt already know, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was declared dead by prison authorities yesterday. As of this morning, his team has confirmed they have received a death notice, but say they have not yet been allowed to see the body.

Cue the conspiracy theories. Already many, including my students, are convinced he was murdered at the behest of the Russian government or Putin personally. Which is possible. It’s also entirely possible that what the prison authorities are saying is exactly what happened: He suddenly collapsed and died from an embolism, with no additional help from poison, beatings, etc. He had apparently been growing increasingly frail, and Arctic penal colonies are notoriously bad for health, especially on top of the near-fatal poisoning in 2021. Perhaps one day we will know exactly what happened, but at the moment it’s mainly wild speculation.

Rather than speculating on Navalny’s precise cause of death, I thought I’d speculate on something very different. What, I’ve been asking myself ever since I saw the headlines yesterday morning, was it all for? What, exactly, did Navalny accomplish with all this?

Navalny had many gifts. He was handsome, charismatic, witty, intelligent, an excellent writer, and possessed more than enough courage for his convictions. But ultimately, what will his legacy be? Has he achieved what he set out to achieve; namely, the overthrow of Putin and the reform of the Russian government?

A sober examination of the facts suggests that he achieved none of those aims, and may in fact have made matters worse by his head-on challenge to the system (more on that later). Meanwhile, he endangered his family, caused his brother to be sent to prison, and finally died without, as far as I know, leaving behind any significant body of work that will live beyond his current notoriety. Perhaps we will one day discover the manuscript to his great work of art or philosophical treatise, but one doubts it. One suspects that he was too busy trying to batter down the entire Russian government with his bare head to produce anything substantive.

As far as I can tell, Navalny got caught up in a fatal flaw we humans (especially of the male variety) are extremely prone to: a dominance struggle. I’ve been studying the psychology and neuroscience of violence as part of my research, and one of the most dangerous and destructive traps people and nations can fall into is a dominance struggle in which both sides are convinced they can and must win. Normally one side is deluded, but their certainty that victory is just around the corner causes them to go on fighting long after they should make a tactical withdrawal and rethink their strategy. Their aggression, meanwhile, triggers more aggression from the other side, leading to an escalation of violence and repression and/or a war of attrition (literal or figurative) in which everyone ultimately loses.

Of course, persistence is essential to achieving anything worthwhile. The trick is knowing the difference between persistence and pigheaded stubbornness that will destroy you and everything you’re striving for. Many of us, alas, have a very hard time drawing that line, and it seems that Navalny did as well.

When he returned to Russia after recovering from the attempted poisoning in 2021, many people wondered why. He knew he would be probably be arrested on the spot, and indeed he was. (If you’re now fulminating against the barbarism of the Russian government and Russian society, consider the fates of similar characters in the West, such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. While they are all currently still alive, they have all faced lengthy prison sentences and, in Snowden’s case, the possibility of the death penalty).

I’ve also been thinking about why Navalny returned. When he did it, I assumed it was because he was demonstrating the courage of his convictions and his commitment to Russia, and I have no doubt that was part of it. He could have remained in the West, but he’d probably have had to earn his bread by writing op-eds for Western publications explaining why Russia was evil and needed to be destroyed. Maybe he couldn’t stomach that. Maybe he also couldn’t stomach the thought of becoming just another cranky Russian emigre. Maybe he was addicted to the fame and adulation he was receiving, and was deluded enough to believe he could parlay it into actual power.

We’ll probably never know that either. What we can know is that these head-on dominance struggles rarely achieve what we want them to achieve. The most likely outcome from them is that everybody loses. To actually achieve real change, we often need to implement the wisdom of the serpent and the innocence of the dove (MT 10:16), rather than the bullheadedness of the, well, bull.

As it happens, we have another famous Russian, one who unquestionably left behind a substantive legacy, for thoughts on how one might do that. Lev Tolstoy’s concept of nonresistence to evil, developed most thoroughly in his treatise The Kingdom of God is Within You, which I am currently reading, gives us pointers on how we might go about creating good rather than succumbing to evil. It focuses mainly on not falling into a vengeance spiral (something to which we humans are also extremely prone), but I think it could also apply to these dominance struggles that are so deadly. We talk about fighting fire with fire, but too much of that can burn the whole world down (don’t be surprised if you see that line appear again elsewhere, because I’m definitely keeping it).

These are all thoughts I’ve been contemplating as I work on Terminal Degree and consider how best to bring Rowena and Dima’s story to a (temporary) close. Dima is loosely based on a number of real-life prototypes, including Alexei Navalny. In fiction, though, we have the opportunity to run simulations and redo things that have gone wrong in real life. Perhaps the fictional Dima will learn from the real-life Alexei how to have less of the bull and more of the dove in his heart. At the moment, though, I can only conclude by wishing вечная память (eternal memory, an orthodox blessing) for Alexei Navalny. May he be at peace.

Sid Stark

Want to know what songs are fueling my writing process?

Hello!

Hope your 2024 is continuing to go well–January is such a long month, isn’t it? If you’ve been hit by the various storms that have been sweeping across North America, I hope they haven’t been too exciting. We’ve had thunderstorms, floods, deep freezes, and now flooding again, but so far we’ve at least avoided tornados (knock on wood).

I’m continuing to work on Terminal Degree, the last (planned) book in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. It’s currently looking like it’s going to be rather long, so I don’t have a good idea of when it will be finished, but I thought I’d share a little more of the creative process behind it.

But first, it’s the last weekend of the Strong Women promo, with dozens of free books, including mine! Check it out here.

As I’ve mentioned before, part of my creative process can include specific songs and playlists to either set the mood or provide ideas for plot and character. Total Immersionhad the songs of Florence + the Machine as a running thread throughout the story, for example, while the character Mel listens to the songs of Hayley Kiyoko.

When I started writing Total Immersion, I happened to be listening to “I Wish It Would Rain Down” by Phil Collins (there’s that wild weather again). To be honest, I haven’t quite worked out how the song is going to feature in the book yet, but I have a strong feeling that it needs to. The problem is that it’s a song about endings, and while Terminal Degree will have lots of endings in it, as you might guess from the title, it will also have lots of beginnings, especially for the complex romantic lives of the series’ main characters. So while the melancholy of “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is part of the mood I’m going for, it’s only one part of what is looking to be a long and complicated book.

Then–and I don’t even remember how or why–I went on a Gary Allan kick. I’ve included his songs in earlier books, specifically in relation to Rowena’s brother John, who is a fan. This time, I haven’t name-dropped Gary Allan (yet–the book is still far from finished), but I have included a side plot about John based on the song “Man to Man.” How this will turn out is still to be determined.

Terminal Degree is supposed to end on a hopeful note (spoiler alert!), especially (further spoiler alert!) for the characters’ personal lives. A song I’ve had on repeat while working on scenes involving second-chance romance (because there’s going to be some of that, of course!) is “Bartender” by James Blunt. In fact, I’ve been binge-listening James Blunt for the past several weeks, as his music is full of themes that feature heavily in the stories, such as trauma, self-criticism, and regret. If that sounds too sad, it’s not! At least, I find James Blunt’s music delightful, with catchy tunes and unexpected moments of humor, and I’d like to think my books have glimmers of humor and hope as well.

What about you? Are you listening to anything you’d like to share right now? I’m always happy to get more listening recommendations!

Oh, and here’s that link to the Strong Women book giveaway again.

Happy reading!

Sid Stark

In which my heroine’s best friend accidentally steals a large sum of money

Hello! And Happy 2024!

I hope the new year is starting out well for you, wherever and however you are meeting it. Here it’s currently pouring rain. The pets are unhappy about it, but after the drought we had this fall, we probably need all the rain we can get. It was supposed to be sleet/freezing rain, but so far it’s just been regular old rain, albeit cold and in large quantities. Probably this is a good thing, although it’s not very wintry.

I’ve got another excerpt from Terminal Degree, which as it happens takes place at the beginning of January, but first, a couple of announcements/offers.

First of all, Jamison Hill‘s new novel, Something’s Wrong with Micah, is discounted to $2.99 this week. For those of you who don’t know, which I assume is many of you, Jamison Hill is an author who’s been largely bedbound for a number of years for somewhat mysterious reasons that probably involve Lyme disease. Despite this, he’s managed to do an impressive amount of writing (on his phone, I believe!) and publish a regular blog, a number of articles, and two books.

I’m sharing the book both because I think it’s worth reading, and because Jamison’s experience could be where my character Mel is heading if she doesn’t get her mysterious health problems under control, something that’s part of the excerpt I’ll be sharing at the bottom of this email. (This isn’t a threat–I’m not planning to send Mel down that path–I don’t think–but just to show what the stakes are for her).

The other announcement/promo I want to share is the Strong Women book giveaway on Bookfunnel. It’s got dozens of books in a wide variety of genres, including mine :), but all featuring strong heroines. Check it out below!

And now, at long last, the promised excerpt from Terminal Degree! As a reminder, this is the planned last novel in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. So the pressure’s on to wrap things up! Frankly, I suspect I’m going to have to do a spinoff (maybe several spinoffs) to deal with all my loose ends, but I am at least trying to bring the main threads of Rowena’s story together here.

This excerpt is the end of the first chapter. Rowena and her friend Mel, she of the mysterious illness that has recently been diagnosed as Lyme disease, are spending New Year’s Eve together. They’re hoping for some peace and quiet before the start of the semester. But of course, their phones (the blessing and curse of modern existence!) interrupt their evening with some exciting/alarming notifications…

***

“Do you want anything to eat? Should we actually cook this feast we’ve planned?”

She made a face. “I’ve got to eat something, ‘cause I’ve got to take my next dose of doxycycline, and if I don’t chase it with something high-fat, I’ll barf like…well, you get the picture. But I don’t want to eat anything.”

“How much longer do you have to take it?” Mel had—finally—been diagnosed with Lyme disease at the end of last semester, after a year of increasingly bizarre symptoms that ranged from sudden bouts of the flu to half her face going paralyzed. She had started taking antibiotics over winter break. Since the treatment itself could be pretty debilitating, the hope was to get through the worst of it before the start of the next semester.

“I’ve got one more week of this round. But that’s just the first round. Some people get better after one round. Some people have to take antibiotics for years, and still never get better.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, um…how do you feel?”

She shrugged. “My joint pain’s almost gone, and I’m not twitching as much as I used to. My face looks better, too, don’t you think?”

I leaned across my small table that served as both a working desk and a dining room table for entertaining, and peered at her face through my right eye, and then my left. From up close, I could see that her dark blonde hair in its boyish pixie cut was developing gray hairs around the temple, her wide, expressive mouth had fine lines from too much smiling and too much sun all around it, and there were dark blotches from permanent sun damage across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, I noticed for the first time, were blue-gray with flecks of green and gold. We were so close, our breathing had synchronized.

I jerked back. “It looks perfectly symmetrical.”

“It wasn’t perfectly symmetrical before the Bell’s palsy, but thanks. It feels like it all works fine again, so that’s great. Some things are great.”

“But?”

“But I feel tired as shit, and every time I eat something, it feels like a poison bomb’s going off inside of me. It was like that before, but the doxy ain’t fuckin’ helping, I tell you what.”

“Maybe that will go away when you go off it, and you’ll just feel better,” I said. “Maybe a week from now, you’ll be done with this and you’ll be completely cured.”

She gave me a smile. It was a kind, condescending smile, the kind you give a little child who’s just said something ridiculously hopeful and doesn’t know not to believe her own words. She’d never given me a smile like that before.

I pulled back a little more. That smile said, “You think you know what I’m going through, but you don’t. I’m just too nice to point that out.”

Well, at least she didn’t say it out loud, I told myself.

“Let’s make supper,” I said. “Even if it doesn’t taste good, it’ll keep you from upchucking the pills that are going to cure you.”

“Yeah…is that your phone?”

Two loud pings had filled the apartment.

“I think it’s both our phones,” I said. We pulled out our phones. Indeed, mine had a message notification.

Darling Inna. Happy New Year! Wishing you joy and happiness. If all goes well, in 24 hours Mama and I will be with you in Atlanta!

The warmth that message washed over me insulated me from the chill coming from the other side of the table. It was only Mel’s muttered “Fuck, fuck, fuck” that brought me back to myself.

“What is it?”

She looked up from her phone. “Apparently I’ve just stolen a hundred grand.”

***

Golly! So, full disclosure: Mel’s problems are partly inspired by my own run-ins with scammers. When I wrote that chapter, I’d just been through several rounds of notifying the proper authorities after discovering that my identity had been stolen and used to file fraudulent unemployment claims. I have not been charged with stealing anything–yet–but it’s a sobering reminder of how easy it is to be a victim of fraud and identity theft. So I’m winding a narrative about scams and fraud throughout the book, with Mel on a quest to find her identity thief.

I’ve also added a third plotline to the story recently…but I think I’ll save that for next time. I hope you enjoyed the excerpt, and here are those links again:

Something’s Wrong with Micah

Strong Women Book Giveaway

As always, happy reading!

Sid

What if the love of Rowena’s life is an assassin? Plus the Smashwords End of Year Sale!

Hello, and Happy December!

Gosh, here we are, the end of the year barreling towards us like an oncoming train…hopefully it’s not that bad, but you get the picture.

I’m proud to say that I’ve been making decent progress on Terminal Degree, the next book in the Doctor Rowena Halley series. Well, I was making decent progress until final exams slammed into us all like a train…gotta stop with the train similes. Anyway, progress has been made. It’s still a long way from finished, so I haven’t even set a release date yet, but I’ve got over 25,000 words of a first draft down, which is a good start.

I thought I’d share a few of those words, but first, check out the Smashwords End of Year Sale, where you can get many, many books, including mine, for free! In fact, the four-book boxed set is currently being featured on the Mystery page 🙂

So do check that out, and here, as promised, is the excerpt from Terminal Degree. For a little background context, Dima and his mother have come to the US for medical treatment. The reunion between them and Rowena is fraught, and it gets even more fraught when Rowena discovers that Dima may be involved in some very questionable activities. This is the scene right after that, when Rowena goes to find Dima and ask him about the accusations she’s just heard. What will happen next? To be honest, I don’t actually know yet, since this is where I stopped in order to deal with a pile of final exams about the development of Russian literature and the consequences of the dissolution of the USSR. Hopefully by the time I get those graded, I’ll know what Dima’s up to. In the meantime, your guess is as good as mine…

***

After Frank hung up, I waited. And waited. And waited. An hour later, Dima still hadn’t come back.

Where are you? I texted.

I waited some more. Still nothing. It was now after 9:00pm. We should really be getting to bed.

I’ll just go check on him. He’d probably gone back to his apartment to take the call, and…what? Fallen asleep? Or maybe he was still on the phone, and I shouldn’t disturb him. Or maybe something terrible had happened to him…maybe whoever he was so concerned about had found him, and jumped him in the stairwell, and…and did I really want to go out into the darkness after him? What if the people after him were still there, waiting in the stairwell for me? What if going out there was the last thing I ever did? What if…

I shoved my feet into my shoes, my arms through the sleeves of my jacket, and my body out the door before I could come up with any more what ifs. Enough with the doom-mongering. Dima had probably fallen fast asleep on the couch after a very long and tiring day. I’d wake him up, we’d apologize to each other, and then we’d both head off to our respective beds, in preparation for another long and tiring day.

The parking lot was very dark. Most of the parking spaces were filled, with deep pools of shadow between and beneath the cars. The thin ring of longleaf pines that surrounded the complex seemed extra-tall and extra-deep, as if they had morphed into a hundred acres of trackless wilderness with the setting of the sun. A gust of wind blew through them, raising a sound from the needles like the whispering of secrets or the hissing of snakes. Clouds scudded across the sky, covering the slender crescent of the waxing moon and blotting out its faint light.

Walk! Just walk! My legs started carrying me past the dark cars and the darker wells of shadow underneath them. Nothing jumped out at me. My ankles tried to shrink in on themselves even so, away from the icy-hot grasp of ghostly hands they were sure were groping for them. Sweat trickled down my sides, and there was a strange, electric-shock-like crawling sensation up the back of my neck as the tiny, feeble hairs there tried to stand on end in a useless gesture of defense and protection.

I wonder if this is how Mel feels all the time? Part of her illness was a whole host of strange sensations, including the feeling of having a taser attached to the back of her neck and the power slowly being turned up.

I glanced behind me involuntarily. What had that sound been? Was someone coming up on me? Was there someone here in the parking lot with me, just out of sight?

It’s a dog, I told myself. Someone’s taking their dog out before bed. It’s probably that woman with the toy poodle who lives in the next building over. I squinted at the dark figure on the edge of my vision. No matter how much I strained my eyes, I couldn’t turn it into a woman and a toy poodle.

Are they coming this way? They’re coming this way! They’re coming right toward me! What should I do? Run? Back to my apartment? Or try to hide in the unlit stairwell ahead?

The dark figure seemed to be picking up speed. I broke into a half-jog. What was that sound? Like a goblin shriek…

“AAAAAGH!” Another figure, even bigger and darker than the one pursuing me, loomed out of the stairwell in front of me. Before I could turn and run, it grabbed my upper arms.

“AAA—“ I started to scream.

“Innochka! What’s the matter?”

“Dima! It’s you!”

“Yeah, it’s me. I came out looking for you, and you practically ran straight into my arms. Are you okay?” His grip tightened. “Is someone after you?”

I looked back. The goblin shrieks had resolved into the yapping of the toy poodle, who had dragged her owner over to greet her best friend, the mini-pinscher from the row of cottages along the edge of the complex. I could now make out the clear and unambiguous outlines of two rather small and unathletic women, who were standing and chatting in the middle of the parking lot while their dogs sniffed and circled each other.

“Only my own unbridled imagination.” I tried to say it lightly, but my voice cracked at the end of the sentence.

Dima looked around. “Even so, let’s get inside. You’re right to be worried about being outside alone after dark. Come on.” He turned and led me up the stairs to his apartment.

***

Yowza! Is Dima actually a hitman who’s a danger to everyone and anyone who gets in his way, including Rowena, or is it all a misunderstanding? I guess we’ll all (including me) find out soon!

And here are those links once again:

Smashwords End of Year Sale

Mystery Page

Sid Stark Page

Happy reading!

Sid Stark