The Clone Betrayal

Where do ideas come from?

No man is an island, but some authors seem to be. Some authors can shut themselves off from the world for a month and emerge with masterpieces. I am no such magician.

I had just completed the first draft of this book in August, when I stumbled across an interesting review of my second novel, Rogue Clone, on goodreads.com, in which the reviewer called my book “dudely” and pointed out that the first female character to have a name did not appear until the forty-fifth chapter of a fifty-three chapter book.

The romance with Ava Gardner already existed in this book before I read that review. In fact, if you must pin the blame on someone for young Harris in love, pin it on Anne, my amazing editor at Ace. I started The Clone Elite with the line, “Until the first half of humanity was gone, all anybody wanted to talk about was the actress Ava Gardner.”

I liked that line because I thought it begged all kinds of questions, not the least of which was, “What the heck was Ava Gardner doing in the twenty-sixth century?” Anne told me that I could only use the line if I gave Ava more of a role than simply appearing in an opening sentence. Since I had just signed a deal for three more Harris books, I asked if I could put her in the next series.

The Goodreads reviewer went on to comment that my clones were oddly restrained when it came to sex among themselves. Brown Betty on Goodreads, Perry Fahey owes much of his very existence to you.

And speaking of idea generators, I want to thank the disembodied voices of SadSamsPalace.com, my website. I have a crew of usual suspects who haunt my blog and often give me good ideas. Aaron Spuler, whose son Kaleb will have been born a few months before this book comes out, reminded me how much I like it when old characters make cameo appearances in novels.

Nope, Freeman’s brief appearance was not Aaron’s idea. I knew from the start that Freeman had to show up sooner or later. As both John Thorpe and Mark Adams put it, “Harris may be optional in a Wayson Harris novel, but Freeman is mandatory.”

Expect a lot more Freeman in the next two books. In fact, I had toyed with the idea of creating a graphic novel called Freeman Stories. Then I read Watchmen and gave in to deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.

Harris will face a new kind of threat in the next installment of this series, and I wanted to thank a few guys for coming up with this idea. Kit Lewis, another constant customer at Sad Sam’s, first proposed the idea. I have left his posting up, but you are going to need to do a lot of digging to find it.

Kit’s idea had never ever occurred to me, and it made a lot of sense. Thanks, Kit.

And thank you to KillerBit. Once Kit came up with the idea, KillerBit did a little digging and fleshed it out with a little scientific fact-finding.

One last note about my blog …When The Clone Elite came out, Chris Nobles (aka Sniperae) was one of the first guys on my blog to finish the book. He could have simply called it “a masterpiece.” I would have liked that, actually. Instead, he gave me mild grief about ending the book too abruptly.

I did not like that, especially because I knew he was right. Chris, I apologize. It won’t happen again. (Until Chris brought this up, this novel had a very abrupt ending as well.)

On the positive side, Jon (Jaffe) said he liked the time line I put at the beginning of The Clone Elite. I originally updated the time line and included it in this book, then removed it, then put it back again following Jon’s advice.

BTW—you may have noticed that I only refer to this novel as “this novel” in the author’s notes. There is a perfectly good reason for that. As of this writing, the book is called Clones Have Ghosts. Anne, my brilliant and kind editor whose advice reigns supreme, has asked me to change the title.

Today is November 28, and I have eighty pages to finish proofreading before I submit the book to Ace. I will send the manuscript to the long-suffering and very wonderful Anne on Wednesday along with a letter of apology. I am not a diva, at least I do not think I am. Of course, what diva ever thinks of himself/herself as a diva?

As of this writing, Christian McGrath has not begun work on the cover for this book; but once he finishes, I know it will be magnificent. I want to thank Anne and Cam and the people at Ace who spend so much time cleaning up my work.

Before beginning my career in fiction, I spent fifteen years as a freelance journalist covering the video game industry. When I first started, Penthouse magazine always had a booth at trade shows for some interactive product. There were posters of three models on the walls of the Penthouse booth, and those same models sat at a table, signing autographs. The thing is, if I had not known that the women in the pictures were the same ones signing the autographs, I would never have guessed. The makeup, the lighting, the lenses, and the photo editors transformed those normal three women into goddesses.

Rachel Johnson, Jordan Green, Anne, and Cam have achieved an even more magical transformation on my behalf. Readers, you have no idea what this book looked like when they received it.

I need to thank Richard Curtis, my agent and adviser. Jeez, this sounds like I’m giving an acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, and I haven’t even gotten around to thanking my wife and parents. Mom, Dad, Brooke, thanks.

My biggest thanks go to you, my readers. I hope you enjoyed this book.

Steven L. Kent November 28, 2008