Welcome Hallie Ephron!

 One of our favorite people stopped by! Hallie, thanks for being here today. Hallie's new book, COME AND FIND ME will be available on March 22.
Visit Hallie's Web site here to pre-order!
http://hallieephron.com/books/come-and-find-me/


Thanks so much for having me on Working Stiffs! 

The most terrifying time for me, as a writer, aside from the weeks of ominous silence before the first reviews come in, are when I've finished one book and haven't yet started the next. Now I know there are writers with ideas, stacked up like planes at LaGuardia. For whom it's a matter of WHICH one to tackle next. But for me the question is: will I ever again come up with an good idea enough to sustain a 300-page novel.

I was in just such a funk, sure that I'd never be inspired as I was (at a yard sale) for "Never Tell a Lie," and wasting my time shopping on the Internet. There I tripped over an ad for a year supply of dehydrated and freeze-dried food. 5,011 total servings. 84 gallon-sized cans with a shelf life of up to 25 years. The photo showed a pyramid of cans in lovely pastel colors.

The chirpy ad copy explained: "...this package will give you variety, nutrition, and peace of mind."

Now maybe if I lived on the San Andreas fault or on a flood plain I might have sent in my check for $999.99. Instead I sat there scratching my head, trying to imagine who in the world would buy it.

The answer was someone like Diana Highsmith in "Come and Find Me" -- she's a recluse, afraid to leave her own house, traumatized by the sudden death of her lover and best friend in a climbing accident in the Swiss Alps. When she returns home alone, she barricades herself behind locked doors with video surveillance, security alarms, and electronic fire walls to protect her--though even she isn't sure from what. She "lives" on the Internet in a virtual world where she conducts business meetings, investigates security breaches, hangs out with avatar friends, and "climbs" Alpine mountains without ever leaving home.

Of course the challenge in writing a high-tech virtual world is to make it seem uncomplicated. To do that, I needed to research Second Life, the real virtual world like the fictional Other World I created in the book. So, armed with enough information to be dangerous, I created an account in Second Life. Then I created an avatar me: young, brunette, skinny jeans. Hey, why not?

So far so good. But I'm so not a gamer. The mouse and arrow keys are not my friends. So even though I knew my avatar should be able to walk, run, fly, sit, and teleport, I couldn't keep her from bumping into furniture. When I finally got her aloft, it was exhilarating, watching like I was perched on her shoulders (think Harry Potter on riding Buckbeak the hippogriff) as she soared over the island at the entrance to Second Life. Not so exhilarating, seconds later, was when she plunged into the blue (very blue) ocean. I actually found myself gasping for breath, then panicking when I couldn't figure out how to get her out.

So, most of what I learned about Second Life was gleaned by riding shotgun beside a few generous souls who let me watch as they went about their business in virtual reality. I learned that even bucolic corners of the virtual world can be infested by "griefers," mischief-makers who enjoy raining down toasters or flying phalluses or dropping cages to trap the avatars of unsuspecting players. It can turn from safe to scary in a heartbeat, which was perfect for the book. And, of course you never know who you're dealing with. Just for example, it turns out that a good percentage of the female avatars in Second Life have been created by male players. My favorite story about Second Life is that although avatars are designed to be virtually indestructible, a woman somewhere managed to kill her ex-husband's avatar.