AUgmenTISM - it's not just a made-up word

It's a new term. It's stylized, and perhaps vaguely familiar.

But what does it mean?

Well, take out the gmen and you have the word "AUTISM". 

Okay, that was obvious. But what isn't obvious is what the term is intended to represent. I guess the best way to describe it, without actually describing it, is to post up the hook for my manuscript of the same name:

Bakersfield, California: Eleven year-old William Johnson, a special needs student with Asperger Syndrome, a mild autism spectrum disorder, breaks his arm after being pushed off his school playground's jungle gym. When Bobby Littleton, who caused William's fall, climbs down and punches the defenseless boy, William merely looks directly at the bully, who then inexplicably starts bleeding out of his mouth, nose, eyes and ears, and nearly dies in the process.

Baltimore, Maryland: ADHD and autism researching psychiatrist, Dr. Jax Brady, learns of the Bakersfield incident and flies out to California to interview William and his parents, learning the Johnsons were part of a prenatal program sponsored by a major pharmaceutical company based in Moscow. And when William goes missing, his parents are found dead and Brady has to kill home invasion assassins in self-defense, things start to go haywire.

Brady, a former Navy SEAL, flees the US on charges of triple homicide, flying to Russia and meeting up with his colleague—psychiatrist and former Russian Spetsnaz commando, Dr. Piotr Dimitrov, who has also been investigating strange phenomenon, as well as disappearances involving children with autism in his own country. Together, they resolve to find out what is happening and put a stop to it.

But what they discover is beyond anything they could have ever imagined: something is being done to the children—before they are even born. And if Green October, the organization responsible for this selective DNA tampering is successful, it could spell the end of the world, as we know it.

Is the hook long? Yes. Is it descriptive? Yes. Is there more to the manuscript? Absolutely!

With tons of twists and reveals, this story is the first in a series (I'm already about 1/3 through the follow-up manuscript, which I call GAMERISM), based on the protagonist, Doctor Jackson (Jax) Brady, a psychiatrist and former Navy SEAL who becomes an accidental spy while researching weird happenings with kids diagnosed with autism. 

Isms! Isms everywhere!

In this series I use current events to create plausible fiction story lines. This method, which I call ZeitGeist, or spirit of the times (a term coined by 19th century German philosophers), enables me to bring familiar subjects to readers, while stretching beyond reality and into the realm of imagination. Developmental disorders, violent video games, human trafficking and genetic food modification will feature, and perhaps prompt readers to look up these serious issues in today's society and learn more about them. 

Now why I wrote this manuscript: I love my sci-fi/fantasy. I have written six stories, all interrelated, and have self-published four of them (I'm sitting on two complete YA manuscripts until I get some traction with AUgmenTISM). But I needed to try something different. You can make anything up in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, but with current-era thrillers you need to have a lot of realism. While you can make up fictitious locales, such as East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby, I don't do that. I actually depict real-world locations in this series. In fact, you can go onto Google Maps and see exactly where the action is happening. When Brady is on a high-speed train tearing through Eastern Moscow, you know what his private cabin is like. How? Well, I have ridden the path between Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod on that very same train, and in a private cabin, no less. 

But I am not Jax Brady. I merely use my travel experience to lend life to the character, to color his landscapes.

Someone asked me how I thought I was qualified to write a medical/political conspiracy thriller. Well, first of all, no one needs any damned justification for writing - ever. But, I was a private investigator years ago. Score one point for that. But what about the psychiatrist aspect of Brady? Or his experience as a Navy SEAL? Simple. I consult with psychiatrists, psychologists and an actual, retired Navy SEAL.

Did talking with them cause me to make changes in my manuscript? You bet! Lots of them, too. But they were all good changes. I learned a lot about SEALs, especially. 

And if this manuscript gets picked up, you will too, after reading the published novel, of course.