High Strangeness

High strangeness: any event or experience related to UFOs that is above and beyond the usual strangeness associated with the phenomenon. It is frequently associated with synchronicity.

Since July, we’ve been getting some of our out of print books into digital form through Crossroad Press.  Since we no longer have Word files for some of these books, Crossroad scans the actual book, formats the document, and designs a cover. What really takes time on their end is proofing the formatted material for errors – i.e., reading the digital file. So we’ve offered to proof our books to speed things up.

The books that Crossroad put up first for me were two in a suspense/mystery series of four books that I initially wrote as Alison Drake – Tango Key  and Fevered  In addition, Crossroad created an audio book from Tango Key.

The next two books in the series are Black Moon and High Strangeness. All four books take place on the fictional island of Tango Key. It’s a rather mysterious island, with a rich history and mythology, and a geography unlike the rest of Florida. There are hills! Cliffs! A lighthouse!  The island is connected to Key West by a twelve-mile bridge. The main character in the books is Detective Aline Scott, a quirky woman born and bred on Tango Key who has a pet skunk and solid intuitive skills.

Now, here’s where the synchros come in.

I apparently forgot to tell David Wilson, who started Crossroad, about the order of the books in the series. It turned out that he didn’t have a copy of Black Moon, the third book, but had High Strangeness (the fourth book) formatted, and asked if he could publish that one before Black Moon. Even though the four books comprise a series, the books can also be read as stand-alones, so I said sure and he emailed the digital file. I’ve been proofing it for the last two days.

The book was published twenty years ago by Ballantine and I’d forgotten what it was about until I started proofing the digital file: a double homicide at an exclusive psychiatric clinic on the island. The suspect, who escaped from the clinic,had been receiving electroshock treatments that have pretty much erased her memories so that when she escapes, it’s fear and terror rather than memory that propels her to a home she lived in when she was much younger. An isolated home. The suspect, Margaret, believes she was abducted by aliens, that the Grays impregnated her and took her baby, but these memories are  recovered in bits and pieces.

Right now, Rob and I are writing Aliens in the Backyard, a non-fiction book about encounters and abductions.  That’s the first synchro. The name of the chapter Rob’s currently working on? High Strangeness.

I’m not sure what this synchro means. Perhaps it’s addressing the high strangeness that exists in publishing these days. Twenty years ago when this novel was published, it never occurred to me that it would be reborn as an e-book. Twenty years and quantum leaps in technology. Wow.