Beyond the Will of God by David Biddle
BEYOND THE WILL OF GOD takes place in Mid-Missouri during the peak of summer when insects take on an orchestral quality — especially at night — and the wet, dense heat is both oppressive and oddly erotic. The plot centers on investigative work by police detective Jill Simpson and reporter Frank Harris into a murder of an Amish teenager and supposed sightings of Elvis wandering around farm country. As these two work first separately and then as a team, the storyline progresses to include many of the legendary conspiracies people pondered during the 1970s — secret missile silos in farm country; the faked death of entertainers like Jim Morrison and Marilyn Monroe (and many more of the fallen from those good old days); mysterious black helicopters; remote viewing; CIA psycho-pharmaceutical experiments; the powers of sensory deprivation tanks and so much more.
Threaded through this whole story is the question of the power of psychedelic music, especially loud guitar music, and whether we have missed out on identifying a secret dimension of human perception as we’ve passed on into the 21st century. The story plays with the meaning of music as a transcendent force for the Baby Boomer generation in a way that no one has ever done before. It is part speculative, part mystical, and part spiritual. Marketed appropriately, I see BEYOND THE WILL OF GOD as a cross between Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Carlos Castaneda’s Yaqui Sorcerer series. It is serious yet playful, questioning and entertaining.
The manuscript is roughly 110,000 words and is overtly directed at Baby Boomers (I’m waiting to see an article in Publishers Weekly on how this demographic is reacquainting itself with reading but wants stuff that is more than what the run-of-the-mill houses are producing). There’s so much that we’re forgetting about those days in the late Sixties and Seventies. We were onto something very big. And then we walked away into the real world. The secrets are still out there, though…
David Biddle Bio
I have been many things in my life: a laborer on a duck farm in Missouri; a chef’s assistant; a solar energy technician; an energy conservation educator; a kitchen manager at a Skid Road shelter and cafeteria; a student at Reed College; a graduate student in energy and public policy; a project manager for an engineering consulting firm; and an environmental planner specializing in recycling issues all over North America.
Through all of this I’ve published articles in everything from The Harvard Business Review,RAIN Journal, and Kotori Magazine. As a freelancer I was a contributing editor for In Business magazine for over a decade. I’ve also published fiction in a number of online magazines including WildViolet, ToastedCheese, and Sleep. I am also a contributing writer to Talking Writing. You can click The Word Thieves to see my latest essay.
From a Press Release from David Biddle’s representative.
-L. Vera
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
A Knife And A Quill- old 
Leave a comment