I've known since I was little that I'd be a writer. Loving to read, I too wanted to tell stories. Needing to pay the bills, most of my writing life has been devoted to educational, scientific and corporate challenges which do not lend themselves to writerly credit -- such pieces are referred to as "work-for-hire" and once written become the property of the hirer -- except for several satisfying stories about the University of Iowa's scientific experiments that have flown on so many of NASA's space shuttle missions.

In all of my fiction, planned and finished, there seems to be some element of the future, some entirely reasonable development that must have come along and without which the novel wouldn't be written. I cannot say that I write Science Fiction because, despite the research and study that must go into each novel, hammering the reader over the head with everything I've had to learn, invent and extrapolate seems somewhat contrary to the goal of pleasurable storytelling.

Asked by my students once why I write about the near (sometimes very near) future, my first answer was that that's where I planned to live. But the more thought I gave the question, I realized that by writing about life-enriching developments that don't yet exist, and writing about them as if they were as natural to the future as TV and Social Security are to today, maybe the right people will get the same ideas and I'll get to see some of these imagined wonders while I'm still around. Such conceit, eh?

My book The 101 Investigation orbits a research project on increasing the human lifespan. No Fish takes place tomorrow (or at the least, very late tonight) at a marine biological institute along the Northern California coast. The book I'm revising at the moment, S*T*U*D, takes a trip off-planet while exploring the evils of great arrogant power with political agendae.

When I can find the odd few free minutes, the novel I'm working on just now is called S*T*U*D. It's about a young woman, Lisa, whose family suddenly goes missing. Having just completed her Masters, Lisa, her sister and her mom and dad were going to vacation together in leisurely celebration of Lisa's achievement ... only they didn't show up for her graduation and she cannot find them anywhere.

Although she can't say why, Lisa goes to an old friend of the family, not really for help, she just finds herself going to him. They had been unusually close when she was the little girl living next door but that was years before. She expects to find an old man, still renting out apartments to college students, if he's there at all, but finds instead that KC hasn't really changed, except in a bunch of surprisingly good ways, and she is overwhelmed by how wonderful it is to see him, especially in the midst of aching in such misery for her family.

KC may have prospered over the years, as he acquired and beautifully renovated rental properties, but he hasn't escaped life unscathed, and chief amongst his many peculiarities -- such as his compelling need to be of help to others, his fierce self-sufficiency, his devotion to his pets -- is his refusal to set one foot off his properties. Nonetheless, as Lisa and KC team up to locate her family and to learn who's behind their disappearance, their search is destined to take them places neither of them could ever imagine going, and among their myriad, confounding discoveries, they find things neither of them knew they were looking for.

Lisa's missing mom, a molecular biochemist, works for an enormous conglomerate called General Unlimited. It's one of those monster organizations that's into everything; the production of food, chemicals, electronics, toiletries, you name it. People often move from one project to another at GU, and most recently Lisa's mom was attached to the GU division responsible for a new line of gender-shared personal products called STUD. Hair products, cosmetics, deodorant, toothpaste, body wash, colognes, condoms, lotions, potions and notions: STUD makes it all. The marketing hook for STUD products is that they make you better, they improve you.

And the stuff works. No, really.

The products glow and their users do a little radiating themselves. STUD's ceaseless marketing campaigns guarantee that because each STUD product reacts to an individual's unique body chemistry, no two people using, say, STUD Fragrance would smell the same. And, while people of either gender benefit from using STUD products, and smell great and look better for having used them, its implicit that using STUD heightens ones' sex appeal. This is one can't-miss line of goods.

Shy people who would never admit to using a product with such a suggestive name may order STUD products from the comfort of home, not that STUD can't be found in their local drug, grocery and department stores. But, STUD is most especially available from outlets like Wal Mart, Econosave and PriceSlashers, where whole sections are devoted to the stuff. It's inexpensive, too, as if STUD were being marketed to the lowest rung of society. STUD commercials promise transformation. They pound away, targeting not just the urban and rural poor, but also every ethnicity. If you're ugly, if you're an outcast, if you're never invited to the beach to play mostly naked volleyball with the beautiful people, this stuff's for you.

At many of the better trailer parks, there are even STUD parties. STUD's a little like hope in a bottle, hope for a better life, hope for popularity, hope for success. And actually, STUD goes even further, dispenses more than hope, more than confidence. In fact, STUD's just getting started.

A few insiders at GU know that STUD can make the US a better country. In a generation or two, STUD could put an end to economic strife and racial divisiveness, could relieve the overburdened health care system, could cure the cancer of the endless perpetuation of the poor and in doing so could perhaps eliminate the economy-draining need for welfare and other money-pit social programs ... because STUD contains a secret. And, the name itself has become a fitting acronym to a social policy undertaken by the richest entity on the planet.

Lisa and KC have no idea what they're getting into as they undertake the search for her family, and try to avoid going missing themselves. They've collided with a force bigger and more determined than they can imagine but Lisa cannot give up and KC is biologically incapable of seeing someone in trouble and not using his every resource to be of help, especially when that someone is a young woman he loved so dearly as a child.

And, where there's a collision, especially when it's a big one, nothing ... and no one ... involved will ever be the same.

For more information on Will's writing, and on his previous and upcoming projects, please let us know how we may be of service.