Zen 101
My upcoming novel, Zen Men Tell No Tales, is set in a Zen monastery. It might be helpful for some to have a quick intro to this religion so that the story won’t feel so foreign. I have been a student of Zen for over 40 years, and in that time, I have thoroughly figured out nothing about Zen. But that’s OK. Zen is not something to figure out. In my experience, Zen is the practice of meditation to understand what it means to exist. Eventually, many Buddhists arrive at the view that everything is impermanent and that anything, including the self, is a source of suffering if clung to. Everything else is negotiable. The goal is just to sit, become who you already are, and stop trying to be anybody else.
That thing more terrifying than teleportation
Have you ever thought about how teleporters work? I know it's difficult to do so since they don't exist. But there are things that we know teleporters must be able to do to achieve their effect:
Mystery Rabbit Hole 11
I recently read a mystery novel, The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman. It is a good book that touches on several issues that will be at play in my upcoming novel, Zen Men Tell No Tales. Without giving anything away in the main storyline, this mystery has a significant subplot involving one of the main characters, Elizabeth, and her spouse, Stephen, who is losing his memory to early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Elizabeth is grieving the slow, steady loss of the man she has loved for decades, and Stephen is sending letters to himself so he will remember what is happening and encourage his future self to do something about it before it’s too late. This is a sad and terrifying story arc that haunts the main storyline about a single murder, where all the suspects keep killing each other until only one is left, making the detective’s job easier.