In Irreconcilable Differences, James R. Strickland returns with his second cyberpunk thriller, once again giving readers a ride for their lives.

Rachel Santana is thirty-six years old. She’s an agent for Interpol Covert Services. Before that, she was an interrogator at the White Sands Reeducation Camp, following the breakup of the United States. Before that, she was a prisoner there. Before that, a Yankee, one of a group of corporate mercenaries trying to extract something like a victory in the Middle East. Before that, she was a United States Marine. She’s a survivor. A cop. A soldier. A destroyer. A killer.

Now, Robert Neil, Rachel’s boss and soon-to-be ex-husband, has implanted a digital copy of Rachel’s mind in Michelle Marie (Micki) Blake, a 16-year-old farmgirl-hacker in rural Kansas. The mission: Learn the local hacker ecology. Locate the dangerous new player prowling the rural networks. Destroy him. Take no prisoners. Leave no incriminating evidence. As covert missions go, it should be pretty simple.

There’s nothing simple, though, about being conjoined at the cortex with someone else.

There’s nothing simple about life on the farm, the life of a high school student, the life of a 16-year-old in post-United States Kansas.

And the rural hacker ecology is unraveling with new forces in play, new powers, new players. It will take all of Rachel’s experience just to survive. All of Micki’s skills as a hacker to dig for the truth. All of their combined abilities to put the pieces together, to find the real threat despite the web of deception and half-truth that surrounds both their operation and Copy-Rachel’s very existence.

And somehow, they have to avoid being grounded. After completing a CCNA certification in 2002 in a vain attempt to gain employment in a down economy, James R. Strickland wrote his first novel for National Novel Writing Month, and the whole dream of being a writer began to reawaken. Strickland has two published novels, Looking Glass, and Irreconcilable Differences. More are coming.

Irreconcilable Differences is available wherever great books are sold, and Flying Pen Press especially recommends these fine retail stores:

The Tattered Cover, Denver, Colorado (http://www.tatteredcover.com/)
Borderlands Books, San Francisco, California (http://www.borderlands-books.com/)
Who Else! Books, Denver, Colorado (http://home.att.net/~who_else/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html)

Irreconcilable Differences.
A novel set in the LookingGlass World.
By James R. Strickland.
Published by Flying Pen Press LLC, August 2008, under the imprint Flying Pen Press Science Fiction.
312 pages, glossary.
ISBN: 978-0-9818957-1-0. Trade paperback. Cover Price: $16.95.
5.5" x 8.5" x 0.653", 0.88 lb.
Flying Pen Press catalog number FIC-S-00004.