Chloe The Clone is a suspense set in the year 2020. Part Romancing the Stone (romantic, comedic, with inept bad guys), part Paper Moon (feel good, sentimental, and quirky), Chloe The Clone nevertheless poses a serious story question: what does a man do when he comes to love the child who was cloned to give him a new heart?
Clonal Transplants, Inc. screws up when a rogue tech illegally grows a ten year old, sentient, female clone named Chloe to provide 56 year old Sam Turner with a new heart.
Because Chloe is near term, greedy CEO Andropov decides to maintain the sentient clone. If heavily sedated, she can pass for being brain dead and be shipped normally allowing Andropov to collect payment for a delivered product.
When the law governing clones changes, Andropov sedates Chloe and hands her off to an unsuspecting Turner, who is told the only way he will be able to save his life is to take Chloe to Mexico and have the heart transplant done there. Once the transplant is performed, Andropov will be off the hook. No more clone, no more evidence of an illegal sentient.
Subsequently, Andropov learns the FBI is looking for Chloe on a tip that she is sentient. He regrets keeping her alive, and resolves to correct his mistake.
On the way to Mexico, Chloe's sedative wears off, and Turner discovers that she is a fully functional charming ten year old girl who awakes and insists on calling him Grandpa. As their relationship builds, he fears that if he surrenders Chloe to the feds he will never see her again. He also suspects that Andropov is after her.
Turner makes it to Mexico, only to find that he must fight for his life and Chloe's. When unknown persons kidnap Chloe, Sam suffers a heart attack. Attended to by a corrupt transplant surgeon, Sam must decide whether or not to accept a perfectly matched heart from an unknown donor when he can't be certain the donor isn't Chloe.
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William E. Mason lives in Monument, Colorado with his wife Ulla on 10 acres of trees and red sandstone outcroppings at an elevation of 7,400 feet above sea level. They have two married sons and six grandchildren.
William was born in 1943 while his father was at Yale University obtaining his Doctorate in Anthropology, hence his upbringing and the basis of the anthropological themes in his writing.
The family subsequently moved to Hawaii where he lived until attending Verde Valley School, Sedona, Arizona, then to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then to the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
After graduate school William joined the Peace Corps and was stationed as an architect in Tunis, Tunisia. Subsequently, he worked as a professional architect in New York, Nigeria, Hawaii and Saudi Arabia.
His series, Primordium explores his contention that mankind's humanity is a mistake deriving from stolen DNA planted in an ancient hominid that enabled hominids to evolve as conscious beings, culminating in Homo sapiens, creatures not meant to be, but creatures capable of curiosity and wonder. They look out at a closed universe they were not meant to see nor have the intelligence to comprehend.
When William isn't writing, he enjoys hiking Colorado Fourteeners, biking, cooking, remodeling his house, playing the guitar and carrying concealed. He has a tractor for the woods, uses a chainsaw regularly and plays tennis at a 4.0 USTA level. His favorite song is Hotel California.
