I did not clone my husband.

I say this up front because an insane rumor started that I cloned him. Perhaps it’s because I’ve written a short story about cloning. Perhaps it’s because my novel deals with tracking chips underneath people’s skin and forced kidney transplants. These things may lead people to think I have more medical knowhow than I do.

The truth of the matter is, I am not a scientific genius with a massively cool, high-tech lab in my house that I use to clone people (specifically, my husband). If you think about this logically, you’ll realize no person of such genius would ever clone their husband.

One might initially think that two husbands would be great, as twice as much would get done, there would be twice as much romance and there would be twice as much help. However, this assumes too much. I fear the only thing that would happen if I cloned my husband is I would end up with twice as much to do.

I can see it now, me trudging through the forest that had been my lawn, walking through the front door only to find my husband and his clone watching television together on the sofa. “You know the grass is pretty long,” I would say, looking down at the grass stains on the mid-thigh area of my pants. “Do you think one of you could mow it?” The following would be the response I’d get.

Husband: It rained yesterday, so it’s too wet to mow.

Clone: (nods, looks grim) He’s right. Definitely too wet. Needs at least two… (looks tentatively at husband for verification)

Husband: (vigorously shakes head in the negative) No, at least three

Clone: Yeah needs three days to dry. (Leans back on sofa, flips to the sports highlights)

Husband: (To me) What’s for dinner?

Clone: (Also to Me) Can you make that chicken and corn salsa dish?

Husband: Yeah, I love that. Go with that.

So, cloning my husband would clearly be a bad idea. Even if I had the knowhow, I wouldn’t.

Even though I didn’t clone him, I must admit that my husband is a clone (however, I think the “politically correct” term for a person born with an exact genetic double is “identical twin”). I had nothing to do with the cloning process — blame his parents 100 percent for that.

I will say, being married to a clone is like being married to anyone else, so long as your husband’s clone doesn’t live with you. If you had to live with your husband’s clone, that would be weird, right?

Anyway, I just wanted to take the opportunity to clear that up. However, most of my allotted space for this guest post is now gone. Before I go, are there any more questions?

Oh, my wonderful host, Chris, would like to know who I’d clone if I really knew how to clone someone and had such a lab in a secret underground lair (similar to the Bat Cave; only I’d call it the Clone Cave!). Well, I must say, what a great question, Chris! I couldn’t have asked for better if I’d written it myself (OK, I did write it myself, but let’s pretend Chris asked it).

The answer is simple, it wouldn’t be a who that I’d clone, it would be a what. I’d clone my book sales. Multiple times. Over and over and over. Frankly, I think most authors would agree on this.

Uh oh. Chris is giving me the hairy eyeball. I suppose that answer is a bit of a cheat, a dodge of the question. Having been a journalist for many years and having hated it when people dodged questions, I shall give you an answer to the question you asked (well, really, it’s an answer to the question I asked myself). If I had to pick people to clone, I’d clone the buyers of my book as well as sales. That seems like a productive strategy. Clone sales and buyers for exponential growth. Unfortunately, as we established earlier, I don’t know how to clone. That makes this brilliant strategy quite problematic. Thankfully, it was just a hypothetical question.

Well, it looks like our time has come to an end. I want to thank the Story Reading Ape for hosting me and ask that you check out my book, Life First. It’s not about cloning. But, it is futuristic and very exciting. In it, Kelsey Reed must escape tonight or tomorrow her government will take her kidney and give to someone else. (See, you were wondering when I’d get to the kidney theft. Bam, there it is!)

Griffin’s Honey Blog calls Life First “a poignant, riveting, thought-provoking read that had me entranced from page one until the very end of the book.” You can find out more about it and/or buy it by clicking on these blog bookcase links Science Fiction / Short Stories. (And while I am generally opposed to husband cloning, I whole-heartedly approve of you cloning yourself so you can buy more copies of the book. If cloning seems extreme, you could totally skip the cloning and just buy lots of copies of the book. Or, if you wanted, you could skip buying multiple copies and just buy one copy and recommend it to all your friends. Or, you could just buy the one copy and really enjoy it and tell one friend, because that would be massively awesome, too. Or, if none of those ideas appeal to you, you could just forward your friends a link to this blog post. Chris and I would both like that.)

Find out more about RJ by clicking on the following links:

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