“The Quest for Peace” is a short story Kindle book about a young man’s quest for peace in the Middle East.

From Laurie Lamson:

I used to host a get-together to celebrate International Peace Day.

Every year I’d show the documentary Peace One Day by Jeremy Gilley, about his struggle to get the United Nations and countries around the world to establish an annual Peace Day on September 21.

One year, I invited my guests, all very creative people, to share something about peace – a song, a poem, a video, stand-up comedy, whatever they wanted. My own contribution was this story, originally titled, “The Quest For Peace and Heavenly Virgins.”

In preparing for the Kindle publication I left “heavenly virgins” out of the title for fear of being judged as politically incorrect or insensitive.

This made me look at myself and consider the rights and responsibilities of a writer more carefully. There’s the oft-repeated trope, which could be taken as a warning, “Write what you know.”

Certainly, if we write only from the experience of our own race, religion, gender, culture, or neighborhood, we at least have the pretext of authority in those worlds we find familiar.

I personally have never taken “write what you know” literally. I see it as being more about emotional territory. After all, if writers’ only wrote about what they personally experienced or had first-hand knowledge of, the genres of fantasy and science fiction wouldn’t exist.

In this story I’m an outside observer daring to pretend to be on the inside. I’m looking at events from real life about which I have no first-hand knowledge. However, I’m an Earth citizen and I feel impacted by these events. Therefore, I believe I have as much right to respond to them as anyone else.

Christopher Pratt rated on GoodReads: it was amazing

This is strange, I had this idea. The same idea. The exact same idea. I didn’t have the courage to write the story and I think this is evidence the universe will find a way to birth stories into the world. One way or another, if it’s meant to exist, someone with write it.
Well done.
PS Laurie’s a better writer than I am.

More information on International Peace Day and the Peace One Day documentary, visit PeaceOneDay.org.

“The Quest For Peace and Heavenly Virgins” was a runner-up in an unusual on-line story contest conducted by a psychologist, Dr. Rob Dobrenski.