I have been writing poetry and short stories since I took a Creative Writing class at Purdue University in 1967. Unfortunately, that was the only class I passed and spent the next three years in the army, including a tour in Vietnam. After leaving the army, I earned a BS in Computer Science from Rutgers and struck off on a career as a computer programmer.
I find that my years of writing poetry have affected how I write prose. My wife is always saying to put more narrative into the story. My poetry side keeps trying to pare it down to the emotional bare bones. What I create is always a compromise between the two.
Short stories and poems of mine have been published in Biker Magazine, two compilations by Poetry [dot] Com, The Salal Review, The Scribbler, That Holiday Feeling, a collection of Christmas short stories, and Not Your Mother's Book on Working for a Living.
All of my books and short stories are described on my website with links to where you can buy them in hardcopy or e-book form. I've also included some of my favorite poems. You can see what is currently under development, sign up for book announcements, or volunteer to be a reader of my books that are under development.
My Books:
The End of Children Trilogy – Science Fiction – Available in paperback or e-book from Amazon
Three graduate students at Stanford University—Lily Yuan, Kevin Langly, and Douglas Medder—discover how to open a wormhole after Lily has a dream about it. When the students open their first wormhole, an alert is sounded by the wormhole detectors that were planted on the moon fifty thousand years ago when humanity was raised from apes to humans. The alert causes humanity to be evaluated by the Galactic Species Control Board, the New Species Enforcement arm of the Ur. The Ur is the Confederation of Sentient Species in our galaxy. Wormholes would allow humanity to begin spreading and exploring the rest of the galaxy. We are evaluated to see if we have progressed enough to begin trading and interacting with the other peaceful species who already inhabit much of the galaxy. The evaluation examines us to see if we have accomplished the five basic milestones of acceptance into the Ur—ending war, controlling capitalism, ending pollution, ending resource depletion, and ending overpopulation. We fail to pass their evaluation. Because there is no way to stop us from developing starships using the wormhole technology and spreading our warlike attitudes and greed throughout the galaxy, humanity is selected for elimination. This is done by releasing a virus that has no other side-effects beyond turning off our ability to have children.
The dream was planted in Lily by someone who wanted humanity to be evaluated before we were ready. This would cause us to be selected for elimination. But no one knows who or why. Suddenly humanity is part of a who-done-it to find out who planted the dream, why they did it, and how the elimination decree can be reversed before the last of us dies out. Without the need to preserve our world for our children, civilization begins to unravel. We plead with the Ur to give us a second chance, but no one answers our calls. We continue building starships to escape our doom and populate them with uninfected clones while the worldwide pharmaceutical industry tries to defeat the virus and create an artificial uterus to clone uninfected children. Sterile habitats called SHIPS are built by seven different governments to house the uninfected children until they virus can be defeated or the starships completed. Wormholes are used to send drones to nearby solar systems to see if they have worlds capable of sustaining human life.
Wormhole technology escapes the US and proliferates around the world. Suddenly every hostile regime, despot, and terrorist has the ability to deliver anonymous bombs without notice or warning anywhere they choose. Doug escapes the prison where the three students are being held and connects with the antigovernment underground. With a group of scientists at UC Berkeley, Doug invents a wormhole detector. The underground publicizes the wormhole weaponization development our government is desperate to keep top secret. The underground publishes the plans to build the wormhole detector, giving the technology for free to everyone, worldwide. Suddenly everyone can see where a wormhole originates and ends. This stops the anonymous bomb delivery and covert spying. The US government puts Doug on the FBI's ten-most-wanted list. Doug escapes to Canada, which gives him amnesty in exchange for his help in building peaceful uses of wormhole technology, technology the US refused to give Canada. As public pressure mounts for their release, Kevin and Lily broker a deal with the US government—both of them are hired by NASA at phenomenal salaries, the three students are submitted for the Nobel in physics, and all charges are dropped against Doug. Doug declines his Nobel in physics, feeling that the technology has been perverted by its weaponization. He is also submitted for the Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of wormhole detectors and its subsequent gift to the world for free.
This is the story of how it all unfolds.
Book 1 – The Beginning of the End
Book 2 – The Three-Hour War
Book 3 – The Emissary
Ghost Ride – Fantasy/Action-Thriller – Available as a paperback or e-book on the Amazon web site.
A novel about how ghosts share our lives and interact with us daily
David is a Green Beret medic. At least he was for thirty years until he retired and returned to his parents' home without a clue what to do with the rest of his life. While he is trying to figure out how to recover from the violence he'd faced in Afghanistan and Iraq, he meets a woman who shows him the way then disappears. As David rebuilds his parents' home and attempts to start an emergency care clinic in his rural town, he meets the woman's granddaughter. Together they figure out how to bring down the meth lab that has poisoned their rural town, overcome state licensing regulations preventing the clinic from opening, help their friend attempt to beat his cancer, and discover David's roots buried in an Indian sweat lodge. Ghosts abound in this story of love, betrayal, supernatural guides, and unfaithful parents. The good guys aren't entirely good. The bad guys aren't entirely bad. Nothing is what it seems at first glance in Chambersville as the book leads the reader on a merry Ghost Ride.
School of the Gods – Fantasy – Available as an e-book on the Amazon Kindle web site.
A novel about the balance between good and evil.
The idea for The School of the Gods began with a series of “What if…”s. What if we really did have multiple lives? What if God made mistakes and learned from them? What if our spiritual goal was to become a god and it was his job to foster us while we grew? What if we ultimately became the god of our own universe, responsible for fostering our own crop of spirits to godhead? If all that were true, there would have to be a school. I mean, that's what schools do … give us the training to start a new career.
The School of the Gods is not a book about God, religious dogma, or organized religion. Instead, it's a story about Jeremiah—ex-Marine, bar fly, and womanizer. Jeremiah's life of excess leads to an untimely end. There is nothing unusual about his death other than he is the 137,438,953,472nd person to die since the beginning of humanity. That coincidence allows Jeremiah to bypass Judgement and get a free pass into Heaven. It also begins the story.
Jeremiah's entry into the hereafter leads to him becoming the confident of the god of our universe. As Jeremiah begins his path toward godhead, he discovers the answer to many questions about God that have confounded humanity from the beginning of time like why transsexuals exist, the real reason for the ten commandments, why the Great Flood of Noah actually happened, and where all of the other species that couldn't fit on the boat were kept. Along the way, God, Jeremiah, and three other god-hopefuls throw the forces of evil out of God's Home, create a beer drinker's guide to the universes, and become all-powerful gods of their own universes.
Green Grass – Fantasy/Sci Fi – Available as an e-book on the Amazon Kindle web site.
A novel in which a magical world collides with our technological one.
It features five archeology students who find a scroll at a dig in the Dead Sea which describes in great detail how to open a portal to Paradise. Paradise has no war, crime, lawyers, or politicians. Everyone just gets along and grows together. Instead of turning the scroll over to their professor, they decide to try it and find it works. They send one of their own to Paradise and, amazingly, get someone from Paradise in return.
Once the swap happens, they learn that they can't undo it for a year. Each of the swapped students has to learn to survive in a world that is completely different from the one in which they have grown up. Paradise, as it turns out, is not the quiet nirvana that was described in the two-thousand-year-old scroll. The Earth students drop into the middle of a civil war with dragons, mages, swords, smuggled technology from Earth, and double agents on both sides of the portal.
Sulphur Springs – Historical Fiction – Available as an e-book on the Amazon Kindle web site.
A novel about two women who settle in the Northwest.
Duha (pronounced DooHa) is the daughter of a slave midwife. Her mother and she are determined to escape the racism in Independence, Missouri, by migrating to Washington State in 1895. But her mother dies in Sheridan, Wyoming, leaving Duha with no money, no job, and no future but working in the brothels. She meets Georgia Prentice, a nurse in the hospital where her mother dies. Georgia takes her in and, together, they begin a life together that spans sixty years and three generations.
They settle in the quiet, idyllic settlement of Sulphur Springs, Washington, nestled between three volcanoes—Mt Rainier, Mt Adams, and Mt St Helens. The beautiful fir covered hills and crystal clear rivers belie the evil growing there that threatens to swallow Duha's and Georgia's families. Three generations must join together as a psychotic rapist/murderer threatens to destroy everything that they have worked and suffered to create.
