Publications

These are all of the books I have published. They are all available on Amazon as either ebooks or paperback. They’re listed in chronological order and a few words describe the story behind the stories. I never thought I’d enjoy anything as much as I have loved writing these books and short stories.

The Unveiled Series.

Awakening of the Gods is the first book I wrote. I was inspired by watching documentary shows about ancient aliens. It was supposed to be a short story, but then well… I felt like the story ended without full closure even though it was meant as a single novel.

I had become interested in the history of the Inauditis people while writing Awakening, so I explored their ancient background in Servants of the Gods. This was fun to write because of our poor knowledge of what society was like 47000 years ago. I also had the opportunity to work with a professional illustrator, who did the great cover from my description.

I wrote a clever ending for this story, which required that I write a third book in the series. In truth, these books were very enjoyable to write. Exiles of the Gods picked up some time after Awakening with the same characters as from Awakening.

The most enjoyable aspect of writing Exiles was integrating time travel into the developing story. It was very complicated and may be difficult to follow during a casual read. Of course, having introduced or at least implied the existence of malevolent actors on the world stage, I put a hook in at the end that required writing a fourth book to close the story.

The story became even more complex with the introduction of more players in War with the Gods.

It was worth the effort because the entire story was wrapped up, and I even managed to introduce God, or the nearest thing to it. The fascinating aspect of writing these books was how it forced me to think seriously about my beliefs. It has been suggested by a friend that this series is the basis of a religion. I hope not.

Novels and Collections of Short Stories

As much as I enjoyed writing the Unveiled books, I was ready for a change and, besides, I had some more issues to work through. I’m not generally a conspiracy fan but 9/11 got everyone’s attention, especially with that whitewash report the federal government produced. However, in Night Shift, I got distracted from the conspiracy theory and really dug into a tragic relationship between two people who couldn’t have been more different.

This book was a lot of fun to write, even though part of the story was tragic. I felt as if I knew Faheem and Sofia personally by the end. What a crazy couple, but they stuck it out despite their differences and what was happening to them, most of it their own fault. Great story!

I did a lot of reading about psychology and behavioral disorders while writing Night Shift. So, naturally, I was inspired to write about myself, not in an autobiographical style but more as a novel with a central character who could be me. Thus, A Change of Pace was created, to write about myself anonymously. There’s a little biography in there but not much, but Jim Walsh is as close to me as I can imagine a character.

The cover sets the stage for this light romantic comedy about a fish out of water. Besides jumping from action/adventure to romantic comedy, I also did the cover artwork myself. I’d used the same studio for the previous four books but this one seemed to simple for their expertise (they specialized in hand-painted fantasy art).

I jumped ship again. This time I addressed a pet peeve I have with so many so-called experts on artificial intelligence. I mean…these people should get a real job! So I dipped my feet back into science fiction although it’s entirely possible that a scenario like that portrayed in Aida is actually playing out as I write.

This story was written after watching Inception, so it’s like peeling an onion. Thus it has a cast of characters as large as the Unveiled books. The simple cover was created by me to encapsulate the central theme of the book. Look at the picture closely and you will find that the beautiful woman depicted in the left side of the face is matched by an evil countenance on the right. At least to me. That is the essence of the story.

I love writing novels because it’s like binge watching several seasons of a favorite show, getting to know the characters intimately. There is so much that can’t be squeezed into the final text. Still, it can be fun to explore a stranger’s life for a few days, a span of time too brief to really get to know them, yet long enough to reveal something significant about their lives. I found when writing Class of 1974 that it could be fun to find a common denominator in several stories that had no obvious common theme.

Fresh from writing seven novels, I found two common denominators for these stories. The title implies that the stories are tied to a rather dismal year in recent American history. The second commonality is more dependent on luck. I created the cover from a stylized Escher staircase showing people going nowhere. I felt that was appropriate for my cohort.

I had to get back to the big picture and, apparently, I hadn’t had enough of artificial intelligence after writing Aida. I hadn’t dealt with advanced androids (i.e., humanoid robots), so I wrote Black Dawn. There’s a story behind this exciting romp with the same elderly writer from A Change of Pace, accompanied by a teenaged android/superintelligent entity.

This is the unlikeliest pair of protagonists I could imagine. I needed someone to guide the central character (AMANDA) as it/she grew intellectually and emotionally within the story. I had fun with the Jim Walsh character (based on myself) as an author who’d written Aida, which played a major role in the story. Very tangled.

Another aspect of writing Black Dawn was that I’d written a first draft before joining an online writers’ workshop (Inked Voices). Influenced by some interesting writing styles I hadn’t thought about, I changed the style for a while on a rewrite. However, I then realized that this wasn’t the appropriate style for this story and…well, I made a mess of it, which required several months to clean up. As published, this book is crisp and clean, blending the somewhat wordy but clear writing I’d relied on previously, with a more dynamic style. I think it works.

Trinity House was written during the Covid pandemic and thus expresses my frustration with the divisions I was watching grow within American society. I didn’t want to write a dramatic story but that’s probably what it is. As the author I accept full responsibility for this dark comedy that attempts to explore the relationship between superstition and innate human behavior.

The professionally done cover encapsulates what is wrong with extreme religious beliefs. One side of the church’s lawn is well kept while the other is overgrown with weeds, the tree dying, yet the gardener is waving as if there were nothing wrong, oblivious of the damage he has done by his own acts. But he isn’t happy, far from it; his demons are haunting him.

I tried to capture the complex social environment of deeply conservative Christians torn between their dogma and the reality of life, the neighbors they are equally capable of loving or hating. I personally love the ending, but then I’m an agnostic, maybe an atheist. At any rate, it felt good to get yet another burden off my chest.

After writing Black Dawn and Trinity House, I wanted to focus on short stories with a common theme again. Like writing practice. Updating the software. And short stories are a great break from the concentration required to complete a novel, with the lengthy timeline and interaction of characters and themes associated with a lengthy work. I think the idea originated in a dream (I can’t remember for sure) with a lot of images flashing past, nothing recognizable; it may have been my waking memory of a series of static dreams. I’ll never know. At any rate the eventual result was a collection of stories sharing as many mirror metaphors as I could think of.

Mirror Images contains a couple of stories I don’t care for (unhappy endings) and several I loved writing and enjoy reading over and over. I’d love to hear what you think.