What about these novels I’ve written. You’re curious, right? How many? Titles? What are they about? Where can I buy one?
I’ve written nine novels, up to date. Below are a list of titles with a sentence or two summarizing the plot. Sometimes, I’ll tell you how the book came to be. I intend to get them out into the world, into readers’ hands. Goddess-be-praised, I’m working on publishing them by the actual Publishing Industry. When this happens, I’ll certainly post it here with a more complete summary and all relevant data.
Stoney
This is a Y-A Sci-Fi novel. Steve Brandon, a twelve year old, is bullied by two older boys. They mock him about his rock collecting hobby. It isn’t long after he finds a ‘special’ stone that he learns it came from a race beyond our galaxy. As he lives with, and understands all the parameters of the stone he has found, he discovers who he really is. Not a victim. Someone who can and will change the world.
Sister Mary Ghost
This is a Y-A Ghost novel. Aurora Slattery is a teen-aged girl new to living in a dorm at a Catholic high school. She and her friend Nissa learn that the scary, mean ghost haunting the dorm may have other things going on. Aurora and Nissa need to solve the mystery, since the nuns don’t, or perhaps can’t, believe the girls are telling the truth about the haunting.
–This story came about when I mentioned in a writing group that I had stayed at Loretto Academy, my high school, boarding for two weeks while my parents went on a business trip to New York. I got up in the middle of the night to pee and I saw a nun coming down the hall. It looked like she was floating. I thought at the time that it could be a ghost. A writer friend in the group said, maybe it was. Then she said, “If you don’t write that ghost story I will.” It didn’t take a nano-second for me to say, “I’ll write it”.
Bone Hunger
Harry Abbott Jr is a scientist harvesting and experimenting with bone marrow from skid-row males in Lawrence, Kansas. It turns out the way he gathers the bone marrow is painful and his donors begin turning him down. After one accidental death during an extraction, the doctor decides that it’s easier to kill the donor and then take his sample with no fuss. Twin sisters, one an M.E. and the other a detective are working on stopping the serial killer.
–I have no idea how this serial killer got into my brain.
Sacred Bonds: Sister to Sister
This is a biographical non-fiction memoir about my older sister. The emphasis is on Jackie, three-years-older than me, and our relationship and what she taught me. I also tell some stories that involve my six-years-older brother, my mother, and my father. All stories revolve around Jackie.
–This is my honoring of a person who taught me so much.
Father, Son & Demon Spirit
Marcus Kates, an anthropologist, and his wife Tananda are in Timbuktu, Mali, Africa when strange storms hit all continents of the world. They struggle to travel home to their young son in Florida. It seems the storms are accompanied by demon controlled ‘ravers’ killing anyone they happen upon. Their danger isn’t over even after they retrieve their son, Jerome, and reach Marcus’ parents house.
–I was walking my dogs one day, when I wondered where exorcized demons went. Then I thought of the Devil’s Triangle off the coast of Florida. Were the demons imprisoned in the Devil’s Triangle? Did the incarcerated demons sink ships, cause planes’ compasses to go hay-wire, and then crash them into the Devil’s Triangle? What if something allowed those demons to escape? What would happen then?
Order of the Crimson Cross
What happens to well-meaning Michael Gannon, a good Catholic priest, when he becomes a vampire? What does he do when the vampire, Vito Wilczak who turned him, kills, then plants evidence against the priest? Father Michael has to leave Big Bear, California, his church, his friends, his parishioners. He then must figure out what he is. Is he a vampire? Is he human? Is he a monster? Is he still a priest? How can he prove his innocence of the murders?
–Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published in 1897. The movie with Bela Lugosi playing Count Dracula first hit the big screen in 1931. I grew up rewatching Dracula in the forties and fifties. Somehow or other, I love vampires. I’ve read Stoker’s book twice and Fred Saberhagen’s book, The Dracula Tape, twice. Saberhagen’s book tells the Dracula story from Count Dracula’s point of view. With Catholicism in my background, I wondered what would happen if a good man, a priest, got turned.
Death in Hollywood
A Death Agent is an entity created by The Boss to collect a person’s soul assigned to die on a certain day. This particular Death Agent, Deeth, makes a few mistakes and The Boss fires him. It’s at this point that Deeth, even though having lived surrounded by humans for over a hundred years, must learn what it means to be human.
–I’ve been interested for a long time about ‘what it means to be human’. Frankenstein’s monster had this problem. Like Dracula, Frankenstein hit the big screen in 1931 and replayed on the big screen in the forties. The monster was made from human parts, but didn’t know how to BE human. In 1966 I found Spock in Star Trek the Original Series. He was half Vulcan, and half Earthling (human). Both halves constantly fought against the other. He did not know how to be just Human. Then came Data from Star Trek, The Next Generation. He was an android on a starship filled with approximately 1,000 crew and their families. Not all the crew were Earthlings (humans), but most were. Data continually tried to ‘fit in’. He constantly questioned what humor, love, hate, all human emotions were. Deeth becomes human in some ways and not in others. But he tries. He really tries.
–My inspiration for this story was the thought that in 1804 there were 1 Billion people moving hither and yon on this beautiful planet, with only ONE Grim Reaper needed. As of January 01, 2023 the world population was a staggering 7 Billion, 942 Million, 645 Thousand, 086 Hundreths. During the month of January 2023–worldwide–there were 4.3 births and 2.0 deaths every SECOND! There surely needs to be more than one Grim Reaper on the job. How about The Boss creating Death Agents. A bunch of them, some to take a person’s soul in their sleep, others to take war deaths, while others would be created to take the soul in a tragic, painful accident/murder. Deeth is just one of these Death Agents that we watch as he makes mistakes and sometimes not. All in learning what it is to be Human.
Half A Man (An original series Star Trek Novel)
This is the first novel I ever wrote. I love Sci-Fi. I loved the original Star Trek on tv. I wrote this on a portable, non-electric typewriter in about 1976 after I came home from work. I wrote it because I love Sci-Fi, Captain Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the crew. I wanted to be part of that world. I didn’t think it would ever be published. I wrote it because of Love.
Update: As of March 2023, I am unable to find the entire manuscript of Half a Man either as a hard copy or on discs/thumb drives. As of now, it will have to live in my heart.
Auriga
Again, my love of Sci-Fi birthed this novel of an astronaut in the future landing on a newly found planet, Auriga. After being bitten by a lizard-type indigenous alien, the protagonist’s consciousness is transplanted into the alien, and the alien’s consciousness is transplanted into the protagonist’s body. Learning to live in another’s skin is the lesson for the day.
Update: As of March 2023, I am unable to find a complete manuscript of Auriga, either as a hard copy or on discs/thumb drives. Argh!
Updated: May 2023
