After a lifetime of short stories, journal entries, articles, columns and scathing letters to the editor, I finally managed to write my first novel, a science fiction story about veteran mental illness. The experience was not what I expected. It was sometimes joyful, sometimes painful. It took me places I hadn't intended to go. I'm absolutely proud of the finished product, though. Now I'm hard at work on my second novel and I hope to have it completed by the end of 2024. Meanwhile, I've published half-a-dozen short stories and I've provided excerpts and links where I could.
A Psychological Sci-Fi Journey Through a Broken Man's Mind
From the moment he watched his best friend being torn apart by wolves on a north Georgia mountain, and heard the reasons why explained to him by a talking deer, Van Ryan knew the self-delusionary miasma of his post-Marine Corps existence was at an end.
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Will is dead, and Marine Corps veteran Van Ryan is on a mission to find out who’s responsible for his best friend’s murder. As Van travels the highways of the American south, urged on by an extraterrestrial taskmaster, he must determine if he is driven by his own lived trauma, an undiagnosed mental illness, or the very real alien voice he hears inside his head. Van is aided in his quest by a gregarious jazz man at the end of his rope, an intrepid artist navigating her own traumatic survival story, and a sentient equine escape artist. Deep in a cave in the Arkansas hills, guarded by human-shaped horrors, lie the answers to Will’s murder and, possibly, Van’s one last shot at redemption.
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