Wild-Side

If I’m honest, in the early days, I was exceedingly annoyed with the widespread unwillingness the population of Wild-Side had to physically combat the malevolent force attacking the fringes of their society. In the first month following my arrival, the creatures we’d come to refer to as the Elend grew bolder. Farms closer to the five main cities had seen the hulking, savage creatures with increasing regularity. Farmers were soon noticed to be missing.

No matter what came, none of the Seeley would fight. No one would join me in the hunt. Worse, most looked at me as if I were as dangerous as the massive reptilian creatures. I’d been willing to fight and even kill the vicious monsters from the start, but it brought me little favor from the Seeley. Some even claimed the very first sightings of the Elend coincided suspiciously with my appearance on Wild-Side.

We eventually determined that my arrival was related to that of the Elend. We were linked, but not in a way that made sense to me.

The Seeley didn’t trust or like me as a person, but thankfully, they let me use their technology.

It was almost two hours past sunset, and I continued to slip noiselessly through the overgrowth of the forest. According to the small countdown timer in the corner of my heads-up display, I had just over thirty-six hours left on Wild-Side. It was one of my longer trips, and I was making the most of it. I’d explored this quadrant of the forest for the last two days and was confident the tracks I was following were fresh. Judging by the spacing of the stride and the shape of the more distinctive prints I’d seen in the mud, I was stalking what my team had recently started referring to as a Jay. Most of that breed was half again taller than a man, about twice as wide at the chest, had wicked triangular-shaped teeth that can bite through almost anything, and…did I mention they have wings?

Yeah. Freaking wings.

They can’t fly, though. At least, that’s what everyone kept telling me. I remain unconvinced. What’s the point of wings if you can’t fly, right? Still, the Doc and his people are far more intelligent than me, so I assumed they knew what they were talking about. It was something about weight and mass, lift ratios, and coefficients: they could be right. There are flightless birds in the world, so why not these things?

Still, the Elend are the closest I’ve seen to real-life dragons, though with human intelligence and what I can only describe as the instincts of serial killers. They couldn’t talk, at least in any language I understood. But they could communicate. I had never seen them in a group of more than two or three, but they absolutely communicated. I won’t describe them as social creatures, but they can organize at least so far as it’s convenient to try and kill me.

I’ve had more than one close call.

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Our-World
Unknown location Kansas

The Cessna flew at just over fourteen thousand feet in a turbulent, moonless sky. The time and timing were no coincidence. I’d planned the night’s operation around the new moon, but the weather system was entirely unexpected. An unpredicted storm front was moving in quickly from the west, playing havoc with the small aircraft. Everything about the night’s operation was planned and coordinated using every bit of intelligence I could beg, borrow, or steal. In this case, mostly steal. Everything except for the storm… and while it came out of nowhere and baffled meteorologists, I knew with certainty what it foretold.

More on that later.

Double Vision Gary was at the controls of the small four-seater plane. The rest of the seats had been removed since Double Vision’s day job was hauling machine parts anywhere in the greater tri-state area. If you’re wondering what kind of business there is flying tractor parts all over the state, there isn’t. Double Vision was a smuggler. Think Han Solo minus the Wookie, and replace the Millennium Falcon with a worn-out and past-its-prime patched-up aircraft that should have been sold for scrap back when I was in diapers.

Not surprisingly, Double Vision’s flexible moral compass made him perfect for my late-night rollercoaster ride through the clouds. For a price, he didn’t ask questions, and he followed instructions no matter how unorthodox they might seem to any sane—or sober—pilot.

Did I mention Double Vision was a bit of a drinker? As I watched him fight the control stick, there was a devil-may-care grin on his face, and the rummy gleam in his eye suggested he was enjoying this ride a little too much.

Lightning flashed across the window to the left, and I had to blink the blindness away. There was less than a second of delay before the accompanying thunderclap impacted the aircraft with a force I felt like a slap to the head.

“Hoo-wee!” Double Vision cackled. “It’s getting thick out there, hoss. It might be time to rethink this plan of yours.”

The oncoming storm was troubling. The fact that Double Vision didn’t so much as blink when the lightning strobed across the cabin ratcheted up my concern. Either he had cast-iron nerves, or he was literally feeling no pain. “Too much prep to turn back now,” I said. “Tonight’s the night. How long to the target?”

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Wild-Side
Today

I was moving fast. Far faster than was safe, given the three-quarter moon, the rough terrain, and the dangers of the creatures stalking the wilderness. They called it the Forbidden Zone for a reason. Actually, they had a lot of names for it, but none captured the horror that the people of that world felt for the untold miles of untouched forest surrounding one of their few small cities. The city walls had been enough to keep the denizens of Wild-Side safe until recently, and I still didn’t know if the few who had gone missing had somehow been taken or had just wandered off before falling prey to creatures from their darkest nightmares.

While I still had hope that the city walls held integrity, there was no question the Elend were growing bolder as they became more organized. They were also expanding in numbers; the truth of the correlation was still only a suspicion as I plowed through the thick brush and vegetation. The wilds of the Reaches resembled those of the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest of home. Tall trees consisted of everything from conifers to massive oaks, redwoods, and elms. But it was like the size restrictions of my world—Our-World—didn’t apply there. It was common for hardwoods to be bigger around at the base than the bedroom I had as a child. Maybe it had something to do with the population of Wild-Side. Though the people were unquestionably more technologically advanced, somehow, they had evolved in small numbers and managed not to overpopulate their world. They never became a burden on their natural resources, and it seemed their technology evolved quickly enough to keep them from making the same mistakes as Our-World.

Nearly the entire population lived in five small cities situated across two large continents. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles of virgin wilderness separated each city. And somehow, it worked. The people, for the most part, lived healthier and more content lives than the people of Our-World. They were intelligent, had resources, and their technology benefited them without damaging their environment.

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My new book is tentatively called Sleepwalker. While the name and content are subject to change, I’ll use this site to publish a new chapter each week. As of today, that’s a 29-week commitment. That’s intimidating, but it will motivate me to hammer out the second draft and maybe get some eyeballs on it along the way.

Unlike my other books, Worlds Collide is intended to be a one-and-done release. This isn’t the start of a new series. And for better or worse, the page count reflects that. Like the rest of my books to date, readers can expect action and suspense with a liberal splash of science fiction. And while the subject matter could be seen to trend slightly more toward the horror genre than is typical of my work, that is more than offset by what I hope to be a tone of humor from the first-person character driving the narrative.

Anyone reading these releases as posted can expect typos, glitches, and mistakes common to a work’s second draft. I’ll publish the story to this site, warts and all, before the book is sent to my editor or even my beta readers.

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The latest releases in the Cyrus Cooper series have been in the works for a long time, but I think the new books will be worth the wait. After the big reveal at the end of Halon-Seven, there were so many directions I could take the story. My problem was that I liked many of them so much that selecting a path was difficult.

As the title suggests, Surviving Origin (SO) brings the fringe technology cult into focus. The group was peripherally mentioned in Rouge Faction Part 2 and Halon-Seven. These new books pull harder at long-standing plot threads, such as Cyrus’s origin, the murky past of the Coalition, and Gertrude Waterford’s paranormal experimentation in Rouge Faction 1 and 2. I plan one more book in the series, pulling all these threads and more into what I expect to be an exciting conclusion.

For now, I am happy to announce the print and ebook releases of Surviving Origin, Part 1 and Part 2.

It has been a while since my last published book, but that hasn’t been for a lack of writing. If anything, it’s because I have been working on too many projects at once. Today, I released the first book in a new series, Black Rock: The Rising, Death Curse.

While my past books have been primarily action/thriller with a twist of sci-fi, this book trends a little more toward the supernatural with concepts like remote viewing, mysterious disappearing islands, and witches burned at the stake. But not to worry, there’s also mystery, adventure, mafia enforcers, and characters that make it all worthwhile.

As always, I write the kind of stories I want to read. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Amazon ebook lands today and the print release can be expected closer to the end of May.

The latest release in the Cyrus Cooper thriller series is now available in Kindle e-book format and trade paperback at Amazon and other major book retailers.  Though Halon-Seven is book #4 in the series, it also works well as a standalone introduction to the series.  New readers are offered a heart-pounding introduction to Cyrus Cooper.  Fans of the series will find him at a pivotal new point in his life.  If you’re new to the series, Halon-Seven offers tantalizing hints about Cyrus’s past.  Some secrets are covered in the earlier books but some will be revealed with the release of book #5: Surviving Origin.  If you’ve followed since book #1, you’re not going to believe where this edition ends up.

In any case, this is the best book yet.  I’m certain of it.
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Book #3 in my Cyrus Cooper thriller series is available today.  This is part two of the Rogue Faction story arc, and the conclusion of an important transition in the character’s life.  The book is available now for all Kindle compatible devices.  The print version will ship in approximately two weeks.

The books are serialized, in that the events of each new release build on everything that has come before them.  One of the things I did to try and make this obvious is to put Book One, Book Two, and so on in the title of each.  The characters evolve and develop over time, just like anyone.  By the end of this book, the protagonist is very different from the young man introduced in book #1.
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The second book in my Cyrus Cooper series went on sale through Amazon first thing this morning.  Rogue Faction Part 1 is the first half of a pair of novels that comprise a single larger story.  It has everything you would expect: murder, mystery, mayhem, and lots of action.  If you were wondering what comes next for Cyrus Cooper after the events in Dangerous Minds, I don’t think you will be disappointed.  Cyrus is back in action, this time working a new case that’s near and dear to his heart.

Part 2 of this story should be released shortly after the first of the year.  Since Part 1 is “To Be Continued,” I don’t want anyone left waiting for the rest of the story.  Part 1 is action packed, but Part 2 is going to take folks places they didn’t expect.  It should be a lot of fun… and it might pull at some heart strings along the way.
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