Category: Origins

FREE Olympian Audio Books

I was pleased with the email I received from Audible this morning announcing that during this time of challenge, Audible is making hundreds of teen and children’s audiobooks available for free as long as schools remain closed.  Great move by a good company.  That got me thinking…

The Sixth Day
Alistair McKenzie – actor, composer, playwright, director, producer, screenwriter

In 2013, LA actor, producer and director Alistair McKenzie and I collaborated on two audiobooks offered on Audible:  The Sixth Day and The Olympian.  Since then, Alistair has produced two other audios for this website that you can download from the ‘Complimentary Offerings’ page:  “Rosie, A Tale of Redemption” and “The Christmas Story” from Gaspar, Another Tale of the Christ.  I will forever be indebted to Alistair and the way he has brought my manuscripts to life through his spoken words!

I dug through some old files and realize I still have 11 ‘free download codes’ for The Olympian.

The OlympianDuring these days of uncertainty, I offer these codes for free Olympian audiobooks on a first-come, first-serve basis.  Here are the codes and instructions will follow:

  • LGEFB3NMYLBLD
  • T37332UTCX8GK
  • KD92YG8LTFYXC
  • 44GGN74B7BEQT
  • ZY387W7MQ6KL8
  • ZRN8QY2MWEMQA
  • LBSZTGZ7AG7ZB
  • 6TWRJJX6WKS2L
  • NAKMG7Y5E3L2R
  • FKR7H88QXJ6A4
  • XLYDJC523RUWX

Yes, some codes are longer than others, so don’t be concerned.  To retrieve a copy:

  • Visit http://www.audible.com/at/redeem
  • Enter the download code into the ‘Redeem Your Promotional Code’ field and click “Redeem”
  • If you are not an Audible customer, you’ll need to create a new Audible.com account.  Don’t worry, you can use your Amazon account to do this.
  • Follow the instructions.  You’ll have 1 credit applied to your account.
  • Go to The Olympian book’s listing (click this link or the audio cover above)
  • Add it to your cart.  When you check out, you’ll see an option to apply the free credit.

That’s it.  If the code you entered doesn’t work, someone beat you to it.  Try the next one.

I hope you will accept my invitation to listen to this book.  Alistair’s interpretation is inspiring and The Olympian remains my best-seller.  Wishing you all the best as we confront the challenges before us.

The Soul of the Book

According to Wikipedia, an epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising statement.  This literary device has been employed for over two millennia.  Epigrams often appear as Epigraphs at the beginning of a book to suggest its theme.  The only books in which I did not employ an epigraph was my first, The Olympian, A Tale of Ancient Hellas, and my cop thriller, DWI: Dying While Intoxicated.  I subsequently added an epigraph to the Kindle edition of The Olympian.

The epigraph captures the soul of the book. Continue reading The Soul of the Book

An Editing Tool

Rarely can I read a book and not find a typographical error.  While that may be an overstatement, it is to say that despite every editor and publisher’s best intentions, the pesky typo is apt to exist in the best of manuscripts.  Spelling errors, grammatical errors, double words… I’ve seen them all, I’ve seen them in my books, and I’ve seen them in books by my favorite authors published by the most prestigious publishing houses. Continue reading An Editing Tool

The Faith of Job is Available NOW

The Faith of Job is now available.

I invite you to click the cover and experience the story that has been an intimate part of my life since the first seed was planted over two years ago in the winter of 2018.

Set in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in WWII, The Faith of Job is a story of moral courage as a young girl, her friends, and a Luftwaffe pilot refuse to believe that war and racism are solutions to the challenges we face as individuals and as nations.

As dear to my heart as each of my books is, The Faith of Job may be my favorite, if not my best work, of course, you will be the judge of that.

There is a light in the heart of darkness, and I hope you find it in these pages.

What Is It About

It has been nearly twenty years since I penned the first words to my first published novel, The Olympian, A Tale of Ancient Hellas and six years since the publication of my last novel, Gaspar, Another Tale of the Christ. Shortly before my return to the Sonoran Desert in October 2019, I completed the initial draft of my seventh novel.

After two years, five extensive drafts and much editing, the manuscript is in the hands of the publishers. I expect the physical proof copy this week. If it looks good and all is in order, the book will be available in print and as an eBook by the end of March 2020.

Continue reading What Is It About

The Faith of Job

I have completed the first draft of my new novel.

During our time in Tucson, my wife and I befriended Jessica, a wonderful woman 10 years our senior.  In those days, we attended daily Mass at the Redemptorist Center in the Sonoran Desert.  Jessica did, too and was always accompanied by whichever service dog she was training at the time.  Jessica always sat in the back row against the stone wall with her friend Joanne.  Marie and I sat directly in front of her.

Continue reading The Faith of Job

Living Tobit

TobitI open my novel Tobit and the Hoodoo Man, A Mystical Tale from the Civil War South with these 89 words…

“Once upon a time, the only sounds that came from the sky were sounds of nature.  The buzz of bees, the call of a soaring hawk, and the roar of thunder that strikes fear into the hearts of restless children before advancing east to other lands that live in the lassitude of unbelief.  Those sounds of life still bless us with their grace, but there are not so many bees and fewer hawks, and the thunder is more distant.  I cherish the sounds and the memories they recall.”

Continue reading Living Tobit