Many of us are making our pilgrimage through fasting, praying and almsgiving – three spiritual pillars common to many religions. In these challenging times, we may pray more, fast more – though not necessarily by choice – and offer more kindness and understanding to our brothers and sisters than we have at other times.
“Easter will be different this year,” my neighbor Rebecca says. She is correct. Continue reading A Different Easter
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…
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! Continue reading FREE Olympian Audio Books
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
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
Afghani writer Khaled Hosseini brought us The Kite Runner in 2003, a complex story of friendship and redemption that follows two Afghan boys – one rich, one poor – through three decades. The book and the film are outstanding and worthy of your attention.
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.
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.
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.
I 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.”
In the summer of 2018, I pulled my copy of Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems, American Places from the bookcase next to my desk. Continue reading Good Poems
