Submissions

January 5, 2010

Wenamon

Book One The Life The tomb-wrenched corpse swayed in the tavern portalway, a thing of tortured flesh and milky eyes. Tavern-keeper Sebi gawked at the aberration. “Osiris’ lost phallus,” he managed. A dozen cups fell from his customers’ fear-stunned hands. A heartbeat later, the tavern-goers were in flight, scrambling though the leather-curtained windows and diving out the alley door. Sebi would have run as well but for his shelves of inventory and tablets of account. He couldn’t afford to flee. His burly assistant, Nomti, advanced on the magiced thing. Capable against brawlers and bargemen, he hesitated as the seemingly animated […]
December 5, 2010

Agent’s Gate

Yes, you’ve found it, the secret literary gate where all my works are available for review. Get a cup of tea. Click about. See if there is anything that makes you smile (or better yet, makes $$$ signs flash into your eyes with associated cash-register noises). I can be reached HERE or at the contact link provided. Click on the titles below to see the opening chapter. Lets talk. Indigo– Indigo, where Jonathan Livingston Seagull meets Top Gun. This is a tale of crows. As moody as vampires, as scrappy as goths, they are natural anti-heroes and Tuft, the avian protagonist of my story, is […]
December 5, 2010

Indigo

  “If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows” – Reverend Henry Ward Beecher Nest He clenched the nest-edge with hoary claws, his body a balanced knot of avian muscle. Widely-spaced eyes inspected wings now clear of first-year molt. Dark wings. Black wings. Or so they would appear to lesser eyes. Beneath his own exacting vision they shimmered in swirling patterns of cobalt and cerulean, azure and sapphire. Likewise elaborate were the subtle decorations adorning his bullet-like body, distinctive, unique, his. His birthing rotte would recognize him a mile out, knowing him […]
December 9, 2010

Fire and Bronze (released)

The thing on the pyre withered. Bitias rocked back and forth in the bitter-sweet smoke, held erect by his bronze corslet and the spear butts he’d jammed into the dry Libyan soil. Around him, the other armored figures stood motionless, dazed by what they’d just witnessed. “Oath-breakers!” Opposite the armored men of Carthage, Hiarbas stood tall upon his four-horsed chariot at the head of his army, javelin horizontal over his head. “Dogs! Defilers of wells!” The curses echoed off the armored men around Bitias. Crackles from the nearby flames punctuated the silence that followed. Dido was dead. Without her, they […]
May 8, 2011

Early ReTyrement

    How brilliant the sea looks today, Patisbazos mused from the manor’s high window, looking across the city’s thick rampart to the sparkling Mediterranean. Even more so without the black hulls of foreign triremes. He was a tall man, thin as a mast. His dark hair and beard were tightly curled in the manner of his Persian overlords, his clothing Medic in origin. His flowing white robe, cinched with a wide belt, ended at mid-thigh to expose trousered legs. His head was topped by a spherical felt cap tailed by a ribbon of white silk. The western sun flashed upon the […]
January 29, 2012

Early-Retyrement-Back-Cover

Early ReTyrement Can a modern programmer make it in the ancient world? Computer Programmer Mason Trellis thought he had problems with corporate nepotism. When an experimental laser punches him 2400 years counterclockwise to the ancient port of Tyre, he discovers greater problems (namely ignorance of metallurgy, chemistry, explosives, history, or even the date of a convenient eclipse). Now laboring in a wineshop, he’ll have to think hard and fast to come up with a way out of slavery and into wealth, power and the arms of the lovely daughter of a high Persian official, all before the war between Greece […]
January 31, 2012

Early ReTyrement Synopsis – Spoilers!

Early ReTyrement   It’s always the clever fellows who fall back into time, the gleaming-teeth, hair-part guys with a conveniently useful knowledge of metallurgy, lower Nile politics or even the date of the next eclipse. How handy. But what is some shmoe (a computer programmer, say) went back? What if this end-use user found himself in 300 BC with nothing save the shirt on his back (and no pants, incidentally*)? What could he do? What would you do? Mason Trellis is just this sort of reluctant chrononaut, an everyday guy who finds himself ripped from his glum modern-day corporation and thrust back […]