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Welcome to my website.  

You will find excerpts from my book of short stories Smash Palace, and from novels Altered Boy and WeatherBeaten.

I am pleased to announce the publication of Smash Palace. You can own a copy by simply clicking the “Buy Now” button. I will sign your book, adding a personalized message.
 

 Smash Palace
 

“Smash Palace is Jim McDonald’s debut work of short story fiction, its themes spanning various genres: crime, science fiction, coming of age, family conflict, sex, cats, dystopia, and surrealisms.”

“Smash Palace will intrigue you with adventure, wit, and unforgettable characters.”
 

 Altered Boy
 

 Pedophilia in the church is a volatile issue, but no novelist yet has explored the problem from the inside. Until now. Get inside the mind of Father John Damon, and find out what makes him tick. 

In Altered Boy a gang of teen street hustlers – Mickey, Joey, and Shorty – think new priest Father Damon is an easy mark.  But who’s conning who, here? 

Under the alias Mike Smith, Damon rents an apartment on the other side of town as a refuge and party pad for adventurous teens. Vivacious superintendent Yohana complicates his life by falling in love with “Mike.” 

After Shorty dies in Damon’s party pad, he concocts a plan to dispose of the corpse.  However, when Mickey and Joey discover the priest in a graveyard with Shorty’s body, Damon’s only option is murder.

Altered Boy, set in 1960 Windsor, Ontario, Canada, is based on actual events.

WeatherBeaten
 

Allison Krause was a nineteen-year-old student at Ohio’s Kent State University (KSU) in 1970.  When President Nixon, instead of ending the war in Vietnam, expanded it by invading Cambodia, thousands of angry anti-war protests erupted all over the world. After the president of KSU brought in the Ohio National Guard, thousands of protesting students confronted the stony-faced armed guards. Allison said to one young guardsman, “What’s the matter with peace? Flowers are better than bullets.” The next day, May 4, she was killed by a guardsman’s bullet. 

In 1970 Mickey Kelly, the protagonist of Altered Boy, is ten years older, a recent journalism graduate from Detroit’s Wayne State University, across the river from Windsor. Mickey lands a job as combat photographer, and spends nine weeks in Vietnam, a witness to, and participant in, the unspeakable horrors of war. 

Back in Windsor-Detroit, his sister Jayna’s husband, a Vietnam vet hooked on heroin, dies of an overdose. His death steels Jayna’s resolve to end the war, and she joins Weatherman, an activist organization that vows to “bring the war home.” She quits her job, leaves her home, and disappears. Mickey sets off in search of his sister. 

Meanwhile, hapless student Lloyd Purdy is arrested in possession of a pound of marijuana. Rather than spend years in jail, Lloyd agrees to assist the FBI as an informer. They want him to locate various wanted Weathermen in hiding.  

Weatherman was a radical left-wing domestic terror group active in the late 1960s and 1970s, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. 

Lloyd infiltrates the Weatherman group, and supplies information that causes death and chaos. He tips off the FBI that Jayna and her militia group plans to bomb a draft board. FBI agents surround the draft board, and the Weathermen must battle their way out. During the shootout, her close friend and comrade – also Lloyd’s lover – is killed. The rest narrowly escape, and go underground. Mickey is on their trail, one step ahead of the FBI. 

When Mickey hears that Jayna is at Kent State to protest Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, he goes to Kent, Ohio, hoping to convince his sister to come home. Lloyd Purdy is also in Kent on a mission for the FBI. On May 4, 1970, as Mickey searches for Jayna among the outraged demonstrators, he must dive for cover when 67 shots ring out over thirteen seconds. Four students fall dead, and nine are injured. Where is Jayna?