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Hi
Welcome to my
website.
You will find
excerpts from my two novels Altered Boy and Flowers are Better
than Bullets, and links to my short stories on sale at agreeably low
prices from Smashwords.com.
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 from the pressures of the priesthood, and as a 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.
Flowers
are Better than Bullets
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
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 Wayne State University in Detroit,
across the river from Windsor. Mickey lands a job as combat
photographer, and spends eight months 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, a serious radical 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.
Jayna’s
militia group bombs a draft board, and then plans to rob a Brink’s
truck. However, an infiltrator tips off the guards, and in a shootout,
her close friend and comrade Carol is killed. The rest narrowly escape,
and go underground. Mickey is on their trail, one step ahead of the FBI.
When Mickey gets a tip that Jayna is at Kent State to protest Nixon’s
invasion of Cambodia, he goes to the town of Kent, Ohio, hoping to
convince his sister to come home. On May 4, 1970, Mickey is adrift among
the outraged demonstrators when 67 shots ring out over thirteen seconds.
Four students fall dead, and nine are injured. Where is Jayna?
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