MY FICTION

I hope I’m not abusing Latin too much when I call our species homo fabulis—the storytelling hominid—although it is likely unfair to exclude earlier members of the hominid family from this activity. Telling a tale, our most defining characteristic, might have begun with a mother comforting a child saying father would be home soon with meat or a hunter trying to impress the girls or the band with his exploits. I tend to believe it started while we were sitting around a fire in a cave or on the savannah and one of us asked perhaps the most important question ever asked after, “Where do we come from?” Which was, “And then what happened?”

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WRITINGS

EXCERPTS

BRIDES OF THE GAUNTLET

“Don’t love anything overmuch in the backcountry, for the land is a jealous mistress, and she be taking it away."” 

Indentured servants do not fare well in the New World of 1748. Skinny, shivering, and lame, Julian fears for his prospects as he is inspected by buyers on the transport ship docked in Philadelphia. When his bond is purchased by the fur trader and former pirate, Bartholomew Bragg, his forebodings appear well-founded. 

Julian grows into manhood in a violent world where Indian nations struggle to survive war, famine, and disease; settlers stake their lives and meager resources on disputed territory; traders dispense gunpowder, scalping knives, and rum; and bands of renegades murder and thieve free from lawful constraint.

In his travels into the Ohio country and his captivity by the Lenape, Julian learns the harsh realities of life and love on the frontier. In the end, surrounded by enemies and desperate to protect the woman he loves, the jealous land demands its sacrifice.

EXCERPTS

The Thief’s Strange Proposal

“Let’s go.” April started for the door.

“No, that won’t do, Ms. Ives. A new bride and a man other than her husband, dressed in black and with thousands of dollars of stolen jewelry in his satchel, can’t saunter together across a hotel lobby without attracting attention. We need to leave the same way I came in—off the balcony.”

The Voice from the Corner of the Room

The match would wake her of course. She would open her eyes to a man in a black mask and scream. He would see what there was to be seen, and then out the window he’d go. There were enough ledges and eaves and architectural conceits to provide footholds and handholds so that he would land on firm ground in a trice and be off before anyone was fully out of bed.

Tomás bent down and dug his thumbnail into the tip of the phosphorous.  

“What are you doing here?”

He straightened as if electrified and turned around. Miss Boller stood at a doorway that led to an adjoining room. She crossed in front of him and sat down in a chair in the darkest corner. He strained his eyes and thought he could discern the outlines of the veil.

“There’s a chair to your right, sir. Sit down, please,” she said her tone betraying more anger than fear.

Tomás obeyed.

Onto the Rocks

A moment later, the fog thinned, and Thornton saw over the impossible gap of two hundred yards Kurtz quickly pulling alongside the racing wagon despite the driver’s furious laying on of the whip. Holding the reins in one hand and a torch in the other, Kurtz couldn’t draw his gun so he tossed his torch into the back of the wagon. A moment later a flame flared up clearly revealing to Thornton’s shock Tom and Penelope. Kurtz had drawn his gun and was trying to get a steady aim.

“No!” Thornton screamed and, spurring his horse, hurtled forward as Tom thrashed at Kurtz’s pistol with the whip.

EXCERPTS

FIRST SIGHTING

A pickup truck sped past, music blazing, and Marcela suddenly saw a figure highlighted, then blacked out on the corner in front of a liquor store. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She had recognized the posture—the curve of the spine forming a slight question mark. She stood up; eyes fixed on the spot. Another car passed by, the headlights tearing a swath of brightness along the street and showing briefly the unmistakable figure of Raul staring at her.

“What’s the matter?” Ofelia asked.

Straining her eyes in an effort to penetrate the darkness, Marcela didn’t respond. The sound of Ofelia’s question receded as she walked out to the sidewalk and down to the liquor store. Although it was no more than two hundred feet away, the corner belonged to a different, chilling world. Marcela almost stumbled over a drunk dozing in a puddle. She approached another man leaning against a wall in the alley behind the building, half in and half out of the shadow, shivering and scratching scabs on his arms. Her brother’s name was forming on her lips. But it wasn’t him.

IN HIS APARTMENT

Ernesto held out his hand as if signaling her to keep away, but Marcela approached and pushed the second drawer closed and grasped the third drawer. She suddenly cried out in pain as Ernesto kicked her hard in the leg. She tumbled backward and looked up, outraged and frightened, holding both hands protectively in front of her.    “Listen,” Ernesto whispered. From the crack came a soft rattling. Ernesto helped Marcela up and led her across the room. Then placing himself on the side of the dresser he inched open the drawer with his foot. The sound of the rattling increased. Two bright triangular heads appeared, slowly weaving. Ernesto pushed a little more revealing the coils of the snakes lying on a bed of sawdust and dollar bills. “Oh, my God,” Marcela whispered. “Let’s go. We’ve seen enough.” He gently guided her towards the door, but as he reached for the knob, it abruptly swung open.

FINAL CONFRONTATION

“Why, you’re shaking. Remember, if you kill me, our family will be safe; you will save many innocent lives. Is that being a monster? You believe it, so isn’t that a good enough reason? Or not? How about the fact I executed Alberto? I shot the innocent dunce, who was as harmless as they come, in the head.”

“Because you were afraid to die.” Her forefinger clenched the trigger, yet the trigger seemed welded in place. Had Carmelo fooled her?

“Do you see before you a man afraid to die? Do you think you might not escape? There’s no guard. That gun won’t make a very loud noise, especially if you hold the barrel close to me. Just pull the trigger and then leave.”

WHERE FORTUNE LIES

The townspeople of Solvidado regretted the senseless loss of life when the lovers, Thomas and Penelope, drove their wagon over the cliff to escape pursuers, but not nearly so much as the disappearance of the gold they had stolen. Ever since the tragedy, treasure hunters have searched Solvidado and its environs for the hidden gold.  

A hundred years later in a hotel, April, a new bride, prepares to take her own life. Her husband, Philip, just stormed out of the room in a rage. Ravela, a demon from April’s past, has reappeared and convinced her that the only cure for her hopelessness is death. But then Aquino, a cat burglar, breaks into the bridal suite and interrupts her preparations. He persuades April to delay her suicide for the night. He has the strange idea that she is uniquely able to help him find the treasure by reliving the events leading up to the pursuit over the cliff. They exit the hotel off the third story balcony.

Meanwhile Philip has met Jacinto, the ghost of a Portuguese undertaker, a witness to the tragedy, who assures him the gold is where an honest person would hide it. Jacinto offers to guide him through Solvidado and narrate the story of Thomas while Philip tries to solve the riddle.

April and Philip each set off on harrowing nighttime journeys that take them into the previous century where they encounter the unusual love affair between Thomas, a man who lives well but has no apparent source of income, and Penelope, a young woman who always wears a veil in public . April and Philip each discover in their time travel different pieces of the puzzle of the missing gold that can only be made sense of if they reunite. Among the pieces they have to put together are a child lost in Paris, a master who is a servant, a locked door to a cold room, a rancher with a scarred lip out for revenge, a high-stakes poker game for the hand of a young woman, a foggy night, a burning wagon, a Portuguese undertaker and his pig.

However, before the mystery is solved and the treasure discovered, April must first teeter on the edge of the same cliff and wrestle with her demon Ravela.

THOSE WHO TRESPASSED

Marcela, a shy and reserved young Mexican woman, is shattered when her brother, Raul, and her fiancé, Alberto, are killed in a shootout with the police. The police claim they were running drugs. She knows that is a lie.

Unable to rebuild her life in Mexico, Marcela crosses the border. She glimpses at a distance a man on a street in East LA who resembles her brother. The man disappears when she approaches. Not wanting to relive her grief, Marcela refuses to believe Raul might be alive. Then she sees him again. Compelled to unravel the mystery, Marcela searches the drug-infested neighborhoods of Los Angeles,  questioning those who might know—the dangerous, the crazy, the marginal—for clues about her brother. Raul's enemies capture Marcela, brutally interrogate her, then use her as bait to catch her brother. The suspense culminates in a brief harrowing encounter with Raul.

Marcela travels into the Sierras of northern Mexico where several cartels are battling Raul and his army of the indigenous mountain people over the control of the opium fields. She wants to plead with him to stop the drug war that is threatening their family and engulfing the region. Marcela is uncertain whether she will meet the dear brother she has always loved or a monster who kills without remorse. Her survival hinges on whether Raul receives her as his beloved sister or treats her as an enemy.

DEATH UNREQUITED

A dark suspense novel of human evil and redemption.

We all have something to hide, even those of us who appear to be upstanding citizens. For Nick and his High School friends, their secret was big. Craig’s murder wasn’t perfect—Evelyn was the first to drive in the knife, but then he passed it on to the others. Afterwards, Nick made sure they did a damn good coverup. He was certain no incriminating evidence, much less anything that could survive twenty years submerged in the lake, remained with Craig’s body. Why then does the detective want to interview him and his friends? Has somebody betrayed them? Newly married and a different person from the maladjusted teenager who participated in the murder, Nick has a lot to lose.

What begins for Detective Homer Hamlin as a puzzling timeline in a cold case of a boy’s disappearance turns into a harrowing investigation into a group of High School friends  who calling themselves the ‘band of brothers’ dared each other to confront their greatest fears. Did Craig make the mistake of wanting to join the group? Was his murder just another dare? Obsessed with finding the evidence that would connect the band to Craig’s disappearance, Hamlin explores the nearby desert and mountains. He finds a campsite and an abandoned house where they engaged in their extreme trials. Yet the proof of Craig’s involvement in these games eludes him for four years until he happens upon an isolated lake. Believing he has enough evidence to pressure them to confess, Homer calls Nick and the other ‘brothers’ in for an interview.

Excepting Evelyn who is rumored to have died in Mexico, the band reunites to plan how to handle the interviews with Hamlin. As long as they don’t break under questioning and confess, it is doubtful the detective has sufficient evidence to make a case against them. But then things go terribly wrong. Circumstances demand more victims in order to save themselves.

When he calls the ‘brothers’ in for interviews, Homer Hamlin little suspects the evil dynamic that compelled the band to murder Craig twenty years before would also reappear and go after what he holds dearest.

Nor does Nick anticipate the final trial that takes his greatest fear to the extreme and which he is unlikely to survive.