My books... available on Amazon and the Kindle.

They're available on the Kindle App as well. :-)


"Black's Voyage"

"A Pair of Black"

"Red in Tooth and Claw"

"Black and Blue"

Coming soon:

   "Isis Rising"

   "Blackest Revenge"

An unrelated book to the series but the longest I've ever written:

   "Vintage Wrath" a book of revenge and justice in the rarefied world of the Port wine industry.

The death of a character...

I've been editing a scene that involves the death of someone who deeply loved his wife.
The man had to bury her before the plague finished with him. He left a note asking whoever came after him to bury his remains next to his wife's.

So they could be together forever.

I've been dehydrating myself via my eyes for over an hour.

I don't remember it being this sad when I wrote it but I've become a master at writing sad scenes with my eyes closed.

You don't need to see to write.

I have no way of knowing if it'll affect anyone else like this but it's tearing me to pieces.

The book is called, "Blackest Revenge" and is book 6 in the series. It'll be published around Labor Day.

How to write a novel.

I start at the last line of the book.

You have to tear your heart out, every inch of the way, back to the beginning.

When you can't take any more... Not another moment...

You're halfway there.

I don't know how I feel about who I am sometimes. What kind of person poisons three people and kills an old, honorable, hard-working man before he goes to work in the morning?

How do I look myself in the eye, knowing I am planning the deaths of several characters who are wonderful people? They don't deserve to die but they must in order for the story to move forward.

I can write with my eyes closed so I don't need to be able to see through the tears in order to kill a beloved person. I can kill them with my eyes closed.

I can tell you. If my story makes you cry... I promise I cried harder as I broke my spine and removed my heart to let you feel some of what I felt as that person died. I felt it more than the reader and for the reader it was brutal.

I hope it was anyway because that's how I meant to write it.

My abusive relationship...

It's time to confess my shame, swallow my pride and come clean... for many years I've been in a long-term abusive relationship.

With spicy food.

I love it so much but it hates me with a vengeance which seems to know no bounds. I burn my mouth with the heat of a thousand suns and even while sweating and gasping... come back for more.

I step away for a moment and almost immediately my co-dependent need for the pain, only she can provide, pulls me back for additional abuse.

I beg for mercy and plead for deliverance while in my heart I know... neither of us wants it to stop.

Although my tongue feels as though it's rejecting my electrocuted taste buds as though they were a badly transplanted organ out of some Southeast Asian innard-market, my fork returns to the bowl of Creole-seasoning-with-red-curry-over-steak-and-chicken-with-mushrooms-and-onions.

Again and again I chew the painful but succulently prepared meat and my mouth burns away my hours of torture, without end.

Why do I do this to myself? Endorphins? Some solo-macho need to prove myself to... myself? I'm home alone so that's probably not it.

Alcohol brings bravery and a tiny respite from the searing agony in my mouth as my sweaty breathing begins to sound like I'm coaching a La Maze class.

I know I'll sleep well since the pain will fade by nightfall, leaving me tired and exhilarated from my ordeal.

Sometimes the pain launches a counter-attack the next morning but it is a mere echo of the previous night's marathon of feverish discomfort.

The pain doesn't forget. The pain remembers! It wants me to pay for my peaceful night's slumber and suffer anew while I welcome its fresh embrace.

What does it feel like to get kicked in the balls?

An age-old, unasked question which I am certain any number of women would like to know the answer to.

Women think men are just big, snotty babies when the guy is clutching his junk and displaying terrible posture while she's saying, "I barely tapped them!"

Correct. Now, to understand precisely how that felt, let your boyfriend flick your eyeball. The same way you would flick a fly off of a table.

Why are you holding your eye and walking all hunched over like that? "I barely flicked it!"

That is PRECISELY what it feels like. That ache? How it lingers and feels like it goes all the way to the back of your head?

Only now imagine what it would be like to take a "line drive up the middle"? A ninety mile-an-hour baseball smashing into your eyeballs. Both of them. And they're hanging outside your body protected only by a little bag of elbow skin. Right? That'll keep them safe.

Now, from the moment you felt your pelvis be protected from injury, by your soft, squishy eyeballs? You've got about twenty seconds to get it together before the game re-starts and you are expected to perform flawlessly. No one will cut you any slack for still being in agony. Not even in half an hour when your head still feels like it's going to make you throw up.

But at least now you know exactly what it feels like to get kicked in the balls.

Knowledge is power.

*************
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Prologue to Vintage Wrath

Prologue.

Philip Johnson could no longer scream. 

He could no longer beg or plead. The poison had spread too far. Although it wasn’t too late to save him, the list of those who might was now vanishingly small.

He could no longer swallow since the poison had washed down his throat, melting the dendrites at the end of his nerves which allowed such luxuries. But he also couldn't prevent himself from swallowing. 

When Catherine’s bodyguard tipped his head back, the man seemed almost gentle as he poured the remaining poison down his throat.

Vintage Wrath

Vintage Wrath:


I'm not sure if it's like this for other writers but I was very sad when it was time to stop writing. 
 
It took 16 weeks of work to get this thing ready for editing.

It was harder to write than the Establishment series for many reasons. The MC (main character) is an orphan girl, everyone is unfathomably rich and they are all gifted in one narrow field.

There was a *lot* more research to be done but every bit was fascinating!