Studies in Smoke

Studies in Smoke is not fiction. The shared event is actual and the resonance real. So is this.

This poetry remains faithful to traditional form. It is true to life and to living simply while thinking too much.

It is true to the cycle of uneasy, never settled sentiments that prescribe no moral, no message, no mysticism. In plain language and the fitting phrase, this work is authentic to the voices of inanimate shadings, to the shifting shapes that drift into evanescent experience.

This work offers the painterly touches not yet digitalized in the mind’s eye.

Buy the ticket. Take the ride.

Supernaturalis Mortem

In the year A.D. 390, magic is both omnipresent and feared in newly Christian Rome. In an effort to revive their faith, three witches cast a curse on local leaders of the Empire’s new religion, subjecting them to demonic hauntings, possessions, and eventual death. Will the Iracundus family be able to survive the witches’ curse? Can the witches succeed in their quest for revenge?

Medea has always cherished her witch heritage, despite her family’s mistreatment of her. When her mother and grandmother decide to take action against the town’s mistreatment of them and their fellow believers, Medea initially supports their cause. However, when they unveil their plan for vengeance, Medea begins to question the morality of their actions.

As Medea attempts to convince her family to see reason and find a way to satisfy their desire for justice without resorting to revenge, she must navigate a difficult path that will affect not only herself but also her family, enemies, and the entire town.

Switch-Hitter

Switch-Hitter is the story of an ambidextrous female tennis player who plays the game with two forehands but quits after the untimely death of her father, a baseball switch-hitter who was her only coach. Enticed back into the game, she joins forces with an older Bahamian tennis coach who ends up moving in with her family. It is a feel-good American story about the obstacles encountered on the way to the top of the sport. In spite of issues including teenage pregnancy, racism, and geopolitical turmoil, will Sheila, our switch-hitter, fulfil her dream of being the first ambidextrous tennis player to win a major championship?

Synchronicity

Fractured Identities offers an unflinching look into the complexities of desire, identity, and survival within a Hungarian Jewish family during the crucible of the Second World War. Brace yourself for a harrowing psychosexual journey that confronts the limits of the human psyche and morality.

At the story’s center is an uncle – a Jungian psychiatrist – whose career is stifled under the oppressive Nazi regime. Bereft of his practice, he grapples with the dissolution of his professional identity. Opposite him is his wife, a once-successful actress and singer. Constrained by her Jewish heritage, she challenges both her own and her husband’s sexual boundaries as a form of escape from the confinements of religious and societal norms.

Their niece, prodigiously gifted and strikingly beautiful, is raised by her aristocratic, war-hero grandfather. Throughout the war, she faces a relentless assault on her body and mind. Her identity oscillates violently, from a vulnerable Jewish girl to a fierce supporter of Nazi ideology, even as her capacity for scientific innovation and acts of heroism grow. Yet she, too, cannot evade the war’s corrosive ethical compromises.

Terms of Estrangement

After almost 50 years of battling an unwanted sexual identity that had promised him an afterlife in hell, Greg made the decision to give up the fight in 2019. Decades of depression and aversion/reparative “ex-gay” therapy – which consisted of sniffing dog feces while thumbing through cologne magazine ads and participating in awkward “gay men’s basketball” bonding sessions – had landed Greg in two separate mental hospitals, leaving him disillusioned and suicidal and with a choice that had to be made.

However, ‘coming out’ had its costs.

The 12

An outbreak of twelve gruesome, unsolved murders from the 1800s seems an excellent choice for Jay Dalton to try out his hand at writing. Doing so as he is starting life over after a painful divorce in a peaceful, rural farmhouse, in which he had recently moved, seems delightful. All would not stay as it seems for long.

The quaintness of his old farm house quickly fades as he becomes more aware that he isn’t alone in his new abode. A series of journals Jay discovers provide unexpected research results for his book, even as they seem to come more and more ominously to life. But it is a series of “accidents” that are most troublesome, as it seems that someone intends for Jay to never finish his book.

As Jay digs deeper, he begins to suspect that the unsolved murders, the hauntings in his house, and his current peril may be more closely connected than he would have ever suspected. How good he is at putting the pieces together may just determine if he lives to write about it. 

The Adventures of Betty Bee

Follow a cheerful honeybee as she learns how to waggle, forage, pollinate, and swarm with her colony. The Adventures of Betty Bee shows how honeybees help humans stay healthy and how anyone can help keep them safe.

The Adventures of Leo James

In the game of life, there will be many “firsts.” There will be ups and downs with new beginnings that lead to smiles or frowns. When one door closes, another door magically opens. Tides ebb and flow and so does life. Leo Needs a Home of His Own begins with Leo realizing he needs to feel safe and secure. Knowing you are cared for, loved, and accepted satisfies the need, from a young age, that “home” sets the pace where good values can nurture successful early development. The Adventures of Leo James everyday stories present problem/solution creative insights for meeting life’s challenges. A journey of faith, hope, and the ability to develop the courage to discover and take on the “uncomfortable” teach a child what is necessary for fulfilling the multitude of ascending achievements that happen as they pass through adolescence into adulthood.

BE POSITIVE! It’s all about attitude!

“Early taught fosters an early start to a productive life and not one of naught.”

The Adventures of Shillie and Sei-Jim: Mummy Finds Her Two Furbabies

The Adventures of Shillie and Sei-Jim: Mummy Finds Her Two Furbabies is about my real life with my dogs Shiloe (Shillie) and Seishin (Sei-Jim). I want to encourage people to love and share their time with animals… The simplicity of dogs should encourage all of us to appreciate everything!!!

Hugs from Shillie and Sei-Jim!!! 

The Air That We Breathe - Book One

Father Marcellinus warns the young monk, saying, ‘The air that we breathe, that is the creature that we become’ explaining how every influence, both good and evil ultimately shape us into the person that we are. Based on real events, this novel unfolds in a nineteenth century abbey and is about a young man who struggles to face the truth of who he really is, something that all of us must ultimately do in our own lives. The reader is invited into that cloister, so full of passions and conflicts.

Simon desires only one thing since he was a little boy, and that is to serve God as a priest. He dreams of wearing silken gold vestments and being enveloped in great clouds of incense, offering the Sacrifice to God. When he is seventeen, he leaves home and becomes a monk far north in the mountains of Pennsylvania. His faith is genuine, and he gives himself to his studies in order to become a Roman Catholic priest.

But not all is as he expected. A sexual awakening he had not anticipated, blossoms in him and boyhood dreams are shaken to the core as he wrestles with a side of himself he never counted on. He falls in love in a monastic world filled with holy men, mischievous souls, colorful individuals and also great scoundrels.

A powerful visitor invites him to Rome, something Simon never expected. There is a dark price tag, however, something Simon is unaware of.

The Allies

This book lay almost half a century at the bottom of an old computer before it was published. At the time, it was considered politically ‘inappropriate’ because it was too ‘anti-Russian.’ It was written in America by two political émigrés, refugees from the communist part of the world, who knew Russia as it really is and always has been, even during World War II, when it pretended to be a faithful ally of the United States.

American pilots, crew members of a B 29 bomber, are hit by anti-aircraft fire during a reconnaissance flight over Japan. They make an emergency landing in USSR territory. It would seem that they are safe on the lands of an ally, but the reality turned out to be frighteningly different.

Although this book is historical fiction and its characters are invented, they are woven into real historical events related to the Manhattan Project infiltrated from within by Soviet spies. During Gorbachev’s ‘thaw,’ Stalin was forgotten, and Russia was to be ‘an example and model of democracy’ from then on. Even then, this book was supposed to be a warning; now it is allmost a wake-up call. Today’s Russia, waging a criminal, aggressive war against Ukraine, Russia of Vladimir Putin, with its troll farms, armed green men, murdering disobedient citizens in labor camps, poses an even greater threat to the entire free world.

The Attenuating Puritan

Embark on a contemplative journey with our altruistic hero, a reflection of purity in words and deeds, yet occasionally marked by ancestral toxins. With unwavering conviction, he dances under the world’s weight, marching into the unknown, his steps marked by hope and staunch faith.

Bound by a noble quest to restore the splendor of Eden, his every gesture is a sacrifice, a stride towards the pristine and divine. Amidst adversities, he stands a fortified pilgrim, mastering the shackles of mind and body, emerging as a triumphant victor, a mirror to us all daring to confront our reflections.

He is the champion of tainted sacraments, a crusader against the clutches of heavy metal and forever chemicals, hinting that our destinies might be cradled in such hands. As we tread the path of love eternal, each step taken is righteous, a gentle move towards the boundless cosmos that binds us in love.

In The Attenuating Puritan, every breath taken is a whisper of attenuation, every quenched thirst a sigh of grace, and every bounty received a step closer to the celestial, encapsulating a tale of hope, resilience, and the ceaseless quest for the divine amidst the terrestrial.