Reflections of My Soul

Experience life through my eyes and my perspective of the way things are or might be.

Through my poems I challenge the reader to live my reality as I see it. Step into the twists and turns of my mind. Imagine stepping into my dreams, experiences, and nightmares. The trick is to find your way out again.

UnAssigned

Stuck in prison while dreaming of the ocean is how Dr. Savannah Dawson is spending her time in Cape Town. At least that’s true on business days while she works as a physician at the overcrowded penitentiary. But her freedom also remains at risk from Casper, the invisible head of the CIA. Hoping that this assignment might be their last, Savannah and her best friend Lacey work to break free another operative stuck behind bars and caught in the web of their unfriendly ghost of a boss. In order to accomplish this problematic jailbreak, they have to enlist the help of their crew of friends: Charlee, the best lawyer they know, and Karmen, the most cunning IT guru on the planet. But the four of them soon realize this assignment isn’t exactly what it seems, and they are really being exploited for the ultimate cover-up. When the tides turn and they find themselves the ones hiding and hunted, they have to decide to run or fight.

Where the Waves Meet Fire

Beneath the golden glow of New York’s skyline and the wild Pacific horizon, two lives are about to collide in a love story as fierce as the waves that carry them.

Alfonso Rivera, a thirty-year-old surfer and Ph.D. student, lives between the crashing waves and the quiet halls of academia. When his father’s dream of building a surfing center in Malibu pulls him west, he must navigate ambition, family legacy, and the shadows of his past.

Krystal, a former beauty queen turned scholar, hides her scars beneath elegance and fire. Drawn together by an undeniable spark, Alfonso and Krystal discover a love as exhilarating—and dangerous—as the ocean itself.

But passion alone cannot protect them from betrayal, ambition, and secrets that threaten to pull them under. Between the glitter of New York and the wild horizon of California, they must decide if their hearts are strong enough to survive the storm.

Where the Waves Meet Fire is a sensual, dramatic tale of love, resilience, and destiny—crafted for readers who crave romance that burns with intensity and lingers long after the last page.

Father Tom’s Penance

Tag along with Father Thomas Flannery on his circuit ride as he wends his way through western Kentucky and Tennessee in 1948. Listen to his deeply meaningful and moving sermons. Eavesdrop on the sanctity of the confessional as he listens carefully to the penitent. He pronounces absolution and assigns very appropriate penance to each contrite sinner.

Meet some of his old friends along the way and the new friends he makes on the journey in his old Model A Ford.

Father Tom struggles with his personal weaknesses and his past and learns much about the forgiveness Christ offers us. He also learns about true maturity and how one can find it.

He wrestles with great mysteries as a good theologian would and even questions Church doctrine. His compassion, faith, sense of humor, and work ethic help make him a great priest.

Explore with Father Tom the magic of memories, dreams, and fantasies. Enjoy this nostalgic trip back to yesteryear, when life seemed to be more simple—but it really wasn’t!

Coming Out of a Pale Road: Part Two of Pale Twisted Forest

Most of the characters from A Pale Twisted Forest are back again in different situations. Going against his better judgement, Ivan has begun an intense relationship with the judge, who was greatly attracted to Ivan’s unusual beauty. Likewise, his grandfather Peter has begun a pleasant affair with an extreme champion Irish fighter and his exotic wife. Ivan’s mother, Natleaha, continues to run her own fixer business while satisfying her desires with the Chicago police detective Sam and a female children’s author.

But as the Fisk family enjoy their daily routine and happiness, new outside forces rise up and threaten them, who have the potential to be more dangerous than their past foes. Adding to the mix of the story are other characters in the Fisk family’s lives dealing with their own complicated lives.

And unknown to the Fisk family is a mysterious and ancient group that also has Ivan in their sights. So it will take all of Ivan’s wits and cunning to once again come out on top.

Our Lives

This book is not written for today’s poets, pundits and professors. It is written for the mature people who have known, understood and experienced the love as only two passionate humans together can. If Lady Luck has smiled upon you, you have hit the jackpot. The right person makes all the difference. These poems are the expression of such fortune.

This one is written, as simply as I can, for those who have tenaciously clung to each other through all their ups and downs and are still smiling, laughing, hugging, bantering, and, most importantly, still cooing. Those who have made their lives a love song, through all the unsavory political, social, and emotional upheavals that eternally surround us.

This book covers a gamut of everyday interactions between mates, touching on sarcasm, banter, laughter, and even her experience of a simple trip to Home Depot. It is like an ice cream flavor you haven’t yet tasted.

Two Lives

Two Lives tells the story of Mark Stone and Maxim Riche, two men born in the same year, living in separate worlds.Mark grows up in the Bronx and Brooklyn, New York, facing hardship and heartbreak from an early age. Maxim is raised in luxury in Paris, surrounded by love, privilege, and elegance. Their lives unfold in stark contrast: one shaped by struggle and sacrifice, the other by ease and success.As time passes, both men follow their own paths of love, family, and ambition. But beneath the surface, a deeper connection begins to emerge—one that will eventually bring their worlds together in an unexpected and life-altering way.

Mirrored Images

Deep resonance of a shared experience often defines the human condition. Recognizing reflections of ourselves in others is a common trait that unites humanity. The phrase ‘I can relate’ is often uttered when we encounter others going through similar events, helping us to better understand and empathize with our fellow human beings.

Mirrored Images: Reflections of the Human Tribe explores this very concept of resonance. This book is a collection of poetry and prose that encapsulates the essence of the 21st century era. The perplexity, love, and nature experienced by individuals are woven throughout these pages. The spirit is expressed in each piece, offering a reflection of oneself and a reflection of others worldwide, emphasizing the commonalities that bind all humans together.

The chapters delve into topics such as nature, life, fear, humanity, spirit, love, and cultural verse and essays. These chapters will leave the reader craving more. The collection, written over a decade, draws inspiration from various experiences to create its captivating content. It reflects the human tribe – the challenges we face, the lives we lead, and the forces that shape our daily existence.

Mirrored Images takes you on a journey, seamlessly integrating poetry and prose into a compelling narrative from cover to cover. This collection is sure to enlighten and inspire, offering an enjoyable and thought-provoking reading experience that will resonate with readers from all walks of life.

Long Green

This book is about a New Yorker, Kob Hansen, whose parents were both born in Kentucky, though he had only visited as a child with his grandmother to bury them both after a tragic murder suicide. Yet, while teaching part-time at Columbia, he falls for a graduate student who is from Kentucky. They fall in love and decide to get married, and she talks him into returning to her hometown for the wedding and to live. There, things go awry as he learns about his own family and hers—his family poor Norwegian miners while hers rich Bluegrass elite.Meanwhile, Kob encounters a man known simply as Long Green, an old hermit who did twenty years for murder who, after his release, is shunned by the people of the county. The man he murdered thirty years before, Kob soon comes to believe to be his own grandfather, or so he thinks, until he begins to believe Long Green (Labe Cornett) may be his real grandfather.This changes his entire picture of his life and upbringing, all among the Southern culture and mindset of native Kentuckians.

The Adventures of a Woodturner

Are you looking for an easy read with some insights, adventures, haps, and mishaps?

Don’t put me down.

There is no secret or mystery to woodturning; there is no magic that transforms basic raw materials into three-dimensional shapes, whether ordinary functional items or master-class collectible pieces. It only requires practice. These pages explore the process with humor, inventiveness, and a sense of the real world.

Once again, words will take you from a starting point, as with most, more often by chance and circumstance, with these pages blending a desire to learn, develop, and grow—never giving up—while discovering the value of humor amid the euphoria of success and the heartache tied to life’s realities.

Run Horse Run

Hatchell Breeze has now retired from the police force yet and, out of boredom, has teamed up with his old partner, Phillip Young, to open the Breeze Investigations & Security office across the street from the police department, where he formerly headed the detective unit for homicide and all violent crime for the city of Greenville.

Their very first case comes as a surprise, investigating the shooting of a thoroughbred horse while the horse is running a stakes race on the local racetrack.

Is it intentional or a fluke or related to another crime where a notorious criminal was assassinated two weeks earlier? This leads Breeze and the police force on an unusual hunt to solve the mystery before another crime happens. Breeze soon learns the horse industry is truly a totally different animal as he mingles with the elite of the industry and uncovers unlawful acts and plots among the leaders and players, assisted by two cousins who are the daughters of the owners of two of the most famous Kentucky horse farms.

Breeze’s continuing investigation soon opens old wounds he thought were dead and buried and exposes friends, family, and associates to impending danger as he rushes to solve the case before more violence can occur while the spring racing meet is underway and the entire industry is brought down nationwide.

This is the third crime novel of the Hatchell Breeze stories; the fourth is due out in the fall of 2026.

Murder at River Oaks

In Houston, Texas, the energy capital of the world, oil and gas are king. To the shock of the city, Jonathan Pendergast, the CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the country, is gunned down on the front steps of his own home in the wealthy, venerable neighborhood of River Oaks.

One month later, his neighbor, Marvin Green, a nationally known professor at Rice University, was shot point-blank in the head in his office while working late on his latest anti-global warming book. The professor is an MIT-trained scientist and is a well-known advocate for representing oil companies’ views that CO₂ emissions do not cause global warming. Both were killed with 9mm handguns.

The two have worked together before. Possible motives for the two killings include ambition, jealousy, envy, inheritance, ecological passion, and even ordinary robbery. Viable suspects are plenty. Mrs. Pendergast hires Dirk Wolfson, a private investigator and an ex-prosecutor, to find the killer or killers. Dirk has his own shadowy demons to deal with. As Dirk culls and analyzes evidence during the investigation, he ponders to himself, are these killings directly related, or are they random killings by a disgruntled employee or a misguided, passionate environmentalist? Dirk is keen on using modern technology to solve the murders.