My Books
Writing snuck up on me like no-see-ums—I never felt the bite till the itch had me about half mad. I planted my butt at my desk and, soon enough, found I needed a big monitor so my neck could tolerate the long days. I’ll bet heroin would be easier to quit now that the bug’s burrowed. Good question for our new Health Chief, I guess. I’ll keep scratching at paper till I’m cured. I hear death works.
Speaking of that, 43 years of flying didn’t kill me, but it left me with enough marvelment to fill more novels than I’ve got time to write. I cut my teeth on a memoir, spilling decades of embarrassment, as if all those years weren’t humbling enough.
I moved on to fiction starting with a historic version, “Fire on the Mountain," which centered mainly in the area where I grew up. I turned out quite a saga—four hundred and some pages. I published it thinking it was a great book. But my storytelling style’s changed. A lot. I unpublished “Fire…” realizing I could do better. After a year, its phase one amounts to a heck of a facelift. I decided to turn it into a trilogy which will be called "The Legacy". I'm working on Book 1, which is brand new, and starts with Denis O'Neall and family in 1846 in the midst of the Potato Famine in Ireland. I'll finish that sometime in the next year, then spend another polishing, and splitting the re-written Fire on the Mountain into two more books. Should be ready to release between Christmas 2026 and Easter 2027.
My third book, “Into Focus,” got a new name and cover, and a smattering of upgrades inside that make it shine a little brighter. It's now: "A Justified Sin," and is all squared away and available on Amazon.
I hope you'll take a minute to snoop around in my “Works” tab and see if anything grabs you. There's a passel of free reading in there. I hope you find something you like, and it keeps you up late into the night. That’s my aim. Feel free to drop a review and let me know if I succeeded.
“I waited till your eyes locked on mine, then I said, ‘scare the shit out of her and make sure she understands what she needs to understand to avoid more trouble. Don’t hurt her,’ I said, and you said, ‘okay, boss.’ I’m thinking of an old Humphrey Bogart line that musta been made for you—‘Things are never so bad they can’t be made worse.’ You made ’em worse, Knuckles.”
Genre: Thriller | 416 pages | 2025
They call her "Richard," a nickname from a past that stuck. But Captain Victoria (Richard) Smith is a legend in the cockpit, a pilot who clawed her way to the top of the male-dominated airline industry. Her smooth ascent into the high life is threatened when she crosses paths with Ammon Lynch, a corporate raider with a monstrous appetite for power.
Lynch uses his immense wealth and corrupt connections to tear down airline companies, and Victoria's beloved employer, Global International Airlines, is next. As Lynch's ruthless plot threatens to destroy her company and everyone in it, Victoria must face a turbulent fight for survival, both in her career and in her marriage.
Her path inexorably slides toward a shadow war against Lynch where the rules of engagement become hers alone to write. To win, she'll have to use her skills in an audacious way no one could have imagined—and hope the wreckage doesn't take her down with it.
