Fiction
As the Crow Flies
I mention this in the About Me section, but in my Freshman year of high school I had study hall - as I had all my work down by the time I got to study hall, I had nothing to do...so I wrote. After one year, I had a 350 (8 1/2 x 11) page "book", I had titled As the Crow Flies, and it was very similar in events and style to J. R. R. Tolkien. At the end of the semester I didn't know what to do with my 350 page "monster", so I threw it in the trash on my last day of study hall...yeah, I regret that. I well remember the plot, it's about a man, a warrior in fact, who as been living under a year of oppression from an occupying force...it has worn on the warrior part of him, but he is clearly outnumbered...thus he starts a quest to recret enough forces to return and free his country from this oppresion. I will be giving the characters a more modern look and feel than I oringally did, some 40 years ago.
A Game of Chess
White Pawn to d4. Black Pawn to d5. White Knight to c3...
​
I was hunting one day when I, most likely sitting high up in a treestand without having seen a deer all morning, compared the hunting of deer to a game of Chess...and so it really is in some regards. The deer being the King of course, and the goal is harvest the deer in the end, which in my mind was the equivalent to Checkmate.
​
With this concept running through my mind, I decided that it was fitting of a fictional story of a man and a deer, each trying to outsmart each other in the beauty of the fall woods. It is, a game of Chess...
CATCH PHRASE
The patriarch of an international crime family dies...leaving a trillion dollar fortune. To protect himself from his own family, during his lifetime he kept the money and antiquities hidden and inaccessible. Now that he is dead, the filthy rich family members scramble to uncover the patriarch's secret. The only catch, the only living person who knows where all the money is just happens to be the patriarch's 10-year old grandson, everything has been left to him. Enter Brad, the only family member who lived an honest pauper's life and never joined the crime family. He believes the fortune is out of reach of finding. It is a globe-trotting adventure as family members start dying one by one, the closer they get to finding what they believe is the fortune. Who will succeed in this classic Charades style thriller.
Napoleon and Elizabeth
This is another one I am very excited to write about, and it is slowly moving up my list of next in line. Mark is driving cross country late at night to make it in time to his own wedding. He lost $500K in the morning stock market, but rebounded to make a cool $250M by closing. He's not really worried, his Bugatti La Voiture Noire, at speeds well over 100 mph, will get him there. Wait, was that a deer...or somethinng else? Either way he is now in a ditch on the rainy night. A one mile walk to an old manor house with a single candle in the window...a sign for welcome guests...right? He is greeted by...Napoleon? and Sherlock? at dinner he meets Amelia...Earhardt?? What's going on...is it a dream...did he die in the car crash? Wait...where's his car...oh, Hercules is pushing it back to the manor as we speak...
Ray Sting and Everything
You can have your James Bond and you can have your James Phelps...but if those two aren't available, who you gonna call? Ray Sting, that's who! Above the law and outside of the government, he plays by his own rules...when you have your own nuclear powered submarine, you can do that! This is a fictional character I created between the ages of 10-12 for a Young Author's convention, the 12-page story became my first bound book. Originally titled Sub-m.a.r.i.n.e, it got a makeover for the convention. I am going to give Ray a modern feel (yeah, he originally wore a tight blue jumpsuit with yellow stripes on the sleeves, but I was a huge Wolverine fan at the time). I am going to post the originally story here in my blog soon, but rewrite and rebrand to a more exciting and 21st century, Ray Sting.