HIDDEN HELL (107,000 words--completed, romantic espionage/thriller)
A woman is mistakenly identified as a post-cold-war Russian spy, accused of stealing the plans to America's newest spy plane, the Aurora. (The Aurora, a wedge-shaped, supersonic aircraft will indeed replace the retired SR-71--America's last spy plane.) Implicated in several murders, she's scuttled halfway around the world by a desperate CIA agent, until her true identity is revealed. She and the agent become romantically involved, until it appears he is killed. The woman is then unknowingly used by the CIA to flush out the real spy. This she does, when her assumed-to-be-dead lover reappears. She learns that the spy is in actuality the agent's sister, and that both, for various reasons, were raised in opposite worlds, USA and Russia, destined to battle one another, until the sister is killed by her brother. After she flees, he finds her, begs her forgiveness, and a new day dawns.
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DEATH BE UNDONE (110,000 words--completed detective/murder thriller)
The legitimate and illegitimate daughters of a murdered billionaire work well conceived plans to take possession of their father's fortune. The illegitimate daughter, raised in Haiti, uses a tetrodotoxin-laced drug (the fabled zombie powder) faking death, while the legitimate daughter uses an apparent alcohol dependency to appear weak, allowing both women to work their plans unencumbered. Using seduction and murder to achieve their goals, they are thwarted by a Denver detective enlisted to rescue the rightful heiress, who--as it turns out--is neither of the two, and instead is a girl who was switched at birth with the posing Haitian daughter, to protect her from the jealous wrath of the father's wife at that time.
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KNOTTY PINE COLLECTION (Completed young adult collection of four stories)
1. A BREATH OF LIFE (25,000 words) A boy struggling to overcome his breathing difficulty is assisted by a mad scientist working in the woods behind his house.
2. AN UNTIMELY FRIGHT FLIGHT (12,000 words) A brainless high school football star is rocketed into the future by his genius young friend, in his friend's attempt to have futuristic rocket ship technology returned to him.
3. A SWAMPY MESS TO CONTEST (5,000 words) Two boys get caught up in a counterfeiting operation hidden deep in a forbidden swamp, and end up tromping through quicksand in their struggle to escape.
4. A DOSE DUE A DRUG DEALER (25,000 words) A short yet dramatic story warning kids off drugs.
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MESA RUSE (80,000 words--completed western)
In returning to the West a retired gunfighter intends to marry the daughter of the man owning Colorado's wealthiest cattle ranch. But while out riding, wondering why the ranch appears not to be ranching, he is gunned down, left to die. Nursed back to health by an old Indian couple and their young daughter, he uncovers the gold mine his fiancée's father and his men, a cutthroat band of outlaws, operated. Consequently, his fiancée's father wasn't her father at all, but rather a man who murdered her real father when she was too young to remember. Her suppressed memory of his rape of her returns, and the Indian couple, the last of the mighty Anasazi tribe, reunite her with the daughter the man had discarded in the forest twelve years earlier. Her fiancé is forced to reclaim his ability with a gun as it becomes clear that only the quickest pull could settle the--up to this point--one-sided score.
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SAVAGE INTENTIONS (105,000 words--completed supernatural thriller)
A wealthy Denver woman becomes romantically involved with a Mafia thug who is able to read minds when someone becomes ultimately emotional with him--love, hate, etc. He destroys her life, using her wealth to fund his attempt to unseat his father, a Mafia Don, and assume his position. His powers strengthen, and the woman forfeits everything, wealth, unborn child, health--until powers not of this world assist her in stopping him.
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A WORLD BENEATH BELOW (53,000 words--completed science fiction/thriller with sequel potential)
The USS Rutilus ventures beneath the arctic ice to test the salt density of the ocean. Miriam, the female scientist aboard the sub, begins to undergo physiological changes as the Rutilus is pulled toward an alien city located deep beneath the ice.
A century and a half ago, an Ortavian queen had departed her dying planet, tumbling to earth and capturing Sir John Franklin and his team of arctic explorers (Fact: the mysterious disappearance of Franklin and his team while looking for the Northwest Passage has never been explained). Enslaving Franklin and his men, the alien city was built. Now the queen is dying. With the explorers long since deceased, the now half-alien, half-human Ortavian descendents consisted of only men, as the queen was unable to birth a female. But a renegade, a Franklin descendant, had left the tribe years prior, married on the surface, and had birthed a daughter: Miriam. The time had come for the tribe to bring their new queen home.
This arctic cavern, warmed by a subterranean geyser is, because of the increased salt density and seeping pollutants of the water, cooling, killing off Ortavians, threatening the race’s very existence, leaving them in desperate need of both a queen capable of birthing females and a heat source. The modified Rutilus’ nuclear reactor will be that heat source, enabling them to survive the remaining years necessary before venturing topside, to enslave the human race and claim planet earth as their own.
Commander Jimmy Smitts finds himself in a desperate fight to save Miriam and his crew, risking everything to overcome the superior forces of the Ortavians. With the Rutilus’ reactor going critical, they escape on battery power to the surface. Years later it appears the Ortavian tribe had indeed survived, and are again on track to reclaim their new queen--Miriam and Jimmy Smitts’ infant daughter.
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