April 9, 2019

I love to read and write fiction. Always have. From “Lord Of The Rings” to “The Chronicles Of Narnia” to “Harry Potter” to “A Game Of Thrones” and beyond, you'll just about always find a stack of fiction – usually fantasy fiction – next to my bedstand at night.

Last year, after two years of getting up early in the morning and whipping out my laptop on airplanes to bang out a few hundred words, I finished my very first work of fantasy fiction. That book, called “The Forest” and inspired by my eleven-year-old twin boys, is the first in a five-part fantasy fiction series called “The World Leapers” series…

…upon stepping into a dark shed in the middle of the forest, twin brothers River and Terran are transported to a remote prisoner island in the magical world of Arbore – a world crawling with strong magic, hidden snares, and rogue creatures. Using their powers to control the elements of water and earth, the boys must escape the mysterious island inhabitants and discover their way to the mainland, only to encounter an entire country sieged by evil shramana and vile serpents.

Can two human boys save this otherworld? Can the seafarers, elves, warrior princesses, healers and magisters they meet along the way help them in the battle? Will the chaotic struggles they encounter follow them back into their own world? Find out in this riveting adventure that includes harsh wilderness, epic battles, tangled romances, elemental sciences, spiritual encounters, and hardcore survival…

Now, I'm now deep in the throes of writing the sequel and second book of the series, called “The Ocean” – which is an adventure in an underwater world that involves sea monsters, spearfishing, breathwork, water survival, a magical ocean, and plenty more – and thought it would be fun to give you a (admittedly unedited!) sneak peek of the first two chapters. The books are primarily targeted towards young adults, but I've woven in plenty of thrills for the older reader too. Enjoy, and be sure to read to the end of this post to discover how to get the first book of the series, and when to expect the second!

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Chapter 1: The Vacation

“I’m bored.”

Holding a gnarled red frisbee, twelve-year-old River sighed and kicked at the moist sand under his bare foot, then managed a mildly entertained half-smile as the ground erupted into tiny bubbles and a small sand flea emerged from under his toes. His identical twin Terran observed quietly as several more sand fleas popped up from the damp earth, waving their two pair of miniature antennae while skipping and scrambling across the beach as though annoyed by the giant feet disrupting their mid-morning slumber.

After a minute of studying the creatures, Terran also gave a bored sigh, nodded and ran his hands through his wet blonde hair, peering up at the light drizzle falling from the gray clouds overhead. “Yeah, clamming would’ve been fun.”

By this time of the morning, Grandpa Dave would have been nearly five miles down the Seaside, Oregon beach, hunting for razor clams and armed with a narrow clam-digging shovel in his sturdy pair of Montana sheep farmer hands. The gradual slope of the broad sandy beaches of Seaside provided marvelous conditions for the formation of perfect beds for millions of Pacific razor clams. Dressed in rubber boots and equipped with a shovel and bucket, clammers like Grandpa would venture out near dawn and follow the water's edge while looking for dimples or holes in the wet sand – a sure sign of coastal razor clams hiding beneath. When a small squirt or dimple appeared, that meant a clam had only moments before being near the surface but had sensed the vibration of human footsteps stomping above – and was now desperately digging deep into the sand to escape. Racing to catch the clam before it was too buried to reach, Grandpa would bury his shovel a few inches away from the small dimple, dig the sand apart, then plunge his hand into the hole to feel for the clam.

The risk of sliced hand flesh from the razor-sharp shell was well worth the scrumptious steaks he could later prepare: fresh buttermilk soaked clam meat dredged in egg and bread crumbs, salted, peppered, and fried in butter until succulent and tender. With a wedge of fresh lemon, a side of cocktail sauce and a caper-rich tartar cream for dipping, the fried razor clams would be a welcome, tender treat on a cold, rainy Pacific coast evening.

But today, River and Terran had slept in far past Grandpa Dave’s clamming departure and were instead now relegated to wandering the rainy beach with an old frisbee. Back home at the beachfront cottage, their nine cousins – Grant, William, Patrick, Dawn, Aiden, Brooke, Sophie, Mia, and Sam – were up to the usual morning occupations that typically engaged their attention during the week-long summer family reunion foray to the Oregon coast: playing cards, watching cartoons, arguing over the television remote, reading comic books, and eating copious amounts of cold cereal.

Meanwhile, despite the rain, River and Terran couldn’t bear staying indoors during a school-free morning on the coast and instead spent the majority of their free time wandering up and down the beach exploring rocks and crevices, hunting for sand dollars, decorating sand castles with rocks and sticks and tossing the frisbee.

Besides, they found it claustrophobic to be packed like canned sardines in the cramped three-bedroom, two-bathroom cottage that Grandma rented each year. When the cousins were all tiny babies, housing three separate families and two grandparents in the cottage seemed an economical, simple choice. But now, eleven years later, three separate sets of parents, two grandparents and eleven gangly, growing children made the annual family reunion at the coast seem more like an overcrowded throng of bodies, requiring multiple beach escapes for River and Terran to escape the insanity.

There was a time when Seaside didn’t seem so boring. For the first few years of the annual vacation, the little village provided a stimulating, interesting scene for the twins. Over four hundred miles from their hometown of Spokane in Washington state (four hundred and thirty one miles to be precise, as River so often reminded mother and father during the long drive), Seaside was a small tourist-friendly resort town in northwestern Oregon, located on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, at the southern end of the Clatsop Plains, just a few miles south of where the Columbia River empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Seaside beach was well known for surf breaks, a 1920s-esque grey concrete promenade, and the famous Seaside Aquarium with sealife touching tanks, a small seal exhibit, and one thirty five foot long gray whale skeleton.

Downtown Seaside boasted an enormous arcade named “Funland”, complete with an indoor miniature golf course (Terran preferred the challenge of hitting balls through the rotating windmill), a series of quaint coffee shops with local chocolates and scones, an old, dusty bookstore full of secondhand paperbacks, a brightly colored carousel, and the Candyman store: a saltwater taffy shop operated by old Mr. Bonbauer, a jolly, white handlebar-mustached man prone to wink at the twins when they wandered into his shop, just before he would sneak a complementary handful of his freshest kiwi, coconut and watermelon flavored saltwater taffy into their open hands.

But after years upon years of visiting Seaside, the city had become a bit stale and boring.

“After all”, River had mentioned as he and Terran walked down to the beach that morning, “They haven’t added a new game to the arcade in years, the aquarium fish are all on sedation drugs, and I can only chew on so much of that taffy before it all tastes the same.” But Terran suspected the increasingly ho-hum feel of their once-enchanting vacation town was more complicated than that. This year was much, much different. It wasn’t just that yet again the town hadn’t changed at all, or that the cottage was too cramped, or that every day it had drizzled Pacific coast rain. Yes, this year something had changed.

As he watched River, who was still clutching the red frisbee and studying the sand flea, Terran spoke his mind. “There just isn’t much adventure here compared to – you know – back there.”

River shifted his gaze from the sand flea, stood upright, spun the frisbee around his index finger, looked out over the ocean and muttered a single word under his breath. “Yeah, I know.”

It had been four months since the brothers had emerged from the shed in the forest back home: four months since they had departed the magical and perilous forested world of Arbore, four months since they had discovered their hidden powers over the elements of water and earth, four months since they had battled a sea monster, scithrin and the evil shramana Kull, and four very long months of trekking daily through the muddy, wet forest back out to the shed near their house to step inside and peek back into Arbore, only to be greeted by the plain, old rotting wood interior of a dilapidated shed foundation isolated in the middle of a grove of lonely pine trees. River suspected that, based on the conspicuous disappearance of the chickadee portal guide – the portan – since that first night they’d returned back from the otherworld, the absence of the portan had rendered the shed portal quite normal and useless.

And so, to the twins’ annoyance, their ordinary world had seemed somewhat dull and colorless the past four months: school without sword-swinging and survival lessons, quiet bicycle rides instead of thunderous horseback gallops, and shoving away school bullies stuffing snowballs down their backs instead of battling powerful villains riding upon the backs of evil dragons.

But this afternoon, there was at least one promising adventure that twins had planned: a rigorous hike of the Lewis and Clark Trail.

The trail was known by the more popular moniker “Tillamook Head Traverse Hike”, but River and Terran preferred to call it the “Lewis and Clark Trail” after their favorite set of explores: William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, and over the years they had retraced the steps of the brave frontiersmen nearly a dozen times. They liked to imagine the American explorers decked out in furs, clutching musket rifles, and battling the steep, muddy slopes as they inched closer and closer to their destination: a grand and satisfying view of the Pacific ocean. Along with the Native American woman Sacajawea and a small group of brave souls, Lewis and Clark had first crossed this formidable headland in 1806 to purportedly buy the blubber of a stranded whale from the native populations at Cannon Beach, just up the road from Seaside.

In the past, they had always hiked the point-to-point trail with their parents, grandparents and cousins. But this year was different. During the car journey to Seaside, they’d convinced father and mother to let them hike alone. Once their grandparents dropped them off at the trailhead in Ecola State Park, north of Cannon Beach, they would head up the steep switchbacks and begin the familiar journey up the seven-mile long trail populated by lush spruce, hemlock, alder, deer fern, sword fern, and salal forest. Without a contingent of loud relatives, they’d be able to create their own adventure and spend as much time as they wanted exploring the side trails, hollowed logs, mud bogs, and ancient trees. Passing under giant Sitka spruce, circumventing galleys, high-stepping through mud erosion and crawling through spruce and hemlock blowdown, they would eventually reach Clark's Viewpoint, where the trail undulated along the edge of the cliff and passed a massive ten foot wide rotted stump that marked the end of a steep uphill and the downhill descent back into Seaside.

But for now, the hike would have to wait. Grandpa wouldn’t return from clamming for at least two more hours, and he always accompanied Grandma in the car to Cannon Beach so that the two could stop off and treat themselves at their favorite coffee shop to an “Oregon’s Famous” blueberry-lemon-brie scone, drizzled with maple frosting and dipped in a hot cup of organic black coffee.

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As they slowly strolled back up the beach and towards the cottage, River stopped walking and reached his hand into the pocket of his loose-fitting, sand-stained cotton trousers. The orb was still there. He smiled for a brief moment, then his face clouded over as he pulled his hand out of his pocket and sighed. “Do you ever wonder what would happen if we could go back?”

Terran closed his eyes as if imagining a far-away dream. He spoke softly back to River. “Just about every day. I wonder about Master, about Wisp…a lot about Tink…”

His voice trailed and his face blushed red with color. River finished his thoughts. “And Aria and Enya, huh? The girls at school are nothing like real princesses.”

Terran nodded and opened his eyes. It still felt awkward and strange to hold the secrets of their adventures in Arbore between just the two of them. But they didn’t want their parents, schoolmates, and friends to think they were becoming insane with absurd ideas about being nearly roasted for dinner by Bigfoot-like creatures, fighting wingless dragon-worms and wielding powers over earth and water. Conversations at the dinner table seemed to center around their latest progress in Spanish and mathematics, or the unique manner in which mother had spiced the chicken, or father’s plans to clean the garage the next day, and not warrior-princesses, sea monsters, and flying machines. Yet the boys still did get strange looks from their teachers at school when they handily beat all the upper-schoolers in the fall archery competition, raised eyebrows from their instructor at wilderness survival camp when they handily prepared an entire gourmet meal of pillbugs, blackberries, preying mantis eggs, acorns and cedar beetles, and an especially long, curious stare from mother when Terran leaned off the edge of his horse on a family horseback ride and effortlessly plucked a flower from the ground to give to her.

“Where did you learn to do that?” She had exclaimed. He simply smiled mysteriously and shrugged.

The nearest they’d come to revealing their journey into the otherworld occurred on the evening of their twelfth birthday and just a month after they had left Arbore, when father was in the bedroom saying goodnight. After he had bent down to kiss River on the forehead, then walked to the door to depart the room, River mumbled in a tired voice. “Father…do you believe in elves?”

His back still to them, Father came to a standstill at the door and his hand hesitated for several seconds upon the knob. River felt his stomach sink, prepared for a lecture about the scientific impossibility of a never-before-seen race of quasi-humans with sharp, pointed ears. But after a long pause, father turned, placed both hands on his thighs, and bent at the waist to look directly into River’s eyes. “Well, let me ask you this: have you ever seen one?”

Before River could reply, Terran sat up in his bed and raised his hand. “Yes!”

Father raised an eyebrow, stood again, grinned mysteriously and, as he flipped off the lights by the door, brushed his tousled, dark brown hair over his ears and said with a twinkle in his eye. “Well I can’t say I can quibble with that.” With this, he closed the door, leaving both River and Terran staring confusedly up at the dark ceiling with furrowed eyebrows.

————————Now, three months later, they could see the outline of father standing on the porch of the Seaside cottage, hands cupped to his mouth. Over the sound of the waves crashing behind them and the breeze whipping across the beach, they could hear the faint sound of his voice calling them.

Terran quickened his pace and began to jog up toward the cottage. “Maybe Grandpa got back early!”

River remained behind, hesitated, and slipped his hand into his pocket again. This time, he pulled out a large, softball size orange sphere. He cradled it in his hands for a moment, staring at the dancing, diamond-like raindrops that drizzled down the edges of the orb, each drop shimmering in a kaleidoscope of sparkles. He concentrated deeply on the surface of the orb, waiting for it to grow warm, glow with a deep orange light, then pulse ever so slightly in his hands.

But nothing happened. The orb was cold and lifeless. River frowned, placed Falkum back into his pocket, then called ahead to Terran. “Hey, wait for me!”

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Chapter 2: The Otter

Without a gaggle of screaming cousins bursting up and down the trail, the hike seemed far more peaceful, and more exciting without the guidance of father, mother, or Grandpa. They’d trudged for the two miles now, quietly listening to the sounds of birds calling out the approaching footsteps of human intruders and stopping every so often to nibble on fiddlehead fern or to balance with their slippery, muddy shoes on fallen logs alongside the trail.

At a giant, rotting Sitka spruce tree stump on the right side of the trail, River suddenly paused. Terran came to a standstill behind him. “What?”

River stared off into the salmonberry thicket to the left of the trail. He scratched his head. “Do you ever remember passing this trail before?”

Terran crouched down and placed his hands on his knees. He squinted at the narrow path that forked from the main trail and into a cluster of hemlock trees below. “Maybe it’s just a game trail?”

“Dunno – but check that out.” River pointed just twenty feet down the small trail at a large patch of dark, green fuzzy-leaved bushes splashed with tiny spheres of a yellow-orange hue. “Salmonberries.”

Terran licked his lips. He savored the nearly overpowering sour flavor of the salmonberry and the tough skin that exploded into soft, pulpy flesh in his mouth, followed by a light floral-sweet finish that lingered just long enough to keep his face from puckering up from the sour. Traditionally in the Pacific Northwest, salmonberries would be served with a savory fish liked smoked salmon or salmon roe, but today, the berries looked tempting enough, even in the absence of a protein to eat them with. Terran took a step down the trail. “C’mon, Riv, let’s go pick some!”

He started down the trail, noting the cluster of hooved and clawed footprints indicating this was indeed a game trail used by the local creatures and not a human-made passage. He could hear River scrambling after him. Soon they were standing in the patch of large, reddish-purple flowers and yellow-orange tinted, edible berries.

The dense thicket and the leaves, twigs, and buds of a salmonberry patch normally offered an ideal spot for nesting birds and for small mammals alike, including rabbits, beavers, porcupines, deer, and elk. But this patch, extending nearly thirty feet back into the darker shadows of dense trees further down the side trail, seemed desolate and quiet.

Terran popped two salmonberries into his mouth from one bush, then grinned and puckered his mouth as the radical flavor filled his cheeks. He bent down to another bush and pulled two more berries. As he stood, he spotted it: a hint of a brown movement in the bushes towards the edge of the patch. He turned around and poked River, then dropped into a deep squat and pulled his brother down with him. “Did you see that?”

River pursed his lips, swallowed the entire fruity mass of berries lodged in the pouch of his cheek and mumbled. “See what?”

Terran smiled. “One of your favorites brother – I can’t believe it’s all the way up here this far from the beach. A sea otter!”

Ever since he was a toddler, the sea otter had indeed been River’s best-loved creature. The first time he’d encountered the adorable, playful, whisker-faced animal during a trip with father to the Seattle Aquarium, he’d been voraciously consuming sea otter books, framing sea otter paintings above his bed, sketching sea otters and naming the sea otter as his “official spirit animal”, and volunteering to study the sea otter for science projects at school. Still in a deep squat, River’s breath quickened as sat up on his haunches just slightly to get a better look at the otter, which was darting in and out of view as it quickly moved from bush to bush on flipper-like hind feet.

The otter’s fur was dark, reddish brown, and it possessed two sets of very long light-colored whiskers poking out from round cheeks. As it stood on its hind legs to snag a salmonberry from an overhead bush, it thrust one padded forepaw forward, revealing a set of tiny claws and a wrinkled series of loose folds of skin under its armpit.

River grinned, elbowed Terran and whispered excitedly. “See those skin folds? It can store tools, fish, food, whatever it likes up in there. Crazy, huh?”

At the sound of River’s hushed voice, the otter whipped its head towards the twins, thrust its snout into the air and sniffed twice, then ducked and scurried down the trail away from the bushes and deeper into the forest.

“Hey, wait!” River stood and began to run down the trail after the otter. “C’mon, let’s go find it!” Then he abruptly stopped in his tracks.

Terran, running behind, nearly barreled into his brother’s back. “What, brother?

River put his hand into his pocket. “Nothing. I just felt…something.”

Terran shrugged and slipped around River, then down the trail after the otter. River stayed behind and pulled Falkum from his pocket. He narrowed his eyes. Maybe, just maybe. He thought he could sense a slight glow emanating from the orb, but couldn’t quite tell. It does feel more warm. He thrust it back into his pocket and ran after Terran.

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River caught up to his brother just a minute later. Terran was standing at the top of a bald, dirt mound with his hands in his pockets. The trail had seemed to disappear, and he was staring disappointed into the bushes. “Darn, we lost it.”

River and Terran stood both stood on the mound and surveyed the landscape below. The hillside sloped downward from them, opening into a small cluster of spruce and hemlock circled around a dark, circular pool of muddy water. Behind the pool, a steep rock face rose nearly as tall as the trees, casting a shadow over the water and foliage below. Save for the wet breeze sweeping through its branches, the forest had grown eerily quiet.

Then, from somewhere near the pool, a twig snapped and a blur of brown fur darted across the edge of the water. River smiled. “No we didn’t. Look!” He paused to use the edge of a jagged rock jutting from the ground to scrape the syrupy mud from the bottom of his sneakers, then began scrambling down the slippery slope on his heels and butt. “C’mon!”.

As he slid down through over the jutting roots and sharp stones caked in more mud, he tried to keep his eyes where he last saw the otter. He heard a grunt behind him, saw a wet rock tumble past and knew Terran was close behind. “Careful, brother. Slick!”

They both arrived at the base of the hill at the same, their trousers soaked in mud. Terran stood and inspected his backside. The entire seat of his pants was torn. He moaned. “Got snagged. Mother’s gonna love this.”

River ignored him. He was already crawling over the sparse vegetation on his hands and knees towards the pool. The ground was coated in thick moss and flakes of algae. He could smell clay and earth and something sweet like pollen. He nearly put his hand on a fat brown spider, then brushed it away quickly with his sleeve. “Careful! Recluses! Big ones!”

Terran moaned again behind him. “Only thing I hate more than big spiders are poisonous ones.”

River made a hushing sound. He had spotted the otter. It was just at the edge of the pool, sniffing the mud, its front paws already dipped into the water. River lowered his head and body until his stomach was nearly touching the ground, then began to crawl forward again. He could hear the ground brush quietly crunching behind him as Terran followed. As he crept closer to the pool, he felt soft, slippery moss under his hands and smelled the musty, slightly rotten scent of the greenish-black algae that lined the edge of the pool. The earth was very soft now, and his hands and knees began to sink into the mud as he crawled.

Then, ever so slowly, he raised his head and peaked towards the edge where he had last seen the otter.

It was gone. But just near where it had been was a rippling and cluster of bubbles on the surface of the water. River slowly stood and whispered. “You see it?”

Terran stood, furrowed his brows and studied the pool. Now that they were nearly at the water’s edge, the pool seemed much larger than it had from a distance. From where they stood, there was nearly twenty feet of dark, black water that extended in front of them to the wall of the rock face that rose behind the pool, and nearly another twenty feet width from one muddy bank to the next. A tiny stream of spring water was dripping down the middle of the rock face, making a faint trickling sound they could barely hear over the sound of the swaying spruce and overhead birdsong.

For nearly two minutes, they both stood in silence. The bubbles and ripples disappeared, but the otter never surfaced.

Terran broke the silence. “How long can it stay under there?”

“‘’Bout five minutes. It can hold its breath for even more than that. The nostrils and eyes both close when it’s under. And it can swim over sixty miles per-” River stopped and slapped his hand against his pocket. “Hmmph!”

“What?”

He pulled Falkum from his pocket and brought it close to his face, peering into the transparent orb. A gift he had been given in otherworld Arbore from the inventor elf Tink, Falkum was forged from the mineral Razellium by the cave-dwelling Pygian dwarves.

He recalled Tink’s words. “Under the mastery of one who can control the element of water, this unbreakable stone becomes a crushing weapon that can be thrown at high speeds over great distances. Like the falcon, the hawk, and the eagle, it is a mighty weapon of the skies, and so I have called it…”

“Falkum. It’s warm. And it’s kind of vibrating in my pocket.” River rotated Falkum in his palm while continuing to watch the water. He looked up. Through the treetops, he could see dark clouds beginning to form. He sighed and slipped Falkum back into his pocket. “We’ll probably need to go back soon, but…” He looked at the water again. “I’m just going to put my face in real quick and see if I can spot that otter. I’ve never seen one in the wild like this.”

River took a few steps forward and his shoes sunk even deeper into the soggy ground at the edge of the pool.

“Your face? That water is muddy and black. No way you can see anything.” Terran impatiently shifted his feet and looked up at the clouds. “I think I felt a drop of rain. The trail back down to Seaside is going to be a slippery disaster if we don’t get out of here soon.”

River was already on his hands and knees again at the edge of the pool. He slowly lowered his face towards the dark surface of the water. His nose touched first. The water was even warmer than he had anticipated. His cheeks could feel a muggy heat rising from the surface, and a stagnant stench of something like algae and rotting sardines filled his nostrils. With his eyes open, all at once he plunged his entire face into the pool.

His eyes widened. It was crystal clear under the water. He could see dozens and dozens of feet into the depths of the pool, which was much deeper than he had expected. Indeed, it looked more like the reefs of the Atlantic coast he had visited in Florida. There was sunlight shimmering and dancing across underwater swirls, tiny minnows darting back and forth from side to side of the pool, shiny flecks of bright green plankton, and there, just under the outline of a rock that he could barely see, what appeared to be the tail of the sea otter. He grinned and instantly tasted salt as the briny water slipped into his mouth through his teeth.

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It happened all at once. River couldn’t tell if his knees slipped from his mossy perch or if an underwater current unexpectedly tugged him forward but he was suddenly plunging headfirst into the pool. He flipped his body around to try to swim to the surface, but instead he felt his legs tugged powerfully downwards by an invisible force. His mind began to race.

I didn’t take a big breath…

I’m going to drown…

Swim harder! Get to the surface!

Somewhere deep in his chest, he felt a strong contraction like a gagging reflex as his diaphragm tensed and flexed in an attempt to trigger a breath. He resisted the urge to open his mouth and tried to kick up but his legs felt weak and limp like a noodle. His fingers began to tingle. Black streaks began to cloud his vision. Eyes wide open in fright, he could see the clear blue water surrounding him begin to grow foggy and gray as his vision clouded over.

Above, he heard a muffled, high-pitched tone echoing through the water. In the back of his dimming mind, he recognized Terran’s voice, screaming. He desperately tried to scan the surface but couldn’t see it anymore.

Terran! Put your hand in! Save me!

He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. With his final shreds of energy, he spun and swiveled his hips to stop his sinking momentum. When he did, he felt his right side become lighter and something slip from his pocket.

Falkum! No!

His heart pounded with panic. With the last remaining traces of his vision, he could barely see the outline of the orange orb carried away by the current and plunge into the depths below. As his body tensed like a steel spring and the contractions in his chest began to cause a wretching sensation in his throat, he heard a plunging sound.

There was suddenly a burst of bright light and a large hand thrust in front of his face. He summoned his very last fibers of muscle and reached for it…

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Sorry to end on a cliffhanger, but of course, there's much more to come! In my writing process, I stick relatively close to the tried-and-true hero's journey storyline and also rely heavily upon an excellent book called “The Writer's Journey“, which teaches a systematic approach to writing amazing novels that follow the classic hero's journey story.

In the meantime, I self-published the first book of the “World Leapers” series in a very limited print last year (mostly to my childrens' friends, family and school library) and am proud to announce that this spring, I'll be releasing that first book, titled “The Forest” en masse.

If you click here to visit my fiction series website, you can get notified as soon as “The Forest” (the first book in the series) is published and available later this spring of 2019. The book you've just previewed, titled “The Ocean”, will likely be available the following spring.

Finally, do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for me about the writing process, how I write, fiction books you like or anything else? Leave your comments below and I will reply!