“We have some countries that are very near collapse… Let’s see if we can prevent that by doing the right thing now. We really can’t wait til 2020.”

Sick of talking about Trump, we gave ourselves a week off to travel south of the border and talk about issues plaguing Central and South America. Record numbers at the US-Mexico Border and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrado. The latest on the Venezuelan Crisis and sanctions on Cuba, Brazil’s rightward turn under Jair Bolsonaro and fears for the Amazon, Argentina’s money troubles, Bolivia, and recovery for Puerto Rico.

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The seven of them had gotten three rooms for the night. Oliver and Hunter were sharing one room and the three girls were in another, with the Australians sharing the third. Mia had the keys for their room. It occurred to her she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten actual keys and not a plastic card in a hotel. She tried to smile at the thought but instead shuddered at the memory of when the hotel worker had handed her the key and there had been a wet, malarial warmth to his skin. Continue reading →

The following is a standalone story but operates as a prequel to characters and events seen in Kill Switch: Serial Escalation, available on Amazon in eBook and paperback form.

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Neon gleamed off the rain soaked streets of Neo Francisco. Titama liked the time after the city’s frequent small showers. Grime was washed off the buildings, trash hosed off sidewalks and into gutters, down drains, making everything look clean. Standing under a red and yellow awning, Titama avoided the last of the drizzle.

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I bought this paperback from a secondhand bookstore that also sells knives, swords, and synthetic cannabis. Actually it’s more of a knives, swords, and synthetic cannabis store that also sells books as the books part is new. Inside books are piled all over the shelves and floors in complete disarray except for a few authors, Clive Cussler, Stephen King, Matthew Reilly, who have their own dedicated sections. The Vang: The Military Form by Christopher Rowley was $1 from a stolen shopping cart parked in front of the store. Continue reading →

The following is an excerpt from the Prologue of ‘Kill Switch: Serial Escalation’, you can find the full novel on Amazon in eBook and paperback form.

The roar of the crowd filled the cavernous space. It drowned out the grunts of effort from the two competitors and the wet snarls below them. Camera drones circled, capturing every drop of sweat, every strained muscle, and every line of effort on the two men’s faces. Two raised platforms were suspended high above the arena, just barely within striking distance of one another. The round arena floor was dotted with outcroppings of upwardly jagged fake rocks. Baying and snarling, a pack of genetically altered attack dogs circled the raised supports of the two platforms in anticipation of their dinner. The crowd was pushed in tight around the arena cage. The rusty iron stench of blood, sweat and animal stink filled the room.

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The following is a standalone story but operates as a prequel to characters and events seen in Kill Switch, available on Amazon in eBook and paperback form.

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“We’ve got a heat signature in the master bedroom, upper floor, right corner.” The command truck said, “Could be Dawson.”

“Is it Dawson, or is it just a heat signature?” SWAT captain Charlemagne Lewis asked.

“Sorry, heat signature is all we’ve got. Walls are too thick for a better read than that and the windows are shielded.”

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They didn’t come to us from the stars with city-destroying lasers or waves of mechanised infantry and walking tanks, or even false promises of peace hiding villainous agendas. They didn’t need to. When the first of their vast machines descended on the Earth there was nothing we could do to stop it. Continue reading →

The following is an excerpt from Chapter Eight of the zombie novel ‘Wave of Mutilation’, you can find the full novel on Amazon in eBook and paperback form.

Early the next morning, the second day since the rise of the undead, the airspace over Manhattan was abuzz with activity. Military, law enforcement and civilian aircraft were suspended in the air or darting like flies over the corpse of the great city. Pilots did what they could to help but there was so much chaos to try and contain, and nowhere truly safe to take survivors. A small NYPD helicopter sprinted over the Upper East Side, above 5th Avenue as it ran alongside Central Park. On board were six people, rookie officer Maxine Schreiber, two other uniformed cops, the pilot and co-pilot and a SWAT sharpshooter. Maxine knelt by one of the open cockpit doors while the sharpshooter, a swarthy man named Reynolds, was ready for action at the other side with his huge SIG Sauer sniper rifle. Below, 5th Avenue and the numbered streets branching off it teemed with violence and swarming masses of the living dead. Even worse than the streets were the hundreds of people taking refuge on rooftops throughout the Upper East Side. They waved their arms, jumped up and down or used makeshift signs, anything to try and flag down the passing police helicopter. These people were hanging on by a thread, but there was no one available to save all of them by this point. Maxine’s chopper was tasked with rescuing some doctor VIPs from further uptown instead. Continue reading →

I want to tell you what happened to my grandfather, what I know of his disappearance at least. The Judge, everyone called him, which wasn’t all that creative since he was actually a courtroom judge before retirement. My mother called and said that the Judge wanted to see me, ‘You’ve been summoned’ was the joking way she always put it. The Judge was my grandparent on my father’s side and mom had always found him intimidating for his stature in the community and the legal world. I hurried to his apartment in the city on the tail of a nine-hour shift. The truth of it was I was feeling a little bit frightened about what he might want to see me about. The large, hale man who was my grandfather had lost vitality shockingly fast in the last few years since my grandmother passed, and he stopped working. Every time someone called me about the Judge, I couldn’t help but think that at some point that call would be to tell me his health had taken a final turn for the worse and he was gone, and all his wisdom, stories and generosity would have passed out of reach forever. Continue reading →