ON THE FADE

A consortium of planets sends a philosopher and an interstellar crew to Earth.

Upon coming close to their destination, they find the planet is protected by something left behind from Earth’s original ancient inhabitants - a charge that sends the crew’s transdimensional ship out of time. Their ship crash-lands on Earth, but a long time ago. And as they nearly get it going again, they fail to account for everything in the temporal disruption: there is a terrible accident. The crew is separated and scattered through time.

This is the story of how they find each other again and make sense of a civilization that confounds them.

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INFINITE JIM

The story begins as Jim dies.

He's dying of heroin needle-inflicted AIDS. But Jim expected no less of an end to his short, squandered life. What he didn't expect was what happens to him as he crosses over. And what really surprises him is who he meets as he is moving beyond this world.

And, at the cusp of the next world, with help, Jim starts to become the person he always should have been. And in the last three hours of his life, Jim becomes Infinite Jim.

It's a journey of fixing, of repairing his broken life, and even the fixing of others who need to move on. It's a fantasy novel that pushes the limits of reality, breaks through them, and then becomes firmly planted in the world that waits for people like Jim, or perhaps all of us, really.
  
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(Also, see the INFINITE JIM blog: )

1989

A heavy rock and roll band forms, plays, and dissipates in "megatropolis." (New York, deep underground.)

The story depicts a world that we think we know, but only our band is brave enough and boneheaded enough to really get us there.

It's a drama with a comic, surrealistic edge, and each member of the band shines as a full, engaging character. When it all finally blows up, the true test becomes how a musician answers to his muse.

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THE DARK MACHINE

Six decades from now . . .

The world is a much different place. It's been a bad time in between. Enter Sirius Mullen, clerk for State Corp #1227 in New York City. He's in charge of State Corp's interests in the estates of the dead. Sirius is a much different person than he appears to be. He's a much different person than he wants to be.

One day, Sirius comes across a name in his office, the name of a dead person: Christopher Norvella, an executed environmental prophet, a cult leader . . . what did this man really leave behind? Sirius is very interested in this dead person. Meanwhile, he's finding it very difficult to be interested in anything else. Sirius thinks he is having a breakdown. Again.

He's had them before . . .

And so has New York City. Anarchy is bubbling up from the maglev tubes. It's ideological. Bureaucrats like Sirius are tossed out windows by gangs during the periodic blackouts caused by State Corp's mismanaged power grids. On the lucky day that changes his life, Sirius escapes this fate. He takes a day off and goes to the zoo. There he meets Julianna. Julianna is a Norvellite, passing out pamphlets to further the cause. He promptly gets himself arrested because he won't give a cop the illegal pamphlet he was given. Julianna says he's blessed. Sirius, of course, says he's always been cursed. But we see Julianna is right . . .

Across the swollen Hudson is Alton Delaney, chronicler of the Norvellites. Al lives alone at the end of the world in Jersey City district #6. Al is a war vet, and a vet of his neighborhood riots. Al befriends young Isaac Isaac, engineer at Fusion One, after the young man's genercycle breaks down in his crummy and dangerous neighborhood. Al tells the story of Christopher Norvella to anyone who will hear. Isaac Isaac seems to have a sympathetic ear.

Above them all is Popu-Sat, Venton Superprocessor #24. Popu-Sat is a self realized "spy" satellite that changes its own mission parameters to include some of the teachings of Christopher Norvella, a voice it thinks it hears as a whisper in space. Popu-Sat becomes the planet's biggest convert to the idea the people are destroying the earth, and they need a change before they are wiped out by a planet that is coming to believe humanity is a virus that needs curing. And . . . as the Dark Machine, Popu-Sat gives humanity that change.

With nutty and endearing characters alienated but moved to action within their technological and bureaucratic world, The Dark Machine delves not only into an alternate but completely plausible future, but into humankind's timeless struggle for meaning.

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CORPUS CALLOSUM

The place is New Biggsburg, an Upstate New York city that's long past its good days.

In fact, the city is very much fading away.

The time is now.

We're with Kate McCleary, a young 12th Grade English teacher at New Biggsburg High. Recently divorced, Kate is trying to hold onto her life while she feels like it is slipping away from her. Kate feels her life in New Biggsburg is the sunset of her dreams.

To add to the gloom, Jordan Polak, a psychic undertaker and Kate's best friend, thinks Kate's neighbor and one-time student across the street-Bertrand Rupp-is up to no good. In fact, Jordan has a premonition that he's a killer. And what starts as a kind of parlor game between Kate and Jordan-watching Bert Rupp and speculating on his nighttime romps-ends up being much more . . .

We're with Bertrand Rupp, a stammering, towering twenty-year-old whose corpus callosum-the connecting pathway between the lobes of his brain-has been severed to prevent seizures. But the surgery didn't work on poor Bert.

It really didn't work.

We're with Deputy Emmet Lemon, Whitney County Sheriff, who suspects the big and bumbling judge's son is up to no good, too. There have been three horrible murders of women in New Biggsburg, they that all seem to be linked. Deputy Lemon is getting close to proving something about his lead suspect, but the State Police seem to be in his way- blocking his investigation of the judge's son.

What's really going on with Bertrand Rupp? Where does he really go when he takes those late night walks? Where does he go during a seizure, when the light in his eyes fades away? What Bertrand Rupp does . . . he does not know. What he does, he does not remember.

And what he remembers is not real.

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BILLY ARCANE AND THE WAKINYAN

In the heat and heart of New Orleans, a young Lakota/Sioux Jesuit named Lee Wakinyan discovers he has gained a deep spiritual power from his mix of Christianity-the religion he has chosen-and traditional Lakota Shamanism-the religion in his bones.

Something wants this power . . . a foul-mouthed, soul-stealing punker-looking demon named Billy Arcane. When he crosses paths with Lee, Billy discovers the Jesuit shaman is the only person alive that can see what Billy really is.

When Jesuit priests are horribly murdered at his Novitiate in Billy's botched attempt to get at Lee's soul, Lee flees for home - the reservation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota. (Something he swore he'd never do.) There he teams up with his father, Sam Nightdog, a Lakota shaman who's maintained Lee was a wishasha wakan - a real shaman - all along. Lee's hell-raiser brother, Ray, is brought into the spiritual fold, too. Though he's a lot of trouble, they need him.

Billy Arcane tracks them all down. But the only souls of Wakinyan family that Billy can get are the easiest to take . . . unborn twins of Lee's twin sister.

This, of course, is an act of war on the Wakinyan. Using the ancient Lakota Yuwipi ceremony and an ailing Ford Thunderbird, the father and sons become a holy-man trinity taking their chase all the way into Hell to seek revenge on Billy, get their family back, and carry out a plan that greater powers seem to have chosen them for-exorcise this demon so he will die. And boy, does Billy Arcane die.

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EDGE WORLD

There has been a terrible accident.

Rock musician Jake Smith has crashed his Harley Sportster. Though he couldn’t have survived, he wakes up in the hospital, mangled and alive. As soon as he’s released, his punk-rocker friends all gather at his decrepit colonial house and welcome him back from the crash as if nothing is wrong. But gradually Jake discovers . . .

Something is terribly wrong.

As the story unfolds, objects surrounding him move back in time - car model years, computers become typewriters, music gets older - and all the while his grim post-industrial city unravels before his eyes. Soon Jake begins to wonder who he is, too. He’s working on a long novel, perhaps he’s musician, now he’s not sure.

Jake is lost in Edge World.

There are forces in this world that want to help him. He heals unusually fast from the accident. His best friend Henry Naraka appears to be a driving force of reason. And Jake falls in love with Grace Smith, a reporter for the local paper who is using a pseudonym. Jake may have found the salvation he desperately needed in this beautiful, smart spirit. Unfortunately, one of his good friends - the manic and charismatic Billy Zebule - is not what he appears to be, but turns out to be who we expected all along . . . hope you can guess his name.

Will Jake make it out of Edge World alive?

Is he alive?

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