BOOKS
MAKE THEM HEAR TEARS
Several generations ago, survivors of a complex apocalypse banned what they blamed for their civilization’s end: religions as instigators of violence. But human nature survived. People with shared belief systems created ethnicities – and prejudices and conflicts reappeared. Erica and Joel grew up in the Fellowship of Abisjamo.
The emotional bond Erica and Joel create trips on their convictions about their ethnicity’s traditions. Erica feels enriched by them, but she’s among the elite of the Fellowship. Joel protects his dignity, which he sees would be at risk if he were obliged to conform. Their love story spans twenty years on the backdrop of the hatreds and violence born as members of another ethnicity endure a no-man’s-land of border strife. Joel, as a photojournalist, brings that tragedy into the public eye.
Other reporters expose only the rebels’ aggression, which accelerates the longer their plight is ignored. When background events hit close to home, Joel makes the world hear their tears.
AFTER THE GREAT FIRE
2nd Edition
Tony Weber spent his first fifteen years in the sophisticated bunker his parents built when fire ravaged the American farm belt. Raised by their Navajo mother, Evie and her younger brother, Frank, survived in a dam. When Tony finds them, he and Evie discover sex together and build a loving bond. The trio surmounts tribulations until Frank reaches puberty. Then a crisis explodes.
Leading the remnant of urban USA, Jack Sinclair becomes Tony’s antagonist at every level. To forge a new nation, Tony, Evie and Jack, with Frank at the periphery, must each define what they value most. They intend not to repeat Before mistakes.
XENOBREEDS
On the colony of Evadere, created in space 200 years ago, an unrestrained Matriarch dominates the closed society. Two leaders intend to unseat her. One of the two from the commune that confines Sensorially Enhanced Xenobreeds: Mia, who has delved deep for a sense of personal dignity in a life of degradation and abuse. The other rebel is of the colony’s hierarchy—Zane Donahue, owner of the energy resources. To undermine the Matriarch, Mia and Zane expose how the colony understands itself.
The entirely artificial Evavere altered human neurodevelopment. That gave the Matriarch a means to control society. She authorizes citizens’ hiring of SEXes, as assists in achieving arousal. Everyone has been conditioned to accept all that. Mia opens eyes and minds. But will that force the Matriarch to cede authority? Not without violence.
COTTONTAIL
Four professionals comprise the survey team of InterStellar Peace Mission’s Alternative Habitat Division. Each with distinct expertise and viewpoint, they trip into an interspecies conflict that’s brewed for eons on the little planet ISPM thinks might accommodate human settlement.
Agrarian green-furred Chorlas in the dimly lit rainforest and huge Nehnoths in their sophisticated Dunes City live on opposite sides of a mountain divide. With no means to communicate, irreconcilable conceptions of each other built hostility. When Rej captures the pregnant Umma from her desert birthing nest for the Sacrifice Ritual of his Mating Ceremony with Feyri, Umma’s husband must avenge the kidnap.
The ISPM linguist, Swede, struggles to amass language from Chorlas that take the human team to witness the Ceremony. With everyone functioning in their respective value system and unable to communicate, calamity brews.
Fonts and line spacing of this book are deliberate. It’s not a large-print edition. Consistent with the author’s support for more universal inclusion, in this case referring to limited vision, the book is legible without the glasses called readers. More people can read this book because of its format.