Over the years I've written in several different genres. I began with medieval style fantasy tales. My first novel published was THE DARK LADY. This became a trilogy about an orphaned very young princess and her struggles to survive several attempts on her life while holding on to her throne. A bit on the grim side at times, but the publisher and readers seemed to love it.
The next book I wrote in the same genre also turned into a trilogy. THE QUEEN'S PAWN was the tale of a bewildered youth trapped in a besieged city. This also turned into a trilogy of novels as he struggled to escape death while the women in his life took it over and ran away with it. Considerably lighter in tone than my first effort above.
While all this was going on I decided I needed something less serious to give me a change, and invented the HOUSETRAP CHRONICLES, a fantasy detective series of twelve novellas featuring the soft-boiled mongrel detective Randy, and his hard-pressed secretary, Bertha, a half-banshee. I threw in everything but the kitchen sink into these tales, until I broke down and added a sink as a getaway device in one of the later episodes. The novellas arrived first as ebooks, and later were gathered up into four print collections. A world where anything could happen and often did. Gave me a great break from being serious.
I also wrote a pair of stand-alone novels. ALEX IN WANDERLAND featured a modern bickering couple dumped into a dark age world and sent on a quest where they stood a good chance of dying. Had a lot of fun abusing them. Then I wrote WE'RE NOT IN KANASA, a mother and teenage daughter off searching for the source of a mysterious statue, that veered off into science fiction.
Somewhere around this time I dipped into the alternate history genre, with a trilogy opening with TOLTEC DAWN, a tale of what might have happened if that empire from Mexico arrived in the British Isles and carried the heavy artillery. Set in the 1200's its an exercise in the shoe on the other foot as told through the eyes of the three main characters.
I finally dipped into straight science fiction with OF DESTINY'S DAUGHTERS a novel that became a trilogy and what I call my space opera, about a quartet of bored young ladies from Ottawa, who become involved with the crew of a crippled battleship that suddenly appears above the parliament buildings.
My most recent novels take completely different directions. DARK CANDLE is a manuscript originally written over thirty years ago, lost, and a paper copy only recently discovered. It is a grim tale of hypnotic regression and a search for past lives that leads to a mysterious character who doesn't wish to return to the past, and takes a deep dive into sex and murder and the world of the legendary King Arthur. Definitely for the eighteen plus reader. The other novel just arrived last week, SUMMER IN PARADISE, is a story of an angry young man who doesn't believe in the supernatural, and who goes to write the great novel in an out of the way east coast village.
Finally, just a hint. My publisher, Champagne has two more of my manuscripts on the back burner for the next twelve months. THE PERILS OF PAUL is a fantasy tale about a young man and his sister who find a gateway into elsewhere. Sort of a medieval meets modern tale. FLIGHT OF FANCY is my attempt at a science fiction romance story. Both of these manuscripts have yet to survive the editing process.
And this is where I am today.
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