NOW AVAILABLE

The Sumners of Susanville, California, are the embodiment of virtue in their extensive rural community. Paul has a seat on the city council, Kate is an activist for the disadvantaged, and their five children follow a tradition of excellence.

Not many recall the misfortunes that cast shadows on the Sumners’ past—Kate’s loss of her infant son to parental abduction by an ex-husband; the violent kidnapping and attempted murder of her teenaged daughter, Sara; and the fact that twenty years ago, Kate killed a man in self-defense. Like the genocidal history of white American settlement in Lassen County, these unpleasant realities have purposefully faded from collective consciousness.

But when their fifteen-year-old daughter, Kristina Sumner, is forced to kill a classmate to prevent a high school shooting, the brutal act triggers a mix of shock and outrage. The scandal escalates as upstanding members of the community, faced with their own moral dilemma, find themselves pinned beneath the small town microscope, as powerless to control the same type of harsh condemnation that has dogged the Sumners, and just as determined to silence it.

Big Lies in Small Town examines the malignant architecture of human behavior, in this fictional recount of life in rural California.

DEATH BY BITTER WATERS

Release Date - 22 June 2012

In this anthology of ten short stories of Native America, Death By Bitter Waters embraces the seemingly ordinary lives of average people—Kate, connecting with a son nearly thirty years after losing him as an infant to parental abduction; Freddie, whose alcoholism amid the aftermath of a violent profession is tempered by a loving woman; Arlene, returning home to live with her parents when her long-standing marriage is suddenly ripped apart; Tiki, who struggles with her mother’s unexpected death; and Thelonius, a cop whose life is forever changed following traumatic brain injury. More than just the sum of average people engaged in average lives, Death By Bitter Waters is a fictional chronicle of contemporary Red Power in northeastern California, of a healing lifeway risen from the ashes of genocide and cultural annihilation following two centuries of collective trauma.

Rose McKillop’s virtuous life as mother and homemaker, and seventeen-year marriage to an upstanding, decorated police officer, are safe haven from her outlandish family: sexually-unfettered sister, Justine, a freelance writer; brother, James, always in trouble with money, prostitutes and the law; and elderly grandmother, Marlene Burich, who raised the siblings after the cold-blooded murder of their parents three decades ago. Marlene’s radical ideology has estranged her from Rose for twenty years.

ROAD APPLES - Available December 2nd, 2011 - from Musa Publishing

Madeline Benités is a realist, unaffected by the power of destiny. A skeptic, she believes in free will, though she is often trapped by her personal expectations. When the man in her life, Jake, is engaged to another woman, and her sister, Mallory, is cleared of first-degree murder, Maddie feels a need for distance. Her solution is a road trip. With newfound confidence, she gives Jake one last chance, and catches him in the arms of another woman. Outraged at her naiveté, Maddie renounces love.
And then, she unexpectedly meets Wyatt McLain, a glaringly honest man, whose compelling past is part of his charm. Complete strangers, their lives hold too many similarities to be coincidence. A true believer in fate, Wyatt is convinced they have been thrown together for a purpose. That future is shrouded in uncertainty when Maddie discovers she is pregnant, and isn’t sure whether the father is Jake or Wyatt. When their lives seem headed toward disaster, Maddie must decide whether to allow fate or free will to determine the outcome.