Current Works
After The Riots
After the Riots is set in contemporary Los Angeles. Meg O’Connell, a manuscript curator, discovers a dead body outside her office. She soon realizes there is a relationship between the dead man, her dying father, and his FBI files that span nearly forty years. The files, now in her possession, focus on murder and mayhem from the riots of the 1960s to the present. Three men appear to have benefited from the chaos: Joe Baldwin, the present South Central Congressman; Thomas Abbott, a powerful and popular international financier who has become possessive of Meg; and Meg’s father, Jack O’Connell who once served as FBI Special Agent in Charge, L.A. Each of the men play big in the files, and each of them have a reason to keep the files hidden. When her father dies, Meg is hounded by a radio talking head, Harley James, a man obsessed with clandestine activities of forty years. Meg, however, is quite comfortable huddled on the corners of life; she doesn’t want to be a heroine, she doesn’t want to be brave. She wants to ignore the files, her knowledge, and the legacy of her father. Only when her own life and the life of Harley James are endangered, does she force herself to action.
Daniel's Big Chance
Daniel O’Brien is broke, he’s stuck in bluegrass. Once a famous punk rocker, he’s fifty-five years old and he hates the sound of the mandolin. When Barbara Ryan’s presidential campaign approaches Daniel to reunite his famous band and play upfront for her primary campaign, he jumps at the chance--so what if Barbara Ryan is a religious right wing governor from Wyoming; so what if she and Daniel once had an affair out their wazoo; Daniel O’Brien cannot resist one more chance at fame and fortune. Daniel tracks down the old band members. They hit the road with the Ryan campaign. Daniel’s life is good once again. Soon, however, a rumor surfaces that he once paid for Barbara Ryan’s abortion. This could be the end of the ride for everyone, especially when Daniel realizes that Ryan is capable of killing any problem people in her way. Daniel and his freewheeling band find themselves in conflict with the Barbara Ryan campaign. Their treachery, lying, and ruthlessness is more than he can handle. Daniel hatches a scheme to save himself and his band from Barbara Ryan’s unscrupulous political set-up, for lying to the country, and generally, running a pathological campaign. The novel is a humorous, yet tense and quirky road trip with an aging, self-absorbed rocker, a political campaign, and a burned out band.
Short Stories
"The Red Pony" in Blue Earth Review, May 2007
"The five couples had thought that they were invincible in the clean suburban neighborhood, both as couples and as families. They had thought that if you stick together, if you have two people to fight the battles, two people to cart the kids, to meet with the principal, keep up the yard, the cars, the dinners, no ominous pony could hurt you…"
Blue Earth Review Vol. 5 Spring 2007 http://www.english2.mnsu.edu/ber/
"Lefty‘s Electric Chair" in Matter: A Journal of Literature and Arts, November 2005
"Balance is what life is all about,’ Lefty had told the crowd at his Berliner wake—in a dark, loud, very sexy nightclub where we all drank too much beer, laughed too morbidly, and spoke in German. ‘Otherwise, one perishes in a decay of flux.’ The rest of us weren’t quite sure what he meant, but two of them who had eked out a life in East Berlin, seemed to understand."
http://www.wolverinefarmpublishing.org/
"Grandpa’s Little Habit" in Tales of Thirst and Longing: An Anthology of Rocky Mountain Writers, 2004
"If you took Grandpa, held him upside down and shook him, that’s what you’d have—an old man, arms folded, shaken upside down. He wouldn’t try to straighten himself. He wouldn’t yell or scream. He wouldn’t kick or box his way right side up. He’d just stay upside down until you let him go…He wasn’t always like that…"
http://www.rmfw.org/rmfwPress.aspx
“Me and Chuck Man Joe" in the Belletrist Review, 1997
"Chuck Man Joe got the pull-out in the family room. Massey Mblia Mbong got the living room sofa. Harley Hancock took a sleeping bag to Spencer’s room. Syd Becker headed toward Jessica’s room and, among the flowers, the lacy pillows and the girly stuffed animals, young Syd fell fast asleep. The other three, Challenger, Hans and Little Will, set up in the basement, snuck out the back door…"