My Fiction

Still Going Strong!

Finn’s Clock – a coming-of-age story set on the Boston waterfront.

A historical fantasy with a touch of steampunk, set in a time when steam was threatening sail, factories were displacing workers, and the immigrants were Irish – unwanted and under threat, but determined to make their place here. It’s 1853, and into Boston Harbor sails a sea-going Chinese junk, bearing mysteries and magic. First Place Winner in the Young Adult category of the 2019 Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards!

My Latest Novel

The Bell Cannon – Another story set in the not-too-distant past, with a lot more steampunk than Finn’s Clock: A scientist/engineer/inventor working secretly for the U.S. Army in 1878. A fantastic cannon powered by aetheric resonance. A terrible miscalculation. Now Jakub Skovajsa and his daughter, Tereza Skovajsová are forced to leave the U.S. under a cloud of mystery and fear. There have been death threats. Only one steamship line will risk taking them aboard for the passage back to Europe: the Scots-American Line. A steward named Ewan Gilmore is assigned the duty of traveling as a passenger, to act as their secret bodyguard. Ewan is sailing under his own cloud, and this one assignment is the only way he can redeem his reputation and keep his job with the line. It looks to be easy enough . . . until the first death. Spies, stowaways, a French Count, a feisty Southern Belle. Who can you trust?

An Offering

My short story “Miriam Messiah” (originally published in 1988). What would it be like to be 14, betrothed but unmarried, and then to learn you were carrying a child brought on you by God himself? How would you use that knowledge? How would it affect your husband-to-be? What would you do with the power that baby implied?

Download it here: Miriam, Messiah