Kirjahaku

July 3, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. July 4, 2020, Raventon, Georgia.Now it gets weird. Book III in the Raventon Mysteries series, featuring Taylor Smart and the Raventon Three. The most incredible mystery they've encountered!For a season, special people come into your life.Paths intersect. They just do. You don't know why or for how long.And then they're gone.But, you're better for them.

Lance Hawthorne, his life forever changed by a horrific crime witnessed at the innocent age of nine and the yoke of guilt carried after the death of his mother five years later, is a man who has attained a stature of comfort at the price of cynicism and indifference. Virtually afraid of his shadow, Lance wallows in risk-aversion and an inhibitive philosophy of self-preservation he deems the "long view". Lance has lived an adult life of conspicuous consumption, despite an upbringing fraught with the hard lessons of a rural South Georgia farming community and the morals of honor and frugality taught him by his mother, Sara. He has failed to satisfy his insatiably materialistic notion of success. Now he is given what he believes is a chance to do so. That chance focuses on a return to his hometown, after a thirty-two-year absence, to consummate a major land purchase for his company in what he is told will be a test of his negotiating and management skills. Lance discovers instead he is a pawn in a scheme of corporate fraud and drug-trafficking and decides to climb aboard the gravy train. His leverage is his possession of damning evidence of the life-altering crime he witnessed as a child. During his hesitant return home, Lance is ravaged by memories of his past. He is confronted in a restaurant by a mysterious old man who challenges Lance s spiritual well-being. A "spirited" debate ensues. Lance encounters drug-runners, murder and corporate malfeasance, as well as a taste of Old South aristocracy. Lance survives several brushes with death but cannot escape the shackles of his past. Finally, he has no choice but to face the truths of his ghosts ... just in time. Or is it? Lance is a man rushing headlong into his twilight, haunted by a past that will not let go and a future that will not let up. The Ghosts Of Benevolence is a novel of ghosts literal and figurative, greed, deception, murder, betrayal, and redemption.

Non-poets need love, too We may not have the mechanics of a Whitman or the insights of a Dickinson or the intrigue of a Poe, but onward we try, crafting our own brand of the art of poetry. Blue Ridge Sunsets strikes at the sensitivities of the 'everypoet', touching upon the elements of what moves each of us, perhaps not as eloquently as the greats of literature, but nonetheless real. Read on Inside are some ninety-nine "poems", most of which rhyme (heaven forbid ), though an honest attempt was made with each poem to avoid forced rhymes. Elements included are those of love, loss, sadness, gain, triumph, frustration, joy, God, eternity, humor, reminiscence, and wisdom. I try to avoid esoterica, as such tend to annoy, if not beguile, most of us. These are straight-from-the-heart poems, presented in simple language and imagery. I hope you enjoy these poems and find some level of connection with each.

Book two in the Raventon Mysteries series, featuring Taylor Smart. Taylor and her two friends, Bobbie Leigh Harwell and Pilfree Romulus Bojo accept a mysterious offer to play a game of a series of challenges they at first believe is no more than a prank. The game soon takes on a completely different countenance whereby failure to comply with the letter of each challenge's unique rules is not an option. Once committed to playing the game, the three friends cannot abandon the game. Each challenge of the game requires complete focus and teamwork, each participant utilizing one another's strengths while adapting for weaknesses. The price for failure is, well ... their lives.

Lance Hawthorne, his life irrevocably altered by his witness of a horrific crime at the innocent age of ten, is cursed to shoulder the yoke of guilt for taking no action to report the crime's perpetrators, despite his having rock-solid evidence. His guilt deepens after the death of his beloved mother five years later, a death he is convinced he caused. Hawthorne drifts through life, his faith shattered, his risk-aversion having rendered him all but fearful of his shadow. Until the fateful office poker game offers him a chance to return to his boyhood home of Benevolence -- and to the hell that awaits him. Lance Hawthorne is a man rushing headlong into his twilight, haunted by a past that won't let go and a future that won't let up.

Words matter. Don't they? Of course they do, but the extent they do matter depends on how effective are the conveyances of their intended meanings. We assemble our words - our thoughts and feelings - from the building blocks of vowels and consonants. We string together these letters into syllables into words with the hopes our shades of meanings are clear and unambiguous. That, however, is not always the case. Are you more or less likely, for example, to eat 'candy' or 'milk chocolate-covered caramel candy'? This work is an assemblage of vowels and consonants, formed into syllables and words and sentences, given punctuation and syntax, which I sincerely hope in their final delivery convey thoughts and feelings that in some ways touch your life and provide at least a modicum of entertainment and introspection. And such interpretive meaning that you can call your own.

The follow-up companion volume to Say A Few Syl-la-bles , Utter A Few Adjectives is a compilation of short stories, poems, limericks, and comics. This delightfully insightful collection contains introspective studies, stories of the supernatural and the unexplained, reminiscences of a cherished childhood friend, recollections of the author's stay-at-home-dad experiences, the art of the five-line poem, and even offers experiments in stick-man comickery. Sure to please any reader. Enjoy

I've not yet figured out exactly what, in literary terms, a short story is supposed to accomplish, except to say it should do so with far fewer words than a novel. My collection herein does not attempt to break unbroken ground or to achieve any other high-level goals. They're just stories that happen to be short, some shorter than others. Maybe some are well-written; maybe none of them is. But a book of Homegrown short stories will have a happier ending during a soak in a hot bath than a smartphone accidentally dropped into that hot bath. And, I promise you this: No ads will ever pop up in the middle of any of these stories. So, open these pages, open your minds, suspend disbelief, and enjoy an all-around good read, without the digital distractions.

A compilation of poems, essays, limericks, and short stories, BRIDGES is my expression of accumulated wisdom and observations spanning my sixty-four years on this earth. Many of these spans, these personal bridges, are not yet complete, as construction continues as long as I can draw a breath. Someday all will be complete, as will be yours. Maybe herein we will find some common ground, as well as some grounds for friendly dispute. Maybe our bridges are more or less parallel. Perhaps not. Regardless, bridges, literal and figurative, facilitate and exacerbate a life's journey. Bridges take us to places we yearn to go, as well to places we dread. These are some of my Bridges.

Follow the adventures of Taylor Smart, America's latest and greatest teenage American heroine, along with her talented classmates, as they dive headlong into the strangeness that seems to gravitate to the town of Raventon, a community tucked quietly in the shadows of the hills and valleys of northwest Georgia. Come into their world, as the Raventon Three (Taylor Smart, Pilfree Romulus Bojo, and Bobbie Leigh Harwell) take on all challengers and endure all difficulties and discomforts to get to the truth