Writing Projects
Historical Fiction
Viola Ross fought her Civil War in England against Confederate agents, intrigues of empire and the restraints imposed on her gender.
Viola's discovery of her own agency is at the heart of DISTANT THUNDER (76,000 words), her story set against a little-known theater of clandestine action in a war that haunts America to this day.
In June 1863, an agent bearing an offer from the Emperor of France is killed on his way to Liverpool, the center of Confederate operations in Europe. The papers he carries could expose a plot to build warships in France in exchange for Southern approval of its Mexican empire, a plan confided by a French countess to young Viola Ross, social secretary to the American legation in London.
Viola recognizes that a secret French alliance with the Confederacy could prolong the war and its terrible cost. She reports this intelligence to the legation secretary, but he dismisses the information, reminds her of her proper role and threatens to send her back to Boston.
Unwilling to stand by, Viola goes to Liverpool to join Union agent Thomas Lannan, who, dispatched to track the French operative’s movements, has discovered that the Emperor’s papers were taken by Irish nationalists in a botched ransom scheme. Having already encountered notorious Confederate investigator Niall Tackett, Lannan needs Viola to infiltrate the Rebel nerve center to find their man inside.
Lannan and Viola want to find the evidence of the Emperor’s plot and work out a clandestine deal with the Irish Brotherhood. Tackett is out to make sure that no one else recovers the papers, and discover who informed the killers that the French agent was coming. But then Lannan disappears, and Viola must navigate her way through a man’s dangerous world to thwart the Emperor’s plot and the lethal Tackett on her own.
At stake are American war fortunes, European rivalries, and Viola’s discovery of the perilous freedoms of male disguise.
An exiled female spy’s family loyalties in blockaded Charleston collide with the conflict that haunts America to this day.
Late 1863, London: Viola Ross, the young social secretary of the American Legation, has become the Union’s most effective investigator of intrigues between European powers and the Confederacy. When her superior discovers she has extended family in Charleston, Viola is given a choice: go there willingly to investigate a Confederate submersible vessel, or be shipped back in chains as a suspected spy.
Unwilling to face the dishonor of this accusation, Viola undertakes a stormy crossing to Charleston to run the blockade and betray her family. Her loyalties are tested when she is welcomed into a household with slaves and connections to the military and is courted by a young man whose job is to find and execute Union spies.
Viola’s skills may get her into the submersible, but can they get her out of the clutches of rival agents, a proposal of marriage and a desperate journey from the besieged city? As the residents come under evacuation orders and Viola’s secrets place her family in danger, she’ll have to decide how much she is willing to compromise to get free of her mission.
Union agent Viola Ross comes to Civil War Washington from a mission deep in the Confederacy to find her Father, reported missing since coming there to determine her fate.
She is a different person than the daughter he knew and trained, and the bargain she strikes to win his freedom will cost her a journey to Richmond and quite possibly her life.
When you are new to America, your life can change in a moment of terror far across the continent.
In April 1995 several men from around the world who share space in a Brooklyn apartment are just trying to scratch out a life in America. Their daily struggles and those of their fellows change utterly on the morning of April 19th with a massive explosion in Oklahoma City.
George's Dock, Liverpool (1875)
Conrad Wise Chapman - Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L. Hunley, Dec. 6, 1863
RF&P Company Map from the collection of the RF&P Railroad Historical Society.
Legal Suspense
An ex-con turning up plaintiffs for a medical malpractice lawsuit finds that he has not outrun the darkness of his past.
Jay Smerlow did time as a teenager in Florida for harvesting credit cards; now he employs his skills as a case runner, to research and refer plaintiffs for lawsuits. Client Bree Wayland has a case against a doctor misusing a skin regeneration substance from a secretive military lab to treat failing organs.
The case appears headed to settlement when plaintiffs and then Jay's client disappear, and he is stalked by a prison enforcer from his youth. Jay has to figure out what has happened to his client and his referrals and who is behind a horrific threat to him and his family before he too disappears.
The night watchman at a troubled South Florida condo project is murdered just before its final engineer's report is filed, part of a trail of death and dark dealing behind the North Hollywood Aerie, a new jewel on the inner Intracoastal. The condo is allowed to open; its seams and plumbing leak, and the garage is crumbling. Newly divorced ex-con Jay Smerlow, who has gone from harvesting credit cards as a teenager to establishing a Fort Lauderdale case runner business, is called in by attorney Bree Wayland to research and refer plaintiffs for a construction defect lawsuit. What he finds is a lethal commando in charge of security, a mysterious penthouse resident, a past that isn't past, and a love he never saw coming.
Jay Smerlow is already wondering why he has left Florida for a legal technology conference in New York in February when a blizzard shuts down the city. Then participants in a panel start turning up dead in the locked down hotel, and Jay finds himself in the cross-hairs of a murderer.
Short Pieces
Short Fiction
Music narrates our lives and haunts us with our losses. In "Ex Tempore" Alais Kots improvises piano music to the spirit of her vanished mentor.
What's in a name? Perhaps a life changed utterly when the central name of one's life is lost in an accident.
A lost man encounters a place strange and largely unmarked. What Ole Gustafson brings to this place, and what the place itself holds, are the story.
Humor
Because you can get there from here.
Opera is the pop music of a bygone age. Some works have gone a little further by than others.