South Pacific Odyssey 1943 – Deja Vu?


I have been writing a novel that no doubt will stand as my greatest effort of a lifetime. Years have passed while I drafted and redrafted the book I now call “Guadalcanal Avengers.” It tells a family story based on the true wartime misadventures of my Uncle Herbert Hopp, a Navy airman. As I write it, I realize Herb’s saga is remarkably similar to Homer’s Odyssey.

While immersed in a project like this, I often seek out music to provide a thematic backdrop to my thinking and typing. Given the great similarity of Herb’s story to Homer’s, it seemed history was repeating itself. I kept hearing in the back of my head David Crosby and his bandmates chanting, “We have all been here before, we have all been here before…” These are lyrics from the song “Déjà Vu” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I’ll provide a link below, but first, let me tell you why it’s my choice.

Herb’s storyline is astonishingly close to Homer’s tale of triumph in battle followed by catastrophe on the way home. We all know that Odysseus (or Ulysses) sailed with the Greek fleet to Troy and grasped victory with his Trojan Horse plan. And most know The Odyssey recounts his many vexations while sailing home to Ithaca: captured by Cyclops; enchanted by Circe, lured by Sirens, and finally, challenged by suitors for his wife Penelope’s hand on his arrival at Ithaca.

For comparison, consider Uncle Herb’s true tale of heroism and long journey home: sailing to the South Pacific aboard a warship in 1943; confronting the Japanese Imperial Fleet in the Solomon Islands; striking an enemy destroyer with a torpedo from his Grumman Avenger aircraft; being shot down by vengeful Japanese Zero fighter planes; crashing on a jungle island where cannibalism was not yet eradicated; being rescued by natives and paddled back to Guadalcanal in their own version of a warship, a headhunters’ raiding canoe. The story goes on, but I don’t want to spoil the whole thing for folks who’d like to read it when it’s published. So, I’ll stop the narrative here. Herb faced many more challenges on his Odyssean journey home.

Inspired by the déjà vu qualities of Herb’s story, I searched the Internet and turned up a great rendition of the song recorded by Croz and his buddies in concert in 1989, two decades after its original release on the CSN album of the same name. The song has aged well, and I strongly recommend you follow the YouTube link below and give it a listen. David was not just strumming an oldy but goody and reminiscing. He gave, in this recording, what I think was the performance of a lifetime:

Déjà Vu link

Not only is every note played or sung perfectly, but the recording quality (ripped from a radio broadcast) is exceedingly high. Furthermore, the extended solos on keyboard and guitar are surpassingly grand, and very evocative of the old school psychedelic style pioneered by Crosby among others in the 60s. I am about 99% certain the guitar solo is performed by David himself, not a sideman. It sounds like his work on other CSN recordings and here it is done impeccably.

Listen through to the very end because something else awaits—the rarest of treats. As the final crescendo fades and the crowd roars, three loud shouts are heard. They’re the outburst of delight as a musical artist hears his song reach the finish line without a single flaw, start to finish. A rare moment for any performer and you can hear Croz’s ecstatic joy, especially in his last long shriek.

And finally, back to Herb’s Odyssean saga. Here’s an excerpt covering one of many true events, which I have fictionalized to fill out missing details. But this airplane crash is listed on the logbooks of the aircraft carrier USS COPAHEE, so it shouldn’t be far off the mark. Mind you, this is just a first draft and will require quite a bit of polish before it’s ready to publish. But it will give you a foretaste of the adventure I’m writing.

Excerpt from Guadalcanal Avengers, by Thomas Hopp

Aboard the Wildcat, Moe thought his approach had been pretty spot-on, though COPAHEE’s deck looked like a metal-and-wood version of a bucking bronco: rearing high, ducking low, rolling side-to-side, wallowing left, wheeling right. He fingered the steering stick gingerly, keeping his aircraft centered on the middle of all that motion and watching the Landing Signal Officer at his station at the aft port corner of the flight deck, holding his bright orange signal paddles out to his sides against the black-screen backdrop behind him. Moe held his line true as he neared the ship’s pitching stern, seeing no wave-off from the LSO, who could barely keep his feet due to the wind, let alone give such a signal. As the Wildcat crossed the aft end of the flight deck, Moe was about to congratulate himself on making it look too easy—when all hell broke loose.

The COPAHEE pitched up sharply at the bow, struck by a massive wave much larger than those preceding it. Paired blasts of white spray jetted out and upward, sweeping back over her bows. The force of the wave also drove COPAHEE’s stern down deep, just at the moment the Wildcat’s tailhook should have engaged either the first or second arresting cable. The hook, hanging beneath the plane’s tail, missed both cross cables by a matter of inches as they dropped away from it.

Now a rapid-fire succession of unfortunate events took place. An instant after the cable miss, the Wildcat belly-flopped on the rising deck. The impact splayed the wing wheels to the sides, grinding the nose into the deck and throwing out propeller blades and pieces of decking in all directions. Moe was thrown forward as far as his body could go. The shoulder straps across his chest knocked the air from his lungs like a body punch. His head smacked against the instrument panel, making him see stars.

“Oh my God,” Bill cried as the aircraft careened forward, its speed unabated. “He’s gonna get killed.”

To the already unfortunate combination of momentums, the ocean added a sideways roll that tossed the plane starboard and threw it against the island just below the astonished men on the searchlight platform, giving them a bird’s eye view of the carnage that ensued. The right wingtip tore off and the aircraft continued forward spinning flat on its belly and throwing out sparks that threatened to set its wing tank fuel afire. As the deck wallowed farther starboard, the Wildcat spun again and again until it reached the bow, where it careened over the starboard side headed for the sea. Cries of horror burst from every throat on the searchlight deck as the mangled aircraft teetered for a moment, poised above the violent ocean, then dropped over the edge of the deck, tail up and nose toward the dark and frothing waters.

But as it plunged, the heretofore useless tail hook, of all things, caught on a railing of the gallery deck, five feet below the flight deck—and held!

The wrecked plane hung there, swinging madly as waves lashed the ship’s bow and the dangling aircraft alike.

“That’ll never hold!” Herb rushed to the front rail of the platform. “It’ll bust loose—” Even as he said the words, the tailhook tore off with a t-t-u-u-n-n-ng sound reverberating over the howl of the wind. The plane dropped the three-story distance to the ocean, nose first.

Through all this, Moe had been only semiconscious of being tossed violently forward, sideways, and back. Constrained by his hip and shoulder straps, his senses reeling, he came to when cool ocean water sprayed in from every seam and gap in the cockpit. Gasping for breath, he groped for and found the port and starboard canopy latches. Wrenching them open, he tugged the handles back, intending to climb out, but the mechanism balked and stuck about halfway open under the force of seawater rushing in.

The roiling ocean crashed in around his face, swirling wildly spinning trails of froth and bubbles, pressing him back in his seat. Water went up his nose and partway down his throat, choking him. He unbuckled his belts, sensing that the plane had toppled over after nosing in, coming to rest upside down on the ocean’s surface. From the way trails of bubbles moved toward his feet, he deduced that the plane’s nose had begun to drop into the depths, drawn down by the weight of the engine.

On the searchlight platform, there were cries and shouts of horror from the throats of a dozen sailors witnessing the event. More crewmen rushed out on deck to watch the tragedy unfold. Everyone crowded the outboard railing with eyes rivetted to the foundering Wildcat. Herb pushed in among them.

“Outta my way,” he shouted as he forced his way to the railing.

Below them, the plane was pancaked upside down, bent landing gear up like a dead duck’s feet, scraping and bumping along the hull as COPAHEE glided forward, her engines now reversed and her propellers roiling up fountains of white water at her stern. Nevertheless her momentum still made twenty knots over the sea’s rough, wind-driven surface.

“Can you see Moe?” Bill called through the crowd, pushing in to get to the railing.

“No,” Herb called back. “I’ll bet he can’t get out.”

“He’d better,” Joe said as he pushed in next to Herb. “The plane’s already going down.”

The weight of the engine was pulling the Wildcat’s nose under at an accelerating rate, and waves washed over the belly as it tipped ever more steeply and the tail rose. Herb was aghast at the thought his friend was being killed before his eyes.

Bill found a white life ring strapped to the railing, tore loose the buckles that held it, and tossed it down as the plane scraped by below them.

“Lotta good that’s gonna do,” Herb growled, knowing this would be too little help and too late. Moe, unseen inside the overturned cockpit, was in no shape to use it. But Herb had another thought and reacted instantaneously. He climbed the guardrail and, before Joe could finish shouting, “What the hell are you doing?” vaulted the top rail and plunged toward the sea with his arms extended high-diver style.

Men gasped, and one made a clutching grab at Herb, but missed. Herb went into a headfirst dive right over the Wildcat. As he dropped, he had split seconds to consider the wisdom of his jump. It looked like he might strike the belly of the Wildcat. If so, he and Moe would end up at the bottom of the Pacific together.

But Herb hit the water in a clean dive that just missed the Wildcat’s tail, which was all that remained above the surface. Plunging into the blue depths, Herb realized it was a lucky dive. Not only had he missed the tail, but as he angled his outstretched hands to swoop toward the fuselage, he saw and grasped the half-opened canopy window. Inside he saw Moe, trapped behind the glass. Moe still had his flight goggles on, and his eyes looked huge and round with desperation. He pointed at where the canopy was open about five inches. Herb grasped it in both hands, put both feet on edge of the forward windshield housing, and reefed with all his might. The canopy moved back slowly, grudgingly, but move back it did. Meanwhile the aircraft slid beneath the surface completely, gliding nose-down into the depths.

Moe had unlatched his seatbelt buckles, but now he moved groggily, weakened by lack of oxygen. Herb grabbed him by both shoulders and with his feet on the cockpit coaming, tugged him out in a long, desperate pull. By now, the plane and the two men were easily twenty feet below the surface and descending fast. Herb knew that even he didn’t have enough air in him for a slow float to the surface, so he thought fast. He wrapped his left arm around Moe as he came free of the plane and reached in through the straps of his Mae West life vest—which Moe had wisely chosen not to inflate, or he’d still be stuck in the cockpit, trapped in the upside-down compartment by the jacket’s buoyancy. But now the two men were floating free and slowly rising as the Wildcat vanished into the blue depths. Herb grasped the inflation pullcord at the jacket’s collar and gave a sharp tug, opening a compressed gas cylinder that quickly inflated the vest, which hauled them rapidly toward the surface.

Herb kept a good grip on Moe, and when they burst through the surface, he took in huge gasps of sweet air. He noted gladly that Moe, though coughing and sputtering, was getting his share of oxygen.

By now, the COPAHEE’s full length had swept past them, leaving them a hundred yards astern on turbulent water. But they were safe enough thanks to Moe’s Mae West. And there, beside them, bobbed Billy’s life ring. Herb reached out and clasped it, keeping one hand on Moe’s collar.

The COPAHEE’s reversed engines finally brought her to FULL-STOP. As the prop wash settled, men lined the back railings, cheering and pumping fists to salute their shipmates who had survived coming within a hair’s breadth of death.

###

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And Now, The Audiobooks!

Several months ago, I got an email from Amazon Kindle Publishing. Would I be interested in becoming a beta test author for their new audiobook generating platform, Virtual Voice Studio? I was skeptical.

How could any computer voice capture the tonality and personality of a live narrator? I worried my books would come across as cartoonish robo-voiced streams of monotonal, mechanical gibberish. “Danger! Danger! Will Robinson.” But the first snippet I heard convinced me the technology had advanced light years beyond what I’d heard before.

Still, Amazon seemed to be promising too much. At no cost to me, I would be given access to an on-line studio, enabling me to create audiobook versions of as many of my ebooks as I’d like. I decided I’d take a chance and be one of their guinea pigs, if audio versions of my stories would be the end result.

The outcome of the experiment was a great success, as far as I can tell. I love the quality of the books. I think you’ll be impressed, too. I now have three brand spanking new audiobook titles listed along with my ebook and paperback versions on Amazon. They’re at these links:

Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall

Dinosaur Wars: Counterattack

Dinosaur Wars: Blood on the Moon

I intend to follow these with audio versions of my mystery, medical thriller, and natural disaster books as well.

Take a look at one of the links above. Each screen has a whole new category for my book as seen in the upper right corner, above. There’s also a button under the book image marked “Virtual Voice Sample.” Click one and before you know it, you’ll be listening to a 5-minute excerpt of the book. Have a good listen to the narrative performance. It’s as smooth and natural as any real, live human reader could produce, even though it was generated by a robo-voice using AI-generated speech patterns.

You don’t need to be online with Amazon to listen to these books. They can be played by many audio reader programs, including free ones like iTunes, Apple’s QuickTime, or a variety of Microsoft audio player choices. You probably have one on your computer, iphone, or tablet already, which will automatically play these audiobooks. The books are essentially the same as buying an audio CD, DVD, or mp4 version.

My fellow authors should take special note. Whereas the creation of quality audiobooks used to cost thousands of dollars per book, or much more to get top-end production quality or a famous voice narrating the work, now the cost is far cheaper. How about zero dollars? That’s one of the beauties of this robo-voice conversion process. It’s fully automated, and happens near-instantaneously, given the audiobook versions are created at the speed of a computer calculation.

Not only that, but pay close attention, fellow authors, because there’s more. You’ve all heard the advice to have someone read your book aloud to help you catch typos and other errors? That wisdom comes to powerful new fruition in Virtual Voice Studio. How about a reader who has infinite time and patience, and can be paused with the click of a button? In three consecutive ebooks now, I have experienced the delight of sitting back, resting my old, tired eyes, and letting my youthful narrator do the reading (I chose him from among seven male and female voices). And should a typo come along, the voice faithfully reproduced it, causing me to rouse myself and click the pause button. What a way to edit!

My books had already all been tortuously combed by me and my professional editors. But there, right before my ears, were more than a dozen newfound typos in each book! In my opinion, it was worth making these audio versions simply to catch that new batch of typos. I doubled back on each book in turn, killing the typos and uploading revised ebook and paperback versions of the text. Then back to Virtual Voice Studio to finish the audio process. Fabulous!

And yet there is more. You’ve probably also been advised that reading out loud can help you catch awkward phrasing in your prose or stilted or phony sounding dialog. Well, thanks again Virtual Voice! Such prosaic deficiencies are instantly obvious, and again, hitting pause stops them in their tracks to be replaced with better, more life-like language.

In case you missed it, I am entirely thrilled with Virtual Voice Studio, and its output as well. It’s a new day in audiobook creation, and reader enjoyment too.

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Space Case

Meet my latest publication. It’s a short story called, “Space Case.”

It’s a murder mystery courtroom drama science fiction action adventure gothic horror thriller. Or something like that.

It was hard to jampack so much into such a small space. But I’m pretty certain I got everything in its proper place. How can I be so sure? Well, you see, Space Case is already a winner. I entered it in a major literary contest and it took top honors. Which in turn won it a place in an impending anthology featuring some of the leading crime fiction writers of our times. I was thrilled. This would be my ticket to hobnobbing with the big names, and a chance at anything up to and including New York Times Bestseller status. All the signs of success were there. But—

Life has its cruel twists. Good fortune slipped through my fingers.

I won’t give many details or place any blame. But publication delay followed publication delay. Personal tragedy struck the volume editor’s family. Finally, three years after my supposed breakthrough, it was finished. There would be no anthology. Too much time had elapsed. Folks moved on, authors and editors alike.

And so did I. According to my standard practice, I picked myself up by the bootstraps. I fashioned my erstwhile prize-winning story into an e-book version, complete with cover art I made myself. Tell me, does that robot look cute? Scary? Both? If you’re channeling ‘weird’ or ‘creepy,’ then I think you’ve got the idea.

Several rounds of text editing and it was off to my publishers at Smashwords and Amazon Kindle. Shortly afterward versions for Apple Books, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo followed. At last, Space Case was published! And I’m happy with how it turned out. You can check it out HERE.

The Devil Makes Work

Meanwhile, the long wait before I released Space Case hadn’t been time spent idly. I didn’t mope around for three years biting my nails and waiting for some good news. I moved right along at a fast clip. I wrote and published Megaflood, a murder mystery romance novel set against the apocalyptic Ice Age floods that swept Eastern Washington 14,000 years ago. I re-released my short story “Kit Daniels Dinosaur Girl” about a young woman whose hopes for Hollywood stardom depend on her not getting stomped, gored, or eaten by her dinosaurian costars.

And the biggest adventure of all is what’s truly been ravaging my publication output—my World War II novel, Guadalcanal Avengers. Based on the real-life exploits of my Uncle Herbert Hopp, it’s a military action-adventure romance set in the South Pacific, the same time and place James Michener set his Pulitzer Prize winning tale. Writing and researching this book obsessed me through long hours upon days upon weeks upon months upon years of digging up World War II facts and hammering them out on the keyboard. That, plus a large body of history and anecdotes drawn from interviews of old Navy sailors and Marines, and my family members who lived through the events as well. I drew out some pretty amazing details by talking to my sources on numerous occasions. All of them have passed away in the course of time, but not before I wrote copious notes on their reminiscences. The resulting hard-won scenes bring to life the realities faced by American air warriors dueling their Japanese counterparts in the skies over the Solomon Islands in early 1943.

All this effort has consumed prodigious amounts of time and slowed my output dramatically compared to previous years. But when this magnum opus is finished, it’ll brim with rich details and in-depth characterizations of people and places now long gone, but not forgotten. It will quite possibly be the very last World War II story based on conversations with those who actually lived through it.

I caution myself that the novel is getting ‘McMurtified,’ by which I mean lo-o-o-ng, and overflowing with diverse characters, conflicts, and subplots. This hefty tome might even come to rival Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove, if I can manage to carry it off. That’s my intent, anyway.

Now then, if the literary fates and powers would be so kind, please consider this: I already won a handsome prize that was taken away from me by cruel chance. How about a little sympathy this time around?

Meanwhile, I’ll just keep writing and writing and writing…

While we’re at it, does anyone know an expert knowledgeable in Japanese culture and traditions in the WWII time frame? Or a native speaker of the Solomon Islands dialect, Pijin? If you do, please send them my way, or vice versa. Thanks!

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Megaflood — The Good Reviews Keep Coming In

It’s great to see reviews of Megaflood written by people who really liked my story and took the time to say so. An example:

“Perfect mixture of cataclysmic history, DNA science mystery, and Native storytelling at its finest! Author Thomas P. Hopp has delivered yet another superlative, page-turning thriller in his Northwest Tales series. With a combination of the very real geologic history of cataclysmic events surrounding the Missoula Floods that swept across the American West obliterating everything in their path, along with descriptions of Native encounters with mammoths and sabertooth cats, a modern science DNA mystery, and tribal relationships. This book is storytelling at its finest, where science meets natural history and the spiritual.”

And here’s a nice headline:

“Cave lions, sabertooth tigers, and shortfaced bears… oh my!”

And review that takes off on it:

“As another reviewer astutely noted, this book is amply stocked with ferocious beasts. And the connection to The Wizard of Oz is entirely appropriate. Both stories revolved around natural disasters: a tornado for Dorothy, and an epic flood for Denawe, the heroine of this story. And like Dorothy, Denawe is helped along her treacherous journey by friends and allies she meets along the way. Not only that, but her journey involves a wizard, in this case the old shaman Hokah, who lives in a distant cave surrounded by magic charms and animal spirits.

“Whether Hopp ‘borrowed’ some of these ideas from The Wizard of Oz or made them up on his own is no matter. What’s important is that this story wings along on a mix of scary and comical events as the misbegotten band of male and female heroes make their way from one gripping scene to the next. And the setting! Not the mystical dreamland of Oz, but the real environment of Ice Age North America, the way it was 14,000 years ago.

“Little nuances, like how Temokin made a ‘courting flute’ to play for his beloved Denawe, bring the culture of the times to light brilliantly, as do scenes of tribal dances, weddings, and funerals. These are based on known facts but brought to life by Hopp’s fine writing skill. Only time will tell whether this book will take its place alongside L. Frank Baum’s Oz and works of other great writers. But one thing is certain: it’s a gem.”

Words like those warm an author’s heart. And when written as an Amazon Reader Review, or on any other bookseller’s site, they also help to move sales of the book. So if you’ve read part or all of Megaflood and have been meaning to write a review, why not take the time now? I’ll be deeply grateful, and the booksellers’ mighty computers may push Megaflood a little harder. That way everybody’s happy. Here’s a LINK that will get you back to whatever bookstore sold you your copy.

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Seattle Tsunami – My Book Had It Right

My novel The Great Seattle Earthquake dramatizes what would happen if a quake of magnitude 7.8 should strike the Seattle Fault. I researched the book heavily before writing, and it looks like I got it right. A report, newly released by Washington State’s Department of Natural Resources, describes a quake of 7.5 and the incredible inundation that would strike the city’s waterfront several minutes later.

Although the map is a little too detailed for easy reading, let me point out that the wave would reach heights of 23 feet in Seattle’s Central Waterfront, and a whopping 42 feet at the Great Ferris Wheel! Wow! That’s almost worse than I had written about. Almost.

Actually, I’d say my own personal tsunami “model,” which I made up to help me imagine the human dramas that would take place, was a pretty good estimate of how bad things could get. So it’s also fair to say my book, published in 2019, remains an accurate dramatization of the horrors and heroisms of that day.

Washington DNR has done their duty to shake up the complacency of people who live on or near the Seattle Fault. But they need some help driving home just how tough it could be for waterfront homeowners, first responders, baseball stadium crowds, people traveling on freeway bridges or–gulp–entering the waterfront Highway 99 tunnel. All this and much more is dramatized in great detail in my novel. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it might be time to, huh? Here’s a LINK to booksellers who can provide a copy for you.

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You Go, Cavegirl!

As my new novel, Megaflood, climbs sales charts at Amazon and other major booksellers, I’d like to take time to thank the person most responsible for the book’s meteoric success: its heroine, Denawe.

She’s the young woman, not yet sixteen years old, who faces one challenge after another, from abduction to battling a fierce sabertooth cat to fleeing in the company of her love, Temokin, from fierce warriors bent on their destruction. Then comes the ultimate threat of all, an apocalyptic flood that swept half the State of Washington during the Ice Ages 14,000 years ago!

The image above evokes the beauty of a girl who embarks on an adventure far beyond what the average female of our times–or any times–might expect to experience. No, the bronze bust wasn’t cast to commemorate my story. It’s a statue of Sacagawea, the legendary guide of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805. But Denawe would have looked much like her. Both women were natives of the Pacific Northwest, separated by only 14,000 years, a geological twinkling of an eye.

And the two heroines have much more in common. Both were abducted from their tribes and marched far away to be slaves and someone’s personal property in villages far from home. Sacagawea was horse traded to the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau and became his wife. Denawe, too, is subject of a bidding war, with mammoth ivory, the hide of a colossal short-faced bear, and an amulet carved from a sabertooth tiger fang as part of the bride price.

But these two women, Sacagawea and Denawe, were much more than mere objects of barter. They stood on their own and made their way boldly in the world. History tells us how Sacagawea guided the Lewis and Clark party over the snow-clad Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. My story tells how Denawe joined together with her young warrior love to lead the Mammoth People on a path to salvation in the face of an annihilating flood.

Here’s the rest of that statue, a state monument in Sacagawea’s homeland near Salmon Idaho. Here, the two heroines diverge a little. Sacagawea carried her infant son with her on her journey, while Denawe was as yet unmarried. But never fear–matters of that nature can change in a hurry. So, does Denawe become a wife and mother in the course of my book? Read it, and find out!

Megaflood is available at all major booksellers’ websites in ebook and paperback versions. Click this link to go to a page where the different sellers are listed. If you’ve already got your copy, please remember to review it on Amazon or other booksellers’s pages. Those reviews are deeply appreciated by us authors, and can help encourage the booksellers’ crunching computers to try and sell more books. Thanks!

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Megaflood Unleashed

Megaflood is here! The ebook and paperback versions of my new natural disaster thriller are being released today. You can find them at all major outlets, from Amazon to Apple Books, to Barnes and Noble, and more. If you took advantage of the discounted presale opportunity, your ebook account already has a copy waiting. If not, it’s easy to grab one using the link above.

You’ll find something to love about this book whether you’re a fan of mystery, action adventure, science fiction, or romance. Want a story set in a far-off, exotic time and place? How about Ice Age Washington State, a frozen world quite unlike present-day environs. Want to meet a young pair who fall in love in the midst of an apocalyptic catastrophe? Then follow Temokin and Denawe, two young tribe members whose love grows with each danger they face. Want rip-roaring adventure? Try facing down a snarling sabertooth tiger or a rampaging bull mammoth with these young heroes.

All this is drawn up against a background of meticulously researched science. As you read, you’ll learn the latest knowledge about Ice Age North America, its landscape, wildlife, and the hardy people who met and overcame innumerable challenges to survive in a harsh world—until the day they faced the greatest threat of all, the Megaflood. This novel envisions the awesome power of a flood so huge it carried as much water as one of the Great Lakes, all unleashed in a single day!

Follow this LINK to a page where you’ll find the ebook and paperback listed at all the major booksellers.Thanks. I hope you enjoy my story!

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The Sabertooth Amulet

This amulet, discovered on a body in a bog in my new novel Megaflood, is a central clue to happenings 14,000 years ago. Not only is it a priceless artifact and focus of present-day conflict between tribes and museum researchers, but it’s also a clue to an ancient murder mystery and a symbol of timeless love that lasts beyond the ages.

Megaflood is a genre-busting combination of mystery, action, adventure, and paranormal romance, all of which revolve around this mystical charm, a sabertooth tiger carved on its own fang. The Sabertooth Amulet was actually my working title as I researched and wrote this story. Extensive research on ancient Native Americans, shamanism, and Ice Age floods was one reason why the book was three years in the making. Whew!

As I said, the sabertooth amulet symbolizes, among other things, the love of two young people for one another. Megaflood—like most of my novels—is about a marriage. That’s right, even though giant threatening animals and hostile warriors often take center stage, no less important is the love that grows between Temokin and Denawe, an equally matched male-female pair of heroes. Together, they confront huge beasts and the treachery of a jealous chieftain, not to mention an apocalyptic Ice Age flood. Through it all, the charm symbolizes their bond growing stronger with each crisis. Kind of like a good marriage, right?

Most of my novels and short stories feature romantic pairs sharing equally in the heroics. So, whether your preferences run to strong male leads or strong female leads or both, your wish is fulfilled. Here’s a list:

This LINK will guide you to information about these books and stories, if any of them strike your fancy.Meanwhile, Megaflood is available for pre-order and will be released on May 1, 2022. So, if a mystery/romance/action/adventure story suits your reading preferences, why not click over to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or other outlets and reserve your copy today? At $3.99, it’s $1 off the list price. You won’t be charged until the book ships, and you’ll be among the first to get it. Furthermore, by pre-ordering, you’ll help me make the day-of-release book sales more impressive to Amazon’s computers, which in turn will cause them to show the book to more potential customers. Thanks for your help, and I hope you enjoy the story!

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MEGAFLOOD – First Look at the Cover

I got my first physical copy of Megaflood today. There’s nothing like the thrill of holding the product of so much hard work in hand. The cover is a thing of beauty and, like the story itself, required much background research and detailed crafting. Historical accuracy (prehistorical?) is key in a novel that is as much about a time and place as it is about people and events. Everything had to be scientifically verifiable, and I must say, few art projects have ever consumed so much of my time and effort.

Every part of the cover addresses an aspect of life in those times. Glaciers flowing down from the Okanogan Highlands of Eastern Washington are no mere fancy. They represent the massive ice inundation that, in the Ice Age 14,000 years ago, blocked the flow of the mighty Columbia River and diverted it east and south to carve out the stupendous gorges of Grand Coulee. Vertical cliffs of layered volcanic rocks remain there to this day. They figure dramatically in the story as inhabitants desperately seek safety above floods a thousand times greater than anything seen in modern times.

Zeroing in on the center of the cover, the mammoth-hide tipis of Two Falls Village face certain destruction by an oncoming wall of water. The deluge will sweep away everything—and everyone—unless a hero can lead the people to safety.

Animals shared the fate of humans. Even titanic Columbian mammoths, the largest elephants of all, stood no chance against a wall of water many times their height. Other great animals would perish was well, from colossal short-faced bears, to giant ground sloths, to cave lions, to sabertooth cats. The last of these is represented on the cover by its likeness carved on its own fang, an amulet charm worn by the young hero Temokin and dedicated to his love, Denawe, who helped him overcome the snarling beast to which the fang originally belonged.

I’ll write more about the amulet, and the people and places touched on here, in my next post. Meanwhile let your mind soar over this dramatic scene, like Thunder Eagle at the top of the cover. What an awesome spectacle must have played out below him! Many villagers believed it was Thunder Eagle himself who set loose the deluge to clear evil, sinning people from the land. Only those of the greatest virtue would survive this ultimate test of nature.

Megaflood is available for pre-order and will be released on May 1, 2022. So, if a mystery/romance/action/adventure story suits your reading preferences, why not click over to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or other outlets and reserve your copy today? At $3.99, it’s $1 off the list price. You won’t be charged until the book ships, and you’ll be among the first to get it. Furthermore, by pre-ordering, you’ll help me make the day-of-release book sales more impressive to Amazon’s computers, which in turn will cause them to show the book to more potential customers. Thanks for your help, and I hope you enjoy the story!

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A 14,000-Year-Old Murder Mystery

Talk about an exotic setting for a mystery! The desert cliff shown here was once a waterfall three hundred times the size of Niagara that roared with the entire volume of the mile-wide Columbia River. This rampart is just one of two great circular cataracts that existed in Eastern Washington during the Ice Age. Part of the second can be seen to the right.

People who lived here must have been in awe of its thunderous roar. Native Americans of a long-forgotten tribe had only recently crossed from Siberia into North America. And where there are people, can murder lurk far behind?

My latest novel, Megaflood, is set against this 14,000-year-old backdrop. And as if that weren’t dramatic enough, the Ice Age animals that lived alongside the people were equally stupendous. Giant pachyderms came in three sizes: huge (the Wooly Mammoth), colossal (the Mastodon), and titanic (the Columbian Mammoth), the last of which made an elephant look like a pup. And that’s not to mention the Giant Ground Sloth and the Short-Faced Bear, which were elephant-sized as well. Let’s see, did I leave out anybody? Oh. Yeah. How about ravenous Cave Lions and Sabertooth Cats? Me-YOW!

It was my task as author to bring all this astonishing science and history into focus while telling the tale of two young people, outcasts in this foreboding landscape due to their forbidden love. Fleeing a wrathful chieftain, they plunged straight into even greater danger.

This is one of my most ambitious books to date, weaving an intricate path from modern archeologists exhuming a body from a cranberry bog in Chinook, Washington, to an ancient saga where heroic characters move through a world of sweeping beauty and face perilous threats, all in true-to-life detail. Megaflood is available for pre-order and will be released on May 1, 2022. So, if a mystery/romance/action/adventure story suits your reading preferences, why not click over to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books or other outlets and reserve your copy today? At $3.99, it’s $1 off the list price. You won’t be charged until the book ships, and you’ll be among the first to get it. Furthermore, by pre-ordering, you’ll help me make the day-of-release book sales more impressive to Amazon’s computers, which in turn will cause them to show the book to more potential customers. Thanks for your help, and I hope you enjoy the story!

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