My two 2024 books (so far)

The proof copies arrived Wednesday — here are the second and third books I have published in 2024, although I have written only two books this year (so far).

Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic is the fantasy I wrote to escape the unpleasantness of the presidential campaign — literally an escapist fantasy. If I was writing about talking dogs, elfin beings, dragons, eagles and white-tailed deer teaming up to fight a Halloween Hurricane spawned by an evil demon, I would have no time or energy left to write about what so many other people were writing about anyway. And I got a fun little book out of it.

Earlier this year I collected a book of reflections about peace and nonviolence. I called it War IS the Crime to reflect my anger and outrage at the callous way so-called leaders throw lives away with their engines of death and destruction. As an alternative I offered a healthier way to resolve our differences with each other — love your neighbor, recognizing that everyone is our neighbor.

It turns out readers, like all of us, have had enough of anger and outrage, and sales of War IS the Crime have yet to hit double digits. I’m not exaggerating.

We have seen enough declarations of war, it seems. So I decided to rebrand the book emphasizing the solution, not the problem, with a title that reflects that shift — A Declaration of Peace.

And so, if you like my fiction, or if you followed the story in October and want a souvenir of that journey, click here to pre-order Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic.

Or if you prefer the kind of commentary that usually appears in this space, click here to pre-order A Declaration of Peace.

And I won’t be unhappy if you order both books, which will ship no later than Dec. 3. You can also order them through your favorite independent bookstore — tell them they’re looking for ISBN 979-8-9863331-8-2 (Dejah & Summer) and/or 979-8-9863331-9-9 (Peace).

Oh yeah, one more thing. I think I’ve got an idea for my next story. Here’s the opening.

o o o o o

If you’re reading this, it’s possible or even probable that you’ve already read my story “Dejah & Summer in the Time of Magic.” You may or may not know that it’s based on real-life events.

There really is an introverted widowed writer who works as a reporter and lives not far from the waters of Green Bay — the bay, not the city. That’s me. I really do have two golden retrievers — Dejah Thoris Princess of Mars, who was 11 at the time that story took place, and Summer, who was 3.

I will leave it to you to decide how much of the story is based on real life and how much is a figment of my imagination. However, I do want to tell you one important fact.

Seth, the guardian dragon, is real. This is what happened next.

The upend atom

OK, kids, we have a fun fact about sleeping and waking up today in science class.

You know that our natural instinct is to sleep when we’re tired and stay in bed as long as we can, but there’s a special particle that grows in our brain while we’re sleeping. When it grows large enough, it pops and sends a signal to the rest of our body to wake up and get going.

Because it overturns our natural tendency to inertia, we call it the “upend atom.” It responds to sound, so moms, spouses and drill sergeants through the ages have found it helps to shout its name to assist in the process.

Without the upend atom, who knows how long we could be lying there like a lump, blissfully unaware of reality?

How it happened

And the wall came down because people stopped believing the lies. No, actually, people had stopped believing the lies a long time ago. Liars lie, and everyone knew they were liars, and what can anyone do about it anyway?

No, the wall came down because some tipping point had arrived, and people were tired of being lied to and the secret police and the snoopy snoops.

And so they took matters into their own hands and peacefully, without bloodshed, tore down the wall — or they walked through what looked like a wall except for the fact that it had never really existed.

They danced in the streets, or they went about their daily business with an extra spring in their step, or they changed nothing because they were among the rare souls who knew they were free all along.

What scenario am I describing? All of them. Tyranny always falls in the end, and in the same way. You can almost feel it coming when it happens.