My novels are listed in random order. All works are complete and available in word or pdf files. Most of the links point to pages published on my blogs. I have already adapted Lorenzo's Fat Head, Tarby Manor and The Stinky Bomber to screenplays, and could do the same to any other work in two to four weeks. I recently wrote and revised an original screenplay in two weeks, a horror comedy called The Thug Life Unicorn Posse.
NOVELS
LORENZO'S FAT HEAD is a tale of cocaine smuggling set in the milieu of a modern art museum. Click the title for the first few chapters and a more detailed synopsis.
DRIFTING WITH JESUS chronicles a Catholic priest's penniless journey around America. As he travels the country Father Jeremy explores the histories and doctrines of various Christian denominations--the Amish, Quakers, Shakers, Baptists, Christian Scientists, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists, Fundamentalists and Mennonites, as well as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Along the way Jeremy re-evaluates his relationship with Catholicism. Click the title to preview. Available in paperback and for kindle on amazon.
TARBY MANOR is a romantic comedy set in a haunted London mansion that tells the story of Ned and Nell Tarby, irascible married ghosts who are trapped in the mansion where they lived and died. They loathe each other and fall in love with living people when the Darbinger family takes up residence in their manor. Click the title to read a more detailed synopsis and the first four chapters.
PEPPERCORN CAFE is a semi autobiographical literary fantasy set in the restaurant world of Manhattan. Click the title for the preview and if you like it is available here at amazon.com.
Chapter 27 is a stand alone piece, The Shakespeare Rejection Letters.
CAPTIVITY is a prison drama about Raddy Veen, a diminutive homeless man who is wrongfully incarcerated based on charges fabricated by a phony preacher and a corrupt cop. Click the title for a more detailed description.
DEATH INCORPORATED is a war novel that commences after the fighting has concluded, and describes how war continues to rage in the minds of soldiers long after all hostilities have ceased and any truces enacted. Death Incororated tells the story of four American soldiers who fought in Iraq--Bernard, Diego, Bronson and Lujack--where they saved each other's lives on several occasions, which bonded them for life. The four come from disparate backgrounds, cultures and heritages--Diego is hispanic, Bernard is black, and Bronson and Lujack are white. Upon returning home they go separate ways. Shortly after arriving back in Boston, Bernard is slain in a racially motivated murder. Lujack and Diego study accounting then secure accounting jobs in the Pentagon, where they start embezzling millions unnoticed. They use some of the money to buy surplus military equipment--tanks, armored vehicles and fighter planes. Then they pruchase acreage in Alaska, transport all the military equipment there and set up the bizarre battlefield scene that concludes the novel. Contained within the novel is a smaller nonfiction book--a 75 page history of twentieth century American warfare, a painstakingly researched and detailed account of American war and war profiteering spanning the Spanish-American war of 1899 through 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Deak Novels
The Deak novels are a series of five novels and counting that are the absurd autobiography of an all time great rock superstar and musical legend. They were inspired by and written in the spirit of the films This Is Spinal Tap and Bad News Tour.
THE DEAK is the first novel of the series. It is set in New Orleans and chronicles Deak's life from birth in 1960 until the tragic ending of his first marriage in 1981. He was a musical prodigy even in his crib, and fronted his first band, Deak and the Ducks, on Bourbon Street when he was five; and from that launching pad he rockets to international stardom. Click the title for a preview and to visit the blog I have created for all things Deak.
THE SECOND BOOK OF DEAK picks up the thread in New Orleans in 1981 but relocates to Los Angeles, where Deak buys a Laurel Canyon mansion. The arc of the novel is Deak's comically accidental and altogether unwanted several year feud with Michael Jackson that began while Jackson was on his way to superstardom. The novel and the feud culminate at the Wembley Stadium portion of the massive Live Aid benefit concert, on July 13th 1985. Click the link for a very detailed synopsis and sample chapters.
DEAK THE THIRD is the third installment in the series. It is more of the anecdotal ongoing rock star adventures and culminates in Las Vegas and a confrontation with Frank Sinatra over a stolen girlfriend and a half built hotel. Incredibly, all three members of Deak's band are injured within the same hour--Desmond is shot, Jonesy is stabbed Deak falls thirty feet through the roof of a construction trailer. The novel concludes with the three main characters occupying rooms 201, 202 and 203 of a Las Vegas hospital.
DEAK IV 1987: THE EARLY MONTHS is the fourth novel of the Deak series and is complete. The first half of the novel is a string of unrelated rock and roll stories. The second half of the novel focuses on the band's European tour in the summer of 1987 and culminates with a confrontation with Ronald Reagan in Berlin, Germany on June 12, 1987--the day Reagan made his famous speech wherein he demanded that Mr. Gorbachev 'tear down this wall.'
Deak V 1987: THE FINAL MONTHS continues the series. It is nearing completion and a sixth novel is in the works. This installment focuses on the police corruption and brutality in crack infested Compton, the arc being Deak and the band's feud with Los Angeles Police Department Chief Daryl Gates, a feud which intensifies when Compton Ass Terry, the black DJ in Deak's band, becomes engaged to Gates' daughter. Gates was a notorious racist and vehemently opposes the marriage. Everything concludes in an explosive free New Years' Eve concert in Compton.
THE GAZPACHO CONSPIRACY is based on some of my strange family history which I describe as a tragicomic romantic revenge novel. Set in several parts of New Hampshire the novel tells the story of young Robby Charrette, whose grandparents and mother die tragically, leaving him alone and homeless at the age of fifteen. He survives in the woods for several years, bitterly plotting his revenge against his surviving family members, who he rightly blames for causing the deaths of his beloved mother and grandparents. When Robby is 21 he falls in love with Yana, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Russian building contractor, and together they exact Robby's revenge.
NEW CLEAR DAYS is a novel about the Second Coming of Christ that tells the story of a modern day prophet of the earth, a sort of environmental Jesus. Click the title for a more details.
RESURRECTION is a political novel about a corrupt young lawyer who becomes a state congressman and is running for the same national office when he suffers through a profound weekend blinded in the woods that transforms his heart. Click the title for more.
THE MASTERS OF MARSTON is my first novel, and a very fine one at that, which tells the story of a young man's passage into adulthood in a small New England town. Click the title for more.
NOVELLAS
THE PILLOW TALK NOVELLAS is a collection comprised of The Biographer, The Guns, Dear Madam Gilda, The Play Actors, The Virgin and the Rapist and A Literary Love Triangle. The link leads to a more detailed explanation of the concept and the openings of the novellas.
THE BIOGRAPHER was inspired by the David Petraeus scandal, and is a cocktail of impulsive sexuality heightened by criminal activity and finished with a delicious twist of irony.
THE GUNS is a tragedy about a beautiful young Yale English professor and her newlywed husband, an aspiring novelist, and what transpires when he overcomes writer's block by purchasing a handgun.
DEAR MADAM GILDA is the tale of a poker player who falls in love with the madam of an exclusive New York City escort service.
THE PLAY ACTORS is the story of two aspiring young actors who fall in love and sign a suicide pact in blood before starring together as Romeo and Juliet.
THE VIRGIN AND THE RAPIST is the story of a rapist who later seduces and falls in love with his victim, who never saw the face of her attacker.
A LITERARY LOVE TRIANGLE is half finished and tells the story of a young novelist who packs up his manuscripts and moves to New York City to find a publisher in person. Upon arrival he quickly becomes involved in a deadly love triangle with a faded, middle aged literary agent and the beautiful young editor who acquires his novel.
PROZZIES is the story of a serial killer cop who murders prostitutes, and who falls in love with a prostitute he thinks is an office girl. She has two murders in her past, and neither ever reveals their bloody history to the other until the bloody conclusion of the story.
RANDOM NOVELLAS
THE PEDDLER OF SPIRITS is the four month diary of an anonymous man who runs a speakeasy. His writings begin on New Year's Day and end on the Passover day he is observing Christ's crucifixion.
NATHANIEL CHAUNCEY is what ensues when a boy breaks into a Colonial era mausoleum and removes a skull.
A TRAGEDY OF CIRCUMSTANCE is written in the format of a Shakespeare play--five chapters with scene divisions--and is the tragedy of the star-crossed young lovers, Colin and Caroline.
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
BOB IS THE MACHINE is a series of six stories starring a wacky cast of characters with the main character being me, their author.
THE STINKY BOMBER is a collection of stories highlighted by the five that tell the oddball and comical dealings of the bumbling, self-absorbed and goofy cop named Robert Bombalini--aka the Bomber.
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