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From QL 4. Click here to read more.

What Seems True – a novel

After the first black supervisor in a Texas oil refinery is murdered, there’s a damning confession—but the witness will never testify. A tale of murder, sex, racial conflict, and labor strife on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1980.

“What Seems True depends on who you are, where you stand, and what you want–and sometimes …”

See a preview and shop here for What Seems True on Amazon Kindle, Barnes&Noble, and other platforms! https://books2read.com/u/bWa5WW

What Seems True was inspired by a true crime that took place in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1979, a crime for which the shooter has never been convicted or even tried. I was there when a real-life Texas Ranger came to a Texaco oil refinery to investigate the murder of the plant’s first African-American supervisor. While this outcome seems an injustice that cannot be corrected, what continues to intrigue the author is the psychological aspects of the case: the motives of the people involved and the nature of their relationships. What Seems True uses a similar fictional murder and situation to examine those relationships and motives—which may not be as clear cut as they seem at first blush. The novel is also a story about the fraught relationships of workers—white and black, male and female—in a gritty industrial setting on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1980. 

The Safecracker, a tongue-in-cheek legal thriller

COMING SOON – SECOND EDITION in the Fall of 2025

New lawyer Patricia Egan has a safecracker client she doesn’t want and a housemate she doesn’t like, but all three face a common enemy when they separately stumble onto a plot to defraud a group of Carolina cities developing a visionary alternative energy project—and end up in the crosshairs of the conspirators.
 

Ruminations: stories, essay, and poems – 2d edition in the Fall of 2025

Anthology – Stories, essays, and poems accumulated during the author’s journey in writing over fifty years, spanning the Vietnam War, a legal career, and travels in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“What seems true depends on who you are, where you stand, and what you want—and sometimes you’re wrong.”

COMING SOON – SECOND EDITION

Stories/essays: These range across a variety of genres (Sci-Fi to suspense), settings (Southern backroads to a desert wasteland), and viewpoints (intimate first-person to remote third person). The Vietnam-era related works were almost all written in draft form while the author was in the Mekong Delta or shortly after his return home in 1970.

Poems: Mostly free verse, examining the mysteries of life and death through irony, paradox, whimsy, allusion, and allegory.