My Novels 

  
Marine Private Adrian Wheeler, accused of murdering Iraqi women and children, arrived home to face nothing less than: An unrelenting father who cajoled him into enlisting, PTSD, sexual Inadequacy, a sensational court-martial trial, a sister with HIV. He returned from Baghdad and the Iraq war disabled and disillusioned an amputee with a bad knee. His brother, John Mike, didn’t return at all. Both participated in a reconnaissance mission seeking proof Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, WMDs, a mission that tragically failed, a mission in which innocent women and children died along with John Mike and other combatants. As the sole survivor, Adrian carried the details of that trauma deep within his subconscious, and often drank himself unconscious in hopes of hiding from the visitors who came in his sleep; his domineering father, a retired Vietnam veteran, and Rachael, the girl he left behind. In his mental state and physical condition, he did everything he could to avoid her—and the couch they first made love on before he lost his arm. Just when he began taking control of his life, Adrian was charged with the murder of all those women and children. But did he do it? Could it have been John Mike? Or possibly an insurgent? Adrian’s only hope was to get beyond his trauma and recall the terrible secret buried deep within the cellar of his psyche. That required Rabinowitz (a psychotherapist specializing in PTSD) and Angelo Benedetti (a renowned court-martial defense lawyer) to help him remember—and to convince the court he was innocent—whether he was or not.
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“Two generations of dementia are enough!” Robert Glickman declares in his quest to die with dignity and the likelihood he will be next. To that end, he uses his grandson’s sixth grade quiz book, a locked away metal box, and a secret weapon that eventually comes back to haunt him.

In the meantime, he is embroiled in the lives of other residents: his neurotic sister, Essie who plots to steal his secret weapon for herself; beautiful Christina Abernathy, a retired psychotherapist he instantly falls in love with; Hester, a young server at the Fountain who suffers from progressive mutism; Boyle, a man of mystery with a questionable past for good or evil (Glickman isn’t sure which); and Boyle’s grandson, Santini, a troubled young man caught between the dope dealers he runs with and the FBI wanting to use him.

Will Glickman and Essie beat dementia? Can he win over Christina? And what about Hester, Boyle, and Boyle’s grandson?
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In the distant future, all humans who reach the age of seventy-five experience the 'Click' and die. It's considered God's chronological death sentence intended to prevent overpopulation.

Narcissist, Oliver Hitchcock, who looks to be in his late fifties, is a retired C.I.A. operative, and handsome lady's man. He is also one of the lucky ones, a Beater. At seventy-eight he beat the Click and the aging process. His eleven-year-old grandson, Christopher, is not so lucky. The child is prematurely in the throes of the Click and will die within the year if Hitchcock can't save him.

As Christopher's impending demise clicks louder and louder and precious time evaporates before Hitchcock's eyes, he begins to unravel an ugly conspiracy and the truth about himself. In order to move forward and save his grandson he must overcome his own ego, and quite possibly sacrifice his youthful appearance—even his life.
  

The Vase of Many Colors
A Triadic NOVELization

  
  
The Vase of Many Colors explores the orthodoxic ills in Western Religions in a way that taps into the emotions of ordinary readers looking for serious and important content while at the same time wanting a truly exciting story. To achieve this, it utilizes three distinct parts in which first-person accounts describe the journey of Ira Neebest from birth until he returns from the jungles of India after being kidnapped by ISIS and the Iranian Ayatollah for writing The First Coming, a Nobel Prize winning novel about the evils of religious orthodoxy.
 
The first part (An Eye for an Eye) portrays Ira's parents and their love affair made in heaven… if only they were left alone to relish it. It also portrays their family, religious Jews on Ira’s maternal side and devout atheists on his paternal side. That in and by itself makes for serious conflicts, but that’s the least of it. When Rebecca, Ira’s mother, becomes pregnant out of wedlock carrying Ira in her belly, all hell breaks loose. She is disowned by her father and despised by her mother-in-law. What happens to them reminds me of Romeo and Juliet, well at least Juliet. The second part (Black Hearts & Hungry Bears) revolves around Ira's wife, Natalie who was born into a truly dysfunctional, poor Catholic family and abandoned at the age of ten. She was left at a Catholic boarding school, raped at the age of fifteen by monk teaching there, and then accused of causing his demise. Much later she met and fell in love with Ira at an art studio in Florence, Italy. She could not have imagined what was to follow.  The third part (The First Coming) describes Ira's remarkable journey including his own book, The First Coming, and the trouble it caused him and Natalie. He was shot, kidnapped by Iranian extremists intent on beheading him; he was left to die in the Indian jungle where he confronted a giant white tiger and other creatures during his fits of delusion. In the meantime, Natalie was poisoned by the same extremists and remained in a coma.
 
All of this between the front cover that displays the very vase of many colors and the back cover that quotes one of the many 5 Star reviews. Or each part can be purchased individually.
 
  
 
  
I believe that poetry is the doorway into all fiction, the pillars that underpin all fiction, the dictionary and thesaurus that encompass all fiction. It requires the poet to seriously consider the language being put forward and every work counts. No “ifs, ands, and buts” just solid language that describes a feeling, that makes a point, that paints a scene. It is not so much what we say but how we say it using imagery, metaphors, similes, musical cadence, rhyme, and any other linguistic tool that makes what we writes come alive within a unique mansion containing our unique choice of words.
 
If you want to write fiction (or even non-fiction for that matter), consider starting with poetry. Consider reading the great dead white English poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly, as well as the very great women poets like Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Mary Oliver. I love Mary Oliver. She has the ability to play a symphony with words.
 
Also, read the Poet Laureates like Ted Kooser and Billy Collins. Ted Kooser is one of my favorites. Check out his Delights and Shadows. It will blow you away. It did me.
 
I hope you take a look at my eclectic collection, Metaphorically Speaking. It is unusual in two ways. I have combined a bit of my prosaic wanderings adjacent each of the poems explaining what I happened to be thinking when I wrote them, either about the poem or a bigger issue. I also include my own artwork accompanying the poems, not necessarily because they are all appropriate but because it was fun to do. I guess I have that right.
 
Thank you for your time.
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W.  A President on Trial – A Synopsis
 
The Trial of the decade:
The State of Virginia vs. George W. Bush
*An Adrian Wheeler Novel*
 
Less than ten years have passed since Operation Gadgetry, a military plan executed in Iraq at the at the height of the war and intended to prove President George W. Bush was right to invade the country; that Saddam Hussein had WMDs all along. It was during Operation Gadgetry that Private Adrian Wheeler lost his arm, lost his brother John Mike, and lost Grady Smith, his best friend in Iraq.

Now, ten years later, Adrian is practicing law Enter, Virginian Randolph Grady Smith III, a billionaire industrialist and father of Adrian’s deceased friend Grady Junior. The elder Smith wants revenge. The elder Smith wants to hold George W. Bush accountable for taking the country to war based on lies. There were no WMDs to justify going to war. He’s tired of hearing how great a president Bush was compared to the present occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Smith and Adrian, who also wants revenge for his losses, put together a plan, Justice for All, in which they intend to convince the Governor of Virginia, Oliver St. Clair, to prosecute Bush for the murder of those Virginia soldiers who died in Iraq. The plan incorporates much of the legal reasoning provided by Vincent Bugliosi in his bestselling book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

In carrying out their plan, Adrian becomes privy to murder, blackmail, and kidnapping … and is himself targeted for assassination. That doesn’t count being an accessory after the fact of one of those murders along with his ex-girlfriend, a private detective working with Adrian and Smith in helping put away the past president.
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It all culminates in the trial of the decade: The State of Virginia vs. George W. Bush. You have to read it to believe it!
  

All Three in One Volume