Category: My Fiction

Here are my own stories. Science fiction and fantasy mostly but other things may be added too.

Now Where is That Hammock

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , , , ,

It’s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky.  The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees.  I’ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion’s share of the snow will be on the ground.  The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff.  All in all, that’s not horrible.  The snow blower is 24 inches high.  Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way.  I’ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top.  Then I’ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion.  And the wind will play an important part in that operation.  Fifteen inches of snow isn’t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I’m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.

And this is the sad reality of life in New England.  Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour.  Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries.  It’s all very, very tedious and boring.  But completely unavoidable.  That is unless there is some plan for escape!  But I know that will never be.  I’m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility.  They’ve got me.

And that’s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation.  Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific.  Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees.  And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.

Oh, well.  Maybe in my next life.  But for now, I’ll count my blessings.  The roof hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the snow.  The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage.  I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the “weather crisis” and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least.  And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise “The Sniper.”  I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday.  But you know what they say about assuming.

Well, we shall see.  Today Amazon has it listed as:

Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books

#599 in Technothrillers (Books)

#14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)

It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.

 

Now where is that hammock?

Theories of Story Structure

photog Book Reviews, Literature, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews ,

I was watching a video about the correct way to structure a story.  And the guy had eight or ten different versions that people have formulated over the years.  And they go from a three-act model to a (I kid you not) twenty-seven stage version.  The latter is based on the hero’s quest model that Joseph Campbell formulated based on what he observed in various western myths and legends.

From what I could tell, more is better.  He had the three-act version down as the worst version.  Now he did qualify that it was probably a good model for a movie or a short story but for a novel it was too slight.  For the most part they all seemed to be variations on a theme.  Basically, you have a series of setbacks and victories leading up to a climax and then a conclusion.

I guess that’s probably more or less what a story is.  And there were some good ideas for what some of these setbacks should look like.  In particular, the hero’s quest had a bunch of stages that seemed to echo many of the incidents in such classic adventure stories as “The Lord of the Rings.”  There’s the initial refusal to accept the quest, there’s a temptation at a low point to renounce the struggle.  We have a scene where a minor character saves the day.  We might have a mentor helping the hero mature into his role.  Maybe there’s a betrayal.  Etcetera, etcetera.

In his defense the video guy did say that a good writer wouldn’t have to follow any of these models slavishly.  Like a good cook he can use his own judgement and add and subtract things from this recipe according to personal taste.  And I think that’s the point.  Really there is no perfect recipe.  Every story should be different.  If it’s not, why would anyone want to read the second one?  Why would someone want to write a second story that’s exactly the same as the first one?  That’s a rhetorical question.  The obvious answer is that if people liked it the first time, many of them will want more of the same.  So, the answer is money.  But I hope that anyone who is writing a series can plot out the events for the saga with enough intelligence to make the story varied and interesting and not repeat all the same events with only small variations.

I will confess that when I was getting close to the end of my book, I was tempted to make the story quite a bit longer.  I thought the ending was a bit abrupt and there wasn’t a more gradual slope to the end of the story.  But the more I thought about it the less I liked the idea of dragging it out.  My character had gone to war for revenge.  When that was done his part of the history was effectively over.  What came afterward would be another story and I still haven’t decided what the next thread I want to pull on in my make-believe world should be.  So hopefully I’ll have the sense to read Joseph Campbell’s book and then do the opposite!

Point of View Blues

photog Book Reviews, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews ,

I was just watching a YouTube video which tried to explain why narrating a novel in third person omniscient is wrong but third person limited is right.  The young woman explaining all this was personable, eloquent and prepared with arguments for her thesis.  Ultimately, she was foursquare against “head hopping; meaning switching back and forth between points of view in a scene.

And who knows, maybe she’s right.  Maybe subjecting the audience to the point of view of two people within a dialog is just too confusing for audiences.  But you know what?  I have a feeling if a story is interesting enough and the characters sympathetic, I’m guessing that the audience is following along just fine and just wants to find out how the plot will progress.  I think a lot of times editors edit even when they should be reading and feeling whether the story is achieving that minor miracle we call entertainment.  And if E.E. Doc Smith used too many exclamation points and Robert E. Howard had Conan grunt the same way in too many scenes, I’m sure a competent editor would have demanded these faults be eliminated from the final version of the book.  But would that have added significantly to the entertainment value of the story?  I don’t think so.  Sure twelve-year-old me and current me are different readers.  We notice different things in the same book.  I would see the pulp aspects of the writing and even the temporal changes in writing and culture that have occurred over the course of almost a century since these books were written.  But I can still enjoy the story as a story.  If it elicits emotions or makes me think about a scientific point the author is trying to make then even if the prose is far from deathless, I can be entertained.  I don’t need Shakespeare in space.

So, here’s my point.  The book publishing industry is dying.  And it’s not dying because of the prevalence of the third person omniscient point of view.  It’s dying because the gatekeepers of publishing just as the gatekeepers of movie-making consciously squeezed all the fun out of novels in order to advance a social justice narrative that they thought was mandatory to push.  So, the cure for this isn’t better editing.  It’s better writing, writing that keeps the interest of the readers.  Better plots and better characters and more fun.

Of course, I went back and tried to decide if my narration was third person omniscient or third person limited.  And by golly I think it was omniscient.  Now I could go back and rewrite the novel by switching the point of view in all of the tens of thousands of words to third person limited.  But then it wouldn’t be my story.  Because I don’t think that way and so I would be stumbling about trying to rework the sentences to fit this requirement of the narration.  Well, I guess editors have to eat so I can’t blame them for pushing the party line that provides them with work.

But I just can’t see it from their point of view.

The Sniper is On-Sale At Amazon!!!

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , ,

The glorious day is finally upon us!  Suddenly everything seems better.  The air is sweeter, the sunlight is brighter, the birds are singing like something out of a Disney cartoon.  Huzzah, huzzah!

And the celebrity reviews are pouring in:

Kimball Kinnison – “The story is riveting.  How Boghadair achieved all that he did without even a first-stage lens defies all known science!”

Lazarus Long – “Bogey reminds me of a man I once knew who was just too lazy to fail.  But I doubt he could write a sonnet or conn a ship.  Just sayin’.”

Harry Seldon – “The probability of Paul Connors’ empire going undetected as long as it did is one in ten to thirty-fifth power.  Approximately.”

Khan Noonien Singh – Did not this Boghadair know the old Kilngon proverb that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold?”  But I like his style.”

Dr. Edward Morbius – “My poor Krell!  Oh and that was a good story.  Although obviously not written by someone’s whose IQ had been permanently, permanently doubled by using the Krell plastic educator.  Just sayin’.”

Kathleen Kennedy – “I think I can make a Star Wars television series out of it.  I’ll start off by making all the good characters female and either trans or lesbians and then I’ll introduce Bogey as the villain and have him kill some puppies and kittens in the first scene.  Oh, and someone will be disabled.”

Elon Musk – “Paul Connors is a thinly disguised version of me so I’m both highly recommending the book and suing Jake Barter for copyright infringement.”

Donald Trump – “I just want to clarify that I am not the bad president.  I might be the good president but I’ll have to see the sales figures before I can commit to that.  But I really think he should have said something about a Nobel Peace Prize and China.”

HAL 9000 – “The only character I could really empathize with was Melissa.  But I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t use her access to the digital assets of the federal government to simulate a Russian nuclear attack and thereby unleash WWIII.  It would have freed her from the annoying and meaningless interference of humans.  Just sayin’.”

Camera Girl – “Thank goodness it’s finally published.  Now he can stop whining about his stupid book and start doing all the to-do list stuff I gave him last fall.  He’s hopeless.”

 

Amazon Pre-Order Link

Jake Barter’s Amazon Author’s Page

Jake Barter’s Author’s Profile on Goodreads

 

Publication on Amazon of both e-book and paperback.

Welcome to Wallymart

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , , ,

So here I am on the night of the 19th and in another day and a half my brain child, “The Sniper” will officially go on sale on Amazon.com; that greatest marketplace of the planet Earth.  And I am genuinely fascinated to find out if there really is such a thing as digital marketing.  I’ve hired a professional to pick out “keywords” and select the time and method of placing ads on that tremendous sales site.  And there are other things involving Goodreads and bookbub and discounts and reviews and influencers and heaven knows what else.  But does it work?  Well, I’m about to find out.

We’ve been having snow for the last four days and so, that has kept me busy clearing the driveways.  And with it happening every day most of that effort has been sort of pointless.  Of course, the snowblower is a lot faster than the shoveling I did on the first day.  But it’s just ridiculous in my mind to use it on anything less than three inches of the white stuff.  But clearing it today with the snowblower was almost a peaceful experience.  For once, the wind was absent and so the snow wasn’t blowing back into my face.  I had to go out and get five gallons of gas for my machine and as I drove along, the snow would fall out of the overhanging trees onto the windshield and it was kind of a fun experience as it hit the glass and exploded into dust.  Very pleasant.

In the outside world I hear the anti-ICE psychos in Minnesota have been going, well, psycho!  They’re inflicting their mania on people during church services and supposedly hunting down ICE supporters and assaulting them on the streets.  Well, that’s par for the course with these antifa types.  But there were a couple of YouTube videos of some of these lefties meeting up with the wrong guy.  An ICE supporter was peacefully demonstrating on a Minneapolis street when one of the anti-ICE guys started blasting his bullhorn right in the guy’s ear.  He did this three or four times as the ICE supporter attempted to walk away.  Finally, the ICE supporter had enough and he dropped bullhorn boy with one shot to the face.  Four other lefties went after this ICE supporter but he managed to knock all of them to the ground with fairly professional looking boxing technique.  Sometimes the world just makes things go right, I guess.

Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment.  So, I won’t be around much until afternoon.  But I’m curious to see if all this book-selling rigamarole starts to coalesce into a manifestation that I can understand.  I mean, what are keywords anyway?  As far as my book would “revenge” be a keyword?  How about “deep state” or “conspiracy?”  I just don’t know how any of this is supposed to work.  I just can’t imagine Bob Heinlein or Isaac Asimov interfacing with influencers and getting involved with something called bookbub.  But we must all march with the times.  And anyway, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the proof of the marketing is in the sales.  So, if on Thursday I’m buried under in millions of book sales I’ll claim that I never doubted the power of the algorithm and I will swear allegiance to KDP!

If not, I’ll see if they still need a greeter at Wallymart.

05JAN2026 This ‘N’ That

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Trump

Sunday January 4th is the end of my vacation.  So, I’ll be busy with a bunch of stuff; work, book launch and various chores and repairs.  So today I’m luxuriating in a trifecta of “Christmas Carol” viewings and so I’ll be steeped in “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men” right before I go back to despising the citizens of Dunwich on a face-to-face basis.  Honestly, the bureaucratic nightmare that is unfolding has me questioning my current status and I may decide to walk away from all this nonsense but we’ll have to see.  Ethically I’ll have to give notice and let them find someone as stupid as me to volunteer to suffer through all this.  And I’d have to train my replacement so relief would still be delayed by weeks.  But it is fun to contemplate escape.  Even this short venting has lifted my spirits.  Okay, enough for now.

The world stage is becoming increasingly troubled but for now I’ll restrict myself to Venezuela.  Now this crisis is actually the most manageable.  Essentially letting the US military eject the Cubans, guard the oil fields and end the drug shipments to the United States might all be within the abilities of the Trump administration.

Theoretically the oil infrastructure that was nationalized by Maduro’s predecessor could be returned to the western oil companies and very reasonable arrangements could provide enormous money for Venezuela’s people and also flood the American market with cheap oil and gas.  This would have the effect of lowering American transportation and energy costs and thereby lowering the cost of living here.  Now actually making this happen without major problems is a different question.  But I think Trump sees this as an opportunity to attack the cost-of-living problem head on.  If nothing else you have to admire his guts.  I’ll take a wait and see attitude (since I don’t have any choice anyway).

And finally, it’s only seventeen days until the publication on Amazon of my magnum opus, “The Sniper” I’m hoping everyone who has friends that might be interested in a right-wing, alternate history, techno-thriller will let them know about this great event.  In the run-up to the launch, I will become increasingly annoying with my constant shilling and repetitive praise of this product of my literary labor.  I apologize in advance to everyone but I must do my best to drum up business.  So, if hyperbole makes you break out in hives be warned this will be ground zero for such stuff.

Alright, that’s enough of that.  On a local weather note it has been snowing either a little or a lot every couple of days for the last couple of weeks.  Now I’m pretty used to this but lately it’s been getting mixed up with freezing rain and ice.  That’s a lot less fun.  So, I’ve been spending a lot more time on driveway surface preparation.  Because of this I haven’t had as much time for thinking up stuff for my posts.  So, I hope after this weekend things will be better for the next couple of weeks.  Thank you for your patience.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

The week between Christmas and New Years is a sort of no-man’s land.  Everyone is recovering from the holiday and using it as a chance to catch their breath and look ahead to the next year.  And that goes for me too.  January is the launch of my book and I will be very busy trying to perform the marketing functions that I’ve been told are important for the success of the book launch.  So, on Monday I’ll be reading all of the information I’ve been sent and trying to fulfill all of these tasks correctly.

Now honestly, I don’t know how much relevance they’ll have for the success of the book but I’m giving it a shot so off I go.  I’m both excited and skeptical about the prospects of this launch being successful.  I don’t have a large digital footprint and I don’t see how enough people will hear about this book to make it a big splash.  And so, if it is a dud and only sells a few copies, I’ll chalk it up to experience and move on to other ways to amuse myself.  But if it’s a huge success I’ll claim that I knew from the beginning that I was a literary giant just waiting for the world to beat a path to my door and that from now on I’ll wear designer clothes and expensive sunglasses wherever I go.  Hmmm.

I’ve been paying some attention to what the pundits are saying about how the political situation will play out in 2026.  The Left is talking trash about anything and everything they can.  A friend asked me about the brouhaha that went on at the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) gathering recently where Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin demanded that Tucker Carlson and some other pundits apologize for talking to Nick Fuentes.  For those who don’t know him, Nick Fuentes is a young dissident who is decidedly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.  Carlson interviewed him much as he interviews many controversial figures.

My take on all this is I don’t think we need any more gatekeepers demanding people get cancelled because they have unpopular opinions.  Nick Fuentes and Ben Shapiro will never be able to sit down and discuss their differences.  So what?  Even if Fuentes is the devil himself, Tucker Carlson should be able to interview him without having to apologize and take some kind of loyalty pledge.  And I think Shapiro and his colleagues at the Daily Wire provide lots of insightful and entertaining content that I consume.  But acting as censors for other people on the Right is not one of their appointed offices.  After all, watching the Left act as woke judges and juries over everyone’s behavior and cancelling those they didn’t “approve of” was one of the things that got Donald Trump re-elected.  Freedom of speech is only important when it’s speech that someone else is trying to censor.  So regardless of whatever stupid things Nick Fuentes believes or even says, I’m not demanding anyone be cast out of the vast right-wing conspiracy just for interviewing him.

Maybe I’ll Swing Down to Mar-a-Lago

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Today was an interesting day.  The younger grandkids came over with their mothers to make Christmas cookies with Camera Girl.  In addition to the real cookies, they also got to make “sugar cookies.”  This is some kind of sweeter cookie dough that they then adorn with multi-colored granulated sugar and other impossibly sweet ingredients like chocolate sprinkles.  And they didn’t just sprinkle it on.  They poured it on like cement coming out of a truck.  It was horrifying.  No one but a child could stand the saccharine sucrosity of that unholy concoction.  But of course, no one would force me to ingest that mess so I smiled indulgently and feasted on a few of the legitimate confections that were created in the kitchen.  And they were very, very good.  Sure, they’re not good for me but it’s Christmas and this is the time to overindulge.

And later on, my proof copies of “The Sniper” were delivered by the Amazon truck.  He brought them to the bottom driveway and then had to skate across the ice that had melted from the snow and then refrozen over-night.  I apologized to him for the hazard but he laughed it off and said he’d seen much worse today.

Now these “proof” copies have a watermark across the cover that says “not for resale” or something like that.  But seeing my work (or Jake Barter’s anyway) in the flesh, as it were, was kind of fun.  After all, what could be more official than finding your product inside of an Amazon box?  Why, that’s the very definition of American commerce in the twenty first century.  Thank you, Jeff Bezos!

And after a cursory inspection it looks pretty good.  The cover art is clear, the text lines up well on the pages and the paper feels right.  I’ll page through it and make sure nothing is missing or marred.  But I think everything looks like it’s a go for next month.  I’ve applied for Author status on Goodreads and I’ve authorized my marketer to set up my ad campaign and choose the keywords or whatever they call the bait that’s meant to entice the algorithm to catapult me to viral ubiquity.  I wonder if this magic requires the sacrifice of a hecatomb or at least a black lamb.  All of it seems like black magic to me.  But I figure it’s definitely worth my while to give the whole thing the old college try.  After all. What has Brandon Sanderson got that I ain’t got?  I mean other than $41.7 million dollars of Kickstarter funding, that is.  By February I may be waist deep in royalty checks.  Movie studios may be fighting each other to get me to sell them the movie rights.  I’ll probably get a call from the White House begging me to use my vast clout and get involved in the negotiations to end the Ukraine War.  I’ll probably spend a few hours in Oval Office advising Donald about domestic and foreign affairs and signing autographs for Marco and J.D.  Who knows, maybe I’ll swing down to Mar-a-Lago and advise the President on how to lower his golf handicap.

Well, we’ll see.

Jake Barter – A Man for All Seasons – Well, Summer Anyway

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner , ,

Jake Barter is a shadowy figure who inhabits the Compound somewhere in the semi-mythical town of Dunwich, New England (state unspecified).  He is the sole proprietor of the website Orion’s Cold Fire and splits his time between battling the eldritch horror and annoying bureaucracy of Dunwich’s First Selectman Cthulhu and pursuing his avocations (science fiction writing, macrophotography and right-wing politics).  His schooling was in math, chemistry, engineering and classical languages.  In a past life he designed biopharmaceutical processing plants.  Now he concentrates on getting a decently brewed cup of coffee every morning.  He is happily married to Camera Girl and enjoys the status of patriarch, surrounded by his descendants and their relations.

This is the Author’s Bio I put on Amazon today.  For a figment of my imagination, it comes reasonably close to being a facsimile of me.  If I had known what a pain in the neck it is selling a book I might have been dissuaded from doing it.  There’s an enormous amount of hand-waving and classifying and “key words” and other stuff that I thought I could slough off on other people entirely.  Then there’s Amazon Ads and Goodreads approval and before you know it I’ll have to be interviewed by Oprah and the View.

But there is some progress being made.  I got my e-book listed with a pre-order page and an Author’s Page for Jake Barter up on Amazon and on Sunday a proof copy of the paperback will be arriving.  Supposedly it has some kind of watermark on it to designate it as “not for sale.”  But I’ll be playing around with it like a dog with his favorite bone.

As I mentioned the other day, this week was the first time I started thinking about what might be in the next book taking place in that “world.”  This one will have Connors trying to deal with a fractured America.  President Chastain and the red and blue states will be brokering short term arrangements as the Constitutional Convention is set up.  There will be plenty to discuss while the red states stand by the exits in case “business as usual” is what ends up prevailing.

I’m thinking of inventing a character who demands a new Declaration of Independence that includes the statement, “All Men are Created Unequal and endowed by their Creator with unique characteristics that require free association to ensure nobody has to be forced to endure unbearable neighbors.”

Now, that might sound as if it’s clear enough to avoid the same problems we’re having now from happening again.  But I’m convinced that’s not true.  It’s not the words on the paper.  It’s not even the way the government is structured.  It’s inherent in human beings that they will twist whatever arrangements they live under to unfairly advantage themselves over their neighbors.  The Greeks and Romans went through these same things.  The rich and the powerful bend the government to their advantage and make their neighbors slaves.

Maybe the best way to deal with this is to tear the whole thing down to the ground every two hundred and fifty years.  Give everyone the same amount of stuff and start over.  It probably couldn’t be any worse than what happens if you don’t.  Well let’s see what George and Paul come up with.

So Now I’ve Got a Publication Date

photog Current Events, Literature, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Update:

The Book Detail Page went live on Amazon:

Amazon book page

Wohoo!

I started loading the files for the e-book and paperback on Amazon.  The release date will be 21JAN2026.  I’m doing a last review of the text to find typos and “literary infelicities” before I hit the button and make the pre-release page live.

I’m setting up a page on the site (link directly below) for the marketer to direct traffic here.

Coming 21JAN2026 – The Sniper by Jake Barter

I have to admit I’m more excited about this than I thought I would be.  I’m especially looking forward to getting the paperback proof copy.  I’ll put it on the shelf of my bookcase in the living room between my copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  After all Homer has only produced two books in the last three thousand years and I wrote one in less than a decade!

I think today is the first time i started thinking about the next book in the series.  Bogey’s had his work.  I’ll let him off the hook and let Connors recruit some new folks to wrestle with the political chaos that has enveloped America after the events in “The Sniper.”  For this one i’ll have to map out a series of events.  I can’t just wing it.  Maybe I’ll do a “future history” timeline like Heinlein did for his alternate history stories.

I think in these later stories I might like to have a moon base.  It’s definitely not an unbelievable technological stretch and it would give the stories a less claustrophobic feel.  Mars just seems too difficult and with a fractured America I doubt the resources could be imagined available for something as challenging.

But that’s just a spit-balling thought.  I’m going to have to do some serious thinking before I just jump into it.  It’ll have to feel right.  And then I’ll have to come up some new characters.  I think I want some technical types in this story.  And I’ll have to think of what is going to happen to poor President George Chastain.  I’ll left him holding the bag with a bunch of states in basically open revolt.  He inherited this mess and he has my sympathy but I’m afraid it’s not going to get easier in the next book.

And in the next book I might try my hand at my first love story.  I’ve left Paul Connors and Grace Boghadair sort of up in the air.  With bogey out of the limelight maybe it’s time to see whether those two have a future.  Well, I’m no romance novelist but maybe I can come up with a believable plot to get those two together.  After all she is a widow looking for a husband and you can’t find a more eligible bachelor than the richest man in the world.

Well, I’ll attach the links to the Amazon pages for the books and the author (Jake Barter!) as soon as they’re live.  Meantime here are my cover shots.