West of Tomorrow
“Fate hunts us down in our sleep…”
Clay Conover, retired Marine officer turned corporate trainer has successfully re-careered and has a long-term plan. A plan that is grounded in a sense of duty, loyalty and tempered by a healthy dose of realism. Unfortunately,, Clay’s plan does not account for the hiring of Sheera Prasad. Young, hungry and ambitious, Sheera has an agenda all her own.
In the collision of wills that follows, Clay is confronted with a choice that will define him, not simply professionally but personally. Will he take the ethical high road, or opt for self-serving rationalization? West of Tomorrow is an intelligent romance laced with corporate intrigue, betrayal and crowned by the undiscovered phoenix living in all of us.
Best Case Scenario: Act I of Nyra's Journey
“Isn’t hope in some form our best case scenario?”
More than a year out of college, Nyra’s beginning to wonder when her life gets started. Was it like this for her mother? She doubts it, but things were different, back then. Nyra’s reality is nothing like her mother’s.
Nyra gets that every generation faces its own challenges and she’s smart enough to know that it’s on her to overcome them. That’s why she’s worked two jobs all through college, studied so hard and tried not to worry too much about her mounting student loan debt.
Still, this feeling of wading through wet cement is getting old. Buried somewhere deep in the half-formed jumble of dreams for her future, Nyra hears the siren song of hope whispering to her. She’s so ready. But is the song she hears really hope or just hopeful illusion. Nyra would be lying if she claimed to know.
Fifty (50) percent of all royalties earned through the sale of Best Case Scenario, print or electronic are donated to Stand Up for Racial Justice.
The Year of Maybe Act II of Nyra's Journey
He’s nothing like her dreams…and everything she wants.
Nyra’s transition form college grad scrambling for her first career job to full independence is as on track as it can be, these days. Her new marketing job is going well and even if she’s still living at home, Nyra’s pretty sure the light at the end of the tunnel is not an onrushing train.
Still, she gets bored, sometimes. A whimsical decision to take up surfing brings her together with Tai Abrega, a professional surfer and shaper so delicious Nyra’s imagination hasn’t even gotten around to fantasizing about a man like him, yet. And surfing awakens a latent, mystical connection with the sea as strong as her driven passion for the man himself.
But embracing one possibility often demands abandoning another. How can Nyra fit Tai and the seductive siren song of freedom into her “safer” vision of perfect? Can she blend her conventional world with his freespirited lifestyle, or is she doomed to disappointment and heartbreak?
Truth is a shapeshifter. Sometimes it slams into us, in a head-on collision, changing everything in an eyeblink. But more often, change arrives camouflaged in the ordinary, its significance becoming clear only upon reflection.
Sooner or later, we realize that we are at once our own jailers and the instruments of our own freedom, streaking toward a destiny lurking just beyond our headlights.
This anthology is a collection of Dirk’s short stories, some previously published, others released for the first time in this volume. Other stories are adapted from his longer fiction, as a kind of introduction to first-time readers.
Tier Zero, Vol. I of the Knolan Cycle
Two bedrock articles of faith woven into much of science fiction writing chronicling hypothetical first contact between Earth and aliens are that we will necessarily know when it happens and that alien motives for that contact are likely to be malevolent.
In Tier Zero, Volume I of the Knolan Cycle, first contact between Earth and Knola happened over 30 years ago. For an even so profoundly impactful, it seems strange that the event has escaped everyone’s notice. But that’s what’s happened and life on Earth (or Kurrithaal as the Knolans call it) goes on in apparent blissful ignorance that anything significant has taken place.
As for Knolan motives in making contact in the first place? Let’s just say its…complicated.
Eryinath-5, The Dancer Nebula, Vol. II of the Knolan Cycle
“The universe is rarely respectful of our plans.” Khuurus, First Guardian of Knola.
Newly returned from his first successful mission as an officer in the Knolan Shock Forces, Hāthar barely has time to unpack before he’s drawn into the planning of a new and far more dangerous mission than the one he has just completed.
The Guardian isn’t asking Hāthar to lead it—only to plan it. And with his mate Arra carrying their first child, he’s never had a more compelling reason to stick close to home. But it’s a dark time for the Concordant and Hāthar has a problem with planning a dangerous mission someone else must execute. For him, Saʹ ang Kurinth, the Knolan call to duty is more than words.
The mission’s best chance for success is for Hāthar to lead it. And if it fails, the safety of the Concordant and Knola, the world he’s come to love as home will be in realistic danger. Duty, love and honor all lead Hāthar to the same conclusion. But even the Oracle’s uncanny perceptiveness cannot predict the outcome—and the fate of twenty-three systems including Hāthar’s old home Earth—all hang in the balance.