Novels

My current list of novels, ranging from fast-paced contemporary fantasy for all ages to near-future science fiction, along with ghost stories from the distant past and werewolf stories set right here in the present…

Novels about people who might be living right next door to you, balancing on that razor-thin intersection of where normal meets strange…

Finders, Inc.

FindersInc_Cover_300Sometimes those who can’t be found just might not be lost…

As the co-founders of Finders, Inc., Hank Johnson and Bim Mayer have spent the past two decades successfully solving mysteries and — almost miraculously, thanks to Bim’s special skills — finding missing people in and around the remote mountain town of Boone, North Carolina.

Until now.

Their most recent case deals with an outbreak of missing elderly people, all of whom used to teach at nearby Appalachian State University. With the help of teammates Juan and Marly Hernandez, along with Shelby Jamiston, a sharp new private investigator Hank J just hired, they soon learn that the absent old folks all have something else in common. They’re all connected to a shady character with deep, dark ties to both Bim and Hank.

The first book in an all-new mystery series with hints of the paranormal!

204 pages (trade paperback version). Published December 2014 by UnWrecked Press.

Lost & Finders

You can only stay lost for so long…

Mid-summer in the mountains. The breeze carries the smell of pines and campfires, and expensive cars with Florida plates clog the roads. The students at nearby Appalachian State are gone for the summer, and Bim Mayer and Hank Johnson get to enjoy a lazy start to August after a rough winter and busy spring.

But they soon realize that summer’s gotten just a bit too lazy. Something is going down in the remote Blue Ridge Mountain town of Boone, North Carolina. People stop by the Finders, Inc. office to tell stories about whispering strangers just outside of Boone, and they aren’t white-haired tourists asking for directions to the antique stores.

Then, during one week in early August, half a dozen people from all walks of life are reported as missing. The Finder Team suddenly has its hands full with work, with Bim (and his special mental skills) carrying the bulk of the finding on his rounded shoulders.

As summer heats up into a scorching fall and bizarre clues continue to pile up, Bim and Hank might just lose more than a couple pounds and a few nights of sleep. They could lose everything.

Lost & Finders is the second book in the Finder Team series, following Finders, Inc., and it’s coming June 14, 2018! Read chapter 1 here, here, and here.

146 pages (trade paperback version). Published June 2018 by UnWrecked Press.

Family, Pack

FamilyPackCover_200Some family curses really should be passed on…

Tommy Roling does everything humanly possible to raise his infant daughter Corinne the right way. But a half year out of high school, Tommy finds himself a single parent as well as flat broke.

And, with every full moon, he can’t fight the urge to strip off his clothes and run wild through the pastures outside town.

So when a stranger shows up, slashed to death, the day after Tommy’s most recent full-moon run, Tommy must resolve this murder or lose what little he has left. That includes his innocent baby girl Corinne, who just might have inherited his werewolf gene from him.

A paranormal mystery about fatherhood, responsibility, and taking control of your own life, one full moon at a time. The first book in a new “Rural Fantasy” mystery series!

252 pages (trade paperback version). Published July 2011 by UnWrecked Press.

Hunter’s Moon

HuntersMoonCover300Try not to listen to those who whisper…

Tommy Roling has a great freelance job, a healthy daughter, and a new city to call home. Plus he’s finally comfortable with the fact that he’s a werewolf. So why isn’t he happy?

Could it be his daughter’s “terrible twos,” which seem even more terrible because she chooses to stay in her wolf body most of the time? Or is it his growing distance from his family and Nina, his on-again, off-again girlfriend?

Those questions remain unanswered as a group of strangers disrupts the lives of Tommy, his daughter, and his slacker brother. These strangers give Tommy and his small pack a harsh glimpse of the whispering madness that hovers just outside the safe boundaries of their fragile little world.

A world that Tommy just might not be able to hold together on his own.

Hunter’s Moon is the second book in the Family Pack series of “rural fantasy” novels, picking up a year after the first book in the series, Family, Pack.

246 pages (trade paperback version). Published April 2016 by UnWrecked Press.

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic

A Sudden Outbreak of Magic (Cover by M. Selena Jackson)Magic: more contagious than the common cold…

Kelley Strickland and her twin brother Jeroan accidentally step into an ancient battle between a power-hungry Sorcerer—who wants to rid the world of what he calls “renegade” magic-users—and a good Sorcerer who can barely remember his own name.

Kelley soon learns that her new-found way of using magic just might save her adopted city, her brother, and her new, magically infected friends. Or it could doom them all.

A fantasy novel for all ages about ancient power, growing up, and finding your place within those two very different realms. The first book in a new contemporary fantasy series.

232 pages (trade paperback version). Published July 2011 by UnWrecked Press.

A Wild Epidemic of Magic

A Wild Epidemic of Magic (Cover by M. Selena Jackson)Magic: the side effects are painful, if not fatal…

Two months after the explosive and unexpected ending to A Sudden Outbreak of Magic, Jeroan learns all about magic at Dr. Azure’s mysterious training center. Meanwhile, Kelley can’t even leave her hotel room in Dubuque without a chaperone.

When people they care about start disappearing, and people they didn’t think they should care about—like Dr. Azure—get attacked by rogue magic-users, Jeroan and Kelley must work together. Before this growing epidemic of magic turns deadly.

Unfortunately, they learn too late that magic no longer works properly, and they suffer some serious side effects whenever they use it…

The fantasy series for all ages continues!

240 pages (trade paperback version). Published July 2012 by UnWrecked Press.

A Lasting Cure for Magic

A Lasting Cure for Magic (cover by M. Selena Jackson)Contagious magic: good luck trying to find a cure…

Two minutes after the shocking end to A Wild Epidemic of Magic, this third book in the series finds Kelley and Jeroan stranded in Dubuque, Iowa, after losing their parents—and all the Sorcerers they met in the past two months—to the vengeful Druid.

Apparently, the Druid did not enjoy his 200-year banishment.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the twins must once again work together to find a way to regain all of their magic, before time—and magic—runs out for good.

The fantastic third book in the Contagious Magic series, for all ages.

236 pages (trade paperback version). Published May 2013 by UnWrecked Press.

Contagious Magic

Contagious MagicContagious Magic collects A Sudden Outbreak of Magic, A Wild Epidemic of Magic, and A Lasting Cure for Magic, all in one affordable and handsome package.

692 pages (trade paperback version).

Published December 2013 by UnWrecked Press.

A Gathering of Doorways

AGoD_200x300Sometimes you eat the forest, sometimes the forest eats you.

What would you do if your child was lost, and—even though you’d never admit this to anyone—it was all your fault? How would you react? Would you be a hero or a coward? And just how would you get your innocent child out of this situation?

These are all questions Gil Anderson faces when his five-year-old son goes missing somewhere in the dark trees at the edge of the family farm. On that fateful day, Gil must travel through his own version of hell to rescue his child before the forest eats them all.

What Gil doesn’t know is that his wife and son are also on their own dark, solitary journeys as well…

270 pages (trade paperback version). First published in February 2009 by Prime Books, reprinted by UnWrecked Press.

The All Nations Team

ANT_Cover_200x300An unlikely team of misfit players, and the coach fighting to hold them all together…

In his first season as head coach of the All Nations team, former slave George Grunion contends with racist crowds, low team morale, and… the ghost of the previous head coach.

And if George can’t hold the All Nations together, he loses more than his job and his team. He’ll miss his chance to fulfill the prophecy made by his prescient centerfielder Mack — that George will be reunited with his estranged family before the 1918 season ends.

If George doesn’t score this final run, he loses everything.

286 pages (trade paperback version). Published August 2010 by UnWrecked Press.

The Wannoshay Cycle

WannoshayCycle_200x300Aliens crash-land in snowy North America, attempt integration, and fail—violently.

Less than a dozen years from now, over thirty black ships containing the aliens the world will come to know as the Wannoshay arrive on the frozen earth of the Great Plains of America and Canada.

Over the course of a year, the aliens attempt to become part of American society, only to be banished to internment camps when they are suspected of causing a series of deadly explosions at their new jobs.

A handful of humans who made early contact with the Wannoshay stand up for the oppressed aliens. They soon learn, however, that the aliens are not without guilt—a guilt that seems to be killing the Wannoshay with each passing day on Earth…

274 pages (trade paperback version). First published in January 2008 by Five Star Books, reprinted by Merry Blacksmith and UnWrecked Press.

Heart’s Revenge

Heart's RevengeA haunted romance. An unsolved mystery. And a centuries-old curse at the heart of it all.

Off the rough coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Ella Simon tracks down one man—the infamous pirate Blackbeard. She must identify a shipwreck off the coast of the island, but she and her divemaster Mitch Thompson discover much more than that.

They just have to stay alive long enough to solve the mystery of a young girl’s killer before the ghosts of dead pirates take them down to the bottom of the ocean, forever.

A haunted romance, a lovestruck mystery, and a pirate-filled adventure.

236  pages (trade paperback version). First published in May 2006 by Five Star Books, reprinted by UnWrecked Press.

The Prodigal Sons

prodigalsons2013_300_2Three generations of Koopmans live—uneasily—under the same roof of a farm house twenty miles from the center of Holy Cross, Iowa.

Thirty-year-old William Koopman needs to move out. But Dad wanted him on the farm after Grandpa died, so William stayed, married his girl Marcy, and even brought her to the farmhouse to live. The poor girl made it a year before she bolted at the end of a rough winter.

A week after Marcy leaves, William’s shiftless younger brother John returns home. The prodigal son with no money in his wallet, but lots of ideas to make it all back in Holy Cross.

If they all survive this rainy growing season on the farm, it will truly be a miracle.

204 pages (trade paperback version). Published February 2010 by UnWrecked Press.