Novels | Novellas | Graphic Novels | Stories
Art Inventory

	The Martian Marauders, 2012 Available from Double Dragon Publishing After the evacuation of the Earth's population to Mars, the crew of the Typhoon I spaceship must fight native Martian terrorists led by their new human Emperor, political agitator and traitor Sam Hergs.  But Captain Jack Commer compromises the mission when he kidnaps the Emperor's consort and falls in love with her. Book One of The Jack Commer series which includes Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, Nonprofit Ladies, and Seven of Cups/Beyond DamnStar.
	The First Twenty Steps, 2011 Available from: amazon.com for the Kindle barnesandnoble.com for the Nook An ex-convict finds himself mixed up in a motorcycle gang's plan to heist a hyperspatial supercomputer.
	my amazon.com author page my Goodreads author page my LibraryThing author page

Novels

Seven of Cups/Beyond DamnStar, 2012
Former Typhoon II ship’s engineer Phil Sperry struggles with his reversion to Alpha Centaurian brainwashing and his treason to the human race. Book Four of the Jack Commer series.

The Soul Institute, 2011
Himal Steina realizes his recurring dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed Writer in Residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses. But as the Soul Institute splinters under the weight of its unhinged Director and his secret society of Overcrons, the Director’s teenage son consolidates command of the Paint Sniffing Gang, and panic and violence build in the small coastal Texas college town.
Soul Institute Images

Akard Drearstone, 2011
A twelve year-old girl living at a rock commune near Austin, Texas in the summer of 1975 observes the rise and fall of the Akard Drearstone Group as she falls disastrously in love with the group's severely disturbed bass player.

CommWealth, 2010
The CommWealth system, introduced just six months previously, has outlawed private property.  Your house or your clothes can be demanded by anyone to be enjoyed for thirty days.  As actors in the Forensic Squad theatrical troupe adapt to this giddy, chaotic society, CommWealth probes their breaking of the Four Rules, and several members find themselves leading a suicidal revolution.

Nonprofit Ladies, 2010
Ranna Kikken creates The Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth at her nonprofit Cat Farm, but its first conference in 2020 is destroyed when intruder Joe Commer time travels from 2036 to lecture CTESOPE on the coming breakdown of the solar system and the destruction of the Earth itself in 2033.  Book Three of The Jack Commer series which includes The Martian Marauders, Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, and Seven of Cups/Beyond DamnStar. The first book of the Jack Commer series, The Martian Marauders, is now available from Double Dragon Publishing.  Jack Commer, Supreme Commander and Nonprofit Ladies have also been accepted for publication by Double Dragon Publishing.

Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, 2010
Jack Commer brings poor negotiating skills to the war with the fascist Alpha Centaurian Empire, losing his crew to Centaurian brainwashing as he and his wife are sent to be tortured on a barren planet.  Book Two of The Jack Commer series which includes The Martian Marauders, Nonprofit Ladies, and Seven of Cups/Beyond DamnStar. The first book of the Jack Commer series, The Martian Marauders, is now available from Double Dragon Publishing. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander and Nonprofit Ladies have also been accepted for publication by Double Dragon Publishing.
Jack Commer pastel

Sortmind, 2010
What if the answer to any question could be delivered in a telepathic instant? And if a database of all our queries and responses were being used to track the progress of the coming apocalypse? High school art students Oliver and Sam struggle to define themselves in the face of urban terrorism and the malfunctioning, reality-altering Telepathic Database. 
Sortmind Images

The University of Mars, 2009
In a dysfunctional 2065 where religious zealots restrict the world to outdated twentieth century technology, eighteen year-old Bill North seeks comrades dedicated to the further evolution of humanity. But he wonders whether the impoverished university he finds in a bombed-out city might just be a satire of his urge for transcendence. And are alien beings using the university to research their own psychological flaw?
University of Mars Images | Background Page

Ocean Singe Horror, 2008
Billy Bolamme, sixteen year-old star Junior Dropout Basketball League player, transmogrifies into avenging avatar Ocean Singe Horror after missing his 500th point in a row. In a temper tantrum he kills a taunting radio announcer with hand grenades, then blows up the entire sports arena in order to eliminate ten thousand witnesses to his crime. From here on out his fame and luck can only grow.

Parts I and II/Notice and Dream Topology, 1992
In Part I a naive and disconnected artist gives a party to celebrate his career, only to find himself drafted that same night into a mindless war. In Part II he becomes a sergeant leading frightened yuppies against an unstoppable Army of Evil. A partial 1992 second draft, Notice and Dream Topology, was revised into a play titled Linstar, which unfortunately proved to be a bombastic failure.  However, NADT, in cutting out Part II, the interminable war itself, has some promise and may be revised.  And I might want to write a completely new Part II.

Zarreich/The Galaxies Groan Within, 1983
An adolescent comes to live in a small town with his grandmother, only to discover that all his memories have been wiped out.  He panics and commits a murder, then finds himself a member of a secret commune remembered only in dreams.
Zarreich Characters - Images

Akard Drearstone, the original 1976-1978 Draft 1
In May-July 2011, I finally realized a long-standing desire to scan in the 1976-1978 rough draft of Akard Drearstone, which was thoroughly altered in numerous subsequent versions to, by 2011, become a publishable novel.  The sprawling 1,587 pages of Chapters 1-31 come out to 661,581 words, 2,298 pages in a single Word document.  To that I’ve added two appendices: the fourteen songs Akard composed and a short story I wrote some years later called “Chapter 32,” bringing the total to 681,656 words in 2,376 pages. The 7/19/11 blog entry covers this obsessive project in much detail.

Nova Scotia, 1974
Two boys drive a 350 m.p.h. Corvette to Nova Scotia in one night in a demented quest to save the world.

The Fifty-First State of Consciousness, 1973
The Governor of the Fifty-First State, in despair over a failed love affair, begins the Apocalypse at a shopping mall.
The Fifty-First State of Consciousness painting

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Novellas

The First Twenty Steps, 2011 | Available as an eBook from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com
An ex-convict finds himself mixed up in a motorcycle gang's plan to heist a hyperspatial supercomputer. 
The First Twenty Steps painting

The Holy Dark Ages, 1994
Jim Piston narrates his journey through a post-World War III Texas and his enslavement at a commune dedicated to making a plutonium bomb. Escaping, he befriends a dying Air Force flying saucer pilot, then gathers his own commune together and captains the pilot’s crippled saucer on a desperate ocean trip to South Carolina. He repairs the saucer with the help of another commune led by his old enemy Akard Drearstone, only to crash it in remote Alaska, stranding the few survivors of both communes there.

The Psychobeauty, 1984
Ninety-seven percent of the earth's population inexplicably commits suicide, ending civilization and leaving scattered refugees struggling to resist their own suicidal urges.

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Graphic Novels

The Adventures of Tree Leopard, 1985
Leopards build a flying saucer underneath the Municipal Ping Pong Stadium, kidnapping and reprogramming humans to act as their slave technicians.

The Story of Lester Quartz's Fantastic Journey, Volume 1, 1976
A youngster finds himself physically inside the city of another person's brain, links up with urban terrorists trying to destroy that mind, and finally takes control of the mind himself in order to become a rock star.

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Stories

Roadblock Zarreich, 2010
Revised version of "The Roadblock" and posted to blog.sortmind.com.

Starvation Levels of the Infinite, 2008
Astronaut Billy McFarland dies, marooned with Administrator Ming on a Jovian moonlet. But when the story’s next section reintroduces him as an auto mechanic waylaid by the seductive Sheila, it becomes evident that powerful moods are thrusting Billy and his girlfriend into new incarnations and higher levels of awareness. 

Perpetual Starlit Night, 2008
Archeologist Sairjin ShiriKor arrives on a tiny artificial gravity platform in deep space to give a scholarly lecture. However, the barbarian colonists scoff at her evident delusion that she’s anything but a criminal sent to be incarcerated on the changeless and apparently motionless platform.

33, 1985
After graduating from library school I was ready to open up with some new fiction, and these miscellaneous vignettes seemed to coalescence into some sort of surreal story "on the verge of meaning something." They later expanded to the plot of my novel Parts I and II and also morphed into "Starvation Levels of the Infinite."  The story was called "33" because that's how many typewritten pages it consisted of.

Chapter 32, 1985
Continuation of New Akard 1979.  Akard feels a return of creative power, Pete Sponge revives from his coma, and Jim Piston cries his eyes out upon realizing what a dweeb he really is.  Later incorporated into the 1994 and later versions of Akard Drearstone.

Oliver, 1984
The start of an experimental novel about future wars in the South Pacific and young men of the following generation, unable to truly appreciate what their fathers have accomplished, instead wasting time cruising downtown streets.  Parts of this abandoned effort were incorporated into the early Sortmind.

Damage Patrol, 1984
Lucy earns a promotion as an Updater who can reach into psychologically disturbed people's minds and flip the switch.  Naturally there are complications.

The Roadblock, 1981-1984
A chapter from Zarreich, in which car mechanic Oceanmouth and panicked murderer Jim Stunde attempt to set up a trucking business in a faraway city but are stopped by an inexplicable roadblock in the middle of the night that shuts down every light in existence.

Zorexians, 1981-1982
Jack Commer is part of a detective agency foursome attempting to land a spacecopter atop USSF headquarters in  downtown Marsport when they come under inexplicable fire from below. Turns out aliens are behind it all!  Jack's partner Huey is revealed to be an alien himself. Everyone is terrified of course, but sooner or later some sort of mystical interspecies communication definitely has to take place, don't you think? Later Jack is interviewed by the author about his feelings for Huey's sexy wife Jackie. I spent a long time trying to port this over to early versions of Nonprofit Ladies until I finally saw how stupid this was.

The Selector, 1981-1982
Strange and supercilious animals are chewing out the electrical grid of a downtown skyscraper.  Maybe they are eating the building itself, who knows? Some nightshift supervisor dude is in extreme denial about the entire affair. 

Where Eagles Have Unfortunately Landed, 1980
Child genius Klaus Wolfgang von Stuttelmann is fated not to be a Messerschmitt 163 rocket ace for the Luftwaffe. Although I had to joke my way through this story, I wrote it in awe of everything all airmen did during World War II.  This story became part of The University of Mars until I sensibly cut it.

Tollhouse, 1979-1980  
Two boys are trapped at a surreal toll booth job in Australia, later emigrate to America, and then are killed in anti-nuclear protests. One, Blar, winds up in a hospital on Mars--or he is just hallucinating that?  Did he die or not?  Hell, I don't know!  This story became part of Sortmind and got a lot of rewriting until, as with almost all these stories, I realized it didn't belong.

January 1st, 1976-1984
Jim Piston helps rob a 7-Eleven in Skokie, Illinois on New Year's Day. Went through at least four drafts but finally was cut from Akard Drearstone.  Gathered a few rejection slips as a standalone story.  (In fact, almost everything on this list was sent out at least a few times.)

The 66,000 M.P.H. Bicycle, 1975
Special agent Atoka evades "the Americans" on his nuclear-powered, 66,000 mph bicycle until he's bombed into chewed-up guts on a coastal freeway.  The author was able to ignore physics such as escape velocity throughout the story, but came up with some interesting computer concepts for a story written in 1975 by someone who knew nothing about computers.

The Highland Park Cadillac Races, 1975
Insurance executive Bobby Thompson must prove his manhood by racing an enemy Cadillac on the mean streets of Dallas.
Bobby Thompson, from The Highland Park Cadillac Races

Man Against the Horses!, 1975
Five horses in Paris, Texas break out of their corral, charge down the highway, and destroy the city of Dallas.

Space, Time and Tania, 1974-1975  
Bumbling ex-Texas Department of Public Safety officer Marty Brimfeeler probes the death of Tania in Houston shortly before World War III erupts. Published in PigIron magazine, 1977.

The Martian Holes, 1974-1975
A slaphappy, word-wasting investigation of rich folks on the eve of their preferential evacuation from a dying Earth.  Jack Commer makes a farcical appearance but cannot save this mediocre piece.

Alan Ice on Morningcide Drive, 1974
Guitarist Alan Ice manages to bore the reader with excessively overwrought stream of consciousness prose for thirty pages, but there's a glimmer of something interesting when, near the end of the story, he drives onto an infinite parking lot at dawn and watches an alien spaceship explode.

Norman, 1974
Marilyn Monroe writes Norman Mailer's biography.  The Orange Rhinoceros is interviewed on his feelings about art, the university, and "the street."

Holy/Unholy, 1973-1974
From my second novel, The 51st State of Consciousness.  Trying to be helpful during his investigations of the fifty-first state, G. inadvertently dooms himself and Mrs. Bag when he drives onto a mindlessly complex  freeway interchange that can only lead to a lifetime of grueling slave work in grimy industrial junkyards.  I had originally intended to send this story off to inaugurate a writing career after graduating from Rice, but was so discouraged by the academic literary magazines at Fondren Library that I gave up in despair.

Five-Pointed Stars, 1973-1974
Another candidate for a writing career, an ambitious, sprawling attempt at psychological investigation of characters coping with a fifty mph, head-on car accident in December 1972.

Emerson's Vast Hotel, 1972
A young Bill is bored out of his skull in a foreign country and doesn't seem to accomplish very much except for pitching pennies into wastebaskets.

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