Books
It's Time to Start Your Adventures
Why write?
This series is written for young people, with our children and future grandchildren in mind. I wish to write fun, positive, adventurous stories that inspire young people to pursue excellence in their relationships and in their work, and to love beauty, love nature, and love God.
My long-term writing plans:
Some of my favorite authors wrote their best material in their "second career," writing well into their nineties. They are my heroes, and I hope to do the same.
About The Outcasts Series
Since I was a child,
I have loved great stories. I read voraciously, devouring biographies, mysteries, historical books, classics and any Newberry Award winners I could get my hands on. But I especially loved frontier adventure stories, and could never find enough of them to satisfy that story bug inside me.
I determined I would attempt to write such stories.
In 2011, I sat down during a week off and began "The Outcasts" series. I had somehow formed the mistaken impression I could write a book in a week or two.
Ten years later...
World-building required two years. Writing required a couple more. A five year gauntlet of beta readers, editors, writing conferences, and more editors has followed, and in spite of the delay, I am loving the difficult process of becoming a better storyteller.
I plan to release "Kingdom Run" in the fall of 2021. The second book, "Into the Wild" is in progress, with a hopeful target release of late 2022. A total of seven books is planned for this series.
My long-term writing plans:
Some of my favorite authors wrote their best material in their "second career," writing well into their nineties. They are my heroes, and I hope to do the same. That gives me a good forty-five more years of writing! I'm super pumped.
The setting for Book One, "Kingdom Run:"
Imagine that the years 2024-2064 of our present age are a time of unprecedented trouble and destruction on the earth, and that both population and technology are set back to near zero.
Imagine that one couple who survives this “reboot” establishes a vision for their offspring, and slowly builds a nation they call the Kingdom. Patiently it grows and patiently it spreads their philosophy of life and government across this newly reformed landscape.
Imagine that steel tools and horse-drawn carts are the highest form of technology that this fresh age has been able to accomplish.
Imagine that other tribes and nations slowly rebuild as well, and begin to interface with each other, and with the Kingdom.
Imagine that in the year 786 of that future age, in a wild and dangerous land somewhere far outside the edges of that Kingdom, a young slave seeks to escape an awful master.