Uncaging the Muse

Some of these chapters are quite long. You don't have to read these all in one sitting; you can browse them for a while, bookmark your place, then come back later. I'd love to see e-mail with your opinion. I read everything except spam.

Note: In the page below, not all links to book chapters or articles are active. Where there is no link and there obviously should be, it's because I'm in the process of re-writing or editing that piece of work. Check back another time, and you can read it then.

A Raider's Hell

It is early in the 21st century. Corporate power steers politicians and their policies. The keys to power come in the form of processed triton crystals. Triton crystals, refined and properly administered, revitalize and speed the repair of living tissue to phenomenal rates. Processed and taken orally, triton crystals increase metabolic efficiency and reverse the effects of aging. Every aspect of physical well-being is enhanced: Healing. Resisting disease. Oxygen consumption. Synaptic response. Nutrient processing. Mental processing and memory. Strength gain and retention, agility and hand-and-eye coordination can be dramatically improved under Triton therapy. A person on Triton treatments is miraculously resistant to violent trauma. In short, for as long as a person maintains triton treatments, he or she grows toward, then maintains a state that far exceeds their natural prime. They look and feel younger, stronger, smarter, healthier. Triton is more than the fountain of youth.

There will never be enough to go around.

It can’t be synthesized. It can’t be duplicated on Earth. Experiments in space thus far have failed. And the only places it has ever been discovered are the fresh meteorite impacts resulting from a meteor cloud Earth entered in 2016. There’s one last catch. Triton crystals, unprotected, oxidize upon exposure to nitrogen. Unless protected from Earth’s atmosphere, they sublimate to Triton gas. Triton gas is worthless.

Talion Camisade is a Raider Team Leader. In the tooth-and-claw, high stakes world of Corporate Raider Teams, where violence and bloodshed are part of the job, and one's fate literally rests on one's Raider Team profit margin, Talion Camisade is one of the best. But things are changing and some corporate higher up seems to have found a way to turn a profit from betraying the Team. That's not new for the corporate snakes, but now Talion's men are dying and the finger seems to be pointing right at him.

Short Stories and Articles

In this area are a few of the articles or short stories I've written, published and unpublished. Browse and enjoy.

"Artificial Intelligence In Squad Tactical Combat Games" is an essay I wrote in 1996, I think. I'm happy to say that the entertainment industry segments focused on developing these has come along a little way since then, but sad to say it still has a long way to go! "Of The Father...Upon The Son," is a short-short that I wrote for Mythagoras, a regional fanzine circulated around the Southeastern United States. "The Malevolent Causeway of Kiolan Budd" was a short story I wrote on a whim and sent into a "Writers of the Future Contest" a long time ago. Deservedly, it didn't place, but I enjoyed writing it, so here it is. One hopes you'll be mildly entertained.

Poetry and Verse (also known as the "Verse and Worse" Area)