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THE BEST PRESENT EVER: A SINNER'S GUIDE TO THE HOLY LAND
Publisher: Clear Faith Publishing
Order here.
Book Reviews
Catholic Mom
Excellent online source of Catholic-themed articles and information.
New Zealand Catholic
The major Catholic newspaper in New Zealand (scroll to page 15).
The Irish Echo
The oldest Irish newspaper in the U.S.
I didn't want to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land because I thought it would be hot and dry and boring, and I'd have to drag around on someone else's schedule with a group of serious religious types looking at one ancient shrine after another. No, thanks. This is what I told my wife every time she asked me to go with her and her parents. Then a week before Christmas in my usual state of panic over what to get her, I signed up, put the receipt in a box, and gave her the gift of myself.
Two months later, we joined a Dutch couple who owned a Catholic gift shop, a soft-spoken priest devoted to Mary who had never been to the Holy Land before, some Americans, an opinionated Eastern European teacher and her Hispanic photog husband, two young Brazilian lads learning to be tour guides, and thirty Filipinos oblivious to the shopaholic stereotype for a once in a lifetime experience.
Purposefully non-preachy, The Best Present Ever: A Sinner's Guide to the Holy Land, lays bare the narrator’s unfiltered (not always very Christian) thoughts and observations as the days and nights unfold. Experience the relentless work ethic of the ubiquitous hawkers, an argument at the Shrine of the Nativity involving a female Russian tour guide, a night-time lovers tiptoe across the rooftops of old Jerusalem, an impromptu sojourn through the poverty-stricken Muslim District of Jerusalem that the narrator will never forget, the narrator's disastrous three minutes at the Tomb of Jesus, and his pilgrimage-ending confession, described by the tour group priest as "a good one.” The bus driver is Muslim, the tour guide is seriously Catholic, and the story is universal...how do we all get along?
I made a conscious effort to write the story in a way that could be enjoyed by believers and non-believers, male and female, young and old. I'm very pleased with the reviews and feedback I've received, so far.
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NO SAMARITAN
My debut collection of poetry, NO SAMARITAN, was published in April 2016 by Tebot Bach, a non-profit poetry press that, among other things, provides therapeutic poetry workshops to the homeless, battered, and war-ravaged. Order here. A selection of poems included in the book can be viewed by clicking the Poems tab.
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OH, YOU'RE AMERICAN
Spanning London, Seal Beach, Paris, and Lyon, OH, YOU’RE AMERICAN (81,300 words, plus 28 pages of letters) evokes the mood of Notting Hill and will appeal to readers who enjoy comedic American girl-British boy love stories where music and belief are balm for distant lovers’ aching souls. Imagine an asthmatic Mexican-American version of Rosie from the hilarious Australian novel The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. Free-spirited, yet shy, Reggie Muñoz is a bookish, 20-year-old college DJ with a cartoonish voice, a love of soul music, and no direction in life. On vacation in London in 1986, she meets a 24-year-old, local London-Irish boy fresh from the pages of a Nick Hornby novel. When she returns to California they exchange letters. You know the restrained and proper letters found in Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road (which she’s read but he hasn’t)? Well, they’re nothing like that.
They stomp through the minefield of cultural differences as if they don’t exist, make negative first impressions on each other’s parents, and grapple with the increasing angst of having fallen in love with someone more than 5,000 miles away. There’s family, money, lust, the prospect of having to emigrate, and the sudden death of a younger brother problems. Will they ever find a way to be together or are they stuck in a black and white French movie about to implode? One thing’s for sure. Clinging to the hope that it will all work out is getting old and leading to something big. Will she tell her parents about Paris? Will her spirals of melancholy scare him away? Will he take the kind of risk he’s never taken in his life? Throughout the story, the characters reveal in their own handwriting how cultural differences impact the way they respond to the age-old questions: What would you do for love? How far would you go?
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THE BLACK SEA (or BEGINNINGS)
Is a novel about beginnings. The beginning of a romance, the beginning of the end of a romance. The beginning of a recovery, the beginning of a descent. The beginning of a friendship. The beginning of the end of a friendship. As with everything worth writing about, it's ultimately about love in all its disguises.
The story is about a small town No Cal journalist dealing with mild PTSD after an out of his depth attempt at war reporting in Iraq, a Bulgarian girl with hopes of a career in fashion vacationing in Los Angeles, and an English ex-professional goalkeeper working as a coach for the L.A. Galaxy trying to keep his marriage to a red-headed Irish spitfire together. The three storylines converge when the Bulgarian girl enters the Irish pub the journalist and goalkeeper work at part-time. Set in Long Beach, California in 2007, the story reflects the difficulties of recovering from trauma, finding a soul mate, holding on to the soul mate you thought you had for life, and what happens when a US Marine on leave from active duty, struggling to feed his young son after his wife abandons them and his PTSD benefits claim is denied "mugs" the journalist and manipulates him into appearing on a local cable TV news program with startling results.
The story is fully drafted and in the re-writing and editing phase. I like the characters I created, so one day I hope to give them life.
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SHORT STORIES
The short stories I've written are also about love in one way or another.
Sláinte!
The Man My car, London, the 80s Sea of Galilee, 7 AM
