Island Chronicles

Where did we come from? Where are we going? What are we supposed to do in between? Deep into an existential crisis, triggered by his retirement from forty years of teaching, Christopher William Laughton flees to Orcas Island to search for the meaning of life. Instead he finds answers to questions he did not even know to ask. In The Island Chronicles: Book One-Conscious, Christopher learns his journey will not be as expected when he sees Nadezhda Retovna, the older woman who nursed him through his youthful identity crises, even though she died years ago. The mystery deepens when Christopher is seduced by the music that comes at night, which only he can hear. Eventually, the sound draws him to Eleutheria, the woman who lives in the house with the thatched roof, overlooking Bourani Cove and the ancient lime kiln that still breaths life. There he has a glimpse of both her ancient past and his own near future. Christopher is joined in his search for truth by a Belgian Malinois, with whom he may be having conversations. As well as by Lexi, a modern-day Lolita in steampunk who does her best to seduce him, for sport. Eventually, Christopher must make a choice. If choices are even possible. Either believe what Eleutheria has told him about time, eternity, and power. Or escape the island.

In The Island Chronicles Book 1, Conscious, Christopher, whose name has been changed to William, is drawn by the music to the mysterious woman, Eleutheria, who lives in the house with the thatched roof overlooking Bourani Cove and the ancient lime kiln which still burns hot for those who know how and where to look. There, she tells him about trapping time in the old tower, inadvertently creating the dragon, and how he must contain the monster while she searches the world for a way to repair what she has done. Having made his choice to believe her, the story continues in book 2, Chopping Water, part mystery, part philosophy, and part historical fiction, in which William tells Lexi the story of how Eleutheria came to America three hundred years ago only to watch her life shattered before sailing halfway around the world to Orcas Island in search of ultimate freedom. Contemporarily on the island, William encounters investors who have come to create a profitable paradise while he continues to struggle with the mystery of Nazdehda Retovna, the woman who rescued him fifty years ago. Now she has apparently reappeared as Julien Darville, debonair dandy and owner of the bookstore. Eventually, William is confronted with an evil that threatens him, his mission, and those he loves. And we learn to what lengths he will go to survive. With the aid of his companions, Winston, the Belgian Malinois, and the playfully dangerous Lexi, William continues his search for the truth. Do we really matter, or are we just characters playing our parts, nothing more and nothing less, than conscious stardust pretending to be free?

Daily survival is a battle for Raykin Smythe, a fifteen-year-old cabin boy aboard a Sardonian slave ship. For years, he has learned to stay a second or two ahead of trouble. When the ten-ship armada raids the island of Rocky Cove for slaves, they are, decimated by a little, pale girl named Minty Nothingmore. The Captain and the crew are now dead! Raykin flees for his life with a handful of the surviving raiders. They must sail The Last Red Ship to Sardonia and tell the king of a weapon so great it might threaten the whole empire. Getting home won't be easy with storms, mutinies, starvation, and sea battles threatening.

Granny is sick and getting weaker every day. When ten strangely dressed men from Sardonia arrive and begin buying in the marketplace, Minty knows that Granny's premonition has come true. The defilers have arrived, but what can she do about it? She's not yet thirteen years old. Having magic and knowing how to wield it are two different things. Will Granny be able to handle this new threat in her weakened position, or will Minty be left to fight alone? Raykin Smythe has led the Magician's Guild back to Minty's island. He is apprenticed to the Grandmaster, an unbelievable opportunity for a cabin boy of Sardonia. If he can survive his mandatory first year of silence and his master's rage? What will Minty do when she discovers he has led the guild back to her island? None of them will survive if Minty turns her magic against them.