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A warm welcome to our authors' site--thanks for visiting us.
We write fantasy, science fiction, mysteries, and memoir.


Just published--

Order hardback, paperback, or e-book editons of this novel at Amazon.com

 

Print editions available soon at Barnes & Noble

Cooper North is back in a new mystery--it's a sizzler.

 

Bizarre events afflict Dill, Vermont. An alligator scares shoppers on Main Street. Psychopaths costumed as Ninjas go on a killing rampage, with commando knives. Somebody murders a maple-syrup entrepeneur, by hiding wasps in his sleeves.

 

Police call Cooper out of retirement, back into the prosecutor's office. Only she can handle what's happening.

 

Then she finds she's up against terrifyng danger, and it's personal. 

 

You won't guess the ending.

 



A STORY BEHIND OUR STORIES

One summer afternoon, a Pembroke Welsh corgi appeared on our deck.

His name, we learned, was Nosmo King. He lived a half mile up our country road. He resented being left alone all day, with cats, so he’d decided to find a new home.

Just as he joined us full time, Joyce received a telephone call from her doctor—“I’ve got really bad news for you—you’ve got acute myelogenous leukemia.”

He said: “Meet me at the hospital in fifteen minutes.”

Chances of a cure: imperceptible.

Her oncologist said: “I hope to give you two good years.”

All those months, lying in a hospital bed, Joyce invented a regime for herself: as toxic chemicals pumped into her, she imagined packs of tiny Nosmos running through her veins—exuberantly barking—chasing away bad blood cells.

Let’s cut to the chase: Joyce’s statistically tiny chance of a cure turned out, for her, to be one-hundred percent. It’s been more than two decades since that diagnosis.

After that crisis, we moved away from writing articles and essays for magazines. Richard now writes fiction, mainly fantasy and mysteries, and Joyce is working on a memoir. One character, drawn from real life, keeps popping up: a Pembroke Welsh corgi, preternaturally smart, with soaring self-esteem.

About that name. His original family, having just quit cigarettes, named their new puppy “Nosmo King,” a rearrangement of “No Smoking.” It didn’t resonate with us.

Then we realized Nosmo could be a Hobbit name, like Bilbo or Frodo, with maybe a touch of Elvish, and we felt that fitted him perfectly

Nosmo King.

Our Muse