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One would expect a young man whose single mother skipped town a couple of hours after his birth, to have a few problems, but Mortaumal [Mort] doesn’t seem to, thanks to his grandfather. However, when that support is gone and foster parents fail, and there are nasty people demanding he do evil deeds...things begin to look pretty desperate. From the age of ten to eighteen Mort lives with and meets an extraordinary variety of people, gets himself into and out of very hot water, sees rather too many people die, learns to defend himself both physically and mentally, and ends up unimpressed with humanity in general, while loving the few who come up to scratch. This is a light-hearted, not too serious tale about death and dying, affection and callous indifference, independence and love somewhere in tropical Queensland. There’s sentiment but not sentimentality, social criticism, excitement, fun and a bit of everything else in a fast paced yarn that suggests ways to live that are more interesting and natural than those we see on our screens. ...

Excerpt Details
1 Mortaumal According to his grandfather, Mortaumal was a smart kid. According to Mortaumal, Simon was a brainless bully. So why wasn’t it Simon lying on his belly, face pressed into the dust, scarcely able to breathe? Surely twice as big should be beaten by twice as clever? Obviously not, or Mortaumal wouldn’t have had his head flushed in a toilet bowl yesterday, and he wouldn’t have had to endure six months of increasingly unpleasant torment. On this relentlessly sunny afternoon, Simon had ambushed Mortaumal from behind a billboard advertising the benefits of ‘Jezebel’s Gymnasium for Fabulous Fitness’, dragged the object of his unwanted attention behind it, thrown him on his face in the dust and sat on his legs. When fruitless flailing of arms failed to free him, Mortaumal had just decided to humiliate himself by screaming for help when Simon dragged his shorts down. Shocked, or perhaps excited at the absence of underpants, the bully allowed his grip to slacken enough for his victim to slither away and tear down the street, school bag flying, shorts barely back in their usual place when he was stopped by a busy road. A q...

Table of Contents Details
Table of Contents 1 Mortaumal 2 Leon 3 Shrude Aywun 4 Confidences 5 Death 6 Mrs. Pettie 7 Dying 8 The lawyer. 9 Self Defence. 10 Pissed Off 11 Leon and Hugh 12 Family life 13 Fystie 14 A day at the river 15 School 16 School work 17 Mr. Brawn on Women 18 A visit 19 Beach Bully 20 Debriefing 21 Abuse 22 Rescue 23 Marshall on Childhood 24 Paying for It 25 Fystie Returns 26 Life with a lawyer 27 Further Education 28 Sergei 29 Zoltan’s Mother 30 The God Question 31 On Top of the Mountain 32 Marshall meets Angelo 33 Perdita 34 The Beach 35 Bullies 36 Ultimatum 37 Farewells 38 A Change of plans 39 Impersonation 40 Julian 41 The Truth 42 Elbert 43 A Social Occasion 44 A Room With a View 45 School 46 Mr. Preggy 47 The Basement Flat 48 The cop 49 Miss Bussty 50 Brawl 51 Perdita’s present 52 Stefan 53 Perdita Perdue...

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A revolution replaces the Queensland government with a coalition of religious fundamentalists who have strong ideas on how their subjects ought to live, and how to enforce compliance with their draconian laws. Readers have asked what happened to Robert and Bart, the heroes of Rough Justice. They thought I had left them in a bad place…and so I had. Others wanted to know what happened to Sebastian and Jarek between the end of Jarek and the beginning of NumbaCruncha. A good question that requires an answer because what happened could all too easily be the political future for us. So, Fidel is a prequel to NumbaCruncha, and a sequel to my other five novels—Rough Justice, Dome of Death, Sebastian, Jarek and Mortaumal. Fidel is fifteen when the story begins sometime in the near future. He’s running away from home to the big city where he falls into trouble, then miraculously falls out again, and grows into a sturdy, well-liked young man. Like most people he is too busy living to notice that a relatively quiet revolution is taking place, replacing the government with a coalition of religious fundamentalists who have strong id...

Excerpt Details
1 Fidel Fidel was scared. Shit scared. He felt like throwing up and probably would have if he'd had any breakfast. He had to stop thinking about it or he’d chicken out. His whole life had been one long worry that he’d done something wrong and would be punished…but this was sharper, more urgent, more exciting too if he could only stop thinking about all the possible consequences. Taking a deep breath he shouldered the backpack that had been hidden in a corner for weeks, let himself out of the shed, crossed the back lawn and tapped on his brother’s open window. Hylas appeared, rubbing at sleepy eyes. ‘Fidel! What’s the matter?’ ‘I’m off.’ ‘Now? But you…’ ‘Shhh! You'll wake Mum. I just wanted to say goodbye and tell you I love you.’ ‘Where are you going? I love you too! Will you write?’ ‘Brisbane. Of course I’ll write. Don’t tell Mum anything. Pretend to be surprised I've gone.’ With a cheery wave that even Hylas knew was fake, Fidel adjusted his pack and ran off before his courage ran out. Twenty minutes later he was sticking out his thumb on the David Low Way. Almost immediately an elderly couple in a battered T...

Table of Contents Details
Contents 1 Fidel 2 City Centre 3 The Karims 4 What to do? 5 Bart’s enterprise 6 Arnold Jurgenz 7 Bart and Robert 8 Lance 9 Luck 10 Arnold’s Gym 11 Natural Fitness 12 Hylas 13 Brothers in Brisbane 14 Hylas Meets Natural Fitness 15 And Hylas Makes Five 16 JECHIS 17 Lance Returns 18 Disintegration 19 Inspection 20 Plans 21 The Administrator 22 Ciao Natural Fitness 23 Peter and Jon 24 A Forest Retreat 25 On The Run 26 Unpleasantness 27 Travelling On 28 A Meeting 29 Justice 30 F.N.Q. 31 Protectors 32 A Blast From The Past 33 Oasis 34 Tests 35 Developments 36 Job Interview 37 The Vote and After 38 Sanity – Insanity 39 Nothing Lasts Forever 40 Decisions 41 Ciao Oasis 42 Research 43 Solutions 44 The Institute 45 Settling In 46 Endgame ...

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Dear Lover—a poetry collection about hope and heartbreak, about love in its short, long, and temporary forms, about how love can be cloaked in abuse, how love can build us or break us, the hard and soft of it, the good, the bad, and the completely atrocious. The collection is a poetic story of different relationships which are organized into the stages of a relationship; that initial attraction, the circling dance around each other, the honey-moon stage, the souring, the fighting, the breaking up, and the recovering. This work is deeply personal, but relatable all the same. Autobiographical at its core, it aims for love's failures and triumphs, its disappointments and celebrations, the bad, the good, and the downright ugly. It is a poetry collection that reaches for the hearts of anyone who has ever fallen in love, thought of falling in love, fallen out of love, or is in love with the idea of love. Written in letter format, the collection includes a few sonnets, a couple villanelles, and a pantoum among the formal verse poetry, but mostly it is an experimentation with prose poetry and free verse that hardly seems free at times...

Excerpt Details
Dear Lover, If you are empty I am open a lock is nothing without a key to close it, a saucer needs tea like sugar needs a spoon a model does not both pose and paint think of dissolving sugar, sweetened teas Matcha whisks and sheltering saucers ceramic teapots and crochet coasters a heat that creeps from tea to saucer a warmth spread by a sweetening spoon what is a journey without someone who wanders if sometimes a pair is made of two...

Table of Contents Details
Search & Discovery Something About Sleeping Sweet Something(s) Appearances Musing(s) Fear Shame Casual Happenings Promises, Promises Taking Advantage Suffering Compromise and Comparison Apology Penance Recovery The End ...

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A stunning, yet heartfelt work of creative nonfiction about a love affair on a Mach speed roller coaster, a firsthand look at the passionate ups and the horrifying downs of two lovers born for each other. “At the End of the Dance” tells the story of the marriage between Cory and Julie set against the backdrop of staggering excess, deviant sex, lung cancer and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The 100% true story written with humor and startling authenticity written by a husband widowed at far too young of an age....

Excerpt Details
The Deathbed I had never called 911 before in my life. I didn’t want to do it. My wife didn’t want me to dial the number either. She didn’t want to go to the hospital, but knew that she had better. She didn’t look good, and she was in a lot of pain. “Did you take some morphine?” I asked her. “Yeah, but it’s not helping.” ...

Table of Contents Details
The Deathbed 5 Love is Like Oxygen 12 The Five Year Plan 16 Diving 18 Awkward Moments 19 My First Letter to Julie 21 Cabo First 22 Q's 25 How it All Started 26 Bobbing for Apples 27 Sense of Relief 29 Dub's 30 Absinthe & Ecstasy 31 Absinthe & Ecstasy Letter 33 Charlie Brown 35 Say It 36 Another Letter 37 Just a Little Badass 38 A Conniving Bastard 39 You Me Learning to be Us 40 Christmas 40 The Clock Strikes Down 42 Brain Drain 43 Moaning my Name 44 Manic 46 The Edge of the Pool 89 Domesticated 91 Don't Give the Girl Jager Shirt 93 Dead Mice 93 Million Dollars/Someone Forgot 95 Victory is Mine 97 The Peace Accord 98 Gunpowder Adrenaline 99 Jac My World 101 Ugly is Ugly 102 Egg Sandwiches and Chinese Food 103 Problems Letter 105 Maiya and Julie 106 At Home in Cloth Walls 107 Two Hours Gone 108 Settling into our Marriage 109 Six Shooter 110 Do as I say… 111 Money Laundering Degree 112 Lehman Going Down 113 Paranormal House 114 Two Truths 115 Broadsided 116 Cornfield Camping 118 Lehman Evacuation Kit 122 Ground Zero 122 My Muse 123 Copper Pipes and Crack Houses 128 The Dog Rescuer 12...