The Second Bat Guano War
Rats ate his baby daughter while he partied in a disco. Now Horace
"Horse" Mann is a drugged-out expat teaching English to criminals in
Lima, Peru. Oh, and doing the odd favor for the CIA.

When his drinking buddy and CIA contact, Pitt Watters, goes missing,
Horse's efforts to find him hit a snag. He comes home to find his lover,
Lynn -- Pitt's mother -- strangled in his apartment. Arrested and
charged with murder, Horse escapes Lima and follows his only lead to a
Buddhist ashram on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

There Horse uncovers his friend's involvement with a group of Gaia-
worshipping terrorists who want to kill off the human "disease"
infecting the earth.

The group's leader, a world-famous vulcanologist, explains that only a
new generation of lithium-ion batteries can replace the dwindling supply
of fossil fuels. The group plans to set off a volcanic chain reaction
that would destroy the world's most promising lithium fields, and thus
ensure that man pays for his polluting sins.

Horse finally finds Pitt on top of a volcano, his thumb on the
detonator. Pitt confesses to killing Lynn, begs Horse to join him in the
purification of Gaia. Horse must choose: end the world, himself, his
guilt? Or forgive himself the death of his daughter, and find a way to
live again?

Complete at 80,000 words, THE SECOND BAT GUANO WAR is a hard-boiled
thriller set in South America, with an environmental twist. 

UPDATE (8/2010): This novel just won First Prize in the Adult Fiction 
category in Anne Mini's Author! Author! first page contest.







The Judas Syndrome
Sometimes only in betrayal is love even possible.

Joshua McAdams knows how to hate, especially authority. So when he
graduates from Stanford and joins an anti-American guerrilla insurgency
in Colombia, he must learn how to love, or lose everything.

Present day: the Drug War has failed. Two Stanford students on vacation
in Colombia are kidnapped by a new guerrilla group fighting to legalize
cocaine production. When it turns out their leader is Joshua's old
mentor from Stanford, he decides to join the guerrillas. Together they
recruit and train other backpackers to carry out a series of bombings in
Bogotá. Success is within reach -- the president of Venezuela threatens
to invade if the group's demands are not met -- but there is a spy in
their midst. Captured by American commandos, Joshua tells the
interrogators his story. He is forced to confront the truth of what he's
done, and in recognizing his own betrayal, finally learns, too late, to
love.

Complete at 85,000 words, THE JUDAS SYNDROME is a character-driven
political/espionage thriller. It's about Colombia in the same way
THE QUIET AMERICAN is about Vietnam or THE MISSION SONG is about
the Eastern Congo.