Zombie apocalypses 3000 years ago. Mind travel across time and space. Collosseums for tyrannosaurs. Weird fiction and Author-fu. Come join us!

Want to read my first published work? Help me reach this goal and I will, in fear and trembling, share it!

I received a 22-cent check in compensation for it. It was a haiku. It was actually good! It was published under another name, and you will never find it without my help.  ;)   Do you want it?

$100 a month is a serious contribution to writing expenses and bills, and that's really worth celebrating. Hit this mark, and I'll start posting a weekly video of me reading my work! I have had many people tell me that my reading voice is powerful and draws you into the story. I read to my wife every night. So I look forward to this.

(As this amount also covers the Medicaid buy-in for my youngest, disabled daughter, this amount has a special significance for me.)

At this point, you'll be helping me fund illustrations for several upcoming works of fiction! I know several wonderful illustrators, and I can hardly wait to share their work with you!

This important milestone means we'll be stable enough to transition to a new living-and-writing space, one that will be much more workable for my disabled daughter. Right now, we are on a third story, with stairs, no elevator ... it's an absolutely wonderful space and very homey, unless you're disabled. And when we get Inara walking (or wheeling), that's going to be important. So I have my eyes on moving, though the thought is financially stressful.

And, with the support of friends, fans, and readers, maybe I'll get lucky and have a writing corner at the new place, something more writerly than the dining room table! Although this dining room table has seen some stories, let me tell you. Characters I loved have DIED on this table.

But even without some kind of nook or "study," let's move little Inara and my family somewhere safer.

Dear patrons, I have been invited to speak in January at a school for troubled teens, in Atlanta, GA (the homeland of zombie TV and zombie fiction). The publisher of the first Zombie Bible books -- 47North -- has generously agreed to ship 50 copies of "What Our Eyes Have Witnessed" (WOEHW) to the school. WOEHW, set in the Suburan ghetto in ancient Rome, is about the people society forgets, and how they strive to relearn love and hope and make new lives for themselves and change their city:

"Nothing is broken that cannot be remade,
Nothing is ill that cannot be healed,
Nothing captive that cannot be freed.
We must live lives of unstoppable hope."

I hope that the story -- and my talk -- will bring hope to these teens whom society has forgotten. Some have been homeless, or abused, or incarcerated for bad choices. All are trying to turn their lives around.

There are more than 50 teens at the school, and more than 50 will attend the event. If we can make the Patreon membership reach $1000 before Christmas, I will use the added funds (every dollar past the existing $800) to send "What Our Eyes Have Witnessed" to the other teens.

Thank you for helping me get there!