Great News about DOESM as of 10/18/22:
Dragons of Orion and Elijah, the Stolen Man,Book One of the Stolen Man Trilogy is now available for preorder on Amazon KDK.to be entitled:
Book Two is finished and in the prepublication polish edit: The Creeping Darkness of Janaidar and The Stolen Man
Book Three is finished and in the prepublication polish edit: Gravity Masters of Janaidar and the Stolen Man
We optimistically estimate that Books 2 and 3 will be available in the 1st half of 2023 with a 3-month preorder hiatus for Kindle during which beta readers will help us get them perfected.
About the Books:
Beast-headed, genetically-engineered NuliZhu war-bloods from the planet Ta Shemau who resemble the gods of ancient Egypt and humanoid aliens with elongated heads have returned to planet Janaidar to enslave the human population left behind millennia ago.The aliens are powerful and odds seem insurmountable, but unbeknownst to the aliens, Janaidar has it’s own magic-wielding, telepathic dragons, who developed their own science and technology in the Orion Nebula ages before the pyramids of ancient Egypt were built, and they have preserved and hidden an ancient-alien artificial-sapience—The-Creeping-Darkness—that was built by the ancient-alien NuliZhu as the ultimate weapon over 5,000-years ago. Also left behind were the Huan Long Shui Sisteren—an order of chaste guardians have kept The-Creeping-Darkness suppressed over the ages till High Priestess Alahna awakens it seeking a savior for her planet.
A reluctant hero named, Elijah, gets abducted from Earth through a transdimensional-arc, transformed into a power-master by The-Creeping-Darkness, and becomes embroiled in a quest to save the dragons and peoples of Janaidar, an earth-like, parallel planet in a sidereal dimension long abandoned by the long-head NuliZhu around the time of the Pyramids of Giza.
About Robert:
Only days after high school graduation in 1969, I was #7 in the draft. I opted for the US Navy and found myself in Great Lakes Illinois 3-days after graduation. Trained first as a Machinist Mate, I then trained for duty on nuclear submarines at Mare Island Naval Station, Vallejo, CA. Working inside of a submarine is like working inside of a V-8 racing engine during a race—hot, noisy, smelly, and extremely intense. As a self-contained environment, however, a nuclear submarine is much like I imagine a spaceship to be. Both require specialized suits for breathing and the management of pressure where survival in a deadly environment dictates every moment simply to remain alive and keep your shipmates safe.
I’ve spent my life around and inside of giant machinery, powerhouses, and strange industrial environments like underground soda ash mines and strip mines for coal where nothing concerning a human’s ability to survive can be overlooked. We are fragile after all. All of this lends real life intensity to writing about such things. Honorably Discharged after my time in the U.S. Navy, I spent a couple years as a traveling minstrel in the Western USA, met lots of beautiful people, and decompressed from being conscripted into the Vietnam conflict.
After settling down, I worked as a laborer at a petroleum refinery in Cheyenne, which was stinky, dirty, nasty, and dangerous, then moved to heavy construction in the boomtown days of Rock Springs, Wyoming. During that time I worked union operating heavy equipment like draglines and drilling rigs—tough work for tough men. At the Black Butte Coal Mine, I once drove a truck the size of a house with tires twice as tall as a man. I even worked for a time on a Page Dragline with a giant, 50-cubic-yard bucket—one of the biggest, mobile land-machines known at the time. I eventually became an Inside Wireman electrical apprentice in Denver Colorado, and obtained my Master Electrician’s License, which I carried for 22-years.
For those of you reading my work, my gratitude for your time is unbounded.
Thank you one and all.
One time, working on the units at the Jim Bridger Powerhouse, they were shaking down the brand new boiler on Unit-4, when a piece of scrap, stainless-steel weighing about 40lbs got picked up inside of a 10-foot in diameter steam line. It hit the last 90-degree bend, went right through the 4-inch thick stainless-steel pipe, then through a wall of the powerhouse like a cannon ball making a 3-foot hole. We found that piece of mangled stainless (3 inches thick and a couple feet square) over 1-mile away. Three of us were sitting right under the outside of Unit-4 when the coupon of steel went right over our heads. The shock wave was so intense it shattered the windows of the pickup and knocked us all senseless. I moved on and traveled about the U.S. as an electrician putting time in on coal-fired and nuclear powerhouses all the way from Colorado to Oregon and Washington. I even worked at one of the first nuclear powerhouses in the world located at Fort St. Vrain near Platteville, Colorado.
In my late 30’s I decided to make a career move and returned to school at the University of Colorado Denver Campus and obtained a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems. I became an Oracle Master Database Administrator and IBM AIX systems administrator. Of the 17-years in that last career move, I spent the final 7-years supporting Oracle databases for the County Sheriffs of Colorado as the Director of Information Services. Exposure to local and state government gave me great material for writing
I have a profound and personal dislike for narcissistic people, which gives me deeply rooted passions when writing about the bad things bad people do. Writers compose work from direct knowledge or inferred knowledge (research), and have a degree of imagination that compels the reader to go along for the ride to the world you have created. My point is this. To be a good author, you should write about what you know (or feel) with passion—at least that’s one way.
As I look around me today I hope that we—the human race—will someday stop destroying ourselves and our beautiful planet. I consider Expanse to be a cautionary tale, and the best, most accurate depiction of life in outer space I have ever seen. I am also validated in my assertion that
The next heavy-industrial boom will certainly be off-planet. First, we will mine the Moon, then terraform Mars. Next, we’ll mine and industrialize the Asteroid Belt, and finally the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. That’s a lot to write speculative science-fiction and fantasy about, isn’t it?
So, my favorite recent authors both living and dead—and this is an ongoing, non-exclusive list—are: James SA Corey, George RR Martin, Terry Brooks, Steven King, Ben Bova, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, C. J. Cherryh, Orson Scott Card, Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen, Robert Heinlein, Robert Adams, Jack Chalker, Bill Gibson, the Wachowskis, Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, George Lucas and Lawrence Kasdan.
When I was asked to write my bio, the questions of, “Where do I start?” and “What do I say?” are much harder to answer than you might imagine. The real answer lies not in this blog, but in my soon-to-be published The Stolen Man Series.
Thanks for your time and I wish you well.
Lastly, my first published work on Amazon is medical-patient education, non-fiction as a handbook about total hip and knee joint replacement. And, yes, I’ve had both of my knee joints replaced. The handbook was coauthored by myself and my surgeon, Dr. Ronald R. Hugate Jr. MD FAAOS. You can find it at:
One of our favorite vacations is to visit the Oregon Coast. This photo was taken by Vic. We were on the beach below Ocean City, Oregon.