Cyberstrung: A Silk and Venom Story -- YA sci-fantasy novel
E.x.t.i.n.c.t.i.o.n. That is what seventeen-year-old Harker Aimsworth faces when his mother bans him from ever using his M-blazon smartphone. She believes the M-cells caused her younger son Avery’s debilitating and undiagnosed brain disorder. Gadget-savvy and tech-addict Harker hacks his way through the internet to contradict his mother’s theory and win back his smartphone. Instead of counter-evidence, he finds the infamous cyber-terrorist, known only as Impostor 2211, who plans to topple the M-cell industry.
Rather
than disprove Harker’s mom, Impostor reveals an ancient race of half-human and
half-spider creatures. Known as seretans and divided ethnically into Spinners
and Hunters, these creatures have recently established a symbiotic relationship
with M-cell technology which allows them to subsist easily on the human race
via photonically transmitted venom—the very e-venom that poisoned Avery. Harker
uncovers their plans to expand the M-cell line globally, effectively setting the
human world up for seretan consumption.
Digging Deep: Tales of Body Snatching Students in Cadaver Academies -- YA creative nonfiction novel
Imagine entering a cemetery at midnight. Imagine climbing over the old stone wall or the sharp iron bars—your muscles moistened with delicious hot adrenaline. The tombstones, obelisks, and mausoleums poke from the ground like teeth in a busted mouth. But you can’t afford to gawk. You have a shovel in your hand and a task to accomplish.
Digging Deep depicts the medical students in the 18th and 19th
centuries who spurred a medical revolution. When these students—some as young as
sixteen and others not yet twenty—took up training for a career in medicine,
they pursued a profession with a criminal side. To be better doctors,
doctors-in-training needed a solid foundation in human anatomy, which they
could gain only through dissection of the human body. However, dissection was considered
a desecration to the body. If students wanted a body to dissect, they had to go
dig it up out the graveyard. The novel culls from student diaries, letters, and
speeches, as well as from the biographies of Cooper, Knox, and others. The
story seeks to answer questions like: Was it merely a mischievous call to
adventure that lured these young students into nighttime graveyards? If so,
what transcended mischief when newspaper headlines broadcast how dissection
demonstrators were attacked and jailed? What kept the students enrolled every
semester even as mobs burned down doctor’s private homes and cramped dissection
theaters?
Sipping Between the Craics: Two Rovers Tap into the Irish Microbrewing Revolution -- creative nonfiction travel narrative co-authored with Zach Hively
This text features the sixteen craft breweries redefining Ireland’s liquid landscape since 2011. Despite competition with corporate goliaths and economic austerity, these fledgling brewers are elevating their underground industry and attracting international attention. Their story braids with our bumbling travel-travails and culture shocks during a year-long effort to taste the renaissance. To our knowledge, this book will be the first to explore Irish brewing culture post-Celtic Tiger.
Genuine Irish brews and our fool’s search for them are
seasoned with madness, audacity, risk, and unexpected rewards. In the end, craft
beer keyed us into the island behind the travel guides. Sipping Between the
Craics invites readers to slip with us through the cracks of generic tourism
and tap into real Irish culture. (Craic, pronounced “crack,” is Gaelic for good
times.)
"Dangerous Dames and the Dark Knight's Defense of Domesticity." Essay to appear in Myth in Transition: What Popular Culture is Telling Us About Change. Ed. Priscilla Hobbs.
"The Magic Thread" -- MG nonfiction article about spider silk
"Llama Ranching" -- MG nonfiction article about a llama ranch in Colorado
"Swoop, Flap, Sqwak!" -- easy-reader article about a bird of prey refuge in Colorado
