COVER REVEAL!

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LAUNCH DAY  September 26, 2022

                                  Look for it on Amazon.com

My Own Hui Gui

Hui Gui, my first novel published in 2005, a family saga set against a tumultuous time in China from the Long March of 1934 to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, to the influx of refugees into the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong in the early 50s, and on to 1997, the return of Hong Kong to the motherland, Hui Gui. Against this background I wove a story of love and loss, courage and survival, a personal homecoming against the political expanse of Hui Gui, the triumph of the spirit over the inevitabilities of the human predicament. 

Seventeen years have passed since the publication of Hui Gui. But one of my greatest triumphs as a writer is a email I just received from a friend I haven't heard from for a while, telling me that when her son was in high school, he chose my Hui Gui to read for a book report. In the email, she told me she thought that was the first spark of her son's interest in China, resulting in his present-day teaching at a reputable university there. She ends with this message which moved me to tears on reading it: "Congratulations on the success you've had from following your heart. And know that at least one person was inspired to explore the world because of one of your stories."

SEA FEVER -- Teaser 2

Here's sharing another extract of Sea Fever, my new novel scheduled to be published in late September, 2022. This piece is from Chapter 2 "The Room at the Top".

Breathing deeply, Ayan feels the tranquility of being alone in the pinnacle space of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. He hears footsteps, followed by a bang as the door opens and quickly shuts. Instinctively he turns towards the doorway to see what unwelcome visitor is intruding on his quiet solitude. It is a young Asian woman in jeans, a short brown jacket, and calf-high fashion boots. She looks a little frantic. Her eyes rest on Ayan. Quickly she walks around the huge round table to where he has perched by one of the stained-glass windows and stops beside him, sounding breathless.

“Zdravstvuyte!” In spite of his displeasure at being disturbed, he greets the stranger in Russian out of politeness. Receiving no response, he repeats in English, “Hello!”

“Hi,” the woman responds, taking a deep breath. The uneasy look in her eyes softens, even though she and Ayan are total strangers. She looks to be about thirty, not tall, perhaps a meter six. She could be Kazakh, but for her tanned complexion, much darker than city women in his country. At the moment, she seems somewhat distracted, not impressed by the stained-glass doves or the panoramic view. “This place seems pretty deserted. I was a bit scared walking up from the elevator,” she says to Ayan with a nervous laugh. Her English betrays she is not local, probably American.

The Opening of Sea Fever

I am so excited about the upcoming publication of my fourth and latest novel Sea Fever, scheduled for a late September release. I want to share with my readers this thrilling and unique story set in the Central Asian country Kazakhstan, which is like a sleeping giant that has wakened from the grips of the USSR since the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991. For the next while, I shall be posting an extract here and there from the novel, to incite curiosity. Here's the beginning...

1991

To Ayan Kazbekov and the world, August 23, 1991 might well have made all the difference. As he drove his secondhand Zhiguli in the direction of his apartment, he knew nothing of the surprise visitor who awaited him that everning, nor the secrets their meeting would lead him to -- secrets that might shake the world and change its course. That afternoon, Ayan left his office at the Institute of International Languages in Moscow for the last time, having cleared out his desk and shelves and packed two boxes of books to take home -- to Kazakhstan and the Central Asian steppe, in the far reaches of the USSR. Looking back one last time at the office that had been his daytime quarters for the past six years, he felt that same heaviness in his chest as he had the first time he left his hometown of Aralsk by the Aral Sea fourteen years earlier. He had taken the 2,400 kilometer train journey to Moscow to attend university. Perhaps this time the anxiety of separation was more acute, for he could not foresee a reason to return to Moscow again in the predictable future, not with the disintegration of the USSR looming in the near distance. 

SEA FEVER coming soon!

I am thrilled to say the least that Sea Fever my fourth and latest novel will be published by Greenleaf Book Group, under its imprint River Grove. The story is set in Kazakhstan, a former Central Asian Soviet state that has gained independence since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The novel has taken over six years in its creation, involving on-site research that took me to the now defunct Gulag in Dolinka in the northeast of Kazakhstan and the Aral Sea region in the west. Over fifteen years of travels to that former Soviet republic since 2000, and getting to know and love the land and the people there, I felt I owed them a story. The result is Sea Fever, a novel set in the Aral Sea region of this broad expanse of land, in area the ninth largest country in the world.

The story uses as background one of the world's worst man-orchestrated environmental disasters, the desiccation of the once fourth largest inland piece of water, the Aral Sea. Mystery and intrigue surround a former island in the shrinking sea. Sea Fever, a thriller, is scheduled for publication in late September, 2022. Stay tuned. 

 A Ship Graveyard where abandoned skeletal remains of fishing boats lay scattered on the Aral's drying shores