EXTREME PREJUDICE: A MIKE STONE NOVEL
Mike Stone, a retired covert operative, is pulled back into the shadows to hunt down a dangerous terrorist – a man returned from the dead, with a skillset earned as a former member of the US Special Forces.
Former Army Ranger Sergeant Victor Ramirez is the mastermind behind the hijacking of an unimaginably powerful AI-controlled cyber weapon, and the clock is ticking. Unless the authorities can retrieve the device and neutralize Ramirez in time, the entire United States will be plunged into irreversible chaos, anarchy, and societal destruction, with death on a scale never seen before.
The White House has mobilized the country’s most elite Special Forces teams and operators to go in under the radar, find Ramirez without being detected or triggering the unthinkable, and neutralize him - fast.
Stone is an afterthought: a hostile civilian recruit who – in the eyes of the administration – stands zero chance of adding anything of value to the operation. His recruiter and mission head is Helen Ohara, a disgraced former counter-insurgency team leader who has all but walked away from her career. For Ohara, Mike Stone is a Hail Mary, a long shot at some kind of redemption before she walks away for good. But Stone has something his younger, stronger successors don’t: a sense of stubborn defiance coupled with a habit of spectacularly disobeying orders and following his own path. Stone is old school and unorthodox.
As Mike embarks on the hunt, the boundaries between duty and morality begin to blur. Ramirez, threatening to destroy everything Mike has fought to preserve, raises irrefutable questions about freedom, truth, and oppression - forcing Mike to confront his past, his grief and anger over his wife’s death, and his increasingly shaky allegiance to a government now desperate to conceal the darkest secrets of its most powerful inner circle.
And as the neon playgrounds of Miami give way to a storm of violence and betrayal, Mike Stone is about to be shaken by the biggest discovery of all: Victor Ramirez is not his only enemy.
SATYRDAY NIGHT FEVER
When you’re a once-hot journalist who’s just been fired - and blacklisted by pretty much everyone - life’s not supposed to get any more difficult than it already is.
And it’s especially not supposed to get weird.
For Lew Carter, weird is about to become the new normal. Apocryphal dreams, half-glimpsed monsters, crazy cash from a psycho client, and a woman who glitches his reality.
And, of course, a Satyr. With a sense of humor.
Satyrday Night Fever
Lew Carter is an out-of-work, out-of-luck investigative journalist living in San Francisco. His twin brother is dying, and Lew is running out of options, with no way to pay for the stem cell treatment Lionel needs.
Then - an offer he can't refuse.
The money is great, along with the opportunity to settle an old score. But there are complications. A string of gruesome, inexplicable murders. Weird coincidences and unsettling warps in reality. And a corrupt, psychopathic employer who wants his wife dead - with Lew's help.
A seemingly nondescript artefact appears in Lew’s apartment after a midnight quake, placed there by somebody – or something – who, it seems, is sending him a message. Then, a horrifyingly surreal encounter with a laconically humorous Satyr, a myth suddenly become all too real. And a cryptic directive for Lew from the ancient world, as the electric urban energy of San Francisco gives way to dark, secret spaces where the supernatural manifests, terrifyingly and without warning.
The more Lew uncovers, the more he realizes that the woman he’s been tasked with following is not who she appears to be. But to find the answers he needs, Lew will have to do the unthinkable, and become just like the man he hates the most.
Things are unravelling fast. The FBI is closing in. His best friend is in the crosshairs of the criminal underworld. And, as legend roars into full-blown life, Lew is faced with love, violence, deception, revenge - and the explosive discovery of his own secret past.
Satyrday Night Fever is the first book in the Lew Carter trilogy.
Get it now on Kindle or in paperback.
IT’S A WINNER!
On impulse, I decided to enter the NOVA short story competition hosted by Science Fiction and Fantasy South Africa, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021.
The quirky story I wrote ended up winning the competition, to my great delight.
Professor Dierdre Byrne, chief judge, described the story as “remarkably elegant” and “brilliant”. Want to read it?
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