Books

My first published novel is Pacific Crest, which came out in October of 2018 and is available at Amazon as a Kindle e-book or a paperback.

Pacific Crest Revised, February 2020:

I’m not sure any author is ever completely satisfied with a book, even after publication. I certainly wasn’t, but had reached a point with Pacific Crest where enough was a enough. It had been professionally edited and the suggested changes had been made. I then edited it again to eliminate typos and other minor errors before publishing on Amazon. And then I took a University of Washington online course in proofreading and grammar. I learned a lot of valuable information and looked at Pacific Crest again, finding all kinds of small issues and mistakes. So, I edited and proofread it yet again. Whew! It was kind of tedious, but there’s satisfaction in cleaning and polishing up a manuscript.

Once that was done, I formatted the book for publication as an ebook and paperback on Amazon in February of 2020. This replaces the previous version, but isn’t all that different. I’m not sure readers will notice the various small changes I made, but I think it reads more smoothly and is easier to understand.

So what is Pacific Crest about?

Former Marine Faith Montaigne didn’t count on having to use her combat skills on the Pacific Crest Trail. It was supposed to be a serene 2,650-mile journey, a chance to heal from the Afghanistan War and adjust to life after her service. It was also a way for Faith to honor and remember her twin sister Lila. She’d disappeared from the trail ten years ago, her fate unknown.

Hiking north into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Faith finds solace and peace of mind in the wilderness, but that doesn’t last long. Multiple encounters with a creepy hiker and an almost-fatal encounter with a massive wildfire put the hurt on her wilderness bliss. She finds that just as in a war zone, she shouldn’t let down her guard. Even as Faith eventually “discourages” the creeper, another threat looms farther up the trail.

The FBI has discovered a ten-year-old pattern of missing hikers on the PCT. Along with recent evidence found near the trail, they conclude that a serial killer has been hunting along the entire length of the trail. Twelve women are missing and the remains of two more have been found. They all have two things in common: they were all hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and they all looked alike. They all looked a lot like Faith.

The killer’s crimes remained hidden because they happened far apart in time and geography. Now the FBI is on to him or her. Understaffed and underfunded, the FBI recruits Forest Service officer Max Albricci to help identify and stop the killer. Max has little to go on and is certain there will be another murder. He gets nowhere until luck throws him a bone, and then it’s a race to get to the killer before he murders again.

Faith is tough and capable, but will that be enough against an inevitable confrontation with an unknown, unseen enemy? Maybe. Maybe the killer is the one who should watch out.