SINNER'S CROSS WINS AGAIN

I am very pleased to announce that my third novel, 2019's Sinner's Cross, is now a Book Excellence Award Winner for the category of Action. This is Sinner's second honor, having won the Best Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction just months after it was released.

Anyone who knows me knows that, like most writers, I am uncomfortable with self-promotion, but it's part of my job as an indie author to crow when crowing is warranted. Sinner's Cross is most definitely the best book I have yet written, and considering how limited my funds have been to do promotional work for it, to take two major awards in less than six months is a remarkable achievement. So I'm remarking on it. (coughs)

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Sinner's Cross is a WW2 novel told from the perspectives of three very different men -- two Americans and one German. My goal with the novel was simultaneously to tell "the story of an event" (a single battle in late 1944), and the three men's reactions to it as human beings. It is not a book about strategy, tactics, or weapons. It is not a wide-eyed homage to the "Greatest Generation." And it is most certainly not warmed-over wartime propaganda. It is simply about the reaction of human beings to confusion, discomfort, uncertainty, terror, and the most intense stressors imaginable. Anyone who has ever read anything I've written knows that placing ordinary people in extreme situations is my hallmark, and Sinner's Cross is perhaps the most extreme example of this trait. A friend of mine who saw heavy combat in Vietnam told me he felt "exhausted" after reading the first act, and I took this as a tremendous compliment. That having been said, though there is plenty of action in the story, it has hardly a tale of "hot lead and cold steel," either. Each of the characters -- Ed Tom Halleck, Bobby Breese and Martin Zenger -- are archetypes meant to represent a different aspect of the human condition. It is my hope that the reader will see glimpses of their own personalities in these characters, and perhaps come to discover how they might react in a similar situation...for better or for worse.

I have often stated that my main motivation for becoming an independent author was to avoid being branded and thus forced to work within the confines of a single genre. (I don't read in just one genre, so why would I write in only one?) As it happens, my first two books were gritty crime novels, often categorized as suspense or mystery/suspense. My third was a short story collection consisting of horror tales, dystopia, black comedy and only the devil knows what else. Sinner's Cross is my first novel in the genre of historical fiction, but as you can see, the good people at the BEA decided the pace relentless enough to give it top honors in a different category entirely. And -- big surprise! -- I'm completely on board with that. Never mind the short stories and novellas, before I'm done, I intend to have written a full-length novel in just about every genre you care to name, including fantasy, science fiction, erotica, romantic suspense...pick your category. To me, story-telling is an essential part of the human heritage, and there is no need for snobbery and little excuse for incuriousness. There is something to be learned from every genre. There is, after all, a reason why tales, legends, fables, books and plays from thousands of years ago are still told. One of my favorite exchanges in one of my favorite movies, Amadeus, goes like this:

Mozart : I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?

Baron Van Swieten : Because they do! They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us. Opera is here to ennoble us. You and me.

I dunno about opera (due deference to my cousin Kelly, the opera singer), but I do know about fiction. And I know how restless my curiosity is and how much joy I take in the selection and arrangement of words and the telling of tales. Sinner's Cross was a bitch to write, but the struggle was also rewarding and necessary: I paraphrase General Patton, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a book about war that didn't feel like a war to the author when he wrote it.

So, gentle reader, if you have the time, why not head over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and give Sinner's Cross a try? I guarantee one thing: you won't forget the experience.

Sinner's Cross: A Novel of the Second World War