'Flatline' The heroes of this story are NOT the good guys.

My next novel, (which I expect to publish 11ish/2015) started as a speculative fiction piece intended to be a short story. But, the characters and events got loose and I was never able to corral them into the seven or ten thousand words I originally intended. They wanted a crime novel and I became their galley slave.

Despite its cry for guns, guts, blood and violence, it is a clean, flinch-free read.The only flinching come as you duck the bullets and the brains.

Troy Bittles, the protagonist, is a retired enforcer for an infamous worldwide motorcycle club (gang). In his retirement, he turns his former exploits into fodder for a somewhat successful novel writing career. He lives alone with his aging English Bulldog Sam.

Life seems good, but the monotony is not all he thought it was cracked up to be. Stacked against his former action-filled life of an enforcer amongst outlaws, it is a flatline. He found a slimly negotiated peace with the life he yearned for, yet there is a haunting deed he can never shake, the accidental murder of a child. That secret haunts Troy's mind and heart. The hit was never supposed to go down that way. The boy was not supposed to be in the house. On law enforcement logs, the child is still listed as missing likely kidnaped.

While out for a routine walk with Sam, Troy is jumped by street thugs in an unwarranted beating. Initially, it seems a random event until another much older outlaw, Roy Beckett, from a notorious street gang himself, appears to help. Roy, in the spectrum of organized gangs, is a polar opposite to Troy's world. The only thing they have in common is strong arm violence and murder.

Roy's offered help comes with a bite, and both men are propelled headlong into a series of calamitous events filled with hitmen, murder, drug cartels and runs from the police. Within these events, Troy sees a dim chance at redemption for the one deed he felt doomed by.

The story winds its way through California, Arizona, Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. In Recife, Brazil they are killing killers, the death squads preying on children whose only real crime is poverty. The story takes a turn I could never have imagined and redemption for the protagonists remains in sight but just out of reach.

The ending flabbergasted me and almost made me flinch.

Flatline is a crime novel. A wanton wild tale with a cast of strong colorful characters that ride with impunity through violent circumstances mostly of their own making.

The heroes in this novel are not the good guys.

Look for Flatline's release by October 1st, 2015.