Under a cloak of what cynics refer to as the sweeping stupidity that followed September 11, 2001-while senators and representatives were working out harmonies for their newest rendition of God Bless America-a pair of Executive Orders slipped out of the White House establishing the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security; the first expanding the definition of terrorism to include domestic acts against citizens and government interests and the second creating a bureaucratic juggernaut of twenty-two agencies with over 200,000 employees. Just as staggering, in the Pacific Northwest, more than 250 concrete dams regulate a watershed the size of France, choking the life out of tributaries that barely feed the 1,243-mile long Columbia River. The fourteen hydroelectric dams on The Columbia's main stem have contorted America's fourth largest river into a system of sluggish, slack water reservoirs that harnesses nearly a third of all the hydropower potential in the U.S. but at the biological expense of a now-decimated, millennia-old salmon run. Against this concrete river-stopping backdrop, a pair of monkey-wrenchers-known only as Hooknose and Hazard-polka-dot the Pacific Northwest with hits of eco-sabotage intending to stop the industrial annihilation of the planet in its bulldozer tracks. These elusive characters, unknowingly manipulated by a master puppeteer, are heading for a stumble that will make 9/11 look like it was little more than a crack in the firmament; that is if they can navigate themselves out of the way of a cresting tidal wave of red tape. Michael Scott Curnes lifts the cloak on domestic terrorism to offer a perverted glimpse at the extremes to which both environmental activists and the government-of-the-day will go in their eco-tug of war for The Love of Mother.

For the Love of Mother

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Curnes, Michael Scott

Thrillers & Suspense

Inkwater Pr

Ashton Taylor was a hypochondriac--justifiably so--with multiple and sometimes self-diagnosed issues that turned him into a bit of a misfortune teller. Always knowing he would die young-ish, and anticipating what would otherwise have been an unorganized and messy affair for others, he had thoughtfully left behind a step-by-step post-mortem plan. Choreographing circumstances and conveyors, Ash had arranged for his cremains to be distributed to the places he cherished in this world, by the people who meant the most to him--especially his patient and tolerant partner of the past twenty years, Rich Dreadfulwater. Rich, who is known by his family as Limping Rabbit, on account of a childhood tumble from a moving pickup truck, is a Seattle-based Native American defense lawyer suddenly grappling with grief, his caseload, and the task of divvying up the four pounds of his ash-rendered boyfriend into nineteen pre-labeled black plastic 35mm film canisters. Struggling with everything he's lost, he finds himself coping with a whole lot more than his partner's ashes. In honoring the final wishes of the man he never imagined he could live without, the mourning lawyer embarks on a quest to find his Inner Indian ... and the destiny that has always been his birthright to seize.

Coping with Ash

Literature & Fiction

United States

Inkwater Press

Wicked Ninnish

Michael Scott Curnes

To Pay Paul

An Eco-Thriller 17 Million Years in the Making\nSeamus Quinlan is a geophysicist with a problem neighbor that also happens to be his employer-the Manhattan Project's once top-secret Hanford Nuclear Site, currently the largest radioactive waste cleanup project anywhere on the planet.\nAfter Seamus's father succumbs to the cancer that killed the rest of his family, Seamus attempts to make something of the family's barren acreage, while overseeing ground stability assessments for the Department of Energy in a region whose past was riddled by basalt lava flows, catastrophic floods, and seismic hijinks. Anomalies around the Quinlan farmhouse lead to a collapsing graveyard, sending Seamus on a subterranean quest during which he learns more about his family's roots, decides to blow the whistle on a coming environmental catastrophe, and, not incidentally, falls in love with his colleague, Cody Getz. An improbable doomsday scenario ushered into the frightening realm of the plausible, To Pay Paul is a tale of how individuals survive when longstanding environmental debts finally come due.

Genre Fiction

Down Wind Press

"A modern day story about the world's most silent and puzzled actor of all time... Rudolph Valentino..."

Brownell & Carroll

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Books by Curnes, Michael Scott