I began writing The Doves, my love & war story about an American defense engineer who, disgusted by the systemic corruption of American defense contracting, received a clandestine offer from the Russian Army to develop tactical ground combat sensors and moved to Russia in order to accept it honestly, in November 2008.

The rough cut, completed December 31, 2008, was 30K words and black beyond belief.  A few days later, I decided I no longer felt that way about the world and began rewriting for a happy ending.  That took another few weeks.  After that, something of a hiatus followed.  I wrote on The Doves on and off, mostly off, until about the end of May 2008, when my writing, both fiction and non, took off. 

The Doves is now a finished, edited novel of 229,000 words.  At the same time, from July 2008 forward, I also wrote some 42,000 words of nonfiction essays, and several thousand more words of expanded commentary.  Not bad production, even when you don’t consider some of the nerve-racking things I went through while writing it.

Since The Doves is now on the market, I have removed all drafts of it from this site. 

I am now, over the next few weeks, going to turn back to my non-fiction and begin working on (Young) Womanhood in Time of Peril:  What it Takes to be an American Today, and What It Means.