Ongoing Fiction by season…
Spring
Check back here for the release date of the first book in Craig’s upcoming Touch series!
With only a touch, Michael Calrissi can read your thoughts. His psychic skills, however, are a double-edged sword: an effective tool for tracking down serial killers, but an obstacle for keeping friends or lovers.
In “The Spider Bite Murders,” he investigates a string of disappearances in a remote California forest. Soon, Calrissi psychically pries into the secrets of both his detective partner and a would-be girlfriend, alienating both. His skill also reveals that something—or someone—is living in the oaky canyons, using deadly spiders as a weapon. Can Calrissi channel his abilities and crack the ghoulish case, rebuild the bridges he’s torched, and save the lives of the two people closest to him?
Summer
The Touch Series
Follow Michael Calrissi’s story and cases over time. Already-drafted installments include “The Suicide Killings,” “The Snowfall Snuffings,” and “The Baptism Drownings.”
Fall
(Coming-of-Age YA from a boy’s perspective - READERS: COMING SOON - AGENTS: PLEASE INQUIRE)
Tommy, 17, has to figure out Elaine, his “perfect” girlfriend, and her mind-blowing past. Then he realizes his best friend’s somehow morphed into a methhead and is about to go off the rails. Just to pile on, Tommy’s always tried hard not to think about his dead mom and what happened when she died— but suddenly more memories of her flash back each day…
The clock’s ticking. It’s spring now, but he’s only got until summer to deal —with all of it.
Falling Off the Mountain
Excerpt
Midnight. Snow whispered against the panes, and Dad snored from down the hall. I was wide awake, Elaine’s words looping in my mind: “Tommy, I’m leaving in three months...”
She’d called after dinner. Her voice was low, almost a whisper. Neither of us can afford a cell, and their phone was corded. So, zero privacy. I pictured her mother, hovering there like a vulture.
“Leaving?” It came out like a foreign word. My brain felt fuzzy and slow.
“Mom’s moving me the day after graduation.”
“Like, to another cabin in Pine Knot?”
“No, Tommy. Listen. She's moving me out of California…”
Winter
Siblings Daniel and Sarah discover an elderly woman who looks young...and a grown man who’s actually a kid. They trace these unwanted transformations to the sinister Timemaster—but when they confront him, they pay. He changes Sarah, 12, into an elderly woman who is put in a locked convalescent hospital. He turns Daniel, 11, into a pre-speech infant. He’s taken in by a foster mom.
No one believes Sarah, and Daniel can’t talk. It will take every ounce of their ingenuity and weak psychic skill to even get together again. Then, as an old lady and a baby, the pair must rally their enemy’s seven other victims against him—before they all run out of time.
Seven Clocks
(Speculative-Supernatural-Adventure for Middle Readers - READERS: COMING SOON - AGENTS: PLEASE INQUIRE)
Excerpt
…I frowned. “If you don’t like your beard, why not shave it off?”
“With a razor? Nah-aw. Razors are sharp.” He set the Bubble Magic on the floor. He didn’t bother to screw the lid back on. Then he picked up a toy car.
“Mr. Powell—” Daniel started.
“I’m Chuck, ’member?” he said in a hurt voice. And then this full-grown man started running the red car up and down his thigh, guiding the tiny vehicle through wrinkles in his pants leg. In back of his throat he made the sound of an auto engine.
“That’s right, Chuck. You told us that.” Daniel spoke in a super gentle voice. “Chuck, is this your trailer?”
“No. This old man, Mister Feinstein, saw me crying under one of his apple trees. I said I got no place to go, and he felt bad for me, so he lets me live here. He gives me some money, too. That’s how I buy my candy.”
I had a killer idea. “I like that toy car,” I said. “Do the doors open?” I reached over and touched the side of the little auto—and I also touched Mr. Powell’s hand.
And—yes!—I figured it out. Don’t know why, but my hunching was working, for once.
“Doors don’t open on that car,” he said. “But the front wheels turn. Lemme show—”
“Chuck, how old are you?” I interrupted.
“Six,” he said automatically. He slowly lowered the car, biting his lower lip, and stared at us to see if we’d heard. “I mean...twenty-six. I’m twenty-six.”