I was about sixteen when I told myself I was going to be a writer. About thirty five years later, I finally paid the first installment off on that dream with a book called Locoland (2001). A mad dash through the Mexican heartlands, it tells a tale of surfers on a ‘safari’ who pick up a hitchhiker who happens to be a very drunk federale. Darkness falls on the happy campers. The federale ends up dead and the tale keeps moving further south than any tale really should but it is a thrill ride getting there.Murder in the Mojave, (2007?) next up, is a look back at the inglorious 60’s of LSD and hippie lore. It takes us inside life at a very normal, small town desert high school that is just beginning to feel the push of change emanating from the huge star to its west, Los Angeles, where Sunset Strip winds through the heart of a new culture, illuminating, some say poisoning, everything it washes up against. When this river of change follows the freeway to Two Palms, California, with its eager high school kids wanting to be cool in the worst way, how much change becomes too much and who gets hurt in the process?Next up, a new take on an old favorite. Called The Monsters of Paradise, (2012, rewritten 2021) it tells us of an alien, hungry and dangerous, dropping into the jungles of Yucatan. Tells us of a Yucatan fishing camp owned by a man and his family. When the family comes down for a look see and a vacation, the alien creature smells food. Can the Powers’ family outwit this hungry, intelligent beast or will they be devoured even as they try and fight it off? Kirkus called the book a well told adventure.Next up, My Fantasy trilogy. The Six Realms Series.Book One, The Team, (2022) introduces us to an odd mix of characters. An angel, a Seer, a dwarf and Shape Shifter go hunting for an out of control demon. We travel with them as they explore the far corners of the Six Realms. When they do find this demon they hunt, she turns out to be more than they can handle. Which takes us to Book 2 of the Six Realms Series. Opposition. ( 2022)The demon is finally caught and a battle ensues. That is all I will say. Unfortunately, a new and even more dangerous, group has crossed the Divide, from one universe to the next, and surprised everyone in the 6 Realms with their strengths and secrets.Book 3. Serker Kin. Uh. Things get dicey here. The book is not finished and it should be. Explanation: I have always wanted to write a long fantasy, a trilogy full of strange creatures and high adventure. The first book of three, called The Team was finished back in early 23’. It was followed smartly by the Second book in what I called my Six Realms Series, The Opposition. I was about 80 percent done with the third and final book in the trilogy, called The Serker Kin after the diabolical Six Realms destroyers who jump the Void when my computer coughed up some sort of killer hairball and, zappo! the third book which I was just a month or two from finishing, disappeared off every site in my MacBook. Needless to say, I went a bit loco. I went so far as to buy a new Mac Air, thinking that there was some way I could reboot the story from a new vantage point. I spoke to the reps at Apple and Microsoft, purchased a history digger app called DrillBit to drill into the past, called in an expert for hundreds of dollars and NOTHING. As my expert said, your files are gone. Sometimes this happens and there is nothing that you can do, Mr. Morris.I sat for a few days, staring at an empty page, trying my best to piece together every storyline, every important scene, every funny conversation, every small character development, every change of scenery and passage of time in the original three hundred and twenty one pages. I don’’t know how to explain too you how miserable I felt when I realized that trying to piece the book back together from the shards of story in my memory was more than I was able or willing to do. So I flat gave up, told myself I was lucky that so few people were reading the trilogy, reasoned that it hardly mattered if I never finished it. I crossed the long fantasy trilogy off my writer’s bucket list, tossed a good year and a half of fine storytelling into the ashcan and moved on. As luck would have it, I was just finishing up Tayo and the Porpoise Child, a project which I had started before the trilogy was completely finished and this gave me solace, gave me a reason not to worry so much about the 'disappeared' third book.,I was about three months past even thinking about finishing this third book when an idea came to me. There was no getting around it, it was going to bother me until my dying day, leaving that trilogy unfinished. I thought about it all the time. I was guilty about not finishing what I promised with the first two books. I felt bad for the readers. I felt bad for the characters that had traveled so far only to lose their voices because of a tech screw up. Bad for myself. How could I appease these voices and still be content with my writing life? What if, I thought? I take the book up again and start the story at the point that I had been stopped, on page 322. I could write those final eighty to a hundred pages that were still so real in my head. In essence, I could supply a few pages of historical background and spin a new beefed up version of the tale from page 322 to that final scene on page 400 or so which I had always envisioned.The upshot is, I am presently working on a novelette length tale of perhaps one hundred and twenty pages tentatively titled The Last Story Told, to serve as Book 3 in the Trilogy. Hopefully, this will satisfy my readers. My characters will get to tell their stories while I feel good about finishing what I had always wanted to finish, a Trilogy of Long Fantasy full of adventure and characters Strange and Delightful.Watch for The Last Story Told in the summer of 24' . (Keep you posted).Last but hardly least, Tayo and the Porpoise Child. (2023-4)This book came screaming out of the ether and demanded to be told. The story of an African basketball player who comes to 1999 Alabama to play for a local ‘college’ team only to be swept up in the troubles of the time and place, it is a rough, profane tale to swallow but it is a book that I hope all sides in our never ending battle of color and gender will, if not enjoy, then understand. I hope you enjoy each and every one of my efforts to entertain you. Writing is not as easy as I first thought. In fact, it is a monster in its own right. Kicks you one way and pulls you in another and after all that, nobody reads the work anyway. Why do I do it? Because it is what I know. I would be lost without it. Read more about this authorRead less about this author