The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander Science Fiction Series (Sortmind Press)
Book 1. The Martian Marauders, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
After the evacuation of the Earth’s population to Mars, the crew of spaceship Typhoon I must fight native Martian terrorists led by their new human Emperor, political agitator and traitor Sam Hergs. But Captain Jack Commer compromises the mission when he kidnaps the Emperor’s consort and falls in love with her.
Book 2. Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
Newly-promoted Jack Commer brings poor negotiating skills to the war with the fascist Alpha Centaurian Empire, losing his crew to Centaurian brainwashing as he and his wife are sent to be tortured on a barren planet.
Book 3. Nonprofit Chronowar, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
Ranna Kikken creates the Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth at her nonprofit Cat Farm, but its first conference in 2020 is destroyed when Jack’s younger brother Joe inadvertently time travels from 2036 to lecture Ranna’s complacent nonprofit ladies about the destruction of the Earth in 2033 and the resulting evacuation of the remnants of humanity to Mars.
Book 4. Collapse and Delusion, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
As former Typhoon II ship’s engineer Phil Sperry struggles with his decades-long treason to the human race, Supreme Commander Jack Commer and his wife Amav journey to the paradise planet Andertwin for a painful visit with their reclusive son Jonathan James, survivor of an abduction by Alpha Centaurian security forces and now the author of a bestselling novel about the collapse of the Centaurian empire.
Book 5. The Wounded Frontier, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
Jack Commer pushes for exploration far beyond Sol in the untested Typhoon V when a star thirty-four light years away abruptly vanishes, leaving the infrared signature of a Dyson sphere apparently built within one week.
Book 6. The SolGrid Rebellion, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
When the solar system adopts the buggy SolGrid telepathic network designed by former Space Force officer Patrick James, Jack Commer’s charming but impudent son Jonathan James instigates a rebellion against what he considers brainwashing.
Book 7. Balloon Ship Armageddon, 2021 (eBook and paperback)
Eight hundred years after his death as a human, Jack Commer’s rebellious son Jonathan James rises as a Wounded bio-robot to captain Balloon Ship Armageddon on a toxic waterworld in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 163,000 light-years from Sol.
The UR Jack Commer, 2021 (eBook and paperback)
The author reviews the childhood beginnings of the Jack Commer saga, as well as experiments that never made it to the published Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series.
The Balloon Ship Interviews, 2021 (eBook and paperback)
Twelve series characters plead with their creator for a chance to star in the last Jack Commer novel, Balloon Ship Armageddon, surprising the author with their eloquence and concerns.
Asylum and Mirage (Sortmind Press)
Asylum and Mirage, 2023 (eBook and paperback)
Art maven Reva McKee invites a hundred fifty guests to artist Dave Raavenscorr’s quirky warehouse studio, but they’ve really come to seek succor from the charismatic Marshall Singletree, the Great Migrator who escaped two Reunion brainwashing catastrophes in the south.
The Damage Patrol Quartet: Four Stories (Sortmind Press)
The Damage Patrol Quartet, 2021 (eBook and paperback)
Collection of four stories: “Roadblock,” “Randy and Laura,” “Perpetual Starlit Night,” and “Damage Patrol.”
CommWealth (Sortmind Press)
CommWealth, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
As actors in the Forensic Squad theatrical troupe struggle to adapt to the chaotic society resulting from the outlawing of all private property, CommWealth officials probe their breaking of the Four Rules sustaining the system, and several members navigate a twist of betrayals, double agents, and murder to find themselves leading a suicidal revolution.
The Soul Institute (Sortmind Press)
The Soul Institute, 2020 (eBook and paperback)
Computer technician Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses, unaware that he’s blundering into a catastrophic jumble of power lust, romantic chaos, drug abuse, and gang violence.
Sortmind (Sortmind Press)
Sortmind, 2019 (eBook and paperback)
The telepathic Sortmind app Mindwipes ten thousand users, and hysterical factions battle in the streets over whether telepathy should be free or outlawed. Oliver and Sam, high school art students whose fathers head the reviled Citizens Against Telepathy, struggle with friendship, love, and family–as well as rumors of alien invasion and the malfunctioning, reality-altering Sortmind.
Jump Grenade (Sortmind Press)
Jump Grenade, 2019 (eBook and paperback)
Berserk at missing his five hundredth point in a row, psychopathic Junior Dropout Basketball League star Billy Bolamme kills a taunting radio announcer with hand grenades, then blows up an entire sports arena to erase all witnesses to his crime. But his fame and luck can only grow as he joins shamanic forces with Guenevere “Universe” Ryder, fellow high school dropout, art gallery receptionist, and unwitting accomplice to thirty thousand murders.
Akard Drearstone (Sortmind Press)
Akard Drearstone, 2017 (eBook and paperback)
A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. Months later, as the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame at their rural Texas commune, twelve-year-old Jan Pace nurses her crush for the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston, growing up way too fast in a surreal summer between seventh and eighth grade.
Trip to Mars, the Picture Book (Sortmind Press)
Trip to Mars, the Picture Book, 2017 (paperback)
A sixth grade boy reports that World War IV has rendered the planet uninhabitable, and that Jack Commer and the crew of Typhoon I have been chosen to spearhead the evacuation of Earth’s surviving population to Mars.
The First Twenty Steps (Sortmind Press)
The First Twenty Steps, 2011 (eBook and paperback)
An ex-convict finds himself mixed up in a motorcycle gang’s plan to heist a hyperspatial supercomputer. Published 2011 on Nook Press and Kindle Direct Publishing, 2013 on Smashwords.
Stories
“Perpetual Starlit Night,” 2013 (in Twisted Tails VII, published by Double Dragon Publishing)
Archeologist Sairjin ShiriKor arrives on a tiny artificial gravity platform in deep space to give a scholarly lecture. However, the barbarian colonists scoff at her evident delusion that she’s anything but a criminal sent to be incarcerated on the changeless and apparently motionless platform.
“Roadblock,” 2013 (Etherbooks)
A feckless architectural school graduate finds himself blindly falling in with Oceanmouth, a sixteen year-old car mechanic, in a dubious trucking venture that takes them to the rural south in deep night. There they encounter the massive roadblock created by road construction strikers who have the power to eradicate all light.
“Space, Time and Tania,” 1977 (PigIron Magazine)
Bumbling ex-Texas Department of Public Death officer Marty Brimfeeler probes the demise of Tania in Houston shortly before World War III erupts.
Blog
blog.sortmind.com
Posts, stories, and excerpts about writing and art processes