Free Range Men (2014, Main Street Rag): T.J. Beckerman is unlucky in life and love. Newly divorced and struggling to make ends meet as an overworked and underpaid adjunct professor, he whiles away his evenings hopping from dive bar to dive bar with his two boozy friends. Skirt-chasing, but still pining for his ex-wife—who has a new love interest—Beckerman struggles to maintain a presence in his still-impressionable son’s life. Strapped for cash and desperate to pay his child support obligations, he takes a cue from a fellow professor and enters into a very questionable sideline—a shady business sure to end what little of an academic career he’s got left. Free Range Men is a modern day tragedy set in small-town Pennsylvania, told in a spare prose, and punctuated with dark humor.  

 

The Late Great Thor McHugh (Aardwolfe Books, 2014): Lucy Glass had often dreamed of the father she'd never known, imagining he was a world-famous surgeon or perhaps an airline pilot. What she didn't expect was that he was Thor McHugh, an aging, self-absorbed Bigfoot hunter. Living off the funding of a 4th tier university, McHugh and his partner, Ames, share a comfortable yet insular life in their fortified compound. But when a new chancellor takes over, McHugh suddenly finds himself cash strapped and out of a job. For Lucy, the stakes are much higher. Ailing from a rare terminal illness, her only hope is to locate any relatives that may be potential tissue donors. With the assistance of a private eye, Lucy tracks down her father and his two other illegitimate children who are her brothers. Together, they converge on McHugh's compound with a resulting clash of wills and personalities that ebbs and flows as they learn more about the flippant con man who paid off their respective mothers to be rid of them. Will the aging McHugh find redemption in the form of his now-adult children? Will he succeed in reclaiming his funding? More importantly, will Lucy find a match?