John Chapman, as the legend goes, crisscrossed much of what was America in the 19th century planting trees just about everywhere. Those trees, of course, would take years to actually bear any fruit, but in time, they would grow and flourish, and everyone in America would be able to enjoy its fruit. Thus is the legend of Johnny Appleseed.

Dream big, and expand everywhere.

I’ve been spending the last few months working on three very different works of fiction, two shorts and one full novel. All different genres, with something for everybody. I don’t want to give everything or even most of everything away, but I figured a few teasers (by way of the material I wrote for all the queries I send out) are in order.

You get a snippet of one page each.

Vampire Meets World

“Natalie, a ‘purebreed’ vampire, is literally getting her first taste of the human world for the first time in her existence. She’s not supposed to fall for Ethan, an ordinary middle manager at a second-tier copier company, but she becomes immersed in the ways of the human city, a place that should offend the dignity of all vampires living underground. A “true” vampire is expected to play the role of the seductive temptress, a destroyer of men, but perhaps a copy machine salesman’s world of bowling alleys and coffee shops is what Natalie really desires the most.”

Missed Connections

“The story is a contemporary romance set in New York. It starts as a chance encounter between two strangers, a man who ends up at a museum for the day and a woman who just moved to New York. They discuss love, the finite and rare nature of affection, and cliches about meeting the right person and the existence of that special someone for everyone. They fall in love with each other, but it is only when it is too late do they find out how uncommonly precious love truly is.”

War Zone

“Jake Tyler is an agent of the Federal Reality Commission, tasked with tracking down Rika Kitada, a ‘double’ who has taken the identity of a woman in an alternate Earth to be with a man who resembles her deceased husband. He has to pose as an FBI agent in an alternate San Francisco torn apart by a tense conflict divided along racial and territorial lines since World War II. In the end, Jake has to choose between following his duty or letting Rika have the life she longs for, even if that life is in the middle of the one most dangerous hotspots in the world.”