What happens when you have seen something you weren’t supposed to see?  What happens when what you have seen will change the face of the Earth forever?  What will the governments of the world do to keep things stable and quiet while everything you ever knew is about to change?  Who will be saved?  Who will be sacrificed?  And to what lengths will they go to secure your silence?

The first book in The Rain Trilogy - Storm Cloud Rising probes those thorny problems and provides some possible answers to the questions.  The answers you will not like, but they are answers that have a firm foothold in logic and rational thinking.  And history supports them.  The world’s governments have done much worse in the past over smaller issues than what are presented in STORM CLOUD RISING.  The results have always been tragic travesties against innocent human beings caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Come, take a trip down a one-way street to disaster, death and total destruction.  Look deeply into the dark, violently boiling greenish- gray of a storm cloud rising as the curtain begins to descend on humanity and ask yourself, “Would I be able to survive?”  Well, would you?  Give it some serious thought.  Don't think about it too long, though.  No one can say when what happens in STORM CLOUD RISING will occur.  Tonight?  Tomorrow?

Magnificent cover art by Deron Douglas

A note of apology to all those who have sent me e-mails regarding  Book 2 in the RAIN TRILOGY: MAELSTROM.

Owing to physical problems and a health situation that keeps me away from my writing for long periods, progress on this book is much slower than I had hoped, but it is moving along and should be available soon.

Book 3, TAPPER TOM, MOOCH, AND THE TRAVELER, is being written as much as possible alongside book 2 and the third in the trilogy will thus, it is hoped, be ready shortly after release of MAELSTROM.

Again, my apologies to all of you.

J.

Here is an excerpt from book 1 of THE RAIN TRILOGY:  STORM CLOUD RISING....



In the back yard of a large, rambling ranch house just north of highway 60 between Soccoro and Magdalena, New Mexico, Jeremy Stone, shivering in the sub-zero weather, presses his eye against the cup of the ocular, his pulse quickens and breathing becomes difficult.  There can be no mistake, but what he is seeing is...is impossible.  All his life, well, up until today, he has wanted to find one, but...but this sight is unreal, incredible, unbelievable.  He steps back from the eyepiece and closes his eyes for a few minutes, then leans down to take another look.  No, there is no mistake.  It is no illusion.  They are there.  Tough to see, yes, but they are there.

I sure hope they’re bright enough for my gear to track, he thinks.

Jeremy taps a series of numbers into the keypad he holds in his gloved hand and the system gives the signal that it has locked on the target and tracking has begun.  Out in the computer shed, data recording and automated orbital reduction processing for later transmission to the International Astronomical Union also begins.

“Dad,” he shouts at the intercom.  “Dad, dad, come on out here...quick.  Hurry.”

Jeremy’s father, Wendell Stone, pushes at the sliding glass door that opens onto the patio.  He pulls his old woolen Navy watch cap, the ancient one his wife keeps tossing out and he retrieves repeatedly from the trash, down to cover his ears, and trots over to the small observatory he and Jeremy built during the summer to house Jeremy’s new two meter telescope and attendant computer systems.

“What?  What is it, Jerry?”

“You’re not gonna believe this, dad.  Take...take a look,” Jeremy says and steps away from the scope to make room for his father who, like Jeremy, is puffed out to almost double his girth in a quilted, down-filled jacket.

“Well, what do you know about that?” his father says.  “You found one.  And it’s a beauty, too.  Have you checked the computer data to make sure it’s not an existing—?”

“No, dad.  Let your eyes adjust a little more and take another look—and yes, it’s a new one—they’re all new ones.”

“They?” his father says, leaning back from the eyepiece with his eyes closed.  “What do you mean, they?”

“Just look again, dad.  Tell me how many you can see.”

After another minute of resting his eyes in total darkness, Jeremy’s father opens them and returns to the eyepiece.  Jeremy watches impatiently as his father concentrates on trying to see with his old man’s eyes what is trapped faintly in the eyepiece.  His father gasps and almost staggers back from the scope.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he says under his breath.  “I’ll be damned.”  He looks again and Jeremy figures it’s probably to convince himself he’s not seeing things because of Jeremy’s suggestion in the plural.  He pulls away from the eyepiece and looks at Jeremy who is standing, barely visible, in the dim red glow of the service light.

“Well?” Jeremy asks.  He is aware his voice is oozing anticipation and excitement but, considering the circumstances, he doesn’t care.

“I...I counted five of them.  Is that what you saw?”

“No, Old Eyes.  I saw...seven.  Let’s go to the computer room where we can enhance them on the screen and suppress Sirius so they’re a lot easier to see.  Besides, it’s a heck of a lot warmer in there.”

The two of them leave the dome and make their way across the crust of snow and ice that crunches and crackles under their boots to the small building adjacent to the observatory.  Once inside and the door is closed against the bitter cold, Jeremy turns on the automated system’s visual monitors.

“There.  See?  There are seven of them in a group.  Oops, sorry...eight of them.  They’re so faint they get washed out against the glare of Sirius.”

“Another Shoemaker-Levy 9?”

“No, dad.  They’re too far out to have been broken up by anything and, according to the track the system’s calculated for them, they’re on a hyperbolic path.  It’s their first and last visit to the sun.”

“Oh, my...God.  Quick, Jerry, connect to the Union and start transmitting your data.  Wait ‘til your mom hears about this...she’ll flip.  You’re going to be famous, my man—if you get in before anyone else does.  Go, man...go, go, go.”

“It’s already running, dad.  See?  The receipt signal just came on.”

They rush across the yard to the house for a cup of hot chocolate to toast Jeremy’s discovery.  In their hurry to celebrate, they don’t notice the red warning light flashing news of a possible collision event.

                                                         * * *

                                      12 January 2054:  1655 PST

“Hey, Sandy, I made it,” Emery Klein called out as he came in through the door from the garage.  “Where are ya, babe?”  There was no answer.  “Well, damn,” he said to the air around him.  He was accustomed to this empty home business.  Their careers kept them on the move constantly, but...but sometimes it was frustrating, and this time she had promised she would be waiting with open arms, and there would be his favorite chocolate cake, plastered generously with extra thick fudge frosting, sitting on the dining room table.  She even told him there would be candles on it, if she could find enough of them to cover the occasion...and she had picked out some filmy, flimsy black negligé for dessert.

Smart-ass woman.

But there was no cake and there was no Sandy, fully clothed or in a titillating...