I also think I’m doing some of my best writing I’ve ever done. There’s always room for improvement, but, I’m really quite proud of my new book and I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Here’s the official description:

Magic is real. And now, it’s political.

Reporter-turned-reluctant-sorcerer John Jupiter has barely begun to understand the world he’s been pulled into. Still reeling from the revelations of Modern Magick, he’s now launched a full-scale charm offensive trying to show the world that magic can be a force for good. Meanwhile, freshman Congresswoman Zara Ravelle is pushing the nation’s first bill to regulate magic, determined to prevent another catastrophe like the Stanhope Stadium Incident, where nearly 50,000 people lost their lives in a magical disaster the world still struggles to understand.

But not everyone wants magic controlled. They want it eradicated.

A viral protest movement known as the ANTIMAGs has taken hold online, fueled by fear, conspiracy, and chaos. Their message is clear: wizards should be registered, locked away, and treated as less than human. Behind the movement lurks Chris Crockett, a reclusive billionaire with a far more sinister agenda. His true goal? To twist magic to serve his own terrifying ambitions. As politics ignite, ancient powers awaken, and dark forces gather, John finds himself caught between the court of public opinion… and a kingdom of the dead. Because some spells don’t just change the world, they shatter it.

Comes out on August 15th. You can pre-order it now here. If you do, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

My new book, Modern Magick – Book One of the Omnichron Chronicles, is about the reintroduction of magic into modern society. “But RJ,” I hear you saying, “hasn’t that been done to death?” to which I say, “Nope. Well maybe, but I wrote one anyway.”

Here’s a short synopsis:

Witches, warlocks, and magic spells. They were only stories. Until now.
Everything people think they know about magic is wrong.

Reporter John Jupiter is no stranger to strange news. But when news about the murder of reclusive billionaire Alan Knickerbocker falls in his lap, the story of a lifetime drastically changes his life.

After a mysterious amulet gives John the ability to cast magic spells, it’s up to him and a handful of brilliant misfits to stop a team of mercenaries known as the Triumvirate, who are determined to release an ancient threat and use it to bend humanity to their will.

No one else will believe them. No one else knows. Magic is real…

This was my ‘pandemic project’ that I began writing shortly before the world went into hibernation. My intention is to make this a series with follow-up books following the adventures of the cast of characters you’ll meet in this one. I’m really proud of what I created and I hope you enjoy it.

I started writing and self-publishing books in 2012, and I feel that a decade of experience has really taught me how to be a better writer and self-publisher. It’s been a long road, but one I’ve enjoyed traveling on. I hope you’ll join me in this latest journey. I worked really hard to make sure that you do.

1,000 years into the future, humanity has evolved to develop one of four powers: Super strength, flight, telepathy and invulnerability.

However, that has driven the world’s population to separate into four warring factions based on their given power.

This is the story of a man who was developed all 4 powers by the age of 18.

When the mutations began, doctors didn’t really know what they were dealing with. People would come to them with claims of strange abilities straight out of comic books. However, most doctors responded to their patient’s wild claims with either a referral to a psychiatrist, a prescription for Xanax or both.

Then the footage began appearing on YouTube.

Thousands mutated within the first days. The chaos that followed was unlike anything that had been seen before in human history.

The survivors eventually settled in four different camps, with everyone living with their own ‘kind’. (there were fewer murders that way).

Super-strength: And when they say super here they really mean it. One of the first videos that surfaced proving humanity had taken the next step in our evolution, showed a man ripping the Empire State Building off its foundation to use as a weapon against those who had no powers during the initial skirmishes. The super-soldier had been enthralled by a malevolent telepath who had tasked him to destroy the world’s foremost city.

Telepathy: Now this one was truly terrifying. You never knew how strong the telepath was. It varied throughout the population. Some telepaths could barely pick up on people’s emotions, while others could control vast armies of superpowered people, directing them to conquer the world.

Flight: One of the most useless powers believe it or not. People have always wanted to fly, but no one realized just how fucking tiring it is! OK, imagine running a marathon. Then multiply that by 100. That’s the amount of effort it took most people to stay afloat. Flight was better used as a controlled falling sort of situation for most. Then again, there were others that found flight as easy, well, as easy as taking a swim.

Invulnerability: By far the most useful power, but the one that terrified me the most. What did invulnerability really mean? People think it’s cool when the bullets bounce off their chest, but they never stay as calm after a telepath has forced them to lock themselves into a steel coffin to spend the rest of their days in. See, being invulnerable doesn’t mean you can stand toe-to-toe with some of these other superpowered folk. In fact, the power seemed to have fooled a lot of those who had it with an undeserved sense of immortality.

The war between the factions began shortly after scientists realized they couldn’t put the genie back into the bottle. Whatever changed the human genome was permanent, forcing civilization to quickly adjust to its new reality of constantly feuding tribes of super-powered mutants.

You know, I realize, when I say it that way, it sounds pretty bad-ass. It’s not, but I can see why you’d think so.

Anyway, I was born during the third generation of the mutation. And for a time, my parents thought I might escape the curse.

You see, everyone begins developing powers around 16-years-old. For me, my sweet sixteen was filled with disappointment. I was a ‘late-bloomer’, someone that wasn’t likely to develop any powers, forced to become an outcast, and useless to society at large.

But when I turned 18, everything changed.

I wasn’t prepared for it. The day my powers awakened, I’d given up hope long ago that I would feel any tug of magic in my veins.

It started with whispers. I was hearing voices, but I couldn’t place where they were coming from. For a time, I truly thought I was going insane. But it was only during a meal when I passed my father the potatoes without realizing he hadn’t said a word that my family recognized what had happened. I had joined the family and matured into a telepath.

It was strange having powers at first, after being without them and seeing my classmates progress so quickly. I compared it to being in a coma, and needing to make up for two years worth of work.

More than anything else, I was happy to have finally developed my powers. My father and mother were telepaths – some of the strongest in our tribe. As such, they were well-placed, and had been ashamed that their first-born had been born without any abilities. Now that I had powers, I would be allowed to join then in society.

But, then things got weird. Err.. Weirder.

I discovered, quite by accident, that I now had the ability to rip the sink off the bathroom wall with my bare hands. No need to look into what I was doing, or why the sink was destroyed. All I can say is, as a teenager, you can occasionally lose control.

The point is, I was developing another power.

I didn’t know what to do. My powers were raw, and unfiltered, I wouldn’t stand a change against my family who had developed the discipline to hunt through a person’s brain to find their secrets. I know. My mother and father had been doing it to me my whole life.

But what’s forced me to leave my family and put me on the road is the fact, no one has ever developed more than one power.

Ever.

I knew that if anyone found out about my extra power, that the fire control team working for the government would pick me up lickity split. They’d take me back to the labs, dissect me, maybe even try and replicate my DNA to try to do the same thing for others what I had done to myself naturally.

I had to save humanity from itself by disappearing and staying out of their war. I would have to pretend I was powerless. Unable to read anyone’s thoughts, or pick up a building, or withstand a flamethrower (I tried that once. I don’t reccommend it even if you are invulnerable).

I looked back at the house I had grown up in and felt the tug of the memory of my family pulling at my heart. I swallowed it back. I would have to forget them if I was going to survive.

I turned away from my parent’s house and looked up at the full moon above. I felt another tug, this time, from what felt like the moon’s gravity.

I wondered if it was possible. I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. As I did, I felt my toes rise off the ground.

I opened my eyes and looked down at my house, now several hundred feet below me. I needed to leave, but I also needed one last look at home.

It was likely the last time I ever saw it.

Rosetta – A Jim Meade, Martian P.I. Novel

Murder, betrayal, the fate of Humanity… it’s all in a day’s work for Jim Meade: Martian P.I.

In a slow orbit around the sun, just beyond Mars, a mining colony known as Rosetta houses thousands of Consortium citizens who mine the valuable ore Humanity uses for space travel. Over the last three years, Rosetta has grown exponentially, from a tiny mining colony, into an economic behemoth that threatens the delicate balance of power between The Consortium and Coalition – two nations who are still healing from a devastating nuclear war that turned Earth into a hellscape of hopelessness and despair.

After a prominent scientist for The Consortium dies in an apparent accident, Jim Meade is hired by the victim’s family to find out what really happened to their father Dr. Sanjay Sinjakama. There, Meade finds himself caught up in a power struggle between the diabolical CEO of Nebula Mining Dimitri Koschei, and Lazarus Rincon, the charismatic leader of a vicious cult.

With the assistance of his friend and confidant (the beautiful Emeline Hunan), Meade races against the clock to find Sinjakama’s murderer and prevent a catastrophic disaster that might mean the end of all life on Earth.

$4.99

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I write books because I love creating new worlds and coming up with the type of stories that I’ve always wanted to read. I’m a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, which led me to wanting to create something people could enjoy as well.

If you’d like a taste on what my writing is like, I’ll be posting various short stories as well as some of the daily articles I write for iHeartMedia. If you sign up for my newsletter, I’ll even send you a FREE eBook – the first book in my Twelve Stones series.

Here’s a short description:

“Twenty two years ago, Alex McCray found the first of the Twelve Stones, a set of powerful artifacts left for Humanity to find and use to save Earth from certain destruction.

Returning to his hometown of Onyx, California, Alex reunites with his father who returns the stone Alex found so many years ago. Their reunion is cut short however after Alex’s father is murdered by billionaire industrialist Rupert Kline, a madman who will stop at nothing to collect all twelve stones for himself.

Driven by revenge, Alex McCray vows to bring his father’s killer to justice and keep the remaining Twelve Stones out of Kline’s hands.

A thrilling tale that mixes romance, cutting edge science, and oh yeah, the fate of human civilization.“