Showing results by author "Riano D. McFarland" in All Categories

When a United States marshal retires their badge and hangs up their gun, more often than not, their only remaining desire is to ride off into a distant horizon and live out the remainder of their lives in peace and solitude. When Oliver Blackstone sailed from Galveston, Texas, to Boston, Massachusetts, it was also his deepest wish. After bringing an untold number of the Western Frontier's most dangerous criminals to justice and sending more than 100 of them to face judgment in the hereafter, he'd been dubbed "The Deadliest Man Alive" by renowned frontier journalist J.C. Cavanaugh.

Since the dawn of mankind, there have been extraterrestrial entities observing our development as a civilization from afar. They have watched as our knowledge and our numbers have grown, while still feeling the need to shield themselves, as our intolerance for those who are unlike us has kept us from evolving to a higher level of enlightenment. While entities of pure energy may possess the knowledge of the ages, having traveled the tides of time and space for millennia, even they are easily enthralled by the uniquely human temptation of touch.

When Andrew Ingram walks his longtime friend and confidant Jeanie home after a celebratory dinner, he has no idea that his life is about to change in unimaginable ways. After having created an innovative new automotive gaming platform, he was riding high on the wings of success when a deadly explosion ripped not only his best friend but also his eyesight away from him.

With each new recipient, the artifact expands its knowledge while passing the sum of its experiences on to them. Although its mission is quite specific, its very existence is the closely guarded secret of a society sworn to recover it—a task which proves to be far more challenging than they could ever have suspected.

Long before even dragons roamed the planet, the spores of the borlamites were biding their time in the heat and darkness of deep Earth. They were waiting for the surface to cool and the seeds of life to take hold and turn a barren rock into a pearl among planets in our galaxy. As they prepared to emerge from beneath Earth’s tectonic plates and turn the bio-matter of the dead and dying, into food for the budding flora and fauna, their birth was interrupted by an asteroid strike. The planetary conditions suddenly changed, and the borlamites continued to sleep.

Following seventy thousand years of undisturbed slumber, the vessel of a planetary empire that had followed its own predetermined path to destruction eons earlier had finally reawakened, bringing with her the potential to change everything. Embodying all that was benevolent and beautiful from innumerable long-forgotten cultures, this lifeform in suspended animation also possessed the power necessary to prevent her gifts from being corrupted by those who will eternally thirst for dominion over others.

In 1955, the Soviet Union introduced the Moscow Water Dog in a canine show to great acclaim. However, in real world situations, they fell far short of the expectations Russian cynologists had set for them, and in 1979, the Moscow Water Dog project was shut down. Supposedly the last of the breed died out in 1990, but did they?

For millennia, dragons and humans have shared the Earth. For most of that time, it has been a peaceful coexistence, primarily because contemporary human civilizations considered dragons to be nothing more than fairytales created from the fanciful imaginings of cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers. In truth, they have always been an integral part of a healthy planetary biosphere, and without them, Earth's environmental balance would have collapsed long ago.

When Barney, a clever little dachshund, looks for a place to escape the chaos created as movers load the family's belongings into a moving truck, he discovers a box of warm laundry fresh from the dryer, and burrows himself comfortably inside it. After a refreshing snooze, he awakens to find that his makeshift doggy bed has been loaded onto the truck, and he is already on the way to Denver, Colorado. Although the rest of the family intended to follow the moving truck, when they were unable to locate Barney, they remained in Pueblo, Colorado.