Bøger af Alan Black

York August Sixteen was abandoned as a baby, abused and molested as a child, beaten and harassed as a teen, and had his rightful place in the Republic's Space Navy stolen from him. Fighting back against huge government systems was useless. Dispensing justice on an individual case-by-case basis was more to his liking, yet even that was taken away when he was stationed on a lonely communication space station. York's life would change when he decides to seek justice for people even less fortunate than him.

Sixteen-Year-old Tasso Menzies just finished burying his grandfather next to his mother and grandmother on the family farm when he receives an order from his estranged uncle to come to Capital City. He doesn't want to leave the only home he's ever known. He doesn't want to be apprenticed on a space freighter crewed by Texas cowboys of Mexican descent. He certainly doesn't want to be gone for so long that his home and inheritance are stolen. While trying to fit in and still get home he learns what it is like to live in space, what a cheerleader is, how spicy a taco can be, and that Texicans like a good fight as much as he does.

The new commander of the 1392nd Allied Protective Expeditionary Services is Hamisha Ann McPherson and this is her first command of anything larger than a squad. She is a larger-than-life combat veteran and a bonafide war hero. She knows combat. She also knows that combat is one thing and that command is a warthog of a different and dubious color. Misha wonders if she has the necessary skills to turn this group of slackers, petty criminals and losers into an effective fighting unit in the short time she has left before being tossed out the back end of a spacecraft to fight in ground chewing warfare. APES are supposed to be an armored infantry fighting force. However, this unit's last commander retired in the saddle leaving his unit to unravel and fend for themselves. Their assigned space forces transport captain is less than no help at all. The war with the Binders is heating up and there are secrets swirling around mixed with gossip about the last big battle against the aliens. Some secrets could mean life or death for the ground pounders who wear metal armor in dirt side warfare. Combat is on the horizon and even the veteran APES doubt they will be ready for what is coming. All Misha can do is crack a few heads, kick some backsides and see what happens. Her APES might live through the next battle if she is successful. If not...

In the Ozarks in 1920 Susanne Harbowe is shamefully and suddenly ripped from her life as a schoolteacher. She did nothing wrong that justified being fired from her job, evicted from her home and shunned by people she thought were friends. In desperation she joins forces with her young friend, LillieBeth Hazkit. Susanne and LillieBeth track down the men responsible for ruining Susanne's life. While she struggles to keep up with her friend's youthful spirit and undaunting courage she wonders if she will end up in a brothel with nowhere else to go. LillieBeth's audacity and determination lend strength to Susanne as she seeks to either reclaim her old life or build a new one. But first, they must bring the men who hurt her to justice.

Larry enjoyed raising cattle on his Kansas farm, until the aliens arrived. He couldn't help himself; he was going for a ride with aliens from outer space! The aliens wouldn't tell him where he was going, how long he would be gone, or if he was ever coming back, but a space trip sounded like more fun than beer and burgers at Benny's Been There and Done That Bar and Grill. He had to go. Larry's ride into deep space wasn't just a Sunday jaunt. This space-faring species was in danger of being wiped off the galactic map. They offered Larry a ride because his assistance was vital to their survival, but they were xenophobic to the point of barely tolerating Larry in the same room. He was willing to help, but what could he do? Could he live long enough to save himself? What skills did Larry have to save an alien species threatened with annihilation? Every time he asked them for information, they stonewalled him.

LillieBeth Hazkit is thrust into an adult world of evil and of evil men, she has to grow up much too fast, learning of love, of tribulation and of facing her demons with fire, fury, anger, and blossoming maturity. Growing up in the Ozarks in 1920, she loves everyone and in her twelve years of wisdom believes all people are endowed with love and kindness. Her daddy gets home only on weekends, so she and her mama take care of their small, rented farm. She has become very adept with her precious .22 rifle helping Mama put meat on the table. She feels compelled to obey the command to love our neighbors, a scripture she learned at her little country church and school house. It comes as an immense shock when she learns the friendless, crazy old man down the road does not want to be her friend and it becomes her mission to convince him that she loves him and wants to be a good neighbor.

Stone's fist, secure in the combat suit and hidden by camouflage, impacted the Hyrocanian mouth before it closed around the baby. Stone grabbed the helpless piglet with his free hand and tossed it to a startled female. The piglet, the last of her kind on the delivery shuttle, grabbed the baby and ran. "Ratcheting up the excitement and the stakes, Black nails it again with Rusty Hinges, the latest in his Metal Boxes sci-fi series!" Melanie Tighe, book reviewer for The City Sun Times, Phoenix, Arizona Stone twisted his fist, trying his best to break every tooth in the Hyrocanian's mouth. Hyrocanians have four sets teeth, two for chewing vertically, and two for chewing horizontally. Suddenly, his fist broke free from the shattered teeth. Opening his fist, he felt something soft and squishy at the back of the alien's throat. He closed his fingers around it and yanked.

In 1925, Mercy, a black ex-prostitute, dumped like yesterday's trash, is taken in by the bravest, boldest woman she's ever met. What's in store for her, finding hope and courage with LillieBeth Hazkit or more rejection? When Bald Knobbers bent on keeping their mountains for whites only, visit them, Mercy wants to run, but there isn't anywhere to go. LillieBeth, with true Hazkit style, refusing to yield or bend, they confront the evil together. Can Mercy learn to live with Leota Wikoff at the Hazkit's, no less racist than the Bald Knobbers willing to lynch her? Can she learn farm life or will she be a burden to the young woman who rescued her? Can a small jasper stone give Mercy the courage to be strong?

The sequel to #1 best selling science fiction novel Metal Boxes. Blackmon Perry Stone hasn't gotten over his fear of being outside and he still hasn't settled into life in the Empire's Navy. After months of legal wrangling over his last assignment, he has been given a new assignment. He was looking forward to getting an new posting on a spaceship or a station. The problem is that his new job is on a planet. Worse, once there, the base is overrun by the enemy aliens and now Stone is trapped outside on a hostile planet, injured, and hunted by aliens bent of killing him.

Ensign Stone's goals were to make his way in the empire's navy, make his family proud of him, and make love to his fiancée. No matter which way he turned, someone was conspiring against him. Disgraced and humiliated, he is court-martialed, discharged, and abandoned. Accepting what he thinks is a lowly busy-work position on a beat up old family business space freighter travelling At the Edge of human space, he hopes to earn back the trust and respect he lost. The Empire's political powers and his family have different goals. Stone faces humanity's enemies in a do-or-die operation.

The White Wind's captain looked forward to a smooth, profitable voyage, but mutineers steal his ship and kill, kidnap, or toss his passengers and crew into the sea. Saddled with the ship's most irritating passenger, he wonders why he doesn't let her drown, be eaten by dragons, or taken by hostile barbarians. He must find his crew, cross uncharted hostile lands, and fight a magician to take back the White Wind.

Coming of age can be hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he barely manages to graduate from the empire's cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. He has trouble settling into navy life, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Life becomes difficult when they killed him. Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.

In 1925 in the Ozark Mountains, LillieBeth Hazkit has learned to love where she can, not turn away from those in need, and stand up for herself when she has to. Feeling compelled to obey God's word and apply what she knows; she stands steadfast and unmoving upon biblical principles. Collecting strays, runaways, and lost souls has become an accidental habit. Human nature no longer surprises LillieBeth. Protecting her friends from evil men may require using her guns She fights back with every means she has available when moonshiners, racists, and horse thieves invade her life.

Chastity Snowden Whyte just wanted to mine for rocks, metal and ice in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Rock mining in space was all she knew. It was all she was good at doing. She was comfortable living alone as the captain of her mining ship the Sedona. Normally she managed with only infrequent trips to the planetoid Ceres for resupply. She didn't want to have to make extra trips back to base because of equipment failure. She didn't want to become a mining tutor for a group of newcomers from Earth. And she certainly didn't want to get entangled in corporate conspiracies, piracy, kidnapping, murder and worst of all...politics.

Libby Winrow can't afford to lose any more cattle from her small herd. She must go look for them when a few stray off. Finding more trouble than missing cattle, she is set afoot, her leg injured, beset by wolves with a cold winter night coming on. Survival is not guaranteed.

Here you will find everything from turning your initial ideas into story generation, from beating writer's block, to keeping your writing moving forward from story concept to knowing where and how to end your story. The following is a sample. "WRITE THE CLIMAX FIRST It is said that the hardest paragraph to write is the first paragraph of any book. So, don't start there. Remember rule number three? We don't have to write a book in the same order we read the book. Write the end first. Then back up and get the characters to the end as quickly as possible. We became writers because we were readers first. Our natural inclination is to write our novel like we read a book, from front to back, beginning to end, start to finish. That just isn't always the correct or only way. We write in any order that gets us writing and keeps us writing..."

LillieBeth is determined to find the men responsible for stealing her horses, to stop them and make them pay. Leota Wikoff finds refuge from her abusive father with LillieBeth Hazkit. Embarrassed by her past and her recent actions, she speaks without thinking and offers to go with her new protector to the edge of the Ozark Mountains, back to her hated Arkansas to hunt down and stop a ring of horse thieves. Leota's only tether is the tenuous link to her new boss and the odd collection of outcasts LillieBeth gathers around her. Can Leota overcome her own selfish ways and find a tether to the biggest anchor of all?

When an orangutan goes on the lam, anything can happen. Chasing Harpo (is) an intriguing cast of quirky characters you'd like to visit with longer. Including the star, Harpo - an orangutan who believes humans are here purely for his entertainment and, of course, to deliver his food. A fun ride and a great adventure for all ages, as Harpo and his trusty servant, Carl, try to outwit the zoo security team, the police, the attorney general and a gang of drug dealers. October 1, 2013 by Melanie Tighe CITYSunTimes Scottsdale, Arizona news.CITYSunTime.com

A "hilarious and utterly irreverent tale" (Irvine Welsh) of a year in the life of an abrasive pee-wee soccer coach Growing up in Scotland, Alan Black learned that soccer was no mere game; it was a matter of life or death. In this harshly hilarious tale, Black, a Glasglow transplant living in suburban California, coaches the Dragons, a peewee team that proves an embarrassment to his beloved sport. They're pampered. They're soft. They've been told by their overprotective parents that (gasp!) "winning isn't everything." Using drills and bombast, Black attempts to whip the team into shape. Kick the Balls is a sidesplitting memoir of grass stains and free kicks, a no-holds-barred account of one man's bafflement by an alien culture, and a stinging satire of American parenthood. Alan Black's voice-howling from the sidelines-is that rare thing: a fresh, original, winning comic talent.