Coming in the December 2011 is my second mystery novel. It is about a newly married couple that were living in Flagstaff, Arizona, where they were brutally murdered. The killer is identified but a judge finds a problem with the way the evidence was collected and the killer is set free.
The book follows the grandfather as he plans to quietly, without being discovered, secure some form of justice for his granddaughter's murder.
Stan Miles was dispatched by the National Center for the American Indian in New York City to a supply center in Richmond, Virginia. He was to transport several boxes of Indian artifacts that had been unearthed during a Corps of Engineer project on the Navajo Indian reservation. When Stan was helping unload the artifacts he discovered drugs. He was subdued by the men delivering the articles, knocked unconscious and thrown in a subbasement of the supply center.
The story is about Stan's trials and tribulations in the Pitch Black of the basement of the supply center and his brother, Larry's, relentless search to find Stan. Larry's desperate search takes him to the Navajo Reservation and a brush with murder in a high-stakes drug game.
Chuck with his Golden Retriever while displaying two Navajo paintings. The paintings and a Golden Retriever play prominent rolls in Pitch Black.
Passages from the Heart Featuring writings by Chuck Sisson. Art work by Beth Cooper
This is a compilation of poems and writing collected over the years by Chuck Sisson. I have asked everyone in the family to participate. This is a blended family made of children from my family which includes my daughters Debra, Kathy, and Sandi along with my wife Paula's two daughters Kim and Jana. We call ourselves The DJSKK Clan (Deb, Jana, Sandi, Kathy, and Kim). The DJSKK Clan includes the five girls, thirteen grandchildren andfour great-grand children.
I authored my first novel when I was 75. It was published in the fall of 2008. It is a mystery novel entitled Pitch Black (shown above). I had taken the story line from course material I developed when I was instructing an Educational Psychology class while serving as an Adjunct Professor at a local university.
I was pretty sure it would never be a bestseller but it has done surprisingly well in the market with no organized marketing plan. My main objective in writing it was not to write a bestseller but to leave The DJSKK Clan a legacy.
Since my only publications until the mystery novel were a few magazine articles and a dozen or so published poems, I decided to put together this book of family writing and call it Passages from the Heart. It is mainly for a record for our family but I think you may find some of the writings to be interesting, even entertaining and they might inspire you to try the same thing with your own family.
The DJSKK Clan reunion in Estes Park Colorado in 2007
The marvelous illustrations were done by a colleague and a very dear friend, Beth Cooper, with whom I worked at Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
Beth Cooper has been writing and illustrating books for herself since she could hold a pencil. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of North Texas and spent twelve years designing interfaces for websites before returning to her roots. These are her first illustrations to be published.
Beth enjoys drawing using colored pencils, pastels and graphite and gets her inspiration from nature and traveling with her family in their RV. She lives with her husband and son in San Antonio, Texas.
Here is one of the interesting images taken from the book.
