The House That Fire Built (poetry)

The House That Fire Built tells the story of Eliza and Michael, a couple with a young daughter who inherit a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains from Eliza’s father, where he lived only a year before dying of cancer. Strange events and nightmare visions haunt the family before and after they move in. The house then burns to the ground while they are away. When arson is ruled the cause, this sets off a chain of conflicts, internal and external, as the perpetrator is sought and seems to be a man who worked on the house. The narrative is primarily seen from Eliza’s point of view, as she nurses her abusive father in his final days and must initially confront the inheritance of fire alone, before Michael returns from a remote assignment. Eliza encounters human, supernatural, and internal demons once she learns the house was destroyed by arson, and the likely arsonist returns. She, along with her husband, must work through layers of loss and disillusion to understand the karmic forces at play. 

The House That Fire Built, largely based on real experience, is told in lyric and narrative poems, reminiscent of the work of Robinson Jeffers in its “California Gothic” explorations of death and loss (and a bit of David Lynch, too). The setting colors events and opens reality up to deeper and sometimes violent mysteries, while also offering the solace and awareness found through the dhamma and the natural world. But where Jeffers typically ends his poetic narratives in tragedy, this story turns to the powers of love, meditation, and awareness for healing and growth. 

The Runner Between Worlds, Book One of Rifts: Young Adult Science Fiction Trilogy, currently seeking a home. Here’s my query!

When sixteen-year-old Isaac breaks into his missing dad’s forbidden lab, the ore he finds opens a Rift that propels him into a parallel universe. Isaac lands on Uriel, a highly advanced sister planet to Earth, where he is placed in an elite school to learn the powers unleashed when science and meditation are united, as well as to be protected from the unknown agents who smuggled the ore to Earth. There he meets Desert Hawk, a girl who helps teach him to alter matter via thought equations, tap into a mycelium “Internet” containing billions of years of knowledge, and travel Rifts across the galaxies. She also says she can find his father, but in exchange, she wants Isaac’s help to discover who is stealing the ore from her people’s lands. Attracted to her, and desperate to find his father, Isaac helps her discover the ore is being swapped for uranium by one of Uriel’s leaders to build Rift transporters, part of a plan to create an inter-galactic empire. If Isaac and Desert Hawk fail, not only will his father be lost forever, but the volatile transporters may start a chain reaction that will obliterate Uriel, and Earth. However, after Isaac believes Desert Hawk has betrayed him, he opens a Rift to travel home and becomes lost in the Rift channels. A Keeper of the Rifts saves him, offers surprising advice on love, and gives Isaac a rare gift before sending him back to Uriel. Instead, Isaac uses the gift to return to Earth, where he is greeted by devastation. 

THE RUNNER BETWEEN WORLDS, Book One in the trilogy, RIFTS, is a YA science fiction novel of 106,000 words. The story is told by Isaac, a champion long-distance runner and top math student from Santa Cruz, California, whose parents are both scientists. The series features a cross-universe teen romance set in a world shaped by cutting-edge science, political intrigue, spiritual mysticism, and environmental crises. Books Two and Three continue Isaac’s search, now for both missing parents, as he attempts to tell friend from foe, navigate love, and thwart plans threatening to destabilize two universes.