The primary aim of the "Novel Excerpts" blog category is to showcase my creative writing, specifically from the novels I've written. Hopefully, these posts will provide a glimpse into my storytelling style, themes, and narrative skills. It's an opportunity to share my artistic expressions and the worlds I've created through my novels.
The Boaz Stenographer, written in 2018, is my fourth novel. I'll post a chapter a day over the next few weeks.
Book Blurb
Walt Shepherd, a 35 year veteran of the White House’s stenographic team, is fired by President Andrew Kane for refusing to lie.
Walt returns to his hometown of Boaz, Alabama and renews his relationship with Regina Gillan, his high school sweetheart, who he had ditched right before graduation to marry the daughter of a prominent local businessman. Regina has recently moved back to Boaz after forty years in Chicago working at the Tribune. She is now editor of the Sand Mountain Reporter, a local newspaper.
Walt and Regina’s relationship transforms into a once in life love at the same time they are being immersed in a growing local and national divide between Democrats and traditional Republicans, and extremist Republicans (known as Kanites) who are becoming more dogmatic about the revolution that began during President Kanes campaign.
Walt accepts two part-time jobs. One as a stenography instructor at Snead State Community College in Boaz, and one as an itinerant stenographer with Rains & Associates out of Birmingham.
Walt later learns the owner of Rains & Associates is also one of five men who created the Constitution Foundation and is involved in a sinister plot to destroy President Kane, but is using an unorthodox method to achieve its objective. The Foundation is doing everything it can to prevent President Kane from being reelected in 2020, and is scheming to initiate a civil war that will hopefully restore allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.
While Walt is writing a book, The Coming Civil War, he is, unwittingly, gathering key information for the Constitution Foundation.
Will Walt discover a connection between the Foundation and the deaths of three U.S. Congressmen in time to save his relationship with Regina, prevent President Kane from being reelected as the defacto head of a Christian theocracy, and the eruption of a civil war that could destroy the Nation ?
Chapter 82
Late Tuesday, just a week before the Presidential election, Anton and Anatoly Romanov, were arrested at LaGuardia International Airport in New York City. The two were wearing disguises and were flying under fraudulent passports. Their intentions were unclear, but an unnamed source stated that Anton, aka, the Professor, was claiming he was delivering his brother to U.S. officials under an agreement. One thing was clear. The CIA had linked Anatoly to the Russians 2016 efforts to manipulate that year’s presidential election. The CIA, along with the FBI and a host of intelligence agencies from around the world, had confirmed that the GRU, the Russian agency Anatoly was responsible for, had sent U.S. election officials emails that appeared to be from VR Systems, a Florida-based election systems provider to trick the election officials to click on an attachment that would have introduced malware into their computers. This would have provided the hackers control of the infected computer. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged it doesn’t know how successful the Russian efforts were in that effort or what information or access the GRU may have gotten.
In all appearances, this year’s election won’t be affected by such spear-phishing attacks even if they are successful. A month ago, Congress and President Kane passed legislation requiring all districts to use paper ballots or verify that its electronic results agreed with its paper backups. Although elections officials from across the country were frantically trying to implement the new law, it appeared all attempts by Russia to manipulate the upcoming election had been thwarted.
The Pencil-Driven Life 