Neal Burgess, a semi-retired, middle-aged computer analyst from California, had just cashed in from a start-up company he helped bring to life. He bought the sailboat of his dreams and was enjoying his new live-a-board lifestyle in a small marina in southern Alabama intending to just kick back, relax, do some writing and focus on his zen practice. Life there was idyllic and blissfully uneventful until the day he met Cap'n Billy, a prototypical, down home good ol' boy who operated a small shrimping trawler along the inland waterways that lined the Gulf. Before he knew it he was spending almost...

Human life on Earth was entering its death throes. The Earth itself, having long suffered the abuse of human pollution, seemed to have given up. The ozone layer was all but gone, weather patterns around the globe were erratic and extreme, oceans expelled tons of dead and dying sea life on beaches every day, ground water was drying up, crops failed regularly and earthquakes were becoming more and more frequent. It was as if the Earth itself was trying to slough off a malignant growth. Humans seemed to ignore all these signs and continued to concentrate their efforts on waging their wars...

Jihadi: Path to Heaven is a novel describing the life of Imam Zabiullah Omarkhel who was born in Afghanistan just prior to the Soviet/Afghan War.
The book begins with his birth in the small village of Koh-e Dalan Sang nestled in the Panjshir Valley, and tells the story of his childhood and early schooling in the village's maktab (primary school). It continues with his education at a madrassa (secondary school) in the province's capital city, Bazarak, where he is introduced to the teachings and ideology of an ultra-conservative version of Sunni Islam that will eventually...