This week I published my first novel, and second book. Now available as an ebook and paperback on Amazon, the story involves two of the 20th century’s most important events: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and NASA’s successful manned Moon-landing program.
“The Answer From Surveyor 3” is a tense, suspenseful mystery surrounding the real story of those two events. The tale starts by asking the question: What if someone were accidentally present when Oswald fired those fatal shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas? And what if that same person accidentally captured some photographic evidence?
I’ve been thinking of the plot for almost a decade. I’ve studied NASA’s Apollo program since that first landing and Moonwalk on a July night in 1969. The internet is now chock full of places where I can listen to recordings of transmissions from the six successful landings, and view thousands of photographs taken on the Moon and during the trip back and forth. That achievement proved to me that it was important to set lofty goals in life and strive to achieve them despite how difficult they might be.
I was a very young man when JFK was killed as he rode through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. During the ensuing years I read books, watched videos, and—as the internet flourished as a source for historical documents—pored through thousands of pages of documents related to the assassination. Since assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was killed two days later, the tragic event has spawned dozens and dozens of conspiracy theories—despite a Warren Commission report that named Oswald as the sole planner and shooter. I’m pretty sure he was alone in committing this terrible crime, but I often thought about whether my beliefs and those of many others would hold up if new evidence came to light.
It was that last line of thinking that led me to combine both events into a fictional story. The urge to commit the idea to paper grew when I rediscovered some elements of one of the Apollo missions that could help me tell my story.
The link to buy the ebook or paperback on Amazon is here and below, for cut and paste.
As always, I’d love to hear your questions and/or comments here, via email, or through reviews on Amazon.
I would like to thank my sister-in-law Deanna Gallaro for her wonderful cover design. A talented graphic designer, she has always been able to listen to or read words and turn them into something visual and interesting.
Happy reading.
