I just wanted to share the news. E-Books-UK is going to publish my novel, Objects Are Closer Than They Appear, which sprang from my short story of the same title. Since e-books are here to stay and increasing daily in popularity, I thought, "Why not?" Besides, the editor of E-Books-UK, Keith Mason, impressed me with his professionalism and know-how, as well as his enthusiasm over my novel.

Here is a brief synopsis of the novel:

Tammi Jean Cook is sixteen. She is also psychic. And Tammi Jean knows her daddy is alive and well in California, not dead and buried in Waco, Texas, the way everyone, including her own mama, claims he is. So when Tammi Jean thumbs a ride with long-haul trucker Elvis P. Boone, she is determined to prove Charlene Cook wrong, although Tammi Jean is just as determined to leave behind the mobile homes, red dirt, and kudzu that personify everything she despises about the state called Alabama.

Under the erroneous impression that her mother is deceased and Tammi Jean is traveling “back home to be with her daddy,” Elvis decides to take her all the way to California. Sure, she claims she’ll be safe hitchhiking, “being psychic the way she is;” but Good Samaritan that he is (as well as skeptical of her psychic ability), Elvis is concerned about Tammi Jean’s welfare. Besides, the way he sees things, he’s going that direction anyway and it’ll be nice to have someone to talk with as the miles click by on the Kenworth’s odometer. 

Yet, as Tammi Jean and Elvis leave Alabama behind and begin to crisscross America, headed toward California, they not only get to know one another, they also encounter people who are as diverse and colorful as the scenery bleeding past the big rig’s windows—characters (some good, others evil) whose lives intersect with their own, if only for a while; and these lives are changed, some of them forever, as is the life of Elvis P. Boone and, in the end, Tammi Jean Cook’s life as well. After all, just like it says on the wing mirror of every vehicle on America’s highways, “Objects Are Closer Than They Appear.” And this is especially true if, like Tammi Jean Cook, one can see the future.