SERVICES

• Magazine and newspaper articles
• Ghostwriting (e.g. memoirs)
• Corporate documentation
• Advertising copy
• Editing
• Fact-checking
• Manuscript reading

Member Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild

PROJECTS

An Open Beer (working title) - non-fiction book

On Oct. 29, 2005 a cop and a suspect grapple in the interview room at the Houston, British Columbia RCMP detachment. Moments later, dispatchers in Prince George receive a frantic radio transmission. Other officers on duty that night in the small northwestern B.C. community race back to the detachment. They find Const. Paul Koester, a rookie five months out of depot, sobbing on the floor. Ian Bush, a 22-year old millworker, face down in a pool of blood on a broken, orange vinyl couch, shot in the back of the head.

In the weeks and months that follow, a disturbing scenario slowly begins to emerge. Koester had approached Bush for having an open beer outside the arena during a Houston Luckies hockey game then arrested the youth when he gave a false name. The officer's story, that he was forced to use lethal force after Bush attacked him, got him in a chokehold from behind and threatened to kill him doesn't really seem to add up, igniting a public debate on police accountability. The Bush family's lawyer ridicules the story questioning how it would be possible under the described circumstances for Koester to inflict the deadly wound and why there was no video evidence. Contradictory testimony by RCMP and independent blood-spatter experts at a coroner's inquest 18 months later, further fuels the controversy.

As a reporter for Houston Today, the local newspaper, I ate, drank and breathed this story for two years and wrote dozens of news stories, features and editorials. I am currently seeking a publisher.


Calculating God - a comic play in two acts

Dr. Stephen Knight, a world-renowned mathematician has spent his entire career trying to scientifically prove the existence of God. Now, he and his protege believe they may have pinpointed the second coming of Christ to a tiny, remote village in northern Ontario. They go to the community to quietly check it out and meet Mary Jenkins, a beautiful 29-year-old Aboriginal woman. Unfortunately, they also run into Ralph Martin, a sleazy, Toronto TV reporter who catches on to what they are up to and invents a story that Mary is Christ reincarnate. The resulting media frenzy draws a Vatican investigator, a Skeptics Society debunker and hundreds of pilgrims to the Paradise Hotel, where Mary works. In the mayhem that follows a surprising question emerges: Could Mary really be the second coming?

This play has been completed and workshopped once. I am currently tweeking the script and seeking a theatre group to
produce it.

Untitled - a novel

Disclosure meets Erin Brokowich in this story of suspense and corruption.

Charlotte Williams is a healthcare troubleshooter who can fix anything. For years, she has moved around the country taking medical facilities from substandard to excellence. Now, she and her husband, a geologist, want to settle down. When they both land jobs in beautiful Smithers, British Columbia, they believe they have found the perfect spot.

Charlotte makes rapid progress toward solving the woes of the nursing home where she is the director until she takes disciplinary action against a veteran nurse for abusing a patient. Instead of being rewarded for her efforts, Charlotte herself becomes the subject of an investigation and a series of subtle sanctions. Unwilling to be bullied, she decides to fight back. A psychological game of cat and mouse ensues in which Charlotte begins to uncover a corrupt and incompetent bureaucracy. Professionally isolated, she turns to the community for support, but finds only a culture of fear and denial that threatens to destroy her professionally and personally.