Eidolon: Quest (seeking publication)
In our world of vanishing resources, Sandor Tatrin sees his career prospects as a Navy officer vanishing. So he jumps at the chance to command an unconventional mission to the first alien civilization. Sander views it as an opportunity to help a strife-torn human race. Yet his own crew personifies the age-old human curses of fear and greed, with one exception: Naomi Hargraves, his strong-willed African-American scientist. Unknown to him, he holds a secret that that would ruin political careers back home if revealed. Its nature becomes clear to him as the voyage progresses. A series of mishaps puts the mission in jeopardy, causing him to fear that a mole in his crew means him harm. In the face of these uncertainties, his ship manages to land on the alien planet. However, surprises await him there. The race he came to meet, the Pisceans, fails to appear. Instead, he encounters other visitors who plunder the world and engage in pitched battles, thereby putting its life in peril. Sandor sets out to find the Pisceans and discovers that they abandoned their world long ago. Blocked at every turn, his life in danger from his own crew, he struggles to find a way to get his people off the planet and return to Earth to reveal what he knows, while saving what remains of the Piscean life. An impossible task. Or is it? The solution he seeks may resolve the mystery of the lost Pisceans and set into play events on Earth beyond his control.
Always the Sun (unpublished)
This is a young adult novel that tells the story of a group of teenagers who serve as crew on a voyage to deliver a Cabo Rico yacht from Connecticut to Atlantic City, New Jersey. It's a typical first novel that deeply needs a rewrite, which I may get to someday if two other ideas fail to reach a critical mass.