Julian Cameron is a painter down on his luck with an ax to grind. When Julian fakes his own death to boost lagging sales he pulls off the greatest art scheme of the century... with otherworldly consequences. An impromptu hypnosis session reveals a past life where he was the lone survivor of the destruction of Atlantis 14,000 years ago. Fate delivers him to France, only to become the world's most famous painter of cave art in Chauvet at the Cave of the Bears. Thrust into his hands at his moment of escape is a mysterious black box with the dire warning, "Do not let this fall into the hands of those who would cast you into oblivion." Fearing for his life Julian hides the box behind the cavern wall of his world-renown signature, Red Hand. But, is it true?
In his present life, Julian returns to the cave, surprised to discover a time travel device suspiciously linked to a UFO. And the UFO wants it back. Along with Julian!
Chief Inspector Benoit is hot on his trail for art fraud. DARPA, the top-secret government agency involved with time travel experiments wants him dead. All Julian wants is to become the most famous painter in the world again, and with the aid of the UFO he names, Einstein, the second coming never looked so good. Too bad Einstein has other plans! Hitch a ride through hyperspace in this hilarious mystery/detective/time travel adventure as Julian and friends attempt to foil every ruse to put him out of business... for good!
Although Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble list my books, they are mostly privately sold through author fairs, book store signings, my website, and my music concerts. Total sales from all three books to date are @2,000 copies. In other words I purchase author copies directly at a reduced rate and resell at retail prices, typically what are listed online for the POD versions.
Any halfway decent painter worth their salt knows
nothing is more vile in the world of art than cheap
greed - with one possible exception - clever cheap
greed. Because the devil is clever. That’s why it’s
always second rate. So what unholy ghost ever
possessed Julian Cameron, painter extraordinaire of
twenty-first century fine art, to be clever?
Every pernicious gallery owner, art dealer, art
broker, and agent provocateur he had ever cut a back
alley deal with, Julian loathed. Low-balling an artist
was an insult akin to blasphemy and every last one of
them was an exalted primary offender ripe for
excommunication from the Church of High Art.
He had learned two things. The more one cares
deeply about something in this world, the more the
world wants to punish you for it. Secondly, that time is
the most valuable commodity one can ever possess.
The days teach much that the moment never knew. A
truly enlightened painter captures inspiration in a
moment, and the moment is what heralds a legacy of
immortality beyond our control. Because the irony is
that time, like fate, can be a fickled mistress.
Dark Manhattan skies charged upon a vanguard
wind that whipped the waves of the Hudson into a
furious living spectacle of an invading horde. For a
fleeting moment Julian stared blankly at nature in
chaos, inviting the inspiration to form in his mind.
Then abruptly abandoned the thought and continued
thumbing through the cheap detective novel with the
same disdain for the reader as for the manner in which
it had been written. Predictable villain, bad. Good guy
gets the girl. Were there no good villains who ever lost
a girl? All he wanted was a way out.
