Showing results by author "Jonathan Lowe" in All Categories

Troubled by dreams of hell and Rapture, Michael Rivers fights to overcome his visions by keeping a diary and staying awake. But his nightmares can only be dispelled by facing the preacher who so terrorized his childhood. The psychologist treating Michael, Veronica McCord, has her own problems.

Here are stories and emails written from the fictional writer Robin Masters. Or is he fiction? Could he exist in another dimension? With nods and winks to stories and travel articles written for magazines, the author has included “Easter eggs” and more.

Valerie Lott is a reporter living in Tucson, Arizona, when she meets a man at the ballpark while waiting to interview a baseball star. Their conversation affects her deeply. He is so alive in the moment that she can't forget him. Homeless? When a councilman's daughter is kidnapped, though, the description fits the man she met! Could her instincts be wrong about him? She is so certain that he can't be a criminal that she tries to find him before the police do...

People used to talk. We don't much anymore. Not sure when it happened, but how is pretty obvious. Progress became a two-edged sword. People wanted more, better, faster. Stopped going on family road trips in fake wood-paneled station wagons and moved on to SUVs and muscle cars fueled by road rage warriors between monitored intersections.

Will the rise of machines result in our becoming slaves? What is the human consciousness? Science fiction fans whose typical Hollywood diet of future killer robots may not have considered the very real possibility that, when quantum computing gives rise to artificial intelligence, its rate of technological advancement will not only become exponential, but it will apprehend quickly (and scarily to us) who we are, and who IT is, especially if this A.I. has instant access to all human knowledge.

Question: when do sewer rats in suburbia acquire intelligence and cunning? Answer: when they begin calling each other names. For Duff and Tuff, newly arrived on Conner's lawn after being ejected from a drain culvert during a flood, their I.Q. soon begins to rise while Conner's falls. Conner, you see, is obsessed with TV. Now the plan is to keep this bachelor from going through with his vow to change his life (and their situation) by pretending to be his supposedly deceased ex wife. Inspired by "Who Moved My Cheese?", this short fable has but one lesson: imagination is linked to reading, not watching television.

Meet Alan Dyson, a research scientist experimenting with the longevity effects of a newly discovered bristlecone pine tree gene. He thinks he's being watched and followed. He's right. When his secret formula is stolen, and all notes are wiped from his computer, his friend--the firm's computer programmer--secretly tracks the thief to a P.O. Box in Zion, Iowa.

Jude Johnstone and his photographer buddy Grover once traveled together for magazine articles. Times have changed. Jude is now a tabloid reporter in Miami, and Grover runs a dying camera store. Then Jude gets a tip leading to the location of a disappeared Powerball winner of $900M, and finds him in hiding in a South Beach penthouse.

Stories of science fiction, mystery, humor, and romance from the author of The Final Plot of Valerie Lott, the Methuselah Gene, Lottery Island, Gonzo Fun, and Judge Jury: Hybrid Stories. Several previously published in magazines.

What if one man (not Bezos or Musk) became a trillionaire and was interviewed by a Rolling Stone reporter intent on finding out how he did it? Combining the lottery, genetics breakthroughs, and artificial intelligence to achieve massive profits over time, the elusive trillionaire is revealed with tongue-in-cheek fun by award-winning author Jonathan Lowe.

Dorothy Stratten was killed by her jealous husband soon after appearing on Johnny Carson. Paul had met her in Canada and became her manager.

A rookie postal inspector hunts a postal bomber as police search for the wrong man! Set in Tucson and Phoenix, where I worked for 20 years as a postal clerk, retiring early in 2009 to do more writing. See memoir Post Office Confidential. The story needs no update as it fits today's headlines about shootings and bombings, and border tensions with targeted immigrants and social services costs.