About the Book

"The only good thing to come from the Unite the Right long-weekend of terror was that it made me get sober."

This disturbing series casts Tony Moore, an alcoholic in crisis, as witness to the real events of 2017 when he is uniquely vulnerable to the terror the White Supremacists unleash on Charlottesville. Imagine suddenly realizing that you could not protect your family or rely on the police or elected officials to, either. You couldn't even count on the President of the United States to tell the truth about the threat to the community or country. Tony knows the Alt-Right traitors consider Charlottesville theirs ("Whose streets? Our streets," they chant, every time) and uses his fear as motivation to dry out and, with the help of his new girlfriend, he trains to become "more capable of violence. "Parts I and II, published on August 9th 2018, are historically accurate through August 6th, when the story shifts to a dark vision of what could be if the Alt-Right's evil is not confronted and defeated by patriotic Americans. Part II ends in a cliffhanger. The remainder of Book 1 (Parts III and IV) will be released once the actual events of the Unite the Right anniversary weekend are safely behind us and we return to the semi-normalcy of American life in the Trump era. You will like this series if you enjoy Odyssey-inspired tales, domestic terror conspiracies, or post-apocalyptic thrillers with strong women and feminist men. If you think there is anything great about Trump's America, save yourself $3. MC: It was the first time I've ever been an eyewitness to history. Then, to see a complete whitewashing of it was heartbreaking. If you weren't in a small part of Charlottesville on 8/12/17, whatever you've heard about the day is, at best, partially true. The Heaphy Report, which offers an unbiased accounting of the summer and weekend's events, opens by pointing out what a miracle it was that, despite the bungling by city leadership, poor planning and no communication by and between CPD and the Virginia State Police, and the hate within the hearts of the Unite the Righters, only one civilian life was lost and one shot fired on August 12th. 99 percent of the "counter-protesters" were decent Americans, including dozens of clergy, but there were bad apples who attacked the Alt-Right. Their behavior was disgraceful, but, the President and right-leaning media fail to make a crucial distinction: Any Antifa and Black Lives Matter activists who engaged in violence came to Charlottesville to fight the Alt-Right. The Alt-Right came to terrorize the town. None of my neighbors is worried about the "Radical Left" returning to C'ville except that it means the Nazis are back, too. If our president and the media won't try to Unite the Rest of Us, then we must do it ourselves. This isn't about one party winning elections anymore or the virtues of "deregulation." Americans openly hate other Americans now, hate our president or his vanquished rival. Some people reading this hate me for telling you that what we experienced is different from what the President said happened. "Fake news!" Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin had to be hospitalized for a 700-day erection. The 2nd Civil War has begun and we're all losing.That's what this is about. My non-fiction thoughts would be lost in a sea of punditry because nothing I've said soothes or outrages sufficiently to rise above the din. We want that now. We want to hear our opinions spit back to us and feel the rush of justified rage as we demonize the other team. But by telling a good story-a ludicrous one, hopefully-perhaps I can cut through the noise. You can't put that many guns and angry people in one place and not expect disaster. They'll be back this weekend. Miracles don't tend to repeat themselves.
About the Author: Michael is a father, educator, ex-academic, and now, fiction author who writes in multiple genres. Though he lives in Charlottesville, VA, he still considers Boston home. Both places figure prominently in his writing. On 8/12/17, Michael found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and was horrified to find his neighborhood briefly crawling with swastika-bearing, Alt-Right thugs, armed to the teeth. Without a cop or camera in sight. Seeing how the POTUS and right-leaning media misrepresented what happened in C'ville changed him and the country forever. Within weeks, The 2nd Civil War series was born. These disturbing, post-apocalyptic thrillers feature Tony Moore, an Odysseus-like alcoholic and conspiracy theorist who must go through the hell these domestic terrorists create to reunite with his Penelope. Fans of dystopian, alternate-reality fiction will find something to like in these books. As dark as they are, there are always a few laugh-out-loud lines.