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What's good for the first book in the Adam Parker series — Adam Parker and the Radioactive Scout — is good for the second. Brand new cover design for Adam Parker and the High School Bully is out now. As you can tell, we're working with some commonalities with the first book redesign. If interested, purchase the paperback and get a brand new version of this story where Adam is forced to confront the action of his past.

The first book in the Adam Parker Mysteries series, Adam Parker and the Radioactive Scout, is getting a fresh, new look. I also made a few formatting changes to the inside of the book as well, which added a bit more thickness to the book. I really like the way this cover came out. Thanks to Pat Whalen for the initial design, all I did was make sure everything was on the cover in the right spot. For those unaware of the Adam Parker Mystery Series, here's a synopsis of the first book: In the small town of Hilldale, kid detective Adam Parker was crime’s worst enemy. With the help of his best friend, Kevin, and the girl next door, Becky, no mystery was too great to tackle. 15 years later, Adam returns to his hometown, but this time playing detective is no longer his passion. Kevin needs his help and what starts out as a favor, quickly turns into a plot to destroy the town. Get your brand new copy now!

After my recent release of The Brookville Arms, the first grouping of the Welcome to Brookville series is complete. In 2020, I wrote three other stories — Paradoxed, The Corn Maze and All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora — along with The Brookville Arms with the intention of putting out a Welcome to Brookville anthology book. But after reading most literary agents displeasure with being pitched an anthology book (Silly me), I opted to break up the stories into easily digestible novelas or novellettes. Here's a breakdown of every story as they appear in my most recent press release. If you're interested, please feel free to grab a paperback or digital copy today! Haunted Harvest in "The Corn Maze" Halloween in Brookville takes a terrifying turn when Clancy Denton and his friends find themselves trapped in a corn maze not just with dead ends, but with a malevolent entity with a 400-year-old grudge. Will they escape the clutches of this ancient evil, or become its latest victims? Winter Chill Unleashes a Monstrous Secret in "The Brookville Arms" A snowstorm isolates the residents of The Brookville Arms, unaware that a delivery truck careens towards them, its cargo containing a creature whispered only in legends. As the storm rages and tensions rise, the beast is unleashed, threatening to devour their peaceful existence. Rewind, Replay, and Rewrite Reality in "Paradoxed" Dusty and Phil throw a unique birthday bash for their friend Mason, whisking him back to their teenage haven: a now-defunct arcade. When they stumble upon a portal to the past, the lines between nostalgia and danger blur. Can they navigate the temporal paradoxes they've unleashed, or will they be forever lost in a bygone era? Myth Meets Man in "All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora" Duncan Carver, an adventure seeker, arrives in Brookville, only to encounter a mythical threat – a powerful Titan searching for a hidden Pandora's Jar, believed to hold unimaginable power. Teaming up with skeptical journalist Amanda Copeland, Duncan races against time to protect the town from this ancient force. But can they keep both themselves and the jar safe, or will Pandora's secrets spill chaos upon Brookville?

New month. New book! I give you The Brookville Arms, yet another story that takes place in the "Welcome to Brookville" series. And the perfect story for winter. This makes the fourth story that takes place in the town where strange things seems to happen. (Adam Parker and the High School Bully does find Adam investigating his case in the town for a chapter or two as well) Enjoy! The residents of The Brookville Arms are on lockdown as a winter storm rages through the town. A delivery truck is on a secret delivery mission; its contents a creature thought to never have existed. As the storm worsens, the truck hits a patch of ice and careens out of control straight for the Arms where this beast will be unleashed and change the lives of everyone inside forever. Welcome to Brookville. Available in paperback and on Kindle!

New Month. New cover for an old book. My YA action-adventure book, All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora, is getting a fresh new look. All of these re-covers are to bring a new look (a rebrand, if you will) to these stories. I'm doing it for all of them. When I wrote ATW: The Jar of Pandora, I didn't intend to place it in the YA genre. It just, sort of, happened. It contains pieces of an older screenplay that I thought I'd somehow direct. As with many of these stories, it takes place in Brookville during present times. Duncan Carver moves to Brookville in search of adventure. It’s not long before he’s face to face with a mythological titan who seeks the true Pandora’s Box. Only it’s really a jar and it was never opened, oh, and it’s hidden in Brookville. With the help of skeptic and journalist, Amanda Copeland, Duncan is on a mission to save Brookville. But at what cost? Without spoiling anything, there's potential for the character of this book to return for new adventure, so get in on the ground floor as we learn more about the strange things that go bump in the night in the town of Brookville. Available at Amazon!

One of my earlier published stories is getting a fresh new look. The story of three friends and one dude no one likes travel back in time and mess up their own timeline is getting new front and back cover. Something a little more atmospheric than the original. Here's the official brief synopsis: Dusty and Phil decide to give their best friend, Mason, the birthday celebration of a lifetime by taking him to their old haunt when they were teenagers in the 80s. The arcade! Closed for some time now, the people are gone, but the games remain and when they accidentally discover a time-portal, their lives are never the same. You can find Paradoxed on Amazon!

Grady Olsen came to Brookville many years ago, opening up a small shop downtown called All Things Weird. The shop sold a variety of items — mystical knock-offs, books about the supernatural, and during All Hallow's Eve, capes and masks for costumes. Like many of the downtown stores in Brookville, most of Grady's business came from tourists. Only making money isn't Grady's real purpose for being in Brookville. In the story, The Corn Maze, Peter Ellis and Clancy Denton seek out Grady and the knowledge that exists within the walls of his shop. Grady is the unofficial town historian, especially when it comes to the mysterious, mystical and supernatural happenings throughout the town's past. We learn more about Grady in the book, The Jar of Pandora, like how he finds his way to Brookville, his real purpose and a few people from his past. As of right now, Grady hasn't appeared in any other stories set in the town of Brookville. But that doesn't mean he won't in the future or the past. Check out The Corn Maze or The Jar of Pandora (re-issue coming next year).

Clancy Denton has lived in Brookville for the entirety of his 17 years. He's always been a boy less interested in sports, and more into anything else, actually. It would be a mistake to refer to Clancy as a book nerd or a math geek. Yes, he liked to read. And he also enjoyed the occasional algebraic equation. He just never really connected with being an active child. That fact always made his friendship with Peter Ellis that much more interesting. Peter was into sports. Peter spent his year going from football to basketball to baseball. That didn't change when the two friends entered Brookville High School. Peter continued on his sports path, while Clancy found solace in other facets of the high school life. New friends entered their lives, but Clancy and Peter remained. Peter was never short on self-confidence. Clancy, however, found himself frequently questioning every choice he made. Clancy was adept at hiding his anxiety, a necessary skill to keep your peers from making fun of you. Despite the progressive attitudes prevalent amongst the younger generation, adolescents were still going to make fun of each other. They just invent newer ways to do it. Clancy's friendship with Peter alleviated some of those concerns, despite the new friends that entered their lives. Peter's other friends, mostly teammates on the football team, would often tease Clancy, but never too far. Peter wouldn't hear of it. And that's how Clancy's high school experience carried on until a seismic shift in his friendship with Peter happened in the form of Chrissy Morgan, Peter's new girlfriend. Clancy has had a crush on Chrissy ever since the 4th grade. He didn't have the courage to tell her, so he would think about her from afar throughout their years in elementary and middle school. Once high school came around, Clancy was still not ready to tell Chrissy how he felt and it didn't make sense to reveal those emotions. She was popular. He was not. He knew it would never work out, so he remained silent. While it made sense for Peter, another popular kid, to start dating Chrissy, it still hurt Clancy. He suffered in silence, but something unexpected happened. Chrissy and Clancy became friends. They would share funny stories and inside jokes, often at the expense of Peter. Their duo became a trio and while they remained friends, Clancy still held a small torch for Chrissy. This is just some of the background that led to the events of the story in The Corn Maze. If you want to know how Clancy, Peter and Chrissy fair, check out the The Corn Maze on paperback and eBook available at Amazon.

A new story emerges in the Welcome to Brookville Series, and just in time for the Halloween season. Check out my latest story, The Corn Maze, available on Kindle and Paperback now! Halloween arrives in Brookville. The fall festival is in full swing and this year’s corn maze promises to be one no one will ever forget, especially for Clancy Denton and his friends as they will battle an evil force that has called Brookville home for over 400 years. This is the beginning of more stories in the Welcome to Brookville series and re-releases of some older stories. I'm actively manifesting this writing career I keep flirting with, so I hope you enjoy the stories. Thanks! Mike

If you've visited the website before, you probably remember a lot more content. Over the course of the last few weeks (and probably some future tweaks), I've been slowly changing the website to focus more on my novels and books. Gone are the scripts. Gone is the portfolio. Gone are the videos, web series and other projects I've worked on in some capacity. Those stories and tales will always part of me (and you'll see them again), but I have so many new stories and characters that are coming. And this site change is part of that. Stay tuned.

Am I doing what I should be doing? I'm meant to tell stories. I find great satisfaction being part of the storytelling process. I just have never been lucky enough to make a living out of it. The more I do that brings me further away from that passion, the more I feel alone. Storytelling is in everything I do, even at my job. When I watch movies, read stories, experience plays, I feel this pull. A tug at that tiny, little passionate storyteller that I've placed on a tiny stool, in this tiny room. And I told that dude. "Stay here for a bit. I need to go do these other, more responsible things that bring money into the house." I don't regret that. At all. I've found a way to fill my creative bucket along the way. Maybe that's what important. Finding those pockets of creativity in our everyday life. I love writing. I love creating a story and shaping it. The way a character on the page will surprise you with their decisions. (Yes, you're writing it, but often those characters are directing your keystrokes). I love everything about filmmaking. The collaboration, the excitement of where a scene just clicks while shooting. Setting up shots with your cinematographer. Working on character with your actors and actresses. Maybe it's just my creative bucket is running low.

April 2019. Four years ago. I was sitting in the back office of the movie theater that I had called my day job for a very long time. (Even though I worked more nights than days) My colleague and friend, Mike Butler, had been talking about doing a podcast for a bit and finally said to me, "We should do a podcast!" So we did. We started talking about what would eventually become Forgotten Cinema. We bought some equipment. We did one practice episode covering the movie "Sphere", which turned out to be rife with issues. The episode, not the movie. Although, the movie is far from perfect. During the four years of Forgotten Cinema, I started and ended another podcast with my good friend, Pat Whalen called Yet Another MCU Podcast. You guessed it, we covered the Infinity Saga phases of the MCU — from Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame. We wrapped that up just time to avoid the mess that became Phase 4 — not in terms of the quality of content, but how the phase spanned from theatrical releases and episodic streamers. It was confusing and I wouldn't have enjoyed trying to cover it for a podcast season. Forgotten Cinema grew into us making commercials. Little short films that varied in themes from being related to the movie we would cover that week, a commentary on our job at the movie theater and this creation of characters based on ourselves where I played an over-exaggerated, egotistical, too-cool-for-school version of myself and Mike the naive, do-gooder who was not yet made cynical by life. We even had a series of us being in quarantine during the very-low times of the pandemic. When the world stopped, we did not. Now, that podcast is over. We recorded our last episode in December 2022. But the final episode went live the final week of April, making it a full four years of podcasting. We are done. No more. But yet, are we? I imagine a future where we might come back from blocks of episodes. The weekly, day-to-day of the podcast was too much to handle with my other job and writing projects. But, if there was an opportunity to revive Forgotten Cinema into an entity that provided compensation for myself and Mike, then I would sign up for that in a second. Forgotten Cinema as it was known to me may have ended, but the idea of it will never end. I'm happy we accomplished something that brought a lot of good times and new friends into my life. I was able to celebrate the art of storytelling every week and we built something that will always be out there for new audiences to discover. I'm proud of the last four years. If you love movies and are curious, check out Forgotten Cinema.