Reboot

Oscar Ridell is a hero to most towns he visits as he travels west, paying for room and board by restoring equipment fried by the Pulse. Few guess he's part of a national recovery effort; fewer still that their hero is a reformed alcoholic, haunted by the voices of his estranged wife and child. When a bandit attack leaves him on the run and bleeding to death, Oscar finds himself in an isolated town with no belongings and little to offer rescuers, other than his repair skills - something the town's leaders forbid he use lest he revive something harmful to their fragile community.

Winter is approaching, bandits control the roads, and the only means of contacting someone back east for help rests in the hands of a national guard unit who, Oscar discovers, are the source of the bandit attacks.

What Oscar wouldn't give for a working telephone... or a stiff drink.

Auteur

When I was young, my mother told me I could be anything I wanted and I've tried hard to accomplish just that. I've driven a nuclear submarine, landed a Cessna plane, hunted squirrels with a slingshot, shook an astronaut's hand, got kicked out of a midnight showing of Rocky Horror, drove a truck while talking on a CB radio, sailed across Long Island Sound in a rented sailboat, played D&D with Gary Gygax, ordered food in a foreign McDonalds, rode on a firetruck in full gear with the sirens blaring, blew the engine of a car in the middle of nowhere, watched a baseball game from the Green Monster at Fenway, and appeared in a major motion picture (or at least my elbow did.)

Despite my colorful history, I live a fairly uncomplicated life in suburban Maryland with my wife and daughter, and I write fanciful stories when I can.