Here is a small sample of my new book "Kyriea" set to be published in February 2016. Enjoy.

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Kyriea would ask questions too.

“Grandfather, how did women go from being equal to men to now being property? How did men like yourself not keep other men from making such strict rules and then enforcing them?”

Kyriea’s grandfather had gotten a sad look on his face when she had asked those questions.

“My dear, Kyr, there is no good answer for that, except to say that we did nothing because we kept telling ourselves that it would never get this far. The truth of the matter is that women never have been truly equal. Ever. Oh, maybe way back when, thousands and thousands of years ago, before men decided they wanted power and control, but even before the war women were paid less for the same job a man held, fewer women were in politics, owned companies, and all that. But it was more equal than it is now, obviously. But there was a growing movement of men who didn’t like that women had that much power over their own lives. It started slowly. An added law here or right revoked there. Have I ever told you there was a time that a woman could go into a clinic and terminate a pregnancy because she wanted to?”

Kyriea shook her head in disbelief.

“It’s true. Women could choose, not only where she lived, who she lived with, what job she wanted to do, but also whether or not she wanted to be pregnant. Birth control was widely available, so pregnancy was controlled. If you didn’t want to have children, you didn’t have to. But extreme, religious nutjobs wanted to control all that. They didn’t think women should have choices. Even over their own bodies. They bombed clinics and killed doctors. They made laws that made it difficult for women to take care of themselves. They even, once, made a husband keep his dead wife, who died while eighteen weeks pregnant, on life support in the hopes that a dead corpse would be enough to sustain a growing fetus. Women meant nothing to these people, even in death. They called it ‘pro-life’. Even though once the child was born they didn’t care what happened to it. Kind of ironic that now these same religious extremists kill baby girls all in the name of their ‘God’.”

Andrew Volk shook his head. Kyriea could tell what he was talking about upset him still.

“Grandfather, you don’t have to tell me any of this if you don’t want to.”

“No, my child. You need to hear this. It started with women’s health. Laws were changed or created that made it almost impossible for women to get good health care, saying that they didn’t need all the preventative procedures. Then it was the abuse laws. There once was a time where a man could beat his wife and not get into trouble. Then laws were put into place where the husband could be charged, and convicted, of abuse. Those laws were the next to go. Now men could abuse their wives and no court would help her. Then divorce. Women could no longer ask for a divorce. Only the man could divorce a woman. Then laws about rape. Women began losing case after case in court when they tried to convict a man of rape. The defense attorneys would bring up a woman’s past and used it against her. Then housing. No apartment wanted a single women renting from them, and no community wanted a single woman owning a house in their community. It was too tempting and dangerous. They feared the women would draw to them men who wanted to do violence. And it went straight downhill from there. And the sad part is there were many women who spoke out about how these new laws would be good for the country. ‘Get back to family values’ they said. And all the while they were pounding the nails in their own coffins. Sometimes literally.”

“You asked why no one like myself stopped the changes that were happening. We failed you. With every new law changed we told ourselves that they couldn’t do anymore damage. They may have gone ‘this far’ but they would never go ‘that far’. And then they went farther. And then it was too late.”