Dead Game

by Bob Stockton

The new PC Operating System was light-years ahead of the competition. On the Black Market its value would be in the hundreds of millions. That much money made it easy for Leo to justify stealing it and killing its creator. But then his scheme began to fall apart. His clients realized it would be much cheaper to steal the software from Leo than pay his price. The mercenary team hired to do the deed was twenty minutes too late. Leo’s live-in girl friend had emptied his safe and was on the run. The mercenaries had a good idea where the girl was headed. This was going to be fun, chasing down this girl. They were being very well paid and the girl was very cute. Once they had the software, she would be their bonus. It would be the kind of game they were eager to play. When they crossed paths with ex-Marine, Jack Chard, they had no way of knowing that in this kind of game, Chard played for keeps. People were going to die.

455 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 25, 2011

About the author

I was born in west Texas purely due to a scheduling error. My mother made the schedule and I was the error. At the time, my father was in the service, stationed at a remote air base. My mother planned to return to Michigan to have her baby in a hospital with her doctor in attendance. Oops! I showed up over a month ahead of schedule. My father had to flag down a truck on the highway in order to get my mother to a doctor’s office in a nearby town. I’ve been a little out of phase ever since.

Growing up, I was the oldest of six, three of each. My childhood was a little reminiscent of the old TV show the Waltons. We were just about as poor, but we didn’t own a mountain. Actually, my memories of those years are almost all good ones. I may not have had everything I wanted, what kid does, but I did have everything I needed.

By the time I graduated from college I had a family to support, which meant there was no time to take up mountain climbing or to work my way around the world on a tramp steamer or to write. Instead, by pure chance, I got into the then fledgling field of Data Processing. This was way back when computers were room sized and had mouse sized memories. It turned out I had an aptitude for programming. To me it was like getting paid to solve puzzles. I ended up spending thirty years in that profession. Most of it managing software developers, though I did put in a seven year stint as what I called a Technological Mercenary. That is, being self-employed, completing technical projects for clients on a contract basis.

Thinking thirty years was more than enough, my wife and I decided to drop out. Since then, we have spent most of our time at our home in northern Michigan. While we’re not really remote, we are by ourselves most of the time. I do share a few traits with my main character, Jack Chard, and like him, I am a bit of a recluse.

My other motivation for dropping out was to get the chance, finally, to write.

I had a bit of success writing for outdoor oriented magazines, but what I wanted was to write novels, specifically thrillers. My Chard stories, Dead Game and Dead In Seven, are my first efforts in this genre.

Currently I’m at work on something different, a novel set during the Civil War. I have read quite a bit about this tragic period and have recently learned that I had a number of ancestors involved on both sides of the conflict. I do not have a title, I never do until finished, but I hope to have this work done in 2013.