OnWriting
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I used to think that writing was like being a magician. I worked at putting words together to surprise people, entertain them, and make them think of me when they read the words: how good I was doing what they could not do. My mature self now understands that being a magician is almost the opposite of being a writer: the art is not in dazzling people so they think of me, it’s in making people think of themselves without noticing me. It’s a lot harder than magic, I think. I work at finding or expressing common truth between me and the reader, and then using words so that people think that finding or expressing the truth has come from within them. I want to go unnoticed. That’s the craft, the art, and the essence of good writing. Welcome to my website, where there is no magic.
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Mogi Franklin Mysteries
Ghosts of the San Juan, book 1
In Ghosts of the San Juan, a student rafting trip involves them with the mysterious disappearance of four men in 1934, launching a trail of clues that Mogi must put together to foil a plan of evil enrichment victimizing the vast Navajo Nation. Attacked at school, then lured into a deadly trap, Mogi must summon all his courage and ingenuity to survive and overcome his foe’s vicious scheme.
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The Lost Children, book 2
At a picnic in the mountains in 1891, three children run into the forest to play and are never seen again. More than a hundred years later, Mogi Franklin and his sister, Jennifer, discover a series of clues that bring them to the brink of solving the mystery, only to be thwarted by a resort-building billionaire eager to sacrifice an entire town to build a playground for the rich.
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The Secret of La Rosa, book 3
It was just a short cross-country ski outing over the Christmas break for Mogi Franklin and his sister, Jennifer—until they find themselves suddenly caught in a vicious blizzard. Near collapse, they ski into a mysterious valley with an ancient hacienda, a busy Spanish family, and a village with no electricity, no plumbing, no cars, no phones, and definitely no Walmart.
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The Hidden River, book 4
A crazed professor is on a rampage to prove that horrible crimes were committed by the ancient ancestors of today’s Pueblo Indians. His murderous accusations stir the community into anger and violence. Vacationing nearby, Mogi Franklin and his family are suddenly caught up in the turmoil roiling the countryside. In this third book of the exciting Mogi Franklin Mysteries, the young hero must find a sacred object hidden by the ancient people of Acoma Pueblo somewhere in the vast, forbidding lava beds of western New Mexico. To those who lived on the stark, high mesa four hundred years ago, it held a magic that could defeat the Spanish conquistadors despite their steel and steeds. To Mogi, it was an ancient mystery he must solve to stem the rising tide of bloodshed. But the clock is ticking, and his deranged adversary traps Mogi, Jennifer, and their friends in the absolute darkness of an underground cavern, with little hope of escape.
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River of Gold, Book 9
Two teens, one huge monk, and a stash of stolen gold—that’s all that stand in the way of a powerful corporation getting its hands on a peaceful river valley in rural New Mexico. Mogi Franklin and his sister, Jennifer, uncover clues to a century-old mystery, but unraveling a botched robbery isn’t enough when a whole river, and a way of life, are at stake. Can fourteen-year-old Mogi expose the truth—and save the valley before it’s too late?
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Adult Novel - The King of Trash
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The plague of homelessness runs through the book like a pulsing vein. There is murder—and bodies galore. There is unhesitating genocide. There is an escape from certain death that will haunt you.
And yet The King of Trashis a story of tenderness, of ethical struggle, and of deeply bonded humanity. In his latest novel—and his first to move beyond the highly successful Mogi Franklin middle-reader mysteries—author Don Willerton intertwines modern-day themes of transcendent importance through a unique and intriguing tale of mystery, adventure, and courage. Early readers have sometimes had nightmares, but yet The King of Trashis ultimately redeemed by its heart. It begins with a newspaper reporter setting out to interview a former school mate who’s now become one of the world’s greatest scientists—and one of its richest men. Before long, though, we are enmeshed in a web of awful and expedient “facts” building to a twenty-first century morality tale in which no one can escape the hard and bitter decisions of the “real” world. And yet at the end, we learn, is the central truth, the only remnant left to sustain Willerton’s fascinating and vivid characters—and the rest of us alive on Earth as well. |
Adult Novel - Smoke Dreams
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Why would you remodel a haunted house? The house breathes, has a heartbeat, and gets physical when it gets mad. But Tucker Whitby is an experienced builder who is also haunted. He feels responsible for his wife’s death and his daughter’s murder. Because of this, he is emotionally stunted and denies himself love. Can rebuilding this unusual house jolt his life back on track?
Tucker gets far more than he hoped—the house decides that if Tucker is rebuilding it, then it will rebuild him. Through a series of dreams involving a ten year-old boy kidnapped by Comanche Indians in 1870, Tucker witnesses the savage life of a boy who becomes a warrior. But soon he’s not dreaming—he is becoming the boy. Before long, the pain and horror of the boy’s life takes Tucker’s real life towards violence, murder, and an encounter with the house’s deepest secrets. |
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Adult Novel - Teddy's War 
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It is hard for Teddy Gunnarson to tell his family about his three years in Europe, fighting through the horrors of the Second World War. Some of it he is officially forbidden to talk about, some of it is too personally terrorizing to remember, and some of it was due to his becoming marginally insane.
But, at the end of his life, dying from cancer, Teddy must reveal it all so that his family and his memories may finally live openly and truthfully, and that he might finally find peace in confessing to what happened. No individual parts can portray the reality of everything that haunts him; he must tell it all. He reveals not only his own secrets, but those of his wife, his parents, and especially his older brother who experiences the war with him, whom he learns to hate. Throughout his story are scenes of merciless bloodshed, ruthless combat, ground-shaking artillery, constant bombings, endless cemeteries, the fraying of the social fabric across the countryside, and the deep, mind-boggling hate that pervades every movement of the warring armies. But it wasn’t only the war that corrupted him on the inside. It is the family lies, the misguided upbringing, and the open betrayal by those who had supposedly committed themselves to love him. Only in the end, only when surrounded by the horrors of a concentration camp and the consuming wrongs of the Third Reich, does Teddy find redemption and forgiveness. Teddy’s War is a historical fiction novel that plays out against an authentic background of the World War II era. It will be available through Amazon on November 1st, 2020. |