Coming Soon, from WarGate Books: “Ghost Drop” and “Terror Swarm.”
Previous Books by Kevin Higgins:
“Skeleton Trail“
(The Gunfighter, Prequel 1)
Army Cyber Warfare veteran Sam Knightsbridge never asked to be trapped in a hyper-realistic, virtual reality of the American Wild West where bullets bruise, blades wound, and every choice leaves lasting scars. But a near-fatal ambush forces his insertion into a cutting-edge virtual therapy—a SIM world—while ground-breaking regenerative therapies heal his broken body.
Millions share the SIM, where the line between game and reality blurs and humanity has found another frontier. It’s a vast new world for thrill seekers and entrepreneurs and a life-extending haven for terminal patients and the critically injured. For the latter, finding a peaceful existence here is life or death.
But a malevolent organization, the Patriot Council, is exploiting the SIM, using hackers to corrupt SIM systems and pitiless mercenaries to sack towns, enslave innocents, and harvest their suffering for profit. They need Sam ejected and dead to protect their secrets. Sam must remain in the SIM if he hopes to heal.
When his new girlfriend and his best friend are abducted, will Sam risk everything to save them? Loner or not, there’s only one answer to that. But the Patriot Council’s warriors are legion, their demonic leaders nearly invincible, and the SIM’s brutal rules favor the ruthless.
What path can Sam choose when even victory may leave him shattered in real life?
“Invasion”
(The Gunfighter, Prequel 2)
In “Skeleton Trail” (“The Gunfighter,” Prequel 1), SIM Gunfighter Sam Knightsbridge was hunted by murderers, survived skeletal hordes and demonic bosses, and fought his way across half the country to rescue his girlfriend from the malevolent conspirators known as the Patriot Council.
Having barely survived the climactic Battle of English Mountain by his wits alone, Sam figures he’s done with the Patriot Council’s schemes. Now he’s just looking forward to a little down time with his girl in picturesque Tahoe City.
But dark cabals aren’t banished that easily and there’s a big difference between winning a battle and winning the war. The Wild West SIM in which Sam must live has become a lucrative world for the Patriot Council. They will neither retreat from their losses nor overlook the threat of Sam’s continued interference. For the shadowy Council, hiring the hackers and murderers they’ll set against Sam are just line items in the cost of doing business.
Sam’s only path to survival is going on the offense, adapting to new ways of fighting in the SIM while his father and brother press the fight in real life.
As the Council’s darkness spreads, growing populations reliant on the SIM for healing, stopping disease, or just earning a living find their world turning frigid and foul. Innocents are becoming prey, their life force ripped away by rites the Council performs to craft items of incredible real-world value.
Remorseless forces are doubling down on their hunt for Sam in the SIM and in real life, where they’ll kill him if they can. Will he survive long enough to stop them? When it comes down to it, what will Sam sacrifice to keep the West’s people safe?
“Surrogate Threats“
(Michael Rader Adventures, book 1)
Michael Rader and Gabriel Lang hunt the cunning new breed of entrepreneurial criminals whose command of cutting-edge technologies allows them to prey on others while misdirecting the police.
In “Surrogate Threats,” Rader – a wanted man himself – must figure out why and how someone is encouraging hundreds of innocent young third-world women to become surrogate mothers as an unwitting part of a global blackmail operation. Who is the master villain? Why is his organization destroying lives and toppling the powerful?
When hapless victims are being thrust into their ultimate nightmare, suddenly suspected even by their friends or loved ones, Rader and Lang and the skills they bring to bear are the only hope for the helpless.
“Self-Driving Steamrollers“
(Your Guide to a Future Featuring Autonomous Cars You May Never Buy)
Don’t wait for our near future to hit you like a driverless truck with a faulty collision sensor. Your world will soon change and this book is an entertaining introduction to help you prepare.
Using easy narrative, humor, anecdotes, his business experience, and Futurist’s vision, Higgins makes a compelling forecast that the age of driverless cars will be upon us and revolutionizing our world more rapidly and more drastically than most people realize.
It’s not a future you should await passively! “Self-Driving Steamrollers” lays out the benefits people and companies stand to reap by planning for the sweeping changes these technologies will bring. It also explores what and how much might be lost for those that don’t look ahead.
Self-Driving Steamrollers” is must read for both teens and adults. It’s valuable reading for both small business owners and executives leading large corporations.
“A Blade in the Storm“
A storm is brewing in the Kingdom of Zantaria.
A life of travel, enforcement and combat in service as a Rogar-mahn, Zantaria’s elite Rangers, have earned Caeron Coldlake an unequaled reputation as a woodsman, a sword master, and champion of Zantaria’s King. But now the kingdom is under siege and Caeron must overcome tragedy and hardship to buy the kingdom the time it needs to defend itself.
A Blade in the Storm, a sweeping epic fantasy, is a collaborative first novel by Kevin Higgins and George Reed. They began writing the book in 1985, penning much of it by hand while stationed out in the harsh environment of the Mojave Desert, where Higgins served as a US Army Infantry officer and Reed was an Armored officer. Both were assigned to the US Army’s elite desert OPFOR units at the National Training Center where OPFOR soldiers at the time spent around 220 days a year out in the field. It’s no accident that parts of Western Zantaria reflect the harsh environment in which the story was created! The book’s rough prose and significant length kept Higgins and Reed from finding a publisher until their opus could be converted into electronic format around 2009. Between 1993 and 2008, the authors toyed often with the idea of re-writing and shortening the book, but ultimately decided to leave it as originally written and unabridged.
While “A Blade in the Storm” is only available in digital format from the Smashwords epublishing site, versions for most electronic readers are available.
Sunning My Inner Lizard 