Peter Wilder went from Sports Illustrated cover boy to a baseball bust in a single night. His life adrift in the fallout, he fails to see his scientist mother's sudden drowning was no accident.
His sister, Cassie, knows better. A brilliant law intern by day, she spends her nights hunting down the corporate titans behind the Genesys Project, a ruthless genomics venture that silenced their mother to protect its darkest secrets.
When Peter unearths their mother's hidden diary, he discovers a terrifying truth about his family. The pages don't just expose the corporate greed that cost their mother her life; they reveal a sinister experiment that has turned back the evolutionary clock, triggering dormant 'ghost' genes with devastating side effects.
And Cassie is one of its victims.
Set against the humid, shadowy backdrop of corrupt Big Sugar and unregulated genomics research, The Swamp House Diaries is a razor-sharp Florida noir thriller. It explores the toxic intersection of revenge, noble greed—and the unintended consequences of tinkering with the life code.
Steven C. Vogel is an
award-winning freelance
writer and editor,
magazine contributor
and creative director,
who migrated to the
corporate world,
completing thousands
of writing assignments for some of the biggest names in the Fortune 500.
The Swamp House Diaries is his debut novel. He published a nonfiction memoir The Prostate Storm (Amazon) and a travelogue photobook Up Kilimanjaro, both raising funds for prostate cancer research.
A graduate from the University of Florida, Steve grew up on the beaches of South Florida, the backdrop for his recently completed YA novel, Raising Sloop John B—the first in a series of sports/mystery adventure stories about the Barlow brothers and friends. Steve and his wife, Lorraine, live with their two cats in Northeast Florida, just outside Jacksonville.
Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
-Grace Wilder,
The Swamp House Diaries
...next up...
When a split-second decision
changes everything.
Teenage friends take refuge on a remote island off the Florida coast after a storm capsizes their sailboat, only to discover they aren't alone—the uncharted coral cay is a yacht chop-shop and smuggling haven for modern-day pirates.
But when Jake and Luke Barlows’ damaged sailboat, the Sloop John B, drifts into their cove, the teens plot their escape. Their plan: A daring night raid on the pirates' camp. Steal the parts for repairs and refloat the sailboat—before being discovered.
It doesn't go exactly as planned.
Scheduled publishing date:
Early 2027
Raising Sloop John B launches a fast-paced YA sports mystery-adventure series, about the Barlow brothers and their teen friends getting in and out of mys-adventures.
Imagine the Hardy Boys, but with a serious upgrade: the series is more tech-savvy, the teens more athletically gifted, and together they must navigate more socially-relevant topics, not unlike Mike Lupica-style sports stories, such as Heat and Strike Zone.
These tightly-plotted novellas deliver brisk pacing, ideal for young readers, particularly boys, who are discovering reading and crave action-packed stories.