As sheriff of Rankin County, Axel Cooper holds the distinction of being the first elected Montana County Sheriff not born in the state in the last sixty years. Unfortunately for Cooper, he'll soon be known for much more than that.

Montana's governor has just enlisted Cooper to act as the local liaison for a raid on a high-altitude, seasonal cattle ranch called Crestfallen. The raid's purpose is twofold: apprehend a federal fugitive and shut down a meth lab. Directed by U.S. Marshall Jack Hilton-described by some as General Patton on steroids-the operation takes a fateful turn when shots are fired and two men are dead. The shooter is Cooper, and one of the dead is an undercover FBI agent.

Cooper contends the shooting was self-defense. But Hilton, looking for a scapegoat, charges that Cooper is nothing more than a revenge-seeking, rogue cop and should be prosecuted for the shooting. As Cooper probes more deeply into the incident gone awry at Crestfallen, he has more questions than answers. Something about the raid just doesn't seem right; he's determined to solve the riddle that could either end his career or his life.

Thus, this is the third story line I find compelling out of mutual history with the myth. Divine transformation of the soul, how inner beauty like an artist draws to you as second skin, as doppelganger, as your twin, who has a whole world you know nothing of (and we call it consciousness? and our strivings, moral?). The transformation of inner beauty is Psyche's overall task so that she opens the Beauty Box, that the Far-Looking Tower warned her not to, and swoons into unconsciousness, becomes the image of the divine beauty, the daughter, Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, reborn as mother, Demeter. Eros awakens her, as Psyche had previously rudely awakened him, with renewed spirit and completion of the pregnancy, bringing out into the world the inner beauty Psyche displayed in the form of everyone's daughter who has lived and gone what she has gone through, birthing a daughter named "Joy." The third story line is one that is not obvious on first or second reading: the ego-Self axis activates and plays itself out in ways that intertwine with the descriptions of this different threading of existence. In other words, how you become the richness of your inner life and the inner images living you so that you are the four seasons and realize their stories of reality to you. Truth then becomes a testing stone for your journey. Everyone one is the stories and lives in moral depths that the spiritual storms leap out of you, usually involuntarily, into what has secretly been growing in you, a secret even to yourself until the evidence reveals the truth; you are the soul's vessel, and its healing power, weather the terrorful dark bleak unblinking nights. You realize a whole soul is a compass for the journey you never learned to read and ignored for outer education and fulfillment, as you were ignorant, arrogant, and spiritually and psychologically blind. Then, like Buddha, you learn compassion for all that you threw away and lost because they only shape shifted into other energies trying to open you to the terrible splendor of the universe. Compassion learns you lessons you never knew existed. You were educated, but you had no knowledge despite your most vehement protests to the contrary.

CHICAGO-THE GEM OF THE PRAIRIE-EARLY AUTUMN, 1871 The city was alive. Raw materials and finished goods moved as fast as the new railroads and lake schooners could carry them. Wisconsin white pine lumber was big business in a city composed of thousands of wooden structures connected by wooden sidewalks and wooden-block streets.

Competition was fierce, ruthless, and deadly.

An Eau Claire lumberman is killed in his hotel room and a competitor, Arlyn Rygg, from Green Bay, must work with the police to find the real killer in order to exonerate himself. His inquiries draw him into a maelstrom of intrigue and deception. Ultimately he races through the Great Fire and learns more than he ever wanted to know.

Praise for "Natural Drift," a contemporary Western action mystery pinning a Montana County Sheriff against a rogue U.S. Marshall. "I am writing to let you know how much I enjoyed your novel, Natural Drift. I found it to be a very good read with a realistic plot and well developed characters. I honestly could not put it down once I started it." -Sheriff Thomas Rieger, Carbon County, Montana

Song 15 Everything tugs on heart strings, Neither note nor silence misses its mark. The welts sting leaves dangling, Demanding passion's attention to fire. Desperate metaphors haunt the void Left by burning kindnesses. Marrying Heat horrors words into exploding rage. Lifetime's miasma on ways of the heart. The burns sandpaper all I say and do To change the nature of the instrument. Seamless heart's never fathomable healing Leaves love's aches as meander weaves That unwinds any self acclaimed brocades Into shattered bones scattering any hope For hope but to cut the strings. Then what? Territory of the damned or ice age Of the longest history. Or puppets end In primordial soup whose ingredients, Somehow, beckon and threaten simultaneously While making life out of its unnerving broth That continuously remakes and nourishes. *** Give succor to those I care for and adore. Friends and loved ones in desert times, In mountain times, and in river times, I let play me as they will. The thrill of it all. Imagine rolls with empty eyes as walking stick. I let what comes, come. If it is never enough, It is never enough. If it stops playing, it stops. If it plays to the end of time, it plays. It is What roots metaphors. It does for me What I do not know how to do for myself. I use it to fashion a way to birth heart Whose musical chords has no other existence Than its song that plays every note. What it touches ceases charm and harm, Agony and pain, broken strings, and Burning and burnt risen mind. *** I make a difference being here no one ever sees. My microscope sees what no one else can see; Telescope leaves nothing in the universe out. Find the scar of wound, never a wound. With no strings, live all seamless beings life.

Life's Way offers new visions and voices for anyone to enjoy and use to help them grow new ways of seeing and hearing into an authentic and unique sound and sense. In these two hundred poems, life speaks through the poet just as it has done to all poets from the first to today's poets. Themes explored in depth are love's tragedy and compassion, death, and grief as well as joy, gratitude, and nature. Also, the poet values the poems as skillful means to clarify his Zen practice and insights whose expressions are soundings of his spiritual growth and psychological transformation. The poets intensive encounter with the Great Unknowns of life's way radiates through the multiple layers of many of these poems. These wonders have motivated many human aspirations, inspirations, and perspirations.

You know when your hair is on fire: The questions that keep you up all night, the failures and mistakes that make of your life a fiery swampland that you never seem to get beyond, and that whatever you think, do, and create only further engulfs you in flames with no end in sight. Desperate for the light, you cannot see what is in front of you. The desperation of your wounds alert you that you must work your way through the healing that is in the wound. But what if you are one of those people who do not realize or refuse to see that your hair is on fire. You are born with your hair of fire. You fear to look for you are terrified that no one has ever or can ever ameliorate the suffering, grief, and agony that continuously throws fuel on the fire. This is so, even when you believe you are throwing water on the fire in the form of denial, spiritual shopping, or wrestling with an unappeasable soul whose voice will not leave you alone and whose relentlessness is, you think, part of the problem. You do not understand its language nor what it is trying to tell you because it is telling you that what you are doing is not working and that the truths you have lived are lies. You must listen to the voices for they originate in fire, and they are trying to tell you that your hair is on fire. You must acknowledge them and it in order to change your living. Change into the worth and value of what they and you are that you discover in your conversation with them. You must make live what is truly alive in you and give it life as the world. This is background to the poems in "Hair on Fire." Each poem burns in these long inflammatory issues. Many of them use the light of the fire to see what is blocking insight and what is beyond into ways of work with the fires of desires to lessen the suffering, wound, grief, and agony of each and every one of us. The poems immerse you in fire to make you aware of our condition and state. They experiment and investigate the state of our predicament. Many of the themes may appear to deal on matters of life and death, but these matters bring to light of white heat through coldest of light controversies and conflicts of the nature of the self, war, chaos, impermanence, and consciousness as well as the ineffable feeling and presence that we are all living the same living being as everyone and everything in the cosmos. "Hair on Fire" throws light on what one poet has garnered from the treasure of thousands of years of human experience and suffering, filtering his gleaning through his unique and common experience of desire, fire, and how begin to live not consumed by them but with a reciprocal love and discrimination that encompasses the world we live in every moment of our lives that enlarges everyone we meet, seeing our reflection in others eyes because they it is their reflection of our eyes, no different from one another yet enormously not the same.

"Songs of the Sea" reveals Ron Boggs' spiritual and intellectual soul work through stories, essays, poetry, meditations, analyses, and aphorisms. It explores gifts that are available to everyone. It embodies inspiration, showing how to inspire oneself and be the creative individual of one's aspirations. See how to speak directly out of the voices and visions that give life to spirit and soul, whether it is in writing, painting, dance, music, work, vocation, or art of life. Take this adventure with the author through discoveries that open life to creativity and its origins, Jungian psychology, Zen, American history, liminality, and poets and poetry. His luminous and dark imagination becomes a companion for stepping into a new life.

How does silent tongue speak and sing? One wakens what was silent and learns the language spoken over one's life. Another way is to have "No Hook in Mouth," freely following the guidance given by many voices of the selves. Further, the nature of human beings and the world leads one to wrestle with what William Shakespeare did when he wrote, "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea/Whose actions are no stronger than a flower." The rage and the beauty, the poems and silence arise together and confront the reader with spiritual and moral dilemmas and interactions.

What does a person's life look like from the point of view of soul? Why not ask soul. Go on an adventure with soul in order to live an authentic life through initiation into soul's calling. Using the technique of active imagination as rediscovered by Dr. Carl Jung, the dialogues struggle with soul, which leads to changes in the author and in soul. Soul becomes a guide. Author's initial descent into soul encounters an invitation, as it names its art. Its art makes the soul a companion that will require many heart rending sessions. The descent is also soul's ascent; in doing so the soul reshapes author's ego, identity, and life and gives him songs of soul. Refusal Man makes an appearance, being the living embodiment of the many refusals to accept life's offerings. Many issues arise on how to reduce the influence of this Refusal Man. An ancient way of being arises upon learning to trust the soul: everything is alive. A number of spiritual exercises are the result. Soul educates him on what soul is and how to build soul's home. Soul explores original life and the author's psychological "curse." Soul elaborates on how what is spiritual is practical and appears in personified form of "Laura," after long guidance from the Greek god, Hermes. Inner Guide evolves out of soul that is the dream awake. Soul delves deeper into its poetries. It makes real what happens and broadens one's horizon. Charley is an inner man who wants to kill the author, if he could. Their conversation is riveting. Shape shifting becomes a way of being. Soul takes the author deeper into love and gratitude. The adventure closes fully enmeshed in the art of darkness: proving the unprovable to soul, a perspective from Zen, and finally a celebration of soul's adventures. A brief afterword summarizes some of intellectual and spiritual ideas and practices the author learned and how they are of use in everyday life.

As sheriff of Rankin County, Axel Cooper holds the distinction of being the first elected Montana County Sheriff not born in the state in the last sixty years. Unfortunately for Cooper, he'll soon be known for much more than that.

Montana's governor has just enlisted Cooper to act as the local liaison for a raid on a high-altitude, seasonal cattle ranch called Crestfallen. The raid's purpose is twofold: apprehend a federal fugitive and shut down a meth lab. Directed by U.S. Marshall Jack Hilton-described by some as General Patton on steroids-the operation takes a fateful turn when shots are fired and two men are dead. The shooter is Cooper, and one of the dead is an undercover FBI agent.

Cooper contends the shooting was self-defense. But Hilton, looking for a scapegoat, charges that Cooper is nothing more than a revenge-seeking, rogue cop and should be prosecuted for the shooting. As Cooper probes more deeply into the incident gone awry at Crestfallen, he has more questions than answers. Something about the raid just doesn't seem right; he's determined to solve the riddle that could either end his career or his life.

A must read for understanding today's battle between "client-service" and "self-interest." Nothing's "Transparent"! A new genre: The Insurance Thriller Pre-Publication Commendations: "Adrian's Bordereaux is a great read. It reminds me of my years at Marsh... all bluff and bluster dressed with sales cynicism. Fabulous characters, outrageous behavior!!" Norman Conquest, retired Marsh Executive "This book is dangerous!! All commercial insurance buyers need to read it to get an understanding of what happens to all those premium dollars. The enigmatic broker is revealed." Former Johnson and Higgins Senior Executive