Ellie is a soldier in a world without governments. A generation ago, a series of financial crises caused most of the world’s governments to collapse, and left many of the people in those countries in terrible personal debt. Since then, the worst debtor nations have been under military occupation by the troops of the debt recovery corporations, and the worst debtor of all is Měi-guó, the old United States. Ellie is serving in the Afghan Police Action when she receives bad news from home. She is told the daughter she hasn’t seen in years is dead. She flies home from war, upset, to do what needs to be done, but once there she finds out all is not as it seems. Ellie’s daughter is alive and unhurt. She is being held by of one of the many debt-recovery corporations. Held, for leverage, to make Ellie do the corporation a favour. Ellie’s daughter will be returned unharmed if Ellie does as they wish. The son of a company director is lost somewhere in the wilderness of post-debt-restructuring America, and hasn't been seen for three days. The company wants Ellie to go and find the kid, and Ellie doesn't know if she can. The one rule she's stuck to all her working life is to never to go to America, but now she might have to. She will have to, if she wants to save the daughter she hasn't seen in years. This is fairly dark and gritty near-future dystopian SF. ----- Debt Collectors War is now on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QZG1RHI/ Also on iTunes and B&N and other places. Just if that's easier to read that way! But please don't feel obliged or anything, and thank you for looking -----

Seventeen-year-old Gavin Hillstone is resigned to being miserable for the rest of his life. Left alone in the world after his parents died in a fire when he was four, he was placed in foster care, which for him meant ending up in an abusive home with an alcoholic adoptive father. Gavin’s only escape is in taking and creating images. His camera is his refuge from the unending torture and isolation of daily life in his “family.” Until he learns by accident that he isn’t alone in the world after all. His father’s parents are still alive and living in Washington DC. When he takes the plunge and travels 3,000 miles to find his grandparents, he learns that they—and he—are part of something much bigger, and more dangerous, than he could ever have imagined. Something that has always put his family at risk and that will now threaten his own life, while forever changing it. He learns that he is one of the last descendants of a small group of Photo Travelers—people who can travel through time and space through images. But his initial excitement turns to fear, when he soon discovers that he and his grandparents are being pursued by the fierce remnants of a radical European Photo Traveler cult, the Peace Hunters. What Gavin has, they want! His adventure will take him to past eras, like The Great Depression and the Salem Witch Trials. Gavin will have to discover who he really is and must make choices that spell the difference between life and death for himself, for the relatives he now knows and loves, and for the girl he will come to love. For Gavin, life will never be the same.