The Author

Richard Ashland

Life does not always start at the beginning!

Richard Ashland wrote his first short story, “Monak,” (not published) in High School and published his first novel, “The Clock Shop, Emit Levart” a few years ago.

Richard’s intent was to write The Clock Shop and the sequel, but then there was feedback from the readers, feedback that showed a real interest in keeping the main characters, Charles and Mary Rikker, active always coming back for more.

Richard says that he writes because it allows him to walk in many different shoes and see things from every angle. He has always been passionate about the human spirit and what makes people tick. He spent eight years in the military, six in military intelligence at the tail end of the Vietnam War.

His favorite places to travel are Oregon / Cologne, Germany / Verona, Italy,/ England/ and Vienna, Austria.

As an author, the culmination of all the years and effort it takes to create a novel, are repaid at book signings. It’s not about the money, it’s about the accomplishment of a dream and the realization that goals must first be set (in writing) before they will be realized.

In the Clock Shop, we will discover that time travel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Richard and his wife, Mary live in Michigan.

BOOKS

RECENT NOVELS & SHORT STORIES

“We walk a thin line between Light and Dark, Good and Evil, the Heavenly Sky and the Black Abyss; one must always beware!”
-Richard Ashland

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Richard Ashland

Author of Sci-FI and Thriller Novels and Short Stories

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Death Avenged: Shadows from the Past. A Short Story

It was the most intense winter storm to hit the Midwest in over fifty years and the frigid blast had Detective Jake McCloud virtually locked into his building. An electronic glitch, perhaps, who knows, but the doors wouldn’t budge and for McCloud, locked doors were not normally a problem.

He looked out at the mound of snow that a few hours ago had been his car. Where were all the other cars, where did everyone else go? There were at lease forty other people earning a living in the Cobblestone Professional Center. Certainly they wouldn’t have left without his noticing. He would have seen windows being scraped, engines warming up and the cars leaving the parking lot, but he didn’t. Was he alone? He didn’t feel alone. Was it a dream, a nightmare, or was there something otherworldly at work in Jake McCloud’s world? Will an unsolved murder of thirty years ago resurface in the darkened halls of Cobblestone, the murder of his father? Had his father’s killer found his way to the son?

White Deer: A Winter Fairytail? A Short Story.

For John and Marie Langley, their road trip home from Christmas celebration at grandma’s house takes a nightmarish twist when they realize they have driven off and left Suzie, their eight-year old daughter, at the gas station. Can’t happen you say?

When John and Marie realize that Suzie is not in the car, they make a “U” turn on the snow-covered road and race back to retrieve their daughter. But the gas station is closed and Suzie is nowhere to be found. Tracking what looks like Suzie’s boot prints in the snow, it appears she has fallen down a steep embankment where droplets of blood have stained the pure white snow next to a large rock rock. But there are no further tracks, and it appears that Suzie had vanished. The Sheriff is called in, a search party goes into action, finding only deer tracks where the blood stained the snow. John and Marie Langley’s journey will lead them to discover that things are not always logical. Perhaps they will never tell this story to anyone for fear of being ridiculed for an unbelievable tale. Perhaps this is a fairytale, you say? Maybe, but don’t tell the Langley’s that.

The Bus: Ghostly Travelers. A Short Story

Originally written for the TV show, “The Twilight Zone,” this mini thriller should only be filmed in Black and white, lest we destroy the true ambiance of “The Zone.” What happened to John Weston on that New York to California bus trip, he doesn’t much talk about these days, or what may have happened to all of his demented passengers just before they reached Selina, Utah.

PLOT
John Weston, (Captain John, some like to call him) a seasoned bus driver is plagued with a group of twenty-seven very bizarre travelers, all senior citizens, heading from New York to Los Angeles. Their obnoxious and crude behavior nearly drives Weston crazy until on the forth day of the grueling journey, the bus breaks down seventy miles east of Salina, Utah. Weston’s brother, Jake, just happens to own a towing service in Salina but can’t get to John for several hours to tow the bus in. He does , however, arrange to send an old school bus to to pick up the unruly passengers, a rescue mission perhaps. When John finally does get into Salina, his passengers are nowhere to be found . . . turns out all of his passengers were killed in a bus accident nearly forty years ago . . .

Terretsville: The Lost Inheritance (A Charles Rikker Novel)

The things that happened to Charles Rikker in Terretsville in 2004 he has never shared with anyone, not even his wife. . . some things should not be talked about with anyone (and who would believe it, anyway). Since 1984, the year after Rikkers took possession of their inherited mansion, and each year after, on the first of May, the Tour of Homes members begin their journey around Stamford, Connecticut at the entrance to the long, circular drive that leads up to the old Benson Estate. They are there to witness its Greek Revival charm and to hear the stories the tour guides love to tell of its mysterious past.

‘On June 14th of 1933, the owners of the estate, Margaret and Hershel Benson, vanished without a trace. For more than seventy years the mystery behind their disappearance has gone unsolved.

Stranger yet is the hand- written, cryptic will left behind by the Bensons that would keep their Connecticut mansion from being occupied for fifty years. At the end of that fifty years, the city officials of Stamford Connecticut were collectively given the keys to the mansion and the combination to a vault tucked away within the walls of the estate. Days later, Charles Rikker, a career army intelligence officer was notified that he was the sole beneficiary of the entire estate including a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion and millions in cash. It’s been more than twenty years since Charles and his family took possession of huge manor and two things remain a mystery: Why and How did the Bensons write him into their will eighteen years before Charles was born. We all wonder if the Rikkers will ever uncover the mystery.’

March 2005. Charles and Mary discover a hidden tunnel that runs beneath the foundation of their mansion, but only after an explosion exhumes a mysterious body from a hidden grave. What secrets are hidden in the tunnel that was part of the Underground Railroad when the place was built in 1833? Is it possible that Charles will come to regret his grand inheritance?