Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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‘The Last Train To Glen Alum’ Radio Drama

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One hundred and ten years ago, there was a murder, payroll robbery and posse chase through the hills of Mingo County. West Virginia Public Broadcasting reached back to the golden age of radio to create a radio play of the event called “The Last Train to Glen Alum.” Eric Douglas wrote the play. 

‘The Last Train To Glen Alum’ Radio Drama 

Douglas: Let’s talk about the atmosphere in West Virginia in 1914.

Stan Bumgardner: 1914 is in some ways, a pivotal year in West Virginia. There’s no way to quantify this, but certainly one of the deadliest coal mine strikes, or strikes period, in U.S. history was at Paint Creek and Cabin Creek in Kanawha County. At the time of the Glen Alum robbery, prohibition had just come into effect in West Virginia, which happened nearly six years before it happened nationally. 

But what was happening in southern West Virginia was just massive change. And I mean, everything was changing. Before the Civil War, and even after the Civil War, you know, this had been a sparsely populated area, just some scattered farmland, and really not much of that because of the terrain. If you look at the census numbers, very few people lived in Mingo County, and in certain parts of McDowell County, very few people lived there until the railroads came. The railroad started coming in the 1880s and then by the 1890s, the Norfolk and Western had reached what’s now Mingo County. At that time it was part of Logan County. Mingo County is our newest county. It came in in 1895 and it’s almost solely due to the arrival of the N&W, the Norfolk and Western, and the opening of coal mines. Towns were being built, seemingly overnight, they were all over the place in that part of the state, and places where almost nobody had lived.

On Substack: Problems with freshwater

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You can find this post on Substack as well.

This week we’ve finally gotten appreciable rain where I live. It’s been months. Fortunately we avoided the flooding rains that people not that far to the south of me have endured. According to the National Weather Service, we’ve been in “exceptional” drought. The grass hasn’t grown. Trees have been dropping their leaves since late July or early August. The last time I cut my grass was June. 

We normally have lots of birds in our yard. I feed them all winter and provide a fallow area where they live and build nests. On a typical evening, I can identify 10 or more species of birds. 

But not this summer. There are a few, but most seem to have moved on in search of water. The Elk River is a couple miles away. The ground is too hard for them to find worms. There aren’t as many bugs crawling around or flying through the air. 

I’ve watched the news all summer and marveled at our dry air and heat while other parts of the country have been slammed with floods. (Everyone has been hot.) 

As the planet continues to warm, weather patterns are set to change. Some places we live now will become unlivable and temperate areas will be hotter and drier. 

Many of my novels involve current events, history and science. I might make up places and people, but the science is all real. I don’t write science fiction, but scifi is often about extrapolation — taking what we have and wondering what it will look like in the future. Think about Dick Tracy’s watch or tricorders and tablets on Star Trek.  

The major theme of Water Crisis: Day Zero is, obviously, water. I wrote this book a few years ago, inspired by a situation in Cape Town, South Africa where the city of more than 4.5 million people was within just a few days of running out of fresh water — its Day Zero. Researching deeper, I found that wasn’t an unusual scenario and civil wars have even started over fresh water resources. 

That’s where water refugees move to cities to get access to fresh water, putting strains on city services, leading to uprisings. The civil war in Syria is an example of this. 

But it’s not just in desert climates. Fifteen plus years ago, I was living in Durham, North Carolina when the local water reservoir was within a couple weeks of running out of water. A tropical storm hit the Carolina coast and in one weekend, everything was back to normal. 

About two weeks ago, a small community in West Virginia — Richwood — was within a few days of running out of freshwater. The Cherry River was down because of the drought. The city managers were even contemplating using water in a fracking well — if the radioactive levels in the water tested low enough. 

This week, suddenly, we got more rain than was even forecast, even before Helene slammed into Florida hard enough that it brought heavy rain to the southern Appalachian mountains. Everything is back to normal.

Water out west is a prime commodity. The Colorado River doesn’t make it to the ocean any more. I saw a photo recently showing an area in the San Joaquin Valley in California where the official elevation had dropped dozens of feet because the water table below ground has been pumped out for agriculture.

The point of all this is, some people don’t believe in sea level rise or even climate change. But it’s hard to ignore things like running out of water when it is right in front of your face. 

Diving opens doors for disabled

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Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story

Throughout my diving and writing career, I’ve written hundreds of magazine articles, newspaper stories, books and now digital essays. I can say without any doubt that I’ve written well over a million words on the ocean, diving, adventure and the environment. 

Below you’ll find links to some of the more recent essays about the ocean I’ve written on Substack. If you aren’t a subscriber there, I highly recommend it. For me and others. There are a lot of great writers using the platform to talk about a wide range of topics. 

One of my books, though, is probably one of the most amazing stories I’ve written and it is a work of nonfiction. 

My friend Leo Morales lives in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Fifteen years or so ago, he discovered he had cancer. It was in his hip and he had to have his entire leg amputated to get rid of the cancer. 

Depressed and struggling, a friend suggested he try diving as a form of physical therapy. He did and he hated it. But his friend convinced him to try again. At that point, Leo never looked back. 

Leo is a dive instructor. He is also a cave diving instructor as well as a technical diver. That means he can go places and do things most divers never imagine doing. And he does it all with one leg. Leo also travels the world as a motivational speaker. 

In 2018, we worked together to publish a book about his life called Dive-Abled: The Leo Morales Story. Check it out. The ebook is on sale, too. 

Semi-related, I also spent some time working with Jim Elliot, the founder of Diveheart, helping him and his crew develop the training program he uses around the world to teach dive instructors to work with the disabled. He does amazing work and the bravery and excitement from people who use wheelchairs and then are weightless in the water is awe-inspiring to see. It puts my own challenges in perspective. 

It just goes to show that diving opens doors for people who never knew they could even walk through those doors. 

Substack Essays

Some of my recent essays about the ocean and the environment. 

Travel around the world without leaving home with Mike Scott

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Summer is on its way in the northern hemisphere, but I’m sure some of my friends in the southern hemisphere are happy it is almost over. The heat has been alarming and is leading to severe coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. 

At home, though, it’s almost time to get 60 feet underwater here in West Virginia. Which means I have to get my tanks inspected and refilled. Last year, I ended up waiting until nearly the end of the season to go diving. A whole lot of life things got in the way, but that won’t happen this year. 

I know I’ve been saying this for months, but I am also finally getting back to writing. For real. I’m about a third of the way into what will be the next Mike Scott thriller novel. It’s a good one and a cool story. But I got myself stuck. I finally figured out it was the location. I was trying to put it someplace I didn’t know very well. Once I realized that, the logjam started to open back up. 

Right now, I am reading back through what I’ve written and identifying the places I need to adjust. And getting some new ideas on how to move it forward. Stay tuned. 

Lately, I’ve been doing some more writing on Substack as well. It’s an interesting place where essayists write on a wide variety of topics. It’s taken me a little while to find my voice there. I wanted to make it informative and based on my personal travels and experiences. Below are my two most recent essays. 

You can subscribe there to get notified whenever I publish a new essay. 

Audiobooks

All of the Mike Scott novels and novellas are now available as audiobooks. Some are read by a professional voice actor; others are read by an AI voice. I’m satisfied with the AI reads, but obviously, they can never touch a human professional. 

Now that spring and summer road trip season is beginning, if you haven’t listened to any of my audiobooks, I invite you to check them out. 

Take a look at all of them. 

And speaking of road trips, if you want to get away, but can’t find the time right now, all of the Mike Scott stories are located on the ocean, on beaches and on islands. 

Locations in Mike Scott stories include:

  • Cayman Cowboys – Grand Cayman
  • Flooding Hollywood – Catalina Island and Los Angeles
  • Guardians’ Keep – Adriatic coast of Italy
  • Wreck of the Huron – North Carolina and Cuba
  • Heart of the Maya – Riviera Maya, Mexico
  • Return to Cayman – Grand Cayman
  • Oil and Water – Curacao
  • The 3rd Key – Florida Keys
  • Turks and Chaos – liveaboard dive boat in Turks and Caicos
  • Water Crisis – Moscow, The Bahamas and Miami, along with a couple shorter stops.
  • Held Hostage: Search for the Juncal — North Carolina and the coast of Mexico.

PFAS is a major problem for the oceans — and us

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My day job is as the news director for West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Our team reports regularly on the presence of “forever chemicals” in groundwater and in rivers, streams and fish around the state — as well as federal efforts to curb them, now. 

Forever chemicals are commonly referred to as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). The most famous of these is Teflon, but there is an entire category of these substances. They were designed to give materials like paints long-lasting qualities. The chemicals take forever to break down. 

The problem is these chemicals take forever to break down. Even after the paint has deteriorated or the firefighting foam has been cleaned up, to all of its other uses, the PFAS themselves are still around. 

Today, these chemical contaminants have been found in remote corners of the world — in Arctic Sea ice, in fish. 

“A study published in January by the American Chemical Society, a nonprofit scientific organisation, said that PFAS had been detected in the Arctic Ocean at a depth of 3,000 feet (914 meters).”

That’s from an article on Phys.org. 

“From the tiny zooplankton eaten by shellfish, which are consumed by smaller fish and ultimately larger predators, PFAS lurked at every step along the way.

“A 2022 study in Australia established the transmission of PFAS from female turtles to their unborn offspring, while other research found traces in polar bear livers and birds, seals and other animals.”

Exposure to PFAS has been known to cause cancer and other illnesses along with complications for pregnancy. The problem is, there are 4,000 chemicals in the family. Many of them are proprietary so it is difficult to study them. 

Earlier this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency moved to limit six of the most common forms of the chemical from 70 parts per trillion to between 4 and 10 PPT. 

Just last year, a statewide survey in West Virginia found high levels of PFAS in finished drinking water being delivered to homes. 

It’s been 62 years since Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring about the dangers of DDT killing birds and bees. The book met huge amounts of resistance from industry at the time, but it ultimately led to the creation of the environmental movement and for Richard Nixon to ban DDT, sign the EPA and the clean water and air acts into law. That all happened between 1970 and 1972. 

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1972 and it grew out of the environmental movement of the time as well. Today, kids are taught in schools to protect the environment and Earth Day is something they expect to discuss every spring. 

As we approach the 52nd anniversary of the first day, it makes me wonder if PFAS chemicals are our new DDT. There isn’t as clear of a connection between problems with PFAS as there was with DDT — so far. But its pure pervasiveness and resistance to degradation once it is in nature makes it just as concerning. 

Books, diving and everything else with ScubaRadio: Listen now!

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Over the weekend, Eric had the chance to speak with Greg Holt from ScubaRadio. Eric has been a friend of the show, and Greg’s since nearly the beginning of the show.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted any of these on-air conversations, but this felt like a good clip to post. This segment aired Mach 23, 2024.

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