Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Intro to Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story

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The following is the first page of the new book Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story. Visit the book page to learn more about Leo, overcoming cancer and his motto that Nothing is Impossible!

Chapter 1

“Scuba diving saved my life.”

You will often hear people make broad statements without having faced true adversity. They’ve never wanted to end it all because of something that happened in their lives. They’ve never had to fight to walk again or felt like they were less of a person than they were before. And they never found joy, peace, inspiration and purpose in something.

But Leo Morales has.

By his own admission, Leo “had it all.” He was an up-and-coming young professional who had fun and made money. At twenty-eight years old, he became a bank director and won several awards for performance. His star rose fast and he enjoyed the ride.

Until 2008.

He felt a strange pain in his lower back. He wrote it off to sitting at his desk as he worked long hours at the bank. Finally, he gave in and consulted a doctor. The news was shocking. He had cancer. The tumor was on the inside of his right leg and right buttock. It weighed three kilos (6.6 pounds). The doctors told him there was a serious risk the cancer could spread into his vital organs. The only solution? Remove his entire right leg. The odds were high he would not survive the surgery. If he did, the doctors said he would have a five-year life expectancy.

Leo describes the decision to have the surgery as a leap of faith. There was a good chance he would never wake up from the anesthesia. There was a good chance he would never leave the hospital. He said goodbye to everyone he knew and loved and went to sleep on the operating table asking God for “one more day of life.”

New covers, all Mike Scott novels

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As the Mike Scott novels have been published (starting in 2004) each book has been a separate entity. Now that there is an entire series, Eric decided the books need a cohesive look to give readers the ability to immediately identify them when they see them online or in a book store.

These are prototypes of the new covers for the entire series, so comments are welcome. The font is the same throughout. The text is in either black or white with the same treatment on each. Placement is either at the top of the cover or the bottom, depending on the image.

We’ve also added subtitles to the books that didn’t already have one.

Marshall divers studying native mussels in Ohio River

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Originally published in the Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail on September 29, 2017.

 

Imagine jumping into the Ohio River, the cool end-of-summer water covering your head, and then descending to the bottom, staying there and searching in the dark through the muck, sand, rocks and submerged trees for freshwater mussels for an hour.

Graduate student Mitchell Kriege is finishing a research project in the Marshall University environmental sciences program. He and a team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Tom Jones, have been diving in the river and then completing surveys of the freshwater mussels they find on the river bottom.

On a recent September Saturday morning, the group met at the university and drove the boat to a remote ramp on the Ohio. It’s difficult to call what the team does diving. They are underwater for an hour breathing compressed air, but they don’t wear fins, and they don’t swim. They crawl along on the bottom, fanning away silt and mud, feeling for mussels.

They find mussels with common names, like black sandshell, three-horn wartyback, pimpleback, washboard, three-ridge, deertoe and sheepnose (which is listed as an endangered species on the federal register.) Zebra mussels, an invasive species they don’t study but that are often attached to the mussels they are looking for, have a razor-sharp edge that causes fine cuts on their hands.

According to Kriege, the eastern United States is the hot spot for mussel diversity in the world.

“We are the equivalent of the Amazon rainforest, but for mussels. It is important to study them because they are so heavily imperiled,” he said.

“This project will be the first time we have a statistically defendable estimate of the mussels in the Greenup Pool, or anywhere in the Ohio River to my knowledge,” Jones said. “More species of mussels are federally listed than any other taxonomic group by percentage. Some authors cite almost 70 percent of mussel species have some federal protection due to rarity.”

The research project includes 20 randomly chosen locations on the river. At each location, the team lays out 100-meter-long weighted lines from the bank toward the middle of the river. A diver then enters the water and collects every mussel to be found in a 1-meter-wide swath along that line, placing them in mesh bags.

These swaths are called transects. Every 10 meters, the diver clips off the bag and begins a new one. When finished with the dive, the diver has surveyed a 100 square meters of river bottom.

At each location, they make six transects, each one 100 meters downriver from the previous one. For his master’s degree thesis, Kriege will produce maps showing the locations and dispersal of the various types of mussels in the river.

Jones explained freshwater mussels filter bacteria, fungi, protozoan and algae from the water column.

“In essence, they clean our drinking water for us. They also alter their substrates by movement and provide food to other species, both by being eaten and by producing pseudo-feces that bugs and fishes consume,” he said.

“Each mussel filters anywhere from 5 to 20 gallons of water per day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If one mussel filters 10 gallons of water a day, that’s 3,650 gallons a year. When you get to talking about populations in the millions, you begin to realize how much money mussels are saving the taxpayers,” Kriege said. “Mussels not only clean the water we drink, they act as food for a wide array of organisms — muskrats, fish, etc., and their dead shells act as homes for many macroinvertebrates, fish and aquatic eggs.”

After each dive, the crew brings the 100-meter line to the surface with the mesh bags attached. They carefully measure and identify each mussel and record its statistics, before returning it to the river, where it can continue growing.

Before they are returned to the river, though, the zebra mussels are pulled loose. Zebra mussels attach themselves to just about anything underwater, including other larger mussels, and can kill them in the process. Removing the zebra mussels gives the native mussels a better chance at survival. Kriege explained that they do this for the mussels caught in the survey since they were dislodged from the bottom in the first place.

“This project has opened up my mind to the incredible number of mussels present in the Ohio River. There are literally hundreds of millions of individuals in our pool with 25-plus species. However, it has also opened my eyes to the sad truth of the incredible habitats and wide array of species we lost when the river was dammed and heavily polluted. About half of the sites we surveyed were heavily impacted by humans and nearly devoid of mussels. Historically their numbers would have easily been in the billions in just a short section or river.”

Eric Douglas, of Pinch, is the author of “Return to Cayman,” “Heart of the Maya,” “Cayman Cowboys,” “River Town” and other novels. He is also a columnist for Scuba Diving Magazine and a former Charleston Newspapers Metro staff writer. For more information, visit www.booksbyeric.com or contact him at Eric@www.booksbyeric.com.

Take advantage of 112-Hour Sales

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When I tell people about my latest book, The 3rd Key: Sharks in the Water, some of them say “But I want to read the series from the beginning.” Now that the Mike Scott thriller series has eight books in it, that’s a little harder than it used to be.

To make things a bit simpler, and to coincide with summer/poolside reading, the Kindle versions of the first four books in the Mike Scott series are going on sale – one each week. The original price for each book is $3.99, but each week, you’ll be able to get them for just $0.99. (A 76% savings!) That should keep you reading well into August.

Have some friends who might be interested in saving some money on a good summer read? Share this email with them and let them know how to save some money!

To help you remember when the next book goes on sale, I’ve set up calendar reminders for you, as well.

Cayman Cowboys

July 10, 2017 at 5:00 AM (PST) to July 14, 2017 at 9:00 PM (PST)

Add to calendar

 

Flooding Hollywood

July 17, 2017 at 5:00 AM (PST) to July 21, 2017 at 9:00 PM (PST)

Add to Calendar

 

Guardians’ Keep

July 24, 2017 at 5:00 AM (PST) to July 28, 2017 at 9:00 PM (PST)

Add to calendar

 

Wreck of the Huron

July 31, 2017 at 5:00 AM (PST) to August 4, 2017 at 9:00 PM (PST)

Add to calendar

Return to Cayman: Excerpt Friday #2

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The following is an excerpt from the Mike Scott thriller Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage.

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“Please excuse the interruption,” the well-groomed news anchor said directly into the camera. She wanted to look serious and concerned, but reassuring at the same time. “We have just received a video from an anonymous source explaining what has happened with international communications on Grand Cayman. They say the video has been sent to international publications and media outlets in the US and Europe as well. It says why we have been cut off and what will happen next. They are claiming to keep the island off-line until their demands are met, but they have not sent us any information on exactly what those demands are. We are being held hostage, virtually. We will show you the video now, so you know what is going on, although I must tell you that we are still working to determine the authenticity of the recording.”

The image on the television screen shifted to the image of a masked man, sitting in a chair on a beach with the ocean behind him. He looked casual and comfortable, except for the ski mask over his head and the electronic scrambling that made his voice sound mechanical.

*****

For too long, we have treated our oceans as a dumping ground. We have believed we could do anything to them. Because they were so vast, it just didn’t matter. Our fishermen have caught fish on top of fish believing they would miraculously and magically reproduce, even while seeing the size of the fish they caught get smaller and smaller. On top of that, fish are showing up with concentrations of heavy metals so high we’ve told pregnant women not to eat them. Now, there are fish swimming in our oceans filled with radioactive waste from Fukushima and tons of plastic floating on the surface that we call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, like it is out of a cartoon. But no one seems to care. It is easier for us to stick our heads in the sand.

Coral reefs are dying around the world. Climate change is just part of the problem. Farm runoff, untreated sewers and other forms of pollution are causing unchecked algae growth, choking out the sun corals need to grow and prosper. Corals protect our beaches from erosion and storms, providing habitat for small fish to grow. The recent event on this island where a cruise ship dropped its anchor on a coral reef that was beginning to recover is the latest example of how we mistreat the ocean.

Grouper, long considered an icon of the Caribbean, are endangered and populations are struggling because we harvest them during their mating gatherings. Sharks are caught for their fins and thrown back in the water to die.

This is all throwing the oceans out of balance, and we will no longer stand by and accept it.

This place, Grand Cayman, is a temple and we should treat it like one. If we won’t take care of this beautiful ocean jewel, what will we save?

 And that is why we are holding this island hostage. We want the world to wake up and understand what is at risk. We are in control of this island. And make no mistake, we are firmly in control. Cutting communications is just the first step. No one has been hurt and, except for a few tourists, no one has been inconvenienced. Mark my words, this is just the beginning. We are in complete control and plan to stay that way until the world is willing to come together to change. These are drastic measures, but these are desperate times.

From this moment, you have 72 hours to bring together a group of representatives from every nation in this world. We are sending this same manifesto to news organizations all over the world. We expect to see presidents and prime ministers, kings, queens and dictators. And don’t think we won’t know what is going on. We are not just here on this tiny island. We are monitoring communications. Don’t think we aren’t ready to counter anything you might try. We are everywhere.

Lastly, be warned. If the military from any nation should try to intervene by invading the island, there will be consequences. We have the power to erase every computer system on the island. Much of the world’s banking and commerce flows through Grand Cayman. On any given day billions of dollars flow through this island. If we choose, we can make it all disappear, throwing the rest of the financial world into chaos and taking the rest of the world with it. Stay away and get to work meeting our demands.

If that body of leaders is not ready to make the changes we ask for, the people of Grand Cayman, and the world, will face more serious consequences.

The Saviors of the Ocean are watching.

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Get your copy of Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage today, in softcover or Kindle. It is also part of the Mike Scott Boxed Set that includes the first five novels and two short stories.

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