To

Newspaper reporter...television correspondent...magazine founder, editor and writer.   Political writer...crime writer...health writer...travel writer.  Contributor to Esquire, Gourmet,  GQ, New York Times, Playboy, Texas Monthly, Town and Country, Travel and Leisure.  Over 20 awards, including nomination for National Magazine Award, Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe award, Texas Institute of Letters Award. Non fiction books:  Evidence of Love, a true-crime classic, and The View from Nowhere, a tour of great American saloons that has become a cult favorite. Presently trying his hand at fiction. Check out his first unpublished novel,  an excerpt of which is at right.

TO A MORAL CERTAINTY

by Jim Atkinson (excerpt from first novel)

He would remember later, much later, that he didn’t even hear the engine of the speeding van until it was a scant ten yards from them. 

“Andy!” came Lisa’s voice.  Without thinking he yanked his daughter across in front of him and flung her toward the median of the street.  He then dove for his wife and attempted to ram her out of the way of the speeding vehicle.

But he delivered only a glancing blow.  The instant that the van was upon them, Lisa was spinning and stumbling right in the path of its headlights, while he was skidding on the asphalt to safety.

The grill of the van struck Lisa with a dull thud—a death sound.  She flew straight up into the night air, like a helicopter on take off, then came straight down on the hood with a horrifying wet thwop --like the sound a huge, filled hot water bottle might make if it was dropped on asphalt from a second story balcony. The van continued to speed eastward and her body bounced and rolled forward on the hood, her pale arms flaying about for something to grab hold of in the damp, black air.  The van accelerated and jumped a large chuckhole, flinging Lisa up and out in front of the vehicle. Andrew had landed with his head turned in the direction of the fleeing vehicle, and so he didn’t even have time to avert his eyes as it piled over the twitching body of his wife, its axles whining and chassis rattling as if it’d run over a discarded sack of fertilizer.

A sound was in his throat someplace, but he couldn’t get it out.  He rolled over, tried to rise up to look for his daughter.  The horizon yawed nauseatingly as he pulled up and tried to get a bead on the median.  Andrew could smell his own body odor.  Desperate feet whisked to and fro, voices, strident but far-off sounding bounced off the night sky, which all of a sudden looked very close. 

“Annie!” came his first utterance

As if from over a mountain range, he heard her voice, “Daddy!  Go save mommy!”