The Night Caller 

70,000 word Psychological Suspense

2008 1st place-Great Expectations Contest

2011 Sandy Finalist

Evan Roth is not your average crisis negotiator. He talks down well-meaning neighbors wielding date-nut bread. He orchestrates others to tend to the details of his life with his rehearsed shrink-talk. He even restores century-old wood to the place it was before it went ten kinds of crazy. What he can’t do is find a reason to step outside his Victorian house. Ever.

Until she calls.

Late one night through the dusty shell of an antique crank phone, it begins. Subtle at first—the wrong number perhaps, crossed phone lines, a prank on the town freak who won’t sell under eminent domain pressure. But this is no ordinary call, and she is no ordinary woman. She is the only person in the world who can bring him back to the hero he was before fourteen hostages died on his watch. Too bad she’s calling from 1881 and will die in ten days at the hands of a railroad photographer-turned-serial killer.

Negotiate time travel? That might take more finesse than refusing date-nut bread.

Excerpt:

The call came before dawn.

Had Evan Roth not doodled creamer art into his French Roast, he might have missed the call. Had he not witnessed the eclipse of his neighbor’s stretch pants below her adult diaper, he might have missed the call. Had he not exhaled on the parlor window and fogged the ordinary life on a residential street in Silver Creek, Colorado, he might have missed the call. Had he not filled his nights with restoring his grandfather’s Victorian house, he might have completely missed the call.

For the call was ordinary in all ways but one.

Evan Roth had ripped the phone out months ago.