Duane Poncy and Patricia J. McLean

Duane Poncy and Patricia J. McLean are the authors of Bartlett House, A Will Adelhardt / Lucy Hidalgo Mystery and editors of Raising Our Voices: An Anthology of Oregon Poets Against the War, published in 2003 at the outset of the Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Raising Our Voices was honored as one of the 150 most important Oregon poetry books by the Oregon State Library and Poetry Northwest, on the occasion of the Oregon State Sesquicentenniel.

Also in 2003, they founded Elohi Gadugi, a small nonprofit literary organization, and its literary publishing imprint, The Habit of Rainy Nights Press. They are editors at the press, which now includes Elohi Gadugi Journal, a literary magazine dedicated to showcasing “narratives for a new world.”

Duane, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, writes speculative fiction, fantasy, and mysteries with a literary bent. His work often contains Native American characters and themes. His current project is The Sweetland Trilogy–he has finished the first novel, Skyrmion, and is hard at work on Entanglement, the second book of the series.

Patricia is currently working on A Stranger in Town, a novel set in the fictional Eastern Oregon community of Germaine. The story was inspired by Duane and Patricia’s groundbreaking online fiction website, The Germaine Truth, which came online in 2004. She also writes poetry in addition to her longer-form writing pursuits.

Patricia and Duane live at Portland, Oregon’s Milepost 5 artists community where they host monthly literary readings, as well as classes for struggling writers.

Skyrmion: Book 1 of the Sweetland Novels by Duane Poncy

Is Sweetland a new world ready to accept suffering humanity, or is it another kind of escape entirely?

Joe Larivee

Joe Larivee is an Everyman, a tireless social worker trying to help the growing legions of the poor while keeping his own head above the water, and in 2031 the water is rising fast, fed by global warming and collapse of the ice caps. America is on the verge of war and economic disaster. For the starving many, a new answer seems to have arrived. It’s Sweetland, a newly-discovered earth-like world. And there’s a novel way to get there — through the virtual reality called New Life.

Fourteen-year-old

Jessie Larivee

Jessie Larivee wants to go to Sweetland. There is no future on Earth for children like her. She has been taking virtual training classes at an online university, and she is determined to emigrate, no matter the cost. But she hasn’t figured out how to tell her dad, who is a bit of a luddite. She desperately wants him to go with her, but how can she convince him?

Claire Deluna, aka Bridge Whitedeer

Virtual private eye, Claire Deluna, has been hired to spy on a mysterious corporate upstart by it’s parent company, New Life, Inc. Now she has the big players on her tail, but is it the mob, the government, the Bolivarians, or someone else? More worrying, why are bodies of mostly poor, young people turning up everywhere? And what does it have to do with the Temple of New Life and something called Sweetland?

For those left behind, the act of crossing over to Sweetland is, literally, no different than death, but Joe Larivee has seen the other side, and now he must decide: is Sweetland real, and, if so, does he follow his daughter and lover and escape from the hell Earth has become, or does he stay and fight for the unfortunate ones he has spent his life serving, and, in the process, just maybe redeem himself for the betrayal which eats at his conscience?

Visit The Sweetland Novels for sample chapters and other materials.