Ralph Bowden

Biography

Ralph Bowden has entertained himself by writing mostly fiction for almost 30 years, through and following careers as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry, a history professor, a home builder, an alternative energy consultant, an instructional designer, and a technical writer. Twenty-six novels, four story collections, a volume of collected short fiction, and a three-act play reside, mostly unread, on his hard drive. He likes all of his word children. Realistically, some of them are probably flawed and maybe even terrible. Others might entertain readers besides himself, but Ralph hasn’t the time or ego drive to promote and sell, nor the stomach for collecting rejection letters. Self-publishing avoids all that and is quick. If somebody finds and likes what he has written, fine. If not, the world will go on (or not) just the same.

Books

Saving Shadow Mountain
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 114,380. Language: English. Published: August 28, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Adventure » General
Elsie has lived her 43 years in Shadow Valley, a tiny remnant community in East Tennessee where the local pit mine closed in 1981. For many years, she has been sole caregiver of her father, a former miner with black lung COPD. Her life is wrenched out of its narrow limits by a struggle to fend off the destruction of her life space by mountaintop removal mining.
Anatomy of a Factory
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 92,380. Language: English. Published: July 24, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
This faux documentary looks inside a typical small manufacturing plant in middle Tennessee, its personnel, culture, corruption, and intrigues. The factory is owned and starved by a Chicago holding company. Profits are down and everybody expects the plant will be closed. How can it be saved?
Alien
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 61,380. Language: English. Published: July 22, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
A concert pianist, recently escaped from an institution for the criminally insane, attempts to escape recapture and rejoin a world he never really knew because of his narrow profession and training. Many difficulties face him, especially at first; he has only prison clothes, no money, identification, food, or experience with the rough mountains he finds himself in. Will he make it?
Jane, Lizette, and the Beards
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 69,510. Language: English. Published: July 19, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » General
Shooting noises in remote Tennessee woods, distresses Jane, the new owner of a large adjoining tract. She and Lizette snoop and find what she thinks is a terrorist militia training encampment run by two bearded men. They capture Jane. Lizette helps her escape once, but the beards recapture her. She manipulates them to bring down the cell.
The Swami's Arrow
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 113,540. Language: English. Published: July 19, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Adventure » General
In a remote Carolina beach community, the ex-military, divorced, protagonist must deal with the house he has bought, the girl he has hired to make it livable, an assortment of colorful characters, the threat of real estate development, a hurricane, and his own belated coming of age.
Hitch Hikers
Price: $1.99 USD. Words: 22,990. Language: English. Published: June 18, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Themes & motifs » Psychological
(5.00 from 1 review)
The eight short stories in this collection feature different situations in which someone picks up someone else for a ride. Some of the stories are slightly weird, some are scary, some are surprising. Taken together, they provide a picture of the extreme range of humanity and of interaction between people.
The Fiona Letters
Price: $3.00 USD. Words: 85,680. Language: English. Published: June 9, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Themes & motifs » Family sagas, Fiction » Historical » Victorian
(5.00 from 3 reviews)
Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, one of the first scientific celebrities, led a full, productive, and virtuous life, above reproach by Victorian standards. His only passion was for science in the service of nation and empire. But he must have had another life, another kind of passion. This novel imagines how it could have happened
PLACES; Eight Place Stories
Price: Free! Words: 32,530. Language: English. Published: May 21, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Themes & motifs » Psychological
(5.00 from 1 review)
These stories explore the relationship between physical places and the lives of people in them or affected by them. The places – an abandoned factory, a lonely beach in winter, an old water tank, a beer joint, a cemetery and others – elicit all kinds of responses from all kinds of characters. Different stories are funny, creepy, sad, heart-warming, subtly erotic. All are thought-provoking.