TURTLES
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 7 September 2023
Murder by bug? TURTLES starts with attempted homicides on opposite sides of the Earth. A winged insect kills an American professor in Washington, DC. Within days, a Western Australian university lecturer clings to her life as police investigations reveal another insect assassin flying loose on Cappuccino Strip in Fremantle. The link? Both researchers are team members of a project seeking to identify fabricated science, fake journalism and fraudulent academic publications.
In Washington, GNN journalist Samantha Holloway and Professor Tanya Copley team up with Australian researchers Liam Heathcoat,
Elliot Hooper and Akiko Nakamura to investigate the global scourge of the multi-billion dollar trade in bogus scientific research mills. The death of one colleague and the hospitalisation of another portend the seriousness of the task at hand. With no suspect identified in either America or Australia, suspicions begin to turn to a non-human culprit… Could artificial intelligence be responsible?
Australian Professor Elliot Cooper quickly points out that the existential threat so many well-known scientists have warned us about AI may be founded on a misunderstanding concerning the true nature of artificial intelligence. Dr Cooper explains that the coding of the algorithms at the heart of AI is all a creation of human beings. Could something that we have created in our own image possibly be a threat to us?
TURTLES is Churach’s tenth novel, another electrifying technothriller exploring one of the hottest topics on everyone’s newsfeed – artificial intelligence. The tale’s central theme deals with the changing nature of truth… of reality. At a time when fake news, bogus research, staged photographs, AI-created video clips and publications filled with outright lies run amuck, TURTLES dares to ask if we stand any chance of returning to the days when most people agreed to a fundamental acceptance of what is real. In a world overrun by instantaneous communications, social media run wild, and the speed of change outpacing any government or regulatory body’s ability to manage it, can AI possibly help save us from ourselves?
A worldwide surge of brutal crimes results in a growing total of excess deaths within clusters of certain targeted occupations, including law enforcement officers, journalists, lawyers and academic researchers. Local police team up with the FBI, AFP and ASIO agents to search for the perpetrators of these senseless acts of violence. When dozens of physicists perish in a Berlin explosion, an out-of-control car kills two journalists in London, and three Sydney police officers die in a freak accident, Dr Hooper knows it’s time to act. Along with three of his doctoral students, he codes a replicator program sure to cure the aberrant AI once and for all until…
CLOUDS
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 19 February 2023
GenoBotics is a new start-up company developed by Jonathan and Bronwyn Statler, a couple of Western Australian researchers applying the laws of physics integrated with biomolecular research to create nanorobotic devices as small as molecules. With offices and research labs in Australia and California, their work attracts worldwide interest in the promise of their nanobots to deliver the latest miracle drugs to precisely the right place within an individual’s body to help remedy many maladies.
GenoBotics quickly becomes a global phenomenon, and the internationally acclaimed Global News Network give award-winning journalist Pippa Hutchings the job of
producing a television documentary exploring the company and technology. Before Pippa can dive into her work, she learns of Jonathan Statler’s untimely heart attack in his Australian lab, which puts him in the cardiac care unit of a large Perth-Metro hospital.
Fortunately for Jonathan, his medical problem seems easily fixed with a cardiac stent. While comfortably recovering in his hospital bed with Bronwyn at his side, Jono reflects on the cruel statistics of how many symptom-free 51-year-old men never have any indication of heart disease before a fatal event. He holds his wife’s hand as he tearfully is thankful for this ‘lifequake’ event giving them a chance to reassess their lives. Unexpectedly, their quiet reflection is abruptly interrupted as Victor Dyson, a patient from a nearby CCU room, dashes down the hospital corridor and across a veranda, leaping from the railing to the car park below. Was this a suicide? Could the patient’s demise have been planned? Were any psychoactive drugs involved in the incident?
Western Australian police officers Inspector Walter Benson and Sergeant Georgie Walsh begin an investigation to determine whether this was an explainable death. Pippa’s research into Jonathan Statler leads her to wonder if maybe Statler was the real target, and the deceased patient was the mistaken victim. Unexpected twists and turns lead Georgie and Pippa to search for the answer to the same question – was Victor Dyson’s death a suicide, an accident or a murder?
Can you see through the CLOUDS? Dan Churach’s latest technothriller will keep you trying to part the clouds shrouding the mystery right up to the very last page.
"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending”
― C.S Lewis.
KAIROS: Book 3 of The Ancestor Trilogy
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 19 August 2022
Kairos, noun (καιρός)
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment." The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies "a time in between," a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens." What the special something is depends on whom is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.
Kairos time is usually perceived as a time of crisis. With this in mind, one has a possibility of participating in a “new creation.” One has the choice of danger or opportunity, a chance to build something new out of the old. "Kairos' time" bridges the tearing down of the “old way” with the building of a “new way.”
(Thanks and credit to The New World Encyclopedia website)
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KAIROS explodes into action as GNN reporter Owen Yates and his wife, Professor Fiona Wu, regain consciousness after the terrorist bomb destroys the Jacobi Research Hub. Desperately searching through the smouldering wreckage, the pair must face a growing casualty list that includes many friends and colleagues. The bombing triggers even greater determination amongst Ancestor Restoration Project team members to intensify their work exploring humanity's origins.
KAIROS continues Churach’s tale that began in EIGHT when astronauts exploring Mars discovered the remains of a predecessor species to Homo sapiens. The saga continued in SOLASTALGIA as the ARP team initiated face-to-face interactions with Homo parentibus, our restored human ancestors. In KAIROS, returning characters astronauts Lochie Greenbank and Arya Abass, Australian Professor Kylie Childs and journalists Sunlyn Singh and Zaleha Rodrigues join with their ARP colleagues as they are whisked away to a more secure location to continue their project.
The violent incidents at the Fremantle and bushland estate hubs cause project safety to be of primary concern. Global interest pressures authorities to find the responsible culprits and ensure maximum security for the team. Local Western Australia police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation team up to track the terrorists as ASIO Agent Tyne Dawson is embedded into the ARP.
The ARP work continues at a secret underground facility in a remote area of the Western Australia Goldfields. Gothosians Shayburn, Ligraff and the rest of the restored ancestors share much about how their failings on their home planet led to the ultimate catastrophe that led to their species’ extinction, Homo parentibus.
Can humanity learn from our now-extinct relatives? Is there hope humanity can avoid a similar disaster on Earth? KAIROS foreshadows the imminence of an opportune moment… KAIROS offers hope that Homo sapiens will choose to join an alliance of species… KAIROS conjures up an image of a future in which all of Earth evolves to become an intelligent planet. KAIROS, brothers and sisters – the time is now.
KAIROS: ISBN 979-8843228422
SOLASTALGIA: Book 2 of The Ancestor Trilogy
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 30 September 2021
Solastalgia, noun (so-lês-tæl-ji-ê)
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Definition: A form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home, but the environment is changed.
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Etymology: Coined by Australian philosopher and researcher Glenn Albrecht of the roots Latin sōlācium (comfort) and Ancient Greek algia (pain).
(Credit Wordnick)
SOLASTALGIA is the sequel to EIGHT and begins two years after the international astronaut team on Mars discovered alien artifacts. Trillionaire Jacob Jacobi, who financed the initial Mars mission, now establishes the Ancestor Restoration Project – the ARP – to awaken the digitally preserved brains of deceased aliens. Avoiding the political rivalries of China, America and the European Union, Jacobi chooses Australia as the home of the ARP.
Returned Martian astronauts, Lochlan “Lochie” Greenbank, Parisa Henning and Arya Abass, join Australian ecopsychologist Kylie Childs and her Chinese colleague, Fiona Wu, as part of the research team at the Jacobi Research Hub in Fremantle. Now confirmed as an ancestor to Homo sapien, the alien species is officially named Homo parentibus reflecting that relationship. The aim of the project – to revive the preserved alien personas, get to know our ancestors on a personal level and potentially learn why our ancestors became extinct.
The ARP story already attracts worldwide interest and promises untold insights into alien science and technology. The project’s goal of knowing our extraterrestrial ancestors on a personal level promises human interest stories unlike anything covered by the media before. As journalists rush to Western Australia from all over the world, GNN again assigns reporters Sunlyn Singh and Owen Yates to cover yet another ‘biggest story ever.’
But all the global attention isn’t supportive. Many fundamentalist groups see any thought of an alien life form as threatening to Earthly religions. A worldwide protest movement spreads in opposition to the alien artifacts, the returned astronauts and the entire Ancestor Restoration Project. Chants of “Jesus didn’t die for any aliens” ring out from Washington to London to Perth. Increasing masses of peaceful demonstrators take a violent turn when one of the twelve returned astronauts, Steve Borkowski, is assassinated in a Washington, DC, restaurant. DC Police detectives Harry Grimms and Maggie Patton are again on the scene chasing down the assassins.
SOLASTALGIA explores a series of ‘what ifs’ humans have faced since the beginning of history. What if we could speak with ancient ancestors? What if we could develop a personal relationship with humans who had died a million years ago? What if these returned relatives had a message for us to save humanity? What if there is something more to the story of the universe than just Homo sapien? SOLASTALGIA opens an unexpected door into our past. Maybe we can go home again.
SOLASTALGIA: ISBN-13: 979-8675249121
EIGHT: Book 1 of The Ancestor Trilogy
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 23 January 2020
Earth 2044… Nine-billion people struggle daily with first world problems in an environment suffering from the political inaction of prior generations. EIGHT follows three stories entangled in a struggle with challenges presented by a global malady of solastalgia, the desperate craving many feel for a home that no longer exists.
EIGHT begins with a bullet-laden message to two American journalists and the investigation that follows by Washington Police Detectives Harry Grimms and Maggie Patton. They chase a convoluted trail through a bizarre series of leads, uncovering a sinister experiment that
employs the hacking of personal, implanted SAMs – Subdermal Angel Microchips – ultimately leading to a massive increase in teen suicide.
Contemporaneously, the world’s first trillionaire, Jacob Jacobi, funds a volunteer team on a one-way mission to Mars where his small group of scientists stumbles across evidence of alien life. The rush to determine the origins of their discovery competes against the pressure to release their findings to a global press corps demanding answers.
Australian ecopsychologist Kylie Childs along with her Chinese colleague, Fiona Wu, team up with American journalists Sunlyn Singh and Owen Yates to connect the Mars discovery to the epidemic of teen suicide in a chase around the world on a trail leading from Washington through Hawaii and Shanghai and across Australia.
The story follows the interaction of scientists, journalists and police struggling to answer paradoxes faced by humanity throughout history. EIGHT explores the curiosity of the human spirit and the interactions of homo sapiens with their environment. It seeks the ultimate origins of humanity, our evolution and the direction in which we go from here.
EIGHT: ISBN-13: 978-1671341944
RAINBOW
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 22 September 2020
RAINBOW is a nail-biting tale about Hayden McNally, an American university professor-cum-high-tech-entrepreneur whose Eye-Safe technology has him well on the way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire. At the pinnacle of his career, he suffers back-to-back life tragedies that throw his world into upheaval. He and his wife, Jean, experience the unimaginable pain of losing their only daughter to social media-induced suicide. Shortly after, as Jean McNally lectures her class of university students, a crazed shooter bursts into the presentation, killing a dozen students along with Hayden’s wife.
McNally fights through his personal catastrophe, now obsessed with dedicating his life to honouring his wife and daughter. In short order, he sells his Eye-Safe Company and directs his hundreds of billions of dollars towards a gift to all of humanity. His memorial tribute takes the form of a technical and social experiment aimed at finding a better way for people to live in harmony.
Professor McNally enlists three of his former doctoral students – American Skylar Jennings, Russian Dimitri Ivanov and Australian Nick Simmons – to settle in Civitas, a newly established community in Western Australia.
The goal of Civitas is to apply their computer science expertise to devise a technical answer to the politically polarised populations found in so many nations around the globe. The experiment entails creating a system of artificial intelligence aimed at moderating government shortcomings. How? The Civitas designed AI breakthrough is the ‘Triumvirate’, three supercomputers (AI-Red, AI-Blue and AI-Yellow), all overseen by a moderator supercomputer – AI White Light.
Their experiment quickly captures world attention by demonstrating the safest driverless car network, the best ‘deep learning’ medical system imaginable and building an integrated energy grid the envy of the world. Civitas offers hope and assures humanity that a workable new way for people to work, live and play in a functional, sustainable, peaceful social structure is possible.
One of the foremost international news organisations, Global News Network, sends American journalist, Wailani De Silva, to Civitas. Her assignment: to learn about their innovative methods and produce a GNN documentary on their experiment for the global audience. From the moment of her arrival, DeSilva is almost overwhelmed by how very well it all works… until…
Accidents at three Canadian nuclear power stations, process control incidents at several African hydroelectric dams and missile silo doors taking on a life of their own in China, Russia and America. Could this all be a terrible coincidence? Were unknown hackers causing these events? Could the Triumvirate help solve the mystery? RAINBOW spins a real-life thriller that keeps the reader guessing to the very last page.
RAINBOW: ISBN-13 : 979-8675249121
DREAMS
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 12 September 2019
DREAMS is a novel about your parents and your grandparents. DREAMS is about your children and your grandchildren, born or not yet born. It scrutinises matters of one’s family, and how those matters are forever a part of your spirit, a part of your soul? DREAMS is a tale that explores societal attitudes toward our young people and our elders, towards how a cross-generational cast of characters interact in ways not often considered.
The thriller begins with a tremendous explosion destroying the Pinetree Retirement Village in 2025 Washington, DC, killing twenty-some residents. While DC police Sergeant Nick Corcoran and Officer Jo Satterfield track down two suspects in the Pinetree Village explosion,
suspicion quickly grows that responsibility for the terrorist act rests with an unseen power much larger and more distant than anyone anticipated.
GNN journalist Samantha Holloway dives headfirst into the story only to find connections to other suspicious deaths of older people in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. With the list of now-suspected homicides growing, Sam enlists the help of a number-crunching psychologist, Professor Tanya Copley. Using sophisticated artificial intelligence software, they manage to find a common link connecting the growing number of murders: elderly reports about serial dreams. Working independently of the journalists, police departments, the FBI, the UK National Crime Agency, ASIO and Interpol, Holloway goes on a global mission to investigate the evolving conspiracy. Is there any limit to the risk exposure for older people reporting serial dreams?
Western Australian ED doctor Leah Ferguson and her friend psychologist Akiko Nakamura contemplate the same dilemma, though from a much more personal point of view. Leah’s 77-year-old grandpa is Laurie Ferguson, a retired academic who never shies away from sharing his thoughts with his granddaughter. During a weekend barbeque at his Fremantle home, he innocently shares his recent dreams with them never considering that it might present an imminent threat to his wellbeing. Laurie resists Leah and Akiko warnings until the terrifying reality of the unseen threat becomes too great to ignore.
The story told in DREAMS aims at every mother, father, son or daughter who has ever worried about a family member. Through it all, DREAMS offers a ‘who-done-it’ drama that follows across four continents and builds suspense that will keep the reader on edge until the final page.
DREAMS: ISBN-13: 978-1687597519
FEVER
by Dan Churach
Publication date, 16 June 2019
FEVER weaves a tale of tension and intrigue triggered by several terrorist events that befall Australia. Asha Sharma, a Global News Network journalist working in America, returns home to Fremantle on an assignment investigating a rash of mutated microorganisms appearing globally. From the zombie microbes thawing in the melting permafrost of the Arctic to new strains of Ebola virus spreading into Thailand and Malaysia, was this Mother Earth’s attempt to resist the ecological onslaught of humanity? Asha finds herself in the middle of the ‘news story of the century’ working with an eclectic group of ASIO agents, police detectives, medical doctors, university
academics and a team of marine biologists in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.
FEVER opens with an explosion aboard the research vessel Reef Explorer, and ASIO Agent Clint Navarro quickly ties that blast to an earlier bombing that destroyed an MP’s office in Gladstone. Days later, another terrorist incident sees a ‘murder-by-Ebola’ scheme carried out in Melbourne unleashing the first active case of Ebola Virus Disease in Australia. Forensic investigators quickly identify the murder weapon as a synthetic version of the deadly virus produced in Melbourne laboratories. Does this portend more extremist activities to come?
From America, through Southeast Asia and across Australia, FEVER is a thriller that unravels through a series of twists and turns in fast-paced action whodunit keeping the reader guessing until the very last page.
FEVER: ISBN-13: 978-1070458830
BACK TO PARADISE
Kindle Edition 7 November 2017
Paperback Edition 15 April 2019
by Dan Churach
What makes a paradise? A geographic place? A state of mind? A specific time in one’s life? For many, personal paradise may be a combination of time, place and state of mind. For others, it could be that their own ‘Garden of Eden’ transcends earthly existence entirely while crossing over into another dimension.
Ben Decker has no idea that he is about to stumble into his personal paradise, a paradise far more beautiful than he could have ever imagined. Trapped in a two-decade-long marriage that seems to be going nowhere, the closest he can get to joyful bliss is through his career. The middle-aged
electrical engineer is on the cusp of one of the biggest technology breakthroughs ever, though he has little understanding of just how big the Alpha-Max 2000 will prove to be. As lead designer of the program, it is Ben’s task to travel to Hawaii to present his invention to a global audience. After boarding a modern-day Jumbo Jet on the mainland, he somehow finds himself on a propeller-driven Super Constellation approaching a Honolulu International Airport of long ago.
Decker must immediately confront a 1957 Territorial Hawaii forty-some year in his past. Though he is instantly immersed into the charm of the Islands, he rapidly discovers that every Eden rewards with a paradise… and punishes with a serpent… He falls head-over-heels in love with a beautiful young Hawaiian woman, Leilani, as she shows him a long-ago Hawaii still serene, still untouched. But the more Ben tries to open himself to his new-found paradise, the more paranoia he feels from American FBI agents watching his every move, convinced that he is a communist spy.
Back to Paradise follows Ben as he tries to balance his heaven versus his serpent: his new-found love against the rough-and-tumble world of a 1950s Cold War as well as the psychological conflict pitting his love for his two children living four decades into the future against a marriage relationship that had emotionally ended years ago. What to choose? Not so easy a decision since he realises full well that without knowing exactly how he jumped forty years into the past, he has no idea how to return to the future.
Back to Paradise begins with Hawaiian kahuna Uncle Kapena talking story to Wailani, a teenager wanting to learn more about her family. The tale he introduces will keep you riveted right up to the very last page.
BACK TO PARADISE: ISBN-13: 978-1983050572
PROOF!
Kindle Edition 2017
PROOF! Second Edition Paperback 2019
by Dan Churach
Michael Boddin is a middle-aged, New England high school teacher fighting to recover from a serious heart attack and near-death experience. The stresses in his life are heightened by the interplay of his relationships with the three women that are closest to him – his alcoholic wife, his religiously fanatical and over-bearing mother, and his frequently impatient lover. His seemingly typical struggle with a mid-life crisis is thrown into a tangled web of fear and confusion by an apparent out-of-body experience during a visit with the occupants of an unidentified flying object. Was it a real experience, or was it a hallucination?
Being quite sceptical of any so-called psychic or paranormal phenomena and fearing that public ridicule would result from any unwanted publicity, Michael is absolutely determined to keep his secret away from the media and nearly all his friends. He decides to share his encounter with only two people: Nichole O’Brien – his lover, and Jon Thomkins – a state police officer whose reputation had already been destroyed after he reported his own similar encounter.
PROOF! develops the desperate character of Michael Boddin as he becomes obsessed in his attempt to find even the slightest bit of concrete evidence which he could use to prove beyond any doubt that his bizarre experience had actually occurred. His quest for proof leads him on a wild, anxiety-laden search during which he undergoes a medical metamorphosis, is pursued by unknown government agents, seeks divine intervention from both a Catholic priest and a new-age spiritualist, has his life threatened by an Air Force Colonel, gets accused of running a child pornography operation, and is even arrested for murder. Throughout the entire ordeal, Michael and Nichole try to maintain their collective sanity by consistently conjuring up a mutual vision of running away together to a coconut-lined, black sand beach somewhere in rural Hawaii. But before they can transform their fantasy of being together in paradise into a reality, Michael must somehow make contact with the strange beings one more time...
PROOF! offers some unique and surprising answers to several age-old questions: Can we explain why supposed miracles happen? Does God really exist? What is the cause of the deja vu phenomenon? Is earth visited by alien beings? PROOF! is loaded with suspense and challenges the reader to keep on guessing – right up to the very last page… the very last sentence.
PROOF! Second Edition: July 26, 2019: ISBN-13: 978-1076063687
PROOF!: Publication Date University Editions, 1990: ISBN: 1-56002-116-0
The Donkey that Carried a King by Daniel G. Churach, 5 March 2020
Dear Reader:
Please allow me to briefly "Dansplain" my 'guest' children's book to you.
“The Donkey that Carried a King” was written by my dad, Daniel George Churach, sometime during the 1960s. It's a children's book aimed at kids from 5 to 10 years old and is a very appropriate story for that moms and dads might read to their younger children.
Dad had a lifelong interest in Biblical history as well as creative writing. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday on 27 September 2020, so my sister, Kathy Ozoroski, and I find it fitting to release this story for all to enjoy. We hope that you, your children and your children’s children enjoy Dad’s book for many, many years to come.
A special thanks to our friend, Janice Wentworth. Her artwork in “Donkey that Carried a King” brings the story to life for so many youngsters. A special kudos to Janice since she also did the artwork for Back to Paradise and has been an indispensable proof reader of all my creative writing.
Regards, Dan Churach, February 2020
The Donkey that Carried a King
The “Donkey that Carried a King” is a heart-warming story about a 7-year-old boy, David, and his pet donkey, Tobias. The tale takes place in Biblical times as his father, Samuel, takes a supply of olives from his farm in Palestine to be sold in a nearby town.
Samuel and David begin their journey back to their home only to be caught up in the stream of people going to Jerusalem to crown a new King of the Jews. The story relates the Biblical account of Jesus coming into Jerusalem the Palm Sunday from a seven-year-old’s point of view and that of his friend and pet, Tobias the donkey.
The Donkey that Carried a King: ISBN-13 979-8621600075