Author

Writing about mid-life characters in pursuit of second chances that don’t always turn out as planned…

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In his nearly twenty years as as Catholic priest, nothing could prepare Paul Griessen for what awaited in the hospital ICU. He was called in to anoint a patient clinging to life, victim of a tragic accident that took the lives of her entire family, only to discover the patient is Sandra Besher, his high school sweetheart and the girl he once thought he would marry. When Sandra regains consciousness, she struggles to walk and talk and has no recollection of the accident, her family, or her own identity. Her only connection to her past is the kindly priest who comes to visit.

Sandra’s doctors enlist Paul to help her recover and regain her memory and he interprets this as a sign from God he was meant to minister to his old friend. In the months that follow, he becomes her constant companion and in the process, experiences what life with Sandra might have been, rekindling long-forgotten feelings he manages to suppress until she strikes up an innocent friendship with an engaging French widower and natural feelings of jealousy emerge, tumbling Paul headlong into a struggle over whether God is testing his faith, or if God’s will is for him to be with his one true love.                                  

[107,000 words]

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The Consolation Gift (alt. title, A Little Strange)

Eleanor Kouign (pronounced “queen”) is an award-winning professor of genetics at Princeton University, but lately she has been “out of sorts”—snapping at students, fighting administration, and becoming increasingly estranged from her quirky “Dr. Doolittle”-type biology professor husband—and doesn’t know why…until she learns an ambitious young research assistant with whom she parted ways five years earlier on bad terms is now CEO of a bio-tech startup and is speaking at an upcoming conference. In Ellie’s mind they were cut from the same cloth, sharing a passion for genetics and even laughing at the same jokes, but when he suddenly abandoned the project to pursue his own dream, out of spite she removed his name from the award submission…and now wonders if she let her one chance at true happiness walk out the door.

Obsessing over what once was…and what could again possibly be…she proposes a trial separation from her husband, and against the advice of her therapist, sets off for the conference with a plan to present her former assistant with a lighthearted “consolation gift” to make amends for the award recognition he never received, building up their anticipated reunion in ways that might not quite be in touch with reality.

[70,000 words]

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Friend in Need – A Novella

Out of the blue, Caroline Metzger receives a phonecall. The pregnant wife of a former employee she hasn’t seen in three years is asking for her help—he’s been imprisoned in Colombia, mistaken for a local insurgent. And although she hasn’t performed field work since becoming senior executive at the Red Cross, Caroline finds herself boarding a plane for the jungles of Colombia, risking her own personal safety to negotiate the release of her protégé, her friend, and the one for whom her feelings run more deeply than he would ever come to know…

[20,000 words – can be developed into a full length novel]

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2 A.M. Dedication (working title)

Somewhere in the middle of the Kansas prairie, Rick Sanders sits alone in a tiny broadcast booth between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. spinning oldies at a low frequency a.m. radio station—one of the few remaining that still plays music. Each night at exactly 2 a.m., he broadcasts a special dedication: “This one goes out to April…from me” in the hope that somewhere out there in the quiet still of the night, the woman he drove from his life twenty years earlier when all he thought he needed was fame and cocaine, will hear his voice and find it in her heart to forgive...

[This manuscript is currently in development.]

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Tao of RUE (a dystopian novel)

Under the pen name Eskatrine Ska

Three weeks after the start of his second term of office, President Roland Tharpe declared himself ‘President in Perpetuity.’ Now, eight years later, the country is in a very different place. Red shirted militia patrol the streets, arresting people at will, and all citizens are required to belong to one of six government-approved megachurches, the largest of which is led by the charismatic Reverend Jeremiah LeGuerre whose fiery tele-sermons are broadcast each week into every household in the Nation.

Althea, LeGuerre’s only child, witnessed her father rise to national prominence by drumbeating Tharpe’s platform of ‘restoring moral values’ through mass deportations while her mother, Renee, stood meekly by. Hers was the last university class to graduate before the book bans and crack down on free speech, and following graduation, Althea and several of her classmates disappear and go underground…only to emerge years later as a well-organized, well-armed militia that stages a coup and successfully overthrows Tharpe.

Renee is shocked to learn of Althea’s involvement in leading the coup, and horrified over the new social order established by Althea that proves even more oppressive and intolerant than Tharpe’s, only now the oppression is directed at those who formerly embraced Tharpe’s definition of ‘moral values.’ Driven into hiding, they look to Renee as their only hope in convincing Althea to end the savagery and save humanity. But as Renee quickly discovers, there is more than one path to salvation.

[This manuscript is in early stages of development]

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If you are a literary agent interested in representing me and my work, please email me at catherineellbogen@gmail.com.

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