Author @Steveshearbooks needs your help... #reading #freebiefriday #IndieApril
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  • N. N. Light
    • Apr 3, 2020
    • 4 min read

Author @Steveshearbooks needs your help... #reading #freebiefriday #IndieApril



To all of you reading this,


First and foremost, I hope all is well and you are hunkered down, as am I.


After spending the last fifteen years or so writing six or seven hours a day, and almost as many hours looking for agents and publishers and attempting to market the stuff that has already been published (three novels and two stage plays), I decided I’m getting too old for all that; the agents, the publishers, and the marketing that is, but not the writing. I love the writing.


I still have lots and lots of unpublished stuff including a manuscript I’ve been working on since 2007. It has gone through more revisions than I can count and at least half a dozen titles. Finally, it is done! Confronting Religious Fanaticism tells the story of Ira Neebest and how he and his extended family are affected by the fanatic fringes of Western Religion, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.


Of everything I have written, this story excites me the most. However, because of the subject matter and its length (approximately 525 pages), finding an agent or a publisher as good as my present publisher (The Wild Rose Press), will take me more years than I want to devote to that endeavor.. Unfortunately, the combination of religious fanaticism and 525 pages is not a good fit for TWRP.


Having said all that, I nevertheless want to get the story out and into the hands of people who might be interested in reading it. Given our present hunkered down situation, I figure this might be as good a time as any to see if I can do that. To begin with, I am offering anyone interested a pdf of the first 175 pages which I subtitle An Eye for an Eye.

An Eye for an Eye focuses on Ira Neebest’s mother Rebecca, a young Hasidic woman who is caught between the religious roots of the family’s orthodoxy and the man she loves, an atheist. After choosing her atheist lover rather than the son of the family’s Rabbi (resulting in a pregnancy out of wedlock), she is driven into her own hell by the revengeful Rabbi. This is the same Rabbi who claims to have the ear of God and who in fact is the mastermind manipulator behind her guilt in this explosive triangle overrun with sexual indiscretions, secrets, and retribution; and it has its own ending apart from the rest of this overall story.

If you are interested in receiving the pdf, let me know. See my email below. You can read the first 10 pages, 20 pages or the entire 175 pages. If you want the second and third installments, I will send you those also.

You can also download it safely from Prolific Works:


All I ask in return are two things if you like the manuscript. First, let me know in a few or words or a lot of words. Second, donate five dollars (if you can) to an organization helping those in need as a result of the present coronavirus crisis.


You will find a brief synopsis of the entire manuscript below. For now, thanks and stay safe.


Steve Shear



Synopsis – Confronting Religious Fanaticism


Confronting Religious Fanaticism (A triadic NOVELization exploring the orthodoxic ills in Western Religions) utilizes three distinct sections and first-person accounts to describe the journey of Ira Neebest from birth until he returns from the jungles of India after being kidnapped by ISIS and the Iranian Ayatollah for writing a Nobel Prize-winning novel about the evils of religious orthodoxy (Ira Neebest and The First Coming). Yes, he and I both wrote a book about the ills of religious orthodoxy! A coincident … or not. On this journey we learn about Rebecca, Ira’s mother, who is constantly doing battle with guilt driving forces in her own Hasidic background (An Eye for an Eye). And we love Natalie, Ira’s wife, who as a child is abandoned by her parents at a Catholic boarding school. She is raped not once but twice by a priest with a rotting black heart, putrid breath, and wandering hands and is subsequently accused of bludgeoning him to death. As an adult, she is used by the Iranians to capture Ira and winds up in a coma (Break Hearts & Hungry Bears).

All of this between the covers of a single manuscript!


Author Biography:


The Trials of Adrian Wheeler was my first published novel (L&L Dreamspell, 2011). It was awarded runner-up in the San Francisco Book Festival 2015. Filmed Imagination of Los Angeles and Daniel Dreifuss (producer of the Academy Award-nominated film NO) took a film option on The Trials of Adrian Wheeler. FI hired Erik Wolter, an established screenwriter, to write the screenplay and FI is now looking for partners to produce the movie. Erik and I have collaborated on a sequel to the screenplay, Justice for All. My wife, Susan, and I also collaborated on The State vs. Max Cooper and The Steele Deal (published by ArtAge Publications), courtroom plays in which the audience serves as the jury. Both are being produced around the country. I have found one review of Max Cooper based on its performance at the James Downing Theatre in Chicago (http://www.chicagonow.com/count-gregulas-crypt/2013/05/theater-review-youre-the-jury-the-state-vs-max-cooper-the-james-downing-theatre/). In addition to the Fountain of Youth, I have three novels that have recently been completed: The First Coming, An Eye for an Eye, and The Click. I am presently collaborating with Erik Wolter on a screenplay based on The Click. I have been writing poetry for over fifteen years and am also a portrait and figure artist and sculptor, having been represented by a number of galleries in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. I am presently represented online by Vango Art.

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