Someone once said, “Write what you know.” That doesn’t mean that an author has to experience everything that appears in a work of fiction.

To me it means to write what is in my heart.

I lived in Florida for thirty years, and it’s in my heart. Most of my novels are set in the Sunshine State because I love it and because I hope that in some way my books make others to stop and consider what can be done to end its headlong dive into the ocean of the developers’ pockets. Perhaps government officials will look at the cost of not enforcing regulations and start making the big boys pay by following safety rules put in place to avoid what happened in BP’s oil spill and the Massey mine explosion. Both events occurred in 2010 approximately three weeks apart. And both could have been prevented if the corporations involved had followed the regulations in place. And the forty men killed in those disasters would be alive today if the environmental agencies in charge of enforcing regulations had done their jobs. Forty men died in April 2010. That’s a loss we can calculate, and it’s horrible. However, we have no idea of the toll taken on our wildlife and their offspring.

And so I write what I know in my heart, and Trails in the Sand and Tortoise Stew show that love for the environment in ways I only know how to express through my words. My next novel, Native Lands, will even go further into an examination of what we do when we destroy even one part of nature.

To celebrate and remember Earth Day 2014, I’m offering both books for .99 cents on Kindle during the month of April. Click on the cover of each to be taken to the Amazon page. Both books are also available in paperback.

Trails in the Sand – .99 cents for the month of April on Kindle

***Love Triangles, Endangered Sea Turtles, and BP’s Oil Spill

***A Florida Novel by award-winning Florida author, P.C. Zick

When environmental writer Caroline Carlisle sets off to report on endangered sea turtles during the BP’s oil spill, the last thing she expects is to uncover secrets – secrets that threaten to destroy her family, unless she can heal the hurts from a lifetime of lies. To make matters worse, Caroline’s love for her late sister’s husband, Simon, creates an uproar in a southern family already set on a collision course with its past.

From Caroline’s sister: “My sister is nothing more than a common whore,” Amy said when Simon told her he was leaving her. “You just have to face it and get over some childhood notion about her being your soul mate.”

On BP’s oil spill: “Two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, dead sea turtles began washing up on the beaches near Pass Christian, Mississippi. Beach walkers discovered the stranded animals on sand darkened by the blood seeping from the turtles’ nostrils and underbelly.”

Using BP oil spill timeline and facts as the backdrop, Trails in the Sand explores the fight to restore balance and peace, in nature and in a family, as both spiral toward disaster.

Tortoise Stew – .99 cents for the month of April on Kindle

Florida Fiction filled with intrigue, corruption, twisted love, and outrageous Florida  characters

A Florida Environmental Novel from Award-winning author, P.C. Zick

Small town politics at its best, worst, and wildest in this novel about the development of Florida at any cost.

“The bomb sat in a bag on Kelly Sands’ desk for an hour before she noticed it.” And so begins the raucous journey through small town Florida politics in Tortoise Stew.

Kelly Sands, a reporter, covers some of the more controversial and contentious issues in a small Florida town. Dead armadillos and gopher tortoise carcasses left as calling cards to those opposing the development of rural Florida show small town politics at its worst.

Commission meetings erupt into all-out warfare. With the murder of one commissioner and the suicide of his wife, Kelly begins an investigation that threatens to topple the carefully laid plans of the developers and politicians to bring a movie studio and landing strip within the city limits of the small town. When a semi-truck from Monster Mart runs over and kills a young girl, the environmentalists become even more vocal against the developers’ plans. All the while, Kelly struggles to overcome and escape her past, which catches up to her as she follows the antics of the politicians, developers, and environmentalists. With the help of her boss, Bart, and her best friend, Molly, she uncovers more than corruption in small town politics.