Vince M. Barron

The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life, driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for self-destruction. Life’s Work is a profound memoir from a brilliant mind taking stock as Alzheimer’s loosens his hold on his own past.

Things aren't going well for Slippery Jim diGriz. First there was the robbery of the Mint on Paskönjak that went terribly wrong, and then that little matter of a death penalty. And last but not least, there's the deal Slippery Jim cuts with the authorities, which, on reflection, doesn't look much better than slow death. In exchange for his life, Slippery Jim must retrieve a missing alien artifact from the planet Liokukae - a dumping ground for the Galactic League's misfits, murderers, maniacs, and the incurably obnoxious.

Jim was left in the custody of the League Navy, this story opens with him escaping from his prison cell on the League base on Steren-Gwandra, where he is awaiting deportation back to his home world. He has discovered that Bibs, a crew girl from Captain Garth's ship, is also a prisoner. Jim holds Garth responsible for the Bishop's death, and plans to hunt him down, with Bibs' help. Garth is really the crazed Captain Zennor, head of an army which continually defies League peace treaties, and now plans to invade and conquer the planet Chojecki.

This time the Special Corps has given the Rat a daring assignment: liberate a backward tourist planet from the clutches of an aging dictator. With his lovely but lethal wife, Angelina, and his two stalwart sons, James and Bolivar, diGriz pits ballots against bullets in the fight for freedom. He's vowed to restore truth, justice, and democracy to the world of Paraiso-Aqui, even if he has to lie, cheat, and steal to do it!

The villainous He has travelled back in time to mankind's distant past on the legendary planet Earth (or 'Dirt') of 1984, where he is altering events so that people who opposed him in the Rat's present cease to exist, Angelina amongst them. Using the Helix, a time-travel device invented by the Special Corps' Professor Coypu, diGriz travels to 1984 America, and then to Napoleonic France where tanks and aircraft are helping bring about Napoleon's victory.

James Bolivar “Slippery Jim” diGriz, Special Corps agent, master con man, and interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog on the planet Moolaplenty when a long-lost cousin and a shipful of swine arrive to drain his bank account and send him, and his lovely wife, Angelina, wandering the stars on the wildest journey since Gulliver’s Travels.

Imperetrix Von Kaiser-Czarski is the richest man in the universe, and someone is systematically robbing all of his banks. He decides that the best course of action is to set a thief to catch a thief, and the best thief of them all is one Slippery Jim diGriz. Sceptical at first, Jim is soon won over by the promise of four million credits a day, plus expenses. Jim and Angelina enlist the help of their twin sons, James and Bolivar, and James' computers soon find the common link between all of the robberies: every time a bank was hit, there was a circus in town.

After saving the world, diGriz is called on to save the universe. Liberating his two, now teenage, twin' sons from a military boarding school and penitentiary, diGriz sets out to free his wife, who has been arrested by the tax men. But the family is soon fighting an enemy of a different sort, when the humans-only galaxy of the League is invaded by all manner of hideous aliens.

The Road runs from the unimaginable past to the far future, and those who travel it have access to the turnoffs leading to all times and places - even to the alternate time-streams of histories that never happened. Why the Dragons of Bel'kwinith made the Road - or who they are - no one knows. But the Road has always been there and for those who know how to find it, it always will be!

The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the 1,300 solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again.