ZODIAC THRILLERS SERIES       OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR       CONTACT

 

 

About the author …

 

Daniel R. VanTassel now lives and writes in sunny California, having brought with him vivid memories of the sharp winters of the Midwest and the rugged stillness of the Adirondacks and Vermont. His family history reaches back to Cornelis Van Texel, a year 1620 immigrant to Niew-Amsterdam (present day Manhattan) from Texel, Holland, whose descendants became part of the American story that the author continues to explore in his fiction.

 

                                                 Dan has spent a lifetime observing the quirks of the                                                           human condition and trying to put some of it down on                                                       paper. His library of observations continues to be a                                                             resource for his written work.

 

                                                 Dan’s series of careers kicked off decades ago when he                                                     was stationed as a naval officer in the North Atlantic and                                                   Mediterranean. He describes his time in that position as                                                   “terrifyingly exhilarating.” The experience proved                                                                  invaluable for helping him portray the recurring                                                                  character, “Stoney” Johnstone, in The Zodiac Thrillers                                                        Series. (see below)

 

Other career milestones: communications/media relations director, cisis management consultant, ESL teacher, and publisher/editor of the international literary magazine, The Zodiac Review. While building careers in those fields, he began writing in earnest while also building Adirondack Guide Boats. He ultimately learned that writers and boatbuilders answer to equally demanding taskmasters...and enjoy equally happy outcomes.                                                            

 

​​​​

 

The Zodiac Thrillers Series…

Novels in the series include:

 

> The Aries Obsession

    Spy Thriller/ Psychological Thriller                           “An excellent pick for fans of spy novels”

    First novel in the Zodiac Thrillers Series                                —The Midwest Book Review

    Published by Vellum Publishing, Inc.

 

Stoney Johnstone, a celebrated FBI agent on loan to the

Navy's NSIC, is immersed in a Cold War counter-espionage

investigation when his daughter suddenly disappears. At

the same time, he reconnects with his long-lost father and

begins to confront a family history he barely understands.

With the help of Anna, a British psychologist whose insights

prove crucial to the investigation, Stoney discovers that the

disappearance of his daughter is connected to a much

larger international threat.

 

Half a world away, the man known as Bully has spent years building a very different life. His obsession with astrology has shaped his increasingly dangerous view of himself and the world. As the two men whose lives were once linked by a childhood accident are drawn toward a confrontation, Stoney must find his daughter and prevent a Cold War crisis that could have consequences far beyond his family.

​

​

> The Gemini Obsession

   Psychological Thriller with military and romance genre threads

    Second novel in the Zodiac Thriller Series

​

Ultra-talented but weary FBI agent Stoney Johnstone crosses paths on a Caribbean island with outwardly charming, covertly vicious twin brothers. The brothers are driven by their twisted view of astrology and a compulsion to steal certain extraordinarily valuable, world famous jewels while also brutalizing any uncoop-erative vacationers. Stoney’s own compulsion…stopping the brothers from assaulting his family as well as other vacationers…is frustrated by his sudden secondment to NSIC on a high-risk shipboard mission involving a high ranking Navy officer. Half a world away, his family courageously tracks down the brutal brothers with the formal blessing of the FBI. They, too, are on a high-risk mission. 

 

The up-close views of the loving relationships among Stoney, his family members and his fiancée make this book a smart and satisfying psychological thriller with military and romance genre threads. The novel is essentially mainstream literary/genre fiction.

 

 

 

Other published works by the author…

 

> The Feminist Gene and the Election of 2024

   Political thriller/historical fiction

 

An action-packed novel featuring several of the author’s

real and imagined ancestors whose common threads

were their ardent feminist beliefs and courageous actions.

Among the book’s characters is the author’s actual 2nd

Great-Grandfather Isaac Van Tassel, one of the few bold

male signatories of The Women’s Declaration of Sentiments

of 1848.

 

The novel’s plot arc is this: Before Presidential Candidate

Kate Kinney makes final plans for extreme policy initiatives, she seeks the blessings and “advice and counsel” of her feminist ancestors depicted on her office wall. Her closest advisors have a decision to make. The book includes events surrounding The Declaration and the abolitionist Frederick Douglas’s participation in its writing, and the explorer Henry Hudson’s encounter with Dan’s actual Native American 9th great-grandmother, each of them early firebrands for feminism.

 

The book is both a fascinating trip through 400 years of the feminist “movement” and a chilling look at the country’s vulnerability to a shift toward plutocracy.

 

 

​

> The Man Who Was Looking Down

    Collection of the author’s short fiction

 

The author’s 11 short stories and 6 prose poems include:

a delusional priest in Walking Papers; a depressed Emmy

Award winner who begrudgingly accepts a tv narrator gig

for automatic cow-milking machines in People in High Places;

and an Adirondack lake where summer people pick rasp-

berries in the hidden glens used by Mohawk Indians three

centuries earlier in The Lake That Was Shaped Like The Letter Y,

published in Blue Line, a literary magazine focusing on

the Adirondacks. 

​

​

 

​​​​​The Zodiac Review

     International online literary magazine

     Published and edited since 2011

​

 

                                         The Zodiac Review

                                  Literary Magazine

                                     thezodiacreview.com

 

                                “For readers and writers without borders”

 

 

The Zodiac Review is an international literary magazine currently publishing flash length fiction. Usually published online twice a year, the magazine has continued to be a source of enjoyment for readers and writers around the world. Throughout our evolving seasons we have published stories from six of the seven continents, clearly showing that we all are readers and writers without borders and humanitarians at heart despite our varied cultural and geographical backgrounds.(Go to magazine here)

 

Dan has been the publisher and managing editor of The Zodiac Review since 2011.

​​

The magazine was established as an online writers’ workshop of sorts, founded primarily to provide an additional opportunity for new and emerging writers of short fiction to get a toehold in the world of print. The magazine currently welcomes flash length stories. Dan and staff members provide meaningful feedback for every story submitted, the work accepted for publication or not. They have reviewed and commented on over 1,600 submissions since the magazine’s inception. Contact

 

 

Contact... 

 

Readers, writers, publishers and others are welcome to get in touch. Please include a brief subject line describing the nature of your message.

 

Please click below to use the Wix protected email system:

​

>>> (Contact Daniel)