Author J.D. Makuro

Nestled in the snowy mountains, drinking hot chocolate before a fire, and typing away on my laptop...provided I'm not skiing.

Accidental abduction

Cora, a young elementary school teacher, is accidentally abducted by space aliens whose spaceship is damaged. Unfortunately for Cora, the aliens are also lost and don't even know what galaxy Earth is in. Plus, their ship is falling apart, and the death of Cora and the aliens is imminent.

Cora of Earth books are short chapter books around 4000 words. 

Time Sailing is Available on Amazon

In 1804, 18-year-old Tori Knight is a wanted woman. The British Navy wants to hang her for murder. A traitorous captain wants her to find his sunken blood money. And Jason Dagger, the husband she didn’t know she had, just plain wants her. 

Born in 2083 AD, Jason is a time sailor, possessing a genetic abnormality that allows him to see and sail through time storms. Jason falls in love with Tori and alters history to save her from the noose. But no matter how many times Jason sails back in time and wins Tori’s love, she always ends up dead. It’s as though fate is caught in a rut. The time storms are becoming more fierce with each cycle of time. This will be his and Tori's last chance.

  Sixteen-year-old Celine Dagger is the privately tutored genius daughter of the infamous criminals Victoria and James Dagger, divorced for two years. Celine should be attending university. However, she wants two things: A typical high school experience and her parents back together. 

However someone has stolen plutonium from the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Disaster and the CIA, FBI, MI6, Chicago mob, and KGB think her parents have it. The result is chaos, danger, and destruction, descend upon Rapid City, South Dakota

However, in desperation, the FBI hires West Point's brilliant, patriotic seventeen-year-old cadet, Bryant Savior, as an agent and assigns him to befriend Celine and discover what the Daggers are up to. Bryant is three years ahead in school and working on his criminal psychology degree, but the degree was to catch and prosecute criminals, not manipulate innocent girls. Although Bryant is committed to serving his country and failing to find the plutonium could mean the death of thousands, he is struggling with the dishonor and dishonesty of his spying.

Celine's brilliant, charming, and dangerous personality soon captures Bryant's heart. Also, it is uncertain if he is manipulating Celine, or she is manipulating him. Can mutual manipulation build a genuine relationship? Regardless, both must survive the out-of-control chaos before finding out if love will ever exist between an honorable patriot and a teenage criminal mastermind. The only thing Bryant knows for sure is nothing surrounding Celine is what it appears to be. Just when he thinks he knows what is going on, he finds out he's dead wrong.

Welcome to my Viable Prepping Shorts. 

Words like emergency preparedness, 72-hour kit, prepper, and prepping conjure many images in people’s minds, not all positive. 

So, I’m defining a new term: viable prepping. 

This means preparing in a way that is easy, routine, cost-saving, and beneficial to one’s normal lifestyle rather than a fear or burden to endure.

In the past, I wrote many viable prepping articles. I thought I would share them here as short videos.

But first a disclaimer. 

Circumstances, capabilities, resources, and laws vary greatly. 

Thus, these articles are things I have done or considered and are not recommendations. 

Any attempt to replicate is your own responsibility and should be done by competent people according to the law.

With the disclaimer now mentioned, let’s dive in.

Adding an outlet plug to the furnace

Throughout my entire life, I have never experienced a natural gas outage. I’ve experienced many power outages, but never natural gas. So, a big thank you to the natural gas workers in my area.

But although my furnace, clothes dryer, and stove are natural gas, they don’t work without electricity. 

In my area, we have cold winters, and keeping our homes warm is essential not only for living in, but water lines start breaking and materials crack. if they go below freezing.

I made a simple modification in my furnace room that solved this problem for my home. 

Every home is different, and it must be done according to code. Also, working with electricity is dangerous and must be done by someone who knows how to do it properly.

At any rate, I installed an electrical outlet in my furnace room with a switch that turns the outlet on and off. I then put a properly sized electrical cord and plug on my furnace so I can plug the furnace into the outlet like an appliance.

When the power goes out, I can unplug the furnace from the outlet and plug my furnace into my small generator or battery pack. 

This allows me to use natural gas to heat my house even when the power is out. 

My natural gas furnace uses very little electricity when heating and my battery backup can run it for a night.

One word of caution is that some electronic furnaces are sensitive to noise on the power line and some generators and or batteries don’t produce clean outputs. 

Also, proper grounding of the generator is important. You need to know, research, and understand your own furnace.

Nevertheless, after much research, I did this modification, and it cost me about $20.

A few years ago, during the winter, a horrendous storm knocked out the electricity at my house for about ten days. 

This modification turned the disaster power outage into a fun indoor camping trip.