Jack Joseph understands physics. He understands the nature of quarks, leptons, dark matter and the desire to find the God particle. What Jack doesn’t understand is Jack. He has a Masters degree in particle physics, an ex-wife, a sugar mama into spanking, a passion for cooking and chronic dependencies he needs to feed. He cleans pools to maintain this chaotic lifestyle. Spinning about in a Large Hadron Collider of his own making, facing a jail term, the particle known as Jack is about to collide with a particle known as Sarah.

The Pool Boy’s Beatitude convincingly portrays a life of romance, addiction and entropy filled with drink, drugs and sex, broken with the miseries of ruined relationships and balanced on a needle of false hope. Somehow through it all the story is hopeful, positive, humorous and oddly enticing. The question is not so much will Jack survive as how will he survive, because surely, behind all this science, there has to be a truth worth living for. A thinking reader’s romance novel, the Pool Boy’s Beatitude creates a character you long to hate and makes you love him.

In preparation for a spotlight, I start by asking an author to tell me something about themselves and how they drifted into writing. D. J. Swykert, from the very first contact, was upbeat and fun and I had a sense that his novels would follow suit. But even more enjoyable was learning about his path to becoming a published novelist. He started as a young man working in law enforcement as a 911 operator. He seemed to have no trouble using those oh so necessary powers of observation and found it easy to fit into an author’s lifestyle. By that I mean that he has allowed himself the room to explore life with all its trappings and foibles and uses those experiences to mold his stories and characters.

D. J. began with writing poetry to impress a young woman. This in itself reveals a delicious romantic side and a whimsey for life that most people covet. His observations have produced both adventure and mystery novels which is no surprise for a person who raised two wolf cubs while living on the Keweenaw Peninsula and now resides with a feral cat named Mister. He believes in directness in his writing, a trait he adapted from his favorite author, Ernest Hemingway, but because of his demeanor I note a detour towards pure joy and surrender to life’s most ironic intervals.

Although his prior work leaned towards adventure and mystery, The Pool Boy’s Beatitude appears to be a deep examination of life, addiction, and a general introspection of how mere existence can become so very complicated.

D. J. Swykert’s novels include Children of the Enemy, Maggie Elizabeth Harrington, Alpha Wolves, For the Love of Wolves, Sweat Street, The Death of Anyone, Three-fingered Jack Davis and The Pool Boy’s Beatitude.  For more information on where to purchase his novels visit his website: http://www.magicmasterminds.com/djswykert/.