Avenging Storm

Imagine a cure for cancer has been found—and governments and big business are conspiring to keep it secret.

Such is the plot of author Maurice Mayben’s first novel, Avenging Storm. Mayben, a retired American Airlines captain and former U.S. Air Force jet fighter pilot, holds a B.S. in finance and management from URI.

In his action/adventure novel, Mayben’s protagonist Derek Storm risks his life to bring to light an ancient Chinese cure for cancer. Mayben hopes this is the first in a series of Storm novels.

The author and his wife, Marcia, came up with the idea while discussing their fathers’ terminal cancers: “We were having cocktails and my wife said, ‘I wish there was a real cure,’ and I said, ‘yeah, right, like they’d let us know if they had it.’ And we inked out the plot on cocktail napkins.”

Those cocktail napkins became pages, and pages became a novel. Now Mayben spends his days on the road, promoting his book at military bases and bookstores. “I particularly like visiting the bases,” he says. “It’s refreshing to be among my peers.”

Mayben, a self-taught fiction writer, subscribes to a simple writing principle: “What makes for really interesting fiction is when there’s truth to it.”

Mayben wrote Avenging Storm in seven months. That was the easy part. It was the five years searching for a publisher that was arduous, Mayben says.

Fortunately, Mayben is resilient: “Persistence —I can’t overstate the importance of that. If you get 157 no’s, you have to look at it as 157 no’s closer to getting that yes.”

Faith is another of his virtues. The former military man quotes Psalm 118 when asked what motivates him: “I prefer to put trust in a Higher Authority and I’m thankful every day for every blessing, large and small.”

Avenging Storm may be purchased at major bookstores’ Web sites or at mauricemayben.com.

—Marybeth Reilly-McGreen