“Twists, Turns, and Unlikely Heroes”

Every page of Kinney’s Quarry delivers something unexpected. Kinney, haunted by a near-death experience, won’t kill again—but that doesn’t stop him from dismantling criminal schemes and sidestepping danger with his resourceful partner Reed. Their mission spirals through fake murders, international intrigue, and jaw-dropping betrayals, each chapter raising the stakes.

Verlin Darrow knows a thing or two about the unexpected. His life journey—spanning careers as a volleyball player, taxi driver, and even a store owner in Italy—gives him the kind of perspective that turns genre tropes on their head. With a keen eye for both drama and comedy, Darrow’s writing draws you in from the very first line. Explore his wild biography and other books at on his website.

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Excerpt

The knife wielder wore khaki slacks, a white polo shirt, and a black cap with a Nike logo on it—basically the uniform of any golfer besides Kinney and Reed. Kinney momentarily pictured him on the first tee at Seaview before remembering that distracting thoughts put him at risk

The African-American man on Kinney’s left towered over the other two and held a hand inside a black windbreaker’s pocket. The jacket listed to the right with the weight of a gun. He was a nine on a threat scale. This monolith looked like a defensive lineman. Kinney imagined him in a 49ers uniform. Then he imagined him lying on the ground.

The third, more nondescript man was hard to figure. He could’ve been anywhere between a four and a ten, depending on what he held behind his back.

Kinney walked toward the men. “Howdy, gents. What can I—”

He lashed out his foot and took out the big guy with a powerful roundhouse kick under his chin. He went down hard onto the cement, the back of his head landing first.

The guy with the knife lunged at Kinney, who ducked to the side, grabbed the thug’s forearm and pulled him forward and down, booting him in the ass en route. The man lay on the ground and watched as the third man scuttled across a stretch of lawn to get behind Kinney. Kinney tried to sweep this man’s legs out from under him. The attacker adroitly leapt over Kinney’s maneuver and brandished a kid’s aluminum baseball bat.

The guy was an eight, Kinney decided. He wasn’t holding the bat correctly, but he was quick. Few people saw Kinney’s leg sweep in time to evade it.

“Calm down,” the bat guy said. “We just want to talk.”

He didn’t look like a classic villain or thug. He looked like Kinney’s high school math teacher—ordinary to a fault. Of course, Mr. Karch had been fired for slapping a disabled student, so it wasn’t though he was actually ordinary.

“Most people use their mouths for talking,” Kinney replied.

The knife guy was back, scything sideways at Kinney’s hip. Upon closer examination, he was quite ugly, with a squashed nose and bulbous lips on his bony, narrow face. Kinney kicked the knife out of the guy’s hand and punched him in the neck. He went down.

“Okay,” the bat guy said, stepping farther away. “I get it. You’re a badass. I never saw anyone kick like that. They shoulda told us about this. Here’s the deal. We’re supposed to bring you somewhere. All they said was that you might not want to go, so we should convince you. Then you attacked us before we had a chance to talk to you.”

“You might rethink your plan to convince me.”

“Yeah, clearly. I mean, I could try to hit you with this bat, and maybe I could. But maybe I couldn’t.”

Knife guy tried to get up. Kinney shook his finger at him and he lay down again. Kinney was surprised the guy had managed to move. Kinney must’ve been a little off when he targeted the nerve in the guy’s neck.

“Why don’t you go ahead and give it a try with your club,” Kinney said. “It’ll be fun.”

The man slowly shook his head and then spoke just as slowly. “I don’t think I’ll do that.”

“So you’re the one in charge? I thought it might be this loser on the ground who attacked me first.”

“Nah, I just like to send him in to find out who we’re dealing with.” The man shook his head again, faster this time, apparently disappointed in his colleague. “What are you—some kind of kung-fu champion?”

Kinney shook his head. He wanted to be the one asking questions. “Who is the ‘they’ in the ‘they sent me?”

“Now, it wouldn’t be very professional if I told you that.”

The man smiled as if he was proud of himself for his loyalty. He tossed the bat back and forth between his hands, which struck Kinney as a very stupid thing to do. All Kinney would need to do was kick him while the bat was in the air.

But he wasn’t ready to end the encounter yet—not while there was still more to find out. “Would you be more inclined to tell me if I take that bat away from you and beat you with it?” he asked.

“You know, I think I would,” The man conceded calmly. With his off hand, he pulled a pistol out of what must’ve been a holster clipped to the back of his belt, and aimed it at Kinney. “But it’s a moot point now, I think.”

Kinney lunged forward and kicked the gun out of his hand before the man knew he’d moved. He followed that up by grabbing the bat, wrenching it sideways to free it, and then slamming it into the man’s thigh. He didn’t want to break anything—the femur was like concrete—but the man crumpled to the ground, holding his temporarily useless leg.

Kinney was feeling pretty positive about the encounter until he saw that the gun had skittered across the sidewalk to the knife guy. Cradling it in both hands from a safe distance, he told Kinney he liked shooting people.

“Then why’d you bring a knife?” Kinney asked as he raised his hands.

Guest Post

Why Do I Write?

At first, I was desperate for meaning. That’s what got me started. As a depressed young adult, fraught with existential angst and across the board over-thinking, I was never satisfied by life. I wasn’t in direct contact with the world, so I couldn’t be fed by it. When I created a manuscript, I introduced something into my experience that mattered to me—a new element that penetrated the layers of insulation I’d gathered around myself to stay safe.

However therapeutic, this era of writing was marked by a distinct lack of expertise. When I eventually began to build a skill set, I added in another motive—making money without having to work a regular job—you know, getting all sweaty, being bossed around, keeping regular hours. Not surprisingly, I failed to manage anything close to making a living writing. Perhaps I sustain a large-scale writing project as a hobby. Nope. It simply didn’t provide enough reward to motivate me.

Eventually, I had something to say, and the tools to say it. Then the early motives dropped away.

I’ve learned to appreciate the glorious nature of being with ordinary life experience just as it is—yielding gracefully to it when I can, and always being mindful to whatever there is to be mindful to. (This is a cure for mood disorders, by the way. Feel anxious about what might happen? Step away from that and orient yourself to the here and now, where the scary future is not happening).

The moment may be sufficient these days, and I may not need to write or generate drunk monkey busy-mindedness to escape it, but nonetheless I feel a continuous urge to create and serve others by adding something meaningful to their moments.

In a sense, I write due to attrition. I tried pretty much everything else and writing survived the process. I was a professional athlete, a storeowner, a spiritual mentor, a singer/songwriter, rich, poor, a Southerner, a New Englander, a Texan, a Californian, an ex-patriate, a factory worker, a road crew laborer, a taxi driver, a carpenter, a world traveler, a hippie, and too many others to list. As I worked my way through what didn’t match who I was—what was based on flawed ideas about myself—I zeroed in on psychotherapy and writing.

They both draw helpful, intriguing, fun things out of me from all levels of my being. Whatever difficulties I’ve endured, I can spread the learning associated with these in both realms. In my work as a therapist, this might entail direct sharing or role modeling. With writing, it’s usually in the background—the settings, a given character’s perspective, or the details of how my protagonist changes over the course of the plot.

Some people really do change, sometimes dramatically, in a short period of time, especially when a conspiracy of dramatic, unexpected events swirl around them as they do in Kinney’s Quarry.