Teenager Joe Ferris was raised to help guests -- he was third generation in the motel business -- but once he connected with mute Judith, they were off on an epic thousand mile road trip through the Southwest, all to help the most unique guests of all -- the Roswell aliens stranded far from home since 1947. With the Men in Black hot on their trail, and discovering that the aliens had more tricks up their sleeves than their captors had ever discovered, Joe and Judith have to wonder just who is taking whom on the ride of their lives!
Henry Melton travels half the year in a satellite Internet equiped RV with his wife Mary Ann, a nature photographer. A jagged path has taken them to dozens of science fiction conventions and even more National Wildlife Refuges. His writing office is often a laptop perched on the Jeep's steering wheel as she tracks down the rare and the beautiful beside some secluded dirt road.
From the Redwood forests to Death Valley to the Great Lakes to Delaware swamps to the African bush, scenes out the windshield become locales for his fiction work. Check his website, HenryMelton.com for current location, a blog of his activities, and scheduled appearances. Many years of travel stories are archived on-line.
Formerly a programmer specializing in database work and web design, he pioneered Internet use for a Fortune 500 company until the tech bubble collapse. In the early days of home computers, he created one of the earliest commercial word processing programs.
Henry's short fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies, most frequently in ANALOG. "Catacomb", published in DRAGON magazine, is considered a classic, and by the continuing fan mail twenty years later, a formative influence among modern computer gaming programmers.
Other than an occasional short story, most of his time is spent writing science fiction YA novels. Currently being published by Wire Rim Books are the Small Towns, Big Ideas series of science fiction. "Emperor Dad", the first of the books, won the 2008 Darrell Award for Best Midsouth Novel. "Lighter Than Air" won the 2009 Eleanor Cameron Award (Golden Duck Award) for Middle Grade Science Fiction.
