Welcome to Jon Kromer’s Website

This site's' primary intent is to promote Jon’s first e-published novel, First Mover. Click her to read the First 3 Chapters. A follow-on novel is in the works, and a collection of short stories is contemplated.

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Young Halcyon’s serene world has come undone. The boy’s body lying in her woodland sanctuary is the catalyst. A bribed Healer, a key witness at the hearing that will clear her, casts a shadow over her innocence. Gone is her Calling to become an apprentice Healer. Her plans to find work in Space are stymied by her house arrest. Her future hangs in stasis while her village’s leaders debate her fate.

Brant is completing the last days of his contract with the Gyp families that populate the space station, Gyp’s Wheel VII. Smart, creative, financially secure he plans dropping Earth side for a year’s rest. He needs it. Professionally the best Tinker in the Solar System, yet scarred by numerous losses, his personal life is in shambles.

Cela, the dead boy’s sister, wants revenge. That Ron-Ed’s death was accidental, and self-induced is unimportant. The village girl, Halcyon, is somehow responsible. Bribing Adam, the Healer witness, is just a first step toward making Halcyon pay.

Star-travel still eludes the Solar System. Near-Earth space is crowded. Mars, and its Lagrange points are suburbia, Io is making miners rich, but no one inhabits beyond. It’s the twenty-fourth century, but technology still lags, and faster-than-light travel remains only a Spacers’ dream.

These four collide. The results are upheaval, violence, deceit, and love. With the help of Crisp, Gyp’s Wheel VII’s commander, Brant finds purpose, Cela finds closure, and Halcyon finds refuge, peace and a Calling.

First Mover’s genre is, obviously, Science Fiction, with a bit of mystery, a touch of romance, and a chunk of fantasy along the way.

It’s “old school” hard science fiction. Technology existing today is well researched, the imagined technologies of the future don’t violate present-day known science theories—no “faster-than-light” travel here—and the fantastic doesn’t try to mask as science.

The follow-on novel, scheduled for early 2013, will also be Science Fiction.

The short story collection (late 2013?) on the other hand, is a potpourri, of jests and errors, and overall humanity.

Jon Kromer is the pen name of David J. Griffiths, a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania whose enlistment into the U.S.Navy, presumably to become a Photographer’s Mate, embarked him on an unplanned voyage, and woke his love for the seas, science and the unexpected.

He began his 26-year Navy career as an airborne Radioman and Technician, then was ordered to college, and upon graduation, was commissioned an Ensign. He drove destroyers in three oceans, circled the planet twice, earned a Master’s degree in Physics, helped overhaul the USS Enterprise, and discovered another love: writing.

Jon (David), now a retired Commander, resides in North Central Florida with his wife, Yvonne, in a carriage driving community, where he cooks and bakes, carpenters, photographs, and writes.

Why do I use a pen name? If you Google or Bing David J. Griffiths you’ll find page after page of a David J. Griffiths, Physicist, highly published, known and respected world wide, who isn’t me. I wasn’t surprised. Griffiths is one of the few original Welsh surnames reluctantly assumed by Welshmen in response to a royal edict. And St. David is the patron saint of Wales. Every Tom, Dick and Harry in Wales is named David.