What does a happily married "black" man do who's turning 40 and is still deeply in love with his wife, when suddenly his life is turned upside down by her accidental death? He makes a drastic 180-degree turn and relocates to an all-white condo development to escape the grief. It's a dive down a totally different rabbit hole. He jettisons a business career to become a modern Renaissance Man, of sorts, seeking a personal excellence long dormant since his college days. Preston Towers hopes to mingle as just another person, invisible as to heritage labels. In other words, he wants to stop being black, Negro or colored to avoid strait-jacketing restrictions. His days take on a revolving door atmosphere, keeping the props up under his business that supports his esthetic efforts. Naively, he's on a collision course with reality in still racially sensitive America despite the times being the so-called liberated, less-tense 1970s. SEARCHING is now available as an e-book @ $2.99 per download from Amazon's Kindle Store in the general fiction category.

THE BARRIER is not a literary time capsule to be examined occasionally by the curious reader as if it were a relic in a dusty museum. Its message is an timely now as when first published. Its story is as gripping and starkly realistic as when first conceived. Its antihero, Bobbie Lee, won't go away, either. His real-life counterparts are still getting into trouble with a dominant bureaucratic society, whose gatekeepers treat them as subjects, not as participants. After you read THE BARRIER, you will never again be complacent about the "other" America and its Bobbie Lees. What some reviewers said about THE BARRIER: "Carmen Fiore has written a great book...should become a movie...and he has a message!" "...always in constant motion...moves from scene to scene...by no means dull." "...an interesting and fast-paced novel...worth reading." "...striking, revealing, accurate, what else shall I say?" Born in Trenton, NJ, Carmen Anthony Fiore first met the characters of his novel while growing up in an integrated urban neighborhood. As a young adult, after a two-year stint in the army, he met them again as their social worker, then later as their elementary school teacher. The result was THE BARRIER.