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THE GOOD KILL Is For Sale!

Wait a minute…

I think I mean, THE GOOD KILL is ON Sale?

Yeah, that’s it.

Silly prepositions…

Small but mighty.

Anyway, even though the romance noir novel RAINY SEASON is my latest belle of the ball, I thought I would give my last brainchild a little love by trying out for the first time one of those newfangled KINDLE COUNTDOWN DEALS.

Which means, beginning right now, you can purchase that dark, violent, thriller of a tome for a mere $0.99.

A former Navy SEAL turned vigilante hitman already in the crosshairs of corrupt Russian agents finds himself in even deeper trouble after rescuing a sex trafficking victim against her will just as she is about to be delivered into the hands of an unscrupulous corporate mogul, an impetuous and dangerous man who will not be denied his purchase. . .

ORDER HERE

But you need to move fast (or, at least fast enough to purchase it within the next 24 hours or so) because the price will keep going up until a week from now it will be back to its regular $4.99.

(Ah, uhm… for those of you who subscribe to NEWSLETTER LOVE, I apologize for announcing the sale began yesterday instead of today.

What can I say…

I’m a nerd.)

So, I guess I’ll step down from my less than stable used car salesman soapbox for now and get back to the business I’m more suited for…

I’m not exactly sure what that business is but it def ain’t a used car salesman.

Right on?

Write on…

#happyindependencedaymurica

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RAINY SEASON is now available

You can order the ebook or paperback here.

Falling in love is the last thing a mysterious American expatriate in Tokyo is looking to do, especially with an alluring jazz club singer shrouded in vague mysteries of her own…

~~~~

Tokyo during rainy season, when the sun rarely shines and the days are hot, wet, and long, is the perfect place for a man like Rich, a man who has traveled the world trying to outrun the memories of a bitter past.

Settled now, Rich spends his Tokyo days mostly in reflection out on his apartment’s balcony. There he leans against the railing, smokes his cigarettes, and watches the rain as it falls upon a sea of umbrellas flowing by on the sidewalk below.

But he spends his nights at The Low Point, a mostly unknown, cozy little jazz club where he is left alone to smoke, write in his journal, and drink Japanese whiskey… a lot of it.

With Tokyo, the largest metropolis in the world, Rich has become, if not happy, then at least content within his self-imposed seclusion.

That is until Miko is hired on to perform at the club. With her comes beauty, grace, an magical singing voice, and a large following that turns the once obscure jazz club into the it place to be.

Also with her comes trouble… a lot of it.

~~~~

Rainy Season, a novella… order here.

   
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A Turn From the Worst

So, I was thick into the development of the follow-up novel to THE GOOD KILL (any guesses what follow-up title will be?) when of a sudden it seemed like End Times had finally started to throw down with the Covid-19 pandemic and cult daddy trump’s horrific death-inducing response to it.

With the Killian Lebon storyline as dark and violent as it is, and with all the research into the real-life examples of darkness and violence it takes to bring it out fictionally, I just thought it best for my mental stability to shelve all the pretend mayhem for a while seeing how there was far too much of it going on within our apocalyptic twilight zone of a reality.

But of course I could not not write so I immediately began looking internally for a story that would be able to transport me away to a better place.

Continue reading “A Turn From the Worst”
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In Appreciation of a Photograph

Except for THE GOOD KILL, of which I contracted out to Extended Imagery, for better or worse, you decide, I’ve created all my book covers, including the one for my latest novella RAINY SEASON.

It’s a fun process creating book covers, one that allows me to escape the writing process tedium for a while and become creative through other mediums. I like to create the cover early on in the story development process so I can refer to it for inspiration similar to the way I refer to the logline.

The covers I created are mostly designed around photographs I took, except for HOW NOT TO DIE, which you’ll see if you look closely, is designed around a photograph of me in a hospital bed flashing my middle finger in defiance as I’m being treated for heart failure, which was the result of a freak side effect of the chemo drug I was taking at the time (I was speedily switched to a different drug which has yet to cause my heart to fail, fingers crossed), and except for HERCULES GONE MAD, which is designed from a drawing of mine.

Continue reading “In Appreciation of a Photograph”
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My Novel Approach to Novel Writing

At least it’s novel to me…

Anyway, these kinds of posts are always a bit self indulgent, but if you’re like me (and god help you if you are), you too like to know how the sausage is made when it comes to an author’s creative process.

I’m both old and old school when it comes to writing. First drafts are were always done with pen and paper.

Mostly because I love the physical act of writing, the feel of pen in hand, the feel of ink flowing on the paper.

But also because if I try to write the first draft on the computer I never make it out of the first chapter seeing that I’m one of those edit-as-you-go guys. I have too many folders with forgotten novels with unfinished first drafts that I attempted to write on the computer.

Writing the first draft by hand allows for limited editing — a line through here, a line through there maybe — and because of this, I enjoy a more immersive, free flowing writing experience…

One that actually results in finished novels.

How ’bout that?

But there is a catch.

My handwriting is garbage.

Which means draft two is pure and absolute torture when it comes to typing it up into the computer. Oftentimes it takes longer to type up the second draft than it did writing out the first.

Which brings me to my novel approach to first drafts, an approach that saves me months in novel development…

Continue reading “My Novel Approach to Novel Writing”
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The Indelible Shining

Great movie despite Stephen King’s protestations* — it’s one of those rare occasions when the movie out shines, so to speak, the book, which I found mostly laughable and long (as I do with most of King’s books) — and despite the horrible decision to cast Shelley Duvall, which, of course, resulted in her horrible acting. Kubrick abused the hell out of her during production because of it.

Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker that Kubrick’s devotion to technique distanced the audience from the domestic horrors of his story. The Washington Post called it “elaborately ineffective.” Gene Siskel said it was “boring” and occasionally “downright embarrassing.” Toronto’s Globe & Mail: an “overreaching, multi-levelled botch.” In its first year of existence, the bad movie-centric Razzie Awards nominated The Shining for worst director and worst actress.

From unloved curiosity to beloved classic: The surprising 40-year legacy of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, INLANDER, May 21, 2020

#allworkandnoplaymakeskurtrethinkhispriorities

*Spoilers of both book and movie

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Straight On Through*

You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless -there is only one thing to do with a novel [or anything important**] and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.

Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1929 letter from France, courtesy the New York Times archive
Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, 1925, courtesy Brainpickings (lord only knows where she got it from)

#alonetogetherwiththelostgeneration

*Even though it says Straight On Through and not Break On Through, I wonder how many first thought of the Doors…

**IMO

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Pulitzer Prize Winners

Congratulations to a bunch of writers I’ve never heard of who’ve written a bunch of books I’ll never read.

(The obvious hyperbole serves only to mask the bitter envy)…

Click on the image or visit pulitzer.org for the complete list

#alonetogetherwritingthenextpulitzerwinner

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Starbucks and Mocha


The New York Times’ recent piece Melville’s Whale Was a Warning We Failed to Heed is actually a quite serious look at human nature, racism, the environment… but here is a fun selection from it that belies its erudition:

Melville had read Jeremiah Reynolds’s violent account of a sperm whale “white as wool,” named — for his haunt near Mocha Island, off the coast of Chile — Mocha Dick. It’s unknown what led Melville to tweak Mocha to “Moby.” Good thing he did, and that Starbuck was the name he gave his first mate rather than his captain. Otherwise the novel would follow Starbuck’s obsession with a Mocha.

Courtesy the New York Times

#whosaidseriousnesscantbefun
#nowbacktobeingserious