THE LURE OF HELL

I finished my HARD CASE sequel last night. THE LURE OF HELL came in at close to 98,000 words. Today, I of course start the editing process. Editing reminds each of us storytellers marketing our word plots, how important loving what we write, and the characters we create, really is. I can only imagine what it would be like if I hated everything needing to be honed into a saleable product, or if the story bored me to tears, or the characters didn’t strike an emotional connection with me. THE LURE OF HELL is experimental in a number of ways. I ended up enjoying the experience of writing in first person point of view for John Harding, Book One, HARD CASE. In Book Two, I’m introducing two new cold blooded killers to John Harding’s Oakland crew, Clint Dostiene and Lynn Montoya. The fact no publisher or agent would touch HARD CASE, and I did send it out nearly seventy times on the query trail, enhances the fact it is selling very well on the indie market. No publisher or agent would ever touch THE LURE OF HELL either. I don’t head hop in THE LURE OF HELL, but I use more than one POV – a mortal sin in the writing world. I have a day job. Even at my newly advanced age of 63, I can still crank out the repair jobs, so I can have fun writing as I commit publishing mortal sins.  :)

The second observation I realized over the weekend that should have hit me a while ago is what a distinctly visual society we’ve become. This may be old news to my writing friends, but it’s something that didn’t strike me until my books began selling. People can go to the movies, sucking up the ‘Die Hard’ franchise, Avatar, Avengers, The Expendables, The Transformers, etc. without any questioning of believability. They suspend reality like a worn out Kleenex. When they read a fiction novel, however, they suddenly go nuts if the author creates a larger than life character or plot. It’s like, ‘hey, you can’t do that’. Well, oh hell yeah I can. I luckily grew up reading Tarzan, Conan, James Bond, Matt Helm, John Carter, and superhero comics of all kinds.

I realize I should be wringing my hands, wondering whether someone who can watch a multicolored robot turn back and forth into a car and a rocket firing death machine without blinking an eye, will be able to handle a larger than life character like my icy cold killer, Lynn Montoya in THE LURE OF HELL. I take my entertainment where I can get it. No wringing of hands for me. Think about it. Authors worrying about the same people eating up goofy looking, blue skinned, dragon riders going ‘wow, that’s so realistic’ – but reading about a larger than life fictional character or plot-line throws them into open mouthed, stunned disbelief. So funny.  :)

Anyway, it’s on to editing and formatting for me today... and of course fixing cars and trucks.  :)

DEMON AT WAR

Book 3 in my YA Trilogy Demon is finally listed on Amazon, titled DEMON AT WAR. With Mike and his canine sidekick Demon communicating directly, it enabled me to write many more humorous interchanges between the two, making this one the most fun to write. If you've read DEMON and DEMON INC, you're in for a real treat with this new chapter in my Demon Inc teen crew's adventures. :)

Getting this one formatted and listed took some time out of finishing the last scene in THE LURE OF HELL, my HARDCASE sequel, but it will be full speed ahead with it now. I can’t release it before July 4^th anyway. I received another 5 star review on my older novel PEACE. It was short and to the point. I’m getting a real charge out of the interest in my older novels. May’s issue of BTSe-mag is out with my ads too. I opted for the same layout because they were so good. The articles, reviews, and columns in this one are very good. Check it out here:

BTSe-mag May Issue

Give PEACE A Chance

I received another 5 star review for my novel PEACE from a very unlikely source. A self proclaimed liberal decided to read my admittedly conservative toned military novel of nearly 700 pages, got caught up in the story, and liked it well enough to give me a terrific review. PEACE has been taking off lately, and showing no signs of fading. This review will certainly help. I loved the way the review ended as you will see.

PEACE REVIEW

Maybe the funniest huge body count Spec Ops/Black Ops novel ever, April 20, 2013

By 

Akamai Okole (Santa Monica, CA, USA)

Let me start by saying I had a bad feeling about this book after the first few pages. I thought the author was some right wing nut with a limited imagination who gave lame names to his characters. Was I ever wrong. Well, at least in part.

Sure, he takes some digs at liberals, and spins some conservative views into the book. But Mr. DeLeo is crafty. Where he injects those issues, he does so in a context where they actually make sense, even to a leftie like me. Yes, I confess to that, and to the fact I loved this book. Why? Because as a Navy brat, I lived in San Diego and he gets the locale right, and the feel. His characters are well-developed, even if his main character is a super soldier of nearly unbelievable skills, whose parents are stereotypical hippies with views so weird they are clearly brain-damaged. It matters not.

What really makes this book unique in its genre, and I have read dozens of books in the genre, is the banter. The glibness, sarcasm, humor, and genuine camaraderie here are compelling, and truly entertaining. So try out a guilty pleasure, fellow libs, and of course you conservatives who are Mr. DeLeo's natural audience anyway.

I guess all I am saying, is give "Peace" a chance.

Saint Joyce and I joined my younger sister Cheryl and brother Mitch in Las Vegas this past weekend for a reunion. My buddy Roger, I was on the USS Ranger with, made it too. We all stayed at the Stratosphere. We sipped a few by the pool, gambled a little, ate dinner at the Top of the World revolving restaurant, and saw the Pin-Up show. Our last night together we had a drink and dinner with my first cousin Darryl, who lives in Las Vegas. I hadn’t seen him in over 40 years. It was a great three day excursion.

On to the business side of the trip. Joyce had a mammography seminar at the Paris Casino on Saturday. I took the taxi with her at 7AM because everyone else slept in after the Top of the World dinner, and Pin-Up show the night before. Once I left Joyce off at the proper meeting room (not easy to locate) I walked down the Strip to the Mandalay Bay Casino where more than a few of my scenes take place in the sequel to HARDCASE I’m finishing. The sequel, THE LURE OF HELL, will be released on July 4^th, but I should have it finished by the end of this month. It has an assassination scene, a UFC fight, a Baccarat card scene, and a confrontation in the workout room – all at the Mandalay. I finished all the research I needed there before walking back up the Strip to the other end where the Stratosphere is. I have a mugging scene between the Riviera Casino and the Stratosphere I wanted to take pictures of and do a final check. A few scenes also take place in the Stratosphere, but I had already checked them out the first day. I didn’t get back to the Stratosphere until after noon time, because navigating your way from the South end of the Strip to the North end on foot is not for the faint of heart – a very good workout. I met up with my brother, sister and Roger by the pool until Joyce joined us later. There are very few times when everything goes right on a trip like this. This one was as close as it gets.

Once in a while we fiction writers get to walk around in our characters’ shoes a little bit, and let the voices in our heads fill in the dialogue.  :)

High Stakes Baccarat Room at Mandalay Bay.

 Mandalay Bay Front

Mugging scene between Riviera Casino and Stratosphere. At night of course in the book.

Book Trailer Showcase Interview

Book Trailer Showcase did an interview with me in time for the May 1^st release of DEMON AT WAR, the third book in my YA trilogy. Their interviewer, Author Natasha Blackthorne, made it fun and easy to do. The days of reclusive writers unfortunately are over. I would have made a great reclusive writer.  :)  In today’s world, we either become household names and reachable by anyone, or marketing becomes a monumental task.

Learning the rules of the game in a constantly changing marketing arena can be the most puzzling and daunting task imaginable. The only constant is name recognition. Without it, we’re just another of the thousands marketing material on Amazon. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the rules of this sometimes mind numbing business, but exposure in every venue seems to be a key to success. Anyway, here’s the interview. I thought it came out very well.  :)

Book Trailer Showcase Interview

Writing Icons

A friend shared a love letter sent from Zelda Fitzgerald to her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald that seems to be going around on FB. It was a very touching letter. The truth is less touching. Zelda spent more time in mental institutions, and Scott in the arms of his mistress Sheilah Graham, and alcoholism than they ever spent together. Hollywood even made movies based on Ms. Graham’s account of the affair. Zelda and F. Scott must have each had a far different vision of their lives than they actually lived – a tragic existence. Most everything about famous writers of that era ends up in illusion or delusion… and of course alcoholism. In college, like everyone else pursuing an English degree, I read a few of Fitzgerald’s novels. Although starkly well written, I was not the readership for many of the writers held up as icons today. I know it’s blasphemous, but I read for the story. Great writing never uplifts the pathos, tragic endings, melancholy miasma, and depressing scenes in many of the ‘Great’ novels by the great authors of the time – at least in my head.

This inspired me to look up the list of ‘Expatriate American Writers’ living on the left bank over in Paris in that era. I recognized quite a few of the names, and realized I had read many of the novels listed under the names. One common theme of depression ran through every single one of the novels I remembered. This exercise renewed something I’ve always believed good fiction should do – uplift the reader. There are certainly all kinds of readers and reading appetites. I have always wanted to appeal to readers, who like me, enjoy fiction with an upbeat character, plenty of action, humor, and individual fortitude. I never want to write a novel that puts suicidal thoughts in the heads of my readers… at least not intentionally. I don’t want to write drunk and edit sober like Hemingway, or receive love letters from someone I supposedly love dearly while in the arms of a mistress like F. Scott. I have no hopes that the thirty or forty novels I intend to write before I pass on will ever be studied or lionized as Scott’s five novels and stories. I do however hope to make a lot of people chuckle, laugh, shed an occasional tear, pump their fist in commiseration with the way I wrote the scene that stirs them, and never think of opening a vein at the end of my novel rather than ever read another sentence I write.

I admit it. I would most definitely read a paranormal, werewolf, vampire, zombie apocalypse novel with a good ending rather than ever read ‘The Great Gatsby’ again. I’m too old to even pretend I loved the classics – I didn’t, I don’t, and I’m not ashamed of it.  :)

On the writing front, I have another couple thousand words in a new Rick Cantelli, P.I. story which will be the tenth part in my ongoing endeavor to make him the most famous geezer P.I. in history. I will also be very close to 80,000 words done in my new novel, THE LURE OF HELL by the weekend. These projects, of course, are not, nor will they ever be – classics. I can live with that.  :)