LANCELOT Review!

I finally managed to get another wonderful, detailed REVIEW of my erotic/paranormal novel LANCELOT under my pen-name, Lee Whitney. My reviewer perceived everything I had hoped a reader would take away from the novel, including the humor and melancholy. The story behind my writing LANCELOT as an erotic/paranormal is kind of an interesting one. I wrote the novel originally as a straight up paranormal urban fantasy, bringing the Arthurian legend into modern times with a completely different turn of events. I installed Arthur as a smart ass eight year old to zing the other characters. One of the lines I gave him which has always been a favorite of mine that I repeated on the blog once or twice is Arthur’s reply to a rebuke he receives: “"I have a genius IQ, and now I'm teamed up with an Alzheimer's patient, a troll, and a beat-up hooker: all of whom screwed me a thousand years ago. Cut me some slack!"

When I finished the novel, I could not garner any interest from anyone. I sent out over fifty queries, highlighting the humor along with the legend – nothing… nada. At the same time, my friend Stacia Kane was doing a blog series entitled ‘Be A Sex Writing Strumpet’ which she eventually turned into a very well done offering on Amazon HERE. I decided to give LANCELOT an erotic turn using the tips I picked up from Stacia’s blog posts. It worked. Double Dragon’s erotic line Carnal Desires Publishing offered me a contract on my first query. My editor on it, a very helpful lady who introduced me to editing rounds, asked me to write in two more erotic scenes. At the time, I’d read many of my writing friends’ erotic romances and none of them incorporated that many scenes, but I added them, finished the editing rounds, and LANCELOT was published.

Then I sent it to all the erotic/romance reviewers my editor recommended and a few others I found in links from the other reviewers’ sites – nothing… nada. A reader on Amazon finally gave me a five star review, and my friend Charles Gramlich did a great review for me on it, but LANCELOT just never got off the ground. As I’ve explained to my marketing partner, RJ Parker, I haven’t a clue as to why anything sells or doesn’t sell. Anyway, if you would like to take a look at the detailed blog REVIEW at this lady’s very well done site, now you know how LANCELOT became a published erotic/paranormal.  :)

My Friend, Dave

Dave's again in the center with me on his right. We're coming into Alameda Naval Air Station after our first cruise.

Dave's the tall one in the center, with me one guy over on the right. We're at sea off the coast of Vietnam.

I'm in front, Dave's sitting next to me. We're in Hong Kong.

My shipmate for three years, Dave Elliott passed away of cancer. I knew him from the time I was nineteen years old. I will not forget him. Before the end of last year, I finally wrote down a story of an adventure we shared snorkeling in the Philippines. He enjoyed the hell out of it, because he remembered our near death encounter very well. I’m thankful I actually wrote it up for him to enjoy, after so many years of putting it off. It’s short, humorous, and true. He and I went on to share an apartment, scuba dive, and ride motorcycles all over. We kept in touch over the decades, and got together when we could. Facebook acted as our place to share pictures and videos over the last couple years. Dave enjoyed my Otter’s Point scuba diving videos, because he and I dove there so many times together. I can’t think of a better requiem than that old Clint Eastwood movie ‘Outlaw Josie Wales’ – ‘He was born in the time of blood and dyin’ and never questioned a bit of it. He never went back on his folks or his kind. I rode with him. I got no complaints’. Here's the story.

Once long ago in a galaxy far, far away I was stationed on board the aircraft carrier USS Ranger with my friend Dave Elliott, and a transient motley crew of five thousand others for three years. During our second cruise with the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club, Dave spent some time back in the states going to C-School. They flew him out to join us in the Philippines where we were parked for some R&R before returning to the line. We went to Grande Island, the recreation spot owned by the Navy. It had a bar/restaurant, and all the beer, soda, and BBQ on the beach you wanted. You could check out sports gear, play short-hole golf, learn to sail, etc. They treated us right, having a place like that, and most of us took advantage of the opportunity. Dave and I were pretty competitive so we decided to mark his return to the Ranger Boat pleasure cruise by swimming around Grande Island with just masks and snorkels. We kept at about the hundred yard range from shore going around, where deeper waters meant more fish and less coral.

Dave was about fifty yards ahead of me as we were nearly three quarters of the way around. I glanced up occasionally to check my position and see if I could glimpse his snorkel sticking out of the water. I spotted him. He stood up out of the water on a rock outcropping, waving in a warning manner at me, pointing at the water. I couldn’t hear what he was shouting and continued toward him. Thinking back there wasn’t much else I could have done anyway. When I reached earshot, it turned out he was warning me about sharks in the water. Some of our shipmates were on shore fishing, and throwing the bloodied up fish back in the water, unknowing their catch and release endeavor acted as chum for unwanted visitors: sharks – lots of them.

Dave and I watched the groups of sharks spinning around crazily happy with their food discovery, knowing if we stayed in the deeper waters, we’d be bait soon. The water became shallow real quick. With around eighty yards still between us and the shore we had good news and bad news. Good news was the sharks didn’t like whipping around shredding themselves on the coral. Bad news was - neither did we. Without fins we couldn’t walk in without lacerating our feet on the razor sharp coral. We began threading our way back to shore in a direct manner immediately, picking a path allowing us to use finger tips and toes to propel us over the shallow coral bed. It was time consuming and we provided our own blood elixir to be washed out for shark appraisal.

When we finally reached shore, we started laughing, looking at each other. We looked like a couple of jigsaw puzzles with thin red coral cuts crisscrossing us from top to bottom. We adjourned to the showers and then found something with alcoholic content for medicinal purposes. I figured Dave and me aren’t getting any younger so now would be a good time to get the story down of how we managed to become shark bait for a day and lived to tell about it.  :)

Rest in peace, Brother.

2003 Kia Optima

In HARD CASE news, two more five star reviews went up, so at least I’m getting some feedback. Please take a look at it and give the very nice reviewers a YES for helpful. 67,000 words done in DEMON INC, so I’m shooting for the 70,000 word mark by Monday. Then it will be day to day until the end, 75,000 is the upper mark for YA novels. DEMON was a little over 77,000. I figure on this one to hit the 77,000 mark and then trim it during editing. It’s always exciting drawing to the close of a new novel. Now, on to the automotive Twilight Zone entry.

My across the street neighbor Fred had three banditos sledgehammer his front door in and shoot off six shots before Fred’s barking dogs drove them off. No one was hurt, thank God. It looks like another cycle of released parolees gone wild for the neighborhood. That explains the tagging incident increase.

I was in the back writing on DEMON INC when a tow truck backed a 2003 Kia Optima into my driveway uninvited. It’s not the tow truck driver’s fault I’m not informed. He unloads the Kia, telling me the customer will be in shortly. It’s a good thing I don’t have a shop full of cars because someone would be heading for the street, and it wouldn’t be my appointments. I’ve never seen this particular Kia before so I knew it must be a new customer.

A guy comes jogging in, looking like he had been posing for Backyard Bob Magazine: greasy tennis shoes, coveralls, hands, and face. He’s about my height, weight I’d guess at about two hundred. If I do whatever needs done on the Kia, I’ll have to build in an extra twenty minutes for cleaning whatever Bob deposited. Like I’ve pointed out, it’s a rough economy. BB smiles at me, sticks out his hand, realizes it’s got a layer of dirt, and pulls it back.

“Sorry, I don’t want to give you that. I’ve been working on this car for a neighbor. It cranks but won’t start. I have a code reader but it won’t communicate. Can you give me a hand with it? The lady doesn’t have much money.”

“That will probably be a problem. I can do a diagnostic check on it and tell you why it won’t start.” I give him my fee, which is easily fifty dollars under any of the reputable places in town. He goes into shock, mouth open, and hands waving.

“Just to look at it?!”

I love this set up, because still after well over thirty-seven years in the trade I get a kick out of my snappy answer to the ‘Just to look at it’ question. I glance at the Kia. “Looking at it’s free. Finding out why it doesn’t run isn’t. I’ll tell you something else that we need to get clear. I am not the bank, nor the welfare department. If I ran my business as if I was, my doors would have been closed decades ago. Another thing is I can’t take an authorization from you on any major repair. I get that from the owner. You can pay the diagnostic fee up front in cash and that would be all right. If any of what I’ve explained doesn’t work for you, I’ll help you push it out on the street.”

Bob’s stunned. “Couldn’t you steer me in the right direction?”

“How? You do understand this isn’t a magic shop, right? I have to do tests in order to write estimates for repair.”

“I’ll have to come back with the money for the check. I hope you can fix it for that price.”

I do too. “I doubt it, but I will if I can.”

I write down the actual customer data on an invoice from the car registration before going back to writing. BB comes in with the money and I give him a copy of the diagnostic estimate after getting the customer’s phone number. I push the Optima over and get started. BB’s right. No communication with my scanner. Check fuses and find a burned out 15 amp one. I put my test lamp across the terminals with the blown fuse removed. There’s no short with just the key on, so I hook up my scanner again with a new fuse and I get communication. There’s a PO335 – crank angle sensor code. I then take the fuse out and crank it. It’s making a bad sound.

After removing a few things I find out the timing belt on the balance shaft broke and wiped out the crank angle sensor and wiring. BB is not going to be happy. I phoned the real customer to give her the bad news. She asked that I do the job at cost. I said no. She asked for credit. I said I don’t do that, but I do take credit cards. She says she’ll call me back. BB arrives ten minutes later to see what the hell costs so much. I took him through it.

“Can you loan me a shop manual. I need to do this to help the lady out.”

“First off no, I don’t loan anything out. Secondly, I have everything on the computer. Another thing I have to warn you about. If you tear into this and screw up, find somewhere else to take it afterwards. I don’t do the patch ups anymore after someone else. Make sure if you decide to do it, buy a real manual and have the proper tools.”

“Well shit!” BB stumbles around in a circle for a moment. He looks back at me with his arms folded over his chest. “Are you a Christian, Sir?”

I’ve been asked this before. I don’t like having my religious beliefs thrown in my face when someone wants a free ride on my back. I smile. “No, I’m a lion.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you have to ask then you don’t need to know. If you’re not paying for this job in cash up front, please go back to your neighbor and find out what she’d like to do.”

BB started to bristle up.

“Look Bob, don’t say anything that’s going to get both you and the Kia thrown out of here. Go back to the lady and have her call me.”

A half hour after that Ms. Kia called and gave me the go ahead. I finished it yesterday and called her to come in. A middle aged lady arrived, dressed to the nines. I won’t even bother with a description.

“Look,” she pleads in the office, “can I give you half now, and come back next week with the rest?”

“Sure, but the car stays here until you come back with the rest.” I’ve been working in East Oakland for thirty-six years. The vegetable truck I fell off of left a long time ago.

Ms. Kia glanced at my Vulcan Death Stare, sighed, and took out a credit card. “Fine, here.”

I looked over the card. “Driver’s license please.”

“What do you need that for?”

“I don’t really, because I saw your real name on the registration. This is not your card. If you don’t have a credit card with your name on it that matches a valid California Driver’s license, I’ll have to ask you to get cash.”

We had a stare down again. She pulled out an envelope from her purse and shoved it at me. “Here.”

It was the exact amount for the job in cash. I marked her invoice paid, and gave her the keys and receipt. “Thank you.”

“I’m never bringing any business in here again… ever!” Ms. Kia swiveled out the office door, over to the Kia, got in and slammed the door with the proper amount of outrage. Lucky for her I’m not Backyard Bob. The Kia started right up and out she went.

Like my old boss, Norris Nilson used to say, “now we got it fixed, now we get paid.”

Amen.  :)

Great HARD CASE Review!

On the writing front, I passed 60,000 words Friday on the sequel to DEMON (the title will be DEMON INC.), so you better believe I’ll be making progress on my three days off. HARD CASE is crawling its way up the Amazon list, thanks to my partner RJ Parker. We garnered another terrific review from outside our demographic – HERE. Please give the reviewer a YES it was helpful if you get a chance. Her first comments are pure gold – “I loved this story! John Harding makes Jack Reacher look like a Sunday school teacher.”   Oh Yeah!

I had to research who Jack Reacher was. He’s a tough guy character in a series by author Lee Child. That our reviewer thinks my hard case, John Harding makes him look like a Sunday school teacher was a real thrill for me. I wonder what she’d think of Nick from COLD BLOODED.

I’m not forgetting this is Memorial Day weekend. Get your flags up. Remember who it is that sacrificed everything so that we can play on keyboards across this great nation, read books, play computer games, watch TV, vote in free elections, and the plethora of other freedoms we take for granted. God bless our troops!

PO491 Code, 2005 Chrysler Sebring plus HARD CASE Review

In writing news, I’m heading quickly up to the 60,000 word mark for my DEMON sequel, so I’m thinking it may be completed before the end of June, which is four months faster than I had anticipated. Not Nora Roberts output, but pretty decent speed for me. After our weekend promo, we garnered the first review on HARD CASE by a young woman. Her review hit all the high points in the novel including the humor. The exceptionally good part being she is far outside my target audience, which I’ve always hoped I could reach. As reviews show up, it will be interesting to note if I’m reaching a larger demographic of readers. If you can spare a moment to give my reviewer a yes the REVIEW was helpful, I’d appreciate it. She's buying COLD BLOODED next.

My friend and partner RJ Parker has a great promotion coming on May 23 & 24. Take a look at it on his blog HERE.

On the automotive repair front, I had a humorous encounter, involving my age to a degree. Yesterday, I was working on an old 1993 Pontiac Bonneville service when a late model Chrysler drove up in my shop. When I began walking around to greet the customer, a young teen girl popped out of the driver’s seat as if she were a jack-in-the-box with a strong spring. Blonde streaked hair, about five and a half feet tall, wearing those below the belly-button jeans, sandals, and a lime green halter top, she was the picture postcard of a cool summer breeze. Her car was a 2005 Chrysler Sebring, so she’ll be Summer Sebring for the blog today.

“Hi, may I help you?”

“My name’s Summer… and you’re Bernie?” She sticks out her hand and gazes at my nametag that is not smudged into Bennie. “My grandfather recommended you. He says you’ve worked on all his cars since the seventies.”

Summer tells me her Pa’s name and he is indeed an old customer. I didn’t think he had any family in the area. I shake her hand, noting she doesn’t give me one of those cold, dead flounder handshakes. “I know him very well. How can I help you?”

Summer hesitates for a moment before going around to the passenger side and reaching in for a sheaf of receipts. She walks back and hands them to me. “I have to get my car’s smog check done and nobody can get rid of the check engine light so I can do it.”

I look them over. The first one’s for a failed smog check with a code PO491 listed as the cause, meaning insufficient secondary air injection flow. The rest were parts changed to correct the code: electric air injection pump and tube, injection pump relay, and even a diverter valve. I went to the driver’s side, popped the hood, and opened it up. With my handy dandy Mag-lite, I looked over the new stuff. I noticed the replaced plastic tube near the injection pump was showing signs it was beginning to melt again. Since I’ve known Summer’s Pa for over thirty years, I quickly pulled off the one way check valve and blew through it. I could blow through it easily in both directions. Since they call it a one way check valve for a reason I knew it was the problem.

Here’s the thing. I go way back from the time air injection smog pumps were first installed on cars. They inject air into the exhaust in order to help burn off polluting gases. We used to regularly get bad check valves in where they were allowing raw exhaust gas to pass the wrong way into the system, melting hoses, and frying the inside of the pump. I held it up for Summer to see. I explained about why the valve was bad.

“This is what’s causing the code. I’ll have to order it from the dealer. Can you leave it with me for a while?”

Summer is skeptical. “How come those other guys didn’t know that? I mean… are you sure that’s really it?”

“I think they were thrown off track by the code. It means insufficient secondary air flow. They probably saw the melted connector and figured the pump had gone bad. It may have, but what melted the connector and caused insufficient flow was the check valve allowing hot exhaust gas into the system. Plus… I’m ancient.”

She laughed at that. “My grandfather said you were even older than he is.”

“Yeah, I think I have him by a year. Tell him I said he’s still a ‘geezer’.”

“I will.” Summer nodded with another laugh. “I’ll walk over to his house. Will it be done today?”

“Let me call you on that. I’ll make sure they have the check valve in stock and whether the delivery will make it here by this afternoon. One other thing, how soon does the check engine light pop back on after a repair?”

“It lit up the moment I started on the freeway for home.”

Yep, that computes. We filled out her paperwork and Summer breezed out to her Pa’s house. The dealer had more than one in stock so I’m figuring it must be a regularly replaced item on this 2.4L engine. It arrives. I get it on, erase the code, and quickly go do some freeway time in the Sebring. No light. Summer arrives to pick up her car with Pa.

We shake hands. “Summer tells me you pulled the ‘Geezer’ card on me.”

I’ve already been joking with him ever since I went on the Reno trip with St. Joyce and invented the ‘Geezer Card’. He was one of my first customers when I got back. He enjoyed my Reno train trip story. “Yep, I figured that would get her a ride over here with you.”

“He pulls the ‘Geezer Card’ all the time whenever he doesn’t want to do something,” Summer added. “It drives my grandma nuts. Now I know where it came from.”

I laughed at that one because I know her grandma too. “Guilty as charged.”

That concludes the automotive portion of the blog. Remember, air injection flow codes and melted parts mean bad one way check valve, no matter how old or new the vehicle is. Geezers Rule!  :)