Press release for my film, Black Rose, and other announcements

Black Rose, a crime-thriller I penned some time ago with Brent Huff, is finally shooting in Moscow, as of June 19. Wrap date will be July 8.  Great cast w/Robert Davi, Adrian Paul and Kristanna Loken (she was the hot Terminator-bitch in T3- Rise of the Machines).  A press release is below.

http://www.screendaily.com/news/russias-luxor-nabs-new-nevsky/5057738.article

I'll head out to Moscow for my second picture, The Boy, sometime later this year.

In the meantime, The Lynx Factor, a new action adventure book, will be launched in July and am finishing up Gray Area 2 and 3 - sequels to the very successful Gray Area last year.

More updates to follow in coming weeks. 

Thanks.

A Word on Branding, Prince and the Magic Quest and Gray Area 2

Hello, one and all.

Yes, I've been 'dark' on the blog circuit these many months.  Been hard at work on a film of mine shooting in Russia come early July, called "Black Rose."  The film ostensibly will star Alexander Nevsky, and Kristanna Loken (the bitch-kitty robot in Terminator 3 - Rise of The Machines). I'll have a role in it as well, a detective. Also helping out a buddy on his film, Guardian Angel, filming to start on June 21.  Both films are thrillers.


I wrote another YA book a few months ago with a buddy of mine called Prince and the Magic Quest, and for the first time, have a small readership in Japan.  My Asian friends apparently love fantasy, especially where swords and dragons are concerned.


And, yes, to my many queries, Gray Area 2 is on its way to launch by the end of summer, followed hard upon by Gray Area 3.  Special Investigator for the LAPD, Lou Diamond, returns in all his hard-drinking, cynical glory, this time as a by-proxy single parent to two ten year old girls.  It's not an easy balance, shooting up bad guys and engaging in tea-cup parties with the youngins'.


Finally, to all you hard-core writers out there, veteran or novice, who are trying to find your 'brand': Terribly important to do so from a business perspective.  There are numerous blogs out there extolling the merits of branding and I embrace those precepts so stipulated by those who have been in this self-publishing business longer than myself. Find a genre (or two) and stick with it/them, preferably one that lends itself to a franchise, and stick to the keyboard.  I've been doing this Amazon self-publishing thing now for just over a year, and while not making $50K or more a month as yet, I have seen steady income.  I have not yet really honed in on my brand as yet, but will do so assiduously this coming year to ensure higher sales.


But why have I not secured 'branding' for myself as yet?  Because I've actually enjoyed the process of writing and creating stories in a variety of other genres.  My non-fiction work has been the most successful thus far and constitutes the bulk of my monthly revenue, followed hard upon by my hard-boiled crime and to a lesser degree, my science fiction offerings.  Horror and YA has been softer, and this is probably due to the fact that in the past 14 months I've served up a wide-array of genres and my name has not been hard-and-fast secured to a particular kind of book.  "Oh, Saunders, yeah he's the action-adventure guy" or "Right, old Saunders, he dishes out that hard-core sci-fi stuff!"  This will come in time.


Writers ... don't suppress your urge to write what you want.  Branding is great for $$$.  But sometimes the literary soul must be hearkened to and not dismissed for the sake of fatter cash intake.  Perhaps I should have taken the advice of some who mentioned I should write under a separate name for my respective genres so as not to confuse my audience, but I did not, and do not plan to suffer for it.  I took a year to get my feet wet writing whatever I bloody chose to write.  Now, I shall pursue a branding course of action and suffer not too greatly for it.  Sometimes we must simply follow for a time the beat to our own personal literary drummer.  I have done so and have no regrets.


Marketing your books is still key, however, and the only reason I'm not selling ten or so books or less in a given month is due to assiduous efforts in marketing, including free promos, joining book clubs, twittering, etc.  These are all vital components for selling your work.  Writing alone will not make you a dollar and a cent in this very competitive business.  Letting the world know you have something to say - that you have a voice - is just as critical to your success as proving to that world you are the next Hemingway.


So get to work and buy my crap while your at it, okay?


Thanks.

Things Change ... and Stay The Same

A Happy New Year to one and all!  I've not blogged in 90 days due to family, holidays and multiple complications with problem drinking and the law, e.g ... life is like that sometimes...

Okay, little joke as preamble.

So, we've had an election and the world failed to end, both for America and in spite of the Mayan forecast of doom and gloom ... though some of my Republican friends are still in an agoraphobic phase of 'the sky is falling' after Obama's re-election.  And, yet ... in spite of that, the U.S. trundles on.  Politicians are still creatures to be leery of whenever possible, as well as vacant-eyed psychopaths wearing hoodies and carrying automatic machine guns.  We have a near-object flyby of an asteroid on February 15 that is about the size of a football field which will thumb its meteoric nose at us then run off like a whore in a nunnery.  The economy continues to struggle ... but in time, that, too, will change.

As all things do.  Yet also, paradoxically, things remain the same.  I'm still paying too much for gas, young supermodels have zero interest in me and my Chinese bartender and cook still tries to convince me that the recooked kittty in my moo-ho-I-just-don't-know rice dish is really chicken.  I now only drink home-distilled grain alcohol and have refrained as much as I can from milk and dairy.  Yet ... I continue to gain weight.

The other night I was walking across the street, thinking there is no God.  A car races in my direction, without his lights on, and had I not happened to look to my right in that split second, I would have been splattered.  Weird. I believe one writer called it a God-wink.  Apologies, my atheistic friends ... I remain unconvinced in your convictions. A change for me ... because I doubt so very often in most everything.

Where things haven't changed (in my view) is in the world of publishing.  We can still be surprised.  Writers - you crazy kids - did you notice your sales jumped by nearly three times in January compared to prior months?  The same is true for this month.  Why?  I think the clear answer is that Amazon/Kindles must have had a fine holiday season in the marketplace.  More Kindles - more downloading.  One theory only.

Or ... I've just turned from a hack into F. Scott Fitzgerald nearly overnight.  Or people are confusing me with Lindsey Lohan (an obvious and pardonable mistake).  I dunno.  But I'm kinda happy about the overall results.  Please feel free to contact me and let me know how your sales are doing.

Last, we all continue to mourn the horror of Newtown, Connecticut.  There is no rhyme or reason for this kind of evil.  Except, perhaps, that evil and psychosis (going happily hand in hand) simply exist and will always do so.  We can only pray for those families daily and likewise do the same that this kind of tragedy never occurs again.

I wish you all a prosperous 2013.  And thank you for not smoking.

Greatness in Great Ones Must Not Unwatched Go

I despair, at times, with our parochial society of penurious puritanism. Two fine patriots are now officially excoriated in the ethos of our nation - David Petraeus and his lover, Paula Broadwell. Petraeus is a downright hero, but not many people know that Paula graduated from West Point, served in the reserves, achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel and was the director of a counter-terrorism

think tank. Both worthy human beings. But because emails were analyzed by the FBI, the General felt a need to resign his position as the Director of the CIA. And Paula is taken down into the mud by unwanted press scrutiny.

Alright, it was the so-called 'honorable thing to do' for the General, and sorry, Mrs. Petraeus, that you're on the short end of the stick. But people - all people - have personal failings in my life. Even I have loved two women at the same time ... imagine. But for a valued general - an intrinsic component to our national security - to feel forced to abandon ship ... it is saddening.

I reckon the President did what he thought was right in accepting the general's resignation, but I would have preferred a different response: "General. Sir. I respect your decision in resigning your very important post, but the country cannot afford to lose you. You have proved yourself too able and essential to our country. Get a room next time, and don't email the chick ... but you, sir, are invaluable and I must ask you to return to duty, apologize to the wife and keep on defending America and the free world at large. You're not the first great man to be distracted by a hottie like Paula. Get over it and be Great!"

In a way, we need more Bill Cintons in the world - leaders who we know are great even when their penises, always guided to the true polar north of sexual opportunity, get them into mischief. A man's personal foibles should not be thrown into the petrie dish of combined superior assets and achievement and thus to be judged too harshly for the relative insignificance of those foibles.  David in the Bible had another man killed so that he could have at it with his wife, Bathesheba.  Did history look at David and vilify him?  No.  He knew how to kill giants with a sling and extol God.  Was Franklin D. Roosevelt demonized for his affair, while Eleanore dealt with the indiscretion as best she could?  No.  Roosevelt obliterated the Great Depression and killed Nazis.  Was John F. Kennedy regarded harshly for screwing everything female while married to Jackie while in the White House?  No.  He was remembered for bringing us out of the shadow of nuclear oblivion through the Cuban Missile Crisis and incentivizing us to go to the moon.

Point is, I wish we'd get over the whole 'well, Petraeus showed himself to be a deceiver and an unfaithful husband' bullshit.  He's helped kill evil jihadists that murdered 3,000 of our people on September 11, 2011 and up until yesterday, was assisting in taking down more of these scumbags. A man's personal life should not be a reflection on how he executes his duty and destiny - particularly when that duty and destiny is to keep America safe.

Abraham Lincoln was once approached by his cabinet about General Ulysses S. Grant. They said: "He's a drunk." Lincoln replied: "Maybe so. But he wins battles!" QED, my friends, QED.

Political Shenanigans Aside

I rarely remark on things political, but this time I will, because it gives me the opportunity to make a positive observation.  Whatever one may think about President Obama or Governor Chris Christie, one must hand it to one and both that they've come together for the sake of the embattled state of New Jersey for the best possible of causes - that poor state's reconstitution and rehabilitation.  I have an ex-girlfriend, someone I stay in touch with and who lives near the Jersey shoreline, and she says that conditions there are still fairly prehistoric.  No doubt, casualty numbers will continue to rise as the seas recede.  It is my hope and prayer that assistance provided will come quickly and restore normalcy as soon as possible. It is also my hope, notwithstanding political cynicism, that this bolsters or inspires some kind of future bi-partisanship between two polar opposites in the Republican and Democratic realms of decision-making.  While I may be a registered Republican, it is my belief that President Obama will win re-election at this point in time; the electoral college alone has all but mandated this manifest destiny.  No doubt, the Democrats will retain control of the Senate, and I further believe, the Democrats stand a good chance of prevailing in the Congress.

Bottom line, like most of the country, I hope this all leads to progress for our great nation.  The economy is still in need of a jump-start and our old adversaries in Al-Queda are clearly still up to no good in the Middle East and northern Africa (among other parts of the globe).

My prayers are with all of those folks on our Eastern Seaboard.  Please share in those prayers for the safety and healing of all our fellow Americans in that tormented landscape hit by Queen Bitch of Ms. Hurricane 2012 - Sandy.

Free Download of new Science Fiction Novel - Desert Angels

Hello, folks:

I've already introduced my new book, Desert Angels, but for those who check in, it is now available today, Thursday, September 27 - ONE DAY ONLY - for free on Amazon/Kindle.  So hurry and check it out.

My next book, PETER AT THE BAT, takes a stab at domestic terrorism and is not unlike Die Hard in many respects.  Non-stop action, ruthless villains, a conflicted hero.  But there are some uncomfortable laughs as well, and violent radical Islam is spared nothing!  Look for this book to be published on or around October 15 of this year.

And for those who have been patient, my November/December novel will be a sequel to the highly successful GRAY AREA, which I introduced back in April of this year.  Lou Diamond picks up where he left off, a year following his exposure of a Neocon sub-division of the DOD, working in tandem with certain terrorist nations for profit.  Having laid low in Mexico for two years, he returns to Los Angeles, seeking work at what he does best:  Kicking ass on bad guys wherever they may be found.

Thanks - and thank you all for a very successful first six months since I've started this crazy publishing business.

Nuclear War, Reincarnation and some String Theory

I have just published my new science fiction adventure novel, Desert Angels, on Amazon/Kindle.  This is a book, which like Whatever Gods May Be, was written in the 1980s... almost 30 years ago, when, as the Brothers Four once put it in their song, And The Waves Roll In:  "when the fish were thick, and I was young and strong."  It was my second outing out as an author, penned in 1985.  I have updated the book somewhat - yet the times seem not to have changed that much. The inciting incident to the story is world war, which takes place initially in the Middle East, with Iran causing all sorts of problems vis a vis Israel, and shit stirred up in general in contiguous nations.  The story takes place a few years in the future, as there is reference that some nations in South America have somehow acquired nuclear weapons, or have perfected a nuclear weapons program.

After the war, our hero, Jack Calisto - a kind of Omega Man - represents the last normal human being on the planet ... inasmuch as he's not suffered from radiation poisoning or mutation.  The world has gone topsy-turvy in this world; the normal rules of physics sometimes do not apply, and there are zombies galore, along with reincarnated wives who come back to help Jack in this nutty post-nuclear environment. Though there is plenty of action and sci-fi scenarios for the most ardent of science fiction Neocons, there is also at play a certain Ray Bradbury-like magical realism that the reader must simply accept.  At heart, I believe Desert Angels is a tragic love story.  You will see what I mean once you have read the book.

For those who have mentioned the word "sequel" in your reviews, yes, in 2013, a sequel to Mars, The Bringer of War will be released.