Below is chapter 1 of my upcoming action thriller The Mechanic. It’ll be the first book in the John Tyler series. A preorder link follows at the end. === “There you go. Line it up and squeeze the trigger.” John Tyler directed his daughter Lexi using the power screwdriver to tighten a bolt. They both lay under a decade-old Honda Accord coupe in desperate need of a new exhaust system. The old one showed more rust than unmarred metal. Tyler…
Recently, reader Amy sent me a question: would I be incorporating the coronavirus into my fiction? It’s a good question, and I think it deserves an answer. Two, in fact. I have both a short and a long answer to the question. If video is your thing, I also answered this in a recent YouTube video. I’ll cover a lot of the same stuff here, but if you want to put a face (and semi-tidy home office) to the name,…
The trailer for Spenser Confidential dropped recently. Let’s just say I have some thoughts. There’s some definite star power attached here, encompassing the three male leads, the director, and musician Post Malone. But is this Spenser? Before we delve too deeply into the answer, I also recorded a YouTube video on this. You can view it here. My channel is still new as of this writing, so I’d appreciate any likes and subscribes you can provide. The big question I…
Knives Out was the best movie I saw in 2019. To borrow a line from Red Dead Redemption 2, “The competition ain’t too fierce.” I think this past year saw us go to the theater less than any other. I don’t mean to diminish the movie’s excellence with this, though—it’s terrific, and I would think so if I saw eight or eighty movies last year. Written and directed by Rian Johnson (probably best known for The Last Jedi, which everyone…
Below is a free preview of my upcoming novel Inside Cut. This is chapter one. Inside Cut will be the seventh crime novel in my C.T. Ferguson private investigator series. Here’s the cover proof. Chapter One The arrival of spring means many things to many people. For several of my college friends and me, it meant the start of a new lacrosse season. We enjoyed a good run at Loyola, even winning it all my last year of eligibility. As…
I’ve had a couple readers reach out to me and ask why the C.T. Ferguson mystery series is ending. Short answer: it’s not. Longer answer: it’s an open-ended series. I just released the fifth book, Daughters and Sons. Amazon displays this is “book 5 of 5.” The reason is because Amazon only knows about five books. I recently sent the draft for the sixth book to my editor. And I have at least plots for the following three. This gets…
This post is going to be a wall of text. Just warning you in advance. I have another free novella coming out soon. As you may infer from the title, it’s called Land of the Brave. I’m posting chapter 1 below as a preview to everyone because it’s taken me longer than I’d hoped to get it out. It should be available to everyone subscribed to my readers list within two weeks. The formatting looks different than it will in ebook…
Last weekend, our daughter’s Girl Scout troop braved the snow to collect and donate a bunch of toys to Toys for Tots. We spent a couple hours in a toy store, and got some customers to donate new toys while we were there. At the end, we took all the toys up the street to a drop-off location. While we collected a decent amount of toys, we’re just one troop. This is how you can get involved and win something…
Thor: Ragnarok (let’s just call it Thor 3 for short) is raucous, good fun. It features good action scenes, some great images, plenty of laughs, and a story that moves the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) forward. There are some moments where it’s a little too cheeky for its own good, but you can look past them and enjoy the ride. The movie: Fresh from stopping the demon Surtur (voiced by the great Clancy Brown–yes, the guy who is both The Kurrgan and…
I can say I had a six-figure book launch. Yes, the launch of The Reluctant Detective hit six figures . . . if you give me the decimal point and four places after. It’s only been out for two weeks, so I’m not panicking. I didn’t expect to becomes James Patterson overnight. That will take until at least 2019! Further, I didn’t setup any marketing or promotion for the book prior to launch. Why not? It’s the first book in a…