My favorites

Talking about favorite movie quotes and immediately I think, "My mistake, four coffins." from Fist full of Dollars. I love this movie. (Stop reading if you want a review) That movie has plenty of quotes and the preceding scene has several. Not to butcher it I have linked to a clip from Youtube.

So many of Eastwood's movies are quotable. This has to be my favorite.

Four Titles, one theme

     With the recent release of The Collectors, I now have four books available for sale. The easiest way to find them is at Amazon, but there are many other eBook retailers out there carrying my books. The Collectors is a neo-noir thriller about a pair of foster care brothers, John and Luis Solo, grown up and kicking ass. They work as collectors for legalized loan sharks in the gambling town of East Town. East Town as succumb to the all mighty dollar and sold their souls for a roulette wheel. The town has now gone to the casino owners and loan sharks that keep them in business. Easy money fast is never either. The brothers take an easy job for a lot of cash and wind up with a bounty on their heads. So goes life in East Town.

Looking back on my collected works (sarcastically) I do have a similar theme running in all four books. My first publication, Homecoming, is a novella that takes place on a spacecraft headed back to earth. As one reviewer put it, she liked the twist ending.

My next full novel, Division Six, is science fiction through a hard-boiled detective's eyes. Jack Hennesey needs a drink and a ray-gun. I had a lot of fun writing this book. The characters came to life with ease. I have notes on the next to novels, just not the time to write them. Some day.

The next book, The Trilon, came quickly with a plot similar to Division Six in that a detective is conscripted while on a space flight to Mars.

I have a new title coming out soon. Blood Oranges next in a line of detective stories I can't stop telling. This book actually started out as a Jack Hennessey short but later transformed into a less then sci-fi story of Chamberlain Cotton. The story takes place in the heart of Florida orange groves, Orlando in the 1950's. He is a hard drinker former bounty hunter and PI who sleeps on the couch in his office. When his only client is murdered, Cotton sobers up enough to go out guns blazing after the killers and peels back the blood orange.

So will my next book be a mystery in some way? Probably not unless I manage to knock out a sequel to one of the above books.

The Collectors out for Nook

Out now on Barnes&Noble

....Gamble your cares away in sunny East Town Florida. Just make sure your pay your debts on time. A late payment will ensure a visit from John and Luis Solo, two of the best collectors to ever work East Town.  Life is good for these two collectors until they gamble on an easy collection for King Lito, leader of the area’s Mexican Mafia. When the odds are that good the game is fixed. Now hit-men and bounty killers are chasing these brothers all over town...

 

Parker is back!!

So one of my all time favorite novel series is the Park novels written by Richard Stark, aka Donald Westlake. I think I've read about 8 books so far. Park is...well to me, he is identifiable. Maybe that is exposing a few deep seated problems or just simply saying a lot about myself. I don't want to break the character down here or analyze each book. Instead I'm sharing the trailer for the new Park movie, Parker. There have been a few movies based on Parker and his thieving exploits. I believe this to be the first time the name "Parker" is used. The last film being Payback with Mel Gibson. I thought that to be a good film mostly because in the opening credits I read it was based on a book. So I looked that book up and read it. Now I can't stop reading them.

Back to Parker the movie. I watched the trailer and it looks like the film is based on Flashfire. Parker does a job and the rest of the crew decide they can't pay Parker right away. They want to use the money towards another job. Well if there is one thing everyone should know about Parker is that nothing stands between him and his loot. There are no exceptions.

Check out the video below and decide for yourself if Statham can capture the Parker as we know him through Westlake. Either way they are getting my ten bucks.

Another problem with "big" publishing...

My fourth novel, The Collectors, came out last week from Forker Media. FM is my third publisher out of four novels. My others, Homecoming, The Trilon (Pandora Publishing Project) and Division Six (Fringe Majority) are all with small publishers.  I have a fifth novel, and shopped that around. As I did, I learned the nuances of publishing.  I kept digging after rejections piled up.  You can blame my attitude adjustment to Big Publishing through rejections but so many of the returns were "not what we are looking for". I get it. I'm not a simpleton or child. Then I started reading horror stories and watched "successful" authors release book after book with the same tired old plots. So I looked for someone hungry, someone who wants to take a chance on what I write and possibly enjoys it.
     Anyway, enough rambling. Check out this link to IndieReader and see what I am talking about.
http://indiereader.com/2012/09/reason-5-to-self-pub-not-being-in-debt-to-a-publisher-for-your-advance/

Hard work paying off

I am glad to announce that the efforts of the last ten years with more ups and downs than a roller coaster at Magic Mountain, The Collectors is out for sale on Kindle. The publisher, Forker Media, assures me it will be coming soon to Nook and other ebook sellers.

Long Days wrenched with transitions...

    So my trip from Florida to Virginia was filled with much more than empty mansions and hidden cross road towns. Though I could not get enough of that. It was my first trip through the south that was not Florida south.
    A high light of the trip came when I came face to face with a wild wolf while camping outside Black Mountain NC. It came with a howl, then a second that was much closer. Minutes later I was on my way back to camp walking up the gravel road when a lone wolf came trotting down the road.
    I froze and he froze. We matched eyes. I refused to accept it was wild wolf until it backed up and trotted off the road. When I lost sight of it I called out to my friend to get the Jeep and come pick me up. I was not willing to risk walking past where the wolf ducked into the dark forest. (Did I mention it was nearly night)
  
   Now that I got that off my chest, these last few weeks have been crazy. I've been working with my recent publisher, Forker Media, to bring to you The Collectors. We are working on a release date before the end of the month. I had no idea how much goes into publishing a book. It is all in the details. Email after email, back and forth to get the cover right and the edits right and contracts signed.
   I have been published a few times before. Division Six has been out almost two years now. I linked here to Wowio, but it is available on several other sellers' sights. So point is I've jumped through publisher's hoops. The Fringe Majority published Division Six and that was a great experience as well. I was very pleased with the cover art and the level of input the asked of me.
   The Collectors is a neo noir venture between my friend Jorge and I. (You can find out more about us at sastrewagnerproductions It was not a fit for Fringe and I was solicited by the guys at Forker so I am entrusting it with them as their debut novel.