Book Release Party!

Remember the good old days when I'd have a book release party and we'd all get together to drink wine and celebrate? Yes, that was pre-COVID-19. And I was younger. And we could all still drive at night.

BUT... Today I'm celebrating my 71st birthday with the release of two new books! And if you were a fan of Dag Hamar in For Money or Mayhem and For Blood or Money, this is a very good day for you!

Introducing For Mayhem or Madness, a Dag Hamar cyber mystery. Dag is one to carry a grudge and has planned revenge for Andi's murder for five years now. But when he brings down the entire fraudulent charitable foundation site that the insane game developer John Patterson founded, another hacker takes the credit and makes Dag's revenge even more complete by erasing the digital identity of people involved.

Into the aftermath, Jordan Grant arrives at Dag's new office and asks him to track down a hacker who poses a clear threat to all the major governments of the world. But so far, he's only touched people those governments are happy to see gone, so they haven't been diligent about tracking him down. FinCEN has decided to shove the job off on Dag if he'll take it. 

Dag is off around the world to chase down Hacker X and decide if he needs to stop the hacker or join him.

On Kindle at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JXQCKMK

On Nook and paper at: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/for-mayhem-or-madness-nathan-everett/1137738180?ean=2940162904120

But wait! There's more!

I'm also releasing Devon Layne's genre-breaking do-over story, Not This Time. What would you do if you were sent back in time to relive your life, but arrived on the day AFTER you made the biggest mistake of your life? You know how you dealt with it the first time. Can you do better this time?

There is a common trope for do-over stories that has been repeated time and time again.

1. A man (always a man) of sixty or seventy years or more 
2. is shot, electrocuted, caught in a wormhole, abducted by aliens, finds a mysterious gem, has a heart attack,
3. and is sent back to relive his life from the time he turned fourteen.
4. He has wikipedic knowledge of everything that has happened in the years he already lived.
5. He is able to bet on obscure sporting events, invest in the right stocks, invent something revolutionary before the real inventor gets to it, or otherwise become fabulously wealthy by being in the right place at the right time.
6. He uses his vast knowledge and understanding of women, acquired in his former life, to woo and bed many women from age fourteen up (because he's really only fourteen, right?)
7. He uses his great understanding of the future to become a world leader and bring peace and prosperity to everyone.

Sounds perfect, right? Well, Not This Time.

On Kindle at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JZ7HVTY

On Nook and paper at: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/not-this-time-devon-layne/1137694752?ean=2940162904045

Come celebrate my birthday with a good entertaining read!

Why I’m not trying to convince Republicans not to vote for the incumbent

I see the social media sites lighting up with political memes, passing on ‘the facts,’ and vociferously arguing for their candidate. I’m not joining in. I’ll support getting the vote out and I will point new voters to a good match with the right candidate. And I’ll try to tell people not to throw their vote away on a third, fourth, or fifth party candidate and not to get so disgusted they don’t vote.

But I won’t try to convert someone who has decided to vote for POTUS 45.

They already know.

They already know he is racist and promotes white supremist ideology and groups. They don’t care.

They already know he withheld vital information from the nation and lied about COVID-19 so as ‘not to cause panic’ and made the pandemic worse than it could have been. They don’t care.

They already know he rules on behalf of the ultra-wealthy and has no concern for the poor. They don’t care.

They already know he actively promotes police brutality. They don’t care.

They already know he has no respect for the suckers and losers who make up our military and veterans. They don’t care.

They already know unemployment was falling in the three years before his administration at the same rate it fell during the first three years of his administration. They don’t care.

They already know improving stock prices only help the moderately-to-very wealthy and do not show an improvement in the real national economy. They don’t care.

They already know he has the lowest moral rating of any president since Clinton. They don’t care.

They already know he cannot compose or speak a complete sentence. They don’t care.

They already know America has fallen to the lowest level of respect of every other nation in the world. They don’t care.

They already know he and his family have profited by his presidency through nepotism and government contracts. They don’t care.

They already know how many of his appointees and closest advisors have been convicted of crimes (and many then pardoned by him). They don’t care.

They already know he lies about what is happening, what he’ll do, and how he’ll make America great again. They don’t care.

When half the nation can see this and still not care, it is a waste of breath to try to convert them. They will justify their blind loyalty with made up facts and fear of the opposition. They will deny any evidence contrary to what they have decided to believe and what they have dug up ‘evidence’ to support.

This is the party of ‘I don’t care.’

Who needs to breathe?

Don’t know if you’ve heard about the air quality out west. With hundreds of uncontrolled wild fires burning, the sky is overcast with smoke. It would be bad enough if it stayed up in the sky, but no. It has to come down here were people are trying to breathe.

A friend took a picture in Worley, just up the road from my summer camp. It wasn’t encouraging.

Last night I even slept with a mask on—most of the night. When I lost it, I covered my head with a blanket. Which gave me an even better idea for today. It’s hard to drink coffee while wearing a mask, but if I had a tent around me, I could filter out some more smoke and still have breakfast.

I happened to have this large piece of lightweight fabric and draped it over my head and computer. Here I sit in my little hidey-tent, in my LaZBoy, working on the blog post.

Well, I’ve little else to mention this week. I have to get a prescription filled tomorrow and that involves a drive into Coeur d’Alene, where the air quality is even worse. Here’s to global warming! (Which, of course, doesn’t exist.)

 

More books coming online

While busily writing and editing new books, more of my backlist is coming online as well. This week, it’s a little of both.

I post my books in free serial format on both my own websites and at StoriesOnline. I’ve always suggested that people can get an eBook in either ePUB or MOBI format by sending $5 to me at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/aroslav and listing the title of the book they’d like. But everyone needs to get their cut of sales and I can no longer advertise that link at SOL. Now I need to post my eBooks on their book sales site, https://bookapy.com/. Just what I needed—another book sales site to monitor and maintain.

But it’s not half bad. In fact, I’d like to see the site grow so big that I don’t need to use Amazon anymore. It doesn’t hurt to dream.

As you can see in the picture above, I have three new Devon Layne releases at the top of the page today. I’ve posted my entire (so far) Props Master series for sale. The Props Master Prequel: Behind the Ivory Veil and The Props Master 1: Ritual Reality are from my backlist. In fact, these books were originally drafted forty plus years ago! Back then, I was struggling to show that I could really write. I even got an agent interested in Behind the Ivory Veil. Sadly, she died before she got the finished manuscript. After I’d written another thirty books, I went back to those original two and started cleaning them up and rewriting to tighten the storyline and proofread.

(One of the agent’s comments back in 1981 was “For Pete’s sake, get someone to proofread this!)

Tastes and standards change over time. What I considered typical urban fantasy material back in the 1980s is now too racy for our standard ultra-conservative society. There is sex in the story! Gasp! It must be pornography! If anything, I toned down the initial manuscript and released it as erotica under my pseudonym, Devon Layne.

This week, I’ve released the third book in the series, The Props Master 2: A Touch of Magic. The original draft was written back around the turn of the 80s, but it was completely rewritten with only the main characters and theme of the story remaining the same.

1974
Minneapolis. A Goddess.
The Great Paris.

Serepte Allen is eighteen and has moved to attend college in Minneapolis where she studies flute. The move is not a simple one, for the five witches of the inner circle have moved with her. Wayne Hamel, the Props Master and Vagabond Priest leads the circle in its mission to protect and nurture Serepte.

Haunted by her compulsion to heal, Serepte seeks refuge in her flute music, releasing the pain she receives from others to a new world where it can live as a free and beautiful thing. It has been prophesied that only when she exercises her gift out of love instead of compulsion will she be able to free her father from his prison Behind the Ivory Veil.

Complicating matters, a traveling magician comes to town to perform at the Showbox where Wayne is the lighting tech. His encounter with Serepte is life-changing. It’s as if they had known each other a thousand years.

A demon-possessed villain, trapped at the same time as Serepte’s father, arrives in Minneapolis, hungering for power. Wayne has exorcized a demon before. Can he do it again before the demon feasts on the young couple?

It’s a fun and romantic story with enough mysticism and magic to keep you guessing about what’s real and what is an illusion.

Join me for the fun!

In case you’ve been hanging around me for a lot of years, Serepte’s father is none other than J. Wesley Allen, author of the almost-infamous Book of Wesley.

Being an Inconcise Compendium

of Irrational Thought

in the Fields of Science, Language,

Philosophy, Music, and Theology

Which

Borders on Truth—

Most of the Time.

J. Wesley Allen

MCMLXXXI

For several years, The Book of Wesley was the core of our “Poets and Philosophers” meetings back in the 80s, where a bunch of us sat around with cigars and cognac and thought deep thoughts. I plan to re-release that ancient tome on my own website in the near future. You have to read it backwards on the blogspot blog version.

There are the new bits and pieces. Enjoy!