Cooking the Hook - NEW

Disco was the least of the 70s. It was the lipstick on the pig of an out-of-control wedge of years caught between the wishful thinking of the 60s and the heart-wrenching chaos of the 80s. A truncated decade limping on platform soles between the wild abandon of Woodstock and the Death Card whispering "AIDS" from every dark corner. The sex cost too dearly, drugs took more than they gave, and rock 'n roll waited patiently in the wings.   But not everyone was standing behind velvet ropes desperate for approval. Not everyone spent their last dime on the latest polyester guaranteed to get them In. That was in the movies.  The economy was in free fall, the oil crisis strangling the working class the hardest. People dropped their credit card bills in the trash, unopened. Goals were sketchy, mutable. For a few, survival on their own terms was slipping through their fingers.  Prophets Tango—S1: Out of Step      What happens when a drug-dealing psychic ...

  There is ecstasy in paying attention. There is also salvation. She hadn’t expected the drug to come on so strong, so quickly. Past the point of remarking on it, past the point of asking someone else to drive, but honestly, she couldn’t have let any of these mongrels take the wheel. She knew her friends hadn’t really turned into dogs but Baker was a much better looking Collie than he was a human, sitting at alert in the passenger seat, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.  Thank god for standstill traffic. Her plan was to drift along, focusing intently on the triple rubies of the taillights of the vehicle ahead of them until the road widened enough for her to slide over onto the shoulder and wait it out. Climb over the guardrail and puke. Sit in the tall grass and trash until she felt better. For now, focusing on the mechanics of staying upright in the seat and keeping the car in the lane was all she could manage.  Air, she needed air, and she hit the butt...

 Nothing like little early publicity to get me up and dressed before it was absolutely necessary. (a lie. I'm still in jammies). Thank you, Grace . 

  Launch!  ~(bodywide horripilation)~ The word gives me equal parts of terror and delight.   Book launch adds the wicked need to pee! The process is complex and time-consuming, especially when I've only just enrolled in Marketing 101 for Dummies. And the actual launch of Prophets Tango is still weeks away .  If you want to be kept in the loop, see that glowing blue box top right? You know what to do, and I promise not to be a pest or peddle your information. 

"So, you want to learn how to dance, really dance, not that disconnected, spazzy gyrating that you could do alone at a bar and no one would notice.  I'm talking about BALLROOM dancing." She waved her hand in the direction of the street-front windows where the lurid purple neon sign burned night and day. "We have a man and a woman, moving together to music." She walked inside the circle as she talked, looking each couple over, seeing who was going to be the most work. "There's the beat, and the melody, of course. Then muscles, bones, and skin...touching! And the desire to make it all work smoothly. If it sounds a little like sex, well, there's no denying it, which is why we keep our clothes on."  Everyone chuckles or blushes to one extent or another and they relax a little. Jack and Paco study their feet to keep straight faces. If they giggled, Connie would ream them out for it later. Giggling was for girls. They were supposed to be men. Jac...

I've decided to go ahead self-publish "Prophets Tango" commando-style, right here on the web. Screw Amazon and its algorithms.  It would have been nice to have all the professional help that wisdom says is necessary, but time and money are running out. I've had the lunatic (I'm told) misfortune of crafting a saga that would run 800 plus pages in print. There's no chance any publisher anywhere will touch a book this size from a debut author who has written in a difficult to classify genre. Oh, that home-made cover will give you the first clue. First and foremost it's a romance with a sparkle of paranormal, but NO vampires, werewolves or shapeshifters. Just a couple of spirits and two main characters who have a few interesting psychic skills. Paths cross, sparks fly. It's a romp, a big, fat beach read that just might someday hit a screen somewhere. Casting suggestions are welcome! Such hubris? What do we have left, but faith in ourselves and the ...

Now comes the part I have to stop saying I hate, because what will that get me? Hives, boils, constipation - the writer's plague loosely called marketing. I've decided (the calendar decided for me) that I'm going to self-publish Prophets Tango as a serial. Yes, something a little different. I don't have time to query an editor/agent and wait six to eight months to get an email saying thanks, no thanks or whatever. Too old for that kind of waiting. Besides, there's another book waiting in the wings. Feedbacking friends and beta readers have been worth their weight in gold, but the best I'll be able to do is spell their names right in the acknowledgments and signed copies. And let them ride in the limo with me. Dear Ed. has given me a to-do list and I'm scratching things off one at a time, with varying degrees of success. One of the things I'm NOT supposed to be doing is imagining that I can do my own cover art. See? There are two distinctly di...