Take a spy home for the holidays!

Walk the path of a spy. Preorder GrayNet, Book 4 Spies Lie Series, DS Kane Amazon: http://lnkd.in/bM_ESSG

Welcome, Corrine O'Flynn, children's book author

Corrine O'Flynn is a friend and fellow indie press author. She was one of attendees at an ActFourWriters.com cycle a few years back. Her new book, The Expatriates, Book One: Song of The Sending, is now available for sale and I've already purchased a copy. Here's an excerpt:


 “Shh!” Charlie stepped toward the midway, her head cocked to listen. “What in the world?”

I followed her gaze across the fairgrounds where the big top towered over the smaller event tents. Festive red, white, and blue flags atop each of them blew in the morning breeze.

“Do you guys hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what?” Hollis said, wiping sweat from his face. He held the swaddled bird against his chest.

The peaked canopy of the big top stood tall over the row of concession stands. The old marquee twinkled faintly in the sunlight, its red and yellow light bulbs spelling out Sweetwater’s Traveling Show. Everything was quiet.

“Charlie?” I knew better than to question her ears.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“Shhh.” She closed her eyes and cupped her hands around her ears.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said. “Actually I don’t hear anything at all.”

Usually, on the day we arrived in a town, the fairgrounds were so noisy you could barely have a conversation without shouting. The roustabouts and canvasmen made a terrible racket erecting the tents and hammering the steel spikes into the ground. Then there was the constant hum of generators and cranes and trucks permeating everything as we all got things ready for the weeklong stay. Not to mention the animals screeching and squawking and the regular people noise. But from where we stood, it was eerily quiet. The whole place felt like a ghost town.

A mushroom of black smoke billowed above the big top in the distance. A rolling boom reached us a moment later.

“Whoa,” Sam whispered.

“Sweet Sisters. They’re here,” Hollis said.

I had a chance to talk with Corrine about her book:

Tell me about your book.
THE EXPATRIATES is the first book in a new YA fantasy series about a teenage boy, Jim Wales, who discovers his family’s been hiding him in a traveling carnival because he’s being hunted for his powers.

How would you describe your writing?

I’ve been told my writing is quite visual, and I like to think that’s true. I’m a very visual person and that comes through while I’m at my desk writing because as I build the worlds of my story, I tend to start with visuals in an attempt to bring you into my world, fully in that moment, in that scene. I think all writers want readers to have that immersive experience while reading. And for me, that begins with visuals. 

Do you have to plan to write or are you constantly jotting ideas and lines down?

A little of both. The only way for me to get work done is to schedule the time on my calendar. My biggest challenge in my daily life is time-competition. We’ve got a lot of balls in the air at our house, and even though I work from home, it’s difficult to stay on task and on schedule with things that can be pushed back. So, while I am always jotting things down and making voice memos for myself as ideas and lines come to me, I won’t get anything done unless I make a plan to write.

 

Why do you write?

I write because I love to read. I love reading a story that makes my world disappear, or makes my heart race, or makes my soul ache. I love reading the kind of stories that stick with me, that make me think, and even the ones that are just plain thrilling. I write in an attempt to do that. I have stories inside my own head that transport me in that way, and I think it’s awesome to be able to share that with readers.






 

My first attempt at a Trailer for the Spies Lie Series

When I found out how much these cost, I was alarmed. So, I tried to make one on my own, and this is it. It's a bit on the long side, just under four minutes, but that's because the piece of music backing the trailer is that long.

Please take the time to watch, and if you want to help me, give me some feedback.

I can't shorten the classical piece, not even sure how to do that without ruining it. I will make shorter ones, one for each book. So, have at it!

Just received the cover of GrayNet, Book 4 of the Spies Lie Series

...and I love it. Best cover of the series so far, I think. My cover designer, Jeroen Ten Berge, also does the covers for Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath among many others, Take a look. Tell me what you think:

Kirkus Reviews issues their take on DeathByte, book 2 of the Spies Lie Series

DEATHBYTE

Book 2 of the Spies Lie Series

Kane, DS

The Swiftshadow Group, Inc. (354 pp.)

$14.99 paperback, $3.99 e-book

ISBN: 978-0996059138; June 12, 2014

 

In the second installment of the Spies Lie thriller series, a covert agent reunites with his allies as intelligence agencies battle over a revolutionary tracking device.

Master hacker William Wing discovers that someone has broken into his Hong Kong apartment and stolen all the secrets on his computer—secrets that belong to clients such as Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Afraid that he’ll be killed as a result of the breach, he reaches out to his friend Jon Sommers, a former Mossad assassin who’s now working undercover in a German bank (and having a hot-and-heavy romance with fellow spy Ruth Cohen). The thief is revealed to be Cassandra Sashakovich, an agent with an unnamed American intelligence agency who had been ratted out by a mole, raped by a terrorist and is now running for her life. The data she made off with includes plans for a tiny tracking gadget that allows one to see through the eyes of the person who swallows it; naturally, many people would kill to get their hands on it. Sommers brings together his few trusted allies, including hardened soldier Avram Shimmel, to help Wing and prevent the plans from falling into the wrong hands—but whose hands are the wrong ones? Kane (Bloodridge, 2014) purports to be a former spy himself, and his extensive knowledge of the ways that the world’s governments wage covert war on one another shines through in his incredibly detailed prose. At times, however, these details grow overwhelming and make it hard to keep track of who’s spying on whom and why. However, readers who adore action-packed thrillers in the vein of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series will enjoy its many double-crossings. However, some readers should be warned: There are graphic scenes of torture excruciating enough to possibly make one’s stomach turn. Indeed, so many upsetting things happen to the main characters that it may be easy for readers to grow despondent about the state of the world by the time the story reaches its firestorm of a conclusion.

 

A dizzying spy story for readers with clear minds and steely constitutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Next Author Event, and my request for a favor from you

September 30, 2014

My next and final author event on the West Coast for this year will be held on Saturday, October 18 from 3 p.m to 5 p.m.. at Pelican Ranch Winery in Capitola, CA. I’ll be reading short passages from Bloodridge and DeathByte, selling and signing paperback books, and unveiling the cover for GrayNet, Book 4 of the Spies Lie series. If you’ve missed my previous appearances, or would just like to reconnect, or have purchased paperbacks and want them signed, please, come to Pelican Ranch.

GrayNet will be released in November. I’ll soon be polishing book 5. And, I’ve already started book 6.

I’m also asking for a favor from those of you who’ve purchased books, either paperback or ebooks: I’m desperate for reviews. If you have read one or more of my books. Please, please, please write and post a review at both Amazon and Goodreads. I’ll be forever in your debt.

The Middle East isn’t the only place where the world is sinking into conflict

You already knew that. But there is something more:

No one really knows how to force the world to become a peaceful place. In the United States, for example, we have been in a state of war over 70% of the time we’ve existed. And we have no idea how to end it.

We’ve entered wars to save our allies, to defeat our enemies, and more often than not, these wars resolved nothing. Except for feeding the weapons development corporations, that is.

The Middle East is just a good example of what we’ve failed to do, despite our good intentions. Almost every time we’ve tried to do something positive there, the results have been disastrous. As Dick Cheney stated about Iraq, “We’ll be welcomed as liberators.” And this leads to how we deceive ourselves into believing we could be the heroes: Our intelligence services are so terrible, we simply can’t rely on them to provide us with the truth. Remember “weapons of mass destruction”? Our choice is to give the intelligence services even more budget, even more power, and hope that the 1.4 million people in the USA with security clearances in the over 1,200 organizations that spy will do something different. Or, we can stop relying on them to drive our global policy decisions. Either choice is sub-optimal. There must be a better way.

It’s time our country, and every country, thought a bit about what we’re letting the world become. Is this what we want? Where should we be spending our cash? What causes should we promote? Is there a better way to keep murderers and criminals from running countries?

I have no answers. But it’s about time we started asking the questions. If we don’t things will probably get worse, and not just in the Middle East. It’s looking a lot like it did just before the start of World War I.