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We Have A Winner

8/31/2015

Hang on to your hats, folks. Miss Dawn has drawn two names from the hat.

The envelope please.

And the winners are: (pregnant pause here. The audience holds its collective breath)

Doris Shane and Jane McDonald for their reviews of Bikini Baristas. (The audience goes wild. Doris and Shane make their way to the podium.)

Well that’s it. I want to thank all of you who entered the Bikini Baristas Review Contest. I’m afraid that four of you didn’t read the directions and didn’t send me your email addresses. However, don’t worry; Dawn didn’t pull your names from the hat. And I should mention that we used my “Hannibal Lector” Panama hat for the drawing.

What, you ask, are the prizes?

I sent Doris and Jane four mystery/thriller novels by authors who deserve to be better known. I hope that they will enjoy them and tell their friends about them.

The books were:

                Red Island                           by Lorne Oliver

                A Dead Red Cadillac           by RP Dahlke

                Low Tide`                            by Dawn Lee McKenna

                The Road to Key West       by Michael Reising

Both winners also got a $40.00 gift certificate to Amazon.com. (I hope that they will spend it buying MY books.)

I can’t tell you how happy it made me to get so many reviews, and so many 4 and 5 star reviews, the first week the book was published. Thank you all. You’ve made me a happy pappy.

Other News

Possible Cover for The Barrett Murders

I’m taking a short break from the Ted Higuera Series. Don’t worry, Ted, Chris, Cat and the gang will be back soon in another adventure in Mexico. I’m tentatively calling it The Cartel Strikes Back. Like that name? I kind of want to invoke the Star Wars theme here (The Empire Strikes Back).

In the meantime, I have completed the first draft of a standalone Catrina Flaherty Mystery. This one is about a man whose two wives die in mysterious accidents. Just the kind of case Cat loves. We’re using the working title of The Barrett Murders for now, but I hope we can come up with a better name.

I’m in the editing phase of the book and my team is working on the cover now.

Watch for it in mid-September.

Libby and Katie bundled up for Seattle baseball

A lot of stuff has been going on here in San Diego. Right now I’m preparing for a baseball vacation with oldest daughter, Katie. When I was 18 years old, I wanted to take my motorcycle and tour the country, visiting all the major league ball parks. Mama said no, so I didn’t go.

All these years later, Katie calls me and asks if I want to go on that trip with her. How could I pass that up? Take that, Mama.

She’ll start in the Bay area with the Giants and A’s, then drive down to L.A. where I’ll join her for a Dodger game. Then on to San Diego where we’ll take in a Padres game. We’ve already seen the Angel’s park.

From San Diego we fly to Kansas City where the Mariners are playing the red-hot Royals. We’ll rent a car there and drive to St. Louis where we’ll watch the Cardinals machine. Then on to Chicago to see the White Sox and the Cubbies. Libby will fly out to Chicago to join us, then she and I will fly home, but Katie will keep going on her trip. Her next stop will be in Minneapolis to see the Twins. This is costing way more than I can afford, but what the hey? How often do you get to tour the country with you daughter and take in a bunch of ball games?

After the ballpark tour, Katie will spend a month in Mexico, then fly back to Seattle for a conference. When she is done with her presentation, she will fly to Ecuador, Peru and Columbia.

While she’s gone, we’re kitty-sitting her cat, Kiva. Kiva arrived yesterday. We picked her up at the airport and brought her home. She immediately hid under the bed, coming out only for food, water and the litter box. By this afternoon, she has ventured into the hallway to check out our apartment.

Wait until we move back onto the boat. That should really confuse her.

That’s it for now. I hope you are all having a great summer.

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MIA

8/16/2015

4 Comments

The girls and me at Safeco Field

I’ve been MIA for the last two weeks. I made a trip to the Pacific Northwest to visit my family and friends. In April my daughters, Katie and Libby, came to L.A. for a concert. I was supposed to meet them there for a father-daughter weekend. However, I had not recovered from my knee surgery yet and had to cancel.

This is the makeup trip I promised them.

I started in Seattle where I went to a Mariner’s game with the girls and friends Susie and Steve. I stayed with brother-in-law and sister-in-law Sam and Marti on Wednesday. That evening Katie drove down and we grilled hamburgers.

On Thursday the girls joined me and we had dinner with Barb and her kids, Jenn and Chris. Oh, we had hamburgers again.

Friday was spent at the ballgame where I had a hot dog for dinner.

On Saturday, Marti and Sam’s middle son, Steven and his family came to visit and we, you guessed it, grilled hamburgers.

The next day, Libby and I drove to Spokane to visit our special friends, the La Plante’s. We got there in time for dinner and guess what we had… hamburgers.

We went to River Front Park for old times’ sake. When the girls were little, we would take them to the kiddie amusement park there every time we visited. They are tearing the amusement park down after the season and building a new one, so we had to see it one last time. We took two of the grandchildren so we had an excuse to act like kids. They put a gun to my head and forced me to ride the roller coaster, tilt-a-whirl etc.

Tuesday we went to a water park. By the time we were done with two days with the LaPlante’s, I was dead. Fortunately, I headed south to Portland to see my mother and brothers.

My brother, Jon, picked me up and we headed over to Mama’s for dinner. In the morning, Mama, her husband, Dave, and I piled into the car and drove to Astoria where Brother Jim is remodeling a house.

They failed to tell me that Jim didn’t have any furniture in the house yet. There was a fold-away bed, but Mama got that. I wasn’t going to ask a 90-year old woman to sleep on the floor. That means I got to sleep on the floor. With my knees, they had to rig up a crane to get me up in the morning.

For dinner, Jim had planned, wait for it…, hamburgers. I revolted and took them all out to a seafood restaurant for dinner. I don’t need to see another hamburger for quite some time.

I got home Saturday. Dawn picked me up and on the way home we stopped at a local taqueria for a burrito. In the evening, Dawn, Odin and I walked down to the dog park. As we exited our apartment and stepped into the courtyard, I smelled carne asada cooking and heard ranchero music playing. On the way home from the park, we walked past the community center where they were holding a quincinera. I felt like I was home.

Okay, that’s what I’ve been up to. I should throw in the commercial announcement here.

We published Bikini Baristas on August 9th. We already have twenty-two reviews. Most of them are five-stars with a few four-stars thrown in. There is one malcontent who gave me one-star, but you can’t please everyone.

I want to thank all of you that took the time to write a review for me. They are the life-blood of the independent author. I am truly blessed to have so many dedicated readers. Thanx again.

The review contest for Bikini Baristas closed today. I’ll announce the winners tomorrow.

You can get your copy at http://tinyurl.com/pm8kp7m.

What’s up next? I have finished the first draft of a new Catrina Flaherty mystery. I don’t have a name for the book yet, but it should be available by mid-September.

It’s about a man whose two wives both die in mysterious accidents. Catrina is hired to find out what really happened. If you like Catrina in the Ted Higuera books, I think you’ll love this story. She’s at her kick-ass best.

We’ll be working on the cover this week and I’ll finish my first round of edits and send it to the proof-reader. Keep a weather eye out for it.

If you haven’t read her first stand alone story, Mirror Image, you can get it at http://tinyurl.com/n5bxoed. It’s about an abused house wife whose husband is the chief of police. When your abuser is The Law, where do you turn? To Catrina Flaherty.

Once again, I want to say how grateful I am to all of you readers out there who write reviews and send me your comments. You have no idea how encouraging it is to hear from you. Hang in there and happy reading.

4 Comments

It's Finally Here...

8/9/2015

12 Comments

That’s right, we made it. Today is the release date for Bikini Baristas. Click here to download your copy. For two days only (August 9th and 10th) I am offering a special “friends and family” discount. You can buy the book for 99 cents. But hurry, the price goes back up to $2.99 on Tuesday.

Here is the back cover synopsis of Bikini Baristas:

Bikini Baristas is a tale of two scofflaws.

Dick Randall is the owner of a chain of bikini barista stands in the Seattle area. Clayton Johnson-White is a teenage kid who thinks he’s smarter than the rest of the world.

The story begins when Dick’s pickup truck is discovered burned-out in the California desert. What happened to him? Did he fake his death to escape his sleazy past or did the past catch up with him?

To get away from his trailer-trash life, Clayton drops out of school and runs away into the woods of Camano Island. He breaks into vacation homes and steals what he needs.

Private detective Catrina Flaherty is hired by Dick’s wife to find out how he disappeared. When she and her partner, Ted Higuera, start turning over stones, some shocking things come crawling out.

Ted’s best friend, Chris Hardwick, has his first case as a grownup lawyer. He is assigned the Clayton Johnson-White file. He expects to do a quick plea-bargain and get on with his life. Instead, he finds Clayton has evolved into a professional criminal who teaches himself to fly, steals airplanes and goes on a nationwide crime spree. Chris, Ted and Cat are intertwined on a case that takes on international proportions.

What do these two cases have in common? In the end, they come together with the force of two colliding freight trains.

So far, we’ve gotten really good reviews for people who got the Advance Review Copies. I’m really excited about this book. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

As you probably know, reviews are the life-blood of independent authors. Most people make the buy/no buy decision based on the reviews a book gets. You want good reviews and you want a lot of them.

In order to encourage you to write a review for me I’m running a contest. If you post your review by August 16th 2015, I’ll enter your name in a drawing for a thriller package. I will send the two winners four thrillers by other authors I admire, plus a $40 gift certificate from Amazon.com. Just send me an email with a link to your review and your address. We’ll hold the drawing on August 17th 2015; I will notify the winners and send the prizes immediately.

To write a review on Amazon.com, go to the Bikini Baristas page. On the bottom of the page there is a section labeled “Customer Reviews.” To the right of the bar graph showing the ratings the book has received is a button labeled “Write a customer review.” Click on the button and it should be self-explanatory from there.

So, don’t forget, you must order Bikini Baristas today or tomorrow to get the special “friends and family” discount. Then submit a review to be entered in the drawing. Click here to buy your copy.

As always, thank you for your support.

12 Comments

We Have A Winner

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MIA

It's Finally Here...

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