#163:  The free promo is over but Pop Two Antacids… is still a bargain!  The Fathers’ Day promo of Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java is over.  (If you missed it, you can still download the book—only $0.99 from Amazon.)  I thank all readers who downloaded it…enjoy!  I’d like to send a special thanks to European readers.  Detectives Chen and Castilblanco are New Yorkers first and foremost, but they often resonate with readers across the U.S., Canada, and overseas, so welcome!  Mystery, suspense, and thrills seem to be universal.  I hope all readers enjoy these stories as much as I did writing them!  By the way, you can share more adventures with Chen and Castilblanco by downloading the novels The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply.

#164:  Not free, but 50% off!  You might recall that Full Medical is back on Smashwords.  Just for readers using Nook, iPad, Sony, and other non-Kindle eReaders, it’s also on sale!  50% off from July 1 through July 31.  This sale requires a coupon and your coupon number is SSW50.  See the Summer/Winter sale on Smashwords (winter for the southern hemisphere, of course).  Note that Evil Agenda is about the same price.  Why not buy the entire “Clones and Mutants Series”?  You’ll have many hours of enjoyable and exciting summer reading!

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There are two classes of people who shouldn’t participate in the political process—soldiers and priests.  The reasons for the first are so obvious that DoD Instruction 1334.01 forbids it, but only when the soldier is in uniform.  Other DoD policies actually encourage participation in political life, a practice also encouraged by the GOP and discouraged by the Dems (because all our armed services are now volunteer, soldiers tend to lean toward the right—the Pentagon and its supporters are not known for their progressive policies).

The caveat about being out of uniform is important.  Now consider a priest—a huge example (in more ways than one), New York’s most recent import from St. Louis golden arches, Timmy Dolan (or, is that McDonald’s).  If you note a certain lack of respect for Catholic hierarchy, we’re dancing the same Irish jig here.  I have much more respect for a lowly priest that works hard to help his community than a fat cat placed high in the hierarchy and out in the community only for photo-ops (for example, our Timmy).  Same goes for Protestants—how did a black man ever become head of the SBC?  I’m religion- and sect-blind, by the way.  Religious hierarchies are just another way to pass money from the poor and middle class to the rich oligarchies of the world—I have no use for them.  Whether you’re making the Vatican rich or Pat Robertson rich, it’s all the same scam to me.

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Today’s pop culture has a way of being tomorrow’s trivial pursuit.  Does my title when spoken refer to an old sitcom or a misspelling of the name of the young man who drives tweenies crazy?  Or, a new meat in your grocery store you’ll find next to the buffalo burger?  Fiction writers today have to be knowledgeable about old and new culture—the trend is to mix them together.  The modern author needs to recognize that not all readers will recognize the words he or she uses.

An added complication is that young and old borrow from each other.  The young can be into “classic rock,” heavy metal, Tony Bennett, and Madonna.  So are the old.  Boomers enjoyed Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Their kids watch it too.  Same for I Love Lucy episodes.  Hollywood seems to remake more old films than create new ones.  It even turns old comic books I used to read into blockbusters.

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#157:  New!  Look for Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java.  My new short story eBook anthology will be released exclusively on Amazon KDP Select.  Free over this Fathers’ Day weekend—this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  If you enjoyed NYPD detectives Chen and Castilblanco in The Midas Bomb and Angels Need Not Apply, you will enjoy these new cases starring the detective duo.  And, if you were reluctant to buy the novels, this is a painless way to meet these two crack detectives!  You will learn more about them and enjoy the thrills and suspense as they unravel some strange cases.

Either free or priced at $0.99 after Fathers’ Day weekend, this collection is inexpensive entertainment to take with you on summer vacation.  Enjoy!  (For those in the know, Castilblanco pops Tums to counteract the acid from the coffee.  Tums are to him like lollipops to Kojak.  I don’t mind using product names in my stories—be assured that these are not paid advertisements!  Nevertheless, I thought it was appropriate not to put a product name in a title.  What do you think?)

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(John L. Betcher, The Exiled Element, Create Space, ISBN 978-1475180589)

The Exiled Element is the fourth book in the series that features ex-military intelligence officer James Becker (Beck), his ex-CIA crypto-analyst wife Elizabeth (Beth), and assorted friends.  Beck is a lawyer in Red Wing, Minnesota.  Nevertheless, considering the Becker couple’s background, even the uninitiated will guess that author John Betcher does not write legal thrillers.  Every book in the “Element Series” is somehow related to counter-terrorism.

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Guetapens.  Spelling this French-derived word that means ambush or trap made Snigdha Nandipati the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  My beef:  Each year thousands of kids win or lose spelling bee events with words that are NOT English.  While it’s true that America is a melting pot and English is the most wanton and promiscuous of the world’s languages, the Scripps organizers should be ashamed of themselves, along with the organizers of every other spelling contest that try to trip up young spellers with foreign words.

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(Ben Coes, The Last Refuge, St. Martins, ISBN 978-1250007155)

Military adventure and thriller junkies will get their fixes and then some by this new book in Ben Coes’ Dewey Andreas series.  Savor it.  Enjoy the adrenalin rush.  Following that, when you wake up at night worrying about reality versus fiction, be thankful you have real people like Dewey waging real-life battles against terrorism.

When ex-special forces member Dewey Andreas is asked what the greatest danger to America is, he replies, “Radical Islam.”  The question should have been: What is the current, greatest danger to humanity?  My answer goes beyond Dewey’s:  it’s radical fundamentalism, aka terrorism, in all its forms.  America and the Western world are its usual targets.  The U.S. has homegrown terrorists and international terrorists.  We also have to face off with the rogue nations—whole countries bent on destroying us.  The most dangerous of these is Iran, the villain in this adventure.

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Author:  [In a whisper, like an announcer at the U.S. Open]  Today we meet Sirena, certainly the most unusual character in my sci-fi thriller Evil Agenda.  The villain in that novel, Rupert Snyder, also known as Vladimir Kalinin, sponsored the research that produced her.  Sirena is a mutant, the first in a projected line of super soldiers, especially built to overpower her opponents, whether using enhanced body armor or not.  We find her coming onto the beach on her island in the Bahamas.  [Normal voice now.]  Good morning, Sirena.

Sirena:  [Starting with her mane of hair, she shakes off the salt water right down to her webbed toes.  We can see her gills pulsating as she adjusts to normal breathing.]  If I didn’t already know you, I’d think you were a voyeur.  Come along.  It’s time for my morning coffee.

A:  [I follow her up the dunes to a patio that sits on the edge of the grassy backyard leading to their house.]  I just have a few questions.

S:  Fire away.  [She throws on a beach robe.]  I don’t want to distract you.

A: You already have.  You were more magnificent than either Ursula Andress or Halle Berry.

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From a line of hundreds of people trying to climb Mt. Everest or die trying, to an eighty-year-old taking a birthday parachute jump and getting more than she bargained for, to a young man that thinks that kayaks were made to go over huge waterfalls, our news media does an excellent job of portraying the active thrill seekers in our society and the world.  These recent events show that humans’ thirst for thrills and adventure is still around albeit not as common as it used to be.  After all, we have some good substitutes.  Many people will not view a movie without spiffy special effects, car chases, shootouts, and, yes, plenty of sex and violence.  Video games allow pubescent teens to chase full-breasted women and blow the heads off people, both good and bad.

There are two kinds of thrill seekers.  The first needs the physical situation to generate the adrenalin—the climbers, the jumpers, and the hobbyist stunt men.  The second survives just fine stretched out in a recliner participating more vicariously in the thrills from his home theatre system, video games…and books!  I’m a writer.  I don’t make a living writing—not yet—but I depend on the more passive thrill seekers in general and book lovers in particular.  I’m also an avid reader.  I’d rather not subject myself to situations where I might die or be physically harmed.  I’ve never rode a roller coaster even.  I can imagine the thrill people receive when doing it but I prefer to read about it.  In fact, I prefer books over movies and definitely over video games.

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2012…a presidential election year…Memorial Day…a time for reflection….  At my age, I’ve lost friends and relatives, some from sickness, others from accidents, and still others in service to our country.  I value everyone that has served our country, from infantryperson to Peace Corps volunteer, infinitely more than the good old boys and girls sitting in the nation’s capital, those politicos who scheme and manipulate and put these volunteers in harm’s way.

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