Demo Dick

In Thriller Guy's last post, the joke was how much better, at least as far as getting the story out to the public, the raid on Osama's compound would have been if they had invited along Dick Marcinko and co-author Jim DeFelice to write down the main plot points and add the humorous details. For those of you who don't know Marcinko, (shame! shame!) he's the Navy man who many years ago designed and developed Red Team Six, the SEAL unit that killed Osama. Dick – aka The Rogue Warrior, Demo Dick, Shark Man of the Delta, The Geek -- led Red Team Six for three years, after which he was tasked with coming up with a unit that would test the vulnerability of US military forces around the world. This unit, known as Red Cell, succeeded in infiltrating naval bases, nuclear submarines, ships, airports, embassies, Air Force One and God knows what else. Marcinko claims that he and the boys stole nuclear devices complete with launch codes. And Thriller Guy believes him.

Marcinko was such a pain in the ass to his superiors they contrived to get him arrested and imprisoned for supposedly defrauding the government over contractor acquisition contracts for hand grenades. He did his time, and TG bets that no one ever attempted to make a little girl out of Dick Marcinko.

Dick published the autobiographical account of his career in 1992. Rogue Warrior became a big bestseller, and it deserved to be. Thriller Guy, under the name of his alter ego, Allen Appel, began publishing novels in 1985 with the first of the Alex Balfour time travel books, Time After Time. TG was several books into the series and thinking of branching out into military-type thrillers, which he did so in 1994 with Hellhound, written with Craig Roberts and TG's own son, Thriller Guy Jr. As research for this sort of writing, TG bought Marcinko's book and read it with pleasure. Marcinko's schtick, carried on through the thirteen or so of the following novels, is to tell the story of Dick Marcinko in his various adventures as a SEAL and later as the leader of his own military contractor agency, Red Cell, as the story of Dick Marcinko and his band of merry, deadly, warriors. In other words, Marcinko the author refers to himself as Marcinko the fictional warrior. It's a bit too tricky and self indulgent at times, but really, would a guy like TG who refers to himself in the third person have a leg to stand on if he decided to chastise Marcinko for this Point Of View? Of course not. Actually, TG thinks that Marcinko's authorial voice is spot on: funny, self-deprecating and perfect for telling his tales.

So way back in the day, when TG was just starting to write action thrillers, when it came time to write a big battle scene he would head for the bookshelf, let his copy of Rogue Warrior open to virtually any page, read along in one of Dick's action scenes for awhile then head to the computer and dive into his own battle scene. This is a method that TG still recommends to those who write him asking for tips and tricks in the thriller writing trade. TG is not telling you to steal from another writer, simply to use that writer to fire up your own physical and intellectual heat while writing your own scenes. TG doesn't really need this kind of kick-start these days, but he looks back with some nostalgia on those times when he was just entering the thriller field.

So imagine TG's surprise last week when he was assigned the latest Dick Marcinko/Jim DeFelice thriller, Domino Theory, for review. TG has reviewed many Marcinko thrillers over the years, and he feels that they just keep getting better and better. The early ones were co-authored with John Weisman, and they were fine, but TG feels that DeFelice “gets” Marcinko's voice better. TG has no way of knowing how much input Dick has in the books, but one would like to think that he at least comes up with the idea, gets together with Jim and the two of them slam down enough Bombay Gin (Dick's favorite) until they have the major plot points worked out so Jim can head off to his personal writing lair and put the book together.

And if not, if Marcinko doesn't do anything to write the book other than be the headliner and split the profits with DeFelice, if the drinking is all by himself in Rogue Manor where he strides the hallways in his smoking jacket, puffing on a Cuban cigar, where he laughs a little too loudly and flatters the fabulous babes who gather round, and where he dives into his money vault like Scrooge McDuck and gambols – paying little attention to his battle-scarred, aging body -- in his many millions earned from his storied military and writing career, well, fine, good for him. The guy has earned it.

The hard way.

Ding, Dong, Osama's Dead

Thriller Guy is not at liberty to say whether or not he was connected with Seal Team Six in any way in the mission to take down Osama. TG can say that the U.S. Government has had an ongoing relationship with thriller writers of note in brainstorming various missions, not that this was necessarily one of them. Enough. TG can say no more.

This is not the first blog entry TG has written about Osama, but the last one has been relegated to the dust bin after the news that the world's most famous terrorist was a porn fiend, casting all of TG's jokes into a weird light. Probably just as well that it's been tossed out.

Of course TG is glad they finally nailed the bastard, but he must admit that it was all, weirdly, sort of anticlimactic. Oh, how many times has TG reviewed military thrillers where various heroes have taken on Osama. In doing so, writers have employed a number of strategies. The lag time of a novel is usually, from turn-in to publication, 18 months. During this time the manuscript/book is in a pipeline and the words cannot be easily changed. This has led to many a nail-biter as the writer waits for history to change the playing field, leaving his/her novel looking kind of silly if circumstances are radically altered. One tactic used in many of the books TG has read where Osama plays a role, is to use weird names for him, as if readers won't know whom they are referring to. I.e. Tom Clancy and Grant Blackwood in Dead or Alive have a character called The Emir, who is obviously Osama. As if they could say, (if Osama were killed before the book was published,) “We didn't mean Osama Bin Laden, this is another deadly terrorist, architect of 9/11 who is purely fictional.”

When the reports began to come in of the real attack, TG felt strangely unmoved because he has read so many fictional battle accounts that were identical down to even the smaller details. Actually, the fictional accounts were generally far more exciting and not just because there was so much more information. Really, what the SEALs needed was their old compatriot, Dick Marcinko, riding into the compound with them, supplying the quips and narrating the action. The same feeling of deja vu occurred on Sunday when TG cracked open his New York Times and saw the headline at the top of the front page on the right: “Secret Desert Force Set Up By Blackwater's Founder.” Well, duh. Snore. How many times has TG read that particular plot? Many.

In Tuesday's Washington Post, Patrick Anderson reviewed Richard North Patterson's new thriller, The Devil's Light. (In the last few weeks TG has reviewed this book, plus Matt Richtel's The Devil's Plaything and James Rollins' The Devil Colony. Time to retire the word Devil for awhile, thriller writers.) Anderson is the Post's chief thriller reviewer and the author of the excellent book, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction, a history of the modern thriller. Those of you who are writing thrillers, or planning to write them, should read this book if you haven't. Anderson tells you what is important in the genre and gives you a solid list of great books to delve into. The single most grievous error TG finds made by today's thriller writers is not the continual cliches or the knocking people out of their shoes when shot but a lack of knowledge of the genre. This is particularly true of European writers who often turn out books with plots and characters that have already been done, and usually done better, by writers on this side of the pond who have gone before.

Anderson liked, with a few quibbles, Patterson's book. TG agrees with that assessment in general. Patterson is a meticulous researcher and writer, and he has no doubt Patterson walked every foot of ground he used in the novel. In his way, he has written a book like Tom Clancy's latest using the same basic plot. Both men brought a wealth of material to the task; in Patterson's case we get lots of history and the rational behind both the good guys and the bad guys, and Clancy brought lots of great new technical gear and weapons, but both would have been better books if they had had come out several years ago when the nuclear attack by terrorists plot was fresher. TG has to wonder if these two gentlemen are keeping up their end of the research not just in trying to come up with the best detail for their novels, but in paying attention to what others in the field are doing and what has already been done. Is this fair, wishing that a novelist had worked faster, come out with a book sooner? Probably not, but fair isn't always what matters in publishing, or, for that matter, in life itself. Will it matter to the sales of these two books? Probably not a bit. Their fans will buy their books no matter when they come out, or, frankly, what they are even about. But still, TG wishes that he were not reading the same plots over and over. It's boring, even when that particular tired plot is well done. And the one sin that a thriller writer should never make, is to let the word or feeling of boredom anywhere near their work.

So, Osama is dead, and that's a really good thing for thriller writers. No longer do they have to dance around the issue of how he is used as a character. He's gone, so terrorist bad guy characters can go back to being fictional, and no one will ever again have to mention or write around that giant elephant in the room, the old man with the beard. And please, those of you who are out there gearing up what you think is a clever plot where Osama really isn't dead, that it was all a conspiracy, a set-up instigated by a secret cabal in the US government, right-wing military officers, a rogue CIA element, the Iranians, the Taliban or a twin or a double who had been playing the role of Osama for years, or a plan by Osama himself to fake his own death, or whatever, but please, don't do it! It's not clever. It's obvious.

TG is tired, oh so tired of crazed Muslim terrorists planning the big hit against the US. Evildoers who had to watch when they were children as their parents were gunned down or sisters raped or grandpas or older brothers or best friends executed by agents of the US. Terrorists who have finally got their hands on one of those old suitcase nukes the Russians sold off years ago, barrels of radioactive medical waste for dirty bombs, tons of explosives loaded onto ships that are making suicide runs into the Statue of Liberty, all those same tired plots.

TG wants something new. Wake him up. Surprise him.

Osama is dead. Time to move on.

Now, you know the tune, munchkins, sing it loud and proud:

Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!

Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.

Wake up - sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.

Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. He's gone where the goblins go,

Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.

Ding Dong the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.

Let them know

The Wicked Witch is dead!

Back Again.

OK, Thriller Guy is back in the blog harness after several weeks away while writing a real article for money. (Note to all those writers who TG interviewed for the article and who did not make it into print. They edited the hell out of the piece because of space constraints, so many of you got cut, for no particular reason. Sorry, your wonderful answers to TG's questions will eventually appear on this site or in another article if TG can talk them into it.)

For all of you writers and readers out there who are successful, unsuccessful, unpublished, happily published, tortured, cursed with longing, blissful, eaten up with envy, or whatever, TG suggests that you go to Salon.com and read Laura Miller's terrific interview with publishing great Robert Gottlieb. There's a lot of excellent material in this article about the process of writing and editing that Gottlieb says far better than what TG has been trying to say over the past few years. And TG knows that some of you, on reading the words 'publishing great Robert Gottlieb,' are going to roll your eyes and figure you don't really have the time, and it will probably be boring, etc., etc. TG would like to say, just read the article because it's really good. Has TG ever steered you wrong?

TG had a recent email conversation with an excellent, extremely popular, bestselling author who TG admires, who said he had looked at TG's website and felt, generally, that it was “... about Fitzgerald and Hemingway and topics like that and didn't have anything to do with me.” And that some day he might read the archives, but that right now he was just an everyday kind of a salt-of-the-earth writer who didn't have time for that sort of erudition. But he did like it when TG told writers to stop whining and get off their asses and write. First of all, TG was flattered that a guy of this caliber would read this humble blog, and, secondly, mortified to think that the advice TG was slinging week after week could in any way be construed as, well, highfalutin? Intellectual? TG sees this stuff as Practical. Necessary. Basic. No bullshit. A kick in the ass. A tonic for what ails the poor, misunderstood, hard-working everyday writer. The men and women who labor without much in the way of recompense or honor, who live in pain while trying to come up with the right word, the right collection of words, to create something, if not of beauty, but at least something that at least makes sense. That tells a story. TG thinks of writing like he thinks of digging ditches: When it's done right, at great physical (and mental) labor, the cool water eventually flows in the correct direction.

Ah, stop it, TG, you're killing me here.

Anyway, here's a little sample, (below) from the Gottlieb piece. TG has always sensed that what Gottlieb says, in this instance, might be the case, but was afraid that it was true. How many times has TG read a book and thought, What a piece of shit. How could any editor, self respecting or not, let this crap through? How many times has TG thought, and even written, “What this book needs is a good editor.” Well, from Gottlieb, here's at least one answer:

“Whenever a review says "What this book needed was more editing," it's usually the book you spent the most time editing. That's because its problems were so severe that you've worked the text (and the writer) as far as possible. There comes a moment when either you the editor or you the writer cannot look at it again: It's over, and you have to let it go”

Who knew? TG has been waiting for years to read this explanation. And he apologizes for ever thinking that editors (or at least many editors) were stupid. It turns out that in many cases they have done all that they can do. That they probably feel, professionally, spiritually, and personally that they can do no more. That the contracts and promises of those in the publishing company, made by those who are far above them, have decreed that this book, as crappy as it might be, is going to be published and will make the company money because its readers may not really care about editing niceties or even the basics of good sense, so just shut your damn mouth, fix what can be fixed, don't piss off the writer because he might abandon ship and head to another house. Just get the book onto the shelves.

Or you're fired.

Bears and Men

Yes, Thriller Guy is aware that he has neglected his blogging duties recently. In his defense, he can only say that he has been working on a large project where he has been talking to many thriller writers, some of the biggest out there, and this diligence will pay off in material for future blogs.

TG has received several e-mails saying he's being too tough on the cheapskates who own Kindles and who have not immediately bought a Kindle copy of Abraham Lincoln: Detective, from Amazon. TG is grateful for those of you who have done so and assures you that every cent TG makes off the book will be squirreled away to pay for him to write another in the series, someday, maybe in the next hundred years the way sales are going right now. TG is, he must say, a little disappointed in some of you out there. No need to name names, you know who you are. It's the same feeling one has when one has a book signing where sales are disappointing. Regular readers of this blog might remember the rule taught to TG by his early mentor, Kent Carroll of Carroll and Graf Publishers, who told TG the following when asked how many books one should order for a signing: Write down a list of names of those friends and family who you are absolutely certain are going to buy a book, and then cut that number in half, then cut that number in half again. That's how many books you're going to sell, and let TG tell you from personal experience, and the experience of most of his writer pals, it's usually a pretty sad number, but almost always correct. There's nothing like seeing some of your best friends not only leaving the bookstore with nothing under their arms but looking pissed off because you didn't give them a free, personalized copy of the book.

Normal people have no idea that the number of free books the publisher gives to writers is usually very limited and usually written into the original contract between writer and publisher. That number starts out at five and if you can get your agent to argue about it they'll easily go to ten, but anything more and they get really grumpy. TG learned years ago to not worry about it in the contract because you can always get freebies out of the marketing department who will gladly give you as many as you want.

OK, you want to know what's really got TG ticked off this week? He was reading a thriller by a pretty famous guy for review and right up near the front the writer describes a character as “a shambling bear of a man.” TG is aware that most thrillers are, sadly, riddled with cliches, but he was stunned to find that particular old war horse still in circulation. Good God, does the writer have no shame? Does the editor have no shame? Or is he afraid to tell the writer that the phrase makes him look like a tyro? (Now there's an excellent word you don't see around much these days.) Have all the excellent proof readers who used to point out mistakes like this all been fired? TG was reminded of his early days in the business when he read a manuscript as a favor for his busy publisher and was shocked to find two separate characters described as shambling bears of men, and then stunned when another character was described as “a shambling leviathan of a man.” TG gently pointed out that the word leviathan almost always refers to whales or sea monsters, creatures who could hardly be expected to shamble anywhere. The publisher, looking very unhappy, took that reference out but still left the two earlier instances in.

Never forget TG's rule when it comes to cliches: when one comes to mind while in the process of your daily writing, pause and try to come up with something better. If you can't, don't waste time on it but mark the offending phrase in boldface and then go back the next day when doing your rewrites and change it to something original. This is usually pretty easy the next day when your brain is fresh.

Which leads to TG's next rule, which is when starting out your writing day, always read over what you wrote the day before and do quick rewrites. It gets you into your own voice and will put you well into your new day's work.

A Word to the Wise, Continuing Sales, Some Recommendations

First of all, Thriller Guy is sick, sick, sick of grown-up thriller writers having heroes, tough guy heroes, chuckle. Enough! No more chuckling! Really, has anyone actually seen anyone chuckle? It's a childish, stupid word. Stop. Right now. Never again.

Thriller Guy's ongoing experiment in selling Allen Appel's period mystery, Abraham Lincoln: Detective, in the Kindle format continues. In the month since the book was put up on Amazon, 12 copies have sold. Pitiful, really pitiful. The roll-out has been purposely slow with mentions of the book on this blog, Facebook and now TG's wife has notified her friends. Profits are hovering around $70.00, enough to buy a middling bottle of Balvenie whiskey. Obviously, if Appel thinks he's going to make any real money on the project he is deluded. Actually, thirteen books were sold and one person came to his senses or something and quickly canceled his order and got a refund.

The book chronicles the adventures of Abraham Lincoln and his sidekick law partner, William Herndon as they try to get to the bottom of a mystery surrounding the disappearance and possible death of an addle-brained visitor to their hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's on-again, off-again girlfriend, Mary Todd, involves herself in the detecting, much to the disgust of Herndon who could not abide Mary Todd. The fiction is based on a real case that Lincoln once wrote a short article about. He was never able to solve the mystery, but Appel has helped him out with a solution. Along the way readers will, one hopes, learn a great deal about Lincoln and the period.

Here's the deal: the book is fun, funny, clever and damn interesting. If you don't believe Thriller Guy, go to the Amazon Kindle site and take a gander at the three reviews there. TG feels so strongly that you will like this book that he's offering the following terms: If you download the book, read it and don't like it, TG will send you your $9.99 back. Yep, no strings, just comment on this blog with an email and TG will get in touch and send you your money. Now what could be more fair than that? Jesus, what does it take to pry ten bucks out of TG's reader's pockets?

OK, now that's out of the way... On the physical book front -- you know, books, the ones printed on paper -- TG has a few new recommendations.

Mike Lawson continues his entertaining series of mystery/thrillers (House Rules, House Secrets) with House Divided, starring Senate fix-it man Joe Demarco. Joe works for John Mahoney, Speaker of the House of Representatives, a larger-than-life, blustery politician based on the Tip O'neil mold, though in this book Mahoney remains offstage, in a coma. This is a gutsy move for Lawson as this character is a good one and he's taking a chance leaving him off the page. TG can report that the gambit works all right, but he would advise author Lawson to not try it again. TG has some tales of woe that come from his own experience of killing off a well-loved character in a series much to the dismay of readers who were very upset at the move. One of these days, TG will devote an entire blog to this mistake. Anyway, those of you who like a Washington-based mystery will like this series. TG suggests that you start with the first and read them in order, which though not strictly necessary will give you a better look at Joe Demarco's continuing history.

The Burning Lake by Brent Ghelfi is a tough, dark book set in today's tough, dark Russia. Ghelfi's hero is Alexei “Volk” Volkovoy, a man who wears many hats – soldier, spy, criminal, assassin – and who works for the mysterious, dwarfish criminal kingpin known only as The General. The story is built around the disappearance of Volk's girlfriend, a journalist who writes under the name Kato, who is investigating a dead zone in the Urals where a radioactive reservoir exploded 50 years ago. Readers interested in Russia today and who can handle some rough stuff will like it.

TG has some more new thrillers here on his desk to tell you about, but they'll have to wait until next week. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the actual numbers on the book that TG mentored and which was mentioned last week. You will be amazed.

Good News

But First...

OK, Thriller Guy will get to the good news in a minute. First, though, he'd like to point out that after the spectacular unveiling last week of the entry announcing the excellent book, Abraham Lincoln, Detective, written under TG's pseudonym, Allen Appel, a Kindle book, he was surprised to see that only one of you (Thanks, Joel! Love you, man!) seemed to have ten lousy bucks to download a copy. Really, out of 34 followers and who knows how many lurkers, only ONE of you was able to cough up that sort of petty cash? No wonder the book business is in the dumper. TG can't even buy one Tanqueray martini (you don't expect him to drink rail liquor, do you?) from the proceeds of one sale ($7.00). And don't give TG the excuse that you don't own a Kindle, you can download it to your phone or even your computer. OK, since you folks seem to be so poor, TG will send anyone who is too broke (there's no shame in it) a free copy of the book in a nice compact electronic file, just because he feels sorry for you. Just send him a message at appelworks@gmail.com telling him how poor you are and he'll get it right out to you. No one in this great country should have to do without the joys of literature because they can't come up with a sawbuck.

And don't expect TG to stop flacking this book in this blog. Consider it the commercial you have to sit through to get to the good stuff.

Now for the good news.

Those of you who are constant readers of the blog (TG loves you!) know that every so often he mentions that he is mentoring several young writers in their quest to produce that all-important first novel. About a year ago a young writer, we'll call him The Kid, (not that he's a kid, but compared to the grizzled TG he is) got in touch with TG about a book he was trying to sell. TG suggested that The Kid read the TG archives and send him the novel. The Kid had been receiving good initial reviews on his partial, but when the entire book was sent he was getting polite but respectful turn-downs. After reading the book in its entirety, TG felt that The Kid was a terrific writer, but he needed help with the structure of the book. So TG told him what he always tells writers in this situation: dump the book and simply write a new one. Really, it's a hell of a lot easier, no matter what anyone else will tell you.

So The Kid agreed, and TG and he began tossing back and forth plot ideas. When The Kid came up with a workable plot , TG agreed and The Kid started to write. Every few months he would send TG what he had done and TG would read, offer a few comments, but mostly say -- looks good, keep on working. The Kid didn't need much more than encouragement, some basic line editing and a few observations and suggestions. He's a real worker. And he didn't have an attitude, didn't complain, didn't explain, he simply understood that when someone points out what might be a mistake, the answer is not to get your back up but to go back and look at what's been pointed out because something is wrong and it needs fixed.

Time goes by. The Kid keeps working. After a year he has a draft. He also has an agent who recognized from the first book that The Kid could really write. The agent offered to work with him while he put together the new book. So everyone was in harness and all pulling together. Notes were given and the Kid hunkered down and did the work to fix all the parts that needed work.

Last week the agent put it out to several publishers. A bidding war ensued. The book sold for more money than you can possibly imagine. After the publisher releases the news on the sale, TG will hand out some real numbers, but at this point it's not appropriate. But it's a big sale. Big. Trust me. Big.

TG would like to take more credit than he deserves for the success of this book, but he's not going to. The credit goes to The Kid who kept his yap shut and did the work. No attitude, no writer bullshit. No excuses. Just did the work. So here's the moral of the story...

The writer dream is still alive. Publishing is in the worst hole that TG has ever seen in his long, checkered career, and yet one guy worked hard and caught the brass ring. Here's the way TG has always envisioned it. Use your imagination...

All the writers who are worth a shit have done the work. Thousands of them. They've written their book. Not just talked about it, not just hoped it would be done, but actually did the work. So we/they are all now sitting around the edges of a gigantic room, waiting. Think Stephen King, no ceiling, just blue sky and fluffy clouds up above. We're sitting in flimsy orange plastic chairs. Cheap linoleum on the floor. Suddenly a door smashes open and the Hag of Fame and Fortune staggers through. She's old, she's dressed in rags, she stinks, her hair is greasy and there's a big mole on her hairy chin. She lurches around the room, falling, dragging herself to her feet, cackling, spinning this way and that, farting, snorting, Christ, she's a real mess. And yet all the writers are shouting Pick me! Pick me! Then she staggers toward the wall, reaches out her bony hand, points an arthritic finger at one of the writers cowering in his or her chair, touches him with her long, thick, sickening, filthy fingernail and croaks, “You! You! You are the one!”

This time it was The Kid she touched.

Next time it could be you.

Shut up.

Get to work.

Shameless Plug

Many of the astute readers of this blog have tumbled to the fact that Thriller Guy often writes under the pseudonym of Allen Appel. Appel has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction, and he is proud to announce he has just published a Kindle edition of his heretofore unpublished novel, Abraham Lincoln: Detective. This novel is written from the point of view of Lincoln's law partner and biographer, William Herndon. It's based on a case that Lincoln wrote about himself, the Trailor Murder Mystery. Lincoln begins a letter to his friend Joshua Speed about the Trailor case thusly: Dear Speed: We have had the highest state of excitement here for a week past that our community has ever witnessed; and although the public feeling is somewhat allayed, the curious affair which aroused it is very far from being over, yet cleared of mystery. Because Lincoln was never able to solve the mystery, Appel has done so. The book is available to all you Kindle owners here.

Appel did a great deal of research on Lincoln for the last entry in his series of time travel books, In Time of War. During the course of which he discovered new Lincoln material that had never been made public. One item was a list of the 39 murder cases in which Lincoln was involved as the defense attorney. He lost only one of them (his client was hung) and some of them he was involved in only tangentially, but there were seven or eight that were very interesting that are virtually unknown. The most famous of these is known as the Almanac Trial, which many people have heard of, but there were others that had never been written about. Appel decided he would start a series of novels with Lincoln and Herndon playing the Holmes and Watson roles. Abraham Lincoln: Detective, is the first of the series.

Why Kindle? This novel is one of two that Appel's agent has been peddling around NY for some time. The last several years have been a terrible time to sell manuscripts. Publishers can be a cowardly sort, unwilling to try anything new, continuing to whine about the business while squeezing their a-list authors to produce books that are known quantities, no matter what the quality. They are content to rest their fortunes on a book-buying public the majority of which is perfectly happy with more of the same, no matter that the product is stale, off the shelf rehashes of what their big sellers and their imitators have been cranking out, year after year. Hence the scores of Da Vinci Code knock-offs that Thriller Guy has to wade through every month. So why not give Kindle a try? Just owning an e-reader puts an individual into a category of eager, intelligent book consumer willing to try something new. Sounds like a perfect market to TG.

If you have a Kindle, the link at the end of the first paragraph and again here will take you to Abraham Lincoln: Detective. If you don't have a Kindle you can download a free App that will let you read Kindle books on your cellphone, or even your PC or Windows computer. So now nobody has an excuse to not join the 21^st Century.

You can also go to the Amazon Kindle store and browse around amongst the hundreds of possible good reads. Yes, much of the independently published work is crap, but as Theodore Sturgeon once famously said, while rebutting the naysayors who declared that 90% of science fiction is crap, “Ninety percent of everything is crap.”

TG says give the book a try. It's good. And when has TG ever lied to you?