“What’s in it for me?” you may ask. I would, if I were you.
I give away free books with every issue. This is important if you love books These are my books (Zombie Turkeys, and others, and the books of other authors.
Another way to get free books from me is to click here. I give away eight free books of mine with every newsletter. But you’ve got to join first. Plus, I tell you about events, I give you free short stories, and more. The newsletter comes out twice a month, but you can reduce that to monthly or even bimonthly.
Do You Want to Be Special? – The Second Way
The Secret Supers Series So Far
This way leads you closer to my heart. How?
“The way to an author’s heart is through reviews.”
It doesn’t have to be long. One sentence works fine. It doesn’t have to be a good review (look at my one and two star reviews). It’s just that you care enough to tell me what you think.
That’s why I think you’re special.
Do You Want to Be Special? The Third Way
This way makes you most special to me. Less than four thousand people in the world are in this category. But you can be.
Have a preview of the spines of the trilogy above.
My First Fantasy Book Magic Arrives – Characters
Front and back Cover of Magic Arrives
I just made progress on Magic Arrives! So far I’m 100% complete on the Characters phase. I’ve got about 71 characters so far, including magical dragons, talking dogs, gorillas, and intelligent dolls.
Magic Arrives Progress – Scene List
ARC Copy
I just made progress on Magic Arrives! So far I’m 100% complete on the Scene List phase. That’s 100 out of 100 scenes.
Progress – First Draft Words
I’m done with the first draft of Magic Arrives! I’m 100% complete. That’s roughly 112,00 words out of my goal of 100,000. Oops. Overshot.
Line editing – done
I’m done with the self-edit. I sent it to my editor, Dori Harrell. She did the line editing. I’m went through that and approved the changes. Now Dori is doing the final proofing.
I created the front cover, back cover and spine with my illustrator, Sean “Fuzzy” Flanagan.
Then there’s the small matter of uploading it to Amazon and publishing it there. Finally, I order paperback copies so you can get your copy here, directly from me, as less than Amazon.
From Chapter 4 London, the first draft of Paranormal Privateers, we find the paranormal privateers, George, Diane, Lulu, and Sharon, going incognito as undeclared zombies, quite against British law at the time. They’re using bloodhounds and zombie corgis to track down terrorists threatening London. Oh, and they have a truckload of zombie bulls.
Get Your Free Excerpt Part 1
The Chapter 5 London chapter icon – what could it mean? Click and find out!
Scotland Yard met us the next morning when we docked in the port of London. We divided up into three groups to cover the area. Diane and I took everything between Grosvenor Place and Belgrave Place. Lulu and Sharon took the area from Belgrave to Basil. The Scotland Yard dog handlers Jerry Naismith and Benjamin Buxley took the wedge from Basil to Knightsbridge.
We jogged along, Diane and I. She had picked up the special two-wheel wheelchair, iBot, from Kamen industries office in London and loved tooling along at six miles per hour. Since we were in England maybe I should use the metric equivalent: ten kilometers per hour. I had no trouble keeping up with her, even as a deaf-mute. If people talked to me, I just handed them my deaf-mute card. The dogs, our two corgis, and two bloodhounds, also in service dog vests, loved it.
Then came a yell over our headsets. It was the Scotland yard crew, Jerry and Ben, both yelling.
“We’ve found them! The terrorists! They’re on the second floor of Harrods, in the tableware section!” said Jerry.
“We can’t get any closer! They’ve got tasers!” said Ben.
Get Your Free Excerpt, part 2
Chapter 10 icon
“The hounds found C-4 in crockpots. When the sales clerks saw us they shot tasers at us!” Jerry continued.
“We would have been fried, but our kevlar vests stopped them,” added Ben.
“Now they’ve surrounded us in the ladies WC, taking shots at us,” Jerry interjected.
“We’re not far away!” said Lulu. “We’ll be right there!”
“George, we’re over a mile away, but we’re close to our truck, er, lorry holding the bulls and more corgis.”
I nodded. We had decided killer turkeys and the crowds of London were not a good combination. The turkeys remained on the yacht.
Diane jumped out of her wheelchair. “I’m breaking cover, you can too, George!” We ran to the truck, about two blocks away.
“Let me drive Diane,” I said.
“Of course. Left-hand drive scares me!”
Left-hand drive just required flipping all my US habits around. Look right first, then left. Keep left. I got the lorry out into traffic. We got into the traffic circle off Grosvenor.
“Look for Brampton exit,” I said.
We went all around the circle. No Brompton.
“Let’s try Chesham,” Diane suggested.
“We just passed it,” I said.
“What about Wilton?”
“You mean that last exit? We can’t go back to it now.”
“Here comes Belgrave again.”
“Let’s pull off,” I consulted the map on my cell phone. No map appeared for London. Rather, a popup said, “Directions disabled for London by order of the City of London. Please consult an official London cabbie.” I read aloud, incredulous.
Get Your Free Excerpt of third zombie book, part 3
The bulls bawled in the lorry. “There’s a taxi stand over there,” I pointed to Diane.
“I’m on it!” Diane leapt out of the lorry, ran across the busy traffic circle, accompanied by honking cars and talked with a cabby. She gave him some money and ran back.
“He’ll lead us to Harrods!”
I followed him out of the traffic circle. Then I heard in the headset, “Yow!”
Paranormal Privateers back cover – Click to get your preview
“Ay, caramba!” That was Lulu.
“What happened, Lulu?”
“Sharon caught a taser in the face. She’s down! It’s way more electricity than a regular taser. It can stop a zombie!”
“How are the Scotland Yard guys, Jerry and Ben?” I asked.
“We’re fine!” Jerry answered.
“After Lulu and Sharon attacked the clerks let us alone,” Ben added.
“Then we slipped down to the first floor,” Jerry said.
“That’s the second floor in US terminology,” Lulu said.
“So if the tableware is on the second floor, that’s the third?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lulu said.
“What’s your situation, Lulu?” I asked.
“I’m using a cutting board as a shield. When the taser hits it, I cut the wires with my katana.”
“Are they going to rush you? Where are you?”
“I don’t think so. One tried sneaking past me and I bowled him down by throwing a mixer at him. I’m guarding the exit to the dinnerware room. They can’t leave past me, but I can’t advance. I can’t leave Sharon anyway. How long until you get here?”
“We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“We’ll need about ten more minutes,” said General MacGregor, who was in charge of the backup forces.
“Good! Double backup! Lulu, hang on, we’re bringing in the heavies!” Diane said.
Get Your Free Except – An Author Reading
Here’s another excerpt, read by Yours Truly, Andy Zach. Get Your Free Excerpt is from the beginning of the book, chapter 1.
The Paranormal Privateers are zombies hired by the Federal government as privateers. The book opens with them fighting Somali pirates–by letting themselves get captured.
“Is that all?”
Nope! They go through the Suez canal and then on to Sevastopol, where they break up a human trafficking ring.
Paranormal Privateers back cover – Click to get your preview
Inhaling the salted breeze, he grinned back at Muhammed. He cheered and laughed in his seat behind the M2 machine gun in the bow of the boat they used to patrol the coasts and fishing waters of Somalia. The sun gleamed off his white teeth.
“Look, Dirac!” he said. “They’re stopping!”
True enough. The bow wave ceased as he watched. A pod of dolphins ended their sporting on the wave and submerged. The gleaming white yacht loomed above them. What were they doing in the fishing waters of Somalia? He couldn’t imagine the wealth on board. Enough for their whole village to eat well for a year!
Their supreme leader, Omar Ogala, organized Somali fishermen and former coast guard sailors to patrol their fishing waters. He ordered them to capture any fishing or cargo vessels they spotted. He told them the Americans and Europeans no longer cared about Somalia with the other crises around the world and they could defend their coasts from foreign competition—and dumpers. Many foreign nations, knowing Somalia’s military weakness, sent cargo ships full of pollutants and dumped them into their waters.
Dirac never expected to see a luxury ship here. It was as big as a cruise liner, but apparently a private yacht. He’d seen one once before when an Arab sheik visited Mogadishu. This one was three times the size! The owner would pay big to get it back. Maybe even a billion dollars? He couldn’t imagine that much money, and he was good with numbers. Let’s see: fourteen million people lived in Somalia. Divide a billion dollars among them would give each about seventy dollars. Unbelievable. A family of five could live comfortably for a year on that!
You Can Go ‘Round the World – Part 2
He came along as a navigator, fighter, and boarder, guiding their boat along the shore of Somalia and into the Arabian Gulf for several days, before leading them back. Besides Muhammed and him, there was Zahi, another fighter and boarder, and Ali, their captain.
“Dirac,” Ali said, “you and Zahi board this ship and take the helm. You will follow us back to Hobyo. Muhammed and I will stay on the boat and keep the machine gun on them.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Ali took the megaphone they carried for ship-to-ship communication. “Let us board! Let us board! Or we will gun your ship!”
Dirac didn’t understand English, of course, but he knew what Ali was saying. Ali was the only one who knew any English.
“Don’t shoot! Give us time! We have to get our ladder!” Surprisingly, the person spoke in Arabic. Good Arabic too, but with a strange Saudi and European accent. More surprisingly, it was a woman, a blonde, from what he could see of the figure leaning over the railing far above us. He kept a close watch on her. Strictly for security purposes, of course.
They kept their boat about fifty meters away from the ship and watched the crew scurry about the many decks. Dirac counted five including the main deck, and there were at least three more decks below the main one.
You Can Go ‘Round the World Part 3
Finally a rope ladder unrolled from the main deck, perhaps ten meters above them. They came close to the ship. A pod of dolphins flashed under their boat. Then they leapt out of the water and into it.
Only, they weren’t the dolphins he had seen earlier. Four people in green wet suits landed with heavy thumps in Dirac’s boat. They had no breathing equipment, not even snorkels. They took off their goggles, and their eyes shone bright red in the sun.
“Zombies!” Ali cried. “Shoot them!”
Automatically, Dirac sprayed the nearest with his AK-47. He heard the others fire too. Muhammed shot the largest one with the big .50-caliber machine gun. That could cut a man in two.
Dozens of red craters appeared in the black wet suit of the one Dirac shot. But she—a white, brown-haired woman—didn’t go down. Her brows furrowed in anger, and shouting in English, she ripped the gun from his hand and threw it into the ocean. He was like a baby with a rattle taken by his parent. The other zombies did the same, except the big one. He grabbed the barrel of the machine gun in both hands and wrenched it from Muhammed. Dirac could hear the zombie’s flesh sizzle on the hot barrel. Then the big zombie bent the barrel into a right angle. Rubbing his hands together afterward, the burned skin fell on the deck of their boat. Pink skin showed on his palms.
He was enormous, bigger than two Somalis put together. His red eyes looked out of his calm, square face. The bullets from the machine gun had sliced the wet suit open across his chest, and more pink skin showed in the gap. As he watched, brown hair grew.
You Can Go ‘Round the World Excerpt – From London
From Chapter 4 London, the first draft of Paranormal Privateers, we find the paranormal privateers, George, Diane, Lulu, and Sharon, going incognito as undeclared zombies, quite against British law at the time. They’re using bloodhounds and zombie corgis to track down terrorists threatening London. Oh, and they have a truckload of zombie bulls.
Scotland Yard met us the next morning when we docked in the port of London. We divided up into three groups to cover the area. Diane and I took everything between Grosvenor Place and Belgrave Place. Lulu and Sharon took the area from Belgrave to Basil. The Scotland Yard dog handlers Jerry Naismith and Benjamin Buxley took the wedge from Basil to Knightsbridge.
We jogged along, Diane and I. She had picked up the special two-wheel wheelchair, iBot, from Kamen industries office in London and loved tooling along at six miles per hour. Since we were in England maybe I should use the metric equivalent: ten kilometers per hour. I had no trouble keeping up with her, even as a deaf-mute. If people talked to me, I just handed them my deaf-mute card. The dogs, our two corgis, and two bloodhounds, also in service dog vests, loved it.
The Chapter 5 London chapter icon – what could it mean? Click and find out!
Then came a yell over our headsets. It was the Scotland yard crew, Jerry and Ben, both yelling.
“We’ve found them! The terrorists! They’re on the second floor of Harrods, in the tableware section!” said Jerry.
“We can’t get any closer! They’ve got tasers!” said Ben.
You Can Go ‘Round the World
Chapter 9 icon of Paranormal Privateers
After more adventures, the zombie privateers (lead by My Undead Mother-in-law Diane Newby) go to Washington DC.
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You Can Go ‘Round the World – An Author Reading
Here’s another excerpt, read by Yours Truly, Andy Zach. Get Your Free Excerpt is from the beginning of the book, chapter 1.
