The hypocrisy of my prologue.

Have you read my novel Bad Case? Maybe, maybe not.

Bad Case starts with a prologue and anyone who knows me knows that I hate prologues. But I did it anyway, I wrote it after I wrote the first couple chapters and needed that chapter to be there right in front and obvious.

So I thought about it and stared at that word: "Prologue" and stared at it and deleted it and rewrote it and thought about it some more. And decided to keep it. It's actually the thing I struggled with the most in the book, everything else came nice and natural-like.

But I don't like prologues. It's not the contents, I've never not read a prologue, it's really just another chapter, but there's something about a chapter labeled "Prologue" that's always bugged me a little. It's more of an idiotic mental block than anything. Good thing I have friends who feel the same way, or I'd feel like a real jerk. But there I was, sitting on my couch with the laptop and staring and thinking about chapters and prologues and epilogues and thinking and thinking and thinking.

Then I stopped thinking and wrote the damned thing. It's just a chapter with a different name, and it works. I said once I'd never buy a foreign car and I think about that sometimes when I'm in our Honda van with the wife.

So I wrote the prologue and I'm happy with it, satisfied that it's there and won't take it back. Done.

Will I write another one? I have no idea, I let the story take the front seat and pretty much close my eyes and write. So far nothing else I have in progress has a prologue, but they all have a first chapter.

I'm an admitted hypocrite. The guy who hates prologues, writing a prologue. But I take full responsibility for my actions. And it's a good story, I think you'll like it.

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Related Links:
Read Chapter 1 (Not the prologue) of BAD CASE here.
A new face on BAD CASE.
Why would you want to read BAD CASE?
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Buy my books on Amazon for your Kindle:
  

A new face on BAD CASE

So, I got a new cover for The Good Life. I felt it needed one and the new one is much, much better.

Then I finished a novella called Dead Hooker, which will be available by the end of May 2011. Dead Hooker is the next book in The Clark County Series, a violent, cops and guns and bad guys action thriller that leads into the sequel to Bad Case, which should be out next year. (Got at least one book to write before I can jump into that one!)

But the cover for Dead Hooker is awesome. It has a great type style and imagery and is really bold and striking. So, I decided Bad Case needed to follow along.

And guess what? Right here for the first time ever, you get to see the new and improved cover for Bad Case and the cover for Dead Hooker.

 

A new face on The Good Life

Thanks to the beauty and independence of self publishing, I had the cover to my short story The Good Life changed. The idea for the original was all mine but once I saw it up and saw other examples and just the image I had in my head of the story, I thought it was time for a change.

Got to thank J. Simmons for the kick-ass new cover. I really like it. Check the site out for great work and an even better price.

Here's the new cover:

 

I think it definitely puts a better face on the story.

Bad Case - Now on Smashwords!

 

Bad Case is now fully approved and available on Smashwords.

Don't want it on the Kindle? Buy it here, for any device and/or computer.

Read it and enjoy. (And leave a review. Indy authors are nothing without reviews.)

The Cloud-Part 2

The green cloud coming in under the door was faint and fleeting and puffed into small clouds as Mitch heard terrified people running past his apartment door. Hands of people running scared and horrified smacked at his door and voices screamed to be let in and Mitch stood in the center of his room with the TV news on watching the cloud and not knowing what to do. Men and women and children were running and Mitch heard them and he heard other noises that sounded like animal noises and he shuddered every time a body slammed against the door and his blood went cold with fear and he knew he was trapped in his room with green death creeping under his door.

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LINKS:
The Cloud-Part 1
Chapter 1 of BAD CASE. Read it here for free!
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I've written a book. (And a short story.)
 

The Cloud-Part 1

Welcome to The Cloud. This is a short story that I'm going to attempt to tell in short, three-sentence bursts. Will it work? Who the hell knows? Will it be regular? Hopefully. I like to think of it as an organic work in progress. If I can use that excuse, no one can call me lazy.

So, please, read The Cloud. Hope you enjoy it.

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When Mitch woke up that morning he instinctively turned on the news as he passed the television and walked into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker and then back to the living room and flopped down on the couch and sighed. The story about a bomb exploding and a green cloud and the cloud killing everyone for miles and then their corpses rising and feeding and running and killing and other reports of this happening all over the country was the breaking news of the morning. Mitch's blood went cold and he wanted to look out the window but he couldn't take his eyes off the television, then he heard running and screaming in the hall of his apartment building and terror and panic consumed him as he heard monstrous noises from the hall and saw a faint green cloud slowly coming in from under his front door.

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I've written books:
 

Have you read my book?

I wrote a novel called BAD CASE. It's a crime thriller, somewhat of a detective novel, a suspense novel. If I had to compare it to anyone you'd recognize, I'd say it was in the tradition of Robert B. Parker, Elmore Leonard, and James Patterson back when his name was the only names on his covers.

I think I did a good job of keeping the book hot with plenty moving from one chapter to the next. Whoever you are, reading this, hopefully thinking about buying yourself a fun book by a self-published writer, I think you'll enjoy it.

It's got everything you want from a crime novel: a suburban private detective who's practice is failing and he's thinking of shutting down, a hot chick, bad guys, a mysterious silver briefcase, cops, stupid redneck criminals, guns, shooting, and punching.

Like I said, I think you'll like it.

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LINKS:
Read Chapter 1 of BAD CASE here for FREE!
J. Simmons, awesome cover designer of BAD CASE and The Good Life
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BUY MY BOOKS:
 

Book Blurb: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

"Never before have I read a book that I wanted to see as a graphic novel. How good would this book be if Eddie Campbell drew it in the same style as From Hell?"

—Connor Dix, April, 2011

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NOTE:
Feel free to use this quote, credited, in it's entirety in any medium.
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Book Blurb: No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

"I am very afraid of McCarthy's God. I'm afraid of the evil He has let loose in the world and by the greater evil He has unleashed to make a good man afraid."

—Connor Dix, 2011

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NOTE:
Feel free to use this quote, credited, in it's entirety in any medium.
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Man Food Recipe: Wingless Chicken Wings

1. Chicken Tenderloins
2. Olive Oil
3. Chili Powder
4. Garlic Powder
5. Pepper
6. Green Peppers or pepper strips
7. Your favorite wing sauce

1.
Cut the tenderloins (Doesn't matter how many, make what you can eat.) I cut them up into small pieces of around 1 inch square, little bite size things.

2.
Place the chicken in a dish and drizzle with a couple tablespoons of Olive Oil. Mix around so the chicken is covered with the oil. Then you want to take the chili powder and cover the chicken. Do the same with the garlic powder. Add pepper to your tastes. Mix it around and you'll probably want to add more chili powder and garlic. How can you have too much?

This is your marinated chicken. I like to let it sit in the fridge for twenty minutes or so, but it's good if you go ahead and cook it right away, too.

3.
Warm up a pan with oil or cooking spray (I use Food Lion brand cooking spray with olive oil. No fat!)

Once the pan is warmed up turn the stove down to about 7 and put in the chicken.

I usually wait two or three minutes to let the chicken cook up some then add the pepper strips. I like to use the bags of pre-cut frozen strips so I get a good taste of red, green and orange peppers.

Let this concoction cook up for no more than four minutes and flip it over. The pieces of chicken are very small the way I cook it, so cooking this on 7 usually takes less than 10 minutes.

4.
Once it's finished cooking take the delicious-smelling chicken and put it into another dish. (Or do what I do and wash the original dish while it's cooking real quick.)

When placed in the dish, take your favorite wing sauce and sauce to your personal specifications.

5.
Enjoy your Wingless Chicken Wings.

BAD CASE, Chapter 1

1.

John Smith was sitting in his office with his feet up on his cluttered desk when he thought he heard footsteps.

Footsteps were no problem, and no real concern for Smith, who was used to hearing people walk past his office on their way to bigger, better places. There were two dentists, one pediatrician, a gynecologist, a realtor and an Army recruitment office in the building. Most people were on their way to those places and none of them on their merry way to John Smith Investigations.

A few months ago he had given up on the notion that nobody liked him. Now he would sometimes wonder if people even noticed that there was a private detective’s office that they walked by every day.

“Hmpfh,” Smith said to the paper he was reading.

No one in this entire county needs a private dick anymore. Do people even know that private detectives actually exist in the real world? Probably not. I should be spending my retirement on a boat somewhere, not trying to make ends meet by being some stupid detective.

He thought about his chosen profession for a minute. “Mostly, I guess I’m just a dick,” he said to the walls and grinned.

John Smith was living the life right out of what he thought the old fifties crime novels glorified. He had a small office, with a part-time secretary who worked Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. She was a real firecracker, and Smith had yet to meet one single person who liked her. He grinned again when he thought that he was probably going to have to fire her because he didn’t make enough money. Such is the life of a private detective, he thought. To tell the truth, he was kind of hoping she would resist when he fired her so he could shoot her. He figured that would be a lot of fun.

His desk was cluttered with papers, his feet were up on the desk, and the he was looking through was the want ads. The big detective business had pretty much turned out to be a bust, but it had been an interesting two years. He started the business shortly after he retired from the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. He retired at the ripe old age of forty-two, after twenty long years on the force.

There was no way in hell he was going to keep on being a cop, he had never gotten along with the management. Twenty years of having to listen to other people telling him what to do had finally just about driven him crazy. When he put his twenty years in and was eligible for retirement he didn’t hesitate. His wife said he seemed like a happier person.

So he started John Smith Investigations within six months of retiring, thinking that he could still protect and serve a small portion of the public, and maybe make better money. He could be happy solving a case here and there, taking some pictures of some asshole screwing around on his wife, maybe even helping some poor family finding a missing kid. Yeah, he could manage to do that. Hell, maybe he could even help find a lost puppy or two.

It was too bad that no one seemed to need a detective anymore. Everyone just up and ran to the cops, now the cops could handle every damned thing. He made a grunting sound and silently cursed everyone who went to the cops when they could make his life a whole hell of a lot more exciting by coming straight to him. Didn’t they know that he was forced to look for a real job, while they could be helping him while he was a little down on his luck? Good thing he had a good pension from the sheriff’s department.

Good thing he wasn’t bitter.

So there he was, at his desk, looking for a job. Maybe driving a truck, something part time, so he could spend some more time on the boat. He was thinking about how he really wanted the business to succeed, how he needed some money, thinking about how someone really needed to come in that door when he heard those footsteps in the hall.

Probably just someone going to get their teeth cleaned, some poor schmuck who all of a sudden feels the need to join the army.

He went back to his paper and imagined a beautiful, sultry woman walking in and sitting down without saying a word. He imagined her reaching into her purse and flopping a wad of bills – hundreds of course – on his desk. Then she would pull out one of those extra long, thin cigarettes made just for women and light it with a tiny, gold plated lighter. She’d stare him right dead in the eyes as she slowly lit her cigarette, and he’d be in heaven.

What happened instead, the footsteps stopped at his door, which was enough to get his attention up, but not his hopes. It could be someone who was lost. He got that a few times a week, and was frankly sick of it.

When the pretty girl in the blue dress walked in, John Smith almost fell right out of his chair.

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Read BAD CASE on the Kindle or buy it at Smashwords

Book Blurb: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

"A bloody painting of a boy of sixteen in 1940's Mexico, All the Pretty Horses leads you through the landscape and brutality and love and sweat and work with John Grady Cole."

—Connor Dix, 2011

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NOTE:
Feel free to use this quote, credited, in it's entirety in any medium.
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