Thank you. What were you born to do?

Hey you. Yes you. Has anyone told you that you’re a big bottle of awesome sauce today? Well you are. Think about it for a moment. All the serendipity that had to happen to make you. Not just the shit you’ve been through growing up, the stuff you learned, the food you ate and things you skipped. Your life is a happy accident.

How so?

Think about it for just a second. Your parents had to meet, and out of all the other potential suitors in the world they picked each other. Then one night when a mommy and daddy love each other very much and a little bit of grunting you and a million of your brothers and sisters raced to see who could reach an egg first. So you are literally one in a million.

But if you go back even further, not only did your mom and dad have to get together to make you, their mom’s and dad’s had to meet up to make them. More one in a million shots.

Your grandparents had to survive all sorts of crap too. Disease. Malnutrition. Starvation. War. Unless you’re native American, they even had to survive a perilous trip across a dangerous ocean. Keep going back to their parents and their parents.

You don’t have to trace your lineage to the roots of your family tree, but just think about it for a minute. You are the result of generation after generation of survival success stories. Ten thousand years ago two people got together to make the beast with two backs and one of your fore-bearers was created, who then did the same and same, right down the line until ta-da, here you are.

The end result of selective breeding.

You are the best version of genetics that could happen, so you have to wonder if you are living up to the sum of your potential.

I question this all of the time. Am I being the best possible version of me that I can?

The answer is probably not in traffic. But I am aware of the problem and working on my road rage issues.

Sometimes I even write about them, or at least let the story lines play out in my head. Or work it all out on a long run, or hike in the mountains. I look at my three children and know how they got here, the feelings I had for their mother, the irony of them being raised by other men (step-fathers). I think about their make up and personalities, their likes and dislikes and wonder at it all. My son who is lactose intolerant but will end up being four or five inches taller than me. My daughter who won’t top 5’2” but is a brainiac par excellence, or my youngest who is tall and smart and beautiful, with her mother’s temper which makes my road rage look like mild annoyance.

They all won the genetic lottery of being born.

I’ve worked hard to instill in them a realization that they can build the world they want. It’s tough sometimes to fight against all the other influences, so I try to lead by example. Chase dreams. Set huge goals. Be fun and positive and upbeat. Push yourself. Find your limit and extend them. Nothing is impossible.

We live in an amazing world where people skydive from outer space and there will be a colony on Mars in our lifetime. And we’re lucky. We have access to so much knowledge, and so many opportunities that our grandparents and their grandparents did not. Plus it’s all built on top of the genetic make up that got us here. They survived without the internet, and now that we have it, it’s a bonus on top of our potential. The cherry on the sundae of us.

So you are a miracle.

Take a selfie and say it out loud. “I am a miracle.”

To say thank you for being a miracle, do me a solid and go download a free copy of FLASH BANG today on Amazon. It’s a short story I wrote about bad things going on in Syria and the right man sent in to do the job of taking care of it. It’s part of my Shadowboxer series. If you like it, click on the stars and leave a review. Maybe share it with someone so they can download it free too.

And then, keep on being awesome. It’s what you were born to do.

Final Thoughts before a final edit

I was putting together the final touches on an edit, looking over the draft gallies when I stumbled across the last pages of the book. Several pages actually.

I have eight published novels in the Shadowboxer series out in ebook now, with print versions of said same coming out over the next several weeks.

Color me impressed with myself.

I’m allowed you know. It’s not conceited since it really is the result of years of work, laying the foundation for writing, practicing the craft, putting it away and hiding that dream because I needed to be responsible and get a regular normal job in corporate America.

But in September of 2015 I took the plunge and started my own publishing company as an independent author entrepreneur.

In the past year, I’ve written and published those Shadowboxer novels, along with work in the science fiction genre, EPOCH, MOON MEN, SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION and HOLY WAR. I even published 25 books for new writers highlighting everything I’ve learned, experimented and built for marketing and growing my writing career.

Twelve novels in one year, plus short stories, plus how to guides. A total of 72 money earning projects on Amazon.

But it was the SHADOWBOXER series that made me smile. Brill Wingfield came about because I was heavy into reading Brad Thor, Vince Flynn and Florida’s own Randy Wayne White when I first moved to Orlando. On my monthly commutes back to Little Rock there is a small town in Alabama called Brilliant and the green sign for the Interstate exit is paired for another tiny burg called Winfield.

Once while driving at night as the kids snoozed in the back, I passed that sign and it stuck with me. Brilliant Winfield, only I got it as Wingfield after a sportscaster I worked with in television fifteen years ago. As we wound our way down toward Birmingham and across I-20 toward Atlanta, I kept thinking about this character, a retired hitman living in Florida who just wanted to be left alone but kept being pulled back into the game. The oncoming headlights lit up a movie in my mind and the coffee fueled my imagination past Hotlanta and down 75. As the sun popped up somewhere around Gainseville, I had a story mapped in my head, along with some plot elements for other works. I wrote down what I could remember as soon as we got home, then spent the day playing in the pool with the kids at the condo.

That was the genesis of three attempts at the Brill Wingfield novels, along with several others, but as I’ve mentioned before, corporate America beckoned and I served that loveless master for almost a decade.

But when I got fired I knew it was time to dust off the manuscripts and get serious about building a business as an author and publisher.

Brill Wingfield was my first choice for a series.

So far I have eighteen to twenty five stories outlined or in various stages of completion, from 5,000 words up to 20,000. They’re on my publishing schedule to get done and get out there. I want to find the fans of Thor, and Flynn and Matt Hilton and Steve Berry, folks who like a good adventure from a flawed character.

But eight so far in a year.

CONSCRIPTED where I tell the tale of how Brill was made from a seventeen year old wide eyed idealist into a cold blooded killer.

Mission One – Brill Wingfield’s first mission working as a contract killer for Barraque

Flash Bang – Brill crosses the border into Syria to rescue a documentary crew and the daughter of a US Senator captured by rebels

Shadowboxer – Brill is hunted across Mexico by one of the men who taught him how to kill

Decreed – Brill Wingfield wakes up in a hospital after being left for dead and goes into low pay hit jobs in Los Angeles while he hunts for his would be killer

Attache – Brill works with EmBeth Davis in Prague to take down a human trafficking ring connected to the FSB.

Disavowed – Brill is sent into Iran to gather intel on their nuclear capabilities and uncovers a connection to his former employer Barraque

Presumptive Nominee – Brill is hired by a Presidential nominee to find the man blackmailing him and threatening to assassinate him but when Brill uncovers a lead that takes him back to Barraque, he’s the one in the cross-hairs.

Credible Threat – After a bombing in Brussels, Brill is contracted by an alphabet agency to gather intelligence and eliminate the problem, his specialty. But when he links Barraque to the bombings and a plot to reinstate an Ottoman like empire with Turkey, he and Carver are declared public enemy and put on the government’s kill list.

The stories aren’t in order. There are gaps in what happens, but that’s the way memory works sometimes. It’s not always linear. The rest of the adventures will follow over the next year and even as I write this one more has popped up to be told. It could have been a news article about Russian aggression or probably the intro sequence to a James Bond filmed combined with an expose on human trafficking across the US border with Mexico and the sick bastards who buy children for pleasure in the wilds of Texas.

But rest assured, if you like Brill Wingfield he’s going to be around awhile. Just like I hope you are.

Here, I made this…

Here, I made this

I read a blog by Seth Godin about the role some people play in society. They are the makers, the doers the ones who put themselves out there over and over again for judgement and ridicule and sometimes a connection. You might be thinking artist, or a writer like me, but it could be an invention or a product or anything that requires that person make something and release it to the world for judgement.
HAve you ever thought, “I’d like to start a non-profit” or “I’d like to build a house” or “I want to (insert your desire here.)
What stopped you?
What kept you from taking the first step?
Or if you started why did you stop?
Today I’m hosting a book promotion for a science fiction novel I wrote.
You can grab SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION for free and help others find it. If you read it and like it, you can drop a review on Amazon. Thirty words or less.

http://amzn.to/2cXtmyh

Where do you come up with all those insane ideas? Are you crazy?

They put out a warning this week. A cluster of mini quakes has triggered a warning that the big one is on the way. I lived in Los Angeles from 1997 – 2001 and each year that came and went without a quake, the warnings grew more dire. It’s not an “if” its “WHEN” they said. A matter of when. The big one would make Northridge look like a cake walk, and LA isn’t prepared for it. Buildings will tumble, freeways will fall, gas lines will snap and the sparks from fallen power lines will burn the town down. The broken water mains will prevent firefighters from stopping the flames and reporters from AP and social media junkies will capture images of cascading fountains next to a burning building to highlight the futility of second guessing mother nature.

If the quake moves off shore, it could create a tsunami that washes through Venice Beach and Marina Del Rey flooding tens of thousands of residents and forcing them to flee inward. Crumbled freeways and roadways will be impassible and people will roam in giant groups with a mob mentality.

There will be instances of bravery and heroic sacrifices, people banding together to dig small children and puppies from the rubble juxtaposed against the rooting and looting that always occurs when disaster strikes Southern California. Far better to get a new flat screen than save a neighbor. Besides, the electricity will only be out for a couple of weeks.

When I was in LA and pitching to producers, I went through a Science Fiction kick with disaster movies. Hollywood recently put out SAN ANDREAS with the Rock and I thought that was a pretty good depiction of how things might go down.

But it made me remember a story I had in a drawer.

That’s the great thing about having written for so long and just shoving stuff in plastic bins and drawers. I’ve got a huge body of work just waiting to be dug up, polished and released. The platforms finally caught up with me and I wish I hadn’t wasted four years of this in corporate America helping a company grow that ended up laying me off. But you make your choices and you takes your chances. During those four years I still wrote.

I just didn’t publish on Amazon or use the KDP program to its full advantage.

But back to disaster #scifi.

I wrote a script about the #spaceshuttle losing power and hitting the #International Space Station, knocking it into a degrading orbit. But before it crashed into the bay off the coast of LA, creating a tsunami and earthquake word got out and created panic as people tried to escape the basin. There were equal parts DEEP IMPACT in it and I’m not sure if the science was correct, which #geeks can pick on me for using my imagination in thinking the #spacecraft could create that much damage.

I published SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION last week and it got me turned on for some of my sci fi work so I dug the script up and decided to put it on the working list. I literally have work for the next three years if I published one novel every two weeks. Seriously, you should see my Scrivener table in Excel.

The hardest part of the whole process is to not get down on myself for missed opportunities. Like the announcement about the BIG ONE this week. If I had published EVASION prior to now, I could be tapping into that conversation and finding new readers for the work. But I get that a lot. I bet you do too. Have you ever had an idea, but failed to act on it, and then saw a version of your idea somewhere else? You think to yourself or maybe even tell your friends, “Hey, I thought of that.” It happens to me all of the time.

What can you do about it?

Whine? Sure. But that won’t get the job done. The best bet is to be prepared and keep working. Kind of like the folks in LA.

It’s going to happen. Deal with it. Save water. Get easy to prepare food and solar candles. Don’t forget a bucket for a toilet. Have a plan. Follow the plan.

Same thing for writing novels. People are going to have similar ideas. We all watch the same media and get exposed to the same stuff. The key execution and following the plan.

I hope you plan to download SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION. It’s going to be .99 cents starting on Monday. If you sign up at my website, I’ll send you MOON MEN for free and let you know about all my books as they come out.