My New Book

My New Book

The Back Nine

By

C. Neuroticus Absolutus

Wow! I’ve done it again. Published another book on Amazon.com. The Back Nine is a sequel to Kill Me Once Again and features the main characters from Kill Me Once Again. When you spend a year writing a book, the characters become your best friends, or enemies. But you should have killed off the enemies if you really didn’t like them—unless you’re Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and your favorite bad guy is the über-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, the Professor Moriarty.

It takes a lot of time to create a character, to put a grin or a scowl on his/her face. It takes a lot of time and love to describe the sweetness of your female character’s personality, or conversely her bitchiness and the coarse physicality of her emotions. You didn’t give birth to your protagonist just to make him a dull everyman wannabe. No, you made him physically strong, mentally sharp, with an indomitable spirit.

You can’t just dump these characters into some array of bits and bytes on a flash drive where they’ll never see the light of day again. They still have enough life in them for another performance, another peek from loyal fans worldwide (I’m certain), to bring another tear or smile into their lives.

You see, a sequel is really born from the author’s inability to say goodbye to characters from his past—characters that are still alive and well in his brain and fingertips as a few loving keystrokes brings them to life once again.

So it is with The Back Nine. I couldn’t say good-bye to Major Scott Wilson, Detective Bubba Rogers, Director of the FBI Computer Operations Center Walter Ellis, motherly Mary O’Donnell and the vivacious Dr. Sunny Baker and I hope you agree and join me in unravelling the mystery in the thriller The Back Nine.

See ya in Myrtle Beach.

Book Review

Of

First Time Killer

By Alan S. Orloff

Reviewed by Wayne L. White

Sneaky. Deceitful. Lying first time killer is only a first-time killer the first time. But the psycho bastard keeps on killing and killing. If you're a fan of talk radio and hinky horror stories, step into the studio at WTLK syndicated talk radio with Rick Jennings, silver-tongued slick talker who controls the mayhem on the Afternoon Circus with a dubious balance between his quiet manners and the dump switch. Nice guy. Red-blooded American. Justice, baseball and apple pie, drove my Chevy to the levy kind of decent radio show jock. The kind of guy you'd give your chaste daughter a thumbs up to date. Trustful. Intelligent. You know damn well he'll have your daughter back before midnight with not as hair on her head out of place. However, he is a bit more mature than that. A satellite radio show is in the works for WTLK, it's full cast of engineers, producers and station masters, and most of all―it's full complement of shock-jocks, if―IF― they can get their ratings up and keep them up, they'll all share in the multimillion dollar bonanza.

First time killer gives them exactly what they need to keep their listeners Krazy Glued to their sets. As a first-time caller to the Afternoon Circus, he directs Rick to a garbage can where, while on the air, they find a severed human arm. Dump switch! Radio call-in kooks come and go like flies on watermelon, but no one has ever talked to a killer on an open mic. The show is a sensation and Ricks producer insists that they milk the killer thread for every scintilla of ratings possible. Rick disagrees, especially after one of WTLK's shock jocks turns up dead after ripping First Time a new one on syndicated air to 42 cities. We're inciting him to murder, Rick says. We're giving him the audience the psycho bastard needs to fulfill whatever sick fantasies he has.

But the ratings go up and Rick battles with his conscience and the show's producer. The police enter the mix hoping to shut the show down, First Amendment rights be damned.

Put on your earphones, ear buds. whatever you've got and tune in to Afternoon Circus and Alan Orloff's quick wit and grasp of the technicalities of talk radio broadcasting. Be forewarned as the cast of Orloff's brilliantly conceived characters leap from the page to gnaw on your patience and sense of humor. You'll scream and beg Orloff to expose the heinous killer long before he does. By the way, Alan's a damned good writer, too. Get your copy of First Time Killer before he loses it and gives them all away.

Book Review

Mad Max: Unintended Consequences

By

Betsy Ashton

Reviewed by Wayne L. White

Betsy Ashton's first novel portends well for her budding career as an author. From the start, Ms. Ashton engages the reader in the upper-class New York Sac's Fifth Avenue world of grandmothers who take pleasure in their station in life and the money that supports their material desires. But life has another role for Maxine Davies. An automobile accident puts her daughter Merry in the hospital with serious injuries and Max rushes to Richmond, Virginia and her daughter's bedside where she takes over her daughter's role in raising her two grandchildren, Emilie and Alex. A son-in-law whose work keeps him away from home for protracted periods complicates matters and Max immediately finds herself the sole caretaker of her precocious grandchildren―not so demanding, but ties Max to Richmond while she yearns for her friends and the concrete canyons of New York.

When Merry is finally released from the hospital, she is mentally incapable of tending to the needs of her children, leaving it all to Max who clearly states that she's done enough child raising for one lifetime. Meanwhile, Merry has developed a relationship with a plastic surgeon who has a mesmerizing hold on his patient and has taken control of Merry's life and decisions.

The delicious plot thickens at this point and I won't be a spoiler. But as I mentioned to Betsy, “My Kindle is about to explode. Someone is going to die!” Max and her grandchildren suddenly become the hunted and the hunters. You won't put it down, so don't plan to read it to calm your mind before sleep.

From a population of well-developed characters to the scenic background of New York and Richmond to the world of grandchildren with special abilities, Ms. Ashton adorns each passage with page-turning urgency. Mad Max: Unintended Consequences not only satisfies, but leaves the reader impatiently waiting for the next chapter in the life of five-star Mad Max.