I just looked on this blog and I realized I hadn't posted since Sept. 21... 2021. Oops. Well, that's embarassing!

So what's been going on in the last year? Particularly on my follow up to Friends in Low Places

• I'm finally making a profit with Friends in Low Places. I'm closing in on 500 copies sold, not bad for an indie novel. They say most first-time self-published novels sell less than 250 copies. It was an effort of dogged persistence, creativity and a growing network of friends that helped get me here. I thank everyone for their support.
• Lose Yourself is an ensemble novel of six separate stories all interweaved over the course of the last  baseball game of the season:  
  • A star who is on a quest to hit .400 for a season while battling some inner demons.
  • A sideline reporter for the MLB Network, who is at a career crossroads while also dealing with a family crisis.
  • A lemonade hawker who needs a big score to fulfill a promise to his daughter.
  • A teenager with a crush who is attending the game with his future stepdad.
  • A longtime usher in his final game before he retires.
  • A mother and daughter saying goodbye to her dying father.
• I'm working through the fourth draft and making the small edits needed to provide greater depth and nuance to each of the characters and their stories. Also working through my agent query list so I can begin shopping the novel in the beginning in 2023.
• I've started the screenplay adaptation of Friends in Low Places. Did you know it's hard to adapt a 300 page book into a 120 page screenplay? Reading Screenplay by Syd Field and Save The Cat by Blake Snyder have been helpful. At the very least, going through this adaptation process has been helpful in "exercising a new muscle" in my novel writing. 

Check out more in the coming months, I promise!

Buy on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/23143/9780358410768
​The Blurb: A handsome stranger. A dead billionaire. A citywide treasure hunt. Tuesday Mooney's life is about to change . . . forevermore. Tuesday Mooney is a loner. She keeps to herself, begrudgingly socializes, and spends much of her time watching old Twin Peaks and X-Files DVDs. But when Vincent Pryce, Boston's most eccentric billionaire, dies--leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe--Tuesday's adventure finally begins.Puzzle-loving Tuesday searches for clue after clue, joined by a ragtag crew: a wisecracking friend, an adoring teen neighbor, and a handsome, cagey young heir. The hunt tests their mettle, and with other teams from around the city also vying for the promised prize--a share of Pryce's immense wealth--they must move quickly. Pryce's clues can't be cracked with sharp wit alone; the searchers must summon the courage to face painful ghosts from their pasts (some more vivid than others) and discover their most guarded desires and dreams.
Thoughts: I liked this book. It was part mystery, part treasure hunt, part paranormal, part family drama. I enjoyed the various characters and how they interacted with one another. I always love a good treasure hunt with seemingly undecipherable clues and how one seemingly benign reference pulls the threat that unspools the entire mystery. However, I do think there were areas where the book could have gone all in... the missing friend from childhood, the family drama between siblings, even the treasure hunt itself, but instead just plays to the surface on some of the subplots. Overall. Enjoyed.

For this edition of the Places of “Friends in Low Places,” we go to one of the islands in the middle of Huntington Lake. This spot plays a key role in the story. Personally, I’ve only been on this island twice, once a couple of years ago. 

Unfortunately, the other time was about 10 years ago in the midst of the tragedy. We watched the recovery of a man's body who had drowned and gone missing just a few days before. We toasted the man that evening, but those images of the Sheriff speeding by in his boat, throwing a tarp over a mass, then taking it away is forever imprinted in my brain. 
​

The Blurb: Jack Reacher is an innocent bystander when he witnesses a woman kidnapped off a Chicago street in broad daylight. In the wrong place at the wrong time, he's kidnapped with her. Chained together, locked in the back of a stifling van, and racing across America to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose, they're at the mercy of a group of men demanding an impossible ransom. Because this mysterious woman is worth more than Reacher ever suspected. Now he has to save them both--from the inside out--or die trying...

Thoughts: Oh I didn't want high brow fiction. I didn't want to think about life and my place in it. I had a long road trip ahead of me and wanted to take my mind off the lonely highway. Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels are the perfect driving companion. They know what they are and do it spectacularly. This is Lee Child's second in the Jack Reacher series so he's not on autopilot yet. The action is crisp, the plot twists carefully planned and the ending satisfying.

Ah, the Lakeshore saloon. I don't know how many times I was in this place on our final night at Huntington Lake. I remember before I was 21 walking by and hearing the raucous sounds pumping out of this wood structure. The first time I actually went inside, the Mike Tyson-Peter McNeely fight was happening... And before we got a beer, it was over. 
There were the nights when my buddies would be looking to meet some women (I had a girlfriend, who later became my wife, so I was the ultimate wingman). We also had nights when we put two tables together and played liars dice all night long.
One time, I was into Long Island Iced Teas and after that night, I am no longer into those drinks. One of my buddies continues to drink White Russians only at this place. 
There are stories about the saddle in the rafters and the thin wall between the men's and women's restrooms, and the various fights we helped break up through pure charm. 
Currently, Lakeshore Resort, including its saloon, is closed. Some say because of Covid, some say the Creek Fire, others say it was sold and they are looking to refurbish. Others say it's unsafe. Who knows? I just hope that eventually it opens again. 

The sights of Friends in Low Places take us to many spots in CA. The first is Hank's Swank Par 3 Golf Course in Fresno. Great memories at the self-subscribed “Blue Collar Country Club.” This fun par 3 golf course near the Fresno airport is where the guys played an annual one-club tournament and began their annual trips.

On my own trips with friends, this was always the first stop. it was a meeting spot before we headed up the hill. It was here I'd greet my friends for the first time in a year,  then buy a round, pull out a seven iron and play a round. The sixth hole is the most deceptive with 2 bunkers to carry and interestingly the eighth hole is one of the shortest and hardest, particularly with a 7 iron.

If you are ever in Fresno, you only need one club and you will have a good time playing Hank's Swank Par 3 Golf Course. https://www.facebook.com/hanks.swank/​