THANK YOU

William and I thank all of our readers and supporters for the great showing last week in the debut of our new novel, ATMOSPHERE OF VIOLENCE.  On Thursday, AOV zoomed to 67th on the Amazon.com best seller list for general fiction and thrillers and stayed in the top hundred for the remainder of the week.  So, out of the hundreds of thousands of novels on Amazon, AOV was the 67th most purchased. These numbers are very gratifying to us and we appreciate your support.  Our readership seems to be increasing every week.  Thanks again.   

Life Imitating Art

Novel number two, AT RANDOM, featured the antagonist "El Moro," a white-skinned drug smuggler born in Tampico to a Caucasian merchant marine father and a Mexican mother.  El Moro was invaluable to the cartel because his color and perfect English allowed him to deliver drugs in the U.S. without raising suspicions. Shortly after AT RANDOM was published, drug kingpin "La Barbie" was arrested near Mexico City.  "La Barbie" was a white U.S. citizen born in a Laredo suburb who moved to Mexico and used his white skin and bilingual skills to rocket to the top of one of the principal drug cartels.  Novel number three, THE RIDE ALONG, featured a violent, gun-smuggling Cuban named "Brujo" who used Santa Muerte hexes and rituals to control his ruthless gang in New Orleans.  Today the story broke that four dozen decapitated and dismembered bodies were dumped along a highway south of the Mexican border.  Many of the victims had Santa Muerte tatoos and talismans.  William and I just published novel number 5, ATMOSPHERE OF VIOLENCE, which involves a bloody confrontation between a white supremacist outlaw biker gang and a black Muslim militia trained in warfare at a commune in rural Mississippi.  Be sure to keep an eye on your favorite news sources to see if AOV foreshadows real-life.  Like David Dunne always says, "you never know." 

What Was Cooking In Junior Seau’s Pot?

When I was growing up and word of an unexpected personal tragedy involving relatives, friends, or acquaintances reached my mother, she would sometimes remark that “you never know what’s cooking in someone else’s pot.”  When I learned today of the sudden death of Junior Seau, I mumbled my mother’s saying.  Junior Seau was one of my favorite pro football players.  He was All-Pro every year, and one of the best defensive players of all time.  Junior seemed like a really good guy, too. Everyone seemed to like and respect him.  Now he’s gone, maybe by his own hand.  You’d think that he would have been on top of the world, basking in the respect and fame he earned on the field.  He wasn’t, however, and fell victim to his own personal demons.  Human beings are mysterious creatures.  The person whose success and position you envy may be struggling every day to just to put one foot in front of the other.  You never know.  So, be kind to the people you encounter today.  Each one of them is fighting a tough battle.