I grew up reading science fiction, inspired by my father’s love of the genre and my own burning fascination with other planets. I couldn’t wait for commercial space travel (Hello 2001 A Space Oydessy), convenient time travel (even if it required a DeLorean), and, yes, Jetson style flying cars. The future looked good!
As I aged and my tastes matured, I wandered into the darker corners of the speculative fiction world. First contact stories ranged from the benign E.T. to the terrifying Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Artificial intelligence helped the human race (I, Robot) or destroyed it (Terminator movies.)
An odd thing occurred to me this morning. If you live long enough (and I have) you are going to eventually end up living in a science fiction novel. You just don’t get to choose which one.
Ah, it could have been cloning (Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.) Or we could have spontaneously developed telepathy (More Than Human.) It could have been an ecological disaster. (Actually, it still might be.) There were so many options.
Which one did we get?
The global pandemic one. Sheeesh. It would not have been my first choice.
The nice thing about novels is all the boring stuff happens fast or behind the scenes. Most time is taken up by people doing something about the situation. There is a nice story arc, and whether all ends well, or a few key heroes survive, or we all get wiped out — something happens.
The problem with living through the real-life version is that it is incredibly slow and confusing and no one has much faith anything is changing. It’s not nearly as exciting to live in a time of crisis as one would think.
But here we are, each writing our own story every day. It’s no action-packed thriller, that’s for sure, and we have to face the fact that months may get condensed into a single sentence.
“She ate a disgusting number of cookies for dinner each night.”
But there will be an end, because the only thing we can count on is change, even when it is slow and we don’t see it coming.
Get ready for the next book in the series. The possibilities are endless.
(Yes, the title of this post was inspired by “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” and I recommend the novel. It will give you something new to do while you eat those cookies for dinner. You might also want to check out this year’s Nebula-award-winning best novel “A Song for a New Day,” about a culture designed to survive an onslaught of new viruses. It was written just before covid-19 hit.)
Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Glenn Painter and Wired by the FBI, his suspense/thriller based on a true story.
Author’s description:
Christian Romano lives his life as a con-artist, burglar, drug dealer, and a ladies’ man, using his good looks to con wealthy women out of jewels and money. When he is arrested and jailed in one of the most violent jails in the U.S. (Cook County in Chicago), a steamy affair begins with a nympho female jail guard. When he loses control of the romance, Christian must end the affair by reporting her to Internal Affairs. It turns out that she is already under suspicion for supplying drugs to various gang members inside the jail. He has to decide if he is “”rogue”” enough to help set her up for arrest. Meanwhile, the FBI wants to recruit Christian to gather information against a sadist ex-cop, Scott Mason, who has been arrested for murder. The risk? Christian must wear a wire and testify. The reward? Witness protection for Christian and his girlfriend and a modification of his prison sentence. Will Christian risk his life for a chance at freedom? Will the female sheriff “”get even”” with him? Or will his life end at the hands of the jail’s drug lords or a lunatic former cop?
My Review:
In Wired by the FBIthe Author Glenn Painter has written a captivating tale taking the reader into the mind and heart of a notorious criminal. Christian Romano is just bad enough you can’t like him, but he has enough compassion and sense of moral code that you can’t hate him either. You end up watching the story of his life with an obsessed fascination, unsure of what constitutes justice or a happy ending.
What I enjoyed:
Glenn Painter does an excellent job of channeling the thoughts and feelings of a man most of us would be hard-pressed to understand. At its best, this tale provides those little details that make Christian human. His sorrow at his brother dying of aids. His love of Chicago. His bold willingness to take down a sadist, and his inability to comprehend cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Even his honesty about his own opportunism and his inability to resist seduction no matter how much he loves his current flame has something endearing about it. You don’t want to see the system squash him like a bug, because the author makes it clear how human he is.
What I struggled with:
Occasionally, the book seemed as if it was name dropping notorious criminals. Sometimes I got tired of the depressing descriptions of life in jail, and got frustrated with the main characters penchant for finding new trouble, or getting himself back into old trouble. I found the second half of the book more difficult than the first.
As the novel concluded, I realized the biggest problem it faced is that even though it is written like a work of fiction, the author is not writing a suspense thriller. He is giving a slightly fictionalized first person account of a real person’s life. He can’t bend reality into a story arc with redemption and a happy ending. Or with a hero’s tragic demise. Or with a bad guy getting his just desserts. Christian’s reality is far more complex than what we expect from fiction, and Glenn Painter is stuck with how it really happened. It isn’t particularly pretty.
To me, the books’ ending isn’t satisfying and at first I was baffled by why the author would invest so much time and energy into telling this story. Then I read his biography (which appears below) and it made more sense.
“He is an advocate for incarcerated individuals who have had their rights violated.”
Indeed, this is a story of such an individual. By the end of the book the reader knows the many ways a sometimes corrupt and often heartless system abused this man for its own often inconsistent ends. Sometimes, by his own admission, he got treated better than he deserved. More often, his freedom and his life were no more than a tool for law enforcement to use. Justice, fairness and even simple honesty were seldom part of the equation.
Every part of Christian Romano’s life may not be fun to read about, but I agree with the author that such stories need to be told.
About the Author:
Glenn Painter is single and lives in Central Florida. He became interested in writing at an early age but did not make it his career until 2014 when he published his first book, Beyond the Sentence.
Glenn has written this story from the notes by the man who actually lived it. However, extensive research was also require in order to make the story factual.
Glenn has also founded a company, ‘Prisoner Civil Right Services.’ He is an advocate for incarcerated individuals who have had their rights violated. He is in constant contact with these individuals, their families and the council. Most of his stories are inspired by ‘factual events’ that have happened to these individuals. This makes his stories both fiction and non-fiction.
Glenn says that writing is very challenging, and you must love the trials and tribulations that come with it. He believes that patience, perseverance and determination are required essentials to see a book through to being published. The journey is just as important as the destination.
Also, the author will be awarding an additional $100 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn commenter. Please scroll to the bottom of this post to comment. If you don’t see a place to “add your thoughts” then click on the number of comments listed at the end of all the tags to add your own comment and be eligible for this prize.
This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.
A Letter from the Author
Hello Readers!
Welcome to my 15-week book tour which starts on April 14th and concludes on July 30th. This tour was planned before the onset of this terrible covid-19 virus which has invaded our world. I want to extend my deepest sympathy to everyone, especially those who have lost loved ones.
A donation from me will be going out immediately to the charity I have listed below and I will also be donating 25% of any royalties from the book which is featured on this tour, to the covid-19 Response Fund. This fund gives support to preparedness, containment, response and recovery activities. The 25% of royalties will be donated when I receive the final notification of number of books sold. I am also encouraging all authors to make some sort of donation to help with the recovery efforts. WE ARE ALL IN THIS FIGHT TOGETHER!
We all are wondering what the long-term impact this covid-19 virus will be to our communities and our livelihoods, Every American, as well as the companies that have worked very hard for every author have been affected, but I have faith that we will recover from this terrible pandemic if we all stick together and we all do our part – no matter how small.
I will also be donating, (over and above what Goddess/Fish is offering):
$100 Amazon Gift certificate to one randomly drawn commentator
$100 Amazon gift certificate to one randomly drawn host.
These drawings will be done via Rafflecopter that will be created by Goddess/Fish Promotions at the end of the tour. To all of my fellow-authors – please don’t forget our marketing representatives, book agents, reviewers,commentator’s, hosts, etc..who are probably working from home and trying to help us.
I will be posting all pertinent information on my web site www.gapainter.com once the tour is over. The Gift Certificates will be mailed immediately after the tour is completed and the 25% will be posted once I receive royalties resulting in the sale of all electronic and print versions of WIRED By The FBI.
I wish that I could do more, however, with every-one’s support, WE WILL BEAT THIS TERRIBLE SETBACK.
Thank you, god bless all of you and the United States of America.
Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Paul DeBlassie III and his novel, Goddess of the Wild Thing.
Author’s description:
Winner of the Independent Press Award and the NYC Big Book Award for Visionary Fiction!
Eve Sanchez, a scholar of esoteric studies, is driven into unreal dimensions of horror and hope as she encounters a seductive and frightening man, criminal lawyer Sam Shear.
Sam introduces Eve to a supernatural world in which the wicked powers of a surrogate mother’s twisted affection threaten love and life. Struggling to sort through right from wrong, frightened yet determined, Eve nears despair.
Goddess of the Wild Thing reveals the dramatic tale of one woman’s spiritual journey where metaphysical happenings, unexpected turns of fate, and unseen forces impact her ability to love and be loved.
In the magical realm of Aztlan del Sur, a mythopoeic land of hidden horrors and guiding spirits, Eve, with three friends and a wise old woman, is caught in an age-old struggle about love—whether bad love is better than no love— and discovers that love is a wild thing.
My Review
In Goddess of the Wild Thing, Paul DeBlassie III has written a mesmerizing and unusual book.
What I liked best:
His descriptions are captivating, and his language is poetic. There is a repetition to his style that turns his prose into an incantation all its own. Goddess of the Wild Thing may be a book about spells, but a reader feels the author casting his own spell, too. It’s eerie yet effective.
I enjoyed getting to know Eve, the strong female protagonist. (You’ve got to love a woman who is being sucked into quicksand by an evil witch and gives her the finger.) But the most amazing accomplishment in this story is DeBlassie’s thorough and horrifying creation of Sweet Mary. This woman (this creature?) has got to be one of the most frightening villains I’ve encountered. He describes her life, motivations and methods with realism and relentless detail
What I liked least:
There was a little thing and a big thing.
The little thing: The author keeps referring to females as felines, almost as if the words are interchangeable. They aren’t. It’s a minor point, but associating half the human race with a type of animal got more annoying with repetition.
The big thing: Well, sometimes it’s hard to tell the true nature of a book from it’s blurb, and I misjudged this one, guessing it was a sort of metaphysical fantasy (which I love) tinged with romance (which I tolerate.)
It isn’t. This book is a modern, compelling and well-written horror novel. The problem is I don’t like gore and most of the book reminded me why horror simply isn’t my genre. So … there was a fair amount of skimming required for me to get through this. But, just because I don’t enjoy something, doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when it’s well done.
So … do I recommend Goddess of the Wild Thing? I definitely do, to anyone who is not particularly squeamish and to everyone who would enjoy a modern, compelling and well-written horror novel.
About the Author
Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D. is a depth psychologist and award-winning writer living in his native New Mexico. He specializes in treating individuals in emotional and spiritual crisis. His novels, visionary thrillers, delve deep into archetypal realities as they play out dramatically in the lives of everyday people. Memberships include the Author’s Guild, Visionary Fiction Alliance, Depth Psychology Alliance, International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and the International Association for Jungian Studies.
This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.
My Favorite Excerpt:
“Shirley spoke up, “Maybe we just gotta give it up and say there’s no good out there and no damn good men.” Shirley spat on the sidewalk, as she was prone to do when attitudes turned south and a pissed-off mood overrode a physician’s reserve. A petite woman, hovering around five-foot-three, she was a spitfire to friends and foes. Her red hair was a fine match for her spicy temperament. She never hesitated to snap her tongue, making an envious woman or cocky man shrivel and long to crawl into a nearby hole and cry. Shirley lived as a healer and a warrior, a woman who cared tenderly for the hurting and raged viciously at pretense and abuse.
Eve, Shirley, and two other friends, Tanya and Samantha, were plagued by man troubles the way pollution settles in during dusty days and humid nights in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of Aztlan del Sur. They were four esteemed professional women who could have any man they chose. Yet time and again, they went for the lower, the bad, the worst. They sabotaged the good, the permanent. Commitment was a frightening consideration for four women who’d suffered childhoods of parental dysfunctional neglect and split-ups. They often quipped, “We found each other because like finds like.” Tonight, Eve’s troubles were front and center. She’d done it again or at least worried she had. The glitch in the man was in the type she attracted: charmers—striking and untrue. Suffering had begun. Time was critical. To stick it out or get out was her dilemma. Things with a new man had taken a terrifying turn.”
I grew up reading science fiction, inspired by my father’s love of the genre and my own burning fascination with other planets. I couldn’t wait for commercial space travel (Hello 2001 A Space Oydessy), convenient time travel (even if it required a DeLorean), and, yes, Jetson style flying cars. The future looked good!
As I aged and my tastes matured, I wandered into the darker corners of the speculative fiction world. First contact stories ranged from the benign E.T. to the terrifying Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Artificial intelligence helped the human race (I, Robot) or destroyed it (Terminator movies.)
The nice thing about novels is all the boring stuff happens fast or behind the scenes. Most time is taken up by people doing something about the situation. There is a nice story arc, and whether all ends well, or a few key heroes survive, or we all get wiped out — something happens.
(Yes, the title of this post was inspired by “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” and I recommend the novel. It will give you something new to do while you eat those cookies for dinner. You might also want to check out this year’s Nebula-award-winning best novel “A Song for a New Day,” about a culture designed to survive an onslaught of new viruses. It was written just before covid-19 hit.)
Becoming Extraordinary 