American Fiction: Smart, intriguing and excellent acting

There’s actually a lot to unpack from this movie. At times it’s almost a farce on both race and the world of publishing. But it is also about family, which can always bring its share of pathos.

Having made my living writing fiction of almost 35 years, I found the writing and publishing part dead on, albeit a bit over the top. I do think many writers have a streak of self-destruction and anger as Monk, the protagonist, certainly exhibits. Publishing is part of the entertainment business and that certainly makes no sense since entertainment is emotional and business is supposed to be logical. Try being Kirk and Spock in one person and conduct business?

On a deeper level, the examination of race and family ties is really worth pondering. The montage of films for Black History Month was startling. The reactions of the white editor and publicist to a “Black” book was funny and sad.

As a writer one of the hardest types of characters to generate is the one who is self-unaware as Monk clearly is. His brother and others around him try to show him this, even though they have their own faults. The range of emotion goes from tragedy to happiness.

Without giving it away, the ending might be considered a cop-out, but it was undoubtedly a genius move.

Bottom line? Jeffrey Wright deserved the Oscar more than Cillian Murphy who mainly walked around brooding. Wright’s able to convey a lot with a little. In fact, it was a much better picture than Oppenheimer which I found to be quite a yawn if you knew the history.

Highly recommended.

Zone Of Interest: A Review. A Chilling and Powerful Movie

Simple is better. Less is more. Those are two fundamentals I try to stick to when writing. So when I read a book or watch a movie that excels at those mantras I am blown away.

Zone of Interest’s premise is simple and is the simple story of a family. That just happens to live in a house on the outside wall of Auschwitz. And the head of the family is the camp commandant. We never really see inside the camp. There is a constant hum in the air along with smoke rising. There are distant, and not-so-distant shots constantly echoing. The sounds of manufacturing machinery, the crematoria, furnaces, boots, period-accurate gunfire and human sounds of pain are a constant refrain. Yet this family goes on with their life. Fishing. Raising a beautiful garden. Admiring a mink coat that came from . . .

This movie is powerful in a sublime way. How the petty concerns of a family, whose head of household is responsible for so much death and misery, are simply laid out without commentary. The fact that his wife refuses to move after he gets reassigned because she loves her garden so much is stunning.

There are many little pieces in this movie that fit together to show the potential for our ability as humans to ignore pain and suffering so easily when it isn’t us. Even more so when it profits us. 

Definitely recommend this movie.

What About Bob? Lavender’s Blue discounted to .99

“Would it kill you to go home and see your mother?” Well, it very well might in the first book of the Liz Danger series as she returns home to a small town in Ohio.

Get Lavender’s Blue HERE on your favorite eBook platform.

The first book in the bestselling Liz Danger series which came out six months ago is only .99 today as part of a Bookbub deal. It’s the first time the price has been cut so low. For those of you who like my thrillers or science fiction, you might want to try this book; the lead male character is a former Army Ranger who is not a cop. There is enough manly man stuff in there, along with a large dose of snark.

On other front, Shelter From the Storm, the next Will Kane book will be out in March. Area 51: Invasion, which can be read as a standalone, is free. If you ever wondered what would happen if the monsters from our collective subconscious such as Cthulhu, Naga, Kraken, Dragons and more return to invade our planet, this is the book for you.

And coming in June, a first book in a new series, Rocky Start. It’s about a small town in the Smoky Mountains where a bunch of former covert operatives have retired. Think the movie RED or Grosse Pointe Blank.

BTW, I’ve been posting more survival videos on my Youtube channel. Feel free to drop by and take a look and subscribe if you like what you see.

Nothing but good times ahead.

Bob

What A Year That Was And A Year To Be

2023 was one for the record books, although which records are up for debate.

Personally, it was one of adjustment after going from never having had a serious health problem to chest pains/getting a stent put in so I don’t die in late 2022 at Thanksgiving. Which I give thanks for. So. All in all a good thing since I’m typing this. My advice—persistent chest pain, get it checked. I beat a widow maker by 10%. There are so many others who experienced worse so I am grateful.

Scout and I did a Gladiator wander to the Rockies to research my next Will Kane book, and followed the Rio Grande up into the San Juan mountains.

Professionally, I added a major thing, collaborating once more with Jennifer Crusie. We published three books, the Liz Danger series, each book a month apart and were gratified with the reader reception. We had gotten a traditional publishing offer for them but turned it down and are quite happy how they’re doing as indie titles. We did take a traditional audiobook offer and I was looking the other day and surprise, surprise, the preorder audiobooks are live on all three. That was incredibly fast work by Audible. The male/female combination of narrators they hired are great.

2024 will also be full of change because if we’re not changing, our brains are turning into cinder blocks. At least that’s what Sister Mary Ellen at Holy Rosary elementary told us many, many years ago.

Personally, Deb and I are going to move sometime this year finally, sooner rather than later. Where? Who knows? People think it’s neat to be able to live anywhere but then you have to like, make a decision. We’ve lived on an island off the east coast, one off the west coast, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, currently next to the Smokies and several other places. We’re more focused on the house itself than location.

Professionally, the next book in my Will Kane, Green Beret, series will be out in March. Shelter From The Storm. Jenny and I have finished the first book in our next series, Rocky Start, which will be out in June. We’re halfway through the second book, Very Nice Funerals, and plan on having the third, Honey Pot Plot, out in 2024. I’m debating what book to write on my own next, although Area 51 is begging for another one in the series. I’m also thinking about a survival fiction book but I don’t want to do the typical post-apocalyptic stuff because there is more to survival than just breathing. I’ll figure it out.

As usual, I’ve got some good deals to start the New Year off right. The Green Beret Area Study Workbook is free and I highly recommend it. This was a labor of love because I think it fills a critical need. As I noted, change is in the air and climate change, accidents, and various disasters will affect one out of three of you. Do you know what the threats are? The assets? Use the workbook and figure it out. It could save your life.

Also, Life’s Little Black Book, which is full of nuggets of advice is free. I need more reviews on it, but people tend to just read snippets and never get around to reviewing it. Synbat and The Writer’s Toolkit are both discounted.

Scout and Maggie are doing well, although I wouldn’t recommend having two girl dogs. They get into scraps with each other once in a while. They do have personality though. And are excellent guard dogs.

In sum, nothing but good times ahead!

Bob

Leave The World Behind, a review

One of the best movies of the year. Okay, got that out of the way. And the reason for that is I read the NY Times review of it by Alissa Wilkinson before I watched it and it was rather negative. But my wife recommended it, and being a smart man, and a survivalist, I watched it. My wife is always right. Seriously.

Having made my living as a writer for over three decades, I understand how easy it is to poke holes in something if the initial reaction is negative. Which is what the reviewer did. Yes, the movie is very different than the book. In some ways, much better. The ending is certainly more uplifting. Bottom line—there’s a lot packed into every scene and not just the dialogue which can seem a bit didactic at times, but actually isn’t. There’s a lot of imagery in the background that sends a message. A lot. From the name of every place to the labels on the food stacked on the shelves in the survival bunker.

This is not a movie about how to survive the end of the world. It’s about the way people interact.

I’ve written a preparation and survival guide and am a former Green Beret. I know about prepping and survival and I will say this movie touched on the most fundamental aspects of it: the mindset. The ability to face things you don’t want to. To change when needed.

It also touched on what is a very possible way things fall apart: they fall apart.

Given the Obamas were executive producers on this movie adds an extra oomph to the part where Mahersala Ali talks about his rich client and the fact there is no secret cabal actually controlling things—that no one controls things. It mirrors the line from John Le Carre where he says the stunning thing in the covert world is to realize there is no inner room. We live in a precarious civilization made of cards and no one is running it. We’re all running it. I remember one time talking to a guy in another special operations unit and we both were wondering who was in the black helicopters doing all the high speed stuff, then we realized we were the ones in the black helicopters doing the high speed stuff, and if we were it, that’s kind of scary.

And our world as we know it is quite susceptible to falling apart. Here in the United States we are well on our way to falling apart. The most dangerous thing going on are those who willfully spread flat out lies, usually for their own enrichment. We have people who are anti-everything. Anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti-EV, anti-empathy, anti-government, the list goes on. Anger, hate and envy rule. And when that gets strong enough, things will fall apart. People like that don’t build. They destroy.

But, back to the movie. Logically there are fallacies if you stop and think about it. But the thing is, it plays out from the perspective of the people caught up in an event they don’t understand. The lack of information is one of the most debilitating things for modern people. When Ethan Hawke’s character essentially prostrates himself in front of Kevin Bacon telling him that without his cell phone and GPS he is a worthless man, it seems extreme. But there’s a lot of truth to it, but more importantly, it is the only way his character can get through to Kevin Bacon’s character and elicit the slightest bit of empathy and gets what he needs for his son. (BTW, yes, I have a whole section in my book on map reading and why you need paper maps and even a Youtube video about it—along with pretty much everything else covered in the film—and yes, you are probably woefully unprepared for even the most basic disaster).

Frankly, the most unrealistic part of the movie is the core: that a character like Julia Roberts, who opens the movie talking about how much she hates people, admits she hates herself for being like that. And she changes for the better. It is an uplifting message. I wish it were true.

Cover Reveal for Rocky Start

After quite a few proposals and a lot of modifications, we finally have a cover for the first book in our new Jennifer Crusie/Bob Mayer series, Rocky Start. Or as I like to to call it, the new Bob Mayer/Jennifer Crusie series Start Rocky.

While we got finals of the Liz Danger covers relatively quickly, this one took a while. A big issue is that while we list the book primarily in “romantic suspense” it isn’t a neat fit. More like putting a square peg in a round hole or something like that. Yes there is romance, yes there is suspense but in a way it’s a bit more than that. Our books examine male-female perspectives which, surprisingly are not the same. That’s because I do the male POV character in first person and Jenny does the female in first person. And we’re both kind of bonkers.

We write entirely via email, using a program called Spike to keep track of the back and forth. And there’s a lot of back and forth. When we wrote the Liz Danger series, we ended up with well over 600,000 words in Spike.  And that’s just back and forth, not the over 300,000 words that ended up in the three books. So roughly a million words exchanged. Occasionally brilliantly. Often not.

What makes the collaboration work is we each bring different things. I am more a big picture, plot writer and Jenny is more a detail, character-focused writer. While Jenny is known in romance circles my readers have no idea what to expect next from me. I’ve hit bestseller lists in romance with Jenny, science fiction, thriller, historical fiction, and even nonfiction. My mind wanders.

We liken the books in the Rocky Start series to the movies RED or Grosse Pointe Blank.

As far as the cover we started out with more a traditional cover. But we aren’t traditional. It was also suggested not having a gun on the cover as that turns off some romance readers, which I understand, but that ship sailed with the previous series. The gun is representative of my character, Max, a former covert operative while the Rose represents, well, Rose, the heroine.

We are awaiting a cover for the second book in the series, Very Nice Funerals. I suggested a coffin with a flower in it. I do no think my suggestion is being taken. We shall see.

Nothing but good times ahead.

The Pigeon Tunnel: The Premier Writer of Spy Novels Talks

The Pigeon Tunnel is a documentary on John le Carre, whose real name is David Cornwell. As a writer I found it fascinating as his twisted plots with a somewhat cynical edge resonate with me not just because of writing but my own Special Operations background.

The title might seem strange, but it’s critical to understanding not just le Carre, but almost everyone. We all have our own pigeon tunnels.

He burst onto the bestseller scene with his very first novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. As he put it, he’s sort of the antithesis of James Bond. Realistic, gritty and requiring focus and knowledge to read, he wrote the classic spy novels of the Cold War and beyond.

One particular thing that struck me, besides the actual pigeon tunnel story, is his reflection on the “inmost room”. It’s a topic my wife and I have discussed many times. When we wrote Bodyguard of Lies we postulated the existence of a sort of inmost room in the form of the Cellar, an organization that rose beyond petty squabbles and worked for the greater good. Of course, that’s fiction. As le Carre points out, there really isn’t an inmost room and that is quite scary. We’re all kind of mucking our way through, including those we think should actually know what’s going on.

I highly recommend this documentary.

How Yellow Fever Led to JP Morgan and Bellevue and Canal Street

A single event can have strange historical ripples.

In 1702 a yellow fever epidemic wiped out 10% of the population in less than three months. This was five hundred people out of a population of five thousand.


The city attempted to deal with recurrent outbreaks by regulating livestock inside the city limits. They also moved slaughterhouses and leather tan yards to the area around Collect Pond, where Foley’s Square is now.


This didn’t help much as they didn’t understand how it was spread.


Another attempted solution was to quarantine the infected. A farm outside the city limits named Belle Vue was bought in 1798 by the downtown hospital for this reason. It became Bellevue Hospital.


The next year, in 1799, before famously shooting someone in a duel, Aaron Burr received a commission from the city to develop a water supply company which he named the Manhattan Company. It is now better known for its financial arm, the Bank of Manhattan which morphed in JP Morgan Chase.


The company lay some wooden pipe. Unfortunately, their source was Collect Pond which, as noted above, was not a great source of clean water. In fact, in 1803 the pond was so polluted, the city decided to drain it. A canal was dug to the Hudson River. That canal was later backfilled and is now Canal Street. Where Collect Pond was, became Five Points.

This is in New York City Little Black Book.

Why Are Streets So Disorganized in Southern Manhattan?

The streets of Southern Manhattan, including areas like the Financial District and the Village, are seen as disorganized or chaotic compared to the rest of Manhattan due to the way the city was developed historically.

Most of Manhattan is in a grid that easily understandable once you learn the secrets (covered elsewhere in New York City Little Black Book). However, the southern tip is a confusing maze of streets. Why?

New Amsterdam’s population was around 2,000. There was no centralized plan and the city grew organically. On the southern end of the island, many of the original Dutch streets remain and the ones that came after tended to be short and narrow, other than Broadway which had been a main Native American thoroughfare. The rest of the island of Manhattan was mostly meadows, farms, ponds and marshes. Early roads tended to follow the easiest terrain.

Here are a few more reasons:

  1. Historical Development: New York City started as a Dutch colony named New Amsterdam in the early 17th century. It was originally confined to the southern tip of Manhattan. The early streets were designed and grew organically according to the topography and the needs of the time. There was no formal city planning, so the roads took on a winding, irregular pattern.
  2. Topography: The landscape also influenced the city design. Streets were constructed to accommodate hills, valleys, and natural features like streams and ponds. This created a lack of grid-like organization.
  3. The 1811 Commissioners’ Plan: The plan that organized most of Manhattan into a grid system (this grid starts at Houston Street and continues north up to the top of the island) did not include much of southern Manhattan. This was because by the time this plan was implemented, lower Manhattan was already densely populated and developed, making it difficult to impose a grid system.
  4. Land Ownership: When the city was initially developing, properties were often defined by physical features such as streams or hills. Individual landowners would then build paths or roads that best suited their own properties, resulting in irregular patterns.
  5. Historic Preservation: Many of these older streets have been preserved for their historic value, even as the rest of the city around them has modernized and become more uniform. This adds to the charm and uniqueness of southern Manhattan, but also contributes to the perceived disorganization of its streets.

While the streets in lower Manhattan may seem disorganized, they reflect the city’s rich history and evolution over hundreds of years. In fact, many New Yorkers and visitors alike find charm in this part of the city for its departure from the regimented grid system.

Another thing as the city great was the shoreline of Manhattan expanded with landfill. The World Trade Center area was originally part of the Hudson River. A number of bays, especially along the East River, were filled in. Look at how the original New Amsterdam would look if overlaid on the current tip of Manhattan.

Of course, that doesn’t help you if you get lost.

I always enjoyed walking around that part of the city which has a rich history. Early in the morning, the night after my prom (held out in Flushing) we ended up in a small diner just before dawn for breakfast. A waitress who looked like Morticia from the Addams Family served us. She made her way, many years later, into New York Minute, my series set in the city in 1977. Indeed, that whole area and the old High Line and the disintegrating West Side Highway make an appearance.