FREE E-Book Week Starts Tomorrow!!!

In the spirit of this weekend’s Dragon Con festivities in downtown Atlanta, we’re giving away the Mako e-book FOR FREE starting Thursday, August 29^th and running through Wednesday, September 4^th.  

To download your copy, simply follow the instructions below and don’t forget to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter!!!

(NOTE: E-books are available for all devices including iPad, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and more!)

1.     Go to the Mako sales page on Smashwords.com and select your desired device/format. 

2.     Add it to your shopping cart

3.     During checkout, enter the Promo Code: EF85Y

That’s it!!!  Now go forth and enjoy — and for those hitting D-Con this weekend, if you happen to spot a bald guy in tigerstripe fatigues and a garnet Florida State football jersey (#16), then by all means… stop by and say hi!!!

Happy Labor Day, everyone, and thanks as always for your continued support of The Mako Saga!!!

RUAH!!!

IJM

‘The night is always darkest before the Con’

Hey folks!  First and foremost, let me start by apologizing for missing last month’s blog.  As it turns out, July proved to be quite the busy month around the Malone house, and honestly it was all I could do to find time for Red Sky Dawning (otherwise known as RSD or Mako: Book 2) much less a blog.  Nevertheless, excuses are like… well, you know the drill.

On the upside, though, next month’s blog will most likely be penned from my ATL-hotel room between panels at DRAGON CON!!!  

RUAAAAHHHHH!!!

Alrighty, and away we go!

The Mako Audiobook continues to rock

I want to give a major shout-out to anyone and everyone who has supported the Mako audiobook.  As I’ve said before, while seeing Mako go live as an ebook was quite the thrill, it paled in comparison for me personally to that of the audiobook.  As someone who has been legally blind since the first grade, audio has been, and always will be, my medium—now more than ever in the age of mp3 players and smartphones where one can quite literally carry a library in his or her pocket.  Thus, it goes without saying that seeing my little contribution to the sci-fi community perform as well as it has on Audible, iTunes, Amazon, etc. has been pretty awesome.

Seriously gang, thanks for that.

Summer movie surprise

Hats off to Director Extraordinaire Guillermo del Toro for delivering what was—for my money—the best surprise of the 2013 Summer Movie Season: Pacific Rim.  As I told my cover designer in a recent email, It's ginormous sci-fi fun with an interesting take on the classic monster movie premise, but with all the heart, humor, and quirky charm of del Toro movies like Hellboy.  Plus, as Sons of Anarchy fan will attest, having Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman on the same cast is just never a bad thing.

Listen, did I enjoy Man of Steel?  Absolutely (see my June blog post).  The Wolverine?  Yep, possibly the best X-Men movie since X2.  Oblivion, World War Z, Iron Man 3,  Star Trek: Into Darkn— 

**coughs and gags profusely**

Sorry guys.  The old-school Treker in me just can’t abide the last one, but it’s whatever.

Anyway, the point is there were lots of great movies this summer, but as has been pointed out on a myriad blogs, commentaries, editorials, and social media feeds, the vast majority of them are sequels and or reboots.  Rim offered something fresh and exciting, with new characters and a new universe, that audiences could sit back in their theater-chairs, drenched in popcorn butter and Diet Coke, to be dazzled by.

For the record, del Toro was the only guy in filmmaking who could’ve pulled this off, too.  Anyone else would’ve spiked it straight in the jock strap, but GDT understands this brand of entertainment.  It’s not a franchise like Transformers or Marvel, nor is it a political statement like District 9 or the aforementioned Into Darkness.  It’s just good, old-fashioned, fanboy fun on a scale that’s often botched and rarely seen well in today’s movie marketplace.

As summer movie season ends, Con season begins

As noted earlier, Atlanta’s Dragon Con is right around the corner on Labor Day weekend, and Smalls (my wife) and I are stoked!  To date, we’re up to two cosplay themes for the weekend: Mako, of course, and Chuck, one of our all-time favorite TV shows.  So, if you happen to spot a bald head in tigerstripe camo and a garnet FSU football jersey floating through the crowd near the Sheraton… well, know that’s probably me, so do stop by and say hi. 

Besides, one never knows what kind of swag the author might have in his pack.  Just sayin’!  ;)

After that, it’s back home to the Triangle where the good folks at The Escapist Magazine will be hosting their annual Escapist Expo in downtown Durham Oct. 4-6.

Okay guy, that’s it for now.  I’m off to wrap another chapter of RSD and get some odds and ends done around the house before the fam gets here for a cookout this afternoon.  As always, thanks for checking in, stay tuned to my Facebook and Twitter feeds for pics from Dragon Con this Labor Day, and talk soon. 

RUAH!!!

IJM

PS- Had time to check out Stephen King’s Joyland while on the road last month… a good read for those who like King, but don’t want an 1100-page marathon like Under the Dome.

'Blog of Steel'

Greetings and salutations, gang!  I do hope your summer is rolling along swimmingly… you know, with the swimming!  ;)

As is typically the case this time of year, the Malone household is quite abuzz with activity.  Cookouts, pool parties, church stuff, summer movie season… pretty much anything is fair game right now for entertainment.  We shall begin this month’s edition of the Manifesto, however, with the latter. 

Man of Steel

As a lifelong nerd and child of the 80s, I was practically raised on Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie and Superman II.  Truth be told, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve uttered the phrase, “kneel before Zod,” it’s probable Id’ have jettisoned my day-job years ago in favor of full-time novelizing on a beach.  Alas, a guy can dream, right?

In the years since Sups II, we’ve waited long and hard for this character to rise from the ashes of “Nuclear Man” (to this day, I still want to punch that dork in his loin cloth) and return to the prominence he deserves as the undisputed King Daddy of the superhero-verse.  To his credit, I thought Bryan Singer (X-Men/X2) made a fair go of it with 2006’s Superman Returns.  But, most agree that, wonderfully nostalgic as it was, SR was still little more than a Donner knockoff.  

… and then, this dude named Christopher Nolan came along and forever changed the landscape of DC movies with a little film called Batman Begins, a triumph of cinematic storytelling which was only eclipsed by Nolan’s magnum opus, The Dark Knight.

Now fast-forward to 2013, and here we are yet again—wanting once more to believe “that a man can fly.”  Well folks, I’ve got news for you: Sups does a helluva lot more than that in Man of Steel… 

The script that writer David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) has crafted, combined with the stunning visuals of director Zack Snyder (300/Watchmen), makes for a Superman origin story unlike anything you’ve seen before with regard to depth.  Rather than sounding the trumpets as our beloved hero flies in to save the day, this story seeks to answer the question “what would it do to a person to grow up being THAT different from EVERYONE else?”  It was a major gamble on the part of Warner Brothers, the likes of which can kill a tent-pole franchise if it fails (see the stink bomb that was Star Trek: Into Darkness).  But it paid off, and Superman as a character is all the better for it.

Listen, MOS isn’t a perfect film.  Great as it is, the plot does have a few holes, it drags in places, and the size of some of the action sequences teeters on excessive.  But for die-hard Sups fans like myself who have waited years to see our favorite “Big Blue Boy Scout” return to glory, this was the movie we needed.  

Great story, phenomenal cast (led by Henry Cavil), and fantastic direction.  That, friends… is my take on Man of Steel.  

Red Sky Dawning update

The second book in the Mako saga took a pretty major step forward this week in that, despite my already being a third of the way through the first draft, I still had no real clue how to open the story.  I got so many compliments on the prologue from Mako, and trying to replicate that was driving me nuts!

As always, though, the writing process has a funny way of working these things out when and if stubborn, impatient, pig-headed, Type-A authors like me will just shut up and let it.  It happened before with Jon Reiser’s log entry in Mako, and thankfully, it’s happened again here with RSD. 

“So what is it, already?” you ask…  

Well, let’s just say that part of the fun of writing a series is that you get to climb back into your old sandbox and start fleshing out certain aspects of the story that only warranted a brushstroke before—only now they get to explode into pivotal portions of the saga mythology.

Too cryptic?  Go back and re-read Chapter 16 of Mako… that’s all I’ll say for now.  ;)

Parting Shots…

Ever since the Star Wars Episode VII news starting flying across the net, I’ve really had an itch to delve back into the expanded universe. That continued last week with Darth Plagueis from James Luceno (Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader).  In essence, this is the story of Palpatine’s rise to power among the Sith, a tale which parallels the rise and fall of the Muun who mastered him, Darth Plagueis.  I’m about halfway through it now, but so far it’s classic Luceno… very dark, very political, and very much the story of an anti-hero.

Translation: I dig the bejeezus out of it!

Okay folks, that’s gonna do it for this edition.  Enjoy your weekend, have a wonderful Fourth of July, and catch ya next month!!!

RUAH!!!

IJM

PS- For those of you who wanted to give my book a read but weren’t sure you wanted to shell out the $5, you’ll be happy to hear that my good friends at the World Literary Café have honored me by making Mako the book of the week via their “Free E-book Friday” promotion.  That’ll drop next week (Friday, June 28), so stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter the day of for the coupon code.