2-13-15
BOOK
SIGNING 4:00 SUNDAY FEBRUARY 15th
AT BOOK
PASSAGE CORTE MADERA, CALIFORNIA –
SEE YOU THERE!
Another
Great Review!
What can I say? It is
these kinds of reviews that make you know you are onto something. All the
hours, rewrites, and editing are worthwhile when you get a review like this:
Diamonds For Death
"The
gun fired with a concussive snap. The bullet clipped the right shoulder of the
woman before shattering the driver's side window; she screamed and let her foot
off the brake."
Most baseball fans in North America consider
the sport to be an exciting pastime but little more than that. Even
professional ball players tend to see it, at most, as a challenging and
rewarding career. Yet for many young players in third world countries the game
is a dangling golden ticket, a chance to escape poverty and carve out for
themselves a new future if they can only be lucky enough and skilled enough to
grab it. Toro Rodriguez, a Cuban slugger who is also an expert fielder, is one
of the few fortunate ones to make it big in the major leagues, but the price he
pays for his success and freedom is a missing family sequestered somewhere in
his native country by a government that wants him back.
In this fast-paced fifth installment in his
Sharon O'Mara mystery-thriller series, Randall combines the world of
international baseball with political repression, diamond smuggling, and
murder. O'Mara, a tough veteran of the Iraqi War and successful problem solver,
is asked to go on a search-and-rescue mission to Cuba to retrieve Rodriquez's
family. Meanwhile, her pal Kevin Bryan finds himself embroiled in helping stop
a diamonds for guns operation that stretches from the Caribbean to Europe and
then down into Africa. Both Sharon and Kevin will need all of their skills and
wits to survive in separate assignments that are actually very much
intertwined.
Randall exhibits all of the tools of a
top-notch thriller writer. However, unlike many authors in the field he opts
for more realistic action than the overblown variety. Expertly employing the
techniques of backstory, character development, believable dialogue, and rising
suspense, he has crafted a story that can stand toe-to-toe with some of the
best examples in the genre out there.
Reviewed by John E. Roper – The US Review of
Books
Didn’t I tell you? Makes one blush.
If there is one thing I’ve
learned is that you can never stop learning, and to have a thick skin when it
comes to publisher’s rejections helps. Let me say up front I am a committed
practitioner of the art of self-publishing. But every once in a while it’s fun
to wonder what might happen if I were to suddenly be accepted in the real world
of traditional publishing (ah the horrors). I sent on my latest manuscript,
that is literally only weeks away from publishing, to one of the crime
publishing houses (dozens have popped up during the last five years) to see
what might happen. Of course it was rejected. Not necessarily because of the
story but because of some issues (in their minds) over the writing style. If you want to start an argument among
writers criticize their styles. Then stand back.
But what the rejection did
do was to give me a review (sort of) of the opening of the book, from this I
crashed through another edit and the book is much better for it. So thanks Lee.
More later . . . . . . . .
. .
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