Ghosts of the Mid-Country – Crime thriller is out now, buy it, tell your friends

Loyal readers of this blog, thank you. Thank you for reading and sharing it.  Our numbers are way up this year since my hiatus to write my new novel is over.  And now the novel has dropped.  It’s available on Amazon and through the publisher, SNR Creative. 

It’s a crime thriller that follows parallel stories that weave together in the end.   

There are four dead bodies in a mechanic shop in southwest Houston, one witness who is shot in the back with a wild tale of witnessing the killer, a MS-13 gangster.  The police don’t believe him. The gangsters hunt him.  A drug and bullet trafficker works his way up and down the middle of the continent, leaving bodies in his wake until his blood-lust removes the protection of the cartels he serves and the revenge abduction of children trafficked sets off a wild manhunt across.  A young attorney wakes up in jail with no recollection of how he got there or the waste his life has become. He seeks redemption in a death-penalty appeal of John Doddy, the Train Car Killer who begins to talk, giving up the secret tale of his life that draws all the violence in a fulcrum around him until it meets its end.

Ghosts of the Mid-Country is the sequel to Devils Walk Through Galveston, and continues the story with beloved and reviled characters, answering its questions and delivering on its promise.  It has two five star reviews on Amazon already.  Two weeks ago, I gave a teaser from the beginning of the story.  Here is one from the middle. 

43.  Churning

Six a.m. and Western South Dakota was quiet.  The call came in to Houston and he recognized the number.  He answered without introduction, which was his custom, “You’re two days late reporting.”

“It was a long ride back.  We didn’t stop anywhere I could call.”

“From Chicago to the Black Hills, there was nowhere to call?”

“I’ve got less than five minutes.  You want to talk about my schedule?”

“Did the bullets get to the Mara kid?”

“No.  He got double crossed back. The bullets went to the original guy.  The bald buy. Nobody says his name.”

“The guy who comes in like a ghost.”

“And who goes out like one.”

“How’d it go down?”

“Red made a call and told him the offer that was being made. He matched the price and paid some extra if the kid was thrown in.”

“Thrown in?”

“Kid’s gone. Kid went with the ghost.  You have a better idea where the kid is than I do.  I doubt he ends up back in Texas.”

“Where are the bullets?”

“They got on a train going south.”

“You get the train number?’

He gave it up.  The DEA agent in Houston wrote it down quick as he could and heard something stir in the background.  Heard before the guy did and said, “Out” and was off.

He was on his computer tracking one car on Union Pacific, trying to see if he could find out where it was, where it would go. Trying to see if they could intercept it, or track it or see who picked it up.  They’d tried to engineer a double cross and found out where loyalties lay.  Found out part of what they wanted to.

§§

The boxcar was hot, even with the wind whistling through the slats.  It was at speed and locked from the inside with the jerry-rigged hasp he put on to make sure no one got in while he was inside.  He needed the lock to sleep.  He needed the safety of it now that he was alone on this trip and had to let his guard down for three hours. 

Judas slid into the slot a foot wide between the pallet and the boxcar wall and laid down, resting his head on his arm and let himself go into nothingness for three hours.  Three hours of the sleep of the dead and he wouldn’t need any more for two days.  He could wake and sit in half sleep until they stopped at a yard or stopped for a temporary break for track maintenance.  Trains now moving on half the track they did when they deregulated.  More track coming on line every year since 2009 when the oil fields in the Bakken opened with those in the Eagle Ford and the oil had to get out.  Those harder to use for his purposes.  Those mostly made up of tanker cars coming out.  Some box cars coming in, none out.  All the space and fuel reserved for oil. For hundreds of thousands of barrels every day that had to find a market.  So he was still relegated to the lesser dry freight track but it served his purposes   He knew the guys in the yards and had coopted with drugs or money or fear or all of each. He needed a tiny bit of space and time on millions of miles of track, on millions of miles of train cars snaking all over the country, every once in a while, north to south.  And here he was. 

Here he was three hours later groggy, trying to make out the geography, the topography all the same: flat. There was the must of the water roiling nearby.  He stood up and peered out and by the twilight saw the bluffs across from New Madrid, new he’d be coming into Cairo soon.  Knew there’d be a stop here or across in Paducah.  Usually a problem with the tracks around here. Usually a break for a couple of hours and he had an itch. He had an itch that needed a scratch.  Hadn’t had the itch in a couple of months and it itched bad.  He’d find someone to scratch it.

§§

A lion in a zoo will take raw meat thrown into his pen and eat it. He’ll taste the blood.  He’ll remember he likes it and eat it silently and it’ll fill his belly.  It won’t fill his lust to hunt. 

He could taste the blood lust in the back of his throat, the iron on his tongue. 

Ghosts of the Mid-Country – New Book About to Drop, Pre-Order It

This blog post is a call to action made directly to you, loyal readers.  This is not tangential, though funny, information placed in your general direction, so you can snark at Taco-Drunk Florida-Man, make appropriate plans to hide your beer from rampaging feral hogs, and know to avoid bootleg butt-injections with fix-a-flat (seriously, don’t do that). 

No, this is a direct, though possibly delayed depending on how you choose to order, call to action.

Proof copy above  - your book will be available for resale

My new novel, Ghosts of the Mid-Country is coming out in about a week and a half.  On June 1, it will drop.  It will not drop on Memorial Day weekend because you will be eating far too much barbecue to read a thrilling murder mystery, drug and human-trafficking caper, with a side of serious (un)requited love story thrown in, just to even things out and push the story along.

Some of you know – though not enough based on the Amazon statistics of books sold recently – that my first novel, Devils Walk Through Galveston, is a page-turning crime-law novel that follows schizophrenic murderer from Mississippi, down to the Texas coast where the city of Houston is in an uproar over unsolved murders being linked to one man. It’s the story of the cops who hunt the killer in an atmosphere where ends justify means, until it gets in front of a jury and the means are examined under a microscope by attorneys with their own motives and side-deals that break down in the heat of battle.  It’s a page turner. Everyone who reads it loves it – all five-star reviews.  Buy it here on Amazon.

And turn some pages because Ghosts of the Mid-Country is the sequel. It stands on its own. But it stands even better, Rocky II style, on the shoulders of the first novel.  In Ghosts of the Mid-Country, an overworked attorney wakes up in jail with amnesia brought on by job stress and his marriage falling apart. At the same time, there is a quadruple murder in Southwest Houston with one witness that no one believes.  The police, searching for the murderer or murderers uncover links in an international drug and human trafficking ring operating on both sides of the border and up into the heart of the country, circling around the fulcrum of Houston.  It is the story of an unlikely hero, pushed to the brink and set up as bait to draw the evil closer to those trying to stop it.  It answers the questions of Devils Walk Through Galveston.  You’ll love it. A teaser is below.

You have less than two weeks to read Devils Walk Through Galveston to get ready.  If mass amounts of barbecue and beer are not in your immediate future, you have time.  If you are going to get bloated on sweet, salty brisket and Bud Light next weekend, then pre-order Ghosts of the Mid-Country from the publisher, SNR Publishing, division of SNR Creative: http://www.snr-creative.com/snr-publishing/. Or put it on your calendar to order from Amazon June 1.  Anyone who orders from SNR Publishing, and wants it, will get a signed copy, just ask when you email them.  Anyone who orders from Amazon and gets me the physical book (by sending it to SNR Creative), I’ll sign and send back at my cost.

Here’s your teaser: Ghosts of the Mid-Country, Ch 3.

Houston, two weeks before, seven a.m.

A warm morning in Southwest Houston. Early fall and the temperature was in the sixties, summer finally calming down. Windows down on Fondren Street. A few mothers in yards idly glancing over at children playing in the grass in the early morning, watching to make sure they didn’t get near the sidewalk. The street a mix of businesses and homes. Massage parlor brothels and transmission shops. The neighborhood a mix of Latin and Southeast Asian. Tricked out Hondas and low- riding Impalas sleeping off the night before.

The metal roll-top door to Taitz Body Shop was down. The business was set to open in half an hour. Four cars in the parking spots to the side, the chain across the driveway still closed. Music played inside. The muffled beats crept out through the one open window of the office. Traffic picking up at Laredo Taqueria down the street. People were walking and stumbling into the line that stretched outside. Four uniformed policemen waited patiently for their turn. They ignored the stink of last night’s weed on the plaid cotton shirts and torn jeans of the laborers getting breakfast before walking down to the empty lot to wait for a day’s work.

Four muffled shots came from the garage. Deafened by the distance. High pitched, low caliber. They sounded like a hammer hitting metal. Hammers hit metal at the body shop all the time. No one on the street stirred. No one in the taco line moved.

The garage door raised up a foot and slammed down. Two more shots. A little fat man rolled out bleeding from a shot to the back of his shoulder. He got up and ran, staggering, off balance, to the taqueria, collapsing in front of a pick-up screeching its brakes an inch from his leg. The police ran to him, turned him on his back. One asked, “Where?” He pointed at the garage down the street. Three ran toward it. One stayed behind, radioed in an ambulance. The laborers in line moved away slowly. Walked down the street. Trying to disappear from the onrush that would come.

Right to Remain Silent, But Not the Ability

It is a hallmark of Anglo/American Law that a person accused of a crime has the right to remain silent.  It is a hallmark of Anglo/American criminal law that very few of the accused have the ability to remain silent. 

In England, all you have to do is shut your mouth.  In America, you can go with option A, shutting your mouth, or you can choose option B and go all Dave Chapelle and say any of fifty ways, “I plead the fifth.”  

It sounds awesome for the common man.  It is awesome for the common man.  Why, do you think that The Man would allow this to happen, to make it difficult on himself to convict criminals? There was the nasty history of torturing suspects to get supposed confessions, and other overzealous police practices. 

Potentially overzealous police

I don’t think that’s why The Man allowed the right to remain silent.  It’s because the vast majority of people have no ability to remain silent.  It damn near never happens. Accused criminals find all kinds of ways to vomit up the truth to the police within about ten seconds of the police pulling up and asking why they pulled you over.  

Think I made that up? I didn’t. It happens time and again, with a couple of recent examples. The Sun, world’s greatest news source, reports on Barry Hodge, who was driving his work van when he was pulled over by officers. Could Barry keep it together like Jay Z?  No, he couldn’t he was sweating and shaking and vomited out the truth, that he had a £700 stash of cocaine in a Kinder Egg shell before telling police he had more in his house.  Hodge told the stunned officers: “I just want to be honest I’ve got another two ounce of prop in the house and loads of benzo. You can just go round and get it.”

This kid is not gangster, not at all.

Snake Charmer Not Charming Enough

There is sad news coming out of Malaysia, where a famed snake charmer apparently wasn’t charming enough and got bitten by a cobra.   This would not normally be news, as cobras are endemic to Malaysia and people get bitten by them all the damn time, which really sucks for Malaysians.  

Not an actual ad for Coca-Cola

And this was no normal snake charmer sitting around with a lute and trying to coax the snake back into a basket with Kenny G level slow jams to calm the snake down. That dude could put me to sleep in about ten seconds with his syrupy versions of jazz classics that were as big an affront to music history as was his haircut.  Let’s reflect on that a moment:  what is worse, Kenny G’s rendition of John Coltrane classics (CLICK HERE FOR THE HORROR) , or that haircut. 

What's breathless is me seeing that haircut

No, this cobra murdered the snake whisperer worse than Kenny G murdered John Coltrane’s “In a sentimental mood.”  Here's the real one.   For God’s sake, don’t listen to the Kenny G version ever again after hearing this.

No, Abu Zarin Hussin (pictured above with a real cobra and coke) wasn’t doing this for fun, like the jackass in Florida who imported a king cobra, then let it get on the loose.  

These were natural born cobras that terrorize Malaysia.  Abu Zarin Hussain headed the King Cobra Squad of the fire department. That’s right. They have a King Cobra Squad to deal with actual cobras.  You would think that the State of Florida would have tried to coax him on a sweet free agent contract to deal with all the cobras running around that state.    But they didn’t, and he was still in Malaysia dealing with Cobras every day.  Accordingto the New York Post, he trained other “smoke eaters” to catch the cobras without killing them, where apparently he would let them go, so they could wreak havoc again. 

Instead of delivering a crane kick to the face, which is how everyone knows you deal with the Cobra Kai, as well as ordinary cobras, he tried to talk sweetly to it. 

Cobra about to get a crane-kick to the face

And it bit him in the grill.  That’s cold blooded, because cobras are actually cold blooded creatures, and damn mean.  So, unless you have got Kenny G levels of sweet syrupy, soul-less clarinet, or can deliver a swift crane kick to the face, stay the f*ck away from cobras. 

Radioactive Hogs Take Over Northern Japan - Seek Tribute Paid in Beer

Dear readers of this once-thriving blog, I have been absent for a long while.  I have been writing and editing my second novel, Ghosts of the Mid-Country, which comes out in May.  Read it, for real, when it comes out.  

I have been remiss in not notifying you of the various scourges that wage war on our beloved lands.  The clowns have come and gone – thank God – now that the remake of IT is out of the theaters and into the that deep recess of our collective terror.  Florida does what Florida does and becomes ever more Florida by the passing day – too many Florida things to recount. 

But, the one scourge that will not go away is back on the loose.  It has been hiding in the deep woods, looking for tasty pecans, and for tastier beer.  Not content to let us keep the delicious nectar of the gods for ourselves.  That’s right, the drunken feral hogs are back!!   And they are growing.

CCTV footage in Hong Kong has spotted a giant feral hog who is tall enough to get into dumpsters on its own.

 

They call it Pig-zilla.  It’s farking huge.  Distant cousin of its fallen brethren Hogzilla from Georgia who was taken out before his time.  We thought he was just some relic of the deep woods. And we knew the scourge of the Fukushima Diachi power plant disaster in Japan. And we know what happens when radioactivity hits an otherwise ornery creature. It creates hogzillas for real.  One year ago, it was reported that hundreds of radioactive wild boars had taken over two Japanese towns.

They were not content with those two towns, though.  They have taken over damn near the whole of northern Japan, where the population is older, and was not close enough to the power plant to get their own radiation to fight off the hogs, hulk-style.  Just this last week, the South China Morning Post reported the scourge has moved North in force.  They noted that in southern Japan, “The papers are full of reports of boars in train stations and parking garages, around school dormitories and even in the sea, swimming out to islands.”  They are now in areas that were believed “too cold and snowy for them.”’  They apparently didn’t understand the power of radiation and beer. Radiation that makes a man’s pants turn purple and rips his shoes off every time he gets mad. 

 

They could try to shoot them, but they’re not in rural Georgia where residents are armed to the teeth for the second invasion of the Yankees.  The Japanese have to get a permit to get a gun and shoot a hog, which seems like bullshit.  So no, they can’t be shot, and they can’t be reasoned with when they charge busses like this:

They can’t be reasoned with when they go looking for beer in dumpsters, like this one in Hong Kong.

They can be bribed, or shown fealty, same thing really.  Just give them beer and get out of the way.  

God help us if they get drunk, get mad, and show up in purple pants.

Rick James is Risen! Rick James needs some cash

Rick and Snoop

In what is either a sure sign of the coming rapture, or a sign that bad hair braids are coming back into style – and that hipsterism has officially gone too far – a dude who looks just like Rick James has robbed a bank in Indiana.  He was with Snoop Dog, dressed as Superfly.  You doubt me, loyal reader?  See below. 

Sign of the end-times, one way or another

There isn’t anything else for the story, right now.  It’s still developing.  Either Rick James has been resurrected, or braids with plastic beads on the end have been resurrected.  I’m not sure which is more scary, or which portends the end times.  Probably the latter.  God help us all if beaded braids are back.

Feral hogs: we take their beer, they narc on our weed and enjoy a sweet, stinky bonfire

Feral hogs, that scourge on our land.  They have been known to eat endangered species.  They tear up agricultural land, to the tune of $500 million per year in Texas alone. And they steal our beer.  

No longer confined to beer theft

Since word got out last year about the feral hog beer-poaching menace, it is presumed that loyal readers around the world have been heeding our call to lock up your beer, to say nothing of your endangered species.  Beer is not endangered, like a red-cheeked salamander, but it is arguably more precious to mankind.   (PETA people, this blog is partly satire. Don’t go eco-terror on my house.  My little dog will bite your tree hugging, salamander petting asses). But, let’s be serious, beer is more precious than salamanders, no matter the color of their cheeks.  And the hogs had been going after our beer with impunity until we locked that sh*t down.

So now, the hogs have struck back.  They have gone in league with The Man and ratted out a massive grow operation.  Texas game wardens - who don’t need a warrant to come onto your property to look for evidence of poached game were led to the 6,500 pot plants on Wildlife Management by hog hunters, who were led by the hogs, to the massive grow operation. 

The Man, taking down the grow

It is an open question whether the hogs were ratting out this stash to The Man, or were offering up a peace treaty with north Texas hog hunters, and the hunters were, in fact, straight-edge.  The hunters, however, may have misplayed their hand. We all know that beer is marching fuel.  Whiskey makes you get all stabby. Weed, however, makes you chill. When have you ever heard of someone toking up, for medicinal purposes or non-medicinal purposes, and just tearing sh*t up, like hogs do when they get a hold of a six-pack of double-deuce cans of brew.  No, the hogs would have munched away, tried to start a fire, though they have no thumbs, and then chilled out.  The hunters, if they were blood thirsty, could have killed all the hogs they wanted if the hogs had been high.  Hogs are smart, though, crafty smart.  And as we discussed, they have no thumbs with which to light a spliff.  They likely knew that The Man, when he finds a massive grow operation, will dig a pit and burn it. 

Prepping the great weed bonfire

So, I’m applying Occam’s Razor, and calling them narcs. Narcs who led hunters to the grow operation knowing that The Man would start a bitchin' bonfire.  I’m betting five that the hogs were congregating in the woods and breathing deep.  They have an incredible sense of smell, which was likely well-used.  

(Bottom two photos courtesy of Dallas Observer, astute co-chronicler of the scourge of our porcine menace).