American Zen Prologue

            These are the first two pages of the prologue of American Zen, or what I call the "hands" part of the book. I've given it a strange nickname because I could never quite get it right. Without trying to equate my book with a masterpiece of Western culture, this prologue nonetheless reminds me of a little-known fact concerning DaVinci's "Mona Lisa." The Mona Lisa's hands was the only thing DaVinci couldn't get right and he kept whiting them out and painting over them before finally giving up. As great an artist as he was, his Achilles heel was hands. And American Zen's prologue never quite sat right with me, which is why I'd finally settled on this, the 6th different prologue it's seen. If you like this, you may want to consider reading a few more sample chapters here and, if you like those, even buying it for $4.99.

Prologue

            Apollo is smiling down on us tonight. He’s gotten with the times and has traded his lyre for a plugged-in Strat. He’s playing through me, through all of us, pleasingly pounding the marrow in our bones. It’s that kind of night when even chaotic feedback is exploitable and my vibrating skeleton recycles that energy through my fingers. Maybe Apollo had a hand in helping Jimi Hendrix control and incorporate feedback. But he and perhaps all the gods are on our side tonight.

            It’s going to be a good crowd, a barely-tamed beast hungering for hard rock, the music my band The Immortals and I play. Our front man Dave finally got us another gig with a sound board and he’s promised to record us off it, maybe send a demo to a record label.

            Even our sound check is inspired. While our drummer Billy was taking a dump, Jo Jo decided to play “I Can Help” by Billy Swan. Dave put down his Les Paul and sat behind Billy’s kit. We’re loose and casual and, as a band, never felt better. This must be the way a baseball player feels during the National Anthem before he goes 5 for 5 with half a dozen RBIs and several brilliant defensive plays.

            Most people don’t have days like this, ever, when their neurons fire in perfect sequence, as if touched by the finger of God or a god like Apollo, when talent and good fortune conspire on a night that will be fondly looked back on, a gem shining through the ash heap of the other 99.99% of our days that are better left forgotten.

            Tonight’s such a night. There’s no way anything or anybody can ruin this.

            Billy returns and we’re once again a complete unit. We launch into our first song, ZZ Top’s five year-old “LaGrange”, and from the opening bar I know my sense of infallibility is justified. Billy starts by tapping out light work with the sticks and Dave follows with an equally light lead guitar. Then I come in with a creditable impression of Billy Gibbons’ vocals. “Rumor spreadin' a-'round in that Texas town 'bout that shack outside La Grange...”

            Then Billy sets me up with the drums and I come roaring in smooth as a panther with my muscular Strat. Big Rob’s fingers make his Fender bass burble like an East Texas crick. It’s harder and grittier than ZZ Top’s original or any cover by anyone and that’s the way we do things. Give the Immortals a chance and we’ll show you how hard your music can sound.

            The usually diffident Jo Jo is not too fond of this song when it’s at the top of our set list because there’s no keyboard and he doesn’t like to sit idle at the beginning of a gig. But, like the rest of us, he’s willing to take one for the team. We’ve been together going on 11 months, now. We’ve been professionals long enough to know what needs to be done, what needs to be sacrificed, including musical ego. And after tonight, the rest of the world would be impatiently awaiting us.

            Hell yes, Apollo speaks through us tonight and even feedback is made subservient to our needs. The drunks below us at the Rock Garden are our acolytes. We’re not blessed with impunity because we simply can do no wrong. There’s nothing that can stop us now.

And then a fat ass Cadillac crunches up unseen on the gravel parking lot, driven by an unctuous little man from Hollywood in a cheap suit, carrying a briefcase.

Letter to Amazon's "Community" Staff

I just got an email from Amazon.com ("We ban more authors by lunch than Barnes & Noble does in a week!") how I can attract potential readers to my author page (linked below. Hope that doesn't qualify as "spam" and violating your precious, corporately-generated TOS.)

Here's the problem, in case you haven't sussed it out, yet: By summer last year, Amazon had banned me, a longtime account holder (since 1999, two years after Amazon launched) and someone who'd purchased countless thousands of dollars of merchandise from you, no doubt making incrementally more miserable the lives of countless temp workers who toil their hearts out for little money in your sweatshop warehouses.

Mere months after I'd published my second novel through Kindle, I was banned for life from posting anything on any Amazon domain anywhere on the planet earth. This means no comments on message boards, no reviews, no comments on reviews, nothing. Every time I've reached you people about this issue, I get the same snotty, arch, canned response telling me you have "no intention of reinstating (my) posting privileges" as you hilariously call them. Furious, I set up a new account, only to be told by your invariably automated system that I had to buy something first before I'd get "posting privileges". Pay to play, in other words

This lifetime banning came about when a handful of right wing trolls, realizing they couldn't engage me legitimately on the message boards, decided to report me for "spamming". The "spamming" consisted of simply providing permalinks to my product pages in my tagline. Quite often when posting a message, I didn't even flog my books, which is part and parcel of being an independent author.

But your fascist automated system and a handful of right wing trolls are controlling the biggest, most pervasive bookselling site on earth. You may sneer and scoff at that but the proof is in the pudding. The more informed of us know that, as with Twitter, Facebook and virtually any other dot com behemoth on the internet, your system is completely automated and all it takes is for two or three complaints to come in, however specious and fallacious, about one person and the system shuts down that person with no appellate process and no chance to air their grievances. It's a fascist, one strike and you're completely out for life rule that alienates not only indie authors (off of whom you make money, so you're just cutting off both our noses to spite both our faces) but also your own customers.

So, I asked the girl on the other end of the phone today, how am I supposed to get people to go to my product page if I have no way of getting the word out? I do not do Facebook for much the same reasons I now refuse to buy merchandise directly from Amazon (I go through independent vendors) and Twitter and my blogs are problematic at best. You don't need a degree in marketing to know that if you want to have a prayer of reaching readers directly, you have to be able to do so at the bookselling site.

So I was banned for life by you fascist cunts for doing the same thing that other authors do, something I was told I'd have to do when I published my first Kindle novel. The agreement was simple and straightforward: We publish your book for free, you do the publicity.

But some right wing trolls had a problem with a liberal who knew how to skewer their arguments and make them look silly so they figured since they couldn't legitimately engage me, the next best thing was to make me disappear. So they gamed your automated system and got me kicked off Amazon for life for doing something that an author is supposed to do: Publicize their books. Only on Amazon.com can an indie author get banned for life worldwide for actually trying to sell a book.

I keep getting told by you people that I violated your TOS without you making the slightest effort whatsoever to explain how I'd done so. It's obvious you haven't the slightest fucking idea what you're talking about. I've reread your precious TOS with a fine tooth comb. Nowhere does it say that permalinks to product pages for legitimate books are a violation. Unlike the right wing trolls (who pride themselves on not reading or buying books, btw), I do not peddle hate speech. I am not a pornographer. I am not a plagiarist. I am a legitimate novelist who'd been trying to do the same thing as a half a million other Kindle indie authors: Trying to make a buck.

And since your fascist system is completely automated, you lack the wherewithall to suggest to these right wing ass pirates that if they don't like a certain permalink, they can go on to the next message or if they choose not to read comments from a certain author, they can block them.

Instead, your automated system implements this scorched earth policy that begins with censoring like the Nazis of old all "offending" comments followed by a lifetime banning, like this isn't going to alienate authors who have a network and tell each other of the inherent dangers of publishing with an entity such as yours?

All you're doing by alienating legitimate indie authors is drive them to your competitor Barnes and Noble and their Nook platform.

In summation, your entire business model sucks. You bully publishers, you bully authors, you bully your customers, you bully and brutalize your warehouse order pickers and shippers and it was with anger and extreme regret on my part that the Justice Department dropped charges of price fixing against your corporation. You use your bloated size to bully everyone on the planet earth who doesn't see things Jeff Bezos' way. Entire publishers' catalogs disappear if you don't get the deep discounts you demand. Entire communities of authors disappear. You people are the Wal-Mart of the bookselling world: You offer cheap books at the expense of authors, publishers and warehouse workers. Frankly, I don't see how you people can sleep at night.

I only hope and pray that one day you get the attention of the good folks at Anonymous and your website, fittingly, also disappears forever in the ethers.

Robert Crawford
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Crawford/e/B008MMC2P4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

And Now, a Word From Mike Flannigan

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari and Welcome Back to Pottersville.)

It hasn't been decided yet whether I'm a figment of Robert Crawford's imagination or his alter ego or vice versa. Either way, it could safely be said that I'm the author of American Zen, the story of an epic road trip that took place during a week of my and my friends' lives exactly four years ago. As I'd subsequently described our trip up and down the northern eastern seaboard across four different states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York), it was like a "Flomax/Viagra/Grecian Formula commercial gone hideously over budget."

And, starting the summer the first draft was completed (2008), I'd made Robert's acquaintance and began blogging part time at Pottersville starting with my thoughts on the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Robert (better known to you as Jurassicpork) figured, as long as my editor in chief Ari Goldstein and the liberal magazine that for legal reasons can't be named sent me to both cities on someone else's dime, he'd asked me to weigh in with some impressions. I don't like the idea of writing for nothing (One of my few personal axioms is "Pay the f**king writer!") but in JP's case I'd decided to make an exception.

Then he asked me to write something for his new blog, Kindle in the Wind, one dedicated exclusively to his writing and the art of writing in general. If I was more like Billy Frazee, my old drummer, I would've told him to take a long walk off a short pier and not to push it. Fortunately for JP, I'm not like Billy and I promised to get something off to him in the next few days. "What do you want me to write?" I'd asked him. JP said, "Just be yourself and tell whoever's out there about the 2008 trip and your appearance in my other novels."

So that seems like a logical place to start.

Yeah, to the dozen or few initiated who'd actually bought American Zen, it may come as a bit of a surprise to you that I don't just appear in that particular book but several. Whenever Rob needs an authoritative journalist figure to handle backstory, exposition or whatever, he usually turns to me (and, in one notable instance, my EIC Ari Goldstein in an upcoming novel). Not including American Zen and the sequel, American Zen II: Rock of Ages (begun years before that execrable Tom Cruise movie), I've actually appeared either in print or over the telephone in three other of Robert's novels.

His other Kindle novel, The Toy Cop, you know about. In the older drafts, I didn't actually make an appearance until Robert was doing the final revision and thought it would be a good idea to write an Op-ed I'd "written" for the New York Times about capital punishment. Since I have some small fame (alright, infamy would be more the word), I agreed to let JP use my name for the sake of authenticity and, for someone who isn't a real journalist, he did a pretty creditable job in not only penning a fictional article but even in coming close to reproducing my voice. I thought that would be the extent of my involvement with his novels.

But then JP got an idea and he ran it by me a couple of years ago. He began by asking me, "Mike, have you read any Isaac Asimov?" I told him I had, at least back in my callow youth that stubbornly refused to end until I hit 35-40. Robert reminded me that toward the last decade or so of his life when he was writing faster and faster, Asimov attempted to tie together his three great series, the Robot, Empire and Foundation novels, into one gigantic cycle. One way to keep all those novels and short stories in the same universe was to use common characters and reference historical events of one series that would actually impact, however incrementally, on others.

I immediately saw, sort of, what he was getting at. His idea was to use me in several series that he's planning, which would be the proposed American Zen series, The Toy Cop (he'd begun a sequel over ten years ago before the first one was even finished) and his new series (a trilogy of novels that are each well underway) of a Russian/American ex cop named Joe Roman. That way, all the protagonists, through me, would inhabit a common universe and his dream was to one day, if his writing career ever took off (are we listening, lit agents?), to write one epic adventure involving yours truly, Penny "The Toy Cop" Gallagher and that semi-benevolent psychopath known as Joe Roman.

I said, "Sure, go for it. You can't sully my reputation any more than I and the sociopaths in the Republican Party already have," and the rest is becoming history.

With money worries and the pressure of finding that ever-elusive job after nearly four years of unemployment, plus all those other duties we all have to meet to sustain human life, it can't be easy for poor Rob and I can only imagine what he's going through just maintaining his household and keeping body and soul together, let alone cobbling together a massive cycle of novels in his spare time (not to mention his noted work at Pottersville).

Although it takes six weeks to two months for him to get from Amazon his piddling royalties (if at all. He can't publicize them on Amazon's website because the good sons and daughters of Jeff Bezos effectively muzzled Rob for life almost a year and a half ago because he tried to sell his Kindle novels on the biggest book selling site on earth. Go figure how that's a violation of their TOS), you'd be helping out my buddy Rob and would certainly boost his always flagging self-esteem if you would buy either novel (both of which providing links to his product pages) and to start frequenting this fledgling blog and his dedicated Twitter account.

Because we writers have to stick together and it can't be said that a lot of established writers have gone out of their way to help out poor ole JP, who's a talented scribe (and a formerly agented one in a slightly less competitive and media-consolidated day and age) in his own right.

The Toy Cop

In case you haven't already read about it, The Toy Cop, while much older, is the second and probably the last novel I'll ever put on Kindle. If you don't know the throughline, here it is:

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The Toy Cop Synopsis

Four years ago, ten canisters of VX nerve agent were stolen from an Army truck near the Dugway Proving Grounds, leading up to the most disastrous hostage scenario in FBI history. Special Agent Michael Brodie, head of the elite FBI crisis negotiating corps, had lost his chance to get IRA terrorist Seamus Hannigan, the man responsible for his daughter’s death and the destruction of his credibility when Hannigan blew up himself and three other people.

            Up the eastern seaboard four years later during a freak nor’easter, former Navy Seal Jack Gallagher and three other men have taken a United States Senator and 12 other people hostage and have holed them up in a Massachusetts armory. The 13 make up the entire team assembled to witness the federal execution of Edd Corn, the most notorious child killer in US history. Corn nearly killed Jack Gallagher’s daughter Deirdre three years ago. Now determined to mete out justice personally, Gallagher seems determined to end his life to that end while his ex wife, rookie patrol officer and ad hoc negotiator Penny Gallagher, watches outside helplessly.

            Seeing Penny is out of her depth, and remembering his slain FBI daughter Leighann, Michael Brodie pulls every string and calls in every favor to get involved in the negotiations while somehow avoiding the emotional mine fields put up by his skeptical superiors, Jack Gallagher and Special Agent Ray Cardoza, the first FBI agent onscene and his one-time future son in law, one of many who holds Brodie accountable for Leighann’s death.

            Then, during the negotiations, Brodie hears a voice from the grave: Seamus Hannigan. Could the hostage scenario be a mere coverup and is Jack Gallagher somehow involved with the IRA plot four years ago to appropriate and use ten canisters of VX on countless  innocents? Or has Jack unwittingly invited one of the world’s most lethal terrorists in his midst?

            With a wide cast of characters, most of whom pursuing personal agendas, The Toy Cop involves national tragedies from Waco, Ruby Ridge and the 1998 Omagh bombing. And these previously unrelated tragedies set off a chain of chaotic events, gradually but inexorably coalescing into what could become the greatest tragedy in American history. The lives of 13 people are at stake, including that of a United States senator during a reelection bid. And unless the Gallaghers, Brodie and Cardoza can put aside ancient antagonisms and broker a peaceful outcome, many more lives will be lost in what could become the greatest holocaust since September 11^th.

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The Toy Cop is available for $4.99 on Kindle and, as with American Zen, you can download the first few chapters for free on your Kindle.

This is American Zen

As an inaugural post to this new blog, I thought it would be a good idea to put up the synopsis I'd written a couple of years ago for my novel American Zen. In the future, I'll also be putting up short excerpts from this and other novels as well as reviews, links to writer's resources and, hopefully, even original articles and links on fiction writing.

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American Zen synopsis

What is redemption worth and what are you willing to risk for it?

Five friends, three decades, one band and a set list of rock and roll songs that had defined their unique dynamic and generation, American Zen is an alternately tragic and hilarious week in the lives of four friends in search of the fifth who broke up their band. Hunting for their ex-front man Dave, their odyssey becomes a wider and deeper search for salvation and meaning. During their road trip throughout the eastern seaboard, their amities are put to the test while realizing how much they can and can’t afford to risk. What unfolds is a story of undying friendship driving home the point that even salvation and redemption can come at a high price.

Rob the conflicted Zen master, Billy the suicidal ex-SEAL, the ailing Jo Jo, his husband Jeremy and Mike Flannigan our narrator learn how cruel the last three decades have been to them. As they reluctantly seek the truth behind their breakup, the reunion garners for them more infamy and notoriety than they’d ever had as a group. Yet on their road to redemption, they give the best and most soul-defining performances of their lives even in the midst of scandal, gang violence and sudden death.

American Zen offers a snapshot of a nation in painful transition. As Barack Obama is about to take the reins as President, Mike is virtually the only political journalist currently not writing about the incoming administration. As America looks forward to change, Mike struggles with that in his and his friends’ lives, realizing that, while the game too changes, the rules remain the same.

This is American life and death. This is American rock and roll. This… is American Zen.

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American Zen is going for $4.99 on Amazon Kindle. You can download the first five chapters or so onto your Kindle as free sample.