Posts Tagged ‘action books’

Releasing November 6th, 2018, Yeager’s Getaway.

A Honeymoon… Abel Yeager Style

Abel Yeager has settled into a life of domestic bliss with his lovely wife, Charlotte. He’s left the violence and bloodshed behind to concentrate on being a good father and husband. For their long-delayed honeymoon, Abel and Charlie take a Hawaiian cruise. They’re looking forward to hiking volcanoes and sightseeing, once they meet up with Victor “Por Que” Ruiz and his new love, Dr. Alexandra Lopez.

Their idyllic vacation explodes in violence when a group of Hawaiian separatists, incited by a foreign power, rip through the islands, leaving blood and destruction in their wake. When Charlie is caught up with a group of hostages held by the terrorists as human shields, Abel is forced back into warrior mode.

The Hawaiians are supported by a few dozen foreign special forces soldiers, modern gear, and plenty of munitions. Abel has the help of three septuagenarian Vietnam veteran Marines and his pal Victor. Outnumbered and outgunned, Abel will stop at nothing to rescue his wife.

Here’s a bit to get you started…

 

 

Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii

Saturday, 8 May

1340 Local Time

 

Kanoa Ino had chosen the meeting place to serve a purpose. Diamond Head Lookout presented a panoramic vista of Honolulu and Waikiki Beach and, by extension, modern Hawaii. Used in countless scene-setting shots for televisions and movies, the view represented an iconic image, instantly recognizable. High-rise condos, hotels, and offices. Smog and exhaust fumes. Blue ocean to the left. Rolling surf.

He could picture the scene in those distant resort hotels lining the beach: groups of island women in fake grass shorts swishing their asses to the sound of a tinny ukulele, mocking the spiritual hula kahiko dance, while fat, lobster-broiled mainlanders gawped at them… and men in anklets of grass, whirling lit torches, as if the Samoan fire dance was of Hawaiian origin instead of imported shtick canned and repurposed for the titillation of tourists.

Bobby Palakiko leaned his crossed arms on the rail next to him. “Aloha, Kanoa. You are looking massive as always.”

“Aloha.”

A stiff breeze off the ocean fluttered Palakiko’s Born Hawaiian T-shirt and flattened his cargo shorts against his spindly legs. Salty black hair whipped away from his comb-over. Next to Kanoa’s towering height and powerful physique, the diminutive old man seemed to be a different species. Tourists milled around the two of them like a constant flow of brightly colored beetles, oohing and aahing at the view or screeching at their hyperactive children. Adult haoles and their offspring bumped into Kanoa, heedless and unapologetic as they huffed along the concrete path.

An Asian tourist in a white, short-sleeved shirt stood slightly apart from the crowd. A pair of binoculars dangled from his neck. Kanoa kept his gaze away from the prim little Asian so as not to draw attention to him.

Sunlight glinted off Palakiko’s Ray-Bans. “A beautiful day.”

Kanoa shaded his watch with a palm, checking the time. He let the silence linger. The old man waited. A faint permanent-press smile creased his lips, as if everything in this world—including Kanoa—amused him.

He won’t smile for long.

“Did you hear about the Akaka bill?” Bobby offered at last. “It has a chance this time, I think.”

“It will fail. Again.”

“We will achieve the same status as Native Americans. You’ll see.”

“And earn the right to live on a reservation? Maybe sell beads to the haole?”

“Always such a downer, Kanoa. You should learn to relax. Aloha, brah.”

“This”—Kanoa spread a broad palm to include the world around them—“is what one hundred twenty-three years of aloha have wrought—a world full of haole, white Americans, yellow Japanese, black Africans, and sheet-wearing Muslims—massed on the beaches, bobbing in the waves, oiling themselves with suntan lotion. Snapping selfies, eating, drinking, puking, and pissing. Taking everything of value. Leaving nothing but trash… trash and money. Always money. And we’re complicit in own degradation, prostituting ourselves for the price of a color TV and a case of Miller Lite—Hawaiian culture whored out three times daily with a matinee on Sunday. No, brah…” He sneered the word. “The time for aloha has long passed. It is time for Kūkaʻilimoku.”

Kanoa tracked the old man’s expression with his peripheral vision.

Palakiko sighed. “We are a people of peace—”

“And peace has killed us, old man!” A gaggle of Japanese ceased their chattering and gave Kanoa sideways looks at they edged past. Kanoa glared, and they hurried on. Time to show some fire. “Our language, dead. Our people, slaves. Our culture, gone. The imperialist conquest is complete, and all your hand-wringing does is salt the wound with a little more white-man guilt, which they will appease by offering us platitudes and half-measures, as always.”

“Why again with this argument, my bruddah?”

“We are tired of waiting.” Kanoa glanced at his watch. “My men are ready to do battle. Hawaii for Hawaiians, now and forever.”

“Your men?” Palakiko smirked. “What is the name these days? The Niho Niuhi—Teeth of the Tiger Shark? Whatever. Listen, my giant friend. The movement won’t allow you to tear us apart with violence.”

“I don’t need your blessing, Bobby. My men are ready, and Ku will bless our struggle with victory.”

The old man tilted his head back to match Kanoa’s stare. The crow’s feet radiating out from around his sunglasses deepened. “What do you mean?”

“The Anglos have not listened to us. They annexed the islands illegally, by force, for the benefit of the sugar barons. They have ignored us ever since. Raped our land. Destroyed our people. Beguiled us with bullshit promises. For too long, we have waged peace and begged for scraps. No more. Kūkaʻilimoku demands blood. The Niho Niuhi will honor him with it.”

“An ancient Tiki god demands blood? Did he send a text or what? You been smoking some primo weed, brah.”

“We are tired of waiting. Bumpy promised us things would change, yet even he sits and talks instead of doing things. Nothing changes through peace. Nothing. Aloha!” Kanoa spat over the railing. He checked his watch again.

As if to punctuate his expectoration, a fiery flash blew out from the side of a beachside skyscraper, followed by a dirty-white billow of smoke. Seconds later, a flat crack traveled up the coast. A rumble followed, vibrating the air. On the heels of the first explosion, a sequence of four more blasts shook the distant skyline.

“The targets just hit,” Kanoa stated, “were the Marriott Resort, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Ala Moana Mall, the Outrigger Reef Resort, and the Hyatt Regency Waikiki.”

Tourists crammed the guardrails of the overlook. They shouted and pointed. Many held up cell phones to record the wounded buildings as they were wreathed in brown fog. It was too far away to hear the screams of the injured, although the wail of alarms drifted to Kanoa’s ears, thin and remote. Bobby Palakiko gripped the rail, more to keep himself upright than anything else, Kanoa suspected. The old man seemed frail enough to blow away on the wind.

“Those were the first shots fired,” Kanoa continued. “The Niho Niuhi will rain blood throughout these islands, and we will keep bringing the pain until all the haoles have gone. Hawai’i will again be ours.”

Palakiko’s head cranked around as if on rusty bearings. Gape mouthed and pale, the old man regarded Kanoa and, without a word, collapsed in a dead faint.

Kanoa spared a quick glance at the Asian tourist dressed in white. They exchanged minuscule nods. Phase One, complete.

Okay, I’m done fooling around. There’s been a definite hiatus in output lately, I admit. I’ve been hacking away at a novel that JUST AIN’T WORKING…so I finally threw in the towel. Fuggedabowddit. Tank it. Trash it. Give it up, already. Ignore the MONTHS spent trying to make a diamond out of a pig’s ear.

It’s back to all Yeager, all the time, until #3 in the that series is done. Happy to report, progress is being made on Yeager’s Getaway, where Abel and Charlie go on a much delayed honeymoon to an island paradise that turns…well, nasty. There is no easy day in Yeager’s world.

Sample from Chapter One:

An epic hangover cracked Abel Yeager’s morning egg of contentment. The yolk of good cheer dribbled out, leaving nothing but an empty shell of misery. His head squatted atop his shoulders like a bowling ball, heavy and hard, while chimpanzees trampolined off his stomach lining. The pocket-sized cruise ship, Fair Breezes, bobbed more than a cork on a fishing line, and the only thing keeping his insides from erupting in a volcanic expulsion of stale beer and pretzels was the uncertainty of making it to the head without falling over from dizziness. The bed of their stateroom embraced him in sweat-damp sheets, and there he planned to stay until the paramedics came to carry him away.

He groaned and covered his eyes in the crook of an elbow.

“Serves you right.” An e-reader braced on her belly, Charlie reclined near the balcony doorway, sunlight streaming through her coppery hair and a breeze ruffling the collar of the cotten cover up she wore over her one-piece swimsuit. Her long legs were propped on the corner of the bed, crossed at the ankles, treating Yeager to a view of the soles of her feet. “How late did you stay up drinking with your new best friends?”

“I don’t know,” Yeager mumbled. “One o’clock, I think.”

“No, you came in at three a.m.”

If you knew, why’d you ask? He kept his mouth shut.

“Reeking of beer, I might add.”

You just did. This, too, he kept to himself. The warning flags were out: Charlie was a tiny bit PO’d and didn’t need any nitroglycerin added to the tank to get her going. Normally, Charlotte Buchanan Yeager was a joy to live with. Smart. Funny. A naturally happy person. Like Victor. On the rare occasions when she did lose it, Yeager found it best to lock up the breakables and hunker down for a storm. His bleary-eyed reading of today’s weather indicated a squall approaching, and it could either blow over, or brew up to hurricane force.

“Just my luck,” Charlie spoke without looking up from her reader. “I finally ditch the kids and go on a much delayed honeymoon cruise with my husband, the Marine. And guess what? The ship is packed with Marines.”

“Three is hardly packed,” Yeager said. “And those guys were salty. Vietnam vets. Telling stories of the Rockpile, Ca Lu, Hill 881. Hue City. Khe Sanh.”

“And while you’re out swapping war stories with the Leatherneck Legends, your wife is waiting up for you in her brand new nightie. See-through, like you like it.” Charlie stabbed her reader with a finger and “flipped” a page. Yeager could almost hear the page snap. He lifted his pounding head with ponderous effort.

“I’m sorry I missed that.” And he meant it, too. Charlie could make his heart race wearing a spacesuit and face cream; Charlie in sexy lingerie made him lose his mind. He groaned again and flopped back. “I really, really am.”

She must have taken pity on him, because she got up and brought him a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. “Here. Rehydrate, caveman. You’re going to need it today.”

“Why’s that—? Wait.” A memory clawed its way up through the corpses of dead brain cells. “Oh, hell no.”

“Oh hell yes, Staff Sergeant Yeager.” Charlie stood by the bed with her hands on her hips and a smug expression painting her face. “We hike the nature reserve today. Three hours of exercise should sweat all the beer right out of you.”

“God hates me,” Yeager groaned.

 

 

Yeager’s back and he’s hotter than ever.

After a number of earthquakes hammer the Sierra Madre region of Mexico, Grupo Verdugo, a Yeager's Missionsplinter group of cartel enforcers, takes control of the drug shipping routes through that territory. Caught in the middle, a small orphanage high in the mountains, desperate for supplies to care for the children and the battered earthquake victims, reaches out to Abel Yeager for help.
Yeager and his friend Victor agree to deliver the needed food and medicine. But Grupo Verdugo seems to have a special interest in starving out the clergy and forcing them to bend to their will. They send a man known as the Executioner to stop anyone daring to assist the people.
Yeager and Victor are in for the biggest fight of their lives as they are forced to move forty children, a dozen sick and injured patients, and one feisty doctor out of the mission and through mountains infested with vicious killers.

E-reader release day today, June 21st. $2.99 for a short time only

Yeager's Mission

It’s here. Or it will be on June 21st, at least.

Yeager’s Mission is now available for preorder on Amazon at the release day price of $2.99 in Kindle format.

I hit triple sevens on the publishing slot machine.  For those following along at home, Yeager’s Law will be published in August of this year.

Synopsis:  Abel Yeager is dead broke, down on his luck, and suffering from a serious case of what-the-hell-does-it-matter. His transition from active Marine to stateside long-haul trucker hit a wicked speed bump when his rig was involved in a wreck that claimed the life of a pregnant woman and laid him up for several months.

Back at work but deeply in debt, Yeager meets bookstore owner Charlie Buchanan in St. Louis and jumps at the chance to haul a load of remainder books to Austin for her. On the way south, a crew of truck thieves tracks his every move. But none of them know what Charlie’s ex has smuggled inside the book pallets, who he stole it from, or how far the owner will go to get it back. Charlie’s the first person Yeager has cared about in a long time, but as their bond deepens, so does the danger they’re in.

With enemy forces closing in, Yeager battles greed, corruption, and his own fatalism in a bid to hold true to Yeager’s First Law: come home at the end of the day.

~~~~~

May Day is in early edits by Divertir Publishing, to be released in early 2016.

Synopsis:  The first in a planned series of novels featuring Sam Cable of the Texas Rangers and Rita Goldman of the FBI.

In “May Day”, Cable is detailed to fly with Trooper Boggs to California to escort Jade Stone, a woman accused of murdering her love.  The victim is a Dallas Police Detective, Tommy Grace.  Unknown to Cable, Grace is connected via his half-brother, John Bartlett, to a group of rogue federal agents with secrets to hide.  Secrets they want buried with Stone at any cost. 

In an attempt to kill Stone, Bartlett’s men sabotage the Cessna being flown by Trooper Boggs, which crashes in a remote part of the Gila National Forest.  With Boggs severely injured, cut-off from help, Cable alone must protect Stone against Bartlett’s team of trained agents.  

When a good friend of Cable’s, FBI Agent Rita Goldman, hears of her friend’s plane crash, she is desperate to help.  She pursues the clues related to the dead detective’s ties to Bartlett and begins to unravel the web of deceit surrounding the organization. 

As Goldman works to link the missing aircraft to Bartlett, and the ground team continues its search, Cable and Stone are hunted over the rough terrain of the Gila Forest while carrying the injured Boggs.  But Stone has more than evading pursuit on her mind; she has an agenda of her own.  One that she’s determined to keep hidden from Texas Ranger Sam Cable.

~~~~~

AND…

I’ve just signed a contract with Driven Press for Working Stiffs, release date probably also in early 2016.

Synopsis Working Stiffs is a Science Fiction (pre-dystopian) novel of the near-future United States. 

Civil liberties have been eroded.  Government has replaced initiative with dependence.  Unemployment has exceeded Great Depression levels. 

And now, technology has created a workforce able to undertake simple, routine tasks, further displacing unskilled labor.  A breakthrough in nano-technology has given us the ability to reanimate the recently dead and modify behavior of the living.  Far from zombies, “Revivants” provide a ready source of cheap labor. The economic impact and social impact is potentially devastating. 

Joe Warren is a college drop-out, somewhat self-absorbed and disinterested in the world’s problems. Unemployed, broke, and with no prospects, Joe only wants a job, food in his cupboard, and his girlfriend cured of the lingering sickness she’s been fighting. 

Instead, he winds up in jail, tracked by government agents, forced to become an informant, and pushed into a tight crack between the federal government and a band of self-proclaimed freedom fighters.

He is forced to examine his me-first attitude and, in the process, learns some things are worth fighting—and dying—for.  He must choose to sacrifice himself to save an ideal.  In the end, can he muster the inner conviction to meet the ultimate challenge?

Get your reading chair ready!