A New Challenge!

I'm teaming up with the best hard-boiled/noir imprint on the planet, Down & Out Books, to put out a book per month. Can I do it?

Income Streams and Publishing Adjustments!

Relying on traditional publishing will not make you a living unless you reside in the 0.00099 percent of all working novelists today. You need several income streams and assets to stay afloat. Here's how I do it fairly effortlessly.

Listen to My Own Books?

I've never listened to one of my audio books. Here's why...

Marketing Musings!

With my agent's annual marketing meetup scheduled for today, I thought I'd talk a little about how I've changed up my marketing strategy this year, and boy oh boy has it worked.

Who wants a universal basic income?

Or what's better known as money for nothing. Many Dem Socialists are proposing this sort of thing one way or another. Andrew Yang comes to mind since he wants give every household a thousand clams per month even if all you do is sit around in your graying BVDs playing video games (I actually like Yang because he sees the enormous potential of Bitcoin and the Block Chain...but I digress).

I'm not sure if a universal income will ever be possible or if it's even the right thing to do for America. Methinks it's just another way to pander for votes which in my mind anyway, means it's a way of making people subservient to the government. In other words, you become a slave without actually knowing it. This Libertarian author will have none of it, thank you very much.

So my guess is we never see a universal income (not without going broke anyway). But what if a mega-corporation like Amazon for instance, actually offered up a living wage to people who signed on for a program in which they agree, in writing, to only purchase Amazon products? It could happen I guess. It's precisely what happens in my new thriller Primary Termination in which people can receive a comfortable living wage so long as they purchase only Everest Corporation goods and services. The program is called the Everest Primary Program, and its advertising slogan is thus: Imagine, for the first time in your life, living entirely worry free.

The only catch is that if you're caught violating the terms and services of the Primary Program...if you purchase products not sold by Everest...your program will be terminated, and you might find yourself a slave locked up in a prison which doubles as an Everest fulfillment center. And don't think Everest won't know what you're buying, because it's AI Alexa-like machine, called Jacquie, knows all.

She is monitoring you 24/7.

Grab Primary Termination while it's hot off the press:

 

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Chase Baker is back in the thick of it...

I can still recall walking the narrow back streets and cobbled roads of Florence, Italy, racking my brain to come up with an action & adventure character who possessed all the humanness and fearlessness of Indiana Jones, but who also enjoyed the ladies, more in the vein of The Most Interesting Man in the World, as seen in the old Dos Equis commercials (one interesting factoid is my having spent an afternoon in Florence with the sister of the man who invented The Most Interesting Man in the World ad campaign).

I wanted the series to be different from my usual noir titles which are often seen as, well a bit dark, and I also wanted the series to remain fiercely independent, just like Chase himself. In other words, other than foreign and multi-media rights, I wouldn't be offering the books up to the publishers. Only I would possess the publication rights. Me, my children, and their children, and their children...in other words. 

But it wasn't until I caught a movie on You Tube starring Charleton Heston that Chase Baker came alive for me. It was called the Secret of the Incas, and it featured an adventurer and former pilot who's as tough as nails, irresistible to the ladies (in fact, he's sort of a male prostitute), and a mega treasure hunter. No doubt he was the original inspiration for Indiana Jones with his fedora and leather bomber.

The original novel I came up with remains one of my bestsellers. The Shroud Key. It's controversial in that it deals with the possibility that the mortal remains of Christ actually exist. But it's full of romance, and adventure, and exotic locales. The point of the novels is not only to entertain just like the 1930s, 40s, and 50s cliff hangar serials used to do, but I would also make them real in that I would travel to each and every destination I write about. Thus far my Chase travels have taken me to the Sahara, the Amazon, India, Nepal, Egypt, Israel, Africa, China, Russia, and many more special locales. Since I plan on writing many more Chase Bakers (the Young Chase Baker series will be launched early next year), I will no doubt, be flying to many more exotic spots on the planet.

Chase Bake and the Spear of Destiny took both on-site research and some library study. The spear that pierced Christ's side during the crucifixion and that released the holy blood and the water that would become the basis for the holy sacrament of communion in the Roman Catholic church service has always fascinated me. It's a relic that holds special powers. No wonder the Nazis wanted it so badly during WWII. Now a band of Neo-Nazis who wish to oversee the construction of a Fourth Reich want to get their hands on it again. But the only way they can manage it is to kidnap the Pope. Can Chase stop them?

Find out for yourself ...

Grab up Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny and be thrilled...

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM