You can help a DUer get a Penguin Book contract.

[Memekiller]

I've been an avid blogger and DUer for years, and am using any opportunity I have to shamelessly promote this. My novel, TAKING OVER, has been selected from 5,000 entries as one of 200 Semi-Finalists competing in the Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Category of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award ( You can find out more about the contest here: www.amazon.com/abna ). From here, anyone with an Amazon account can download free excerpts from the novels and help decide which author deserves a contract with Penguin books. So, if any of your readers want to help choose the next big novel, or just help out a neighbor, I’d love to get the word out. ( You can go to the excerpt directly here: http://www.amazon.com//dp/B00122GTOQ , or find it by searching my name and title, or by clicking the second page of the Mystery, Suspense, Thriller category.)

The novel actually has an interesting story: I was the first new writer my agent had taken on in three years ( he represents Alex Garland who wrote The Beach, 28 Days Later and Sunshine ), and met with several editors who going to publish it until the Iraq War broke out. They were burning Dixie Chick albums at the time and they thought I might have been making a political statement against the war. The story is about a disaffected ex-soldier who gathers a bunch of disgruntled, middle-age men and an art history major to train to take over a Caribbean island so they can create a utopia that operates by their rules. I thought it was in the spirit of Dogs of War or The Man Who Would be King, but, whatever.

The story is about a disaffected ex-soldier who gathers a bunch of disgruntled, middle-age men and an art history major and trains them to take over a Caribbean island so they can create a utopia that operates by their rules. The idea came from a friend’s father who was a Navy Seal who, after seeing the specs on the military of some South American countries, was convinced he could take over the entire country with just one Seal Team, and planned to do it, too, but could never acquire the helicopter. My father said that he had a similar idea of taking over Guatemala when he was a kid (my grandfather worked in the CIA). So I started reading the interesting histories of Bob Denard, William Walker and other rogue mercenaries who managed to take over a country with a few recruits.

From here, an editor will use a Publisher’s Weekly Review of the entire manuscript, along with the reviews of the general public, to help winnow down the semi-finalists for the final round. Think of it as an American Idol for writers. Here’s the PW Review:

This book takes off - quite literally - when Jamie's high school friend Wilbur, just back from a tour of duty in Iraq, "borrows" his dad's Cessna to show Jamie a tiny island just off the Florida coast. Wilbur (now sporting muscles and tattoos and calling himself "Will") has brought along a duffle bag (possibly full of guns,) and reveals that, using skills honed as a member of the elite Special Forces, he plans to invade a similar nearby island and invites Jamie to come along. The book captures the enthusiastic, not particularly rational, thinking that propels the two young men to stage an actual invasion: Wilbur, humorless, obsessive and determined; Jamie, bright but without a world view to anchor him to the reality. Will transfers his energies from the Special Forces to his new invasion plan, recruiting his assault team from a loosely knit brotherhood of paranoid neo-Nazi survivalists he meets on the Internet and enlisting the support of his legendary Special Forces instructor, the fearsome Sergeant Hanson. Jamie goes along for the ride. And the author provides quite a ride, in this deceptively plain-spoken tale that turns out to be filled with clever, surrealistic, and darkly humorous plot twists.

[Sock Puppet]

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