The WILCO Project - a brilliantly conceived techno-thriller that gets close to home

I know, I know.  “Techno-thriller” immediately conjures up scenarios of global conspiracies and futuristic weaponry. Not this time. This time, author Daniel Springer drops it right into your hand.

College professor Steven Archer and his team are developing a new game played with cell phones, the testing of which is wildly popular with the student body...until student bodies begin turning up during the games. Horrified that players are being killed, and baffled that 911 signals lead responders away from the victims, Steven is thrown into a complex murder case.  Together with an old detective friend and a journalism student, he races against time to decode the sabotaged program before the killer can strike again.

The reader is thus drawn into the intricacies of the virtual world and its supporting technology. Yes, the jargon and descriptions sometimes went whistling over my head, but the story held me anyway. (It’s a trick I learned reading Tom Clancy. When the characters start eulogizing every detail of their gadgets, I tend to skip over everything that isn’t Need to Know.) Actually, Springer’s descriptions are easier on the layman’s mind than most. For one thing, most of us have duked it out with a router or a LAN or a game program by now anyway.

In addition to turning out a fast-paced mystery, the author has a real gift for dialog, both as speech and thought. It’s natural, familiar, and scene-setting.  Students talk like students, cops talk like cops, and that stuffed-shirt college dean we all want to shoot sounds exactly as you’d expect.



Author Daniel Springer

The one thing I found somewhat distracting was the editing. I have a feeling the publisher assigned someone from the Romance dept. Characters’ hearts race and pound - sometimes twice in one paragraph. Steven Archer is always swallowing hard or taking a deep breath, particularly during the frantic action at the end when the reader least wants to hear about it.  But, all said and done, Daniel Springer knows how to weave an exciting, intelligent and satisfying tale. The Wilco Project is well worth the read.

I met the author and his book at the Book Expo America. His publisher, Solstice, had the booth right next to VerveStar’s. And if you don’t mind this grandmother’s candid opinion, the young man is much better looking in person!

My fellow VerveStar Authors (Part 3): Franklin D. Murdock

Were you wondering if I’d ever get back on track? Truth is, I’ve been searching for more information on this venerable 90-year-old author and poet with very little success. If I’d taken notes during his talk instead of sitting there in an enthralled stupor I’d have it all. Finally (duh) it occurred to me follow his press release on Google. Since the cover of The Best is Yet to Come is still in development, and the book not available for me to review, this will be mostly bio. And believe me, it’s plenty impressive!

I tagged along to his media conference at The Hallmark of Battery Park, NYC on Thursday, May 26, after we closed up the booth at BEA. Although too blind to really see his audience, he spoke strongly and engagingly. We were all immediately involved.

Murdock was born December 15th, 1920 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the fourth of five boys and one girl. From his press release:

He volunteered his service to the U.S. Navy in 1944 and spent one year in intensive schooling studying radio and radar electronics; serving on two different surface vessels before being discharged early in 1946. Following the military, he worked with Douglas Aircraft Company as a technician in the study of radio energy propagation/development of flush mounted antennae. He was general foreman of all engineering research and development laboratories before accepting a position of design project engineer for electronics and weapons systems for the A4 SKYHAWK airplane used by the Marines, U.S. Navy and several foreign countries. He retired after 34 years; when last of the A4 SKYHAWKS had been delivered.

It was the R&D during those years that led to the HUDs (heads-up displays on fighter jet windshields), iphones and all the other gizmos of today’s life.

Murdock’s primary subject matter is inspirational and spiritual, and he continues to deliver it well. He has written four books: My Life in Poetry and The Absolute Truth, Blessing or Presumption and recently an updated edition of My Life in Poetry. He also contributes to an active blog, networks on Facebook, and still researches daily for his future books. The Best is Yet to Come and his memoir are to be released by VerveStar.

This picture was taken at the VerveStar booth at Book Expo America. With him is his great-granddaughter, Mary, who travelled with him from L.A. They were guests at an assisted living facility run by the same company as his home in California.

It's official: Award-winning actress Jane Lynch will host the 2011 Primetime Emmys

Jane Lynch, pictured here at the 2010 Primetime Emmys, won Outstanding Suppoting Actress in a Comedy Series.

“We’re delighted to have Jane Lynch host the Primetime Emmys this year,” said John Shaffner, Chairman and CEO, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “When our host has comedic, dramatic and musical talents — as Jane proved in last year’s opening number — we know it’s going to be fun for us and for the audience at home!”

“Jane was my first — and only — choice as the host for this year’s Primetime Emmys, and I am glad she said ‘yes,’ ” said executive producer Mark Burnett (Survivor). “She has incredible comedic timing and is a charismatic, talented actress whose energy leaps off the screen and stage.”

“I am tickled pink to be hosting the Primetime Emmys on Fox,” said Lynch. “I’m looking forward to singing, dancing and sporting my finest tracksuit.”

I’m particularly pleased with this news because I’m not only a fan, I’ve actually met her! Yes, that's me grinning like an idiot. I couldn't believe I was standing there with Jane Lynch! We were both at Book Expo America this year; I’m kicking off Book One of my Ammanon series, she’s promoting her new book, Happy Accidents, to be released in September.

Lynch is best known for her breakout role as Sue Sylvester on the multiple-category Primetime Emmy-winning Glee, but I liked her best as TV’s quintessential shrink. Almost every place she cropped up, she played the unflappable psychologist. Oh, the outrageous confessions of her patients; and oh, those memorable acerbic one-liners! To Charlie Sheen who’d suddenly developed an eating disorder: “Put that candy down or you’ll have more chins than a Chinese telephone directory.”

Nominations for the 63rd Primetime Emmy® Awards will be announced at 5:40 a.m. PT on Thursday, July 14. The show will air live from NOKIA Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 18, on Fox.

Yes! I Did Meet Jane Lynch!

Thursday, May 26, my last day at the BEA (Book Expo America) was long and hectic. The next day I flew home. Also long and hectic. So please forgive the lapse in time.

That morning (Thurs) there were four of us VerveStar authors at the booth. I managed to embarrass them all by shrieking “There she is!” when tall and picture-perfect Jane Lynch strode along the aisle toward the Uptown Stage.

She flashed a big smile. “Yes, here I am!”

Somehow I, a notorious klutz, scrambled over all the materials stacked around and under the table and emerged intact with my camera. She came right over to me, swung an arm around my waist and we turned to face a series of flashes. Husband and I are both big fans of hers. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I murmured something about how much I enjoyed everything she ever starred in. She gave me a gracious nod and was off to her speaking engagement.

By then I was aware that a crowd had formed, all of them busy sending pics to their entire contact list.

Around noon, Nick and Miranda arrived from a press meeting to announce that our press releases were now racing over the wires. We then proceeded to set up the cappuccino machine. Sort of. The machine seemed more bent on emulating Old Faithful than producing a trendy brew. After Housekeeping’s third visit to our booth, Miranda got it under control. By the time crowds started gathering for Jane Fonda’s turn on the Uptown Stage, it was turning out delicious shots of foamy hazelnut cappuccino. It proved to be a great way to attract a meet ‘n greet. (At right: VerveStar publicist Miranda Spigener, infamous coffee machine, author Jahnavi Foster)

At 3:00 The BEA was officially over. Time to strike the set. We were down to three by then: Nick, Miranda and me. We worked feverishly away, barely finishing in time to make it to Battery Park for Murdoch’s presentation.

Franklin Murdoch, I must explain, is the 90-year-old author of The Best is Yet to Come. He flew in from LA, aided by his great-grandaughter (above in background). When he wasn’t at the booth, he was at a nursing home in Battery Park owned by the same company as the one in LA. It was in one of their meeting rooms that VerveStar arranged his press meeting. Too blind to see his audience, he nevertheless held us enthralled. But ya know? That’s a whole nuther post. Stay tuned.

I’ll close at a nice quiet Japanese restaurant where we finally called it a day. Whilst sipping miso soup, Nick checked on my press release. It had gone out on Reuters, AP, and others I can’t recall off hand. Subscribers to these news services choose the items they wish to feature. By that time (7:30 PM) 268 had picked me.

On that happy note, we struggled back to our respective motels with a cabbie who didn’t know New Jersey. But that’s yet another story.

Will I see you at the BEA?

Only a few more days now! The VerveStar folks, Nick Delarosa and Miranda Spigener, are leaving Friday to set up Booth # 4885. As I run through the ranks of literary blogs, I find quite a few of you gathering your stuff to go.

There will be five of us debuting at the VerveStar booth this year: Mary Odle Fagan (that’s me!), Coco Mayor, Matthew Scott Kimple, Franklin Murdock, and Jahnavi Foster. My big media day will be Wednesday, but I’ll be cruising the Javits Center the rest of the time seeing how many of you I can find.

Tending to all the details just for my part makes me wonder how on earth Nick and Miranda are getting it together for all five of us. Sometimes I find emails that were sent at 4 AM! Sure hope they at least get some sleep on the plane. Can’t thank them enough for their Herculean efforts.

See you in NYC!

I might actually see JANE LYNCH at the BEA!

When publicist Miranda Spigener texted me that Jane Lynch would be at the Book Expo America in NYC I got very excited. She’ll be appearing on the Uptown Stage at the Javits, right across from the VerveStar booth! How perfect is that?

No, I haven’t been following Jane on Glee. I liked her best when she was typecast all over TV Land as a psychologist. She was so perfect in that role: always unflappable no matter how outrageous the confessions of her patients, and always ready with an acerbic one-liner.

Her credits are way more varied than that, of course. In one show I found her singing with a country music group. Only now have I learned she’s a regular voice on Phineas and Ferb, of all things, and even did a gig on Shrek. And I LOVE her commercials. A limo cat? Seriously.

No doubt she’s enjoying Glee much more than shrinking for the stars, most notably Two and a Half Men. For one thing, it’s catapulted her into well-deserved celebrity. For another, well…why keep trying to analyze Charlie Sheen?

You rock, Jane!

So…we’re getting ready for the BEA again…

The international Book Expo is getting ready to happen. Actually, it happens several times a year in various places – Frankfort, London, Beijing, etc. – but the last week of May it happens at the Javits Convention Center in NYC. Hence, BEA, meaning Book Expo America.

The VerveStar partners started preparing months ago. They scored booth number 4885, an enviable location on a corner across from the uptown stage. (You’d have to see the five-foot-long diagram of Javits’ main floor to appreciate that…)


Last year I found the BEA to be the most seriously non-productive fiasco I could ever imagine. Just scroll back forever to last year’s posts and see. But THIS year I’ve got a new publisher, world class publicists Miranda Spigener and Nick Delarosa, and Booth 4885 to report to. I gotta believe that THIS year it’s gonna be different!


And THIS year I’m taking a hint from my son, who went to NY on business a couple of years back. The trick, it seems, is to stay across the Hudson in New Jersey where prices are somewhat more reasonable. There’s a ferry that goes from Weehawken directly across to the Javits. And there’s probably also a bus that would kindly take me through the Lincoln Tunnel and deposit me within a couple of blocks of said destination. And instead of running the gamut of Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, Priceline, Hotwire, etc., I’m trying Southwest Airlines. So far they’ve offered the lowest fares to both LaGuardia and Newark Int’l.

So if you’re thinking about the BEA, or New York City in general, stay tuned. When I get this all worked out, you can profit from my traveling discoveries!

It’s about Blogging…and Montgomery

Greetings from Baton Rouge! It’s our stopover between Montgomery, Alabama and Houston, Texas. After a weekend with my daughter’s family, four very bright but hyper kids, there’s no way we can make the 12-hour drive in one go.

But the road trip isn’t the entire reason for my inattentiveness of late. It’s BEA (Book Expo America) time. My preparatory task was to go through a lengthy list of literary blogs, both to familiarize myself with what’s Out There, and to get a sense of How It’s Done. If anyone Out There is reading me, you know that’s long overdue!

Oh, my friends, there’s some brilliant stuff Out There. You meet kindred souls in your genre. You learn about industry trends. You absorb a wealth of How-To’s. You view an exciting panorama of new releases and wonderful classics. You can read, read, read!

Now I shall seriously digress.

Did you know that Montgomery has an AA baseball team called the Biscuits? Saturday night found us in the stands of venerable Riverwalk Stadium with hundreds of jubilant locals. Evan Longoria was rehabbing there and the place was packed. Actually, it’s always packed. It’s not that the Biscuits are a winning team so far this season, it’s the spirit of Montgomery.

There’s an event between each inning: a local dance troupe, a Boy Scout knot-tying competition, a pop quiz. My 15-month-old granddaughter was even recruited for a baby-crawling race.

Railroad tracks run along left field, and the mayor has declared that if a batter hits a passing train, Hizzoner will stop the game and present said player with a thousand dollar check.

There’s a lively organist that keeps the crowd stomping and clapping and yelling “Charge!” And whenever a foul ball soars out of the park, the sound of breaking glass and a car alarm blares from the sound system. Best of all, this particular game ended with a spectacular fireworks show.

Yep. Next to surfing blogs, I like Montgomery best.

The Times Square Holiday Inn (Further adventures at the BEA)

So I told you the hotel experience was a whole nuther post. Well, here it is.

If you read the preceding, you know the main problem was air conditioning – as in too much of. See, down here in Texas, we can set the ol’ AC anywhere we want it. Given the cost of energy, that’s usually above 70°. But in NY, if you find 70° either too chilly or unconscionable: tough. If you try to set it above 70°, the heat comes on. I’m not kidding.

Now begs the question: how does Con Ed support the jillions of New Yorkers seeking relief from their steamy streets if the thermostat must read 70° or else? C’mon, people!

The maintenance guy found me wrapped in a blanket beating my head against the thermostat. I found the maintenance guy polite, professional, well-spoken, well-muscled, and altogether gorgeous. And he did get the AC to shut off.

At the time, I didn’t know that was the only option.

It took about 10 minutes for that hermetically sealed little room to become a stifling sweatbox. I turned it to a conservative 76° and tried to coax it to come on again. Nothing.

I called the front desk. Did I want maintenance to come back? Uh, let me think. First, I’d have to get dressed again. Second, how many trips could Adonis make without coming to the reasonable conclusion that grandma was just lookin’ for eye candy? And we were getting into the wee hours by now. So no. Just tell me what to do.

So the front desk suggested I reboot the unit. That is, unplug it from the wall, count to ten, and plug it back in. I did. It started back up. I collapsed back into bed.

It shut off.

I got up and rebooted the thing again. This time it stayed on nearly 15 minutes – long enough to discover it was belching forth heat with a vengeance.

I called the front desk. And THAT’S when I learned the 70° rule. So I hung up, rebooted yet again, and dutifully set it back to 70°. Thus, by 4:00 in the morning, I finally got to sleep.

Next morning, I stumbled down to the complimentary breakfast buffet. I was amazed to find a very Southern offering: biscuits and gravy. No one but me knew quite what to make of it. Then I spotted something I’d never seen before. Ever the adventurer, I picked up the tongs and dropped one on my paper plate. Analysis showed it to be an omelet: artificial egg folded around artificial cheese. Sort of like a taco. Very clever. And actually rather tasty, too. Thus fortified, I struck out for the BEA (Book Expo America) at the sprawling colossus known as the Javits Convention Center. See previous post.

But wait. I’m not through with the hotel yet. Killing time at 3:30 AM waiting for the airport bus, I noticed this diagram by the elevator:

What? The Holiday Inn Express is only 4 little rooms per floor? But it’s 36 floors high! How the heck does the building stay standing? I mean, try that with your grandkids’ blocks sometime!

No, it wasn’t all bad. About 6:00 that second evening, the news of SuperBowl 2012 ran through the lights on Times Square. It was fun to hear the excitement of the crowds. They even had fireworks.

Other than that, I gotta tell ya: suddenly Houston’s looking pretty good!

Book Expo America

If you were there at the BEA, please comment! The experience, except for a few pleasant visits at the booths, was mega non-productive for me! I want to know what it is that authors can accomplish there. For the most part it just seemed like a hard-sell event – a pitiful and demeaning exercise for authors hawking books like used cars.

First is the intimidation of New York City in general, and the Javits Convention Center in particular. See what I mean? The building is overwhelming even against that awesome skyline:

And when you walk up to it, it’s even worse:

I walked for MILES around that place - finding very few of the booths listed on my BEA Planner. The map was impossible to follow since it would’ve had to be enlarged 500X to allow for legible text. And that would have made it…let’s see what my calculator says here…about 6’ x 3.54’. Moreover, only three of the thousands of exhibitors displayed their booth number. Without an annotated map, it was impossible to see if it was one of the 84 I wished to visit. Unfortunately, see, I’d arranged my list in order by booth number rather than alphabetically – assuming (silly me!) the spaces could readily identified.

There were no places to rest on the main exhibition level. The few places on the lower floors were always taken. The food and restroom lines snaked around endlessly.

It would have been miserable even if I hadn’t been up to 4 AM that morning wrestling with the hotel room thermostat.. But that’s another post.

I finally called it a day somewhere around 4 PM. It was the hottest part of the afternoon, and I’d dressed to match my book covers: Black, set off by a flowing red print scarf. That, plus the tote bag carrying 4 books and multiple packets and brochures, made a grueling 8-block walk to the hotel on already wretched feet.

But I made it all the way back to my frigidly air conditioned room – only to find it being cleaned. Sigh. Back down in the lobby, I snagged the one remaining muffin left from breakfast and washed it down with equally leftover coffee. While eating, I called the airport shuttle for a pick-up time. What? 3:30 AM?? For a flight leaving at 7:00? OMG. Suddenly my meager repast seemed providential indeed.

LaGuardia, as compared with other terminals, is as dirty and crowded as the rest of New York. At least, the rather limited part of it I saw. The only food concession open at 5 AM just had a tray of brownies out. That, plus a very expensive bottle of water, was breakfast. Don’t get me wrong. It was an exceptional brownie. Just not my usual fare. It was supplemented 2 ½ hours later by airline coffee and pretzels.

There were more pretzels and coffee on the second leg between Atlanta and Houston. Actually, since I didn’t know they’d changed the gate number of that flight, and therefore missed it, I might have hooked up with some real grub. But by the time I’d walked back across Atlanta’s interminable terminal to the gate of the next flight out, I was too angry and exhausted to care. When my husband picked me up, I forced him to head straight for one of our favorite restaurants where I pigged out big-time. Then I went home and slept for the next two days.

Like I said, if anyone had a positive experience at the BEA, please tell me about it!