It has been a busy weekend here @ The Scoop. There are some amazing digital short stories out there and this is another one of them. Call Me Smitty is a three part series thus far; today’s post is on the first installment. B.R. Stateham will be my guest in The G-ZONE April 6^th @ 9am EST. I think it will be fun. What exactly is this digital short series all about, well check it out:

“From the mind of B.R. Stateham, author of Death of Young…

Is it actually Saturday? Yes, today I have it right and all has been restored to its proper order. Now if I could only figure out what to with all the body parts lying around, figuratively of course, from this digital short. Seriously, back up the truck because what goes on in these virtual pages won’t fit into a normal pickup truck. If you enjoy buckets of blood with a side order of severed limbs and vampire organs, then you have come to the right digital short story. Pull up a…

Being the smart guy I am, I needed to look up the word sublime in the dictionary. The results of that inquiry are as follows: Under verb used without an object: to convert (a solid substance) by heat into a vapor. I do this very well; ask those that are around me. I decided to read on, I figure why not I am on a roll: and as an adjective: complete, absolute, utter and haughty. The last one sounds like it is an interpretation from England. So in conclusion, to use the word sublime…

TGIF to all! Change of plans and pace a bit as I have a back log of posts and digital short stories to talk about and thus the Saturday on Friday thing and then we will still have a Saturday on Saturday thing so instead of graphic novels today we will have the digital shorts in their place if you are following me at all. Nonetheless, here is the deal to make this short and more readily understandable, basically in a nutshell and to cut to the chase: today is Graphic Novel Friday, but in its…

    As the anchor author for "Hunter" I found it to be a real rush. I read each segment as it came in and had to keep track of characters and events so as not to lose anything or anyone and then tie all of the loose ends together. I took elements of each segment and tried to expound upon them. I was being lead in a direction and had no choice but to go there.

   I learned early in my directing career that if you are going to make a choice as an actor or director it has to be a clear…

''Uh...Where am I?'' A tall black man walked over to her. ''Hi. I'm Dr. Collins.Do you remember anything?'' ''No.Well...I was at my apartment and uh...There was a knock at the door.When I answered seven boys approached me.'' ''Do you remember their faces?'' ''No.I was just so worried about trying to get away.'' ''Can you try to remember what happened?'' ''Uh... He pushed me into the wall.I hit my head extremely hard. He threw me over his shoulder. He carried me to the nearest bedroom…

Jazz woke up in cold sweat again, losing the last pieces of her nightmare in the chilling room. she felt her skin burn as the nightmares fires caressed her pain skin.

how can dreams be so real?,she thought.

she crawled out of bed and looked in the mirror at herself. her skin was red and her dim,green eyes watery from smoke. her dark blue hair laid dead at her shoulders, as if the fire and smoke sucked the life right out of it. 

her heart-shaped face so…

 Cover of Book

First Page of Story

Strutting proudly through the barnyard, Snickerdoodle‛s red and

green feathers glisten under the hot afternoon sun. Seeing Miss

Pig near the old tire swing, he heads toward…

Once in a while you come across a novel that is different and unique. A novel that just doesn’t quite fit into the same square and round peg holes, doesn’t follow the formulas that the big guys set out for everybody and is so well done structurally you need to take pause and enjoy it for the gem it is. I was lucky enough to find one of them in Death of a Young Lieutenant by B.R. Stateham. I am going to get to jaw with him on April 6^th on my blogtalk show The G-ZONE and…

Back in the day I used to read a host of different serial novels: The Death Merchant, The Executioner, Nick Carter, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown ….wait I went back to far. Okay rewind it a bit and you get the idea. Someone was smart enough to go back and try to capture the feel and fun that was contained in those types of novels back in the day. Did they carry it off? What do you think? Here is what is in the virtual pages:

 From Lee Goldberg...…

There was once a man he had been working on a wide open field in order to plant crops so that he could make a living for the winter. As he kept working this 26 year old women had watched him work from a yonder. She had walked over to him in a casual to ask the man if he would like to take a break from plowing the fields and come to her place and he had replied I would be very much obliged to.…

I sit here thinking..not about you but about some other. it feels wrong but i cant help it. i am taken and he is taken,but yet we hold eachother from time to time.we kiss ocasionally.oh how i love his soft lips;the feel of them pressed against mine.Yet i feel horrible as soon as we part.For he is are taken and I am taken. He is taken..and I am taken, so it is wrong..IT is wrong for me to think these thoughts and to do the things we do,But we all know that i will continue to do them.

What a way to start the posting week, with a scorcher. Gotta love a story that won’t let you stop reading it and the pages just keep flying. Wait, it’s Monday and we have an awesome week ahead of here at both the blog and the The G-ZONE our blogtalk radio show. Our guest lineup this week includes: Stephen Jay Schwartz today, Leona Bodie, Gayle Lynds, Sylvia Massara, and then on Friday Blake Crouch. Remember if you don’t catch them live, go to the archives and enjoy, they are there 24/7 for…

Over the years Twitter has become one of the most favored social networking sites. With over 100 million registered users and 50 million tweets every day, it’s a great way to communicate with pals, make friends, and even promote your business. If you’re interested in the perks of using Twitter to advertise your business, whatever it may be, then first you need to know how exactly it works.

Twitter is sometimes described as a simplified version of Facebook, but in actuality…

Welcome to a Sunday and the growing number of people that follow this day of posting. We have a double header for you, two novels at opposite ends of the spectrum but both provocative and worthy. The Target by Bill Bowen was an emotionally challenging read for me. Most that know me think I am challenged in many ways, but this novel made me take pause and think a bit more than others that I had read in this genre to date. Here is the synopsis and the author’s…

    Iam proud to introduce my new novel "Dying Innocence" coming to book stores in April of 2011. I have decided to donate a good deal of the royalties to The Innocence Project in tribute to those who have lost their lives having been convicted of crimes they didnt commit. DNA has changed the way we think of eye witness testimony. Simply, it can be inacurate. Dying Innocence is the story of an innocent man convicted of a horrific crime before DNA was used in criminal trials. Again,…

Sounds like the beginning of something from a quiz show doesn’t it? No it isn’t, but if you weren’t just listening in on our Blogtalk Radio Show The G-ZONE that had Steve Berry and David Morrell as guests, you may have missed the announcement I just made. That announcement is that we are trying to do something different this Saturday. What is that you say? Here is the concept and hopefully how we will execute the idea:

-We (by that I mean Trestle Press my blogtalk radio…

Don’t hate on the G-Man because today’s novel is Chick-Lit or whatever you call it now a days. Being the dull geezer I am, I am just going with romance novel, make whatever labels you want to apply to this on your own. The only the other label I would like to smack on this is fun and quick, so your basic fun, quick romance novel. Besides being today’s featured post, Sylvia will be joining us in The G-Zone, our blogtalk radio show, on March 17^th 6pmEST. She is in Australia, I have…

First, let me say thank you to Giovanni. It’s great to be here and hopefully meet some new readers!

My name’s Mark and as you can see from my own blog (http://empyricaltales.blogspot.com/), I’m only starting out as a blogger. I still have a lot to learn, despite the upcoming release of my second novel. Like my own blog, I wanted to do something different for the Scoop. I have a Theory of Firsts: the first sentence, first paragraph,…

MOMBASA, KENYA

Tommy Cooper jumped into the passenger seat of the battered jeep pickup.

“Did you find any Tequila?” asked Matthew Butler, not looking up from the map he was examining. 

“No,” Tommy replied, “I had to settle for Rum.  I guess there’s not much call for Tequila in Kenya.  I also got Captain Z his Johnny Walker.  For beer, I got plenty of Tusker, the Budweiser of Africa.  I grabbed the last of the Guinness, and to round out the order, I got 10 cases…