Vampires anyone? Laurie Bowler has taken the genre to a whole new level with her body of work. She is definitely a busy gal with her newest full length novel, The Depths of Darkness. She also has her new series Across the City which has three installments in publication already: The Beginning, The Battle Begins, and Carnage with a fourth on the way, The Alliance. Laurie will be my guest in The G-ZONE next week April 5^th @ 8.30am EST to discuss all that and much, much, much more.…

Two sisters, one story, & plenty of emotion, this is the recipe for Wicked Good. An excellent one at that as this novel is surprising in its quality and ability to not just grab the reader, but evoke a myriad of emotions that range from tears to hope and inspiration to a few smiles and uplifting moments along the way. Did I, the heartless reader and blogger that I am just write tears? Yes, I did and as manly as I am ,if you cannot shed a few tears as you read this novel, well then your…

-The western, what is the deal on that? Where did that come from?

At the heart of every western a man or woman faces danger, hardship, or overwhelming odds. It’s a timeless theme of courage, especially when their quest takes them into the vast unknown, where they must face the elements and other enemies head on, with little more than a horse, a gun and meager supplies. People always tell me they don’t like westerns, so I thought, why not create the type of western people…

Hey, I didn’t post this early today; I am a bit whooped on from a busy weekend. My youngest daughter had her birthday this weekend, we had a houseful Friday night, and then last night we were partying with Big Daddy Abel, author of the Open Mic series, and the Amish Outlaws at the Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pa. The houseful of people and the birthday celebration were nice; I love having the family around. The concert was intense and jam packed as they turned people away at the…

Yesterday I had the privilege of announcing the first winner in the Trestle Press Spring Submission Contest: Jeffrey Martin for House of Misery. Serious stuff and it is an intense read. More on that in a bit. The contest winners will be announced at different times during the week on my blogtalk show The G-ZONE until we reach the conclusion on or around the 15^th of April. The submissions were many. They varied in style and substance, and were all together amazing. My experience…

The stories just keep pouring out of Laurie Bowler. As I am writing this post she is releasing The Depths of Darkness, a full length novel (I will be posting on that next week). She also has Across the City, the fourth chapter in the continuing saga ready to edit. I already have the cover done for that bad boy and will put it up on Facebook after I put this post up. Hopefully you will like the cover art. Laurie will be my guest again in April on The G-ZONE, my blogtalk radio show.…

For those of you that didn’t tune in on Monday to my blogtalk radios show The G-ZONE, shame on you. Okay, maybe you had something to do, but you can at least listen to it on the archive, who knows maybe you will find another author you find interesting. The reason I am pointing this out is this: Tom gave me a new insight into how and why he writes. I found his answers to my questions compelling as well as very telling and it helped me to appreciate his hard work even more. Here is…

TGIF and welcome to the almost weekend. We have a stellar day planned and a huge weekend ahead of us here @ The Scoop and The G-ZONE. We have another tripleheader of posts tomorrow for Digital short Saturday and a very nice novel for Self Published Sunday. Today on The G-ZONE I get to interview Jeffrey Martin and also make the 1^st announcement of winners in the Trestle Press Spring Submission Contest. Tuesday I will be making the next one. Let’s shift gears: Are you…

Busy, busy, busy. I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support for the work I have been doing with various cover art projects, logo art and posting lately. It has meant a lot to me and helped propel me forward. Tomorrow I get the honor of announcing the first winner in the Trestle Press Spring Submission Contest on my blogtalk radio show The G-ZONE.  It is an honor and also a blast to be a part of this. I will be doing a little bit each week as we get closer and closer to the…

It is hump day, Wednesday, for those of us not keeping count. The end of the week for me is just 5 short days away. Wait, then a new week starts again. I need a vacation! Our main character in the novel tried that and her work followed her. Does that mean when I get to take a few days off, some novels, digital short stories and graphic novels are going to follow me? I hope so! The beach wouldn’t be the same without them. Fortunately when work follows me on vacation, I love it and get to…

Me, a huge fan of the Oregon Files?  You never have to ask me that question twice, yes, and then again yes. I just love the work they have done with this series from the get go. More on that in a minute: today on The G-ZONE ,our blogtalk radio show, Big Daddy Abel dropped by; catch it on the archives, and on Weds. John DeDakis, author/instructor/ and CNN Producer will be stopping by at 8.30amEST, breakfast with the G-Man. Good stuff, so please join us for the fun , good conversation and…

It is Monday and as such I am staring a seriously long and fun week ahead. The posting schedule I have set up for this week and next is chock full of great novels, digital shorts, self-published authors and graphic novels. The Scoop is counting down to its 500th post in just about a year in business. We are, to say the least, very proud of this achievement. I want to thank all the readers, followers, social network friends, authors & bloggers that have read our posts as well…

Humor comes in many different forms. Yesterday I touched on Tom Sumner’s All I Wanted Was a Haircut. His brand of humor is a bit different from BDA (I need to save keystrokes here people, so from now on through this post I am going to refer to Big Daddy Abel as BDA), all of it in good way. Besides that, I needed to lighten the mood today from my earlier post on Laurie Bowler’s Across the City Chapter Two. There is no bloodletting or vampires in BDA’s Open Mic Volume Two, hopefully that…

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…

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...…