Cindy A invited me to participate in a “Meet Your Character” blog hop. Cindy is the author ofThe Milk Carton Murders due out next spring. Meet Cindy and view her blog, HERE.

FCEtier at Blue Ridge Books for a book signing in Waynesville, NC.

Now, Meet My Character:

1) What is the name of your character? Is he/she fictional or a historic person?

Claudia Barry – fictional

2) When and where is the story set?                                          

Current times, eastern seaboard USA

3) What should we know about him/her?

Readers meet Claudia in my first book, The Tourist Killer. She’s sixty-two years old and has successfully negotiated a career of over thirty years. Now she’s contemplating retirement and examining her life. What’s next for a professional assassin? Who do you retire? Her assigner convinces her to take a year sabbatical rather than retire outright. A Year Without Killing is the sequel and chronicles her time off.

4) What is the main conflict? What messes up his/her life?

Is retirement from this career any easier than retiring from the CIA or the mafia? How do you break away and stay alive? Claudia must now find a way to be at peace with herself so she can enjoy the rest of her life. AsThe Tourist Killer ends, she and her lover are in separate parts of the country and neither knows the fate of the other.

5) What is the personal goal of the character?

 Claudia wants to settle down with John Hixon and pursue life without the burden of being the harbinger of death to others.

6) Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?

A Year Without Killing, my current work in progress is the third book in the Barry-Hixon series and is the sequel to my first book, The Tourist Killer. I participate most weekends in a blog hop, titled, “Weekend Writing Warriors” and most of the excerpts I publish for the next few months will be from AYWK. Catch up with Claudia and her exploits HERE.

7) When can we expect the book to be published?

    E-book and trade paperback versions should be available in the spring of 2015. A Year Without Killing will debut in serialized form, with two chapters per week in either late fall of 2014 or winter of 2015 on the publisher’s site, Venture Galleries.

To keep the meetings going, I’ll tag:

Caleb Pirtle , Stephen Woodfin , and David Stokes.

As far as I was concerned, it had always been an urban legend.
The League Of Old Men was as real to me as a twenty-first century Illuminati.
You may have heard the legends, rumors, and stories yourself.
Events that at first seem unrelated and overnight are connected by wingnut conspiracy theorists.
Deals, deaths, and deniable dilemmas that mark the repetition of history through the decades.
The romantic stories of great loyalty, unshakeable devotion, and a will that would make that of G. Gordon Liddy pale by comparison.
Former Hell’s Angels with a desire to preserve their culture.
Viet Nam veterans obsessed with a sense of justice usually reserved for vigilantes.
Maverick cops and detectives determined to execute appropriate sentences — with or without a judge and jury.
Were the rumors of disbarred lawyers true? Was there the connection between LOOM and congress?
Many of their deeds have attracted worldwide attention while others are known only to their victims.
Membership is estimated in the thousands, but none will claim to be card-carriers.
Their financial acumen rivals that of the Templar Knights (inventors of banking, loans, and interest).
My lack of regard for their existence was shaken recently when I walked into what appeared to be an abandoned National Guard Armory. The sidewalk leading up to the street was broken and uneven. Grass and tall weeds made homes of the cracks. Poison ivy grew up the side of an exterior wall, rooted somewhere between a window and the brick veneer wall.
But the interior was another story.
The floors were worn but clean. It was clear that the kitchen and dining area had been used recently and frequently. A mahogany bar hosted a row of bar stools from another era. The back counter was stocked with bourbon and scotch.
The American flag stood proudly with an eagle decoration atop the wooden staff.
Was it an American Legion Hall or a VFW meeting place?
Could have been.
But it wasn’t.
A short hallway lined with newspaper clippings of several wars connected the bar with a large meeting room.
A step into the room is a step into another dimension, another time zone.
There was a “presence” in that room. Was it the ghosts of long forgotten soldiers?
My skin was already alive with goosebumps when I noticed the chairs.
Dozens of wooden chairs. Straight back. Curved slat seats. The kind we had in Sunday school class in the sixties.
The chairs remained in their natural wood tones and shined with repeated layers of varnish and polish. The initials were not hidden.
Before the first coat of varnish, each chair had been labeled with stencil and black paint, “L.O.O.M.”
Now every story, every rumour, and every denial must be investigated.
Who makes up the League Of Old Men, and what are they up too in the twenty-first century?

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Article Copyright ©2014 by FCEtier. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and link backs to this story may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to the author with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Violators will be prosecuted to the extent that the law allows. The League Of Old Men is a fictional organization and any resemblance of the organization or it’s members to anyone living or dead is entirely coincidental.

My second novel, The Presidents Club, will be officially released on Amazon Tuesday, Nov. 19.
It will be available as an e-book for Kindle and soon will be available for Nook.
Already seeing some reviews coming in. Watch for a blog soon on how the series title was selected.
Since it features characters from both my first two books, I’m going with, “The Barry-Hixon Conspiracy.”

To support the Tuesday release, my blog this weekend in the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop showcases

eight sentences from TPC.

“For Whom Did You Last Vote” can be found HERE.

What would happen if the President of the United States survived an assassination attempt (not by Claudia Barry) only to emerge from the hospital blind?
Sightless.
No hope of regaining his eyesight.
Would that mean he had lost his vision? [One of many clever double entendres from Safire.]

William Safire, the late New York Times columnist, addressed the issue of an impaired president in his book, Full Disclosure. Surprisingly, the twenty-fifth amendment addressed this issue in the constitution. Fortunately for Safire’s plot, but not for the nation, the authors of the addendum left the issue blurred — a bit out of focus.

Since completing Safire’s book on presidential politics, I’ve begun reading one of several collections of his columns from the New York Times Sunday Magazine, “On Language.”

Take My Word for It was published in 1986 as a follow-up to its 1980 precursor, eponymously titled, On Language. Collections of essays are a favorite for me as it fits in with the demands of my reading time and offers a refreshing diversion.

Today’s reading includes this excerpt from Safire:
“My favorite calumniating adjective is revolving, a word with a spin on it. When asked why he called someone ‘a revolving S.O.B.,’ Harry Truman supposedly replied, ‘He’s an S.O.B. any way you look at him.’”

Word Origins and Their Romantic Stories is another preferred reference as well as an additional satisfaction for my hunger for a better understanding of words, their usage, and their etymology.

Watch for my articles on each of the above-named books.

Watch for them in the future, because as Criswell said so famously in Plan 9 from Outer Space, “We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.”

I’m in with the in crowd;
I go where the in crowd goes.
I’m in with the in crowd;
And I know what the in crowd knows.

We breeze up and down the street;
We get respect from the people we meet.
If it’s square, we ain’t there.
We got our own way of walkin’
We got our own way of talkin’
We make every minute count! — Billy Page

Forty-eight years ago this month, December 2012, Dobie Gray had a hit (#13 in the U.S.) with the Billy Page composition, “The ‘In’ Crowd.”

The following year, the Ramsey Lewis Trio released an instrumental version. The album went to number one and the single of “The ‘In’ Crowd” went to number two.

In 1965, I became a teenager.  Being “in” was the subject of many a teen’s desires.

Being a “square” (today’s “geek”) was something to be avoided.

Could Billy Page’s lyrics be among the roots of today’s slang term, “whazzup?” (often spelled without the “h”).

The genealogy of words isn’t my specialty. I can, however, recall from personal experience, a number of slang words and phrases in the evolution of language that resulted in “whazzup.”

Before Mr. Gray introduced us to that most favorable of factions, Maynard G. Krebs introduced us to a new way of talking. His vernacular replaced the term “slang” with “hip.”  A 1965 entertainment variety show took viewers, along with Dick Clark, to “Where the Action Is.”

In 1971, Marvin Gaye asked “What’s Going On?”

More examples of hip slang include catch phrases like: que pasa, What’s shaking?, the real deal, keep on truckin’, the whole nine yards, where to get your kicks, right on, don’t be a square.

In my own case, I didn’t quite make it with Gray’s crowd.
I wasn’t hip either.
The horn-rimmed glasses and pocket protector didn’t help.
But a friend of mine fit right in.

Claudia Barry was no square in the sixties. Who dat? She’s The Tourist Killer.
What’s shakin’ with The Tourist Killer?  A professional assassin battles conscience, hired killers, and burn-out while juggling relationships and attempting normalcy in a character study with political overtones.

Art Hoffman produced the video trailers, and came up with the answer to three questions:
1. What do we title the video featuring many of the settings in my book?
2. Where is the action?
3. Whazzup?

His answer: Where It’s At.

Can you dig it?

Seated in the reading room of Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville, NC.

Received many requests about this, so now, my author’s page on FaceBook is live.

Click HERE to visit.  “Likes” appreciated!

My first novel, “The Tourist Killer,” will be out later this year. Hope to have it on the streets in time for Christmas shopping.

My video producer did several promo clips for me including this one for fun. We hope you enjoy!

Watch for more announcements, soon.