Book Trailer for Believe It, You Know an Atheist

UPDATE: Believe It, You Know an Atheist is now available for purchase in paperback and all e-formats. Links to the online sites are available on this page!

Excerpt

Introduction

You’re probably a Christian, but you might also be Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu, and you bought or were given this book because you know somebody who is an atheist and you either are or somebody expects that you are having or are going to have a hard time accepting it. The purpose of this book is to help you to understand what atheism is and is not. This is not an attempt to indoctrinate you into atheism or to make you question your faith; however, I will defend the atheist’s right to be an atheist, so it’s possible, therefore, that at some point(s) in this discussion you will find I challenge long-held beliefs.

If at some point while reading, you find yourself angered or if you begin to simply dismiss difficult concepts or arguments just because they make you uncomfortable, that’s not my fault. Your faith is either strong enough to stand up to scrutiny, or it is not. If it is, that’s great. You’re a theist. We knew that coming in. If not … if you begin doubting your convictions and struggling with your desire to maintain beliefs that no longer fit you, that’s okay too. That’s probably similar to what happened to the atheist you know.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about who I am and why I am writing this book. Then I am going to tell you a little bit about how this book is structured. I’m providing this information now to prepare you for the experience of evaluating what—for some—might be a challenging read. Not challenging because of the language and not challenging because it’s over your head, but challenging because it deals with subject matter you long ago decided was a fixed part of your worldview, and now somebody you care about  is challenging that worldview.

You’re probably wondering what qualifies me to write this book. Am I a lapsed theologian, a philosophy PhD, the appointed spokesman of the Church of Atheism? No, I’m just a guy who used to believe in God, had a crisis of faith at a young age, came out to my family as a non-believer, and grew up in a country where my beliefs (or lack thereof) are marginalized and in many cases scorned outright. My educational background is in communications, and I have written professionally for years, including working as a news writer for the YouTube channel AtheismTV’s news broadcast, The Infidel.  You may be thinking this means you can take my opinion with a grain of salt since I rejected belief and cannot appreciate the experience of faith. I’ll cover that a little deeper later in the book, but for now, let me assure you—that opinion is not supported by the facts.

I was raised in a Catholic home by Catholic parents who had me baptized and confirmed. We attended mass weekly, and I underwent eight years of CCD classes (basically Catholic Sunday School.) Nothing “bad” ever happened to me in the Catholic Church. In fact, growing up I wanted to be a priest for a while. My first wife was a member of the Church of Christ, and we attended church together frequently, even though by this time I was an out and proud atheist. My second wife was a Methodist and we were married in the Methodist Church, although we never attended. (I encouraged her to attend services and to take our daughter if she wished, and even offered to attend with her. She remains a nominal Christian to this day.) I am currently in a relationship with a woman who considers herself a social Mormon. She’s very spiritual and believes in ghosts. I have friends who practice Reiki and go on ghost hunting adventures. Another friend is a minister in the Nazarene Church. I have rung bell for the Salvation Army (although I stopped because of their anti-gay policies.) One of my cousins is an evangelical, and whenever we meet, we respectfully discuss whatever apologetic meme Ray Comfort or Rick Warren introduced to his minister that month.

The bottom line is I don’t hate religion or God or the religious. I’m actually fascinated by the topic and know it pretty well. I respect my religious friends and they respect me.

Now for a little about this book: I have divided it into three parts. The first part is the basic layout of what atheism is and is not and why a person might come to it. It’s the meat-and-potatoes of why you have this book to begin with. If you read only the first part and then quit, you’ll have a better understanding of your atheist relative or friend.

The second part is for those of you who want to better understand how a person comes to reject the God hypothesis (as Carl Sagan called it.) Note that I did not say “how a person comes to reject God.” Atheists do not reject God; atheists do not believe in God. The two concepts are not interchangeable. For example: you may believe in fairies; but if I don’t, that does not mean I reject fairies. But we are getting ahead of ourselves—more on that later.

The third part is a deeper defense of atheism itself. It explores the harder philosophical issues and the more deeply ingrained social/religious norms. If you choose to read it, expect to have your beliefs questioned. Read the second part if you want an idea of how your atheist associate possibly thinks, and read the third part if you want to know how he or she could feel confident in his or her decision.

In reading this introduction, you may have noticed I wrote it assuming as little as possible about the reader and the person he or she is reading for. That’s about to change. For purposes of clarity, I am going to make certain assumptions about the reader and the reader’s atheist. I realize this opens me up to accusations of straw manning, but it’s necessary so the narrative doesn’t bog down in “he/she” slashes and “Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu …” mini-lists. From now on, except where otherwise indicated, I am writing to an American Protestant mother who has just learned that her son is an atheist. Odds are, that’s you. If not, I have every confidence you can make the adjustments.

Part One – Understanding the Fundamentals

Typically, the older we become, the more ingrained our worldview becomes. Conversely, the younger we are, the easier it is to accept new (and foreign) knowledge and adapt to it. Consider that babies learn language much easier than adults, and young people adapt much more easily to changes in their situations. Yet, as we age, it becomes harder to learn languages or to acclimate to environmental upheaval. A baby with absolutely no foreknowledge will learn to passably speak the language of her parents with no formal education or training at all. A six year old will quickly adjust to a move from the Deep South to the Snow Belt … or from the US to Dubai for that matter.

However, as adults, many will not only find diphthongs, umlauts and gender-based articles confusing, they will probably consider them to be just wrong. Meanwhile, the culture shock some experience on vacation in Europe or Asia can be enough to make them so uncomfortable that the idea of moving there permanently would actually cause heart palpitations.

Yet people of all ages do move to Europe and Asia all the time. Each and every day, adults learn to speak languages with rules that seem to make no sense. There are socially accepted reasons for this to happen, so nobody tends to question why one would make such a drastic change to the status quo. However, changing one’s long-held ideas about the nature of existence is another matter. If you think about it, what one believes about the nature of the universe isn’t automatically right just because a person believes it. Many people believe a number of discordant things about such topics as creation, death, eternity, afterlife, etc. Clearly some of those beliefs are incorrect, and obviously those who believe “A” do not think that you are the one with the right answer if you believe “B.”

If you are a Christian, you do not think the prophet Mohammad was the emissary of God. If you were Muslim, you would not believe that Jesus was divine. The tenets of the other religion would be, in your opinion, something to reject. You would be, in effect, an atheist toward that religion. Here’s a hard fact: in regards to your beliefs, most people in the world are atheistic towards what you believe, and you are atheistic in regard to most of the world’s beliefs.

This is known as Roberts’ Rule. First articulated by an atheist named Stephen Roberts, the rule says simply, “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

In other words, asking an atheist why he doesn’t believe in God is like asking you why you don’t believe the prophet Mohammad was delivering God’s message. A person believes what he believes, and disbelieves what he cannot believe. In that sense, atheism is not a decision one makes, but a realization one comes to about one’s self.

Try to make yourself believe something you simply don’t believe. Yes, it can be done, but not under normal conditions. Stockholm Syndrome, for example, is a legitimate psychological phenomenon in which a person under duress from a captor begins to empathize with his oppressor. However, not every example of belief by indoctrination is so severe. Through meditation you can convince yourself that you are not feeling pain or that a red barn is blue. However, if your son tells you that he is the one who believes the barn is blue, he’s not going to simply stop believing it just because you make a compelling argument that it’s actually red. Also, his refusal to acknowledge the redness of the barn—while a rejection of your interpretation—is not a rejection of you as a person.

This is one way you can begin to understand his atheism. It’s not a rejection of you or of your love. Somewhere in your family history, your ancestors converted to Christianity—rejecting the faith of their forebears. This doesn’t mean that your great-great-great-great-grandmother didn’t love her mother and father. It means she made her own decision for her own life, and she was brave to do so.

Keep this in the front of your mind as you continue to read. Your son just came out as an atheist, but he didn’t just become one yesterday. It’s been a process, and he has thought about it. He was an atheist yesterday, and he loved you then, and you loved him. The only thing that’s changed is you now know something about him that you didn’t know yesterday but was true yesterday nonetheless. It’s no different than the time you learned that he doesn’t care for your eggplant casserole.

A word of caution: many theists (people who believe in God) approach discussions with atheists disingenuously. A well-known theistic vlogger known as shockofgod invented a term he calls “Santa Syndrome.” Whenever an atheist compares coming to the realization that he does not believe in God to when he realized there was no Santa, Shock derisively dismisses the argument as sour grapes. In doing so, he ignores the underlying point the atheist is making which denies Shock of the possibility to engage on an honest level. Please do not make that mistake as you read on.

Guest Post: The Future of Publishing by Jordan Smith

If you have an ereader, and like to relax and read a little before going to sleep, you may not realize that what you’re doing not too long ago would’ve seemed like it was from Science Fiction. Many things we used to regard that way creep into our world, almost imperceptibly, and pretty soon we can’t imagine modern life without them. The world of books and publishing is one area where this has happened quite significantly.

At the big picture level, take the 1931 Herman Hesse novel The Glass Bead Game. This highly regarded Sci Fi story set hundreds of years from now involves an intellectual order of people who play an irreducibly complex game that many have said is analogous to our hyper-connected digital world. To quote Bruce Milligan, Director of New Media at the AOL subsidiary Redgate, the ‘game’ of this book’s title comes to his mind when he thinks about what the internet is now: ‘a realm of pure intellect, minds interacting with machines, constructs of information designed to facilitate the sometimes-ordered, sometimes-random and often serendipitous roamings of human inquisitiveness.’

How strange it might be for Hesse if he were alive today to see that something so close to what he imagined is one of the central parts of life in the developed world now. It reminds us all that to a complete outsider who would look on our internet now it would seem strangely abstract. So much of the web is only about ideas and information, humor or audio-visual  experience. This is wonderful in some ways, but also odd in just how removed from actual experience so much of our online world is. The online world facilitates many real world things. I myself am in a relationship with a woman I met online. But on the web now we use terms like IRL (in real life) to refer to such things that actually exist outside of the internet. It’s often otherwise assumed that what we refer to online does not.

Now look at ereaders themselves. I remember watching the Star Trek series’ of the 1990s and marveling at how the characters could pick up a small digital device and use it to peruse a great deal of information. Say, as much or more information than could be packed into a standard sized book. ‘Just imagine that!’ I thought, how far off and distant from my time that must be! The original Star Trek series in the 1960s conveyed a similar technology, and at that time when computers were the size of buildings, and understood mostly by sophisticated academics, such an idea must have seemed utterly fantastical.

But when you really think about it ereaders actually aren’t that shocking, at least in a way. Not long into the history of the computer it was realized that the amount information that could be stored on them would become exponentially more efficient over time thanks to principles like Moore’s law. As decades have progressed it would only make sense that some threshold would be crossed where they could store as much information as books. That point was actually reached back in the 1990s. In the 90s Steve Jobs, and before him Nicholas Negroponte in the 80s, were actually predicting the rise of mobile tablet devices that  you control with your fingers. Once there exists commercially feasible small computers and commercially feasible computer screens you can use your fingers to interface with, the combination of the two to create things like the Kindle and Ipad would inevitably catch on.

So if you followed these trends you actually could have foreseen the rise of eBooks. But eBooks are still a quantum leap in functional possibilities over ink and paper books. eBooks can be networked, the content hidden or displayed an infinite number of times. Vast amounts of new content can be brought to an ereader in minutes online. This raises, quite suddenly, many advantages and problems we didn’t have to think about a short while ago. While eBooks allow a lot of access to books, do they not also cheapen what a book is? How will anyone use a book to escape when the device you read it on is connected to so much of the world?

Focusing on the functional difference between traditional books and digital ones, you can see what a departure from the recent past they are. Herman Hesse may have foreseen that a world of deep informational interconnection was coming because radio and wire services were increasing the connectedness of people in his time, and the technology enabling that was already fast-evolving back then. But to many who hadn’t thought as much about those things, the idea that we can all maintain so many different connections to so many far flung people and institutions would seem like a quantum leap as well.

There’s good news here for people such as myself; I’m an aspiring Sci Fi author and blogger who wishes to put my content out into the world. Content creators are the winners in our brave new world; access to content may be cheap now and most reading done on networked devices, but that has fundamentally eroded barriers to content distribution, and made end runs around the content gatekeepers the new norm.

I’ve written one Sci Fi novel that I plan to release on Kindle soon where I touched on a new technology that could also change the world of writing and publishing; today when authors compose books we type the words, or maybe speak them to a voice recognition system. Pretty soon what if we think our words directly onto the digital page? But that’s so far off right? How can we imagine a computer that you can interact with using only your brain? I don’t know, but a brilliant woman named Tan Le has actually been working on it for years.

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Jordan's website is at jordanthomassmith.com if you care for more musings

Two Books in Two Weeks!

This is an exciting time for me as a self-publishing author. The second book in my mystery novel series, Common Sense, is about to be released in paperback and eBook at the end of this month, and then on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2014, I will be releasing my very first non-fiction book, Believe It, You Know an Atheist. Here’s the blurb and cover reveal for that book.

How can you find common ground when a loved one no longer believes in God?

Cover design by Yocla Designs

Without ever insisting that atheism is the correct conclusion, Believe It strives to bridge the disconnect between the devout and the debunkers. Featuring quotes and arguments found throughout the history of skepticism from Epicurus to Sam Harris and beyond, Believe It lays out a line of reasoning and analysis designed to illuminate the thinking that inspires a godless worldview. Broken down into three parts, J. David Core here examines from an atheist's POV the fundamentals of disbelief; likely refutations of some of the more common theistic arguments; and such difficult issues as grace, the historicity of religious texts, and the nature of truth.

Whether you are the parent of a new atheist, a co-worker of a long-time unbeliever, or simply want to understand the motives and thought processes of your non-religious friends, Believe It: You Know an Atheist.

Book Review: The Hacktivist by R.J. Webster

Jack Bishop is a young and impressive computer programmer fresh out of college and deeply in love with his medical doctor girlfriend, Catherine. He’d known for some time that the day would come when she would set off on her life’s dream to help the poorest of the poor, but when she boards that plane bound for Haiti leaving him behind to await her return, it leaves him feeling more than alone. It leaves him feeling empty. He desperately wants to find some way that he too can help, but how is a computer programmer – even one as talented and devoted as Jack – supposed to benefit the starving and sick poor?

Then one day the company’s security team approaches him about a programming problem and Jack becomes obsessed with learning everything he can about Trojans, and viruses, and IRC server channels. Partly he’s obsessed to fill the void Catherine left in his life, but soon the seed of a plan begins to germinate. Jack can use his new-found knowledge to build his own code – a code to help the charities that help in places like Haiti.

Part techno-drama, part instruction manual, The Hacktivist by R.J. Webster is a book with three agendas; entertain with a realistic cyber-crime story, educate the reader about the legitimate risks of surfing the web in today’s hacker-rich environment, and maybe – just maybe – inspire some people to throw a little scratch at such worthwhile charities as Doctors Without Borders and justgive.org.

As an instruction manual, it succeeds very well. The premises are complicated and highly math-based, but Webster explains the concepts in ways which are very accessible. As a techno-thriller it falls just a little flat. There are few real episodes of high tension or perceived danger. The characters are all believable but just a little one-note. Even the relationship between the counter-hero protagonist and his lady love is mostly seen in rough sketches and long distance emails. There are also a number of walk-on characters who are clearly there only to advance the tech-manual aspect, but they all seem to speak in the same voice using the same kinds of accessible verbal shorthand.

Additionally, a few side stories are introduced but don’t really go anywhere. In one episode, a Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian-type celebrity is victimized by an early iteration of the virus, and vows to go on an O.J.-like quest for the “real” hacker, but nothing ever comes of it. Hints are dropped throughout the story that Jack’s dog, Argus, will somehow trip up Jack’s well-laid plans, but again, that plotline just sort of peters out.

The story also might have benefited from a few more true-life examples of Haitian suffering if the author really wanted to compel casual readers to action. A few asides into Catherine’s and her peers’ day-to-day lives might have accomplished that and added some genuine depth to her character.

There are clever flashes through the story, however. A very clever example which I really enjoyed involves an FBI agent who could use the PATRIOT Act to great advantage but decides to be a person instead. I don’t usually rate the stories I review, but in this case, I’m giving The Hacktivist an “A” as a learning tool, a “B” on the Sarah McLaughlin-style PSA, and a “C++” for the story and characters.

10% of the proceeds from this book will go to Partners in Health to help the poor in Haiti. The Hacktivist is available on Amazon for the Kindle.

Excerpt

Steve turned to John and explained, “Scheuerman’s been doing the dynamic reverse engineering of the bot and has been watching the most recent command and control server for us. You probably want to hear this too.”

John waved Scheuerman in, “What have you got?”

 “Well, the C server sent out an update command, a major update. That is pretty normal, we were seeing updates about once every week or two for a while and then it went quiet for a few weeks and now this. The update command told the bot client to go to a website we have not seen used before. It then downloaded an executable file from there and ran it. As you know, we have one infected system that we are letting just do its thing so it went ahead and updated itself. Well after the update we watched it closely but it did nothing that we could detect. Nothing at all happened. It has stopped trying to communicate. It dropped out of the Command and Control server. The normal behavior was that it would stay connected to the chat room waiting for a command from the C. After this last update completed, it closed the connection and went silent. We have been watching it for over 24 hours now and it has done nothing at all.”

John asked, “Did it shut itself down, or is the viral process still running on the computer?”

Scheuerman told them that it was still running that they could still see the process running though it took quite a bit of effort. The rootkit made it difficult to detect this particular process by normal means.

John turned to Steve, “Well what do you think, could it be laying low because it knows we’re watching somehow? We’ve seen that before, some logic that can detect a lab environment. Or do you think it might have a new way to communicate, maybe periodically instead of an up all the time connection?”

They had all seen viruses that refused to run when in a monitored environment. There were tricks that viruses used to detect if they were running in a virtual environment or in a debug environment. Some viruses were simply smart enough to detect when they were running in the kind of testing environment that the police used to unravel a virus’s mysteries. When they found they were in such an environment, they would simply shut down or refrain from functioning. It was more and more common for a virus to check first to see if the coast was clear before running. And many debug environments are easy to detect. A debug program is a tool that can run another program inside of itself, controlling how it runs. It can allow an engineer to run a program, a virus in this case, one precise machine code command at a time if necessary, stepping through the program with incredible slowness in order to learn all the things that the malware might be capable of doing. Consider that CPU speeds are often measured in millions of instructions per second, MIPS, and with a debugger you can do them one at a time.

Debugging a normal program wasn’t too hard if you understood machine code. Computer programs frequently make decisions from a set of available choices. They decide what they want to do next. The code might check its data and then choose a branch of code based on the data it sees. Some branches might never run if they don’t see the required data. When a program is run in a debugger by someone like Scheuerman, the investigator can force it to try every possible branch of execution to see all the possible things it might be capable of doing. The engineer can change the code of the program too. He can force data or commands into the program, he can basically lie to the program to force it to take each branch. But viruses these days are almost always encrypted in some way. They contained dummy logic and false paths of execution that led nowhere. Modern encrypted viruses might have lots of reverse engineering protections. They are often packed, that is compressed in some way, obfuscated and then encrypted. They only unencrypt themselves a little at a time. Often the only thing the investigator can see at first is a little bit of code in the beginning of the program which might contain jumps to seemingly random places in the virus file. Eventually, this jumping around process executes code to try to detect if it is being run in a lab. If the coast is clear, the virus can decrypt more of itself to memory and see if it is capable of running normally. If it is not, it leaves what’s left of its code encrypted and shuts down. Steve’s technical guys sometimes spent days removing protections or trying to understand the logic of obfuscated programs and then even more time trying to figure out how to decrypt them or convince them to decrypt themselves. What was worse no one wanted to do this kind of work forever so usually by the time someone got really good at it they wanted to move on to something else.

Author Interview: Yoram Katz, Author of The Kabbalist

I was recently approached by new author Yoram Katz about his historical thriller, The Kabbalist, which he describes as "a thoroughly researched historical detective/mystery novel, which spans 2,000 years of history, and puts the mystical doctrine of Kabbalah (which everybody talks about, but most really have no clue what it is...) in a new perspective." We conducted an interview via email.

Please tell us a little about you and your book.

As most Israelis do, I served the 3-year mandatory service, and participated in a war or two.

I then studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I was so impressed, that having completed my BA in both, I immediately ran away to spend two years in Europe and Africa and then landed back on earth to study for my BSc. in Computer Engineering.

Most of my career since has been spent in the flourishing Israeli hi-tech industry, where I held some senior managerial positions and travelled the globe. My career sent me for a few years to Singapore where I relocated with my wife and three children.

I have always been an avid reader planned to find the time to write my own novels. With three children at home and an intensive career, the time for this never materialized, until, a few years back, I realized I could use the time made available for me during my trips. It felt right.

 The Kabbalist is my first published novel. I am now working on the next.

Tell me about your favorite scene in your novel.

There are a few scenes I like but I would rather talk about an early scene in order to avoid a spoiler.

There is this scene about a Jewish refugee running away from crusader Acre after it had fallen to the Muslims in 1291. He somehow managed to escape the crumbling city by sea, but now he is fighting for his life after his ship has capsized. He is terrified, but what happens to him next at sea is totally unexpected, changes his fortune – and lays a foundation for the rest of this multi-layered plot. It is an introduction to other twists the reader can expect in the story.

Can you tell us a little about your writing philosophy?

What I expect a good book to provide me:

1.    Escape - keep me absorbed in the subject and plot

2.    Entertainment – enjoy the experience

3.    Enlightenment – I want it to teach me something new, give me an insight I did not have, or introduce me to new ideas. I want it to leave something with me after I have finished reading it.

Some people are OK with having 1 & 2. I need all three to be satisfied. That’s what I want my books to be like.

Have you ever tried writing in any other genres?

I have not published other novels so far. I am very fond of history, but I do not see myself necessarily tied to historical fiction. My next novel was inspired by a three-year stay in Singapore and my impressions of role spirits play in the Chinese day-to-day life.

Do you have any interesting writing-related anecdotes? If so, can you explain it briefly?

This novel is based on a “conspiracy” historical theory. It happened to me at least twice that I decided to take it in a certain direction and then found that this “new” direction had been actually brought up before by other scholars.

Yoram’s book is available at Amazon in both paperback and eBook. A trailer can be viewed on Youtube. The book also has a presence on Goodreads. 

Book Review: Discretion by David Balzarini

As a young man, Colin Wyle is not particularly impressive. The son of a former professional basketball player, Colin is cordial and likeable enough, but ultimately he’s forgettable. He, like many boys his age,  spends most of his time daydreaming about the unattainable girl-of-his-dreams, Natalie Merian, and the rest of his time trying to figure out a way to earn his father’s respect. Then one day while attending church with the family of one of his friends, Colin begins to hear a voice. The disembodied personality calls herself Christel, and she begins guiding Colin to a better life.

Thanks to Christel, Colin becomes a sports hero and wins the affections of his girl and the growing tenuous respect of his father. Is she a guardian angel, a psychic spirit guide, a muse, a daemon? Colin doesn’t know, and frankly he doesn’t care. Things are going perfectly, and Colin is on his way to the life he’s always wanted. Then, one day while on a holiday trip to the lake, everything changes. Natalie disappears. Suspicion falls on Colin and his father. Days pass, tension mounts, and then out of the blue, Christel is in Colin’s ear telling him the steps he has to take. Hours later, Colin’s life is changed again, Natalie is saved, the man who had her is dead, Colin is a killer, and the police are covering the whole thing up to save face.

Years pass. Colin and Natalie have remained friends, but he is in a new relationship, engaged to be married. He has an investment job which he has been very successful at with Christel’s help. Then, again torment from his past arrives. New evidence has surfaced in several cases similar to the one involving Natalie’s abduction. Investigation is sure to uncover his involvement in the death of her captor. Colin needs Christel now more than ever, but is she everything he’s always assumed that she was?

Discretion by David Balzarini is a thriller with a message. A born again Christian, Balzarini weaves a tale that’s more about consequences than resolution. None of the thriller elements of the story are ever reconciled in the traditional manner, but fatalists and those who enjoy affirmation of faith in their literature are sure to take comfort in the book’s suppositions and anti-resolution.

The story is told mostly in a first-person present voice which I personally find off-putting. When I write, I create my notes and outline in first-person present. The beginning paragraphs of this review are also written in that POV. It’s more urgent feeling and gives one the sense of being instantly connected to the action. However, as I tell a story, I prefer to put all of the action in the past, where it belongs. “Guy walks into a bar,” may work for a joke told to friends at a party, but if I’m writing to an audience, I want them to understand that the action occurred in a tangible reality which I am recounting — not one which I am describing on the fly.

This is not to say that Balzarini doesn’t create a richly textured atmosphere. Indeed he does. His words are carefully chosen and I understand why he elected for the immediacy afforded by telling the story as if it’s happening in the now. I’m not noting this to say the writing is poor. Quite the contrary, it’s excellent. However, for me, there was a curve where I had to acclimate to the style in order to appreciate the writing. So this isn’t a criticism as much as it is fair warning.

I will say that I wish there had been more resolution to the traditional mystery element at the end of the story. The focus at the conclusion is more on Colin’s spiritual resolution than on wrapping up the story of how Natalie wound up where she did that long ago summer day; and there was no warning that this was going to be the case in the book’s description. In fact, the description gives no indication whatsoever that the story is less Taken and more Angel Heart. I, for one, wish I had known that going in.

David can be found on Twitter and Discretion is available for the Kindle and in paperback from Amazon.

Excerpt

When my father calls, my nerves tingle like wires hanging near a bathtub, not touching so to create havoc, but close enough to experience the palpable energy of two opposing forces near one another.

On the second day, during the three days that Natalie was missing, my father ranted and raved about Natalie and every conversation with Jackson or Viktor, the attorney, centered on the removal of liability—as if his status were the only thing that mattered; not Natalie’s life that hung in the balance. And I’ve resented him since.

I answer his call, not because I want to, but because if I don’t, he’ll call until he reaches me and it’s better to take the poison now than wait.

His greeting is cheerful; my response tries hard to be neutral, but it errs on the side of hostile.

“I know you’re busy, but I wanted to stay in touch. How’ve you been?” my father says. He sounds oddly cheerful.

When I left for college, he got nostalgic. He began telling stories of my childhood as if it was some magical time. Little League World Series. Baseball and academic scholarship. A late round pick by the Florida Marlins. The dream coming true for him, to see his son achieve greatness in pro sports.

Christel made other plans. Once the pro sports career went south, he lost interest just as fast.

“I’m managing. Been busy.” I start pacing around my office.

“Yeah, I’m not buying it. What’s going on?”

He never wants to know when it’s about Natalie.

“So…what’s news?” I say after the long silence.

“I sold three of the businesses and plan to whittle away the rest over the next year or so.”

“Really?” He must be going postal. Or Brooke has him by the balls to travel more and attend to her every need.

“Yeah. I can’t believe it either, but I’m moving on from them. tirement doesn’t suit me, I think. But what the hell, I’ll give it a try.”

“Call the network back, then. They’ll have you in a New York minute.” Then I will go back to never hearing from you. How I like it.

My father laughs at the thought. “I like the idea, actually. I’ve never been one to lay on the beach, watching the sunset…ah, I don’t know. I’m not ready to be done working.”

“I must agree. You’ll go crazy before long.”

“Brooke wants to spend six months in Europe.”

“And there is the motivation.”

“Son, you knew that was the reason before I said so.”

“True.” I pause a moment. “Seriously, though. Call the network back. Kenny and Chuck could use your company. Teach them how to play golf while you’re at it.”

“You know she’d throw a fit, so why entertain it?”

It would be fun to watch. I’d drive to his place so I could watch the video footage. “Because it would be fun for you. Pay wouldn’t hurt either.”

He sniffs and remains silent. He’s stewing over the idea. He’s got to be trying to figure out how to slip this past Brooke. The man lives for action. He and I exchange a few pleasantries and hang up, parting on the notion we’ll connect again soon but we know it’ll be months before we talk again.

Blurb and Cover Reveal: Common Sense

Book two in the Lupa Schwartz Mystery series, Common Sense, will be officially released in February, however you can now get a pre-release copy on Smashwords. Enter coupon code LE27X for a 25% discount.

UPDATE: Coupon now expired.

SECOND UPDATE: Common Sense is now available at the following online retailers: Amazon paperback, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, iBookstore, Smashwords, and on Goodreads.

I’d finished describing my surprise at how easy it was to identify Dave since – after all — he’d been pulled from a river after drowning. I’d thought he’d be bloated or discolored, but he’d looked like himself. Then out of nowhere, Schwartz had asked me if Dave had often gone night fishing alone, and I’d gone suddenly mute.

Common sense tells Cattleya Hoskin that her reporter ex-husband wouldn't have gone out night-fishing by himself in the middle of an investigation. The unaccommodating local authorities see it differently. In an effort to prove them wrong, Cattleya enlists the help of her private investigator friend, Schwartz, to follow through with Dave’s investigation—theft from the power grid in a small Ohio town.

The inquiry is complicated by crooked contractors, a menacing white van, and some long-abandoned coal mines and antebellum tunnels. Aggressively loud church bells and the amorous advances of a bounty hunter Schwartz brought in to help add to an already convoluted situation. Yet Cattleya feels she owes it to Dave to figure out what happened to him, for better or for worse.