Whew— it's been a busy spring...

My new thriller FALLOUT (the third installment in the Beck Casey series) was released April 7.

My new mystery-thriller THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES (the first in my new Faulk Carpenter thriller series) was published yesterday (May 28)...…

Part of any author's life is the "joy" of shouldering the hobo-stick, pulling on the walking shoes... and hitting the highway (literally, or on the Internet's Information Highway) to MARKET the flippin' thing.

That is a "given" for all scribes, whether publisher-published or indie/self-pubb'd variety, if only because nobody will market the everlovin' hell out of your books like YOU will.

It can be akin to an…

In this brief "video trailer"for our new, author-centric radio show... uh... I did include my name, as well as the show name, a ...uh... couple of times in the video for "The Book, With Earl Merkel."



Most egregiously, in the closing credits.



In my defense, it is for "branding."



Which I no doubt richly deserve, with a very hot iron.



(Click …

In a wildly dangerous experiment, this Sunday evening "The Book, With Earl Merkel" will break into our usually pre-recorded programming --in mid-show-- for a "LIVE, on-air listener call-in" chapter-segment...



... where YOU can call in to introduce yourselves --and to interrogate, with waterboarding intensity-- Mary Cummings, the head of the fast-growing publishing house Diversion Books (New York).



In an era where many publishing houses are cutting back, Ms. Cummings' house…

More indebtedness incurred by author Earl Merkel, rapidly becoming known as "the Greece of the Writing World"-- this from the lovely Lis Wiehl, who writes the "Triple Threat Club" mystery series when she's not doing legal analysis on television:

"If you're at loose ends waiting for Showtime's HOMELAND to return next fall FIRE OF THE PROPHET by Earl Merkel is your salvation. It's…

Re: those “audio essays” I’m asking you Faithful Readers/listeners of

to send me for airing on "The Book, With Earl Merkel": this comment to Lori Hays, in response to my parallel request to other AOTA hosts for short…

Attention, Vince Flynn fans --or Neil Gaiman fans, since he's featured there too this week-- Sunday night's episode of "The Book, With Earl Merkel" is now available on the radio archives.

Hearing both these outstanding writers discuss their lives & their works is, IMHO, well-worth the "click" on the link below.

Show Synopsis: After a month's-long "foreshadowing" --okay; sure, it's a hoary writing tactic,…

by…

by…

A fellow writer asks: “Aged old debate - to outline or not to outline?”

I respond, and ask you: was I right? …

The award for the most off-target (I fervently pray) Superbowl ad is in: Audi's "The Green Police," a fascist nightmare that inexplicably parallels the 1950's-era anti-Commie paranoia films-- in the Audi ad,

presumably to sell eco-friendly vehicles.

It's jaw-dropping in its appalling "vision" of a police-enforced "green" society, in which only the driver of a bio-diesel car escapes the horrific consequences…