Month: February 2013

Book Brief: The Last Israelis

The Last Israelis
by Noah Beck
Genre: Military and Psychological Thriller
Word count: 85,000

Israel’s leader falls unconscious. Iran acquires nukes. History is now up to 35 Israelis. Ethnically diverse. Ideologically divided. On a nuclear-armed submarine.

Iran threatens to destroy Israel and now has the nuclear means to do so. Israel’s “second-strike” answer to this existential threat is the Dolphin, a submarine with nuclear-tipped missiles. But its crewmembers are a microcosm of the complex Israeli society they defend, making for a suspense-filled ride to Armageddon.

There are two descendants of Holocaust survivors; two native Arabic speakers (one Christian, one Druze); the son of Persian Jews who escaped the Iranian revolution of 1979; an Ethiopian who crossed Sudan by foot as a child to reach Israel; religious Jews who serve on a mostly secular crew; the atheist son of a Soviet Refusenik; an officer who holds right-wing views and another who – against navy regulations – stealthily attends leftist rallies; and the son of Vietnamese refugees saved by Israel in 1977 who is secretly gay.

There is also the rivalry between the captain and his deputy, and a childhood tragedy that haunts a sailor whose psychological wounds could explode unexpectedly.

The pressures of submarine life, threats at sea, and an unthinkable dilemma make conflict among the crewmembers inevitable. Sometimes the boiling point is reached only in a submariner’s dream, but at other times, the situation is terrifyingly real.

The divided men must struggle with the weightiest moral questions as they debate the toughest decision of their lives.

And decide they must. Because they are the last Israelis.

This book is available from Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and the author’s website.

Continue reading “Book Brief: The Last Israelis”

A Helping Hand…cApitaLisaTioN

I tend to find when I’ve read a book which has been a tad economic, let’s say, with the time spent on editing/proofreading (ahem!), that it’s not one particular aspect of punctuation or grammar. No…it’s the full Monty. I am going to need a shatterproof, iron-clad Kindle soon—it can’t take me hurling it at the wall in exasperation for very much longer.

So, having tackled apostrophes, semi-colons, ellipses, dashes and the that/which debate, let’s have a go at capitalisation, which seems to fox people. Like so many other cast members in the screenplay of punctuation characters, we could go on forever, so I’ll try and cover the basics in this limited space.

The best thing to try and remember is: don’t use a capital letter for a common noun unless it is absolutely essential.

Professions are not capitalised and, therefore, professor, doctor, senator, detective, president, etc., are in lowercase, unless they are followed by a proper name, or you are addressing a person in that profession: Continue reading “A Helping Hand…cApitaLisaTioN”

Sneak Peek: Tsunami Connection

Today we have a sneak peek from Author Michael James Gallagher’s new espionage thriller, Tsunami Connection.

A Mossad sleeper, the clever and striking protagonist, Kefira, stumbles into a deadly world domination plot. A diabolical Russian Oligarch devises a frighteningly effective weapon of mass destruction, while the CIA knowingly lingers and procrastinates to see if the weapon’s target succumbs. An evil Fenian terrorist goes rogue during the ‘Arab Spring’ in a destabilized Middle East. All the while, a despotic Russian President plots in an effort to influence prices in crude oil markets. To top it off, a sinister, though little known, powerful, yet clandestine, Chinese General watches events, waiting to pounce, using a new, highly secret weapon of mind control developed and tested on unwitting prisoners in the North Korean ‘Gulag’.

Tsunami Connection is available from Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Here is an excerpt from Tsunami Connection… Continue reading “Sneak Peek: Tsunami Connection”

Write More – 100% Guaranteed

I’m going to keep it simple this week. Every once in a while, we need to check ourselves and keep things ridiculously simple. Social media, publishing, distribution, the demise of the publishing industry … Ahhhhhhh!

What is the number one thing that will keep you from publishing your next, or first, book? Continue reading “Write More – 100% Guaranteed”