Love on the Run
by Dean
C. Moore
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Husband
and wife thieves are on a mission. Just not the same one. He’s out to pay for
her cancer therapy–at any costs. She’s out to humanize him, and make him less
of a self-absorbed jerk.
The
fast-talking, fast-acting, adrenaline seeking duo pick up a few on-again
off-again sidekicks along their way, despite staunch protests from Zinio. But
with all they’re up against–not the least of which being one smart, hound-dog
of a lady detective–the question is: Can love conquer all?
“The
story is smart and funny.” R. D. Hale, Sky City: The Rise of an Orphan
“For
the booklover that doesn’t like having his or her time wasted.” Jack Heath, Remote Control
“This
would make a brilliant movie or TV series.” Demelza Carlton, Ocean’s Gift
“Reminded me of The Thomas Crown Affair, down
to the whip-cracking humor, the snazzy plot turns, and the character dynamics
between the leads and the hotshot female detective on their tales.” Rhys Jones,
The Whispering Void
“Only if you want an action packed read with
fully developed and interesting characters.” Victor Longshanks, One Big Problem
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
Agent Kerry Pierce paced before the giant monitor featuring
Zinio and Delaney speeding along the freeway trying to escape the chase
helicopter. “How can we be so close yet
so far from knowing who the h*ll these people even are!”
“We didn’t get anything out of Uncle Ernie?” Sam said.
Kerry shook her head.
“The man has Alzheimer’s. You
want to wait around for him to blink back into reality for a brief moment of
lucidness, go right ahead.”
“What about the prints from the house?” Carter protested,
his voice rising sharply into a mousey whine.
“Nothing on any data base.
The cosmetics, and personal items, all generic. The hi-tech weapons and toys, all hand-made
from more common, easy to find components.”
“So it really is back to Uncle Ernie,” Carter said. “Maybe it’s worth posting a plain clothes
officer as a home health-aid.”
Kerry shook her head and pursed her lips. “My guess is they didn’t tell him anything
that could get them in hot water; probably not even their real names. Uncle Ernie is an affectation; there’s no
actual relation, which his blood tests confirmed. Probably someone who did them one hell of a
favor once upon a time that made them feel beholden.”
“No one lives in a house for however many years without
leaving a trace unless…” Carter said, trailing off.
“Unless that’s the point,” Kerry said, finishing the thought
for him. “They knew this day was
coming.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
I write sci-fi, fantasy, action-adventures and thrillers, or some
combination thereof—usually with a strong vein of dark humor. Though, my works are dramas first; the humor
is there to take the edge off as with the Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Transformers, and Jurassic Park franchises.
I wrote screenplays for a while, and while enjoying them, I found
them a bit confining. After a while you
just need the extra page count to flesh out characters better and do additional
world building, especially when considering doing anything epic in scope. I also took a run at future forecasting and
trend tracking, being as I always had my head in the future, things like Alvin
Toffler’s Future Shock. I also relished
this, and can certainly see myself releasing a few titles accordingly in the
nonfiction area. But since delving into
novels, short and long, I’ve definitely found my home and my voice. For the first time I feel the restraints have
been taken off of my imagination. I
suppose all mediums have their limits, so I may end up doing a mix of things,
but I suspect I will continue to spend most of my time with novels. Series add an additional dimension, allowing
for even more depth and development both in the character and world building
departments. But I remain at heart a
divergent thinker, so, no surprise, I seem to have more series going than
follow up installments at this point.
That too may change over time; we’ll see. Until then, it may be best to just think of
these books as one-offs if you’re fond of my writing style and some of the
themes I work with.
My current catalog of twelve books represents a little over five
years' worth of work. I'm currently
averaging a couple books annually. Of my
existing franchises with multiple installments, The Hundred Year Clone books
can be read in any order, while the 5 books of Renaissance 2.0 must be read in
sequence as they form part of a singular story arc (much as with A Game of
Thrones.)
I live in the country where I breed bluebirds, which are
endangered in these parts, as my small contribution to restoring nature's
balance. When I'm not writing, or
researching my next book, I may also be found socializing with friends, or
working in my organic garden.
Interview:
Where are you from?
You would think this would be an easy question to answer. But it depends on which part of their lives a
person finds the most formative. On
where they trace the roots of their identity to. The people, places, and events that shaped
them most. In my case, that was my years
at Cal Berkeley, the six spent on campus as a college student, and the
additional four or so spent living in Berkeley and working in San Francisco
(just a train ride away under the bay).
Berkeley, you see, is where all the great social causes of the
world take root. At least it was back
when I went. We’d like to think that
elevated state of consciousness has since dispersed more evenly around the
world today, but devotees of the area would likely beg to disagree on that
score even now. I remember the days
spent in Sproul Plaza handing out leaflets for pro-environmental causes (being
one of the original tree huggers) right next to a booth featuring the Sisters
of Perpetual Indulgence (gay men who wear nuns habits), and on the other side
of us was a booth championing attending classes in the nude at Cal as one of
the basic human rights. I smile now, of
course, looking back on it all, when I don’t outright double over laughing. But my wild, zany, entirely over the top
characters would likely be a lot less colorful and believable had I not lived
in Berkeley and the Bay Area for so many years.
And my championing of human rights is a lot more informed today as a
carryover of that consciousness I’ve since tried to take everywhere with me.
Did any of this fondness for quirky characters bleed into the
writing of Love on the Run? You bet.
Though the situation for my hero and heroine and their on-again,
off-again sidekicks is entirely reversed.
In their case they’re trying to survive the culturally vacuous burbs,
feeling like ducks out of water. When
their refusal to let circumstances and surroundings get the best of them takes
shape in the form of an action plan, the reader might be inclined to feel they
are over-compensating. I mean, how often
does an out-of-work risk assessment manager take on robbing banks, exactly,
even if it is to pay for his wife’s cancer therapy? And how customary is it for septuagenarians
with one foot in the grave to decide to tag along, at least for certain legs of
their journey? And then there is the
homeless boy they adopt along the way into their ad hoc family. One might be inclined to think it’s not
danger or money they’re really after, so much as a renewed sweetness to life
that has long since lost its taste.
Tell us your latest
news?
The last of my e-books is now also available in print form,
yay! That project was a bit like passing
a watermelon through my nose. Thank God
for all the self-empowerment tools out there these days, such as GIMP (a poor
man’s freeware version of Photoshop) that allowed me to create the covers. Not to mention the endless youtube videos
digested on how to use the software along with how to get Word to make the
insides of my books look like the finest hard cover books published by top
flight publishers. Indie authoring and
publishing is a head rush, but the learning curve involved with wearing so many
hats is steep. Ultimately, of course,
what feels initially insurmountably difficult becomes ridiculously easy.
Next project: creating
the audiobooks. So please stay tuned for
that and get on my mailing list by using my “contact me” form on my website if
that’s your preferred way to process fiction.
I’m also itching to write a sequel to Love on the Run, which is why I’m trying to get the word out on the
first installment now (Um, admittedly something I should have thought of doing
a lot sooner). Because I write mostly
sci-fi and paranormal fantasy, this novel gets treated like an orphan child, but
it remains one of my favorites, and a complete laugh riot. If you want to laugh so hard you cry, all
while having your heart ripped out of you with some of my bleeding heart social
causes, I’d say give it a try and please help me with the word of mouth buzz. Sadly, I spend so much of my time trying to
keep pace with my own imagination, I’m not always the best when it comes to
promoting my own books. I feel like an
alcoholic who’s only now bottoming out with the whole
write-to-the-exclusion-of-all-else thing, including forgetting to tell people
that the books are out there!
When and why did you
begin writing?
I guess you could say it’s a lifelong attempt to resolve a
particularly prickly Catch-22 dilemma. On
the one hand, I’m very good at pattern recognition and seeing social trends and
how emerging technologies will impact people’s lives years, even decades in
advance. I’m the self-appointed
Nostradamus of our times. On the other
hand, if you really want to save the world from itself, and to sell people on a
future that is more desirable than the one you see us heading into, as the
saying goes, step one is to look in the mirror.
Until the writer himself is more enlightened, likely what he sees of the
truth will just be a projection of his own ego.
Writing is the one thing that I know that resolves this dichotomy for
me. Through my writing, not only do I
see the world more sharply, and do I think more profoundly about social causes
and issues, but I also become the more enlightened person I need to be to avoid
just leaving another stain on the carpet of my reader’s consciousness. When I set down the pen, the halo effect
lasts for a while, but I’m seldom as hyper-conscious an individual, as
self-aware, as empathetic to the needs of the various human rights causes going
on in the world as when I’m in the zone, doing what I was born to do. Maybe that’s the way it is for all of us,
only not everyone is born to write.
As to when I became aware that my life was being compelled
towards the resolution of this Catch-22, I would say that was sometime in my
teens. The dawning coincided with my
life in Berkeley, CA, not surprisingly, for reasons alluded to in the answer to
your first question.
When did you first
consider yourself a writer?
There were many firsts. I
think for many writers, that question is a bit existential in nature; I get up
every morning and say to myself, “So you think you’re a writer, huh? Well, prove it.” With every novel I write (and before I
started writing novels, with every screenplay) I would be reminded of
Heidegger’s challenge before his students each day, “Are we thinking yet?” Whenever his students were convinced they
were having a deep thought he’d dismantle their thinking and show it up for the
superficial nonsense it was. In a like
manner, every time I finish a book, I think, “Wow, great story, but not sure I
really got across what I initially set out to communicate.” Maybe that’s just the nature of writing, as
stories and the characters within them have a life of their own. And as they have as much to teach us as we
think we have to teach the world, perhaps that’s for the best.
Sometimes I bemoan the whole trying to squeeze a profound theme
into escapist fiction, which after all is designed to entertain, not
educate. And I swear I will show up AWOL
one day from the job, and take up writing nonfiction instead. But then I’ll see a TV episode of a beloved
TV series, or read a book that reminds me, yep, it can be done; you just stay
right where you are. And don’t worry
that you didn’t get to finish that Sermon on the Mount that was just the most
prophetic speech ever uttered. This
being fiction, a line or two can communicate truths every bit as profound
because the reader is in an altered state; like the writer, he/she is a lot
smarter while reading fiction than when away from books. After all, if I’ve done my job properly, and
cast the spell over you that writers are wont to do, then you’re engaging your
whole brain in getting lost in the book, not just the rational mind, both the
left and right hemispheres, the superconscious, conscious, and unconscious
minds. What’s more, I remind myself, if
you really need people to see the truth, the only real way to do it is to write
lies in the form of fiction; it may seem like another Catch-22, but anyone who
has put down a book with a smile knows what I’m talking about.
What inspired you to
write your first book?
Love on the Run was not my first crack at a novel, but the
first screenplay I converted to a book.
So, depending on what side of the bed I wake up on, it feels like my
first. As to what drove me to write it,
it’s those bleeding heart social and humanitarian causes of mine, stacked up
higher than the ceiling. When asked what
it feels like to read this story, I frequently cite the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, with Pierce
Brosnan. Without me ever having to
articulate as much, several reviewers came to the same conclusion, which was
gratifying, because I’d hate to think the connection was just inside my
head. But there’s also a Fun With Dick and Jane vibe (for those
who recall the Jim Carey movie) if we’re talking underlying themes. Here, too, you have a couple people unfairly
and unjustly driven from their jobs and stripped of any chance of making an
honest livelihood, and I was faced with the dilemma of how to right the social
wrongs, and how to get my characters to turn the lemons that are their lives
into lemonade. I also had to figure out
how to address this challenge without making this just the most depressing
story ever told.
I decided if I could get the tone just right that I’d have
something that is probably even more socially relevant today than the topic was
a few years ago, when you consider the global economic meltdown, which may take
several more decades (according to some) to see any meaningful recovery from. One, anyway, that doesn’t involve the rich
getting richer and fewer and the multitudes getting poorer and more
numerous. A pretty depressing situation
all in all. So how do you have fun with
such a dark topic, while also passing along some flotation devices that might
help people get through the ordeal? I
guess that was the challenge I set for myself with Love on the Run. And I’d
like to think I succeeded there better than I’ve succeeded with some of the
other challenges I’ve set for myself as a writer.
What would you like my
readers to know?
I
have a strong narrative voice that follows me wherever I go. So even if I’m not penning sci-fi or a paranormal
fantasy or a mix of both, but have fallen off the deep end into some other
genre entirely, as I did with Love on the
Run, rest assured what you love best about my writing will always be along
for the ride. I often cite films like Transformers, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
and Jurassic Park when trying to help
people understand how I approach a story, the unique blend of drama with just
enough stabbing one liners and dark humor to take the edge off. But many more parallels can be found
certainly, explaining why I chose the banners I did on my website; they’re an
homage to the movies that you’ll likely be most put in mind of after setting
down any one of my titles. So, if you
know me more for the other stuff, even if you don’t often stray from your
preferred genres, I promise one very fun ride.
Oh,
and I love comments and questions, as they’re a chance to get to know my
readers better as well. So as you follow
along with this blog tour, please don’t feel shy. If any of my answers beg a follow up from
curious minds, or if you have something else entirely you’d like to ask me, I’ll be here to field your questions for the
duration of the tour.
Buy Link:
Dean will be awarding a $20 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour
Thanks for hosting me on this truly incredible blog you have going here!
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to thank anyone who will be stopping by with questions and comments for me. I'll be in and out throughout the day to interact with readers.
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteI'll be interested to hear (about) your audio books when they become available.
ReplyDeleteThanks for popping in, Ken. For those of you who don't know, Ken has penned a trilogy that kicks off with Dark Tidings. Though a sci-fi/fantasy mix, fans of the humor rampant throughout Love on the Run will find Ken's cheeky, humorous writing style quite analogous.
DeleteAs to the audio books, Ken, I'm rather excited about taking that next step myself. I will definitely keep you posted.
I liked the interview.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Rita. And thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day to read and enjoy it. Thanks also for following along with the tour.
DeleteI like his story about going from screen writer to novel writer. I think reading about an author's history helps to enjoy their books.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Danie! I imagine you're right, as no two writers approach a story in exactly the same way. Hope to see more of you on the tour!
DeleteA great interview.
ReplyDeleteI love learning more about the authors - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI like the excerpt
ReplyDeletei loved the interview
ReplyDelete