Book II of the Jack Dinero Chronicles, Coffee after Church with Cyborgs, On Sale April 2!

After almost a year of writing, deleting, rewriting the things I deleted, editing whatever was left, and agonizing over margins and headers and footers and PDF export settings, I am now ready to share my sequel to the world. Following straight on the heels of the end of Your New Church Family, Coffee after Church with Cyborgs sees our teenage protagonist Jack Dinero fighting a form of religious oppression even more insidious and dangerous than cult mind control: neo-fascist hate gangs committing acts of stochastic terrorism against Jack’s cybernetic friend Carrie Layson and the rest of the Cyborg-American community. However, confronting this horrific new form of violence will force Jack to confront the darkest desires lurking in his heart as well as come to terms with his feelings for the smart, adorable cyborg he is desperately trying to protect, as well as his former girlfriend, Brianna Bubger, who has been forced to shun him by her church, but who might still have feelings for him….

Jack must also resist the temptations of mysterious older woman, Lori Brinstar, wife of the richest man in Creosote Canyon, an intoxicating femme fatale who may hold the keys to solving the mystery of these baseball bat-wielding zealots, or the keys to destroying the Dinero family altogether…

I have set a release date on Amazon of Tuesday, April 2nd. I needed time to make sure everything was as good as it could be, and if I released it the day before April 2nd, people would think it was some kind of April Fool’s prank. It will be available as a Kindle e-book and as a paperback. If you want to pre-order the Kindle version, you can do so at this link. For some reason, you can’t pre-order paperbacks, so I will release the link on that day. I don’t know if I am going to order a bunch of copies to sell as autographed versions like I did last time, but if anyone is interested in that, please let me know.

In the meantime, you can read the first three chapters here. This is a special preview version in PDF format that will match the formatting and style of the print paperback. This will take you to a third-party website for download. Once I get a few bucks, I’ll upgrade my WordPress subscription so I can host files more… seamlessly. This is a much-rewritten version of my first preview, plus the next chapter where Jack finally finds the church he was looking for… only to have his post-worship brunch plans rudely interrupted. Want to know more? Read the preview, and then buy the book!

Recreating My Characters in The Sims: A Journey into Frustration, Joy, and Lunacy

I’ve always been more of a visual medium guy than a literature guy. I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but I’ve watched far more movies than I’ve read books in my life. I prefer scenes with dialogue and action over long-winded descriptions of natural settings. I find it hard to actually do something unless I see someone show me the steps first. And I had always intended the adventures of Jack Dinero and his merry band of Sullen Teenage Rebels to be a comic strip, an animated series, and a video game franchise. Jack Dinero was even born in the crude cartoons I drew for my high school’s newspaper back in the 1990s. There was only one problem: I couldn’t draw for sh*t.

(Yes, that is Jack Dinero, far removed from the suave, upbeat, spiritual romantic he would later become.)