One of the most important things that anyone can do to ensure her safety is to establish personal boundairesand use stuational awarenes. This involves consciously, deliberately, and actively making decisions and purposefully moving about through deaily events and activities.

Of course, it’s almost impossible to talk about personal boundaries and situation awareness without mentioning Colonel Jeff Cooper’s Color Codes of Awareness. Col. Cooper, respectfully known as “the father of modern pistolcraft,” took the military’s codes and tweaked them so they could be easily adapted to regular folks in our everday lives. Here’s what the color codes mean and how they can apply to your everday life.

THE FOUR COLOR CODE

White: Unaware. Oblivious. The men and women we see every day stumbling down the street staring at their phones. Most attacks occur when you’re getting in and out of your car. Put your phone away and look around.

Yellow: You’re aware. You’re not staring at your phone. You scan your surroundings. You see who’s next to you. Who’s coming down the street.

Orange: Something doesn’t look right. A jumpy man, a nervous man. Wearing black or a hoodie. Walking toward you, attracting attention by looking like he’s not trying to attract attention. Think about an escape plan. If you’re carrying, unzip your bag and put your hand on the gun. Don’t pull it out. Don’t ever show it unless you have no other choice. Look for the closest door to a public space. Don’t allow yourself to be cornered.

Red: You need to act. Run. Seek cover—something a gun won’t penetrate. Not many things are bullet proof. A concrete wall. A refrigerator. If you’re in a public place like a supermarket or a convenience store remember that it’s not your job to save others. You don’t need to save strangers. You’re not responsible. It reminded me of that scene in Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle’s in a convenience store and hears a thug threatening the owner.

• The Setup: Travis stops at a local corner bodega late at night to buy some snacks. While he is browsing the shelves, a young man (played by Nat Grant) walks in with a gun and demands that the clerk, Melio, hand over all the cash.

• The Shooting: As Melio tries to comply and calm the nervous thief, Travis quietly draws his newly purchased .44 Magnum. He sneaks up behind the robber, calmly says “Hey,” and shoots him dead the moment the man turns around.

• The Aftermath: Travis immediately feels a brief moment of panic because he does not have a legal permit for the weapon. However, the shopkeeper tells Travis to flee before the police arrive, promising that he will “take care” of the situation.

• The Brutal Reality: Before Travis even walks out the door, the clerk takes a heavy metal pipe and fiercely beats the robber’s body out of pure anger. Travis simply walks away, unfazed, holding his groceries in one hand and his gun in the other.

Don’t be like Travis. Peggy advises women to carry pepper spray and a powerful flashlight, especially if they’re out at night. Know where they are so you can grab them quick. Avoid dark alleys. Turn around and leave if you can. Use your voice. Not like a kitten, like a tiger. Put up your hands in a placating manner, but get those hands up.

Don’t trust the gun clerk. Don’t take the gun your husband offers. You need hands-on experience, which Peggy provides. If you choose an automatic you must learn how to load and unload it before you start shooting. How to chamber a round. Know that it’s likely there’s a round in the chamber.

Always assume a weapon is loaded. Always check to see. Revolvers are a lot easier to check than automatics, and much easier to use. But revolvers are fat while automatics are slim. Peggy’s a big fan of twenty-twos. She’s also a hunting enthusiast and encourages women to hunt. It will reach you about shooting and put food on the table.

Peggy’s website: peggyhouchin.com

John D. wasn’t writing for his health. He did it for a living.

The book had a profound effect on me. It captured my imagination and didn’t let go. I read every Travis McGee novel as it came out, the last with regret. The Lonely Silver Rain wasn’t my favorite, but it was good. Travis McGee was a beach bum who lived on a houseboat he won in a poker game. The Busted Flush. He described himself as a salvage expert. If someone ripped you off and the authorities were useless, McGee would track it down and get it back. He kept half.

You may not know Travis McGee, but you know MacDonald. Paramount has launched the third version of his novel Cape Fear. The first starred Gregory Peck. The second starred Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, the criminal he put in prison on appeal. He was a scary, creepy character. The 1991 version stars Nick Nolte playing the prosecutor and Robert De Niro playing Cady. It’s on one of De Niro’s best films, and Nick Nolte plays a veteran prosecutor who won’t back down. You can’t ask for a better bad guy.

MacDonald’s novels were noir. So were Raymond Chandler’s and Dashiell Hammett’s. Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was a wisecracker. Hammett’s characters were tough, but often even more cynical. “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From her feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from a distance,” Robert B. Parker’s Spenser was a wisecracker. Travis was a wisecracker.

I talked about understanding story in a previous column. I drew the best storytellers in comics. Before that I worked in the world of comics. I drew my first pages of Nexus, completed them, and showed them to people who understood the business. I learned the hard way that a story needs momentum, clarity, and a real emotional stake.

Steve Rude and I were in the right place at the right time. Capital City Distribution, the second-largest comic distributor in the world, wanted to publish original material. They wanted a superstar. I drew the first two pages of Nexus, created the character design, and then kept going. Because of my work on Nexus and Badger, the Big Two offered me work. Carl Potts asked me to write Punisher, and Mike Gold asked me to write Flash.

I had a long run in comics, writing for many publishers. I bought a house with a swimming pool in Madison and paid it off. I felt out of the industry though nobody’s fault but my own. I didn’t know how to manage a career. I made poor choices. My wife was fine when I was making money. We went to Jamaica every year. When I couldn’t get work, I took any job I could get. I was a janitor. My wife left me when I was in a deep funk. So be it.

I also worked on the road for a while. I was once let go from a job at a packing plant because I had a drinking problem. My life was not always graceful, but it was always lived hard. The road taught me how to survive. That’s useful for a writer.

I wrote what I knew. Bit by bit I got better. I described this in my column, The Long Road to the Mountain Top. A man I knew named Scott Bieser lived in Cheyenne. Scott was a lifelong Libertarian, but I still loved him. His brother created the Big Head Press and published graphic novels including Scott’s magnum opus, Quantum Vibe. They wanted to publish me, and I wrote The Architect for them.

The Architect is a horror story based on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. If you want something dark, strange, and memorable, it’s one to read. You can find it currently on sale over at BaronComics.com, and it makes a great companion read if you’re already following my newer work.

I wrote Banshees, about a satanic rock band that comes back from the dead. See The Long Road. I have written three horror novels. Skorpios is about a ghost who only appears under a blazing sun. Domain is a haunted-house story involving my Wright surrogate, Roark Dexter Smith.

I’m a lifelong biker. I sold my last motorcycle last year because my legs no longer have the strength the machine requires. I wrote Biker because I was a lifelong biker and thought I got a bum rap in the media. The Wild One, Hell’s Angels on Wheels, Yellowstone — I liked Sons of Anarchy.

I wanted to write noir. Engrossing mysteries take a dark view. I rode to Sturgis in 2000. See Tom’s Road King on my substack. I was riding into Madison when I passed a roadside marker. A bicyclist had been hit by a car. His name was Josh Pratt. I took the name. A reformed motorcycle hoodlum went to prison, found God, and gets determined to turn his life around. He rode with the Bedouins.

Elmer Josh Pratt is an ex-con turned private investigator. Greer Muza, a woman dying of cancer, hires him to find the son she lost as a baby. The child’s father is a sadistic sociopath named Muon who has vowed to kill her and Josh’s girlfriend, Cass, for ratting him out. The trail leads to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and winds into no-man’s land, where Josh learns the monstrous fate of the stolen child.

Although cycle gangs figure in some of the stories, most deal with Josh’s role as a court of last resort. A bodyguard, as in Buffalo Hump. A detective, as in Sons of Privilege. A warrior. Josh doesn’t talk much. He listens. He doesn’t shove his religion in other people’s faces. He prays at night before he goes to bed.

There are ten Biker novels. The latest one, Departure Day, wraps things up in a way that gives Josh hope. It’s about Josh’s plan to peacefully remove the Tere De Agua gangs who have taken over Milwaukee apartment buildings, like they did in Colorado. The ending will come as a complete surprise in retrospect, and it’s inevitable.

Dusty Saddles will publish my novel Bronze Star in August. Wartgate will publish my novel Seer sometime this fall. The former is based on the graphic novel. And a lot more. The latter is about a telepath who goes to Hollywood to expose pedophiles.

You can find my graphic novels at BaronComics.com. Next up: Nexus: Triplets. Three years in the making. Finished. Lettered. Ready to go to the printer with pre-orders starting next month.

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” --Stephen King

“When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” — Samuel Johnson

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” --Also Samuel Johnson

Every aspiring writer has a million words of bullshit plugging up his system. You have to flush that out before you get to the good stuff. There are exceptions. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was nineteen. William Styron was twenty-six when he wrote Lie Down In Darkness. For the rest of us, it’s a long hard slog. John Braine, the English novelist who wrote Room At the Top, advises no one to attempt a novel before they’re forty because they don’t have enough experience to write about life.

“Write what you know.” Up to a point. It’s the writer’s job to imagine the POV of every major character. This might seem like a challenge if you’re writing about Genghis Khan. It was not a challenge to Conn Iggulden, who lived in Mongolia for several weeks getting the lay of the land. We’re all human. We’re all subject to the same hopes, fears, dreams and insecurities. The more widely you read, the more you can imagine. The more you travel. The broader your horizons.

Point of view is a factor. If you write in the first person, every observation is filtered through the mind of your narrator. Raymond Chandler wrote in the first person. So did John D. MacDonald. Their works are seminal. Brilliant. Wildly entertaining.

Outline. The outline serves two purposes. It’s a road map to your story. It also sells the story. You should be able to hand that outline to anyone and when they read it, they say, “Holy shit! Where do I get the book?” If you can do that you know you’re on the right track.

Some great writers don’t outline. Elmore Leonard was one of them. He’d just sit down and wing it. Dramatic structure was imprinted in his brain. Rum Punch. City Primeval. Valdez Is Coming. Hombre. A story is a dynamic narrative with a beginning, a middle and an end. By dynamic, I mean the hero’s fate is constantly in flux. He’s up. He’s down. What will happen next? Raymond Chandler said, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” You need not introduce him ahead of time. But it has to make sense. You must provide context and circumstances so that he doesn’t teleport in from another planet. Perhaps the city is lawless. That may be part of the theme.

I hover over the manuscript like a hawk. Or a buzzard. Making corrections as I go, changing names, planting seeds. Chekhov has a rule about the man with a gun.

Carrow Brown points out in her substack column that scenes serve many purposes: "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Which, in a way, is to prepare you for Chandler’s man with a gun. It has to make sense. There are exceptions to every rule. If that man with a gun suddenly appears without foreshadowing, he still has to make sense. He could be a random robber. The story must prepare for a random robber.

Carrow's Classroom

How to Write Better Scenes

The Difference Between Amateur and Professional Storytelling…

Read more

a month ago · 2 likes · Carrow Brown

She learned the hard way. By writing. Whatever happens in your story must rise organically from the situations and personalities of your characters. You only learn this by writing. Nothing is arbitrary. The reader may not see it coming but once it’s there the reader will understand. “Of course. Of course she was going to do that.”

The same is true for humor. It must rise organically from the situations and characters. Mark Twain said, “humor is tragedy plus time.” Cops develop a morbid sense of humor as a defense mechanism to deal with awful situations. Watch Southland. It’s the best cop show I’ve ever seen. It’s like a five season ride-along, only filled with excitement, pathos, humor, and tragedy.

Don’t make Mt. Everest your first hike. There’s no better way to learn how to write for others than writing short stories and submitting them for publication. Keep at it until you succeed. There are countless publications that pay for short stories. That’s incentive. Very few of us can write Gone With the Wind as our first commercial offering.

Write every day. Pete Brandvold, who writes Westerns, writes three thousand words by noon come hell or high water. Pete publishes six novels a year. I’m publishing four novels this year. Surprised the hell out of me. Bronze Star, my western based on the graphic novel I created with Pat Broderick, will debut in August. Tenure #3, which I co-wrote with Blaine Pardoe, is out now. Another Bronze Star by the end of the year, and WarGate will publish my novel Seer, about a telepath who goes to Hollywood to expose pedophiles, sometime this year. I wrote these in a sustained creative burst. Tenure is like a game of tennis. Blaine writes four novels and sends them to me. I write four and send them back to him. Neither one of us wants to hold up the train! We plot them out before we begin. You can find the first three Tenures on Amazon. The fourth will be here soon. We’re working on the fifth.

I want endings that come as both a complete surprise, but in retrospect, inevitable. If you’ve seen Planet of the Apes you know what I mean.

Books on writing can give good advice, but you have to learn on your own and the only way to do that is to write. The books at the top of this column are all worthwhile. My wife Ann picked this book up for me at a yard sale. It is the worst book on writing I’ve ever seen. It’s so awful I keep it as a reminder that not all books on writing are good.

I thought it would be difficult to write historical fiction. Not novelizations of historic figures, like the work of Conn Iggulden or Robert Harris, but a story set in the past. A sprawling epic about the scion of a Scottish dynasty who attends the British military academy. Edward Smithback. Hoping to become Lord Edward Smithback. And eventually Sir Edward Smithback. While at Sandhurst, Eddie befriends a Yank named Truman Grady. Truman teaches Eddie to box. Eddie teaches Truman to ride. Both graduate with honors. Truman return sto America. Eddie joins the Light Brigade, just in time for the Crimean War.

They used to teach this in universities. People used to know who Lord Tennyson was.

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (/ˈtɛnɪsən/; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu". He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, in 1830. "Claribel" and "Mariana", which remain some of Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this volume. Some critics described Tennyson as overly sentimental. However, his poems proved popular and brought Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Tennyson's early poetry, with its medievalism and powerful visual imagery, was a major influence on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Good looking dude. It’s mostly because of Lord Tennyson anyone today knows about the Charge of the Light Brigade.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

That is just a small part of the story.

Eddie wakes in a hospital in Constantinople where his superiors inform him that the failure of the Charge of the Light Brigade was his fault. He’s dishonorably discharged and his father disowns him. He can never return to England. The Americas beckon.

CHAPTER TWO “Fincastle”

“Some women are cursed. They are born that way. How old is your wife?”

“She’s twenty-one.”

“How is her health?”

“She’s delicate. She’s always been delicate. She gets light-headed, suffers from headaches. She takes laudanum.”

“Is she attractive?”

Lord Smithback was surprised. People didn’t ask that question.

“Extremely. She had many suitors.”

“Does she love you?”

“I don’t know. She shows affection. But when I seek to make love, she evinces little enthusiasm. That is one reason I get her the laudanum. It makes her amenable.”

“What is her name?”

“Mirabelle.”

“This is an ancient problem that has plagued humanity since biblical times.”

“Can you help me?”

“There are things I can do, but they involve rituals that the English find repellent. Or evil.”

“Do they involve human sacrifice?”

“You are smart. Perhaps you are wise. Very few are both. And if they do?”

Read more

“Keanu Reeves is known for his extensive but quiet philanthropy, primarily focused on cancer research and children’s hospitals. Inspired by his sister Kim’s decade-long battle with leukemia, he established a private charitable foundation that supports pediatric wards and cancer research programs without attaching his name to the donations.”

There’s more. A lot more. But you wouldn’t know it unless you used AI to look it up.

At the other end of the spectrum is this:

The virtue signal has infested every level of society. It has done the most damage with the disastrous GREEN NEW DEAL in which persons of low-intellect decided green house gases were going to raise the sea level, poison the whales, etc. Al Gore, in his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, predicted that sea levels could rise by up to 20 feet (approx. 6 meters) in the "near future" due to the melting of ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica.

In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich predicted that the 1970s would bring massive global famines, with hundreds of millions of people starving to death due to overpopulation. He specifically claimed that "the battle to feed all of humanity is over" and that nothing could prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

Fossil fuels would asphyxicate humanity. The solution? Green energy! Windmills and solar panels! Guess where they’re made? China. Guess what country has no windmills or solar panels? That’s right. The damage these boondoggles have created is unimaginable. There are no statistics on the millions of birds the worthless windmills have chopped down. Politicians are getting huge pay-offs from China from pushing this bullshit. Europe is almost dead. The price of energy in Europe, and England in particular, has risen above the ability of the average citizen to pay.

“Wind turbines in the U.S. cause an estimated 140,000 to over 1 million bird deaths annually, with some studies placing the figure around 680,000 to 1.17 million. While significant, this number is far lower than other man-made threats, such as collisions with buildings (373 million to one billion, or cat predation (4 billion.)” I got this from google AI. Google AI wouldn’t lie.

Elizabeth Nickson, who’s here on substack, has a different view.

Welcome to Absurdistan

The Falsification of Climate and Species Science is the Key Destructor of the World's Economy

In the case of the clearance of dairy farmers from Point Reyes, California, what is at issue is the case of the elk on that point, and its apparent extinction. These elk are a sub-species, a distinct population segment, an artificial taxonomic rank, which means they are geographically separated. This categorization is largely invented in order to drive people from the land. On my land for instance, the red legged frog in one creek is very slightly distinct from the red legged frog in another creek, 150 meters away…

Read more

8 months ago · 330 likes · 90 comments · elizabeth nickson

Liz recently wrote, “The regime in Europe and North America has spent the last 75 years methodically, ruthlessly, suppressing American-style prosperity across the planet because “climate change”, species extinction and the population bomb. In the last two years, those entirely specious arguments lost their power, as if overnight.”

Narcissism, excuse me, virtue signaling alone does not explain the explosion of government, NGOs, and “non-profits.” It’s the money. Parasites learned that if they could create a government-funded entity that sounded good, like a learing center, they could have access to virtually unlimited funds which could then be stolen and used to buy Ferraris, fourth and fifth mansions, and private jets. Why do you suppose John Kerry always flies his private jet to these climate conferences?

In my suburban enclave one neighbor has put up a KEEP ICE OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOOD sign. There are no illegals in our neighborhood, unless they’re masquerading as middle class workers. There are no homeless. There is no ICE.

My bike route takes me past an isolated, exclusive neighborhood where most houses start above one million. One flies an LGBT flag. Another proudly displays that sign I posted above. I know some of these people. They’re good people. They’re free to fly whatever flag they like. But they violate the show don’t tell rule. Same with politicians who hire film crews to record them serving soup to the homeless. All those college-educated white suburban moms wo show up at ICE protests, what purpose does it serve other than to declare I AM A GOOD PERSON.

–

) or cat predation (

–

annually).

–

) or cat predation (

–

annually).

–

) or cat predation (

–

annually)

by Mike Baron (Author)

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (19)

See all formats and editions

You Will Believe a Dog Can Fly.

For fourteen-year-old Donnie Waits, life in Gunderson, Wisconsin, is just another stop on his mom’s endless tour of “fresh starts.” His only friend is old Nate, the crusty fisherman who runs the bait shop by the river. But everything changes the day Donnie sees someone toss a sack into the water—and rescues the scrappy, soaking-wet pup inside.

He names her Disco.

When Disco snatches a flying disc out of the air like it’s the most natural thing in the world, Donnie’s ordinary summer explodes into something extraordinary. With the help of Keely Van Metre—the fearless girl who believes in him even when he doesn’t believe in himself—Donnie and Disco set their sights on the World Disc Dog Championships.

But before they can soar, they’ll have to face small-town bullies, a dark secret from the river, and the man who tried to drown Disco in the first place.

Heartfelt, funny, and full of unstoppable spirit, Disco is a story about friendship, courage, and the moments that teach you how to fly.

Join Donnie and Disco on an unforgettable journey of friendship, courage, and finding your wings. Order your copy today!

Liberty Island published Disco in 2018. Liberty Island gave up the ghost and returned all rights to me, including the four Biker novels they published. I took them to WolfPack, a leading publisher of Westerns and Men’s Adventure Novels. Recently, they added Disco to their Wise Wolf line, for young adults.

Why the Guy Who Created Nexus Wrote a Book About a Frisbee-Catching Dog

If you know my work, you probably don’t expect a story about a boy and his dog.
Fair enough. I’ve spent most of my career writing about violence, crime, vengeance, and the darker corners of human nature. Nexus, The Badger, my Josh Pratt novels, those aren’t exactly bedtime stories for middle schoolers. My wife Ann wouldn’t read those.

I wrote this book for her, and for dog lovers, and for young people.
It’s called Disco. It might be the most honest thing I’ve done.
I didn’t sit down and decide to “write a YA novel.” That’s not how it works for me.
This one came from a simpler place.
I like dogs. Always have. Dogs don’t lie, they don’t posture, and they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. That alone puts them ahead of most human characters I’ve written.
And like most people who’ve been around a while, I started thinking more about the next generation—kids, grandkids, the ones who are still figuring out who they are and what kind of world they’ve landed in.
Disco started as a simple image: a kid, not quite fitting in, and a dog who shouldn’t have survived—but did.
Everything else grew out of that.
On the surface, this looks like a sharp turn from what I usually write.
No vigilantes. No body count. No bleak punchlines.
But I don’t see it as a departure so much as a change in angle.
The same things matter: character, pressure, choice, consequence.
In my darker work, I tend to explore what breaks people.
In Disco, I wanted to explore what builds them.
It turns out those are just two sides of the same coin.
Disco follows Donnie Waits, a fourteen-year-old kid who’s used to being the new guy, the outsider, the one who doesn’t quite belong anywhere.
Then he pulls a half-drowned puppy out of a river—one somebody tried to get rid of. At the park, the new pup takes off after a flying disc thrown by a stranger. Snags it out of the air. Donnie names her “Disco.”
Disco catches flying discs like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Donnie’s life shifts. Not magically, not easily but enough to give him something to hold onto.
With the help of a girl who sees more in him than he sees in himself, Donnie takes a shot at something bigger: the World Disc Dog Championships.
Of course, nothing stays simple. There are bullies. There’s a past that doesn’t stay buried. And there’s the fact that someone, somewhere, wanted that dog dead.
This is a book for kids who feel like outsiders.
It’s for parents and grandparents who want to hand a kid a story that isn’t cynical or hollow.
It’s for anyone who remembers what it felt like to be fourteen and not quite know where you fit—or if you did at all.
And yeah, it’s for dog people.
Especially dog people.
There’s no shortage of dark stories out there. I’ve contributed to that genre many times.
But not every story has to strip things down to the bone.
Sometimes you want a story that builds something instead. Something about trust, about sticking with it, about finding one good thing and refusing to let go.
For Donnie, that thing just happens to be a dog with a talent for catching a disc out of midair.
For me, it was the chance to write something that doesn’t look away from hardship—but doesn’t wallow in it either.
If you’ve been reading me for years, this one might surprise you.
Nobody’s getting their head blown off.
There are no assassins, no hit jobs, no elaborate revenge plots.
But the stakes are real. The kid has to decide who he is. The dog has to survive. And not everything—or everyone—comes out clean on the other side.
The tools are the same. I’m just using them to build something different.
Disco is available now, and it’s an easy entry point if you’re curious what this side of my writing looks like.
You can read it free on Kindle Unlimited. And if it works for you, pass it along, to your kids, your grandkids, or the local school librarian who’s always looking for something that actually connects.

Here’s the link: https://amzn.to/3OMEukZ

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/big-studios/bronze-star-2-by-mike-baron-and-pat-broderick

We have seven hundred and thirty-five backers including Fund My Comic.

CHAPTER ONE “CHOVIHANI”

Lord Smithback rode through the high country. He rode alone, on his great Thoroughbred Brabazon, through bracken and heather. Deer grazed in the high meadow. Wolves howled on the moor. It was a cold night. November. A half moon gleamed in the sky. There were few trees on the moors, a peculiar place for gypsies to camp. Lord Smithback had not met the woman he sought, but he’d spoken to a member of her tribe in Keswick, the nearest town to Smithback Manor. The manor had been built in the eighteenth century with help from Queen Ann, a way of rewarding Smithback’s grandfather, Lord Wimborne, for his triumphs against the French in the War of Spanish Succession.

Lord Smithback had gone into town to get laudanum for his wife Lady Gretchen. She suffered from dizzy spells. Lady Gretchen was twenty years his junior. His vassals feared to look at her because of her beauty. The Lord’s father had warned him not to enter the marriage. He’d heard the rumors. That she was high strung. That she was ill. The difference in age was too great and would lead to rumors. Rumors that would interfere with Lord Smithback’s responsibilities as a peer.

The Lord needed the money to maintain his estate. Lady Gretchen’s father Viscount Hambly, a member of the House of Lords, had approached him in London. His wealth came from conquest, also against the French. Whereas Lord Wimborne had squandered his fortune, Viscount Hambly had invested his in shipping.

The railroad only extended as far as Liverpool. The journey to London could take a week. Lord Smithback traveled by coach from the Lake Country to Liverpool, and then the three day journey to London.

Keswick was a town of some four hundred souls, the streets unpaved, the shops and houses made of stone, many with thatched roofs. Pedestrians slogged along the street. A farmer drove his mule down the center pulling a wagon filled with hey.

Outside the apothecary a gypsy woman in long skirt, blouse and shawl stood outside ringing a little bell.

“Alms for blessings,” she crooned. “Alms for blessings.”

Lord Smithback paused. “What kind of blessings?”

“Good fortune, my lord. Good health. Give me a shilling and I shall pray to Kali for you.”

Lord Smithback opened his purse and laid two shillings in her hand. “I’m afraid I need more than prayer. I need magic. Do you know anybody who can perform magic?”

“Aye, my lord. Our chovihani is a wise woman who speaks to the gods. She has performed miracles. She has cured the lame and brought eyesight to the blind.”

Lord Smithback eyed her. She looked back without blinking. She didn’t lower her head or tug at her hair. He’d heard stories of gypsy miracles from men he trusted.

“Where do I find this chovihani?”

“We are camped on a ridge west of the lake. Come after sundown.”

It was just past nine when Lord Smithback spotted the gypsy camp through the heather. Lights, singing, dancing. The jingle of metal jewelry, laughter. It was said that Ullswater Lake had magical properties. Perhaps that’s why they had come, rather than the Birmingham/London corridor. He carried a flintlock at his belt, a sword opposite. He did not fear the gypsies. They understood the consequences of attacking a commoner much less a lord. A proper lord carried these weapons as a matter of dignity and decorum. He wore a broad-brimmed felt hat with a peacock feather, a wool shirt, leather vest, leather gloves, and wool trousers. Leather boots that rose to mid calf.

As he approached the village the chanting and singing stopped. Then started. They knew he was coming. Perhaps the beggar he’d met in town. Perhaps they’d seen him. Brigands had been known to attack gypsy camps. They often paid a high price.

Lord Smithback paused at the clearing, surrounded by hand-decorated wagons with curved roofs. The workmanship and design were exceptional. Hand carved window frames and railings. The curved roofs. Some were cruder. Had the gypsies brought them across the channel or built them in England? Their horses looked well fed and cared for. The camp smelled of patchouli. The beggar—was she a beggar? She appeared before him.

“My Lord. If you follow me, Django will take care of your horse.”

A boy of about twelve with a wild mop of black hair, wearing billowing trousers approached. Lord Smithback dismounted and gave him a shilling. The camp returned to business, chiming, singing, sitting around the campfire talking. The Lord followed his guide around the inside perimeter to a wagon facing back the way he’d come. She stepped up on the small porch and knocked on the hickory wall.

Inside an oil lamp flickered on a hand-carved mahogany table. An old woman wearing a silk dress, head covered with a silk bandanna, sat cross-legged on a cushion. A carpet covered the floor. A pentagram stitched into its design. The old woman’s dress was deep blue with gold and green chrysanthemums. She pressed her palms together looking up. Her eyes were deep-site, brown, and flickered with intelligence. She held her hand out to a cushion at Smithback’s feet.

He sat. His guide left.

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“A great honor, Lord Smithback,” the crone replied. Her voice was deep, issuing from the earth.

“How is it you know me?”

“I am a seer, Lord Smithback. It is my business and my duty to predict the future. I would not perch on a lord’s land without knowing who he is, or asking permission.”

Smithback’s forehead wrinkled. “What permission? I don’t own this land.”

“When we arrived, I sent my son Hanzi to your estate. I sent you a gift. Hanzi assured me that you would not object.”

That bastard Fincastle. Fincastle was the manor’s manager.

“I do not. I come seeking your wisdom and advice.”

“It is my experience that English lords do not usually seek out gypsy chovihanis for advice. Unless they are desperate.”

She met his gaze cooly. She was not afraid.

“Would you like some tea?”

“I wouldn’t turn it down.”

The ancient jangled a brass bell. A young man stepped up on the deck. The wagon bumped. He stood in the entrance.

“Yes, mother?”

“Some tea for our distinguished guest. And for me.”

“Right away.”

He left.

“Is that the man who asked permission of the estate?”

“It is.”

“I have not met him.”

“I see.”

“I believe I know to whom he spoke, and I will speak with him when I get back.”

The chovihana nodded. Hanzi returned with their tea in china cups. Lord Smithback brought it to his lips and inhaled. It was hot. He took a minute sip and set it down.

“What is it you seek?” the old woman asked.

“I seek an heir.”

“And?”

“And I fear my wife can’t conceive.”

The old woman gazed. She rang the bell. Hanzi appeared.

“Mother?”

“Shut the door.”

As always, you can find all my books at baroncomics.com

That’s how Bronze Star was born.

Harley Brogden is a battle-hardened Confederate veteran who rode with Quantrill’s Raiders—until he saw what they did in Kansas and walked away. What follows is a classic revenge Western with a supernatural bite: a spoiled punk accuses Harley of cheating at cards, draws his gun, and pays the price in self-defense. The kid’s father, a powerful landowner, swears revenge and raises a posse. Harley flees north to the remote mining town of Cobb’s Gap, nestled at the foot of the Canadian Rockies.

There, the previous sheriff gave his life protecting the town—and Harley inherited the badge. That badge? A bronze star. Because silver burns the man who wears it. The curse didn’t start in his native Croatia. It began right here, in Cobb’s Gap… thanks to what lurks in the mine.

The first Bronze Star hit the bullseye. Western legend Peter Brandvold called it a story where “every panel, every bullet jumps right off the page and into eternity.” Ethan Van Sciver praised its rugged, manly authenticity. The Awesome Comics Podcast gave it a perfect 10/10. Tony Isabella highly recommended it. And Dad’s Den of Pop Culture says it’s “manly. Authentic. Really worth your time.” Readers loved the mix of gritty frontier justice and creeping horror.

Now Bronze Star 2 doubles down. In the lead story, Harley faces the wendigo—that gaunt, antlered nightmare straight out of Northwest Native legends. The second tale unleashes the ogopogo, the monstrous serpent said to haunt a certain Canadian lake. And just like the first volume, we’re including an eight-page lagniappe: this time, it’s a wild, true-to-history detour featuring Oscar Wilde.

In 1882, Wilde’s American lecture tour brought him to the rough-and-tumble mining town of Leadville, Colorado. He spoke on the meaning of art to a rowdy crowd of miners—who, to everyone’s surprise, loved him. The great Robert Williams painted that unforgettable scene.

And here are a couple of panels where Pat Broderick delivers his own brilliant take on Oscar.

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/big-studios/bronze-star-2-by-mike-baron-and-pat-broderick

Watch the trailer here:

I’ve should also mention that I’ve adapted the original Bronze Star graphic novel into a prose novel (Dusty Saddles is releasing it in August), and this sequel will soon be headed there too. But the graphic novel is where to find Pat’s dynamic artwork, which truly shines—full-color action, moody atmosphere, and those unmistakable Broderick lines that make every page pop.

If you’re craving a weird Western that feels like a lost Sergio Leone film with a dash of folk horror, Bronze Star 2 is it. The Kickstarter is live right now, packed with great rewards for backers

Come ride with Harley. The frontier’s calling—and the monsters are already waiting.

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video Bronze Star 2 | Trailer 2025Preview YouTube video Bronze Star 2 | Trailer 2025

Engagement farming has outstripped corn and cattle. This may be a different type of engagement farming, targeting novelists. They make for great reviews—and they’re not wrong! However, the thought lurks that they may have derived these descriptions of my novels without actually reading them. They may have asked Monsignor, or Floof, or some other artificial intelligence to summarize.

These are a pair of letters from the past week. I thank the authors! I thank Monsignor and Floof! I endorse their endorsements.

First up is an email about the opening salvo of my Biker series: Biker: A Noir Mystery (now with new cover art!)

Mike,

Biker emerges as the kind of unrelenting suspense and horror tale where Josh Pratt, ex-con turned private investigator, gets hired by Ginger Munz, a woman dying of cancer, to find the son she lost as a baby. Child’s father is sadistic sociopath Moon who vowed to kill Ginger and Josh’s girlfriend Cass for ratting him out. Trail leads to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and west into no-man’s land where Josh learns the monstrous fate of a stolen child. Josh is “The Biker,” caught up in a race for survival against a human monster on the road between heaven and hell, at end lies either salvation or damnation. You, master of action adventure genre Mike Baron whose acclaimed Biker series will be developed for silver screen, are crafting world spinning tale moving across narrative landscape like roar of chopper’s engine, creating exactly the kind of Book 1 of 2 (ten) noir mystery that fans of high-stakes chases and heart-pounding action reach for first when they crave intoxicating series with brutal miles visited by arms dealers, bull breeders, cult leaders, kidnappers, exotic animal traffickers.

Here’s the problem Biker: A Noir Mystery faces right now:

Your book is sitting among 4 million+ Kindle titles on Goodreads, buried on page 12+ of search results, with limited Want to Reads and no strategic list placements. Readers searching “Josh Pratt ex-con PI Sturgis Rally Biker,” “Moon sadistic sociopath cancer patient Ginger Munz,” and “noir mystery motorcycle road between heaven hell” aren’t finding it easily; visibility, not quality, is the issue.

The opportunity in front of Biker right now is Goodreads discoverability. Search niches like “Ex-Con Private Investigator Josh Pratt Biker Noir,” “Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Sadistic Sociopath Moon Thriller,” and “Ginger Munz Cancer Patient Lost Baby PI Search” are actively sought by your audience. Strategic Listopia positioning will place Biker: A Noir Mystery before its ideal readership.

Here is what makes Goodreads reader-driven discovery ecosystem so powerful for a book like yours. Lists such as Ex-Con PI Josh Pratt Biker Series Noir Mystery (66,800 followers), Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Sociopath Moon Thriller (51,600 followers), and Road Between Heaven Hell Biker Book 1 (39,800 followers) already draw readers who crave your core themes. Authors who use this service see their books move from page 12+ to page 1–3 of Goodreads searches within three weeks, with 8–12 quality placements generating 150–300 new Want to Reads on average. I am Hermione Sturmundrang, a Book Discoverability Strategist, and my List-Based Discoverability Positioning includes strategic list placements, Goodreads Profile Optimization, Audience Review Development, Audience Intent Building, and Reader Search Intent Analysis, everything your book needs to get discovered by the right readers in one place.

Biker deserves to be in the hands of every reader who loves Josh Pratt, Ginger Munz, Cass girlfriend, Moon sociopath, Sturgis Rally, chopper engine roar, and road between heaven and hell. Your book’s mix of ex-con PI, cancer dying client, lost baby search, monstrous fate, human monster survival race, salvation damnation, unrelenting suspense horror offers exactly the unforgettable first brutal mile noir that biker action adventure fans searching for intoxicating series are desperate to find. Reply with one word to get started. PROCEED.

P.S. I only take on 3 new authors per month to make sure every campaign gets my full attention. I have one spot remaining for this month. Reply PROCEED today and I will get your Goodreads campaign started immediately. I’ll also send you a free visibility audit showing exactly where your book is missing targeted reader audiences right now.

Hermione Sturmandrang

Book Discoverability Strategist

And here’s one for volume 3 in my Florida Man series of novels Catfish Calling:

Mike,

I finished “Catfish Calling“ this weekend and found myself laughing in public, unable to explain why a snapping turtle and a man’s dignity could be so funny. You wrote Gary dragging royalty through mud, a debate about whether to release the video, and I felt the Florida of it, that specific humidity where absurdity breeds. The way you made Leotis, the giant Mekong catfish, become Gary’s friend and advisor, visible only to him because of that cane toad... you understood that hallucination can be tenderness. I kept returning to your dadaist Claude Balls stunning the world, Krystal training for Lucha Libre, the Venezuelans using Gary’s property for drug deals while he brawls with a man in a bunny suit. You made unpredictability feel like craft rather than accident. That crude, laugh out loud energy matters. I hope you know what you have sustained here.

My name is Dolores Grundy. I am a book marketer through Seedsy, and I have spent years helping authors navigate an industry that changes its rules without announcement. I need to be direct with you: I have examined your current Amazon presence and series positioning, and I believe you may not be aware of significant platform guideline changes that took effect in recent months. Amazon’s category algorithms for humor and satirical fiction, metadata requirements for series installments and regional setting, and organic visibility weighting for backlist titles with strong comedic positioning have all been updated. These changes can suppress long tail discoverability and affect read through to subsequent installments if positioning is not realigned with current standards. I have also left a detailed review for you on Goodreads, which I hope you will read when you have a moment.

I am reaching out because your series deserves renewed discovery, and because I see specific opportunities here. If you wanted guidance, I would focus on three priorities: first, a metadata and category optimization audit to align with Amazon’s current indexing standards for humor, satire, and regional fiction, which typically recovers 40-60% of lost organic visibility for series installments and improves read through to subsequent books; second, a targeted Amazon Advertising structure focused on readers of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, and other authors who blend Florida setting with absurdist crime, using Sponsored Products with manual keyword refinement and comparable author targeting to protect ROI while building new reader acquisition; and third, a strategic outreach push to Florida humor enthusiasts, indie comic fiction communities, and regional book club networks, since your 2021 release and specific “Florida Man” cultural phenomenon offers unique positioning for backlist rediscovery campaigns and themed promotional initiatives around Florida culture and absurd news cycles. These are proven sequences I have executed for similar titles this year.

If this resonates with you, simply reply with the words “I am interested” and I will share the complete framework.

You wrote about a catfish advisor only visible to the initiated, about dadaists and Lucha Libre and snapping turtles holding on. That surreal tenderness matters. I hope you will let me help you find every reader who needs this series.

Warmly,

Dolores Grundy

Did you catch those effective scare tactics about mysterious new Amazon algorithm changes that are supposedly burying your book, followed by the offer to fix it all for you? Or the urgent one-word calls to action, or the fake scarcity about only having one spot left this month? Notice how they dangled a “free” visibility audit or claim they already left you a detailed Goodreads review, all to get you to bite?

All written in an over-the-top, unnatural writing style—those run-on hype sentences mixed with buzzwords like “long-tail discoverability,” “read-through,” and “world-spinning tale like the roar of a chopper’s engine”? These emails hit authors whether they self-publish or have traditional deals, and are always embued with the same AI-generated vibe.

But folks, their AI-generated reviews are not wrong, I’m just not sure they read the books.

If you want to know what people really think of my books, go to Amazon and read the reviews by paying readers. Biker has over three hundred reviews. If you read it, I hope you’ll leave a review, or tell me your thoughts on it, or check it out on Goodreads.

Catfish Calling has two hundred and sixty reviews. Or check it out on Goodreads. You’ll laugh out loud.

Next up is my Bronze Star 2 graphic novel which launches on Kickstarter within days, sign-up here to be notified of some massive discounts the weekend it launches.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a novel. Thirty years, a dead wife, and ten biker books, to be exact.

I always knew I could write comics, and I proved it with Nexus, which I created with the brilliant illustrator Steve Rude. It was a success out of the gate and led to a long career. Punisher, Flash, Star Wars, and countless others. I fell out of the industry through nobody’s fault but my own. When the money was good, my late wife was great to be around. When it dried up, she spiraled. Pills. Alcohol.

I took any job I could get. One day she told me, “We have to move or I’m going to die.” We left Wisconsin for Fort Collins, Colorado. She got work as a legal secretary but kept drinking and chasing prescriptions. The firm fired her. One afternoon I came home and found her dead in bed. Vodka and OxyContin.

Three of my best friends showed up: Western writer Peter Brandvold, who shepherded me through the grief; my childhood pal Tom Delaney from Mitchell, SD; and Tommy Jasmin, the comics-loving NASA guy from Madison (those strange lights in the night sky? That’s Tommy).

After she died I was at sea. I hadn’t written prose in thirty years. Grief is a lousy muse, but it strips away the bullshit. For the first time I understood stakes.

Thanks to my friend Ian Fischer, who directed the Rude Dude documentary, I finally wrote a novel: the freaky modern slasher Helmet Head. Then came Banshees, about a satanic rock band that rises from the dead. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781614753940

I was a third of the way through Banshees when it hit me: Holy shit. I’ve got it. I stood on a mountain top looking down at the rest of the story stretching before me. I knew how I got there and where I was going. All those years writing, living, and thinking had finally brought me to this place. Once you understand story, you don’t make wrong turns. You don’t wander off on a 6,000-word tangent just because it’s fun.

Since then I’ve written ten Biker novels, Disco, three Florida Man books, four Tenure novels with Blaine Pardoe, and, to my utter astonishment, two Westerns based on graphic novels I did with the great Pat Broderick (Bronze Star and Bronze Star 2: Wendigo).

All of it was practice for the one story I’d been afraid to write for decades.

I don’t know where Lord of the High Country came from, but I know where it’s going. I tried it years ago and wasn’t ready. Recently, with new publishers actually interested, I knew I could do it—and place it. I’m sweeping through the first volume right now, surprising myself on every page. A writer has to surprise himself before he can surprise his readers.

It’s a three-book epic about a young English lord whose disastrous command in the Crimean War leaves him disgraced and disowned. Exiled to South America and then the American West, his towering ambition collides with a war-weary nation still licking its Civil War wounds. Hubris, destiny, and a mountain fortress built at 8,000 feet set the stage for tragedy.

I’ll start posting chapters here soon. The first one is free. After that… less than a Starbucks. While you’re waiting, we’re launching the Kickstarter for Bronze Star 2: Wendigo in a couple of weeks featuring Pat Broderick’s scariest creation yet.

When I moved to Boston, first I lived in Beverly, a bedroom community up the coast. I haunted the local tobacco shop’s spinner rack for new releases. I was gobsmacked by Roy Thomas and Barry Smith’s Conan the Barbarian. By sticking to Robert E. Howard’s stories, Roy provided an outstanding story. But the art. I couldn’t believe the art. Over the first four issues, Barry refined his style into something unique, drawing inspiration from the pre‑Raphaelites and art deco. I bought four issues of each. I still have them somewhere.

I don’t know how I got in touch with Creem. I moved to Cambridge, where my roommate was Gary Kenton, an editor for Fusion, a rock magazine for which I also wrote. I went somewhere overnight and when I returned he told me Lester Bangs had slept in my bed. It must have been Gary who hooked me up with Creem. It was 1973. My father had a store in Madison, Wisconsin, and went twice a year to New York to pick stock. We agreed to meet up. I’m always trying to combine things. Love to see my dad, but what else could I do while in New York? I got in touch with Stan Lee and asked if I could interview him. He was gung ho, as only Stan could be. I got in touch with Barry Smith, who had an apartment in Brooklyn, and asked if I could interview him. Come on over, he said.

I took the train to New York. My dad wasn’t in yet. I took the subway to Brooklyn. Nobody tried to push me onto the tracks or threatened me with a knife. Barry lived in a cheap second‑floor walk‑up, long blond hair cascading. He was very friendly and showed me his latest penciled pages for Conan #6 or #7. One look at those pages and most artists would toss their pencils in the air and try something else. I was trying to teach myself how to draw. Got a drawing board and everything. More on that later.

After I gushed myself out, I returned to Manhattan and hooked up with my dad at his hotel. We went out to dinner. The next day I took a bus to Marvel’s HQ at 135 W. 50th Street. Spider‑Man hung from the ceiling. I met John Romita Sr. in his office. He gave me a brief tour of the bullpen where I met Roy Thomas and Steve Englehart. Funny Steve Englehart story which will appear below after we consume the main course.

Finally I was ushered into Stan’s office...

Read more

I was an Assistant Editor for the Boston Phoenix under Editor Teddy Gross. I became music editor. It was my job to go out night after night, listen to the music and talk to the musicians. I have some crazy stories, like the time I met Freddie Mercury. This one is about the Rum Pot Rustlers. They were a 1% group from Randolph. They kept stopping by the office saying, “Why don’t you write about us? Because we’re like interesting, man!” So I thought what the hell. I’d recently met Hunter Thompson. I’d read his book, Hell’s Angels. They’d beat the shit out of him. He was so drunk he could barely stand.

I took the MTA down to Randolph and walked to their clubhouse in a garage. Randolph was a run-down blue collar enclave at the time. Since then they’ve reestablished themselves as “a dynamic, highly diverse suburban city.” The Rustlers’ clubhouse was in a garage in a seedy neighborhood. Everywhere I went, rats provided an honor guard, slinking along in the gutter. The double car garage was filled with bikes, cheap furniture, and a refrigerator.

Pictures of naked women covered the walls. Empty beer and liquor bottles covered the benches and tables, along with smeared hand mirrors. The clubhouse smelled of stale beer, motor oil, and the kind of quiet desperation that usually ends in a police siren. They wanted to be famous. I was the editor who could give them what they wanted. Their colors are no longer available, but they were similar to that of the Hell’s Angels, rocker panels on top and bottom framing a cartoon pirate clutching a liquor bottle. New England has always been a hotbed of 1% activity. What is 1%?

“A 1% biker club is a motorcycle club (MC) that identifies as an "outlaw" organization, operating independently of the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) and mainstream societal norms.” That really doesn’t do the job. Read Ken Croke’s Riding With Evil about his years going undercover with the Pagan Motorcycle Gang. Sons of Anarchy barely touches on it.

The Rustler’s president Wild Bill had a perfectly circular scar in the middle of his forehead. "One day I hear this yellin' so I go out on my front yard and there's a bunch of Wild Childs (a rival MC gang) doin' doughnuts so I tell them to get the hell off my lawn and one of 'em throws a beer bottle at me. Flippin’ around like a fuckin’ shuriken. Hit me dead center in the forehead and knocked me out." Big gut. Big arms. Every square inch inked up to the shoulders. He offered me a joint. He offered me a line. I took out my pen and pad. “What’s it all about, boys?”

Mostly, they talked about gang rape. They didn't call it that. They called it "sharing" with their brothers. “A brother meets a chick at the bar, brings her back here. She don’t know it, but when he brings back a nice piece we pass that bitch around.”

I dutifully wrote it up. The day after the article appeared three of them were arrested for gang-raping F. Lee Bailey's secretary whom they picked up in a bar. When I went to work the next day the secretary warned me to lay low--I was about to be deposed by the District Attorney. I took the back way out and the MTA to my basement apartment in Brighton.

When I returned the next day the publisher called me into his office. “We’re not going to supply you with an attorney for this. No one commissioned this piece. (They ran it.) You’re on your own.” The Rum Pot Rustlers continued to come by. Every day. Why the publisher didn’t hire security remains a mystery. You have to picture the Rustlers. Look at the pictures of Hells Angels. Or the Pagans. Or any biker gang. Even the Christian biker gangs, who are all men of goodwill, are not people with whom you’d want to mess. The Rustlers’ hygiene was not the best. They wore their colors. Jeans they’d worn every day for the past year. The leather vests covered with patches. The effete mice of the Phoenix quailed and stalled.

Most of the staff were left leaning. Some, like Carl Oglesby, were socialist. “Carl Oglesby (1935–2011) was a prominent American political activist, author, and academic who served as the president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966. He is best known for his role as an eloquent leader and orator of the “New Left” during the 1960s antiwar movement.” Carl was a sweet guy. He gave me a ride home once from a meeting in Cambridge.

A man from the district attorney’s office came to see me. “A guy like you, you wouldn’t do well in jail.” I started training in karate right after that, but that’s another substack. It got to the point I couldn’t sleep at night. Things built to a head. The DA’s office was about to issue a subpoena. The Assistant DA slammed the folder on my desk. 'You have no idea who you're dealing with, Mike.' He was right. I didn't. Not yet.

Read more

I’ve read Ennis before. Mostly Punisher. Ennis approaches the concept of superheroes with a chary eye. Look at The Boys. But when he writes about World War II, and especially the Eastern Front, he takes his job seriously. This first hand account of a young mother plunged into the struggle begins with German troops rolling through her town. Her husband has left to join the resistance leaving her with two young children. Her voice is measured and assured, even when recounting the most grotesque atrocities. Epting’s art brings everything alive, from scenes of death and suffering that would gag a dog off a gut wagon to breathtaking images of bombers soaring over the countryside. Gone are the days of imagining German bombers and tanks out of the whole cloth. Epstein’s drawings are accurate. The rendering is breathtaking. It’s not the peculiar comic art esthetic we enjoy in stylists like Berni Wrightson, Todd McFarlane, or Sam Kieth. It’s the real thing.

Some of these images are difficult to absorb. The double-page spread of naked victims, Jewish I would guess, standing in a pit they were forced to dig surrounded by Waffen SS just before they are gunned down. Ennis and Epting don’t shy away. This graphic novel is as disturbing as Scorsese’s Silence or The Sorrow and the Pity. Aleksandra’s encounter with a writer of children’s books is as bleak as the freezing forest through which they walk. Every word rings true. Aleksandra’s a realist doing what she must to keep her family alive. Difficult choices. The characterizations of the Nazis and the resistance ring true. It’s more powerful than Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which dealt with the Holocaust through the eyes of funny animals. Because it was easier tell the story that way.

It’s a long book. It took me several days to read. Publishers should number the pages. What’s the problem? Partisan is as rich and dense as a good novel. The art commands your attention. You stare at these images because they’re real. The story is real. There’s blood but it’s not overly gory. It doesn’t have to be. Dialogue and images combine to create one of the most powerful examples of graphic literature ever published.

Wolfpack is publishing my Biker novels one by one. This is modern noir. John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee is my inspiration. Josh Pratt is a reformed motorcycle hoodlum who went to prison, found God, and gets out determined to turn his life around. Some of the stories have to do with bikers but most do not.

We will launch Bronze Star 2 on Kickstarter in April. We would have launched sooner but fulfillment of the massive Nexus Omnibus took longer than we thought. Kickstarter says only one project at a time.

As always, you can find all my books at bloodyredbaron.com

Thank you Rotten Tomatoes. This fell between fish and foul (on the menu) so a lot of people missed it. Many movies and series center around restaurants, from the wonderful Big Night to the execrable Black Rabbit. Dinner Rush towers over all. There’s never a dull moment, from the opening scene, in which the mob plots to take over the Gigino Trattoria, to the restaurant itself. This movie snaps, crackles and pops. The sous-chef’s love life interrupts service. Mobsters demand a better table. The staff dreads the arrival of sneering food critic Jennifer Freely, a part Sandra Bernhard was born to play.

Mark Margolis’ arrogant art critic Fitzgerald is mesmerizing, setting up an emotional mic drop whenhe learns his charming waitress is really a painter. And that the wall paintings Fitzgerald has been smack-talking all night are hers. Margolis has been unforgettable in so many films, from Scarface to Breaking Bad’s Hector Salamanca.

Freely finally arrives. What a bitch. Chef Udo nearly charms her out of her pants. If it weren’t for her more attractive friend, he would have. Then there’s the charming fellow at the end of the bar who just wants to drink and watch the crowd. Women find him irrestible. He’s funny, friendly, just wants to drink and watch the crowd.

The ending comes as both a complete surprise and in retrospect, inevitable. Which is how a great ending should come. Planet of the Apes is a perfect example. Of course it was Earth!

My friends, the first volume of Biker was released this week from Wolfpack. If you love modern noir, solid stolid heroes and monstrous villains, check it out. This is a brand new edition, thank you Wolfpack, because every Biker had the same cover and people though they were all the same book. They couldn’t be more different. Here’s what Studio Jake said:

StudioJake Media

'Biker' Thriller Novel Highlight

Biker, also known as Biker: Bad Road Rising, is the first book in a thriller series by author Mike Baron. Liberty Island originally published it before Wolfpack Publishing released a new edition. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

Read more

5 months ago · 2 likes · Jacob Airey

You can find my graphic novels at baroncomics.com. We’re launching Bronze Star 2 by the end of March. Bronzestarcomic.com

An anodyne band takes a break at a wedding and a drunk gets up to sing. Jimmy notices. That drunk can really sing. He asks Deco to join the band. Jimmy posts an ad in a local flyer for auditions. The auditioning scenes are hilarious. One clown after another. “What are your influences?” Jimmy asks. “Depeche Mode, Boy George…” Jimmy slams the door in his face. They stand outside his second floor window singing. They play every kind of inappropriate music. An older guy rides up on a scooter. Joey “The Lip” Fagan plays trumpet. He played with Otis Redding, Little Richard, the Coasters and Joe Tex. It’s Joey who really pulls the band together, instilling soul in the young white players. Three young women join as backing singers. Maria Doyle Kennedy’s Natalie Murphy can really sing. Well, they all can, but Natalie has the chops to sing lead.

They practice in a slaughterhouse. Their opening gig is a disaster but you hear the potential. Jimmy notices the skinhead bouncer Duffy throwing people out. Everything comes together when they sing “Show Me.” Deco sings like David Clayton-Thomas. I love horn rock. According to Steve Katz, long time guitarist for Blood, Sweat, and Tears, in his book Blood, Sweat, and My Rock ‘n’ Roll Years, the band hated Al Kooper. The reasons are in the book. So they booted him and got David Clayton-Thomas. The band hated him even more. Those reasons are in Harvey Brooks’ book. The View From the Bottom. Andrew Strong’s Deco has the voice, but not the attitude.

At the next gig Deco knocks over the amp sparking an outage. Chaos. The drummer quits in discust. Jimmy asks skinhead bouncer Duffy to replace him. As they move from gig to gig their sounds becomes more powerful. Joey beds the back up singers one at a time adding to the tension. They fight onstage but somehow it all comes together when they sing. They land a gig the same night as Wilson Pickett plays Dublin. Joey, who jammed with Pickett, arranges for the great singer to come jam with the band after their gig.

Their final gig is a triumph. “Mustang Sally.” “Try A Little Tenderness.” But when the promised Pickett fails to appear, the fractures tear the band apart. The band dissolves. As Jimmy storms out in disgust, Joey assures him that what he’s accomplished will last with all of them for the rest of their lives. In the movie, Deco lands a recording a deal acts the ass. In real life, the Commitments toured for awhile in the tradition of such great Anglo soul bands as Kokomo and Dexys Midnight Runners. A movie with heart, soul, and humor. If you’ve never seen it you’re in for pure delight.

Visit my shop at baroncomics.com Bronze Star 2 will launch on Kickstarter this month. Bronzestarcomic.com

Visit my shop at baroncomics.com. Consider taking out a paid subscription. It’s cheaper than a latte.

Because the music industry doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind, there’s no steady market for great rock as there was in the seventies and eighties. The Woodstock festival in 1969 showcased Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Santana, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater, the Jefferson Airplane. Record companies like Columbia snatched up every new act that came along. You could get rich playing rock and roll.

Those days have changed. Today, the only true path to success is going viral on the internet. Billy Eilish. This hasn’t stopped groups from forming and performing, putting out brilliant records. If you want to read about what’s new, read Steve Lauden’s Remember the Lightning on Substack.

This is about classic rock of which you may not have heard. Well what is it? Rock or power pop? Power pop’s a big tent. Pete Townshend coined the term "power pop" in 1967 to describe The Who's musical style, specifically referencing their single "Pictures of Lily". He defined it as a blend of catchy, upbeat melodies with loud, energetic guitar playing—a "mischievous" and "dangerous" alternative to the era's more experimental music, essentially stating, "Power pop is what we play".

If you like rock and roll, you’ll love this record. The Remains toured with the Beatles on their first American tour. These guys must be heard to be believed. You gotta love the shaggy recordings with the producers and the engineers talking about which song they’re doing. This does not affect sound quality which is excellent. I just looked at Amazon and this two disc set is available for five bucks, used. Five bucks! Listen to this.

Curt Boettcher was the genius behind The Millenium, released in 1967. This is classic power pop jangle, great melodies, and segues creating a sort of song cycle. That chugga chugga rhythm section.

Neil Finn and Paul Hester formed Crowded House in 1985. Both played in Split Enz. Crowded House has put out many albums over the years, including Together Alone in 2005, “arguably their best record.” Now I have to get it. Few records can surpass their 1991 masterpice, Woodface. Exqusite harmonies, melodies, heartbreaking lyrics. This record is almost a religious experience.

“The Grays were a short-lived rock band comprising singer/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Jon Brion, Jason Falkner, Buddy Judge, and Dan McCarroll. They released only one album, the out-of-print but highly regarded Ro Sham Bo (1994) on Sony/Epic Records.”

But what an album! I was in San Francisco in a record shop and asked the clerk if he could recommend any power pop and he gave me this. Fans will know Jason Falkner as part of the original Jellyfish and the Three O’Clock before releasing a string of outstanding solo albums. Inspired by Odyssey and Oracle, the Grays were jamming when Epic stepped in. “You wanna make a record?” Every song is a home run. For melodic invention and emotional heft, this stands with Crowded House’s Woodface.

The record is now a collector’s item. Still available at reasonable prices.

The police can’t be everywhere. Hence the Second Amendment. They used to teach this in public schools. There’s always been crime, especially in big cities. The New York subways were never a stronghold of safety. I remember when Charles Bronson’s Death Wish came out. The audience in the theater stood and cheered. Bernard Goetz may have broken the law, but millions of Americans empathized. He was sick of gangs surrounding him on the subway and demanding money.

Hardly a month goes by without a new vigilante movie. Many of them feature mild-mannered men who used to work for the CIA. (Nobody, The Beekeeper.) Most of them, including those two, build to a reductio ad absurdism where, at the end, the protagonists are machine gunning thousands of nameless, faceless assassins parachuting down from the heavens, climbing up from the sewers, or riding in on motorcycles. See my column on The Wrecking Crew:

Antoine Fuqua’s Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, towers over all modern vigilante movies. It never jumps the shark. Based on the old television show, this Equalizer’s Robert McCall lives alone in a walk-up apartment in Boston and works as a superviser at a Home Depot-like store. He uplifts everyone around him, particularly a heavy-set clerk named Ralphie who aspires to become a security guard. McCall can’t sleep. Goes to an all-night diner where he befriends Chloë Grace Moretz' hapless hooker. Teri wants to be a singer. But she works for the Russian mob. One night she shows up with a bruised face. As McCall walks her home, a limo cuts them off. Three Russian gangsters pop out, smack her, and force her into the car. When McCall goes up to them, one of them hands him a card. “Russian Nights.” “Come see us. We fix you up.” The next night McCall learns Teri’s in intensive care.

“Russian Nights.” McCall slips security and appears at their sumptious office where four bratva, soaked in ink like downtown Los Angeles, are yukking it up. Making crude jokes Using corkscrews to open wine bottles. They can’t believe McCall’s nerve. He shows them the card and offers to buy Teri for $9800, all the money he has. They toy with him. They treat him with contempt. They promise to use Teri up like a tissue and tell him to come back when she’s worthless. They throw him out.

McCall goes to the door. He opens it. He closes it. He opens it. He closes it. He does this several times before turning around. One bratva holds a knife. Two bratva hold pistols. We see what McCall sees. The corkscrews on the bar. The guns. The knife. Every detail. Tense silence stretches into infinity. The only scene that comes close is at the end of The Wild Bunch, where Pike, Dutch, and the Gorch Brothers must decide to enact revenge or walk away rich in the wake of General Mapache’s throat-cutting of their friend Angel. In each case, the tension builds and builds. The Wild Bunch chooses to go out in glory, knowing they will all die.

McCall explodes, instantly disposing of two thugs with aikido. Counting off the seconds in his head. Flipping the gun hand and pulling the trigger. Disarming the knife hand and slicing the bratva up like a ham. Grabbing a corkscrew and plunging it into the third bratva six times before delivering the coup de grace through the bottom of the chin. Nineteen seconds. As the boss lies dying from a gunshot wound, McCall observes, “You’ll be dead in thirty seconds. All because you refused $9800 for a girl.”

The big boss Pushkin sends his trouble shooter Itchenko, played with chilling intensity by Marton Csokas, who bears a remarkable resemblance to my friend Christian Toto, who writes about film at hollywoodintoto.com.

Itchenko beats the local American mob boss into unconsciousness. “Why did you do that?” one of the crooked cops asks. “To let them know I’m here,” Itchenko says.

When Ralphie quits his job McCall learns crooked cops have been extorting his mother’s cafe. McCall’s solution is ingenious and satisfying.

Itchenko strips and stretches in his hotel room, camera lingering on his fully inked torso. Like Francis Dolarhyde’s reveal of William Blake’s Red Dragon on his back in Red Dragon.

Pushkin’s gangsters push and push. McCall visits his old CIA mentors Bill Pullman and Melissa Leo in their palatial country mansion, nearly as opulent as Pushkin’s Russian palace. This was a jarring moment. These people appear to be multi-millionaires. Perhaps they inherited. They learn Itchenko’s reality and his connection to Pushkin.

MCall goes to war against the Russian mob. Obligatory walking away from big explosion scene. Itchenko invades the big box store at closing time, tells McCall to come or he’ll kill everyone. The final confrontation shows McCall ingeniously using the store’s product to kill the bratva. You have to see it. He dispatches Itchenko in a way that satisfies. And you’ll love the coda. Screenwriter Richard Wenk’s script is refreshing and devoid of cliches. He and Fuqua would team up on two more Equalizers about which more anon.

If you like vigilante stories you’ll love Tenure, written by Blaine Pardoe and me. Tenure #4 just went on sale and we’re working on #5. Please visit my shop at baroncomics.com. This one’s about Peanut the squirrel:

The 2004 version starring Denzel Washington is one of my favorite movies. Staring at a fool’s paradise of made-for-TV series on two thousand streaming channels, I revisited Man On Fire for the fifth time. No matter how many times I watch it, it’s mesmerizing. It begins with washed-up drunk Creasey visiting his old pal Rayburn, living the good life in Juarez, New Mexico. Creasey doesn’t know what to do with himself. Rayburn arranges an interview with rich Sam Ramos to serve as a bodyguard for Ramos’ daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning.) With over 80,000 kidnappings a year, Mexico may be the world leader. As we all know by now, Mexico is a terrorist nation ruled by drug cartels. Their president is compromised. The cartels take a piece of every business, from the fruit peddler, to car manufacturers. Unless and until they wipe out the cartels, Mexico will remain a bad place to invest, a bad place to visit.

In Creasey’s first meeting with his old pal, he asks Rayburn, “Do you think God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done?” The question repeats itself throughout the film.

Ramos has a cash flow problem. Creasey comes cheap. When Ramos asks him why so cheap, Creasey says, “I drink.”

Creasey moves into an apartment above the Ramos’ garage. The main house is a mansion with a swimming pool. Steeped in self-pity and despair, Creasey continues to drink and rebuffs Pita’s attraction to him. In disgust, she moves out of the front seat of the Mercedes and into the rear, as Creasey chauffeur’s her to Catholic school. So often, Catholic school nuns are presented as authoritarian sadists. As in Taylor Sheridan’s 1923 and the current season of Dark Winds. Pita’s teachers are more compassionate. Creasey connects with her teacher instantly by quoting the Bible back to her.

One night, drunk and desperate, Creasey slides a bullet into his nine millimeter, puts it to his head and pulls the trigger. It’s a dud. He calls Rayburn and asks him what it means. “The bullet always tells the truth,” Rayburn tells him.

From that moment, knowing he’s been given a chance at redemption, Creasey’s attitude toward his young ward changes. She’s the fastest swimmer at school but slow off the block. The starter gun mas her freeze. He teaches Pita to dive instantly when she hears the bullet. The scenes of Creasy training Pita are heartfelt and inspiring. At her school’s next swimming race, Pita wins! She gives Creasy a St. Judes’ medallion. The patron saint of lost causes. Creasy reads his Bible.

Then the kidnappers strike. Creasy kills four of them but is badly injured and they grab Pita. When he recovers enough to leave the veterinarian where allies have hidden him from the corrupt police, who are behind most of the kidnappings, he returns to the mansion. Lisa asks him what he’s going to do. “What I do best. I’m gonna kill ‘em.” With Rayburn’s help he buys ammo. Shotguns. A rocket launcher. One by one he goes after the crooked cops killing them in ingenious ways. When a journalist asks Rayburn what Creasy’s doing, Rayburn answers, “A man can be an artist. Anything Food. Whatever. It depends how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.”

While some have criticized Scott’s herky-jerky cinema verite camera style, nothing can kill this script. Man On Fire is inspires and breaks your heart. It stands head and shoulders above the zillions of revenge movies the industry churns out each year. It’s based on a solid book. IN 2023, Washington reteamed with Dakota Fanning for the outstanding Equalizer 3, about which more later.

Consider taking out a paid prescription.

You can find my graphic novels at baroncomics.com

Writers are people who have to write. Some have the knack from Jump Street. Mary Shelley was eighteen when she wrote Frankenstein. Carson McCullers was twenty-three when she wrote The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. William Styron was twenty-six when he wrote Lie Down In Darkness.

They are the exceptions. For most of us, it’s a long hard road to narrative confidence, but you can get there if you try. You’ll know when you get there. We all have friends who say I just wrote this story, will you read it and tell me if it’s any good? It may be, but those writers are usually neophytes. If you work at it long enough and hard enough you’ll know. You’ll arrive at the top of the mountain. You will understand story. Once you understand story you don’t make a wrong turn.

We’ve all gone off on a tangent, writing several thousand words that interest us but have nothing to do with our original intent. These are my words. I wrote them. I can’t get rid of them. It’s like killing my child. No, these are merely detours on the road to mastery.

What constitutes story? “Oh honey, don’t let me commence!” —Truman Capote. Many things. A good plot. Sympathetic, likeable characters. Or, in the case of Cormac McCarthy, the scum of the earth. If you care about the character you will follow him or her wherever they may lead. Sherlock Holmes is the most popular fictional character in history. Conan Doyle created an unforgettable personality. Likewise, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. Likewise, Robert Parker’s Spenser. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

You must choose between three points of view. First person. I walked into the room. Second person. You walked into the room. Third person. She walked into the room. Don’t use the second person. Nobody likes it. First person narrates the story from a single point of view. John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee is one of the best. Dr. Watson too. Third person depends. Your protagonist may be the dominant voice, but you may wish to write from another point of view. Start another chapter. Rarely is a novelist skilled enough to jump from POV to POV in the same chapter. Kevin J. Anderson is one of them. Kevin writes by narrating his story into a recorder while hiking through the Rocky Mountains. Most of us labor away at a keyboard. An increasing number narrate, now that there are voice to print programs. Narration is closer to stream of consciousness which lends itself to the omniscient POV.

The narrative voice lies on a spectrum from invisible to flamboyant. An invisible narrative voice means you’re so immersed in the story you’re not aware of the words. There are no five dollar words thrown in your path to make you pause. Michael Connelly is a master of this. At the other end are flamboyant writers like Anthony Burgess or Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay.) Better have a dictionary when you read these guys. Their use of language is ostentatious but fun. Take Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe:

“Hollywood’s the kind of town where they stick a knife in your back and then have you arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.”

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.”

The more you write the better you get. Ideally. There are some authors whose work deteriorated as they aged. Most get better. I collect books on writing. Most are pretty good. Some are pretty funny, like New York Literati darling Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life:

“Writing a book full time, takes between two and ten years… Thomas Mann was a prodigy of production. Working full time, he wrote a page a day. That is a 365 page book a year… He was one of the most prolific writers who ever lived.”

Gosh! How has James Reasoner published over 350 books? Peter Brandvold has published over 100. I have four books coming out this year. A page a day? Oh Annie! Writers like Reasoner and Brandvold write 3000 words a day come hell or high water.

Some books on writing are so bad I keep them around as curios. Like Harry Shaw Jr’s Writing and Rewriting. “A topic sentence is a statement of the gist of the paragraph; it contains the heart of the idea which is to be, or has been, developed. It does not mention everything that the paragraph contains, nor does it smmarize the full contents of the paragraph…”

There is only one essential book on writing Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.

I didn’t use to outline, but now I do. It helps me order the narrative. I always veer away from the outline. In researching a story, I discover things that lead me in new directions. This keeps my interest sharp. If you want to write a novel, distill its essence into what’s your story about?

I wrote about that.