What writing technique of yours are you most proud of? by Michael Meyer (author of Covert Dreams)

One technique that I am particularly proud of is summed up by one of the many readers who have left reviews on my Amazon website: “One last point: at the end of most of the chapters the author used an unusual and effective technique that really won my respect. I felt I was in the hands of a master. Terrific book. I would recommend it to anyone.” This particular review really had an effect on me since I had worked extremely hard to perfect this specific technique. Since COVERT DREAMS has two alternating stories that are linked in a horrifying way at the end, I wanted to keep the reader in suspense the entire journey. I especially wanted to ensure that this would be a page-turner. So what I did was to link each chapter together with endings that would titillate the reader, making one want to hurry on to see what was going to happen next.

COVERT DREAMS is set primarily in Munich and in Saudi Arabia, both places that I know very well. The locales I have drawn are authentic. The research I did to ensure that the settings are all real came from my own personal observations. I was a student in Germany, and I have probably traveled to Munich on fifteen separate occasions. I know the city like I know my own hometown. In addition, I was a professor at a university in Saudi Arabia, and I traveled extensively throughout the country, which I also know quite intimately. So what I had to do was to somehow link these two extreme cultural entities, the Bavarian ebullient nature and the Arabian ultra religious culture. What I finally came up with, after lots of thought, hard work, and many rewrites was to add an intriguing link between Munich and Saudi Arabia at the end of most chapters.



One of the two alternating stories mainly takes place in Munich, Germany, where a man who has been haunted recently by a series of lifelike nightmares is frantically trying to discover what is real, and who is who. The second story takes place in Saudi Arabia, where an American professor is frantically searching for his wife, whose very existence has disappeared. The first time I used this technique of linking the two alternating threads together to add suspense was at the end of the first chapter: “Time, gradually becoming their enemy, did a flip-flop, and the now became the then, dying, giving birth to what lay ahead, way beyond the present, biding its own good time, in total control, much like a German panzer unit moving across The Netherlands. Just like the power of Allah under the hot Saudi Arabian sun.”



One other example of my using this technique comes at the end of a later chapter: “Then it happened. They were both emotionally wrought, and the fear was evident in the way in which they clutched one another, neither of them wanting to ever let go, the table—their whole world, in fact—shaking, much like a beer barrel polka in a boisterous Munich beer garden—or a sandstorm in the lonely Saudi Arabian desert.”



I am delighted that my readers have found this technique of mine effective because I can tell you that I spent a lot of time making sure that the wording in each chapter ending of COVERTDREAMS was as strong as it could be.

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About the Book

Imagine waking up remembering intimate details about a country in which you have never traveled and fluently speaking a language that you have never spoken. B.J. is living the ideal life. He has a great wife, a wonderful job. And yet he is experiencing life-like vivid dreams of Munich, a city he has never visited.



Stan Halsey is a professor in Saudi Arabia, who sends for his wife to join him. She arrives, and, in the blink of an eye, she vanishes, leaving no trace of ever being alive in either the United States or in Saudi Arabia.



COVERT DREAMS is a fast-paced international suspense thriller that moves from Munich to the burning sands of Saudi Arabia. What is real, and who is responsible for the terrifying nightmare?

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About the Author

I have resided in and have visited many places in the world, all of which have contributed in some way to my own published writing. I have literally traveled throughout the world, on numerous occasions. I have lived in Finland, Germany, Thailand, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Saudi Arabia, where COVERT DREAMS is set. I gained the wanderlust to see the world, to experience other cultures, at an early age, and this desire has never left me. If anything, it has only gained in intensity as I have aged. I try to travel internationally at least once a year. In the interim, I spend lots of time traveling around both my home state of California and other nearby states.



I spent my early years in the small town of Lone Pine, California, the home of almost every western movie, in addition to a wide variety of other genres, made in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. In fact, Hollywood still films parts of big-time movies there today. My dad, the town’s lifeguard at the time, personally knew John Wayne, Lloyd Bridges, and Lee Marvin, all of whom came to the town’s pool, the Memorial Plunge, at times to cool off after a hectic day of working in the sun. I was even an extra in a movie filmed there in 1957, MONOLITH MONSTERS, a B-cult favorite even today. I was ten years old at the time. Even though I resided in a small town hours from the big city, I was exposed to the excitement of action and heroes at a formative age, and, thus, my interest in writing novels of suspense such as COVERT DREAMS was born.



As a recent retiree from a forty-year career as a professor of writing, I now live in Southern California wine country with my wife, Kitty, and our two other cats.



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Bone Wires by Michael Shean (REVIEW)

With Bone Wires, Michael Shean weaves a story that pays homage to multiple genres and tropes, creating a whole that is definitely more than just the sum of its parts. On the surface, this is a police procedural played out against a science fiction backdrop. Beneath the skin is an alternately shiny/gritty surface is an undercurrent of horror, backed by its serial killer atrocities, marked by a throbbing vein of socio-political commentary, centred around the privatization of law enforcement.



In a world where justice and profits are interchangeable, the investigation of a murder is considered a low-priority task, with little profit involved. Up the stakes with a string of gruesome serial murders, however, marked by the removal of the victim's spinal cords, and suddenly the detective involved is not just a celebrity, but a poster boy for the corporation. Suddenly, a seemingly simple investigation is complicated by the need to appease the shareholders as well as the public at large.



Shean's narrative style is well-suited to the mix of genres, coming across as a hard-boiled detective thriller with a strong sense of technological self-awareness. The story itself is paced well, and even when the action lags, there are enough ideas being explored to keep the reader engaged. In terms of detail, this is a book that's both gruesome and vulgar, but never to the point of being excessive.



More importantly, especially for the police-procedural genre, the characters are well-drawn, well-rounded, and well-executed. You can not only 'see' the characters as Shean describes them, but you can 'hear' them as well. They seem to exist beyond the page, bringing life to the story while also maintaining a sense of significance or consequence when they're out of sight.

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Michael Shean was born amongst the sleepy hills and coal mines of southern West Virginia in 1978. Taught to read by his parents at a very early age, he has had a great love of the written word since the very beginning of his life. Growing up, he was often plagued with feelings of isolation and loneliness; he began writing off and on to help deflect this, though these themes are often explored in his work as a consequence. At the age of 16, Michael began to experience a chain of vivid nightmares that has continued to this day; it is from these aberrant dreams that he draws inspiration.

In 2001 Michael left West Virginia to pursue a career in the tech industry, and he settled in the Washington, DC area as a web designer and graphic artist. As a result his writing was put aside and not revisited until five years later. In 2006 he met his current fiancee, who urged him to pick up his writing once more. Several years of work and experimentation yielded the core of what would become his first novel, Shadow of a Dead Star (2011). Michael is currently signed with Curiosity Quills Press, who has overtaken publication of Shadow of a Dead Star and the other books of his Wonderland Cycle.

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GUEST POST: Dance, Monkey, Dance by Keira Michelle Telford

Inspiration: where do you get yours? I used to joke that I had a monkey who would dance for me when I was feeling creatively deadlocked. Of course, that’s not true. Monkeys have a tendency to throw their feces at you, and that’s just not something I need in my life right now. I already have an incontinent guinea pig, and there’s nothing particularly inspirational about that.



So, instead of employing a monkey to entertain me, I try to find inspiration in more every day things. Like: movies, TV, music, and books. Quite simply, appreciating the art of others inspires me to work on my own art—The SILVER Series: a ten-book, dystopian adventure series, chronicling the (fictional) life of Ella ‘Silver’ Cross.



I watch several movies a month, have a handful of TV must-sees always scheduled on my PVR, and I listen to music while I write. But since I spend so much of my time writing, I don’t get a lot of opportunity to read. Like many other writers I’ve spoken to, I don’t like to read while I’m in the midst of writing a book in case I become too influenced by the work. Despite that, over the years, I’ve acquired a few solid favorites. In no particular order, here are my top five:





Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime & Punishment

Justifiable homicide is a central theme in this book, and it’s one that I’ve explored myself in The SILVER Series. It’s a tough read, I’ll admit. The language is formal, and won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s a well-spun tale of murder, guilt, and internal torment. Some of Silver’s experiences might well be compared to those of Raskolnikov, Crime & Punishment’s morally-distressed protagonist. In Acheron, Maydevine convinces Silver that murder can be justifiable. In The Lost & Damned, she puts that to the test when she sets her mind to kill the city’s corrupt Governor. In A New Age Dawns, she might just go too far.





Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy 

To be fair, Inferno is my favorite part of this book. I don’t care so much for Purgatory or Paradise. The nine circles of hell fascinate me. In fact, references to Inferno can be found scattered throughout my work, not least of which is in the title of my first novel—Acheron. The river of pain leads to hell, and after traversing it, Virgil leads Dante on a tour of hell’s nine circles: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. This latter circle, the deepest in hell and reserved for traitors, plays an ongoing—albeit subtle—part in my work. When we first meet Silver, she’s just been banished for treason. That makes her a traitor, and would relegate her to the ninth circle. Links back to this—and to Inferno in general—can be found in chapter headings, dialogue, and even in the book’s epigram. And no, that’s not a typo in Maydevine’s last line of dialogue at the end of chapter ten...





Emilie Autumn – The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

A self-pressed, semi-autobiographical novel by the Victoriandustrial musician, Emilie Autumn. It’s kind of graphic and brutal in a here’s-my-bleeding-heart sort of way. It deals with issues like bi-polar disorder, suicide, self-harm, sexual abuse, and rape. It’s dark, gritty, and pulls no punches in its vivid depictions of mental illness. Emilie Autumn might not be the most sophisticated writer, but you won’t really notice the weaknesses in her punctuation because you’ll be too absorbed in the horrors of her life. The book is littered with song lyrics, diary excerpts, and pictures—illustrations by EA herself, and photographs. It’s a fascinating read, and you might be disturbed to learn just how little the mental health system has changed from the Victorian era up till now. And, in the end, that’s her point.





Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion

This is the only non-fiction entry on my list. What I love about Richard Dawkins, is that he explains science in a way that makes it palatable for the masses. Even a layperson is able to digest the science of evolution, natural selection, and other biological processes, through his detailed explanations of them. I love science, and I fail to understand how any person living in the modern age can refute it. And since science (particularly biology) plays a huge part in my work, I make it my business to read as many of these books as possible. I’m still struggling with string theory, though. And the concept of non-linear time is still a hard one for me to grasp. However, the instant I learned that a single electron can be in two places at the same time (bi-location), and that it’s scientifically plausible that, at any given moment, you are simultaneously everywhere you could possibly be... well, let’s just say that it opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the future of The SILVER Series. Quite literally.





Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot

I don’t know if this technically counts as a book, since it’s a play, but when I first found out about it, I read it in book format. I still have it on my bookshelf. It’s personal to me because it reminds me of a time in my life when I was living in rural Wales with my father. I was sixteen years old, and our daily life bore a striking resemblance to the perpetual routine of nothingness endured by Dede and Gogo on that desolate mountaintop. For me, Waiting for Godot perfectly encapsulates the futility of our existence. You can’t make sense of it, because there’s no sense to be made. It brings to my mind the last lines from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, written by Richard O’Brien: “And crawling on the planet’s face, some insects called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space. And meaning.”.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born and raised in Britain, Keira moved to British Columbia, Canada in 2006. She now shares a townhouse on the west coast with her husband and 9 guinea pigs, yes 9 guinea pigs.



Author of the post-apocalyptic romance novels called Silver.



The world might end, but love endures.



Visit Keira's websites at:

E-Mail: km_telford@yahoo.com

Website: www.keiramichelle.com

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

SILVER: Acheron (A River of Pain) by Keira Michelle Telford



Dishonorably discharged from the Hunter Division and banished for crimes she did not commit, Silver struggles to come to terms with her new prison-like surroundings: a segregated area of the city called the Fringe District, populated by murderers, thieves and rapists. 



Starving, and desperate for money, she reluctantly accepts the Police Division's invitation to enroll in a covert Bounty Hunter program: an initiative devised to infiltrate the criminal underworld of the Fringers, and to force the very worst warrant dodging law-breakers to meet their fate—death.



Unfortunately, Silver doesn't realize that the Police Division is about to up the ante. They need more than little snippets of information and arrests—they need someone to pull the trigger.



They need an executioner.

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Don't forget to check out the details of where Keira will be next.

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GUEST POST: Living With Your Editor by Ray Gorham

As I came to the conclusion of the second draft of my book, I decided I had probably better have someone with better English skills than myself do a little bit of editing.  In school I had always been a good reader and decent speller, and strong in math and science, but for some reason the rules of English, beyond the basics, never made sense to me.  Fortunately, I have a very talented wife.



Feeling pretty good about my book, I approached her with a 2” stack of paper (I had managed to talk her into editing).   “Prepare to be amazed,” I said (or something equally witty, I’m sure).  She stuck her hand out for the manuscript.  “I’m pretty busy, but I’ll get to it as soon as I can,” she replied.  From the expression on her face, I could tell she wasn’t expecting to be amazed.



Being in need of affirmation after such a long project, I was very anxious to get her feedback.  It was probably only a week, but it seemed like a month before she announced she had the first chapter done.  I eagerly snatched the papers from her hand, expecting to see smiley faces on each page, an occasional missing comma fixed, and a mushy love note at the end of the chapter telling me how wonderful my writing was and how glad she was she married me.



She turned to go make dinner and missed seeing my legs buckle as I glanced down at the first page.  Red ink everywhere!  I stumbled to the bedroom and fell into my writing chair.  With shaking hands I fanned through the 20 or so pages in my hand, more red than black.  My head spun.  I had thought my wife was pretty smart, now I wasn’t so sure.



Commas, apostrophes, possessives, verbiage, wording—you name it, she nailed me on it.  I opened the document on my computer and started making corrections.  Okay, maybe I need a comma there.  I guess that word fits better.  I’ll trust you on this one.  By the end of the night the first chapter was done, and it was looking and sounding quite a bit better than it had hours earlier.



We did make it through the book, and the final product is much, much better than my original version.  We liked the process so much that we went through it two more times for the book (just kidding about the like part).  In my defense, I can proudly report that there were some pages towards the end of the book that didn’t need any editing, but they were few and far between.



I learned a few things from the process.  A second set of eyes on your work is essential, because no matter how thorough you think you’ve been, you’ll miss a ton.  Editing isn’t personal.  Rules are rules, and no matter how good I think something is, it needs to be said the right way.  Also, English can be learned—she’s been through part of my second book and has commented that I’ve improved greatly on the technical side of writing (hooray for me!).



Finally, I’ve realized why we never hear about people falling in love with their editor.  Agent?  Yes.  Bodyguard?  Yes.  Backup dancer?  Yes.  Director?  Yes.  Fans?  Yes.  Editor?  Not on your life.  I don’t think it is humanly possible to fall madly in love with someone who points out everything you do wrong.  Fortunately for me, I had fallen in love with her years before, so we didn’t have that hurdle to cross.  So my life, and my writing, is much better for it.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ray Gorham was born in Calgary, Canada in 1966.  Prior to graduating college and settling in the United States in 1991, Ray had the good fortune to live in a variety of locations around the world.  Years in Australia, England, Lebanon, Japan, Canada, and the United States all helped to shape his background, worldview, and appreciation for other people and cultures.



Graduating with a degree in Accounting, he decided he couldn’t spend a future studying tax law and sitting in front of a computer all day, so he took a management position with Wal-Mart and spent the next 10 years in retail management where he had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of employees and thousands of customers on a weekly basis.  Growing tired of large corporations, Ray next tried opening and running a restaurant, but decided after a year that wasn’t for him either.  From there, he found a small log home business for sale in Montana in 2006 and settled in for what he hoped would be a long-term career.



When the construction industry slowed down in 2008, Ray knew he was going to have a lot of time on his hands, so he determined to cross off one of the items on his bucket list—writing a novel.  After thousands of hours of writing and editing he had the final draft of his first novel, a 108,000 word effort telling the story of a husband struggling to return to his family after a major terrorist attack.  While agents and publishers have passed on his efforts to this point, he has found significant success so far in digital format, selling over 10,000 copies of his work.

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

77 Days in September by Ray Gorham

On a Friday afternoon before Labor Day, Americans are getting ready for the holiday weekend, completely unaware of a long-planned terrorist plot about to be launched against the country. Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical device in the country, and results in the crippling of the power grid, the shutting down of modern communications, and bringing to a halt most forms of transportation.



Kyle narrowly escapes when his airplane crashes on takeoff, only to find himself stranded 2,000 miles from home in a country that has been forced, from a technological standpoint, back to the 19th Century. Confused, hurt, scared, and alone, Kyle must make his way across a hostile continent to a family he’s not even sure has survived the effects of the attack. As Kyle forges his way home, his frightened family faces their own struggles for survival in a community trying to halt its slow spiral into chaos and anarchy.



77 Days in September follows Kyle and his wife, Jennifer, as they are stretched past their breaking point, but find in their devotion to each other the strength to persevere.

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Be sure to stop back later this morning when I post my review of 77 Days in September. In the meantime, don't forget to check out the details of where Ray will be next.

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VBT Feature: Demon Vampire by Virgil Moore

Virgil Moore's Demon Vampire asks the question, if given the choice to have power, grace, and immortality at the cost of your soul, what would you do? 



What if the choice was easier than you think? Small incremental segments of you childhood for a boost in strength? The ability to protect your loved ones for the corners of your mind that you don't often use? Regeneration for the traits that make you who you are? 



If faced with a grave decision of morality, what would you choose?

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EXCERPT

  His eyes closed. The red apparition somehow
soothed and calmed him. It was speaking directly now. It was murder. He could
hear it above the raging storm coursing through him. It forced upon him
glimpses of her dead body, a sight of torment. 
“The vast ocean of power I can grant you. The encompassing absolution of
being I offer, to walk without equal as an abomination among monsters. To be
feared as no other.” The voice sighed inside him. It's breath warm on the back
of his thoughts. “Am I truly so disgusting? Is this not what you asked for? Do
I not tempt you? Offer you what you need? Do I not wet your tongue with my
invitation?”

 Fear
swept him, his choices were not sovereign. His gut knotted in indecision. The
hot blanket of seduction that had cloaked him was convincing. It was generously
welcoming. He hesitated, not knowing the demon's destination or his own. He
could feel his soul slipping, a grip once tight, now failing him.

 “Let
it happen, give yourself to me. All you ever have to do, is acknowledge me.
Your soul will satisfy my desires, my requirements.” The voice was commanding.
It spoke as a god dwelling in the recesses of his senses. It continued. “Rip,
tear, rend, and swallow the blood like milk.” The demon inside beckoned with a
sadistic suggestion.

 He
was unsure, the deal was tempting, even acceptable in a sick flight of fancy.
The power was enthralling. His confliction was disturbing, he was not a
murderer. He knew as much, as he doubted his own integrity. It was tempting,
wet in his mouth, keen on his fingertips. Absolute strength on a level
unrivaled. The knowledge that no other being would ever be able to contest him.
It was a spectacular promise. It was seductive.

 The
voice posed its question a final time. Its confidence was unrelenting. “Is my
simple price so steep, so dire, costly, that you would die a
fool's death to deny me the path fate has allowed me to etch in the stars?”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Virgil
Allen Moore has been writing for seventeen years. He began as a poet and
eventually turned to long fiction. In his words "My pen wields visceral
morality as I write. I use my poetic knowledge to woo and satiate the minds of
the world." His books are written for their vivid imagery and well defined
storytelling. He blends old world refinement with a modern feel in a way that
gives strength to the core of his novels. With his books, you are left not just
with a sense of accomplishment, but a moral choice. The reader has choice over
how they feel through the story. The ordeals of the characters are transmuted
to the reader, lending a direct sensation of emotion that only the best novels
can evoke. When you read his words, you will be rewarded. As he says, "If
you enjoy vampires, you will be enthralled by mine."

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GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY: Three Steps to Writing a Dystopian Novel by David Kubicek

Please extend a warm welcome to David Kubicek, who has wandered into the ruins today to talk about his book, A Friend of the Family.

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Three Steps to Writing a Dystopian Novel: Balancing World-Building with Character-Building

by David Kubicek

Occasionally I’ve heard science fiction writers complain that in order to create a future world or alternate reality they have to sacrifice characterization; to create a world and to create characters would take too long, be too wordy, and might bore the readers.



That is crap. It’s an excuse used by 1) lazy writers who don’t want to bother with characterization, and 2) inexperienced writers who haven’t yet learned to “show, don’t tell.”



Ray Bradbury created an unfamiliar world populated with well-defined characters in Fahrenheit 451, as did Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale, as did Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games, as have many other science fiction and fantasy writers.



You don’t need to waste lots of words describing your futuristic world; a few well-chosen words will do. In one of his stories, Robert A. Heinlein has doors that operate like camera shutters; they open and close automatically when someone passes through them. To communicate this concept to his readers, as his character approaches a door, Heinlein writes three words: “The door dilated.”



Similarly, don’t waste words describing your characters; show them in action. The best way to engage your readers is to create characters who are like them, characters who want the same things and who react emotionally in the same ways. This establishes an emotional bond between your characters and your readers.



To create a dystopian world, find something that may be slightly wrong in our contemporary society and exaggerate it so that it is has caused your future society to be seriously out of whack. For example, Ray Bradbury took censorship to the next level in Fahrenheit 451 when he envisioned a future in which firemen seek out illegal collections of books and burn them.



So you have characters to whom your readers can relate, and you have a society in which something is broken. Now combine the two.



Remember that, although the characters have an emotional tie to contemporary readers, their thoughts and actions must be consistent with the society in which they live. In Fahrenheit 451, for example, at the front of the characters’ minds all the time is the knowledge that possessing a book is a serious crime. They know also that speeding 100 miles per hour down the freeway and trying to hit anything that moves is a good, and accepted, form of recreation.

That’s it in a nutshell. Writing a solid dystopian story is as easy as writing a contemporary story if you follow these three guidelines:

• Create characters of the future to whom contemporary readers can relate


• Exaggerate a flaw in contemporary society until you’ve created a world that is seriously broken


• The thoughts and actions of the characters must be consistent with the society in which they live

Good Luck!

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GIVEAWAY!!!

Want to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card? Of course you do!

Just leave a comment for David below to be entered.

One lucky comment from the tour (see the other stops here) will be selected to win.

Yup, it's really that easy . . . so leave a comment today!

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VBT Review: inSyte by Greg Kiser

Greg Kiser`s inSyte is an engaging novel with an intriguing premise that stumbles a bit in its narrative execution, but which still provides for an entertaining read.



The story starts out as a straightforward military thriller, with a pair of Navy SEALS pinned down by enemy fire, outnumbered, and cut off from any hope of rescue. After a brief lull, the story takes an interesting twist into the paranormal, with one of those SEALS discovering the secret of mentally tapping into the limitless knowledge of the internet. It`s through that forbidden knowledge that Mitch discovers a “divine” plan that will result in the deaths of millions . . . a plan that he can prevent, but only if he kills the father of the woman he loves.



Mitch is a solid, if unremarkable hero, who is strong enough to engage the reader, but lacks that something extra that would allow him to carry the novel singlehandedly. Fortunately, we have a suave, sophisticated, amoral villain in Cheslov, the hitman turned serial killer. He`s entirely calm and accepting of his profession, with no moral or intellectual qualms, but also none of the maniacal insanity we`ve come to expect in these characters. These two play well off another, leading to a finale that`s as exciting as it is satisfying, and even if the final scene was something I completely anticipated, it still worked.



Like I said, the novel does stumble a bit in its narration, with a detached third-person narrator who exposes us to the characters` thoughts, often in a disjointed, almost random, stream-of-consciousness manner. It catapulted me out of the story a few times, leaving me confused as to who was doing or thinking what, but I did find you eventually make an uneasy peace with the style.



Otherwise, it is an fast-paced, exciting read, one that`s full of big ideas and which provides a tantalizing glimpse into the future. There`s an interesting world here, full of possibilities, and since there does seem to be a door left open for a sequel, I really hope Greg allows us to explore more of that world.

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`

Greg Kiser is happily married to a wonderful and inspirational wife, Serena, and has two beautiful children – Miller and Grace.



Greg graduated from Southern Polytechnic University in Atlanta with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Greg also earned his MBA from the University of South Florida. He is currently a Director at Cisco, a high tech fortune 50 multinational corporation.



Greg has written extensively for fortune 50 high tech firms in describing next generation networks and painting pictures of the true evolution of technology for the consumer.





(this book was provided free of charge, via the Virtual Book Tour Cafe, in exchange for a fair and honest review)

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