The first review for Bad Day for the Home Team is posted on amazon.com. The reviewer, ReadersFavorite.com, gave the book five out of five stars and I’m most thrilled that the reviewer said, “You could not help liking Sam.” For me that’s the ultimate compliment because Sam is a man who killed forty people. I’m hopeful this review will help boost readership for this challenging but rewarding novel about a man who shoots a bunch of people in Arizona (hmmmm) and how society tries to figure out why he did it. (Again, hmmmmm.).

…Mr. Jones and Mr. Jackson, along with Mr. McCarthy, who rarely does interviews, agreed to meet at the offices of HBO in New York to talk about the film (which has its premiere on Saturday), the play and working with one another. The three collaborators had lunch and after the dishes were cleared away, David Carr hosted a chat that veered into philosophy and some very big themes but had laughs too, not unlike the movie itself. Excerpts of that conversation follow…

“…Three months after the abduction, the kidnappers, who turned out to be Calabrian bandits with a possible connection to organized crime, cut off Mr. Getty’s ear and mailed it, along with a lock of his hair, to a Roman newspaper … the eldest Mr. Getty paid $2.2 million, the maximum that his accountants said would be tax deductible. The boy’s father paid the rest, though he had borrow it from his father — at 4 percent interest…”

And, while I loathe discussing anyone’s writing process, I am having a rejuvenated relationship with my Smith Corona SCM 210 as I begin a new book and it’s exciting. I’ve had this hulking “portable” for about thirty years, through high school and college and in Chicago, DC, Hartford … you name it, it’s one of the very few things I’ve always lugged along. For the last decade or so it has sat idly by as I went of and spent time with an IBM ThinkPad, then a crappy HP laptop, and now two shimmery, silvery Apple MacBooks. And while I have written most of my books on computers, there is something lacking in the physical reality of that.

I’m playing Austin in a production of True West here in Bisbee. Presented by the newly formed Last Minute Productions, the play is produced, directed, and stars Russell Dunn as Lee, the other brother in this classic play about two brothers who have a series of harsh Adam and Cain-like go arounds over a movie script. The talent assembled for this play is amazing…

Check out this post for a fascinating and cool rundown of experiments on people in the US. Enjoy!

A woman off to the side noticed the shooter’s face. She saw that his eyes were absolutely huge.

“Hot bullets,” he said to no one in particular.

He stopped at a table and poured a Pepsi on the top of the gun, and on his hand. He stopped firing and watched a man behind the wheel of a car in the parking lot. The man’s hand slipped along the gearshift as he put it in reverse.

He was horrified, looking into the restaurant, but he was still a careful driver: He checked his mirrors before he backed up.

He was sure to call someone. They would come soon.

The shooter adjusted his grip on the gun. The woman watched his knuckles carefully. She saw them turn from white to red when he relaxed his hands. She saw them tense and go white again and held her breath.

It just went off, like, oops. The first shot hit solid and sent a guy cutting pizza for his son back into a wall.

“Wow,” the shooter said. “I’m sorry.”

He apologized in the same tone a mother uses when she tells her child the hamster died.

“What was that?” someone said. “What the hell?”

continued…

My first novel, Bad Day for the Home Team, is slated to be published Aug. 15. Here and on my tumblr site, http://alexomeara.tumblr.com/ I will post the first chapter of the book in installments. I will begin on Thursday, Aug. 12 and it will be fully posted Monday, Aug. 16.

I invite everyone to read, comment, raise your hands, stamp your feet, yell, scream and whatever as this unfolds. I hope you enjoy it.

This is a book that motivates action, causes me to rethink the basics of running, and is worth reading twice for the info.