If you’re a fan of Pia Sabel, thank you. You are the BEST! You must have been telling your friends about the new Trench Coat series because, after some lackluster holiday sales, Episode I took off in January. Episode II also saw a bump. I expect (and hope) that will trickle down to the other episodes. So, thank you! Keep telling your friends about it.
Those new found readers are just in time.
I’ve just released Episode V: The Reckoning Road. You asked for it, you got it: Jacob plays a bigger role. He’s a man who falls in love with every woman he sees, is a nice farm-boy-turned-soldier, and he’s proven a crowd favorite.
Here’s a teaser. Jacob and his associates attempt to free hostages from bad guys holed up in an old warehouse:
At the same time, Miguel yanked open the office door, tossed in a brick, and closed it. Explosives inside city limits would bring down a world of legal pain, so we scammed Hamoud with a plain old brick. All their eyes would be staring in horror at what they thought was a bomb for a couple seconds.
This is an exchange between Pia and Tania about rescuing children from a squad of Syrians:
“Can the two of us get the kids out of there?” Pia asked.
“We left our weapons behind, we have a smuggler for backup, and an Arab who doesn’t speak English. What d’you think?”
And then there is the bad guy’s assessment of the Secretary of State, David Hightower:
“If you raised his IQ fifty points you could teach him to fetch.”
If you’re one of the early reviewers of the existing episodes, and I’ve forgotten to send you the free Episode V you’re due, send me an email and I’ll send you a copy.
What’s with Episode VI, The Tiger Strikes? Glad you asked. I’m working hard on it now. It wraps up all the competing, backstabbing, un-American factions in a high-speed chase that ends with a face-off between powerful people. Here’s a teaser from when Jacob sneaks into a shed only to discover he’s been outmaneuvered:
He was in the loft, aiming an FN MK 20 at my nose.
For every thousand soldiers in the United States Army, there are nine hundred ninety-nine whose gallantry and bravery and dedication would bring tears of pride to any red-blooded American. The last one-in-a-thousand would make any American cringe. If you lined up a thousand of those cringe-soldiers, one of them would be so bad he’d turn the Dali Lama into a death penalty advocate. Looking down from the shed’s loft was that one-in-a-million, a nightmare of a man, Shane Diabulus. I would recognize his silhouette in any darkened building on any continent. He was a war exploiter, a racist, a mercenary, and a sexual predator with a deadly weapon in his hand.
I hope you like it. Not to give anything away, but I’m certain some will like how Trench Coats ends and others will hate it enough to complain. At least, I hope people feel that strongly about it.
I’ve also outlined and started the opening chapters to the third Pia Sabel book, Blue Plague. Somewhere in that forthcoming story, Jacob explains to a friend why he does so well with women:
You know why women like me? I’m expendable. I’m not handsome, but I’m not bad looking either. The average woman would rate me somewhere between 6 and 8, depending on how many drinks I can get in her. I’m not rich, not poor. I’m smarter, more romantic, and more charming than the average American male, even if not by much. I’m the kind of guy she doesn’t have to be ashamed of if we run into her friends. And I’m the kind she doesn’t feel bad about dumping if something better comes along. One woman told me I was her dream-vacation-date. Says it all right there. But then there’s the kicker—I’m the bad boy women find so appealing. I’ve killed people. Best of all, they were people who needed killing.
Thanks again, and remember, you could really help me out by recommending my work to your friends!
Peace, Seeley
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