Amazon lowered the price on MURDER IN WAIKIKI

[LeeGoldberg]

Fred,

Yes, I wrote an upcoming episode of THE GLADES...and I am in the midst of writing another one. I believe the first one is episode 3 or 4, but I could be mistaken. The one I am writing now will probably air as episode 10.

Lee

[Fred Zackel]

Lee, as you know more when the episode will appear, will you let us know?

Thanks,

Fred

[LeeGoldberg]

It's currently scheduled for Sunday, August 8, and 10 pm on A&E.

Lee

[dreams]

Originally Posted by Fred Zackel

Yea!! I'm at smashwords.

Please look for me there. And if things look dicey, or goofy, or ...

Thank you everyone.

Yay! I'm glad to see your books on smashwords!

[Fred Zackel]

Hi dreams,

Get set for the new release!

Fred

P.S. I will also take your advice ... as quickly as I am able. Again, thank you.

[Fred Zackel]

Corky Collins and his girlfriend wanted his wife murdered.

"Killing somebody you love is a serious thing. It's got to mean something to you." Even more so, "Whacking people is easy. People do it all the time. Amateurs kill on the spur of the moment, and then they get popped by the cops just like that. Professionals take their time and don't get caught."

But the best laid plans always go wrong, don't they?

From the author of COCAINE AND BLUE EYES, MURDER IN WAIKIKI, and CINDERELLA AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Click here to link with Kindle




Enjoy good writing poolside at the cocktail hour tonight.

Best wishes,

Fred Zackel

P.S. Also available through smashwords.

[Fred Zackel]

Ooopsss!!!

[Fred Zackel]

Only $2.99 Hawaiian to be where Walter Bing's body got tossed!

Walter Bing was almost a whole day dead. He faced the sun rising from the eastern Pacific, caught like a kite in mid-flight. He was crumpled in a flame tree, held aloft by broad branches, his left arm dangling and swinging in the constant gusts of wind channeled along the pali walls.

The flame tree basked while Bing naturally fermented in the tropical heat and humidity. The flame tree was full grown and flamboyantly in bloom. His work pants were the color of the branches, and his aloha shirt was the same scarlet and white as the blossoms that surrounded him.

His head was mashed against an errant off-shoot, a thumb-sized sucker that had impaled his cheek. Had he been alive when he crash-landed here, his neck would have twisted and snapped. But he was already dead meat cooling.

When he hit the flame tree, it had actually groaned from the impact. Not that he weighed that much--a middle-aged bantam-weight of a man--but he had hit at terminal velocity. The flame tree did lose some branches, but it was hardy and took the stress well. After all, not many trees could live halfway up the side of a thousand foot cliff on the lee side of the volcanic mountain range.

A honeybee walked his face, prowled his nostril, invaded his mouth, and investigated the sticky sweetness of his blood, the corruption of his body. Soon it was blown away by the gusty winds. New bees came and went.

Now and then the wind stiffened, the tree shook and swayed, Bing rocked in his cradle, old leaves and old blossoms blew off. But Bing's purchase was never threatened; he was wedged tightly. Small change slipped from Bing's pockets, and tumbled to the footpath three dozen feet below.

Bing, if alive, would have looked out on Kaneohe Bay in leeward Oahu. He'd have seen the bedroom community of Kailua. It was a lovely town of manicured lawns, suburban bungalows, choice quarter-acre lots, station wagons, and a very good high school football team. Bing knew the streets of Kailua well, better than most residents, yet he never lived there. He would've if he could've, but he never got the chance. But that's the trouble with murder; we die before our time.

Now he awaited his funeral and burial at the Chinese cemetery in Manoa.

A mynah bird landed near Bing, warbled to the world that this was the frontier of his territory, then caught the scent of dead man, and flew off in a hurry to another border post.

From the novel MURDER IN WAIKIKI, available at the Kindle Store. Less expensive writings are also available.

Click
here

Mahalo! (That means Thank you!)

Best wishes,

Fred Zackel

author of ...
COCAINE & BLUE EYES
CINDERELLA AFTER MIDNIGHT
CREEPIER THAN A WHOREHOUSE KISS
A DEATH IN KEY LARGO
TOUGH TOWN COLD CITY
&
MURDER IN WAIKIKI
All (and more) are available on Kindle and smashwords

[Fred Zackel]

Let me offer folks a snippet from the book's opening chapter.

Honolulu Homicide Detective Steven Ke'aloha Shaw pitied the dead man. "Poor bastard never even made it into his hotel. He gets off the plane, gets into a courtesy van going to his hotel, and he doesn't even get to check-in."

The Medical Examiner giggled. "He was dying to be in paradise."

Steve Shaw examined the body slumped against the window in the last seat. The victim was a young white man about Steve's age, tall and thin. A lean face and a square jaw and a high forehead. Beige hair that was receding quickly. Mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes, and his head was resting against the window. He had some faint acne scars. He wore a red flowered aloha shirt with a large bloodstain among the flowers. Flower leis decorated his chest. He could have been daydreaming or asleep or lost in his own thoughts.

The M.E. indicated an ice pick tucked between the two fresh flower leis the victim wore. "You'll notice it has the words Aloha from Hawaii embossed on the handle. A sharp jab under the ribcage and then upwards. It was over in an instant."

"The killer was right-handed?"

"He could be ambidextrous. That's good with either hand."

[Edited for length- MODERATOR]

Steve looked towards Waikiki Beach, the world's most famous beach, beyond the cocopalms and the benches of the Ainahau Hotel. He could see for miles across the Pacific, could almost see the future. Then the [of the sun reflecting on the flat ocean came flashing back too brightly for him to face, and he turned back to the Scene of the Crime.

Enjoy good writing tonight in the privacy of your own catamaran.

Aloha and mahalo to all my friends and readers!

Click
here

Fred Zackel

author of ...
COCAINE & BLUE EYES
CINDERELLA AFTER MIDNIGHT
CREEPIER THAN A WHOREHOUSE KISS
A DEATH IN KEY LARGO
TOUGH TOWN COLD CITY
&
MURDER IN WAIKIKI
All (and more) are available on Kindle and smashwords

[Fred Zackel]

Romancing the wrong woman on a moon-lit Hawaiian night?

Ah! Danger!!

(I firmly believe that the best way to sell a book is by letting people read some of the story.)

(A segment wherein Honolulu Homicide Detective Steven Ke'aloha Shaw picks up the wrong woman at the disco Ah Sin at the Queen Liliuokalani Hotel on Kalakaua Avenue.)

They walked toward Diamond Head, he on the ocean side and she between him and Kalakaua. The Hawaiian night was warm and alive. An ivory moon had risen to face the sea. The sand had cooled off, the surf still surged, the trade winds rustled the palms, and the night smelled of jasmine and ocean.

On her side Waikiki was a hundred hotels and thirty-five thousand hotel rooms, and at night it became a giant emerald city of bright lights, a great wall of incandescence to complement the black ocean.

"Tell me again your middle name."

"Have you forgotten it already?"

"Ke'aloha," Annie said, this time mispronouncing it. "I've never known a Ke'aloha before. Hawaiian is a beautiful language."

"My grandmother always said Hawaiian sounds like rainwater running over rocks down a mountain stream. Ke'aloha," he told her.

"Ke'aloha," she said correctly. "Ainahau," she tried.

"Ainahau. In Hawaiian, Ainahau means the place of the hau trees, those trees with the golden blossoms, but the real pride of Ainahau are its banyans, those Kaiulani banyans near the Aina Stream. They are named after the Princess Kaiulani."

"And who was the Princess Kaiulani?"

"She was the most beautiful woman of all the Hawaiian royalty. She was the Princess of the Peacocks, the Rose of the Ainahau. Born to be the Queen of the Hawaiian Islands. Princess Kaiulani was a true Hawaiian princess, although she was also half-Scottish. Her mother was Princess Miriam Likelike, a descendant of King Kamehameha the Great, the Father of his Country, and the youngest sister of King David Kalakaua, the sixth king of Hawaii. Her father was Archibald S. Cleghorn, the world-famous botanist, and his prized creation was the Ainahau, a garden built for his daughter on part of their family estate in Waikiki."

"The Ainahau? The hotel?"

"All this was fifty years before the hotel. A century ago the Ainahau was the finest botanical garden in the world, at a time when most of the Waikiki peninsula was a swamp, just taro patches and duck ponds. That one there, for instance, and all the other really tall ones."

"Ah Sin's duck ponds?"

"The beach itself was empty, except for some wooden shacks and some cocopalms. Some of those cocopalms are still alive today, still living on the beachfront lawn at the Ainahau Hotel."

Annie made a grand gesture that went beyond the ivory moon above the beach. "The princess grew up here."

"Yes. A fairytale childhood in the shadow of Diamond Head. She had servants and governesses. By the time she was seven, she was an accomplished horsewoman. She had her own pony and even more exotic pets, like white peacocks."

"Is she the Ghost of Ainahau?"

"Sometimes people in love can see the Princess walking on a moonlit night through her garden, when the air is heavy with the smell of night-blooming jasmine."

"Oh god!" she breathed.

"She loved the jasmine so much, the Hawaiian people named its blossom pikake in her honor." He touched the necklace of white flowers around Annie's neck. "You're wearing pikake. Very delicate. Very fragile, and it doesn't last long. It turns blue at the lips when it dies."

Steve had taken Annie along the beach until now they were opposite the beachlawn of the Ainahau Hotel. He changed their course and brought them close to a huge banyan tree that covered much of the manicured lawn.

"Robert Louis Stevenson lived about here. The Cleghorns entertained many famous people, but their favorite guest was Stevenson. He was drinking buddies with King Kalakaua and lived in a grass shack at Ainahau while he struggled to finish 'The Master of Ballantrae.'"

Steve told her the story as he had heard it as a child. How Princess Kaiulani was Robert Louis Stevenson's special friend. How the sickly world-famous author and the lovely teenage princess sat here beneath the banyan trees, sipping tea and listening to the peacocks, and the Scotsman would tell the young Kaiulani stories about faraway places and long-ago times.

"He adored the beautiful princess and wrote poetry about her. He called her 'the island maid, the island rose, light of heart and bright of face, the daughter of a double race.'"

They stood beneath the banyan tree in the center of the Ainahau Hotel's beachfront lawn, and they were hidden from the guests inside the hotel by its great aerial roots.

Annie stroked the bark. "And this is the same tree?"

"You can smell the jasmine, can't you?"

She looked into him, her eyes boring deep into his soul, and his balls spun around in his scrotum, and his scrotum tightened like drying leather, and his throat went dry.

"What happened to her?"

"A tragic death at the age of twenty-four." Steve hesitated melodramatically before finishing. "She died unloved. She never had a man."

Annie raised an eyebrow. "Never?"

"She died without ever making love."

Steve stared at her without blinking, as unflinching as a hunter, daring her, and she stared at him as if she could look through him, and her eyes urged him towards her.

Her voice was veiled and sad. "How terribly, terribly tragic."

"So her ghost haunts young lovers."

She touched his arms with velvety fingers. "Are you related to the Princess?"

With an effort, Steve kept talking. "My great-great grandmother was her kuma hula, her hula teacher. She taught the Princess the hula. Secretly, of course. The missionaries frowned on the hula. It was too sensual, too romantic."

"How romantic was it? How sensual?"

“Lick your lips.”

She licked her lips, never taking her eyes off his.

Then Steve kissed her, and Annie let him. Her arms came around his neck. He felt the curve of her breast under his hand. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He wanted this woman as much as she seemed to want him.

(His life will never be the same.)

From the novel MURDER IN WAIKIKI, available at the Kindle Store. Less expensive writings are also available.

Enjoy good writing tonight in the privacy of your home.

Best wishes,

Fred Zackel

author of ...
COCAINE & BLUE EYES
CINDERELLA AFTER MIDNIGHT
CREEPIER THAN A WHOREHOUSE KISS
A DEATH IN KEY LARGO
TOUGH TOWN COLD CITY
&
MURDER IN WAIKIKI
All (and more) are available on Kindle and smashwords

Click
here to visit
Hawaii!

[Fred Zackel]

Yesterday Amazon lowered the price on my book from $2.99 to $2.39 and hasn't told me why yet.

So, what the h----, folks, save yourself 60 cents.

Best wishes,

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Fred Zackel

Yesterday Amazon lowered the price on my book from $2.99 to $2.39 and hasn't told me why yet.

So, what the h----, folks, save yourself 60 cents.

Best wishes,

And THAT's the way it works.

When a promotion changes, just "Report" your post. I, or another Moderator, will change the Thread's title to reflect the changed status.

Then, post at the tail end of the Thread to LEGITIMATELY bump your thread, giving us the new information.

You will most likely need to go back to your Post #1 and edit that changed status.



Don
(Moderator)

[Fred Zackel]

My apologies, Dr.

Being Kobo'd -- for that's what led to the lowered price -- surprised me.

I was unaware that Kobo was selling my books. (In fact, they AREN'T selling at Kobo, but--) Then to find out they lowered the price ... which led to Amazon matching them ...

Arrgghh!

Best wishes, though, to you.

Fred

[Fred Zackel]

Geez, I hadn't realized how long it's been since I was here. I have been grading 'way too many papers! (Geez, I'd like to get my hands on that stoopid instructor who assigned so much work! He must have been nuts!)

But I would like to send folks to a site where my "Four Innuendos" is now available for perusal. "Four Innuendos" are flash fiction.

The "Four" are in 971 MENU, its October issue, 2010.

http://www.971menu.com/2010/10/zacke...innuendos.html

Please enjoy.

Fred Zackel

author of ...
COCAINE & BLUE EYES
&
MURDER IN WAIKIKI
both of which (and more) are available on Kindle and smashwords. (Soon the Nook.)




Best wishes,

[Fred Zackel]

Aloha! Am I allowed to mention that I received a wonderful unsolicited review and that afterwards I had my best month of sales?

Aloha and mahalo!