ReadersFavorite

Posted March 26, 2013
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***** 5 stars

Reviewed by Paul Johnson for Readers' Favorite Staff Sergeant L

Reviewed by Paul Johnson for Readers' Favorite

Staff Sergeant Larry FitzGerald, code name Reaper 6, was a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier deployed to Vietnam in 1965. As a member of a Special Ops team he reported to only two men: Generals Westmoreland and Abrams, the commanders of all the U.S. Armed Forces. His first assignment, one that lasted many months, was a mission to assassinate four enemy generals in Laos to delay the planning OF the 1967 Tet invasion. This mission was never disclosed to the media or the public. Because of his actions, General Westmoreland said FitzGerald deserved the Medal of Honor, and a large number Purple Hearts. Unfortunately, this mission and most of his later ones were conducted out of South Vietnam, in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. All his missions during his three tours of duty were classified, covert, and denied. They have not been disclosed until now. "Reaper 6" is the only biography of this extraordinary soldier's life.

This is truly an amazing narrative. Although reading somewhat like a documentary at times, it is an incredible account of A long ago war, seen from a different perspective. From the beginning, when FitzGerald began his training, until the end of his third tour, the reader will get insight into things undisclosed so far. As a member of a Special Ops team, FitzGerald and his comrades were subjected to the harshest realities of war. It has been said that war can sometimes be classified as weeks or months of sheer boredom culminating in minutes of sheer terror. This wasn’t the case for FitzGerald and his team. From day one ‘in country’ they were stressed almost beyond belief. And even as amazing as this story is the fact that at the end of his third deadly tour, FitzGerald was only 23 year old.

REAPER 6 Now avalible!

A Top Secret Story of Unparalleled HeroismStaff Sergeant Larry FitzGerald, aka "Reaper 6," of the U.S. Army Special Forces, led a special Black Ops team deployed to Vietnam in 1965.

He reported to only two men: General Westmorland and General Abrams, who were in command of the U.S. Armed Forces. His first assignment—a suicidal mission to assassinate four enemy generals in Laos who were planning the 1967 Tet invasion—was never disclosed to the media or public.

General Westmorland stated that Sergeant FitzGerald deserved the Medal of Honor, and nine additional Purple Hearts, but unfortunately, most of his missions were conducted across the fence of South Vietnam, in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. In fact, all of his missions were classified, clandestine, and denied. They have not been told until now. Reaper 6 is the only biography of this extraordinary soldier's life, capturing the very sights, sounds, and smells of the Vietnam War. Today, Larry is the proverbial "last man standing" of 89 souls who went where lesser soldiers shouldn't dare.

Star Wars on the ocean~Anchored with reality!

     I was born in 1946, in San Pedro, California, and grew up in a commerical fishing family. At seventeen I went commerical fishing with my father, captian of a large purse seiner, durring summer vacation. Two years later, I worked on a ninty-foot fishing boat, which was caught in a hurricane force storm where I almost lost my life.
     These events later served as inspiration for my first non-fiction true life adventure, Red Sky Morning.
     My favorite genre's are Action Adventure, Thrillers, and Suspense, and decided to create my own seires featuring the ORCA (Oceans Reconnaissance Commission and Associates) organization, featuring Reef and Alexis, plus a handpicked group of security and computer specialists to provide coastal and port protection against global terrorism, drug trafficking, and eviormental issues.
     Star Wars on the ocean, starts with the first ORCA adventure, Creating Madness, followed by, Mediterranean Madness, and Mexican Madness. 
     What has been called the Madness trillogy, swept the Gold, Silver and Bronze, Readers Favorite Book Awards.
     I'm currently writing the forth ORCA adventure titled The Green Alliance. Creating Madness is now avalible for .99. By the time you finish the first three, the forth should be on the market.

An excerpt from my upcomming black ops book REAPER 6

     I just finished my next book Reaper 6, the true story of Staff Sergeant Larry FitzGerald, the leader of a thirty-man black ops team that was deployed to Vietnam in 1966. After three tours, and receiving eleven Purple Hearts, Larry returned to the States unable to adjust to our society, along with most of the veterans coming home from war.

     What I learned about our veterans was overwhelming, and I closed the story with a short piece titled, “Our Soldiers.”           

     They’re only kids, eighteen or nineteen, just out of high school, volunteering or drafted, to fight for our country. They joined because they were patriotic, following their peers, an opportunity to learn a trade, make money, pushed in by their parents, or forced in by the draft.

     But every soldier coming home from combat arrived crippled, some with visible life-altering injuries, which left them without limbs, crippled physically, without hope for easy integration back into society.

     What’s not visible, but devastating, is what all war veterans deal with upon returning home. They suffer with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), TBI (traumatic brain injury), drug and alcohol issues, high rate of suicide, family issues, financial issues, psychological and psychosocial issues, and future employment problems.

     Many veterans, although emotionally scarred for life, were later attacked by cancer caused from Agent Orange and other carcinogens they were exposed to in the jungles of Vietnam, and ended up suffering an excruciating painful death. 

     The negative sentiment and discrimination of Vietnam Vets was overwhelming. No one likes rejection, and to avoid it, a vet simply let his hair grow out, maybe grow a beard, and disappear into the crowd.

     The current war our nation is embedded in is a war against terrorism, with no remorse and little support. We cannot forget about the war veterans coming home with life-altering injuries, previous unseen diseases, radiation sickness from depleted uranium in weapons and armor plating. And, high rates of lung cancer from exposure to “burn pits” where hundreds of tons of contaminated materials are burned partially, included sewage and various carcinogens. This is all just emerging. The military says they probably had cancer before deployment. How can the military state something like this?

     These healthy, physically fit young men and women volunteered to join our Armed Forces, returning crippled with physical and psychological disorders, and we can never forget the soldiers that paid the ultimate price, dying for our country.

     There are over a million veterans collecting VA disability and close to a million that are unemployed. The Veterans Administration is overloaded with cases for Vietnam Veterans, and new cases are flooding in every day.    

     So, America must ask itself, what is being done to help these men and women get back onto

their feet and become beneficial members of society?

     Too many veterans who served our country decades ago still suffer from horrible medical problems stemming from their time in the military. Time and again, the federal government has failed to provide them with the quality care they have earned. Sometimes, it is the bureaucracy that stands in the way. Other times, it is red tape or cost-cutting measures that prevent vets from getting the care they deserve. But for the hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans, it is a shameful technicality in the law.

     Many Vietnam veterans who were initially entitled to 100% disability were surprised to see their benefits changed to 30%, with no prior notice or examination. These veterans suffering from PTSD, and physical injuries were literally driven into poverty. They would complain to the VA, who informed them that they were re-evaluated. Evaluated by WHOM and WHEN? This travesty occurred over eighteen years ago. By whose authorization? No one in our government would ever admit to this.

     Currently the media says the VA is better now in recognizing war-related ailments and disabilities, and President Obama recently ordered recognition of such maladies without the previous burden of proof from the veteran that the Iraq/Afghanistan war is responsible. They previously had to pinpoint a time and place where they were injured or contaminated or became ill.

     Obama, known for his distaste of the military and the war, has a reputation of making big promises, only for political advancements, as many other presidents and their administrations have been, in the past. Veterans are not impressed with boisterous platitudes for selfish political gain. Our veterans want action. They deserve action!

     Our older veterans need all the help they can get, and our Iraqi/Afghanistan men and women need assurances that they will not fall in disregard, as the vets before them.

     Never forget that these men and women were only innocent teenagers when they embarked on their journey to protect the country we hold so dear. We have to make sure that they can assimilate with society, and that our government protects and provides them with medical and financial benefits, now, and in the future.

They deserve it!!     

Making home made wine~a labor of love

     I was born in 1946, and grew up in a commercial fishing family in San Pedro, California. We lived within a close proximity to my grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and I mean within a few blocks of each other.

     The town was primarily made up of Italians and Croatians. The largest employers at that time were the shipyards, longshoring, fish canneries, and commercial fishing.

     When the canneries were processing and cooking tuna, you could smell the aroma throughout the community. When the fishermen brought in loads of Spanish mackerel, every barbeque in town was smoking, and when the grapes were ready to harvest from the farms in Riverside (about 40-50 miles inland), the old-timers would get ready to make wine. Then the families would get together to crush the grapes, and the presses squeezed out the juice, then the fermentation process began, and the aroma of fresh wine filled the air, along with music from my uncle’s accordion, while the family danced and sang.

     My grandfathers were born on Dugi Otok Island (Long Island), located in the Adriatic, off the Croatian coast. They had been making homemade wine for most of their lives. They both began helping their fathers as children, and as adults continued the tradition of making great homemade wine. I remember going to their homes and helping, even stomping the grapes in a huge open barrel. It was through these experiences that I learned the basics of making my own homemade wine.

     As I grew older, I developed a taste for quality red wine, and dreamed that someday I’d be able to follow the tradition of making wine like my family had in the past. I was 52, happily married, and living in Palos Verdes Estates. Our daughter just had our first grandson, and we were looking to buy another house.

     We found the perfect home that sat on the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and to my surprise it had a huge wine cellar. Now, I could fulfill that dream.  

     I now have been making homemade wine for 14 years, and have been quite successful.

     Nothing feels as satisfying and authentic as making your first batch of wine. There are many kinds of grapes to choose from, depending on where you live. The famous European wine-grape family includes such renowned varieties as Chardonnay, Merlot, Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon, which are available in the United States. These grapes thrive in California and the Pacific Northwest, and also grow well in microclimates scattered from New York to the Great Lakes.

     Homemade wine is a rewarding and enjoyable hobby and the quality of homemade wines today are better than ever! With a small investment in equipment you can continually make good quality wine for a fraction of the cost of store-bought wine.

     One of the greatest pleasures of making wine is being able to taste and enjoy what you have created. Share your wonderful achievement by giving a bottle to family or friends as a gift or proudly serve homemade wine to your dinner guests. It’s very rewarding to see the surprised look on people’s faces when they learn that the marvelous wine they have been enjoying was your wine.
     Although homemade wine can be made from a variety of fruits and other sources, good quality red wines are easier for the beginner to make. But whatever kind of grapes you use, the general techniques, equipment, and ingredients are basically the same.

      Not only is making red wine a fun hobby, drinking red wine can benefit your health. Studies have shown that consuming red wine in moderation (one to two glasses a day) has several health benefits. One of the most widely documented benefits of red wine is heart health. Researchers found that red wine inhibited the build-up of fatty material along the artery walls which helped to explain why people in France have a relatively low incidence of heart disease despite a diet rich in saturated fats. Other studies also indicated that red wine can raise HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol) and prevent LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) from forming. Red wine is a particularly rich source of antioxidants which studies suggest may help protect against certain cancers. Does that mean an extra glass or two would be better? I hope so.  
     Even though my first exposure to making wine started with crushing grapes at the homes of my grandfathers, I’m lucky to have a little winery nearby called Marbella Winery. Now 85 years old, Tony Marbella still grows grapes in Riverside County, and does the crushing, pressing and disposing of the wastes, and starts the fermentation process. I order what I want, usually a blend of a third of Cabernet, Merlot, and Sara or Zinfandel. Then he fills a stainless steel tank, mounted on his truck, and delivers 120 gallons of juice to my home. Then using an electric pump and a long hose, he fills my barrels in the cellar.

     The process of fermentation in wine turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation, yeast interacts with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol. This process takes approximately forty-five days.

   Now you have to rack the wine. Simply, racking means to siphon or pump the wine from one barrel to container, so as to leave any sediment behind. Then, you have to clean out the barrel and pump the clean wine back in.  

Racking is an essential part to making any sound wine. It is a process that, on average, should be performed 2 to 4 times throughout the winemaking process. Doing so in a timely manner

will aid in the clarification of the wine and help to inhibit the production of unwanted off-flavors. 

     Now the fun starts, because it’s time to bottle your wine. I personally leave the wine in the barrels until the next harvest is ready to be picked and crushed. Bottling is usually shared with my friends, having duties, like filling the bottle, corking the bottle, and storing them in my wine rack that holds seven hundred bottles of wine.

     A 120 gallons will produce 450 bottles of wine, and take us most of the day. But we mix the work with pleasure, sampling the wine and eating hors d’oeuvres, and finishing the job with a barbeque, and a few more bottles of wine.

     On occasion I’ve been asked. What do you do with 450 bottles of wine? “Hell, we drink it. A bottle a day, and give some away, we’ll run out by the next bottling.”

     Making wine is a labor of love, with a great reward. Give it a try. You’ll be glad you did!

Book Trailers

     Movie and book trailers have become the marketing phenomena. This new world of trailers, in which the internet has turned ads of one to three minutes into events that people analyze and judge, influencing whether they should buy the book or go to see the movie.

     There’s minimal statistics on the growth of book trailers, but movie trailers are now watched more online than in theaters, streaming more than 5 billion trailers worldwide in 2011, and that number is growing.

     The growth in movie trailers has influenced the way to promote books, along with the upsurge of eBooks, and buying books online. Movie trailers influence the fan that still has to go to the theater, but when a book trailer creates a sell, the buyer simply goes to a link and buys the book, or downloads it to their eReader and starts reading. Talk about instant gratification.

     Book trailers are the newest rage in the publishing industry. The main difference is that a movie trailer already has visual images to work with utilizing clips from the film. With a book trailer, the author, publisher, or a professional, has to convert the written words into visual images.

     Some authors make their own trailers running from one to three minutes. They can be anything from the author reading a passage from the book, to an elaborate mini-movie. If you want to produce your own trailer, go to YouTube and search for “book trailers.” Spend some time watching as many as possible, regardless of the genre. Take lots of notes. See what piques your interest, and what you would want to emulate.

     Write out some ideas for your trailer. Create some of the text and make lists of pictures you’d like that relate to your story. Keep in mind that you want to convey a sense of what the book is about, without giving away the ending or describing the characters. Your goal is to end up with a video that will stimulate a reader’s imagination.

     Think about the movie trailers that made you want to go see the movie. Did the intensity in the scenes and music escalate as the trailer progressed?

     At this point, you have to make a decision to produce your own book trailer, or possibly search for a professional. If you pay someone to do it, the cost could range from $250 to $20,000 depending on what you want to accomplish, and of course what is within your budget. A lower budget gives you a video compiled of still images and written text. Costs increase with a mixture of stills and canned video, along with narration, and the complexity of the trailer.

     Emulating the movie industry, professionally produced live book trailers, will be the new rage costing $7,000 to $20,000.
     What do you get in a live book trailer? The only sample I have comes from my new novel co-authored by Louis Pagano. Go to http://angelsgateheist.blogspot.com/ to view the book trailer from Angels Gate based on a true story of the greatest heist never told!
     Now that you have your book trailer, you need to upload it. Start with YouTube. That’s where the vast majority of viewers will happen upon your video. For maximum visibility on the internet, consider uploading to other video-sharing sites such as Yahoo, Google, and MySpace. 

     Have links posted on your blog, websites, and Facebook. Then announce it to your family and friends, your fellow writers, and your readers. Invite them to link to or even post your video on their blogs and websites. Encourage them to share the link on e-mail loops, bulletin boards, and via private e-mails.

     Whether you create your own book trailer, or have a professional produce one, you will be one step further in successfully marketing your book on the internet.   

Self publish, or not?

     Many first time authors attempt to get published by sending off hundreds of query letters to literary agents in hope that one will be interested in representing him/her, and promote their manuscript to big publishing houses for review, and hopefully a contract to publish their book. Meanwhile, they sit around waiting months for the dreaded rejection notices.

     I was one of those authors completing my first book in 2007. I learned that, agents will reject almost every query, because they’re not taking on any new authors. Or if you’re lucky you might be asked for a chapter or the first fifty pages be sent for her/him; only delaying their final rejection.

   Getting published can really become a disheartening task to first time authors. There’s no doubt that a lot of good manuscripts are collecting dust on a shelf, or stored in the memory of a potentially good authors computer.   

   Some new authors may choose to self-publish their work, presenting a whole new set of problems, but they can be overcome. Even though self-publishing is an alternative, you'll still need to gather the information needed to do it yourself, and approximately $10,000 to $25,000 investment to get started. This will cover printing of 2-4000 copies, based on the size of your book.

   This option is not available to struggling authors that lack the funds, and if you’re not a good sales person, or contract with a marketing company to promote your book, you’ll have cases of your books collecting dust instead of your manuscript, and be out the money invested.

   Say good-bye to the rejection of traditional publishers and the two-year publishing cycle. Say good-bye to the hassles of independent self-publishing, like guessing print-runs, managing inventory, and the responsibility of order fulfillment. In the last few years the brick and mortar book stores sales have dropped, while the growth of internet and eBook sales have grown exponentially.

   The growth of internet book sales and eBook market, if anything, has picked up pace, which means that the growth of potential buyers for self-published books is growing faster than ever. Of course, so is the number of available eBooks, but it is still time to catch the wave and get a book out there.

   The rise of eBooks slowly began in 2006 reaching global annual revenues of $3 billion, with projected annual revenues from eBooks delivered to portable devices growing to $9 billion by 2016. This robust growth is due to the increasing penetration of eReaders and tablet devices in households throughout the world

   For self-published writers, this is good news. The success of a well-known self-published author like John Locke, who sold over 1.1 million books in five months, was due in part to the fact that they caught the eBook wave at the beginning of its rise. He also chose Telemachus Press to produce and print his books sold over the internet.

   I chose Outskirts Press to produce my books. Outskirts Press offers you the best of both worlds by combining the advantages of independent self-publishing with the advantages of traditional book publishing.  Before, during, and after publication you will receive the assistance of a dedicated group of publishing professionals, all the while maintaining 100% of your publishing rights and 100% of your profits. Their “Diamond” package costs $1000, to design a front and back cover, and produce a quality book, ISBN number, list your book on Amazon, and Barns & Nobel, and provide marketing instructions to sell your book over the internet.

   The number 1 & 2 selling items on the Net in the United States are software and books. So if you’re going to write books and sell them on the Internet, you'll have a very large and responsive market. The only difference will be that your books will be available through internet book stores and in a digital format, allowing you to publish your book through Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, and other eBook publishers.

   Finally you'll have full control over your book and when it gets published. You can set the selling price, receiving 70-80% royalties. But, before you go off and start the process, make sure your book has been professionally edited. No one wants to read a book with a bunch of errors, even if they only paid .99 for it.

   Now that you saved all that money from not self-publishing a book, and you’re ready to publish, and sell on the internet, you might consider hiring an internet marketing company to promote your book, or learn how to do your own promotion. Now the only question is will you take advantage of this exciting and rapidly growing market?