Life Better Lived Dead

Life Better Lived Dead, that's the tagline of my second novel twisting in the grinder of the editing and revision process. I can’t recall how those words first emerged from the loamy earth, but I immediately liked the taste, smell and sound. That short phrase encapsulated the message of, ‘FLATLINE’.

It’s a crime novel, a fun little read, 90,000 words plus of bullets, blood, splattered brains, and big – make that – HUGE knives slipped from hidden sheaths between the shoulder blades of Goliath-sized cartel soldiers.

Can a book like that have a message to edify one's soul?

All books and stories have a lesson, moral or message – for someone. I'm a believer. Every book I've read had something to say.

Stories, like primeval notes stuffed in bottles, are penned, corked and set adrift upon stormy seas just waiting to land on some foreign shore in the hands of its next reader. This happens by chance and providence alone. Or, how else would they find us? Or, we find them?

Every year for Christmas, Nichole, one of my five daughters, has given me a book. Not a one of those has failed to spark some big shift in my psyche. They arrived exactly on time. She had no idea what was swimming in my soul at the time, and we never discuss books since she is not a big reader. Even our tastes and styles run divergently to one another.

Asked how she picked them, she responded, “Oh, it just looked like something you would like.”

By the same process, 'Life Better Lived Dead' came to life. If I were to think on it much longer, I might wonder if it would stir some controversy, but then again, it may drive some people away. Perhaps it was not in the stars for them to read this book.

How do those words strike you? What do you think of me as an author for penning “Life Better Lived Dead?" Does it bring up thoughts of suicide or vampires, or a biblical verse you once read or heard?

Suicide:

Do I think suicide would be a better option than a living breathing above ground existence?

Not on most days, no. This story and that line are not a lead into a discussion on assisted suicide. I have strong thoughts on that, but would rather leave them where they're at for right now.

Vampires and the Undead:

Am I a vampire or am I promoting the life of the undead as some better option than what most of us have here? Or, on the other side of the same coin, do I have something against the undead or a vampire’s lifestyle?

I’ve enjoyed reading vampire tales, but it doesn’t stir a belief in them. The original Dracula tale might come close, but is definitely more Christian than my story. Dracula was chock full of Christian truths in a metaphorical battle of good against evil.

Looking for the correct words to describe my experience with Dracula, I searched the internet and found Mike Duran’s tremendous blog and comments. His well-worded explanation for what I found during my read of the original Dracula was better than I could have come up with.

“For one, Christianity is portrayed in a positive light throughout Dracula. The protagonists pray, quote Scripture, seek God’s guidance, and ultimately prevail. If Count Dracula is meant to symbolize the devil, then it is clearly Stoker’s intent to show that the evil one is resisted through the power of God. And unlike much contemporary vampire fiction, Christianity is not minimized or mocked. Rather, our heroes display an unabashed reliance upon the God of Scripture and His Son, Jesus Christ.”

“Life Better Lived Dead,” should be better explained…

In my novel ‘Flatline,’ Troy Bittles is retired from decades as an enforcer for the world's most notorious motorcycle gang. He sees his best years behind him. Life was once a constant flow of blood, bullets, and fists which never stopped flying. But those wild times have slowed to a nonexistent trickle. He and Sam, his Bulldog, go from one day to the next in a snails-paced progression towards the end…

All in one day, Troy moves from bemoaning his flatlined existence to tumbling headlong into a mad dash of crime and murder across two states and three countries. Troy is strong-armed into using his former skills in the killing arts to perform for a mystery organization. These deeds run counter to his newly formed set of values, but his only choice is kill or be killed. The only reason Troy finds to go through with it is one faint sliver of hope that he can redeem himself from an old dark regret that looms over his life.

He pours his life into that purpose rather than keep his life to himself. And, in that sense, his life is better lived dead.

“If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.” (Matthew 10:39 NLT)

When Jesus said this, there were no churches, so he meant more than church attendance and missions service. What he meant was, if you pour your life into his cause, you will find your life.

Jesus’ cause was people, not necessarily their comfort, but their life.

Our lives scream for a purpose, a cause to throw ourselves into, a cause outside of our own small world. When we chase that cause, it brings us life. Hence, our life is better lived dead.

You could read Flatline, ignore its message, and still enjoy it, but, why the hell would you waste your time like that?

I’m on my second pass of revisions. My next pass is to print it and read it aloud to the cat before turning it over to an editor.

Hopefully, it will be done by the end of 2015.

Review of 'Wish You Well' by David Baldacci

For hardcore Baldacci fans, this novel is a departure from his taut legal, crime and spy thrillers full of bullets, large burly heroes, and villains. But even they will not be disappointed by this tale of wonder and hope launched from a childhood tragedy.

The year is 1940.
Twelve-year-old Lou and her seven-year-old brother Oz are plucked from New York city after a car accident kills their father and leaves their mother Amanda in a catatonic trance. Set down in the hills of Virginia on a farm with neither phones, plumbing or electricity, the stories best workings are found in the children as they overcome the shock of a new deprived existence. They have no choice but to fall into the sunup to sundown rigor of chores to keep the farm in working order.
The character of Lou’s namesake great-grandmother Louisa will stay with you throughout your life. You’ll both wish you’d had a grandmother like her and at times be glad you didn’t.
The children’s first best friend Diamond Skinner, a barefoot preteen Daniel Boone scraping out his own existence and spinning towering tales along the way, is as stunning a character as any of Baldacci’s spies and gunners.
Cotton Longfellow is a lawyer and friend of the family, but not the coal company trying to steal the farm. Perhaps he’s never made it as a lawyer due to his lofty principles.
Villains abound in grimy men of the hills and sharp-suited coal company men.
Any reader of fiction would regret missing this story.

Wikipedia entry

Amazon
Goodreads

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If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious you can comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook M. Matheson

'Flatline' The heroes of this story are NOT the good guys.

My next novel, (which I initially expected to publish in 2015) started as a speculative fiction piece intended to be a short story. But, the characters and events got loose, and I was never able to corral them into the seven or ten thousand words I originally intended. They wanted a crime novel, and I became their galley slave.

Despite its cry for guns, guts, blood and violence, it is a clean and fairly flinch-free read. Flinching as you duck the bullets and brains.

The protagonist, Troy Bittles, is a retired enforcer for an infamous worldwide motorcycle club (gang). In retirement, he has turned his former exploits into fodder for a semi-successful writing career. He lives alone with an aging English Bulldog, Sam.

Life seems good, but the monotony is not all he thought it would be. Stacked against his former action-filled life, as an enforcer amongst outlaws, his current life is a definite flatline. For a while, he finds peace with the life he yearned for, yet one haunting deed he never can shake, the accidental murder of a child, continues to haunt his mind and heart. The hit was never supposed to go down that way. The boy was not expected to be in the house. On law enforcement logs, the child is still listed as missing, likely kidnapped.

While out for a routine walk with his dog, Troy is rat-packed by a group of street thugs. Initially, it seems unplanned although provoked by Troy. A much older outlaw shows up to help. Silas Parker, who in the spectrum of organized gangs, is the polar opposite of Troy's world. The only thing the two have in common is violence and murder.

Silas' help comes with a bite, though, as both men are propelled headlong into a series of calamitous events filled with hitmen, murder, drug cartels and runs from the police. Within these developments, Troy sees a dim chance at redemption for the one deed he felt had doomed him to a life of torment.

The story winds its way through California, Arizona, Mexico, Central America, and Brazil. In Recife, Brazil they are killing killers, the death squads preying on children whose only real crime is poverty. The story took a turn I could never have imagined, and redemption for the protagonists remains in sight but just out of reach.

The ending flabbergasted me and made me flinch.

Flatline is a crime novel. A wanton wild tale with a cast of strong, colorful characters that ride with impunity through violent circumstances mostly of their making.

The heroes in this novel are not the good guys.

Look for Flatline's release by mid-2016.

Advanced Searching - Who would believe you could do that?

Greetings,
I hope your writing, promoting and building of your social media platform is going well.
Keep the creative flow in your writing. Don't let the flame flicker and die. It's so hard to get going once it is snuffed out through the cacophony of life or inattention. Without your creative gift released into the world, we are all less. Without your craft, there is nothing for you to promote and no reason to build a platform from which to disseminate your work.

If all you want is activity on social media for social media's sake, you can do that. But, as an author or marketer, there is a greater purpose to it all. If you spend countless hours pushing tweets and facebook posts and responding to same, your flame may flicker and die as you lose any room for any real creative flow of your gift.

But, if you are interested in becoming proficient, effective and productive in your efforts. If you desire to build not just a large number of followers, but ones that are interested in the things you are interested in; Followers that will engage in conversation, share their lives and work and in turn you share theirs, synergy will happen and an organic growth of engaged followers and friends.

To accomplish this though, you will need help. By help, I don't mean turning your account over to a BOT that will retweet your followers posts while you sleep, leaving you with nearly no original content. Now, you will have lots of time, but no engagement, only a big fat worthless account. And, the help that I absolutely refuse is buying followers. The proliferation of offers to sell thousands of followers for a few dollars tells me people are buying... It would be like paying people to hang out with you, and then bragging about how many friends you have. Would they care? Would they share? What is that relationship really worth.

Okay, back to the help. We need sincere, informed help to accomplish real growth and engaged relationships. My help is Hootsuite, a Social Media Management System. To make it very clear, I am not a Hootsuite employee. I am an unpaid volunteer Brand ambassador. I feel so strongly about Hootsuite being the most comprehensive and best performing system that I find it a pleasure to promote the brand.

A system could be the greatest in the world, but useless if you are not trained in its features. In comes Hootsuite University. Thanks to Hootsuite they offer a comprehensive social media education that not only trains you in the Hootsuite Dashboard, but best practices and social media strategies.
Through Hootsuite University, I became a Certified Professional. Give it a try, in the first thirty days free trial you can become an expert and up the level of your game. After the trial period, the cost is $21.00 per month. Invaluable.

Besides teaching you all the features of the Hootsuite Dashboard, which is powerful and extensive to say the least. Hootsuite University offers courseware and video teachings to up your game and your career.

The one video and course segment I most valued was 'Advanced Listening.' I learned how to create streams that filter out what people are talking about, when and where they are talking about it. If I want to know all the people talking about coffee within, say, five miles of my home, I can have a search stream for that. Of course, that is only an example. I can then engage these people in conversations about my product, book or campaign.

The single most valuable feature of the Hootsuite platform is bulk scheduling. I can send up to 350 posts at one time to each account I have.

Also, powerful apps within Hootsuite bring me top notch content I can share through my accounts.

It is difficult to hold back and not keep going, but both our dinners are growing cold.
Please check my other posts that cover some of these things in more depth.

Have you seen Owly? Hoot! Hoot!

Hootsuite Certified Professional

The Three Stages of Building Social Community

These and many others are things I learned from Hootsuite University

Browse my other posts and you'll find still others with great tips on using social media.

Peace,
Mike



If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious you can comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook M. Matheson

The 3 Stages of Building a Social Media Community

Hootsuite continues to be not only an invaluable tool for managing social media, they provide education on so many different levels. From the basic how to use the program to more in-depth articles on engaging customers, building a brand and how build a terrific following.

I just finished reading and watching a presentation, 'The 3 Stages of Building a Social Media Community' by Evan LePage a Hootsuite Author.

Stage 1: Building a Foundation for Social Media Community A foundation is critical to any enterprise whether you are building a life, a house or an online presence. This could be easy to miss for someone building a social media presence. The temptation could be to just put posts and pictures and leave it to marinate.

But, Evan pointed out that, 'The foundation of social media community is built on two-way communication."

One-way communication is no communication at all. 
All interactions such as follows and retweets on Twitter or comments in Facebook need to be acted on swift and positively. That is a key to building any relationship and is the backbone of a strong community.


Stage 2: A Growing Social Media Community is what everyone wants, but less of those are willing to do the work, often signing the elbow grease away to strange computers for $29.95 a month. That may gain you a truckload of uninvolved followers, but what we want is engagement.

The reality is, not all followers are created equal. The reason you shouldn’t simply go buy 100 followers is because they likely won’t be engaged or get involved in your community, and they might not even be real. Earning 10 engaged followers yourself is a far more valuable use of your time.

You build an online community the same way you build a flesh and blood community, one heart, one handshake and one good deed at a time. Not only acknowledge what people do for you, but do them similar good deeds.

But it's not enough just to grow a community, you must maintain them and keep them engaged.



Stage 3: Leveraging Your Social Media Community
Ultimately we're all in business to make a profit, and we must leverage (not a bad word) the community to achieve our goals, but Evan reminds us,

...never ignore the principles on which you built this community. You don’t want to throw everything you’ve built out the window for a quick sale.

Collect feedback: You want people's honest opinions This can only help us grow. Whether it's my wife's honest opinion about my haircut and shirt choice or a customer's distaste for our slogan. We need to know whether we look like a doofus or not.

Crowdsourced Content: Answers to polls, photo contests and other user-generated content is one of the greatest benefits to your social media community.

Amplify your content: Let your crowd tell the good news. Ask them for help and tell them what you need them to do. This is what a true community does, a good one anyway.

If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious you can comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook M. Matheson

Have you seen Owly? Hoot! Hoot!

When I was just starting out to build a platform for marketing my books and stories, I worked the social media angle mostly from my iPhone. My PC at the time was a boat anchor running Vista. I've since turned to MAC for deliverance. Where has Mac been all my life? It was like finding the fountain of youth.

My wife grew ever more exasperated as I ran into her office each day; holding my iPhone aloft and dancing with the exciting news that ten people had followed me on Twitter that day. Up until I started working at it in July of last year, my follower count was near rock steady at a static 200 -- give or take 1-3.
Since then, my excitement has grown less naive. I have over 5400 followers and the average day sees 30-40 new ones with spikes close to a hundred on occasion. Twitter is my main marketing platform.

I also use Facebook and Google+, yet I haven't paid as much attention to those as Twitter since the little blue bird is where my best interaction, growth and success have been.

As my account grew via iPhone, I soon realized that a good SMMS (Social Media Management System) would be necessary to monitor, grow and maintain the growing interactions. Without Hootsuite as my choice, this could not have been accomplished short of going insane. I'm now a rabid fan and brand ambassador for this top-rated platform.
Just so you understand clearly, I am a volunteer and am not paid for any of my endorsements or promotional activities. Hootsuite has been such a game-changer in my efforts to build a marketing platform on social media. So much so that I want to wash the CEO's car or at least mow his lawn.
I didn't just fall into... with the first pretty bird to come along either. I did my homework. I tried the others and evaluated them for ease and performance. Hootsuite won hands down. There were super simple programs that sacrificed too much performance. That would not work for me. I test drove Owly(HootSuite's monicker). Within the month, I upgraded to the Pro Version and never looked back.

If you are on Twitter at all, you have no doubt been bombarded with ads for adding followers, 10,000 guaranteed in one day for $29.95. Sounds like an old commercial from the 70's for painting cars. I tried it and the paint peeled within the year. That same thing will happen to your new bytes of friends. Do you really want to pay for your friends? Can we be so desperate for recognition that we pay some computer savvy person money to tweak the system so it looks like 10,000 people were interested in what we had to say? What kind of gravitas will be gained by that number under our profile pic? The proliferation of such offers suggests a lot of people drink that Kool-Aid.

Well?

If 10,000 REAL people, in one fell swoop and all in one day, were interested in me and my books, the media would be parked in front of my house clamoring for an interview like flies on a sugar stain. Quite a temptation for a writer...

And, there are others offering to automatically manage my content for me. Just think of the free time that would suddenly be available to me. Succumb to that one and you'd end up with hearts and flower romance novels in horror story posts or vice-versa (I've seen it). How about a little porn stirred in with your Christian brand? That would do wonders for your image.
The profiles using automated content providers are easy to spot; they have no original content. All their posts are Retweets and rarely any original content from the account holder. Occasionally a post says someone else is doing the heavy lifting -- just for legalities sake.

Me, I like to get to know people whether online or in person. I like to shake their hand even if it is across the data stream. I like to recognize and celebrate them for their achievements and help them achieve their goals. Yes, Mom all that happens on a well run Twitter profile. Read my post on the simpler basics of Twitter I learned from watching others and by applying Common Courtesies and a Handshake to Social Media.

Meanwhile back at the ranch --
I really need to give credit where credit is due. Without HootSuite's SMMS (Social Media Management System) I could not have accomplished what I have so far. Hootsuite allows you, through an online dashboard, to manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or Word Press accounts, and you can manage multiple accounts within each one of those. I'm out of breath just thinking about it.
In addition, there is a plethora of third-party apps  to work with available through the dashboard: Instagram, YouTube, and even Gmail. Being web based you can do all this from anywhere in the world on any computer. There is a free version of HootSuite' or a Pro version for $9.95 a month which has proved its worth ten and a hundred fold, perhaps more, each and every month.

Within my dashboard, I manage 9 different Social Media accounts, some of those I curate for companies who were impressed with my proficiency, knowledge and the results I got back from my own accounts. I can also manage each of those on a limited basis from my iPhone and iPad. Using a laptop or desktop computer, of course, enables you to extract all of the features and best benefits.

Since my mainstream is Twitter, I'll tell you my experience from that standpoint. The single most beneficial thing is the bulk scheduler from which I can upload up to 350 messages at one time to each profile. For me, that's about two week's worth of content. This takes a little head scratching and finger grease, but if you have a bare minimum of experience with Excel you can do it. I learned through a reccomendation from HootSuite's help pages that the best program to use is Google Sheets their online answer to Excel. Sheets is not as powerful as Excel, but having it web based alongside the HootSuite Dashboard is more convenient than bouncing from software locked to one computer in which you have to save filenames and perform other juggling acts. Sheets also makes cleaner CSV files for uploading.

HootSuite even gives you templates ready for you to enter your info. The date and time go in the leftmost cell, the contents of your post in the next and technically a link goes in the third column. The digits you see in the fifth column is my own invention: I have a formula there that counts the characters in the content column. Since Twitter is limited to 140 characters, it removes a lot of guesswork. Then save a CSV file of the sheet and upload through Dashboard/publisher/bulk message upload. If there are any errors the program will tell you what and where they are located. A note on the third column link: I shorten links beforehand in Hootsuite's composition box and insert in the second cell. It works better for me and keeping count of characters.

This is my dashboard, like command central. From here I monitor Retweets, New Followers, Mentions and even see what my latest tweets were since I scheduled them up to 2 weeks ago and can't remember what they were without looking. Now I can respond rapidly and appropriately to those interacting with my account. By the way, that is only one tab visible. If you scan across the top you'll see 9 more tabs and the last one holds multiple streams also.

One more beautiful thing is search streams. I can check on the competition or other sites putting up great content that I can use. I can even find everyone within a specified radius of anywhere talking about coffee or church or whatever you might need -- to find people locally that are interested in what you like.

I do have a few more tricks up my sleeve.

Always on the hunt for a faster and better way, Google Sheets have been a godsend. Look at the tabs on the bottom. I used to keep different sheets for every upload, now I keep the same one, change the dates and time and change the informative tweets. Promotional tweets I keep in the same time slot, tweaking. adding and subtracting them as needed. Retweets, quotes, and funny dog pics are exchanged for new ones and these I keep in other tabs. There are tabs that hold all my blog tweets and tabs that hold all my books and another one for the stories I giveaway and on and on it goes.

Last but not least and probably the best feature of HootSuite is its people. Customer service is near instantaneous, only a Tweet away through @HootSuite_Help. If they don't have an instant solution they sic a team of people on it till it is done.

Recently, I have  become a HootSuite Ambassador, one small part of 1,000 others who volunteer to support the brand because they believe so strongly in it. 

HootSuite has improved my life.

If you'd like to leave a comment and find the form tedious you can also comment on my twitter feed @mikeyznsacto or Facebook M. Matheson

The Taxman is Here

A name that releases ubiquitous fear within adults of tax paying age and income is THE TAXMAN. This also is the name of my new short story.

Kenneth Selznick is an auditor with the IRS, he is 41 years of age and still lives at home with MOTHER, Malvina the Malevolent. This arrangement has produced an insanity within Kenneth that preys upon the happy world around him. His twisted brand of joy comes from auditing returns and watching good honest people bleed slowly to death. The more honest and happy, the more he enjoys the kill. The tables in this short tale continuously turn as Kenneth's fortunes twist and turn.

That's all you'll get about the tale without reading the story except for a little background.

The original idea for this story came from a real audit of my wife and I. If you've had the misfortune to be audited, you know the grief that it can bring no matter how level and straight your records have been. There is no shortage of myth, true or false, and lore surrounding the Internal Revenue Service's ravaging of the peace of common citizens.

When my wife and I were audited several years back, we knew we had done our due diligence, yet the fear remained. Our biggest worry was how much this was going to cost us. Well, weren't we surprised to learn we would be getting money back, a lot of money, and it was the IRS that had made the error. I'm sure that does not happen often.

I hope you enjoy my story which couldn't have been made possible without the beta reading, advice, edits and big suggestions to the storyline by Melinda Matthews.

Please check out her Amazon Author page and follow her Twitter page.