Sunday, October 27, 2013
THE NEW BOOK TRAILER
Trailer with the contest announcement in which you can win $3000 in gold! The Moroni Deception book trailer
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
It may be worth your while to be on the lookout for the new book trailer $$$$$
I know I've been off this for a while, but aside from working on my new novel, most of that time has been spent writing, producing, and partially directing the latest promotion for my most recent novel, The Moroni Deception. As the latest and I think best promotion for TMD, the new book trailer will be out very soon. It was shot, edited, and mostly directed by a remarkable young filmmaker, and I think whether you've read the book or not, you will greatly enjoy it. As a bit of a novelty (I guess it's the PT Barnum in me), I decided to shoot the trailer to make it appear more like a film trailer, because, God bless 'em, most of the book trailers I've seen are either horrifyingly bad or so by-the-numbers lame (as if they were all produced by the same book trailer factory--which I wouldn't be surprised if that was just about the case), that I thought it shouldn't be too difficult to break out of the pack. That is, if, first, we did it well, second, made it more like a film trailer that actually entertains (as opposed to mostly just informing the world a new book is out), and third, tack an announcement on at the very end which announces a scavenger hunt of sorts, much like the one in the book. Only in this case, if you are the first to figure out all the clues based upon (well, you'll have to watch the trailer--don't want to give you too much of a head start and unfair advantage), you could be the winner of approximately $2500 in gold Krugerands (depending on the market price at the time). I thought about making it higher (but then I don't have the deep pockets of a large publisher behind me), and I thought about making it lower (but then if it's too low, who's going to bother?), so finally I decided to make it just about enough to get that gigantic plasma screen TV you've had your eye on, or that awesome Jet Ski or 4-wheeler your neighbor is selling, or that trip to Hawaii you and your husband have been putting off.. Anyway, be on the lookout. I'll announce it here the day it goes "live," but it will also be posted on Amazon, Goodreads, Youtube, and the book's website at www.themoronideception.com Good luck. -JB
(Oh yes, and I, of course, must mention, if you are a friend, family member, or acquaintance, you are are not eligible to win. Not that it would give you any sort of advantage, but for appearance sake and a sense of fair play, it's got to be some fan of the book who I don't know from Adam.)
(Oh yes, and I, of course, must mention, if you are a friend, family member, or acquaintance, you are are not eligible to win. Not that it would give you any sort of advantage, but for appearance sake and a sense of fair play, it's got to be some fan of the book who I don't know from Adam.)
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
Price drop for the e-Book version of THE MORONI DECEPTION
Just lowered the price of the e-Book version of The Moroni Deception to $3.99. If you were waiting for the price to drop, well, it just did. AMAZON LINK
Saturday, January 26, 2013
New blog radio interview now in podcast
Believe it or not, I'm actually part of this hour and a half interview, but you'll have to listen extremely carefully to the very first few and last few minutes The rest of it was. . .well, you'll just have to see :) "What's write for me" Blog Radio Show (Also, there is a short excerpt I read somewhere in the middle, and writer Michael Murphy has a new book out that sounds like a lot of fun--some aging hippies revisiting Woodstock years later and their various misadventures. Good reviews on Amazon from both Country Joe McDonald and Wavy Gravy)
Friday, January 4, 2013
Saturday, December 22, 2012
New Guest post blog (with a giveaway)
Guest post blog (with a book giveaway). And speaking of book giveaways, there will be 10 book giveaway on Goodreads starting this coming week. Good luck. -JB
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
THE MORONI DECEPTION now available in "hardcopy"
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Thursday, December 6, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Podcast/Interview on "A Book and a Chat" with Barry Eva
My "A Book and a Chat" interview with host, Barry Eva, a most enjoyable English gentleman (now living and working out of New York City). Link: A Book and a Chat Inteview Barry set me up with nothing but great questions throughout the
interview, yet when asked, I somehow managed to still give a somewhat
stumbling synopsis of my book. (Note to self: Keep short, coherent written synopsis on
hand during next phone interview).
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Why I Write
First off, still not sure what I'm in for yet, but have an upcoming live interview on the show "A Book and a Chat" (which will later be available as a podcast) with writer and host Barry Eva, coming up this Sunday at 11 am EST. The link if you'd care to listen in, or find it later, is A Book and a Chat with Barry Eva.
(The following is for an upcoming guest blog post, which I was directed to keep in mind that The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia book blog had a great many younger readers, so with that in mind, here's "Why I write")
(The following is for an upcoming guest blog post, which I was directed to keep in mind that The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia book blog had a great many younger readers, so with that in mind, here's "Why I write")
Why I Write
The following is a quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite writer when I was in my late teens.
"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.
They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an
art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for
heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories.
Write a poem for a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you
possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created
something."
And I would agree. While I loved listening to and reading stories growing up, I loved making them up and telling them even more. When I was in high school and feeling like I didn't really belong (which I later learned almost everybody else felt that way), while I played sports and participated in various extracurriculars to have some interaction with other human beings, I turned mostly to books and films to find those who I could relate to (J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut are the first two who come to mind) and who I believed understood me--which again, I later found was not that unusual. Somewhere along the line I got the crazy idea that maybe I could create the stories that people would shell out a few dollars for to go watch in the dark for a couple of hours. I think it was not long after I'd read A Confederacy of Dunces, still my all-time favorite novel, shortly before going off to college, that I got it in my head to become a filmmaker, because an Academy Award-winning movie, I felt, absolutely had to be made of this amazing novel (although, surprisingly, after numerous starts and stops, it has still yet to be made).
I was fairly certain, however, they wouldn't turn over the keys of a $50 million movie to an 18 year old, so I would have to somehow work my way up to find myself in a position to one day get that film made (as well as Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, another of my all-time top five novels). At that time in the 80's, I didn't have a very clear idea of how to do that, although at some point it occurred to me perhaps through writing I might. Prior to that, aside from multiple research papers I recall writing on either Porches or Vlad Tepes, the historical Dracula, all I had written were a few short humorous skits in high school which had never been more than maybe 5 or 6 pages (I vaguely remember an updated version of Antigone that I wrote, enacted with clay figures in a shoebox stage and performed in the vein of Mr. Bill, in which everyone died a gruesome Mr. Bill-like death in the end--and if you don't know who "Mr. Bill" is, ask your parents, or maybe even your grandparents). Looking back, though, now, I realize I also wrote for not only my high school and college newspapers, but at the end of my 3 year Army stint, I was editing and writing most of my battalion's newsletter.
Clearly this compulsion to write was a part of me, but yet during this entire time I had never really thought of myself as a writer. Perhaps in my youth I somehow thought of it as effete to write, or perhaps there were no writers I had ever heard of who I really wanted to emulate since it seemed like most of them were either alcoholics, drug addicts, recluses, mildly crazy, or at the least badly depressed. Even John Kennedy Toole, the writer of my very favorite novel committed suicide before his opus had even been published (or discovered for that matter--his mother solicited the help of famed Southern writer, Walker Percy, to get publishers to finally take a look).
After the Army (during which time I'd also attended a night-time filmmaking program) I worked on several films in production (at the low end--not producing), and then went on to a film program at NYU. After that I worked in a number of different (relatively menial) jobs, all the while working mostly on my film scripts, the first of which I'd started writing while still in college. The first two were mostly autobiographical comedies, both probably pretty bad (they're lost to the ages now), but both I'm sure were necessary to get out all the biographical stuff that writers need to sometimes first get out of their systems and move past. Which is not to say that your personality and everything that you've gleaned from your life experience shouldn't be used, but all the little real life episodes that probably seemed so cool and hilarious and in which you probably starred in, probably really don't have the makings of anything much more than a short story (I don't know if it was true, but T.C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" is a classic "you won't believe what happened the other night" story). After I got the first two out of my system, I went onto to complete five pretty good ones (okay, four, but the fifth one is probably the one that would have racked up at the box office), although none were ever produced. Without going into too much detail, I did, however, send my very favorite, and probably best one off to two different director/producers I'd made the acquaintance of in somewhat roundabout ways. Both I'm fairly certain (read my script and then watch their two movies) went onto "borrow" large chunks of my screenplay for their films, both, of course, without any acknowledgement or payment.
That repeated experience definitely took the wind out of my sails with regards to breaking into the film industry (which I've since gone on to learn that plagiarism and outright theft is apparently an everyday occurrence, and merely viewed as a cagey business move if you change just enough of it to keep it from being identical, as opposed to something reprehensible, as its regarded in the academic and literary world). I still love movies, but along with those episodes, I've since found myself reading a great deal more, especially now that I also seem to have "aged out" of the demographic that most films are made for. As far as writing The Moroni Deception, I'd always thought of trying to write a novel, and, in fact, had made several half-hearted attempts over the years, but never really had either an interesting enough story, or enough of a story to complete an entire novel--that is until I happened across Jon Krakaur's Under the Banner of Heaven. It was then I knew I had found my source material, and I was so confident I then went on to research the LDS faith for a full year before I ever really even put pen to paper (other than for the copious notes I took).
Looking back, the interesting thing I find about this whole writing evolution is that it was never just about making money. In fact, it's not been until just fairly recently that I've finally been able to even see the first dime. Yes, part of my hopes in all of this was to write professionally full-time one day, but the main reason, I truly believe, was just as Mr. Vonnegut said, to feed my soul, to "create something" as " a way of making life more bearable." For the younger readers (and those few older one to which this applies) I would just conclude with the advice that if you've not yet found your creative outlet, I would highly recommend that you do. While I won't go so far as to say that it's the meaning of life (that would, of course, be "to love and be loved" which I learned from Peter O'Toole in the film, Creator--and biologically speaking, to procreate), but it will give a richness and an added layer to your life that if you haven't yet discovered, you will treasure when you do.
The following is a quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite writer when I was in my late teens.
"Go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living.
They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an
art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for
heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories.
Write a poem for a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you
possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created
something."
And I would agree. While I loved listening to and reading stories growing up, I loved making them up and telling them even more. When I was in high school and feeling like I didn't really belong (which I later learned almost everybody else felt that way), while I played sports and participated in various extracurriculars to have some interaction with other human beings, I turned mostly to books and films to find those who I could relate to (J.D. Salinger and Kurt Vonnegut are the first two who come to mind) and who I believed understood me--which again, I later found was not that unusual. Somewhere along the line I got the crazy idea that maybe I could create the stories that people would shell out a few dollars for to go watch in the dark for a couple of hours. I think it was not long after I'd read A Confederacy of Dunces, still my all-time favorite novel, shortly before going off to college, that I got it in my head to become a filmmaker, because an Academy Award-winning movie, I felt, absolutely had to be made of this amazing novel (although, surprisingly, after numerous starts and stops, it has still yet to be made).
I was fairly certain, however, they wouldn't turn over the keys of a $50 million movie to an 18 year old, so I would have to somehow work my way up to find myself in a position to one day get that film made (as well as Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan, another of my all-time top five novels). At that time in the 80's, I didn't have a very clear idea of how to do that, although at some point it occurred to me perhaps through writing I might. Prior to that, aside from multiple research papers I recall writing on either Porches or Vlad Tepes, the historical Dracula, all I had written were a few short humorous skits in high school which had never been more than maybe 5 or 6 pages (I vaguely remember an updated version of Antigone that I wrote, enacted with clay figures in a shoebox stage and performed in the vein of Mr. Bill, in which everyone died a gruesome Mr. Bill-like death in the end--and if you don't know who "Mr. Bill" is, ask your parents, or maybe even your grandparents). Looking back, though, now, I realize I also wrote for not only my high school and college newspapers, but at the end of my 3 year Army stint, I was editing and writing most of my battalion's newsletter.
Clearly this compulsion to write was a part of me, but yet during this entire time I had never really thought of myself as a writer. Perhaps in my youth I somehow thought of it as effete to write, or perhaps there were no writers I had ever heard of who I really wanted to emulate since it seemed like most of them were either alcoholics, drug addicts, recluses, mildly crazy, or at the least badly depressed. Even John Kennedy Toole, the writer of my very favorite novel committed suicide before his opus had even been published (or discovered for that matter--his mother solicited the help of famed Southern writer, Walker Percy, to get publishers to finally take a look).
After the Army (during which time I'd also attended a night-time filmmaking program) I worked on several films in production (at the low end--not producing), and then went on to a film program at NYU. After that I worked in a number of different (relatively menial) jobs, all the while working mostly on my film scripts, the first of which I'd started writing while still in college. The first two were mostly autobiographical comedies, both probably pretty bad (they're lost to the ages now), but both I'm sure were necessary to get out all the biographical stuff that writers need to sometimes first get out of their systems and move past. Which is not to say that your personality and everything that you've gleaned from your life experience shouldn't be used, but all the little real life episodes that probably seemed so cool and hilarious and in which you probably starred in, probably really don't have the makings of anything much more than a short story (I don't know if it was true, but T.C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake" is a classic "you won't believe what happened the other night" story). After I got the first two out of my system, I went onto to complete five pretty good ones (okay, four, but the fifth one is probably the one that would have racked up at the box office), although none were ever produced. Without going into too much detail, I did, however, send my very favorite, and probably best one off to two different director/producers I'd made the acquaintance of in somewhat roundabout ways. Both I'm fairly certain (read my script and then watch their two movies) went onto "borrow" large chunks of my screenplay for their films, both, of course, without any acknowledgement or payment.
That repeated experience definitely took the wind out of my sails with regards to breaking into the film industry (which I've since gone on to learn that plagiarism and outright theft is apparently an everyday occurrence, and merely viewed as a cagey business move if you change just enough of it to keep it from being identical, as opposed to something reprehensible, as its regarded in the academic and literary world). I still love movies, but along with those episodes, I've since found myself reading a great deal more, especially now that I also seem to have "aged out" of the demographic that most films are made for. As far as writing The Moroni Deception, I'd always thought of trying to write a novel, and, in fact, had made several half-hearted attempts over the years, but never really had either an interesting enough story, or enough of a story to complete an entire novel--that is until I happened across Jon Krakaur's Under the Banner of Heaven. It was then I knew I had found my source material, and I was so confident I then went on to research the LDS faith for a full year before I ever really even put pen to paper (other than for the copious notes I took).
Looking back, the interesting thing I find about this whole writing evolution is that it was never just about making money. In fact, it's not been until just fairly recently that I've finally been able to even see the first dime. Yes, part of my hopes in all of this was to write professionally full-time one day, but the main reason, I truly believe, was just as Mr. Vonnegut said, to feed my soul, to "create something" as " a way of making life more bearable." For the younger readers (and those few older one to which this applies) I would just conclude with the advice that if you've not yet found your creative outlet, I would highly recommend that you do. While I won't go so far as to say that it's the meaning of life (that would, of course, be "to love and be loved" which I learned from Peter O'Toole in the film, Creator--and biologically speaking, to procreate), but it will give a richness and an added layer to your life that if you haven't yet discovered, you will treasure when you do.
Friday, November 2, 2012
New interview in "The Examiner.com"
Examiner.com link Jack Brody "on writing" interview
Ah, very good, you've found it. Now that wasn't so hard, now was it? So, here are a few words from. . .well, you'll know. Words for the worthy.
Ah, very good, you've found it. Now that wasn't so hard, now was it? So, here are a few words from. . .well, you'll know. Words for the worthy.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Good news for those of you without an e-Reader
Good news for those of you without an e-Reader
(although there are free downloadable apps to turn your laptop,
desktop, or smartphone into an e-Reader--see earlier post with the
links), because of what appears to be a growing interest, Visigoth Press
will be releasing a hardcopy of THE MORONI DECEPTION in the very near
future--initially through Amazon (but will probably also be available on
the website as well at a discount). Stay tuned. -Jack
Monday, October 22, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Interesting review and questions from Christian reviewer, Eustacia Tan
Just got a positive review (as well as some rather interesting questions) from book blogger/reviewer, Eustacia Tan, who brings a Christian perspective. The Mind of a Bibliophile book review and my responses to Eustacia Tan's questions. Hope those of you who are stopping by are enjoying these guest post and interviews I've been doing (and reposting here), even though they've been taking quite a bit of time and have therefore been limiting my own blog posts. In fact, I now have 4 more posts to do which I haven't even started on yet and three radio interviews coming up to try to get ready for (I'll let you know when and where to find them soon just in case you'd like to listen to me squirm). The first one was going to be this month, but the hostess (a very nice Mormon lady who broadcasts out of Utah) and her two co-hosts decided it was too controversial to discuss before the election so they're waiting until the week after. Hmmm.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Nice interview with yours truly in the Seattle PI
The interview with Irene Roth has mostly to do with the inspiration for THE MORONI DECEPTION and my background. Seattle Post Intelligencer interview
Monday, October 1, 2012
And if you don't have an e-Reader. . .
A would-be reader just mentioned on the
Facebook page that she didn't have a Kindle, so I will repost this bit
of information. While The Moroni Deception is currently only available
for e-Readers, you can, if you don't have a Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or
Sony e-Reader, download several free apps to turn your laptop, desktop,
iPad, smartphone or tablet into an e-Reading device.
Here's the app for Kindle for various systems: KINDLE APPS
And here also are for the Sony eReader
and the Kobo e-Reader
Here's the app for Kindle for various systems: KINDLE APPS
And here also are for the Sony eReader
and the Kobo e-Reader
Friday, September 28, 2012
White Horse Prophecy anyone?
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