10 Questions for Anita Mitchell, whose new book came out April 17. It's the incredible true story of a man born without arms who became a champion swimmer. Click on the link to buy at Amazon.

God Took My Arms But He Gave Me This Gift

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK: The future looked bleak for Abbas when he was born. With so many other problems in Kabul, people with disabilities are a low priority. If Abbas wanted to excel with his unusual skill as a swimmer, he knew that he had to leave his large and close family. How he left, how he traveled through Iran, how he petitioned the UNHCR to come to the United States, how he made the Tokyo refugee Paralympic team. How he became a US citizen and what complications ensued in his life is a beacon of triumph and a salute to the human spirit.  Abbas is a role model not only for people with disabilities, but he is also a role model for anyone with a lofty goal that comes with detours along the way.

 

WHAT DOES THE TITLE  “GOD TOOK MY ARMS BUT HE GAVE ME THIS GIFT” MEAN?  When I first did a short blog piece about Abbas, he told me this  line and I said, "Abbas, that could be the title of your book”…and it is. Abbas is an observant Shiite Muslim and although he was born without arms, he believes that he was given the gift of becoming a swimmer.

 

HOW CAN SOMEONE WITHOUT ARMS BECOME A SWIMMER?  Abbas was soothed by the water as a kid growing up in Kabul. He says he is reborn every time he swims.  Strength in swimming comes from abdominals and legs..and mostly from your desire to do it. Although Abbas was born without arms,  through expert professional coaching, he has learned how to propel through the water at a championship level. A winning mentality is something Abbas always had, whether it was  how he played marbles,  performed martial arts or eventually excelled to world class levels in Paralympic swimming.

WHERE DID THIS STORY COME FROM?  I am also a member of  Swim Fort Lauderdale (SFTL) masters swim team .  In our weekly newsletters from Coach Marty Hendrick, he told the team that we were getting a new swimmer. This new swimmer was training for the Tokyo Paralympics,. He was coming from Portland Oregon where he had lived and trained for four years.. Abbas was brought to the United States  by the  United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  He was from Kabul, Afghanistan and spoke very good English . He lived in Turkish refugee camps before being chosen to emigrate to the United States.  

      I had just retired from 26 years at WSVN7 as a field producer and assignment editor.  I knew that this was  an incredible story.  I underestimated just how special this story and this person is. 

 

BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK: The future looked bleak for Abbas when he was born. With so many other problems in Kabul, people with disabilities are a low priority. If Abbas wanted to excel with his unusual skill as a swimmer, he knew that he had to leave his large and close family. How he left, how he traveled through Iran, How he petitioned the UNHCR to come to the United States, how he made the Tokyo refugee Paralympic team. how he became a US citizen and what complications ensued in his life is a  beacon of triumph and a salute to the human spirit.  Abbas is a role model not only for people with disabilities, he is a role model for anyone with a lofty goal that comes with detours along the way.

 

WHAT ARE THE PARALYMPICS:  The Paralympic Games are a series of multisport events with disabled athletes. The games are held immediately following the Olympic Games in the same host city.  

 

WHAT IS YOUR BACKGROUND:  I have been a Broward County high school English teacher,  a field producer/assignment editor at WSVN7, a blogger, a book editor and now an author. I graduated from  Michigan State University.

 

ADVICE FOR THOSE STARTING THEIR LITERARY CAREERS  Write whatever you can that people will see;  you never know where that will lead.  Keep writing what you love every day: you will get better and faster.  I  have written restaurant menus, event programs, wedding toasts….anything that let people know that I write. Through this, I was approached about this book

 

WHERE CAN THE BOOK BE PURCHASED? Amazon.com, soon Barnes&Noble

 

WHAT I DO WHEN I AM NOT WRITING  I am swimming, training in the gym for better swimming, cruising garage sales, talking to people who are important to me and relaxing at my keyboard with my cat.

 

  Smuggler's Return      

Music

A Pirate Looks At Forty by 

Jimmy Buffett

Smuggler's Blues by 

Glenn Frey

What About Me? by

Quick Silver Messenger

I Shall Be Released by Bob Dylan sung by

Joe Cocker

I'm No Angel by 

Greg Allman

20th Century Man by

The Kinks

The Barricades of Heaven by

Jackson Browne

My new novel Smuggler’s Return is now available on Amazon as paperback, hardcover or Kindle eBook. Take a look. To find it right away at Amazon, click on this link:

Smuggler's Return

News! Book release coming

 

My novel Smuggler's Return is coming soon

This is the art for the front cover

 10 Questions for Neil Crabtree

Q: Your latest book  Smuggler's Return bears the subtitle

   "A Miami 2000 Novel" on the front cover. Why?

A: The story is about two friends who smuggled marijuana from Colombia in the 1980 time period and by the year 2000, they've gone their separate ways. But even the year 2000 is a different era from what we live through in 2024. There was no Uber, for example. Cellphones had limited range and roaming charges. There were still retail computer stores, and Amazon was more of a rumor than anything else. No medical marijuana dispensaries, no legal pot anywhere. Yet we all lived through it, with pretty much the same hopes and dreams as today.

 Q: The main character Rooster is working hard to stay straight but carries his past with him everyday. His old partner Johnny Fallon shows up though he is supposed to be in prison. There are two rogue federal agents running Fallon to steal thousands of dollars from drug traffickers who thought they'd safely retired. Fallon wants Rooster to work with him collecting money but Rooster tells him NO. Why is Rooster unwilling to help his old partner?

A: Rooster himself had been busted. While in prison, his rich wife Alicia divorced him and married his trial lawyer Sheldon Teller. Alicia and Sheldon have raised Rooster's son and given him all the best things in life. Now a teenager, Chris still loves his father but understands that Rooster gave up custody while incarcerated. Rooster works everyday running a computer business to set a good example and to show that The Business (as smuggling was known in those days)  was no longer part of his life.

Q: Rooster has two different love interests, his ex-wife Alicia, and the married daughter of his second wife Miriam, Paula. Both are strong characters and important to the story. How did that come about?

A: Love is the driving influence in all our lives. For Rooster, his first marriage to Alicia was strongly influenced by his role as a smuggler. The Jimmy Buffett song "A Pirate Looks At Forty" would be a perfect theme for Rooster and Johnny Fallon. "Made enough money to buy Miami, but pissed it away so fast" is a line Buffett came up with because he knew guys like Rooster and Johnny Fallon. After the money is gone each has to find a way to live. Fallon needs to find more money. Rooster needs to find something better.

Q: How did you come up with the idea of  the smugglers and their affairs?

A; In the late 1970's, the best pot in the world was Colombian Gold. Florida was its main port of entry. Before the Cocaine Cowboys and Miami Vice, running reefer was the new version of Rum Running. Every beach bar on either coast had locals with stories of pot smuggling on their fishing boats, shrimpers, yachts and small plane. On a dare I went to Barranquilla Colombia looking for adventure. I found plenty, and lots of smuggler stories, and came to love the world of the marimberos. I met my wife Doris there and we have been together ever since.

Q: What is the DooMee Device and how does it play into the story?

A; I came up with a device that combined Virtual Reality with America's obsession with sex and image. Traditional crime novels have a formula that I can't tolerate. I wanted to say that there isn't a lot of difference between wanting to get high and get laid, and wanting to get pumped and get laid. The DooMee is technology's answer to Viagra. I put it in as a product Rooster's computer company signs up to distribute, though Rooster dislikes everything about it. The marketing campaign in the book for DooMee is a backdrop for the crime story of Fallon desperately trying to get rich again. Two get-rich schemes as crazy as can be.

Q: What kind of readers do you look for?

A: There are millions of us Baby Boomers who lived through Woodstock and Vietnam and friends getting busted for pot, who became Deadheads or Parrotheads and went to some of the most incredible rock'n'roll concerts that ever happened. We know that time has come and gone, but it is alive in our hearts. Smuggler's Return was written in that spirit.

Q: How long have you been working on Smuggler's Return?

A: I've written two complete versions of this novel. One I published as The Barricades of Heaven. I published, I Unpublished. It's wonderful to have the freedom to do that, the control of what goes out under my name. But the book has been through at least thirty proof-readers and I have had terrific editorial help. To say I have twelve years invested in this novel is an understatement.

 Q: Do you have another novel in the works?

A: I have been working on another Miami based novel for years and am now in the fifth draft. That's the thing. No matter how you publish, a serious writer knows the real story is in the revisions, the edits, the feedback from other writers. Not Dead Yet will open with a closed door murder, follow a family fighting for control of its empire, and feature a smuggler's ghost come to tell of his murder. Like Hamlet. By the end of the year I'll be ready.

Q: There's also a short story collection, right?

A: My story collection is called Believable Lies and is being revised currently for Kindle and paperback sales. The stories appeared in different eZines like VerbSap, Bewildering Stories, Denver Syntax, and American Fiction Vol. 11. The stories cover twentieth century life through  several different points of view. Some stories are still on line. Look at "LIVE BAND TONIGHT". It still pops up. 

Q: Any advice for those starting their literary careers?

A: Find a good indie bookstore and go to every Author Reading you can. Look at your local colleges and universities for MFA programs and associated writers groups. Read a lot, but not formula bestsellers, unless that is your goal. Read read read. Write write write. And then get people to read what you write and give honest feedback. That works.

 

10 Questions for Ramesh Nyberg, author of Badge, Tie, and Gun: A Memoir

 

Q: Tell us about your family and growing up in Miami. Eliot Kleinberg said he went to high school with you in Pine Crest. How did you come to be there?

My parents first settled in the Grove in the late 1950’s, and in 1962 moved to a house in South Miami, near the Hospital. In 1969, (when I was 11) they bought a house in what was then known as “Suniland,” just a block from Suniland Park. They paid a whopping $29,000 for it. That meant I would go to school at Palmetto Junior High and later, Palmetto Sr., where I met Eliot. Suniland wasn’t an “elite” place to live, as Pinecrest is considered now. The house my parents bought for $29,000 in 1969 is now valued just under $850,000.

 Q: When did you decide to become a cop?

That would be around 1977. I was a music major at Miami-Dade College, but my focus suddenly shifted to law enforcement after a I had a near-mystical encounter with a police scanner. That story is detailed in my book.

Q: Tell us a brief synopsis of your book. It’s subtitled “Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Homicide Detective” which is a real attention-getter.

I’m glad it is. I wanted readers to know that this isn’t just a compilation of police stories side by side. This is also about my growing up with Miami (not just “in” it), and how certain events in my childhood re-merged in significant and meaningful ways in my law enforcement career. Yes, the book is filled with many police stories, but I wanted to convey to the reader how life lessons you learn in your youth often surface and hopefully help you understand situations on a deeper level. There is rich detail about death investigation, but there is also a lot about life, and how I navigated it—sometimes unwittingly—because of my experiences as a youngster.
Additionally, the Miami I grew up in was a fairly quiet, innocent place until the late 1970’s. There is some irony—and hopefully, meaning—in the fact that I turned 18 in 1977, and entered the police academy in 1979. Miami and I grew up together; it’s safe to say we also both lost our innocence together.

Q: When did you decide to become a writer, and why?

It was never a conscious decision. I started writing when I was about nine years old, starting with a poem I wrote in school. I also was a big football fan at that time, and after I went to my first pro football game, I was enthralled with the way a reporter in the Miami Herald wrote about the game. I started writing similar articles about our softball games at South Miami Elementary School; no one asked me to, and we didn’t have a school newspaper. It was just something I enjoyed doing. From that point on, I wrote about any memorable life experience I had. Once I entered police work, I wrote about the many strange and memorable calls I went on as a uniform officer, and later, as a detective. It wasn’t until right about the time I retired that I started thinking seriously about putting it all together in a book.

Q: Did you get any help when writing your book? If so, from whom?

I definitely got feedback and encouragement. Two very close friends of mine became beta readers, of sorts, so I considered that help. The content of Badge, Tie, and Gun is deeply personal, however, so no one could really help me with how I wanted to express the stories and emotions involved in police work.

 

Q: Is there a second book you are working on?

Yes—a second and a third, in fact. When I finished BTG, I sent it to an agent who had agreed to represent me, and I immediatley went to work on a novel called “The Flyboys,” a police procedural set in 1986 Miami. After I finished that, I wrote “Dear Chief,” another police procedural set in modern-day central Florida. After a year with no luck selling BTG, I decided to self-publish it, and right now I am working on the second draft of “Dear Chief.” I will seek agency representation for the novels. I want to try and go the conventional route with the novels.

Q: Where can people reach on social media? Do you work at posting new information?

Yes, I’m moderately active on Facebook (just search up Ramesh Nyberg—I am the only one) - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557234681168
I’m on Twitter: @NybergPI and TikTok (@MiamiAuthor). I’ve just learned TikTok and found it  easy to put together simple, short messages to promote the book. It seems to be gaining some traction. I try to do one every day, usually a teaser to get people to search for BTG.

Q: Who do you read and admire?

For non-fiction, I’m a big fan of TJ English (who wrote me a terrific review for BTG, by the way), and David Grann. Mark Bowden is also a fine writer and wrote an excellent book about Pablo Escobar (“Killing Pablo”). I’m a fan of sea exploration and history, so I greatly enjoyed “South” by Sir Earnest Shackleton, and “Over the Edge of the World” (the story of Magellan’s voyage) by Lawrence Bergreen. Bruce Catton’s works of the Civil War are terrific, as is Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s first-person memoir, “The Passing of the Armies.”
Where fiction is concerned, I hold in high regard the works of Nelson DeMille, Larry McMurtry, John Irving, Joseph Wambaugh, and John Grisham. I’m also a big fan of Carl Hiaasen and Scott Turow. 

Q: Where can readers purchase your books? Please provide links to those sites.

“Badge, Tie, and Gun” can be found on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and several other online book outlets. You can also find a link to it on my website, rameshnybergauthor.com
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV

Q: Do you read popular police procedural novels and stories?

I’m guilty of not reading enough of them. The problem I have had over the decades is that most of them fall miserably short when trying to describe procedures and realistic detail. It’s a curse of sorts, due to my having been a homicide investigator for twenty-two years. Even some of the most famous police procedural novelists such as Michael Connelly get some things so badly wrong that it ruins my enjoyment and I often end up putting many books down. I should mention that Connelly gets a lot of it right, and for not having a background in law enforcement, I’ll give him credit there. But a note to writers of crime stories: if you’re not sure of a detail, ask someone who knows, otherwise, you’ll be causing many criminal investigators and even lawyers to close the book and move on.
I promise to keep giving new voices in police procedurals a chance, and I’m trying to be less critical with the details. (But for heaven’s sake, make the effort and get it right!)

 Extra: What do you do when you are not writing?

When I’m not writing, I teach—I’m a teacher at Coral Reef Senior High in Miami, in their Academy of Legal and Public Affairs, teaching Crimina Justice classes and heading up our Mock Trial Club. We recently won our District competition and went to Orlando to compete for the state championship. We didn’t win, but to watch these young people embrace the practice of law with such enthusiasm is truly thrilling.
I’m also a law enforcement instructor and through Training Force USA, I teach police officers in the subjects of Homicide Investigation, Interview Techniques, and Trial Prep and Testimony. I’ve done both in-person and Zoom classes. 
My wife and I enjoy finding good things to watch on Netflix and Max, and we love travel. I would welcome a way to survive on 2-3 hours of sleep. It’s a very busy life, and I’m enjoying myself. I do, however, look forward to a day when I can write for a living and spend more time traveling and spending time with my grandchildren.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery makes the Booker Prize longlist

  

Jonathan Escoffery is an amazing writer whose book If I Survive You has been nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Raised in Miami after his parents migrated from Jamaica, Jonathan's stories invoke a personal and universal search for identity. This is a book of the year, a huge bestseller that you need to read and share. Jonathan has provided a reading clip from Ursa Story Company and we encourage you to follow these folks as well. Under The Ackee Tree