Author's Log Stardate 04012011

4/1/2011

If I learned anything from Sensei Dean Wesley Smith it's - if you want to be a professional writer, you have to write every day - no excuses - no laziness.

So here's my excuses (at least no laziness) for why I haven't written a lick in four days:

- Had to take care of some freelance consulting work
- Published a new blog
- Little League - 4 boys on 3 different teams
- Shopping (yes, I'm the one who buys groceries)
- Social Networking
- Homeschooling the Fab4
- Made changes (fixes) to the interior and cover of _The Watchman of Ephraim_ (so had to re-upload the changes to Amazon, PubIt, Smashwords, CreateSpace and Lightening Source.

I also just started a 100-day diet ... so I'm cranky.

Putting my Publisher's hat on and speaking to my top author (me) - "None of the above are acceptable excuses ... now put your fingers on the keyboard and TYPE!!!"

I hope Sensei DWS is pleased with my self-repudiation.

Bottom Line: As a strategic objective, I intend on becoming more disciplined about writing every work day. Publisher g: "Sounds great ... NOW GO DO IT!"

Some good news: Norm Goldman of Book Pleasures, one of the larger book review sites on the net reached out to me yesterday. He passed _TWOE_ on to his staff, which led to Fran Lewis requesting _TWOE_ for review! She'll have _TWOE_ in her hands by next week. Norm also mentioned that there might be one other reviewer who may be interested in reviewing _TWOE_.

For those of you self-publishing, you know how important and difficult it is to get professional reviews. I'm very grateful to both Norm and Fran, regardless of whether they rave or pan _TWOE_ ... but I pray it's the former!

I hope to have another chapter or two written for _Signs of War_ this weekend.

End transmission

(Please feel free to leave comments – your comments can be as helpful as anything I write for others. I hope this series turns out to be less my talking at you and more – a group of like-minded storytellers that self-publish or intend to. Peace & God Bless!)

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Author

Gerard de Marigny is an American novelist, producer, and scriptwriter, starting with the publication of his 2011 thriller, The Watchman of Ephraim (2014), now in development. New books scheduled for release in 2017 are New Detroit (Cris De Niro, Book 6), the novella Joshua's Country, and the novella White Widow (ARCHANGEL, Mission Log #3).

Born in Brooklyn to an owner of an office supply manufacturer who served in the U.S. Marines in both WWII and Korea, and his wife, on June 28, 1963, de Marigny attended St. Francis Preparatory School, a Catholic private high school. He did not complete his senior year, leaving high school to help form the rock band, Americade. Americade went on to record two albums from 1981-1984, and their remake of Grand Funk Railroad's, "We're An American Band" video won "Best New Video - Heavy Metal" in 1983 on MTV.

After the original lineup broke up in '84, de Marigny went on to write, record, and produce music for other artists and for TV. However, his music career ended abruptly in 1996, when he was diagnosed with a recently-discovered sub-type of Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphoma cancer. Unable to find work in the music industry after his diagnoses, surgery, and treatment, de Marigny finally earned his G.E.D. in 2006, and then attended Penn State University where he earned a degree in Information Science and Technology, graduating with honors in 2009.

In 2007, de Marigny began working in the financial services industry. By that time, he had started to pen a number of short works of fiction, initially in the Christian Speculative fiction sub-genre. None of them were published. In 2010, at the urging of his wife, de Marigny decided to resign from the firm to focus solely on his writing. It was at this time that de Marigny, who had been shopping the Christian Spec fiction manuscript, opted to shelve that manuscript and start work on an idea he had since he and his wife lost one of their dear friends, Daniel Afflitto, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. That idea became his first novel, The Watchman of Ephraim.

de Marigny shopped _TWoE_ and received 74 rejections before choosing to release the novel himself, independently. He founded JarRyJorNo Publishing in January 2011, and released TWoE on January 21, 2011. Sales were slow going in the beginning, with TWoE selling only 47 copies between January 21 and September 10, 2011. However, de Marigny woke up on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to find that his novel had hit Amazon best seller lists in eight countries (US, UK, CA, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, and Australia).

The book's 9/11 basis resonated with espionage sub-genre fiction readers globally. It was considered to be extensively researched, very detailed and savvy when it came to the set-ups of a non-governmental counter-terrorism firm and modern geopolitics. By 2014, de Marigny had written four Cris De Niro novels and had introduced a spin-off Archangel novella series with two releases, focusing on The Watchman Agency's paramilitary arm, Archangel.

Outside of his fiction, de Marigny also began work on two rock memoirs, in 2014, when he was contacted by renowned producer Michael Greenburg (MacGyver, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis). Greenburg loved the novel and immediately identified the potential to turn de Marigny's Cris De Niro series into a Cris De Niro feature film franchise. He offered de Marigny the opportunity to co-write the script adaptation of TWoE and to become a co-producer. de Marigny has set aside his novel writing while he and Greenburg are completing work on the script adaptation of The Watchman of Ephraim.

JarRyJorNo Publishing

Author's Log Stardate 04012011

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