Here is my new novel, in all its glory, glowing with a cover designed by noted mid-Pennsylvanian photographer Ben Cohen (although Ben did not take the cover shot), and telling the story of Jerry Callahan, a small-town Ohio boy out to make it big in the hard-hearted District of Columbia, circa 2008.
Jerry makes a living, barely, writing speeches and other copy for none other than Newt Gingrich, until Newt decides to take things up another level, or perhaps two—or even three—by choosing Jerry to ghost his long-deferred magnum opus, the Washington novel to end all Washington novels, The City and its Masters.
I got the idea for Jerry some years ago when I somehow got an ad for Newt Gingrich’s Newsletter, absolutely free! I imagined the newsletter as an opportunity for Newt to unload on the Washington establishment in an orgy of self-congratulatory free association, in the “just putting it out there” manner of Rush Limbaugh, which I thought might be funny, so I signed up.
Well, as it turned out, all I got were ads for right-wing products that were not free, almost as if Newt used his supposed newsletter as bait, trolling for suckers and compiling a mailing list that he then sold to other right-wing hustlers. Most of it was seriously banal right-wing dreck, but I also got a hilarious “ad” from none other than “ain’t no Mexican gonna rape me!” herself, Ann Coulter, hawking a $99.95 a year newsletter guaranteed (pretty much) to make you 50% richer in just two years! Which is probably the most honest pitch Ann has ever made!
Okay, wasn’t I talking about my novel here? Yeah. Anyway, I finally did track down Newt’s newsletter, and it was boring as hell. You get what you pay for, unfortunately. But I also learned that Newt had co-authored some alternative history books, on the Civil War and World War II. They might be fun!
But they weren’t. By now, I was getting a little pissed. All this “research” for nothing! Well, if real Newt wouldn’t deliver, fantasy Newt would!
So I invented a fake Newt Gingrich, who would hire a struggling nobody, not at all like me, and set him on a writerly errand, ending either in triumph or disaster, and Tongue of Newt is the result. In fact, once I had the title in mind, I couldn’t not write the book. It sounded like so much fun.
You can read sample pages, not to mention buy, TON via Amazon as either an ebook or a paperback. My author’s page at Amazon has seven other titles for sale. Or go here and scroll to the bottom to download an absolute freebie, Three Bullets, my fan fiction tribute to Rex Stout’s immortal fat detective, Nero Wolfe, offering three novellas featuring Nero, Archie Goodwin, Fritz, Theodore, Inspector Cramer, and many more.
