Free Audiobook

Audiobooks keep getting more popular, and right now you can listen to the short story that J. Lee Porter and I wrote in Cartagena, Columbia, a story of crime, and cryptocurrency, and right and wrong, for FREE (as long as our codes last, so move fast). John Witstijn did a beautiful job of narrating the story and we think you'll love it.

If you like the story, we hope you'll check out the Bitpat series. The second book, CRYPTO CITIZENS, is now available through Amazon.

In fact, check out all our work at Nomadic Giant, LLC.

The story of a story

When J. Lee Porter and I were writing CRYPTO SHRUGGED and researching the Bitpat series, we made a trip to Colombia -- the scene of some of the action. The stories we envisioned were about the global ramifications of cryptocurrency, in big and small ways.

We managed to spend time in both Cartagena and Medellin. Both were great, but in completely different ways.

In Cartagena, we managed to rent a place in the old district, just walking distance from the Walled City. We went there several times, and an idea for a short story, actually based on some experiences Jeff had in Mexico, started to bloom. In Medellin, we talked about how it would develop. At the end of the trip I was flying back through Cartagena, so I got a room in the walled city and revisited some of the places that inspired us.

The short story, INVISIBLE FORTUNE, worked well enough that we made it into an audiobook, narrated by John Witstijn, who did an incredible job.

To let people know it exists, I took the photos and videos I'd taken on the trip and combined them with John's intro to the book and some of my music, to create a teaser that's also something of a travelogue -- an introduction to Cartagena. I hope you enjoy it.

Mapping the terrain

As part of planning out the trilogy of mysteries I'm writing that feature Ron Anejo I needed to create a map of the island of Kayakoo, where the story takes place. To a certain number of people, my fictional island won't seem quite so fictional, but that's how it goes.

Kayakoo is located in the West Indies, near the southern end. It is one island of several in the country and not that far from Onion Island, which is a part of St. Voracious. Just a day sail if you are so inclined.

The boat you see is Ron's Danish fishing boat, MeinGott. Here she is in close up.

Medellin, Colombia

I've talked about the research we did in Colombia and shared some photos, but I might not have said much about how impressive Medellin is. It's a clean and incredibly modern city. The traffic sucks, but they have an efficient metro system and plentiful taxis that aren't expensive.

Much of the time we stayed a section of the city called Laureles that was a wonderfully walkable part of town. There were shops of all sorts, from small tiendas to large malls -- all within a few blocks of us. Better yet, we frequented a delightful Cuban restaurant that offered five-year old Cuban rum.

The hotel we stayed in had a nice breakfast area in the picture below. Often I would set up my computer in the morning and work on our short story INVISIBLE FORTUNE that came out of the days we spent in Cartagena. My coauthor J. Lee Porter and I would pass the drafts back and forth until we were happy with them.

As both of us tend to be early risers, we could often have a story conference over breakfast. Get the work stuff out of the way and explore. If you aren't a writer, chatting about the plot of a crime story might not seem the stuff of breakfast conversation, but it worked well for us. And we needed to make sure that the story fits in, in terms of tone and style, with the Bitpats novel series we are writing. The first book, CRYPTO SHRUGGED is coming in May and you can read about the series at Nomadic Giant.

As you can see, this neighborhood is tree-lined and pleasant. Every morning the shopkeepers were out sweeping the sidewalks and keeping everything nice. And given that this picture was taken in January, you can see that it's a perfect place for escaping snow and ice. We understand that the temperature doesn't vary that much year round.

Medellin is above 5000 feet and in a valley surrounded by mountains. Rather idyllic. We will certainly be tempted to return there.

A new short story -- a new fiction genre

Remember that picture of Cartagena, Colombia that I showed in my last post? Well, now it is the cover photo for a short story that J. Lee Porter and I wrote. The idea came to us while exploring the walled city and we wrote most of it right there in Colombia, although I'll confess we wrote a lot of it in Medellin, then I went back to Cartagena to double check some important details.

"Invisible Fortune" is a crime (short) story. It's a story about expats in South America. It's a story about cryptocurrency. In fact, we think it's the first crime story that involves cryptocurrency. And now it's on pre-order on Amazon. It will be in the Kindle Unlimited program and available for 99 cents. For less than a buck (free if you are in KU) you can get a little over 10,000 words of suspense, intrigue, technological mayhem, and sheer fun in a brand new genre.

Just click on the book cover below and order it for delivery on February 9th--soon!

What could be easier?

This story will give you a taste, just a morsel of what is in store for you when we unleash CRYPTO SHRUGGED in May of this year (that's 2018 in case you don't have a calendar handy.) The novel will be more political, more incendiary, more technology, more of everything. It's a cyber, crypto, thriller.

Stay in touch with our efforts here, and at Nomadic Giant Publishing. Just follow the friendly nomadic giant wherever he goes and you will get to a lot of interesting places... promise. Here he is.

A taste of Traveling Ed's crime fiction

Here is a great chance to get acquainted with my new fiction at no risk. The ebook of my crime short story A Mexican Divorce will be free on Amazon from March 30, 2014 to April 3, 2014.

Here is the blurb:

How is a girl supposed to have fun on vacation when blackmailers are going to try and make her pay them for pictures of it all? And what will Bart say if he finds out? Of course she can't little thing like a greedy blackmailer ruin a perfectly good setup.  

 

New story and a reminder

I've put a new crime short story up on Amazon, called  A Mexican Divorce. This was a fun story to write and involves Mexico only tangentially, but it does involve it. It is a story about a woman who doesn't see wedlock the same as some do, and perhaps sees the world a little different too. At any rate, it asks the question, what happens when you try to blackmail someone who doesn't play by the rules?

The story won't be available anywhere but Amazon for a time. Eventually I will collect some of the crime and mystery stories (there is no mystery in this one) into an anthology and probably make it available in both print and ebook formats.

I also want to remind you that UNDER LOW SKIES is on available in ebook format from Amazon for only $2.99 from today through the end of the month. My birthday present to you.