Category Archives: Books

December 12, 2011 · 4:00 am

The Globe Has a Cover


It’s Globe Week here at RDougWicker.com.  And in a moment you’ll see the cover.

What is The Globe?  In addition to being the title to my latest novel, The Globe is . . . well, the protagonist of The Globe knows his ship a lot better than do I, so I’ll let Security Officer Reynard Chevalier tell you about The Globe in his own words:

I guess now would be a good time to set you straight on The Globe just in case you thought this was just a cruise ship.  It isn’t.  It’s a seagoing condominium community for the unseemly wealthy, those with at least eight and preferably at least nine digits in their credit union Christmas account.  It’s 38,500 tons (give or take a couple) of opulent, oceanic luxury transporting 147 lavishly appointed townhomes ranging in size from approximately 330-square-foot studios all the way up to a 3,243-square-foot Owner’s Suite (and you get only one guess as to who owns that little exercise in ostentation).  All homes have patios with an ocean view complete with saltwater spray, and everything above studio size has a fully functional kitchen (induction cooktops only—no exposed conventional heating elements or gas burners allowed on ship, of course) and no less than two full baths.  Many townhomes have working offices complete with high-speed internet just so everybody can get on line to check on those aforementioned all-important Christmas accounts.  After all, conventional home owners who default on their mortgage get booted onto the street.  These people get booted onto a street in Mozambique.  Who the hell wants that?

Anyway, I deal with three types of residents:  Those who own outright; the guests of owners; and those who are trying out a townhome on a rental basis before deciding to purchase, when on the rare occasion a residence actually become available.  There’s a very long waiting list and not too many owners willing to give up a suite.

On Wednesday, Reynard will tell you a little about himself.  For now, be among the first to view the cover for this murder thriller (click on the image for a larger view):

The Globe

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December 5, 2011 · 4:00 am

Coming Soon—The Globe


I received some initially devastating career news on Friday.  My long time friend and agent has decided to pass on representing my latest novel.  At first I was crushed.  But then I decided, what the heck?  That just means I get to cut out all the middle men and put this literary wonder out as an eBook myself, as I did with Decisions.

So, what is The Globe?  It’s almost 89,000 words, that’s what it is.

Sorry.  Couldn’t resist:

The Globe—38,500 tons of ocean plying opulence housing in its fabulous apartments some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

Reynard Chevalier—The Globe’s security officer.  An expatriate American with a new name, a new country, a new life, and a past that is rapidly catching up and threatening to destroy him.

Staff Captain Katarina Giordano—Reynard’s boss during the day, his lover at night.

Jane Hanover—The Globe’s latest resident.  The fiancé from Reynard’s previous life.  The woman who has sent Reynard’s past careening on a collision course toward his all too vulnerable present.

Charles Hanover, III—Jane’s philandering husband.  A man who rationalizes his infidelities by demanding that his wife also find solace outside their marriage.

Security Officer Sarah Brighton—Reynard’s amorous Number 2.  A woman too young for Reynard and too determined to accept no for an answer.

Sterling Heyward—The Globe’s reclusive owner and Reynard’s best friend and employer.  A man whose enormous wealth was built spilling the blood of others.

The Globe Slasher—A sadistic sociopath with a very large chef’s knife and an insatiable blood lust for the rich and beautiful.  A serial killer who has reached into the distant past to find inspiration for his perverse grotesqueries.

Louis Guignard—The French police captain.  A man stationed in Saint Barts, hundreds of miles from The Globe.  A man walking Reynard through his investigation via a very tenuous internet connection.  A man who knows that it is only matter of time before the Globe Slasher turns on the one person aboard The Globe who can stop the slayings—Reynard Chevalier.

I spent the past two days working on a cover for The Globe, just to see if I could come up with something acceptable.  I’d really appreciate input from my many fans.  Should I go with one of these two covers?  Start from scratch?  Hire out the whole enterprise, as I did with Decisions?  Any ideas?  Here are the concepts:

The Globe—Cover 1

The Globe—Cover 2

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August 26, 2011 · 12:05 am

Trotting the Globe Aboard The Globe


Please indulge me as I do a little boasting . . . to strut my stuff, as it were, for a moment.  On this blog we’ve covered everything from photography tips to travel.  We’ve done movie and book reviews.  We’ve drooled over gourmet food and fine wines.  We’ve had a chuckle or two over the occasional humor piece.  We’ve been keeping up to date on the crisis this country faces in aviation safety and the deterioration of the air traffic control system.

But, while fun and informative, these are not the primary reason for this blog—they’re just the bait I use to get you to spread the word about and perhaps buy my current mystery novel and to consider purchasing my upcoming action thrillers—the Ian Drake series.

So, it is with great pride and considerable relief that I can finally announce that, for all practical purposes, the first draft of my mystery thriller The Globe is finally coming to an end.  Less than half a chapter to go, and that’ll get knocked out by probably Saturday evening, if not sooner.

It’s been a long, hard journey on this one, and it is by far the most difficult and complex tale I’ve yet woven.  It’ll probably take another month to complete my initial rewrites and editing, and then it goes out to my beta readers for additional review, suggestions, and corrections.

After that, it’s off to my agent Henry, who will get first shot at seeing if he wants to represent this piece and find a publisher for it.

In its current, almost finished form, The Globe stands at 84,984 words spread out over thirty-seven chapters covering 405 manuscript pages.  Hopefully that word count will get knocked down a bit to around the 75,000 range, or a little shorter, after I tighten up the prose and the story a bit.

After The Globe is shipped out to New York, I begin the rewrites of my three Ian Drake novels for publication on both the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook later this year.  This series was written back in the 1990s, and book two had at one point three studios considering it for movie treatment.  Alas, that’s a long, sad tale that we’ve already covered in A Tale of Woe and Misfortune Like No Other.  At any rate, you can look for the Ian Drake series to start trickling out in the next several few months.

And what is the Ian Drake series?  Ian Drake is a globe-trotting aircraft sabotage investigator working for the U.S. Government in the immediate wake of the fall of the Eastern Bloc and during the early rise in global terrorism.  He travels to exotic and exciting destinations, from the Swiss Alps and Egypt in his first adventure, An On Time Departure, to Sydney, Australia in And the Games Begin.  This second story in the series, And the Games Begin, is the tale nearly optioned by Hollywood.

The third novel in the series is Grand Slam, a pulse-pounding thriller that takes you from the Arizona desert, to a maximum security prison in Alabama, to U.S. airbases in England and Italy, to a tantalizing chase through Turkey.  Grand Slam culminates in a heart-stopping tale of death that finds Ian Drake aboard a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea—a ship caring not only the rich and famous, but also a very deadly secret cargo that will leave the U.S. military no choice but to sink the ship with all aboard, or risk a new and devastating war in the Middle East.

If action is your escape, you’ll love this upcoming series.

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