Area 51 Nightstalkers: Containment, Concealment, Control

Enjoy an excerpt from Area 51 Nightstalkers released 11 December 2012.

Moms sat back in her seat and gestured for Nada to begin.

The team sergeant got up and picked up the top binder. “Nuclear Protocol, including facilities, materials, weapons, etcetera.” He tossed it to Kirk, who caught it. Nada picked up the second binder. “Biological Protocol. There are some nasty bugs out there, and hard as it is to believe, there are people in labs trying to make nastier ones. It’s not like Mother Nature can’t be quite the motherfucker by herself.” He tossed the second binder. Third binder: “Chemical. Really, you do need to read all this stuff, cause Doc or an Acme might not be by your side. Pretend you’re in graduate school for things that can kill. Learn which ones kill quickest and fastest.” He paused. “You know your three Bs right?”

“Breathing, bleeding, broken,” Kirk said, listing the priorities for triage.

Nada nodded. “For us it’s the three Cs. Containment is the first priority. Nothing else matters if whatever shit we’re trying to deal with spreads. Then concealment.” He noted Kirk’s surprised look. “Panic can kill as much as the actual problem. Word of some of the things we’ve had to squash gets out, people will go bonkers. The people out there in the world got twenty-four-hour news channels. They’re hungry for bad shit, like the way weathermen pray for hurricanes to hit so they can stand on that pier with the wind howling around them. The news would eat up the stuff we deal with and the public would panic. War of the Worlds–type shit. The third C is control. That one is regulated by Ms. Jones’s directive whether it’s dry, damp, or wet. Got it?”

“Containment, concealment, control.”

“Good.”

Nada picked up a stack of three more binders. “This is just a bunch of stuff. And some of it is pretty weird. They list every single mission the Nightstalkers have been on since it was founded in 1948. Makes for great late-night reading.”

Moms cut in for the first time. “Don’t concern yourself so much with the problems, because some of them won’t happen again, but look at the way the team dealt with it and consider possibilities.”

Nada dumped the three binders on top of the ones already in Kirk’s lap.

He grabbed the thickest one off the desk. “This is the one I call the Dumb Shit Scientist Protocol, but don’t ever let Doc hear that. This lists all the incredibly dumb things scientists have done that damn near wiped out the human race.” Nada’s eyes shifted to the wall between the CP and Ms. Jones’s office, as if she could hear through two feet of steel-reinforced concrete. “Pretty high up on that list is what happened at Chernobyl.”

Last, Nada tossed a pocket-sized team Protocol. “That’s your first priority reading. You’ve got forty-eight hours, then anyone can ask you anything in it and you’d better know it and your place in whatever it is.

Here is an overview of the entire Area 51 Series.

Tell us who your favorite Alien is (from any movie or book) and be entered in a  drawing for a free audio book from the Area 51 Series.

 

 

Tis The Season… FREE eBooks

Happy Holidays from everyone at Cool Gus Publishing. And for all those people who found an eReader or tablet under the tree this year we’ve got some free eBooks. Something for everyone.

Bob has two eBooks that are currently FREE on Kindle.

FREE on Kindle

Chasing the Ghost is currently ranked #1 in Men’s Adventure and #1 in Political. Review from a reader on Amazon: “Chasing the Ghost is tight, fast moving action/mystery…just the kind of story Mayer does best.” Covert operative Horace Chase has been chasing ghosts his entire life. First, his Medal-of-Honor winner father who died in Vietnam without ever meeting his son. And left him the legacy of an automatic appointment to the Military Academy at West Point which shaped the next thirty-five years of Chase’s life. Then, the ghost of his mother, who died while he was at war in Afghanistan and wounded, causing him to resign his commission and return to the United States, a lost soul.  Chase now wears two hats as a Federal counter-terrorism liaison to the local police department in Boulder, Colorado where he becomes embroiled in two seemingly un-related cases. Working as a detective with Boulder PD he chases another death, this one the apparent rape/murder of Rachel Stevens, an upscale housewife attending night classes at the University of Colorado. And with his counter-terrorism team he is embroiled in a series of killings involving a militia group, a rogue ex-Special Forces officer, a psychopathic ex-CIA contract mercenary, and ruthless drug runners. From the streets of Boulder, to the highest railroad tunnel in the world, to a swingers club hiding in plain site in suburbia, Afghanistan starts to look pretty good to Chase.

Free on Kindle

Also FREE by Bob this holiday season on Kindle is Lost Girls. And Lost Girls just got a new cover!

Praise for Lost Girls: “ . . .delivers top-notch action and adventure, creating a full cast of lethal operatives armed with all the latest weaponry. Excellent writing and well-drawn, appealing characters help make this another taut, crackling read.” Publishers Weekly

Praise for Bodyguard of Lies: “Thelma and Louise go clandestine.” Kirkus Reviews

“Heart-racing non-stop action that is difficult to put down.” Mystery News

FREE in iBookstore and Kobo Bookstore

And for those who have either an iPad or a Kobo device, Psychic Warrior Project Aura is FREE. Psychic Warrior takes warfare into the virtual plane through avatars and then reinserts the covert operatives into the real world. The results can be devastating. Mayer uses his real Military experience in the then-classified Special Forces Trojan Warrior program, which was actually conducted, and writes a novel about the new frontier of warfare: the mind. The Russians sink the submarine USS Thresher in 1963 using their classified psychic project, but something goes awry and all are killed. All except one scientist who plans to take the project to a higher level. Decades later, the Russians unleash Chyort, also known as the ‘Devil’. Chyort is a cyborg that can project into the virtual world with almost limitless power and reassemble his avatar anywhere in real world to wreak havoc. As the Russian mafia steals 20 nuclear warheads to auction them to the highest bidder, Chyort implements his own plan of revenge. Sergeant Major Jimmy Dalton and a small team of US Green Berets who were originally trained in Trojan Warrior program are thrust into the Psychic Warrior program. The team, called Bright Gate, must battle Chyort on the virtual plane and take their own avatars into the real world. Their mission seems simple. Stop Chyort. If they fail? World War III…

From the Bestselling Author of Famous Women we have Colin Falconer and Harem as FREE reads on Kindle for the next two days. Here is a really cool storyboard Colin did for it.

Free on Kindle

And finally, Jen Talty’s award winning romantic suspense novel: Jane Doe’s Return is also set to FREE on Kindle. Jane Doe’s Return won The Beacon and The Molly. Imagine spending your entire career looking for the one person you believe will unlock the mystery of who killed your sister only to find her the most unlikely place; in your office, as your new partner. Special Agent Travis Brown has set his life up so he can have access to information that will lead him to the one woman he believes can tell him who killed his sister. But he’s not prepared for the drive and determination of his new partner; Special Agent Shauna Morgan. Her instincts are sharp and her beauty undeniable. His attraction to her is as strong as his need to find his sister’s killer. But Shauna has a secret. A secret that will ultimately put his heart on the line, along with her life. Jane Doe’s Return is a completed contemporary romantic suspense set between the city streets of Albany, New York and the scenic beauty of Lake George where I lived for many years. It is a tale of one woman who believes the only way to move beyond her past, is to shut the door on it, and the man who breaks it down.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday season!

A Book That Can Save Your Life (And Those You Love)

Seriously.  Finally out this week is The Green Beret Survival Guide to the Apocalypse, Zombies & More.  I wanted to get the book out before the end of the world, at least according to the Mayans, who already had their end of the world, so I’m not sure what stock to put in that.  And since the last “end of the world” prediction was for my birthday and it didn’t happen, I appreciate it, because now, at least, my wife knows my birth date.  She always had problems with it in the past.

As a former Green Beret who went through survival training, and then through more survival training, and then through more, and then had to apply much of that training during various deployments around the world, I’m not too thrilled with the survival information that’s available to the average person.  A lot of it is written by hard-core survivalists and too technical.  Other experts focus on hiding out in the hills with their gun and becoming the next Robinson Caruso without my man Friday (they’d shoot him).  I focus more on the most pressing possibilities and also surviving with others, since no man is an island, except what’s his name, Tom Hanks, but even he left the island.

I wanted to write a book for the average person and also wanted to cover emergencies from most likely (power outage, hurricane, accident, burglary, etc) to least likely (Apocalypse, Zombies, extinction event, vampires, etc).  I use humor, experience, film and book examples and real world case studies.  This is a book you can talk about with your family and friends.  I guarantee you will find numerous bits of information that you didn’t know and also you can develop a template for survival.  More importantly, this book gives you the information you need to prepare for an emergency, which you can do right now and is critical.  In Special Forces, most of our success was dependent on our planning.

This book lays out the mindset needed to survive; the five key elements of survival; the Special Forces Area Study; how to build your survival A-Team; equipment needed; proper preparation and actions in your home and your car; then covering a range of emergencies from car accidents to burglary to hurricanes, power outages, vampires, wild fires, plane crash, alien abduction, terrorism and more. Yes, there is humor in the book, because humor is a key element of survival. The pages with humor are designed as Kindling pages (not Kindle) that can be torn out of the print version and used to start a fire.

From the basics, the book moves into detailed survival techniques for water, food, fire, shelter and first aid. Finally, the book concludes with extreme emergencies, where civilization collapses, whether for a short or extended period of time. And yes, that’s when we get to zombies (communicable diseases).

While this post is blatant promotion, it’s because I strongly believe this book is one that people should have.  Even with my own training and experience, researching it, I learned quite a few new things.  Plus, it makes a great holiday gift.

I wish you all the best for December and the holidays!

Nightstalkers by Bob Mayer

Also, I’m collecting survival stories, so if you have one, feel free to share it along with your contact information.  With each blog post where I collect a story, a drawing will be held to give away a copy of the Guide in eBook format to a lucky winner.

The winner from the last blog post is Richard Sutton– please contact us so we can get your prize to you.

Speaking of alien abductions, Area 51 Nightstalkers, continues to be in the top 20 in science fiction for over a week now and is moving up the bestseller lists, ever so slowly.

“You Know Authors: Bunch of Bitchy Little Girls”

Nightstalkers by Bob Mayer

Area 51 Nightstalkers was published yesterday, and it’s already doing quite well.  Of course, being an author, publication is always fraught with peril.  What if the truck carrying the books gets hit by a train also carrying the books and they slam into the warehouse holding the books?  Except the vast majority of my sales are electronic, so then one thinks about solar flares wiping out the electronic grid, or a high altitude nuclear blast with EMP.  Both of which are covered in The Green Beret Survival Guide to the Apocalypse, Zombies & More, which will be published with the next week.  Promise. Except it’s about survival, not saving your eBook.

I digress, as I often do.  The book is in the top 20 in science fiction on Amazon, which is good because that puts it on the first page for anyone searching in that genre.  It’s also a “mover and shaker” going from no ranking, to top 2,000, to top 1,000, to, hmm, not that I’m checking, but let’s face it, we all check:  281 paid right now.

So I’d sent a whiny email to my editor at Amazon the night before last. To give credit, his response was level-headed:  we’re in it for the long haul, etc. etc.  Which is true. eBooks are such a different business model than print, where you have to make the splash out of the gate.  Actually I got an email from 47North explaining all the things that were being done, etc. etc.  Which is, honestly, more than I got in 20 years of traditional publishing.  I mean the response.

So I said please bear with me:  I like the line from the opening credits  of Burn Notice where Sam Axe says to Michael:  “You knows spies, bunch of bitchy little girls.”

And please don’t get upset about the gender reference.  After all, his girlfriend is “Trigger happy”.  And ex.

Authors are like that sometime.  We whine and bitch because every publication is a gamble.  And I don’t gamble. Never, ever.  When I make a bet it’s because I control the outcome.  My first company commander in the First Cav Division made a bet with me that I couldn’t do the 12 mile EIB ruck march (uniform, boots, ruck with I forget how many pounds, weapons, tweety-bird, etc) in under two hours (the standard is three for qualification).  I did it in 1 hour, 59 minutes and 23 seconds.

I won an Irish six pack:  a four pack of Harp beer.  Wait, I’m supposed to be blogging about the Nightstalker team according to the rigorous schedule Jen Talty set up for me, but what the hey.  Want to know more about the team, check out this slideshare (better yet, but the book, eh?)

Also, here are a bunch of blog posts specifically tailored for the book.

CONTEST: I’ll be doing a drawing daily here and on Facebook for the next 6 days. All you have to do is answer a question each day. Today’s giveaway is…An ARC of Area 51 Nightstalkers!

An audio download of Area 51, the first book in the series from Audible (corrected by slave driver Jen).

I think.  If I’m wrong about the prize, Jen will come in and correct it.  But it’s something cool.  Maybe an audio download of Area 51, the first book in the series, from Audible.  Actually, I think that’s it for today.  We’ve already picked the winner from yesterday, but I lost the email Jen sent me with the info.

The WINNER of yesterday’s contest is….drum roll please…Fred Bloom. He posted on Facebook. Fred, I’m putting that up on Facebook now. You can contact me at jentalty @ coolgus dot com and I will make sure Bob ships that book right off…

TODAY’S QUESTION:  Based on the character descriptions in the slideshare, which of the team would you most like to meet and why?  See, I’m driving you to at least look at the slideshare.

Nothing but good time ahead!

 And yes, The Green Beret Survival Guide for the Apocalypse, Zombies & More will be out within the week.  The perfect Xmas and pre-Mayan end of the world gift!