Dave Buschi's Blog, page 2
May 30, 2018
The big idea
With each book I’ve written it was always important to have that clear and center before I put the first words on paper. For me it’s like an ignition button. The thing that gets me started.
So what do I mean by a big idea? I’ll give an example. For THE BACK DOOR MAN, my big idea happened during the 2-week gas crisis in Georgia. A big storm hit the Gulf and had a ripple effect where refineries were affected, deliveries were put on pause, and suddenly gas stations were running out of gas in the entire Southeast. It was a minor blip in the scope of things, but it was crazy for those two weeks. There was a run on every gas station. Once people heard that gas supplies were getting low everybody suddenly had to go top off their tanks. Lines piled up at gas stations. People became crazy. My wife, while waiting in line in her car for a pump to get open, saw two people almost come to blows because one of them thought the other cut in line. It didn’t take much. Just eighteen hours into the gas shortage and this one guy was willing to kill this other guy because he thought the man cut in front of him. I saw similar craziness. Horns blaring. People on edge wondering if they were going to be able to get gas before the tanks went dry. And dry they went everywhere. Every gas station, including the one at Costco near me, went dry by the end of the day. The next day there were cars lined up at Costco at 8:00 a.m. just hoping that a gas delivery was going to happen. Four hours later some of those same cars were still there waiting.
It was that second day into the Great Gas Crisis, as coworkers of mine were wondering if they should join the car line at the Costco across the street, when I got my big idea. Not gas, though. My big idea was this: What if credit cards suddenly stopped working everywhere? I don’t know about you, but for me I’d be in trouble. I never carry cash in my wallet. Even when I do, it usually isn’t much. Definitely not enough to pay for a tank of gas or groceries. I figured I wouldn’t be the only one either. We live in a digital age. We expect those credit cards to work. What if they didn’t, though, just for a day? I could only imagine the panic that would ensue.
Once I had that big idea the juices started flowing. A story developed, took shape, and before I knew it I was writing as fast as I could.
On writing. This helps me. Thought I’d pass it on.
The big idea. With each book I’ve written it was always important to have that clear and center before I put the first words on paper. For me it’s like that ignition button. The thing that gets me started.
So what do I mean by a big idea? I’ll give an example. For my book, THE BACK DOOR MAN, my big idea happened during the 2-week gas crisis in Georgia. A big storm hit in the Gulf and had a ripple effect where refineries were affected, some deliveries were put on pause, and suddenly gas stations were running out of gas in the entire Southeast. It was a minor blip in the scope of things, but it was crazy for those two weeks. There was a run on every gas station. Once people heard that gas supplies were getting low, everybody suddenly had to go top off their tanks (even if they still had half a tank left of gas or more). Lines at gas stations were insane. People became crazy. My wife, while waiting in line in her car for a pump to get open, told me about seeing two people almost come to blows because one of them thought the other cut in line. It didn’t take much. Just eighteen hours into the gas shortage and this one guy was willing to kill this other guy if he didn’t get behind him in line, move his car back, and not cut in front of him. I saw similar craziness. Horns blaring. People on edge wondering if they were going to be able to get gas before the tanks went dry. And dry they went everywhere. Every gas station, including the one at Costco near me, went dry by the end of the day. The next day there were cars lined up at Costco at eight AM in the morning, just hoping that a gas delivery was going to happen. Four hours later some of those same cars were still there waiting.
Absolutely crazy. It was that second day into the Great Gas Crisis, when coworkers of mine were wondering if they should join that car line at the Costco across the street, when I got my big idea. Not gas, though. My big idea was this: What if credit cards suddenly didn’t work? If just everywhere they stopped working? I don’t know about you, but for me, I’d be screwed. I never carry cash in my wallet. Even when I do, it usually isn’t much. Definitely not enough to pay for a tank of gas. Or groceries. I figured I wouldn’t be the only one either. We live in a digital age. We expect those credit cards to work. What if they didn’t, though, just for a day? I could only imagine the panic that would ensue.
Once I had that big idea the juices started flowing. A story developed… took shape. And before I knew it I was writing as fast as I could.
May 16, 2018
Half a billion
This is interesting.
Facebook closed 583m fake accounts in first three months of 2018 (see link below)
April 20, 2018
Yikes!
Where is James Kolinsky when you need him?
April 19, 2018
The Spy Inside
We purchase products that change and make our lives easier. Not all technology is our friend. This article touches briefly on some of the dangers of thinking that latest gadget is just a router, just a camera, just a phone.
April 12, 2018
The Monster that Facebook Helped Create
Reading this article in Bloomberg Businessweek (I’ve included the link below) reminded me of that movie, Boiler Room, that starred Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Giovanni Ribisi, and Nia Long, among others. In that movie a group of twenty-somethings discover an easy road to riches. All they needed was a competitive drive to succeed and a complete and utter lack of morals. That movie came out in 2000, but on a miniature scale could easily have summed up the Wall Street subprime mortgage crisis that created the Great Recession. Bad actors given the right tools can wreck all sorts of unbelievable havoc that impact the rest of us.
The last year we’ve seen what bad actors in Russia have done on Facebook. The articles about how they used Facebook to try and influence our election and stir discord in our country have been too numerous to count. This article in Bloomberg shines a light on some of the other bad actors using Facebook. Like for the actors in Boiler Room, the objective is money. The causalities of their money-making schemes are nameless. Not shown. Those nameless ones are the suckers. Us.
This article is worth reading. I found it amazing that Facebook reps, with all that’s going on in the news, presented at a convention in mid-2017 to a room full of attendees all eager to run ad scams. Those attendees were just like the new recruits in Boiler Room. Young and eager and ready to lay waste to humanity.
(Bloomberg Businessweek article link below)
March 23, 2018
Perfect Storm
Years from now this period of time, which I’ll call “T-time” (T as in Tornado) to give it a name, will be covered ad nauseum in books by insiders. For now we’re getting the outsider view. Peeks through the windows with each article that begins to flesh out a reality that belongs in a spy novel.
Yesterday there was this article about Guccifer 2.0 being a Russian operative. Guccifer 2.0, to give a brief recap, was the individual who breached the DNC and provided all those emails to WikiLeaks that were disseminated to the voting public. Emails, if you recall, that didn’t exactly put Hillary Clinton’s campaign in a favorable light.
The day before that article there was this article where the former director of the CIA, John O. Brennan, speculated that Russia may have something on Donald Trump.
Brennan is not the first one to think this. To back up a second, let’s look at some of the things that Russia has done to us recently.
Hacked our election.
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/13/russian-breach-39-states-us-elections/
Hacked our power grid.
Tried to sow division and discord with every news cycle (below are a few).
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter-targeting/index.html
CNN: ‘Pokemon Go’ was used by Russian trolls to sow discord on social media
***
And what does the leader of our country do?
He congratulates the man responsible.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin/index.html
Not exactly the action most of us were hoping for. Generally leaders are supposed to protect who they lead. Make sure that if someone messes with us they don’t get a free pass. Or two. Or three. Or nine hundred and ten and counting.
Which does beg the question. What do they have on you, Mr. President?
Could it have anything to do with this (financial ties to Russia)?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-tax-law-firm-deep-ties-russia/story?id=47376041
Is it something to do with questionable real estate deals (possible money laundering)?
https://www.curbed.com/2018/1/12/16885354/trump-condo-money-laundering-report
Or is it this (pee tape)?
https://mashable.com/2018/03/16/donald-trump-pee-tape-golden-showers-explainer/#k8tsiFmtesqh
Guess we’ll have to wait.
Truth does come out sooner or later. It has a way of doing that.
March 8, 2018
A thriller for these times
Two weeks ago a Russian journalist, Alexander Anichkin, wrote this article about my book INSIDER X (link for article below). The article is written in Russian and I used Google Chrome’s “translator button” to read the article (link for Google’s free Chrome Web browser, also below).
Initially, Mr. Anichkin reached out to me on Twitter and asked if he could write an article about my book on his blog, Tetradki. The news about Robert Mueller’s recent Russian indictments had made him think about my book. A book which I wrote over four years ago.
I’m not surprised that folks are seeing parallels with my book and the current news making the headlines. I am surprised, however, to have a Russian journalist one of those folks. It just goes to show you how words do have power. They can reach across oceans.
In the last few months, INSIDER X has proven to be a very prescient story. At the time I wrote it, I suspected that much of what I was writing about was really happening. Nevertheless it was fiction… a suspense thriller meant to showcase a frightening ‘what if’ scenario. A scenario that has become very real as Russia’s interference with our 2016 election has become widely known.
Scary stuff. Particularly since I suspect what we see in the news is just the tip of the iceberg.
(link below to Mr. Anichkin’s article about INSIDER X)
http://european-book-review.blogspot.fr/2018/02/blog-post_21.html
(link below to Google’s free Chrome Web browser)
Hello from Russia
Two weeks ago a Russian journalist, Alexander Anichkin, wrote this article about my book INSIDER X (link for article below). The article is written in Russian and I used Google Chrome’s “translator button” to read the article (link for Google’s free Chrome Web browser, also below).
Initially, Mr. Anichkin reached out to me on Twitter and asked if he could write an article about my book on his blog, Tetradki. The news about Robert Mueller’s recent Russian indictments had made him think about my book. A book which I wrote over four years ago.
I’m not surprised that folks are seeing parallels with my book and the current news making the headlines. I am surprised, however, to have a Russian journalist one of those folks. It just goes to show you how words do have power. They can reach across oceans.
In the last few months, INSIDER X has proven to be a very prescient story. At the time I wrote it, I suspected that much of what I was writing about was really happening. Nevertheless it was fiction… a suspense thriller meant to showcase a frightening ‘what if’ scenario. A scenario that has become very real as Russia’s interference with our 2016 election has become widely known.
Scary stuff. Particularly since I suspect what we see in the news is just the tip of the iceberg.
(link below to Mr. Anichkin’s article about INSIDER X)
http://european-book-review.blogspot.fr/2018/02/blog-post_21.html
(link below to Google’s free Chrome Web browser)
https://www.google.com/chrome/
March 2, 2018
Glimpse into a troll farm
Fascinating video of a troll farm employee. When I wrote INSIDER X over four years ago I never anticipated that almost everything in that book would play out in headlines and become essentially non-fiction.
