Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff's Blog, page 33

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Go Forth and Kick Some Ass: Book Preview

"Life is tough and this book reminds you of that, but it also reminds you that YOU are tougher than anything life can throw at you. Mark has taken years of experience and boiled it down to an inspiring, humorous and dead on serious look at what you need to do to be successful in life. It isn't as difficult as you might believe."

- C.C. CHAPMAN – New Media trailblazer and bestselling author of "Content Rules"

Go Forth and Kick Some Ass

by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

YOUR MISSION

Beware the Boogeyman for he is real.

Not flesh and blood, for flesh and blood can be stopped with a silver bullet or a stake to the heart; the Boogeyman is as real as any monster you can imagine and believe me, twice as dangerous.

No matter how far you run, he can catch you.

No matter where you hide, he can find you.

The Boogeyman lives in the shadows of your mind, in the dark crevices of your consciousness waiting to spring out and kill your happiness. Kill it dead. Slice its beating heart out and show it to your face as your terror scream is locked in your throat with no escape.

And the Boogeyman does this by way of its two greatest spells that it will attempt to cast upon you like some kind of evil wizard in the night.

Fear and Doubt.

You know the Boogeyman. You have met him. You have felt the touch of his icy fingers against your skin and watched the gooseflesh raise upon your arm in tiny bumps.

The Boogeyman is your mortal enemy. If you let him close he will keep you from that which you desire most:

Success. Happiness. Contentment.

If you let the Boogeyman control your actions, he will take over your life and treat you like a puppet on a string. He will destroy everything you work to create. He will strangle your hopes and dreams.

Fear and Doubt. Doubt and Fear.

Those two things will derail you from your path and once the Boogeyman hits you with one of these debilitating emotions, it's not long before the other will breed inside of you like a blackened evil seed full of poison.

Fear and Doubt are the most powerful forces that can keep you from finding success. Alone or together they can paralyze you.

Close your eyes. Imagine the following:

Red wire. Green wire.

Timer counting down.

You gonna cut one or just watch the clock run down to zero?

Can you even imagine having to ever make a decision like that?

Red wire. Green wire.

Let's just hope you're not colorblind. This will be pretty difficult, as is.

Pick the one you think is right. Say a small prayer that you have chosen correctly. Use your cutters. Do it fast.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that chances are good you won't be faced with anything quite literally as harrowing as disarming a bomb. Although, and this is just my opinion, if you happen to be using this book as part of training yourself on explosive ordinance disposal you may want to consider reading faster.

Since the path to success is often fraught with chaos, you can never account for every possible variable. Because shit happens, you evaluate your best mental snapshot of the situation, weigh it against your goals and then take your next step with full commitment.

Do you hesitate? Do you falter under pressure to succeed?

Perhaps the effects of your past still weigh heavily upon you. So much so that it hampers your ability to make progress.

Repeat after me: I am my own worst enemy.

I do things to sabotage myself.

Sometimes I even realize I'm doing it and I still can't stop myself from monkey-wrenching the whole damn thing.

That's right, monkey wrenching: the act of screwing yourself out of what you have worked so hard for.

We have somehow conditioned ourselves to accept that we can, might, and will cause the gears of our own progress to come grinding to a halt because that's just who we are.

That's how we are wired.

One day I gazed at the face looking back at me in the mirror and asked it a couple of tough questions.

Hey Face,

How hard should it be to find a life I can truly be passionate about?

If happiness isn't going to find me, how will I find it?

Face had no answer.

So I sat and I thought.

Understand that I had realized early enough in life that happiness is tied hand-in-hand with self-worth, and by that I don't mean what you have in your bank account, but by how you feel inside about the progress of your life, and the trajectory in which it is headed.

My happiness rises and falls with the successes I have—in work, in love, and at play.

As I looked at Face in the mirror, I wondered which Face would be staring back at me in the years to come and I realized whatever I was going to do with my life, I just truly wanted to be successful at it.

Face agreed with me, even if he was just along for the ride.

Success breeds confidence.

Success breeds opportunity.

Success breeds more success.

And above all, success breeds happiness and some of the deepest satisfaction you can ever know. It is just that simple.

That being said, don't ever mistake simple for easy. The only thing in life I ever had that was easy required a penicillin shot afterwards.

Look, if all you want out of life is fame and fortune then you should just go wait in line to buy a lottery ticket or get on a reality TV show; basically just punch your one-way ticket to the magical land of Dipshitville. Just because you think you should have success doesn't mean it will come to you. Success, for the most part, requires effort and I have to tell you that a lousy work ethic along with a sense of entitlement is not life's perfecta, my friend.

To find success in this world, you have to be willing to accept an uphill climb. You have to want it.

First, take a deep breath. Now second, really and truly ask yourself, "Do I want it? Do I want to enjoy the rewards that success can and will bring emotionally and more than likely, financially?"

If you answered no, you're too fucking stupid to read this book.

If you answered yes, I'm not going to drench you in bullshit platitudes like, "You just made the first step of the biggest journey of your life". Hell no. This isn't about "trust circles" and "wish penguins" or any of that sappy New Age crap.

There is no mystical healing crystal that will envelop you in a shining glow and make your life easier and everything go your way.

Trust me. I would know. If there were I would have bought the damn thing already.

If you answered, "Yes, I want it." I want you to understand there is indeed a road ahead and it may not be all smooth sailing.

Remember, there is no easy money.

Sure, you may hear about tech workers making millions off "stock options" and wish you were so lucky. Well guess what? You are that lucky. You already have stock options in yourself.

It's called, sweat equity, and it generally means the more work you put into your chosen passion, the greater the reward will be when those efforts finally pay off.

And what I wish to do by giving you these keystones for personal growth is make the road ahead much easier to navigate and that sweat equity much more valuable.

So go ahead and ask yourself, "Why not me?"

Though I won't pretend this book contains a secret formula to riches, I have a feeling that by the time you finish reading this from cover to cover you'll be on your way to never having to ask yourself that question again.

Today, when I look at the mirror, Face is much older and has its share of battle scars but I can tell you Face is happy. Face is satisfied.

I want you to be able to look in the mirror and see yourself as a being of infinite potential. I want you to be excited about the future and taking control of your destiny. This book is for those of you out there who wish to be doing or getting something you want, but are stymied from achieving it simply out of fear.

For years I allowed myself to be held back from my true potential; the forward march of my own progress stopped cold. There were things I wanted to do with my life but were afraid to.

Inside the confines of my barricades were my nest and a certain level of safety.

Outside lived a monster. I knew his name.

The Boogeyman.

Nobody is going to save you.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there is no cavalry. No knight in shining armor who will come and rescue you from this life that seems like it could be so much more.

Should be so much more.

Am I wrong?

I know you have been waiting.

That, I again hate to say, as been part of the problem why there is a divide between where it is in life you wish to be and where you are right now.

You are not where you want to be.

You have been waiting for the problems and the shortfalls in your life to be taken care of by someone else:

The person who will by way of job, relationship or circumstance will turn your life around; A hero to save you from the dismal fate of an unhappy existence.

A lifetime wishing you were someone else.

Stop waiting. Life is capable of being a lot more than just a string of disappointments.

The only person who can save you is you.

I knew that if I ever wanted to achieve the things in life I desired most I would have to leave the confines of my nest and face my demons.

It would take COURAGE.

And CHARACTER.

PERSEVERANCE.

FOCUS.

But as I learned, these superpowers needed to defeat the forces that held me back were already inside me.

They are inside you, too. You just need to find them.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is one of great importance:

Find your superpowers.

Be the hero of your own life story.

You can do it. Just turn the page.

 

COURAGE

Alive in you and I is something we share with countless others. We are dreamers, but our dreams are far from aimless. Aimless dreamers stay within the confines of their nests and never dare come outside for fear of getting their hands dirty.

Aimless dreamers talk big and never do a damn thing.

Aimless dreamers want you to believe they know everything, when in fact, their bluster is only a smokescreen. Hidden behind their mask is a scared child who knows very little, or has only experienced life through other people's eyes.

You and I though, our dreams may seem lofty, and to some pure fantasy; our dreams differ from those of the aimless like night and day. Our dreams are built upon a burning desire to rise above the status quo that surrounds us.

This is the view from 10,000 feet above the ground. It may be there over the horizon out of sight for the time being, but you know in your heart of hearts that its there just waiting for you.

Do you really want it?

*****

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Go Forth and Kick Some Ass (Be the Hero of Your Own Life Story) - Audiobook

This book is for anyone who has ever suffered from the crippling self doubt that comes from feeling like your life is stuck in a rut.

 

 

 

 

Diary of a Madman: Book Preview

"Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff's work blends the best elements of the noir, horror and thriller genres. Gritty and compelling, his writing is masterfully paced, pulls narrative tension as taut as piano wire … and then goes for the throat. Supremely talented, Nemcoff crafts finely-tuned muscle car fiction: delightful, determined and dangerous."
–J.C. Hutchins, author of Personal Effects: Dark Art and 7th Son: Descent
DIARY OF A MADMAN

by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

CHAPTER 1

Dear Diary,

Today, I woke up at 7 a.m., stretched for 20 minutes and made myself an egg white and spinach omelet with two pieces of wheat toast and the last of the margarine. Watched the news on KTLA for fifteen minutes. Caught a story about a possible teachers' strike. Afterwards, I took a shower and got dressed (white buttoned-down JC Penney shirt, tan Dockers pants). Grabbed my gym bag and went into the office to pick up some new brochures. Told my supervisor I had a sales call in Torrance, but instead drove three hours to Bakersfield and murdered a man named Phil Testaleone.

Phil's house was located in a tract of small and inelegant homes built in the 1950s. Two bedrooms, one bath, twelve hundred square feet, including one-car garage, all perched atop less than a quarter acre of land. Original brick exterior. Twenty-year-old aluminum windows (why people don't replace those awful things is beyond me?). Roof that appears to have last been shingled more than a decade ago. Chain-link fence in the front. Old picket fence in need of a coat of paint on the south side belonging to the neighbors. Slightly bent screen door (lock already broken). Schlage doorknob lock with two deadbolts on the front and two on the back door leading out into the yard behind the house.

Grass was freshly cut, possibly yesterday (I love that smell). A rusted and forgotten swing set idles near the fence (made back when they used to build them out of steel, and not plastic) right next to a dirty and spider-infested pile of firewood. It was almost 2 p.m. when I got there. I circled the block and saw nobody, which was exactly what I was expecting since in the weeks I had been casing Phil's house nothing in this neighborhood had changed. A few doors down, the one house on the street for sale still had the same sign on the lawn. (And someone please tell me why the hell do realty whores think they need to put their mug shot on everything? Sheesh!).

Three blocks away, I parked on the street with several other cars near the Von's market on Henderson. In the back seat I took the grey meter reader's coverall out of my gym bag and put it on. (It's a bit looser after I dropped those five pounds). The surgical gloves, I slipped into my pocket.

Because there was no need, I didn't bother appearing to be checking meters until I was on Phil's block, and with the hat pulled down on my head and these fake eyeglasses, I was nobody. I once read somewhere that the whole idea when they designed these uniforms was to make the wearer invisible. (I should have thought of getting one of these outfits sooner, but what can you do? Live and learn.)

At Phil's house, I made it into his backyard by hopping over the gate when nobody was looking.

One scary moment, I caught my leg on the top of the fence and slightly ripped the coverall. Quickly checked the fence for fibers and my leg to see if I was bleeding. Luckily no on both, but decided I should seriously consider dropping another five pounds.

With no one home and both neighbors at work, it took me less than a minute to pry one of the flimsy aluminum windows with a screwdriver. As I got it open, I thought of the combined four deadbolts on both doors and had to stifle a small laugh.

I pulled myself into the second bedroom and, once inside, tried to take in the aroma of Phil's house but was denied the home's natural scent by way of a Glade plug-in air freshener trying to convince me summer lilacs smell like something from Dow Chemical.

I'm almost convinced people are so accustomed to what's fake that they prefer it to the real thing. I mean, when the fuck have you ever had grape soda that actually tasted like grapes?

In the hallway, I could catch the hint of bleach in the air and followed it to a pair of accordion doors hiding an old washer/dryer pair. Inside the washer was a load of whites. Hanes underpants and T-shirts, socks. Probably all new, as of two Christmases ago.

The dryer was empty.

Very little in the fridge except for tomato juice, eggs, bread, mayonnaise, mustard, deli-cut lunchmeat (ham and beef tongue) and Swiss cheese. In the cupboards, I found mostly soup and one bottle of imitation maple syrup. There was hardly any doubt in my mind Phil has lived alone here ever since his mother passed away a year and a half ago. Throughout the house, I counted three photos of her. One faded black and white snapshot of a young woman with wavy hair wearing the uniform of a WAC from the Second World War, reminds me of an old postcard.

At some point, I realized I'd been staring at the WAC photo for fifteen minutes. Honestly, it started to give me the creeps, so I pushed it off the wall. After that, I went into the garage to hunt around.

Phil came home right on time, a little past six. I had been waiting just behind the door and when he closed it while flipping through his mail, I grabbed him from behind. I clamped my right hand over his mouth very tightly and used my left to hit him in the neck with the stun gun. He reacted quickly, quicker than I thought, trying to elbow me. Everybody gets one good shot thanks to the adrenaline. Thankfully he didn't get the lucky shot.

His elbow to my ribs didn't hurt at all and as I kicked his legs out from under him and brought him to the floor I could feel the fight go right out of his body. I waited for the stun gun to recharge and hit Phil again, holding it to his skin until he passed out.

I originally had thought I would drag him to the kitchen but after some thought I finally decided on the small dining area.

Phil awoke a half hour later, and as expected, tried to scream through the duct tape covering his mouth. I had wrapped it three times around his head to make sure there was no chance—better safe than sorry. He was secured to a chair at the head of the table, wrists and ankles taped to the thick armrests and legs. They really don't make furniture like that anymore.

I kept the light low and the shades drawn, nothing out of the ordinary. I even put the TV on in the living room. (It's the small details that matter. Remembering them reminds me I'm in control.)

When Phil came to, his eyes went so wide I nearly had to laugh. He looked like one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons when Elmer Fudd sits on a thumbtack or something. I could see that he was scared, even though he tried to pull it together quickly.

But once he saw what I had taken from his garage, he broke down. He had to have known what was going to happen next.

Truth was, I hadn't expected to find a cordless drill, but I did come across an old plug-in Craftsman that was heavier than a brick along with a nicely coiled twenty-five-foot orange extension cord. The drill bits found in the box nearby were old and needed sharpening, but I was pretty certain they'd be good enough to go through skin, muscle and bone.

Hovering over Phil, I held up the drill and gunned it once for effect. I watched him begin rocking back and forth in the heavy chair, struggling to break free out of instinct. Had he been thinking, he would have realized it was a completely fruitless effort.

Where does the saying "fruitless" come from? Archaic from when folks used to go out foraging to survive and the resulting feeling of coming back empty-handed? I can't understand it. Why not take a crossbow with you? You're bound to find something to eat if you look hard enough.

I let Phil rock back and forth a bit because I could finally smell the acrid scent of sweat coming off him. Eventually, I pushed him backward, tipping him over until he and the chair slammed on the floor half on and half off the Persian rug. I'd bet anything that was a real Persian too, not some made-in-Mexico knockoff.

I leaned down and pushed the point of the bit against Phil's shoulder and the moment I hit the trigger his body jolted as if struck by lightning. I put my other hand on his chest to hold him in place and drilled until I hit bone. I was feeling good so I drilled a second hole before moving to the other shoulder. Then I decided the holes weren't big enough so I went back to the garage. There, hanging on an old pegboard, was a thick, half-inch masonry bit I'd missed before, still wrapped in the blister pack it had been sealed in sometime during the 1970s.

When I'd gotten back to Phil's dining room, he had managed to roll over onto his side in a lame effort to get to the door. I kicked him back over and told him I was going to punish him for his disobedience, and I used the masonry bit on his hip, actually feeling it snap once I punched through the thick bone.

The other thing I'd brought back with me from the garage was a nice old-fashioned claw hammer. I actually had to hold each of his knees down with one hand while I went to work on them with the other. (Five whacks to shatter the left one. Seven for the right.) It had always been my feeling that if you break the knees first, it makes it easier to do the feet without too much of a fight.

I took Phil's shoes off (Florsheim, nice!) but left his socks on (one black, one blue—colorblind, Phil? Maybe?) before using the claw end of the hammer on his feet. Within two or three swings, I'd lacerated them, tearing flesh away with each successive blow. I'd even managed to splatter myself in the process so it was probably a good thing I had on an old apron I found in the kitchen.

Phil squeezed his eyes shut from the pain and it annoyed me so I went through the drawers in the kitchen and found a pair of orange-handled scissors. I put my knee into Phil's chest as I pulled his eyelids up and cut them away. There. The last thing I wanted was to have all this hard work of mine go unappreciated.

I took the scissors in my hand and used one of the points to stab right through Phil's cheek into his mouth where it made a slight popping sound. I kept stabbing his cheek until I'd punched a hole big enough to see his tongue then I began stabbing that as well until it looked like a lump of bloody hamburger. I hadn't been planning on doing that. I love it when I improvise.

Phil had weakened immensely from the blood loss, so I decided to think about wrapping things up a bit. I went into his bedroom to get the items I'd found earlier.

When I showed them to Phil, he began crying and it occurred to me that he hadn't even shed a tear until this very moment. I told him what I like about older gardening shears is that they're made from cold-forged steel. Steel made in the U.S., and not this imported Chinese garbage.

"But I guess you know that by now, huh Phil?" I told him.

When I showed him the cigar box I had found hidden high on a shelf in his closet, he tried to turn away. I opened the lid to reveal all of the tiny severed fingers. Most of them shriveled and blackened with age. One, maybe half the size of my own fingers, looked fairly fresh, maybe a month old.

I held the tiny finger up to him. There was a hint of pink polish on a chipped nail and I thought of a news story I'd seen weeks ago about an eight year-old girl who'd vanished from a playground as her mother's attention was focused on a cell phone. I'd seen the posters with the girl's face as far away as L.A.

Jody Sue Montgomery.

They never found her, and right now I was pretty certain I was holding up her ring finger. One that would never see an engagement or wedding ring because of Phil Testaleone, a forty-seven-year-old pedophile who, as the cigar box would testify, apparently loved to collect trophies.

I put the small and delicate finger back into the box and closed the lid. I picked up the claw hammer and used the head to smash into the duct tape covering his mouth, bringing it down hard as I heard his teeth shatter underneath. I believe I said something to him, but for the life of me, I can't remember what. It'll probably come back to me later.

At some point, I must have turned the hammer around to the claw end because when I looked down, Phil's face had caved in on one side. Quickly, I stopped because I wanted to make sure he was positively identified.

So then I picked up the drill and used the masonry bit on his abdomen and chest, trying to remember where all of the major organs were located. After several tries, I found his heart and sometime during the second hole I'd put in it, it must have given out.

I slipped out of Phil's shirt (and the pair of his shoes I'd squeezed into). In the kitchen sink, I used a lighter to completely melt the surgical gloves I'd been wearing before dropping them down the disposal. I took off my coveralls and put on the dark sweatpants and shirt in my gym bag and left out the back door sometime after 1 a.m. The street was dark and quiet and I walked to my car and drove home. All the way back, I fought the urge to stop and pick up a pack of cigarettes.

*****

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Diary of a Madman (Kindle)

Diary of a Madman (Nook)

WARNING: EXTREME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL CONTENT.
DIARY OF A MADMAN is a splatterpunk symphony of hardcore violence and sex wrapped in a tight-as-nails noir narrative about loss of self. Told in a casual first person style, DIARY OF A MADMAN details one man's fixation with infamous serial killers such as John Wayne Gacy, Harv "The Hammer" Carignan, The Genessee River Killer and Andrew Cunanan and his obsession with catching the serial murderer known as the "Interstate Slasher". During the day, he hides behind his bland persona as a salesman but outside of the office politics he is very serious about his "hobby". However, as he kills more victims his world begins to unravel around him and what he finds on his murder and sex-fueled journey will shock you right to the very last page.

What listeners are saying on iTunes about DIARY OF A MADMAN

Wonderfully Delicious – A Window Into the Darkness.

The author/narrator truly captures the deviancy of a serial killer's mind, heart and soul. The author paints an authentic profile of a killer. It appears the author has done a commendable job on his research. As a professor of child psychology, with a strong interest in violent behavior disorders, I enjoyed peering inside the mind (while fictional) of a serial killer. Thank you, Mark.

-JamesPh.D.

…His precise knowledge of human physiology lends an almost Tom-Clancy-like second-by-second suspense to the actual description of this murderous efficiency, which is very very chiling (Nemcoff must have some medical traiing)… this book was an unexpected guilty pleasure, and I found myself checking my earbuds to make sure no one was overhearing his wickedly delicious narrative.

-stacy_a_lbc

I have to say the first chapter threw me for a loop. The detail of the murders and the language were a bit unsettling. After the second chapter… I have become addicted to the book. The description, from the point of view of a killer, is definitely colorful, insightful and entertaining. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a beautifully written thriller.

-BOLESE

WOW! Truly twisted and unavoidably addicting.

-Fergibaby

 

The Doomsday Club: Book Preview

"Reads like a bullet train. I couldn't put it down!" - BERT LOVITT, Director of the feature film PRINCE JACK

"Nemcoff's stories cut to the chase — blistering action meets brutal reality on the way to over-the-top, big-budget finishes." – NYT Bestselling author, SCOTT SIGLER

THE DOOMSDAY CLUB

by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff
CHAPTER 1

Hale doesn't really seem to notice your life has headlonged into a massive clusterfuck of sorts. Not that you ever really expect him to but in your sometimes incredibly naive way of thinking, you've been hoping he'll mention that you haven't showered, shaved, gone outside in days, or eaten much more than Cheetos from the rusted-out, hunk of junk vending machine down the hall. For Christ's sake, the least he could do is mention the haircut you'd given yourself. Though, you suppose if it was your roommate turning into a dirty, reeking, Cheeto-eating poster boy for mental patient hairstyles, you'd probably do your best to say nothing either. Truly, the funniest thing about this is that if he would just crack open one of his Psych textbooks long enough, he might even recognize this as a complete cry for help on your part.

It's around the fourth or fifth day that he finally says something about it.

"I used to call her Mitten because she smothered you and gave you absolutely no distinctive form," he tells you.

You glare daggers into his soul as he shakes his head.

"Thank you, drive through," you answer.

At this point Hale picks up the framed photo on your desk, the one you've been unable to look away from since falling into this funk—a snap of Jackie and you in better times, and frisbees it through the open window.

You yelp as if he had carved out your spleen with a wooden spoon, knowing if you weren't feeling so damned helpless you might sock him in the eye. Instead, you sit and stare at the empty space the photo of the woman you once loved had, until just now, occupied. To Hale's credit, at least he doesn't remind you that this is the second time this month you've been kicked to the curb.

Last year, Coach Riggs moved you from the outfield to starting shortstop. A lot of your teammates had hopes for getting to the bigs after graduation but you knew you'd never have the chops to go to the show so you were just happy not to ride pine. As a complete surprise to no one, you had a very lackluster season. You didn't quite suck but you didn't really shine either—except once.

In your inimitable way you blamed your sorry-ass excuse of a decent on-base percentage on the lack of a good bat. Everybody thought it was a steaming load, but in your gut you truly believed it. Jackie had gotten so sick of hearing about it that right before the third to last game of the season she bought you a brand new aluminum Louisville Slugger and damn if it didn't look like something King Arthur could have pulled from a stone to slay a dragon with. On the spot, you dubbed it Excalibur. Jackie threw her arms around you, kissed you and said the words that put the ping back into your swing:

"Get thee a hit and thou mayest bed a lusty wench this evening."

You went three for four that afternoon, including the triple that scored the game-winning run. You even homered in each of the last two games of the season. That damn bat made all the difference in your swing and your confidence and you treated it like some sort of holy relic by mounting it on a rack on the wall above your bed. This year, though, your mind is elsewhere and you field like someone punched a hole in your glove. At the plate you can't see the ball to save your life. When Coach Riggs pulls you aside to say he's making room for someone else on the roster until you get your head on straight, you pack your stuff and leave without saying a single word.

***

You're anxious as Hale leaves to get your picture from the street, thinking some wino in this crappy neighborhood has already run off with it. When Hale comes back twenty minutes later, having replaced the shattered frame with something cheap from the corner market, you snatch it from him with both hands. Your heart still sinks. Jackie a.k.a. "Mitten" had been your steady girl for most of the last twenty-six months, two weeks and three days and the fact that she'd ejected you from her life with all of the fanfare usually reserved for tossing a cigarette butt from a car window was not exactly a state secret around here anymore. Nor was the fact that she had done so because you had become one unbearably morose son of a bitch.

Made you wonder how come you were always the last to know. Never before it happens but boy if a moment of horrifying enlightenment didn't strike you between the eyes just as the words were about to spill out of her mouth. You have this crazy theory. You think your balls know and they crawl right up into your belly. They do a duck and cover and all of sudden you sense them pushing up against your gut and you know that it's all turned into a big nine-ways-to-Sunday pooch-screw. It just beat the hell out of you how they got to be so damn smart in the first place.

And that's when Hale sighs, reaches into his dresser drawer and does what he thinks would be best. He packs a very, very large bong hit for the two of you.

"A friend with weed…" he offers.

"Is a friend indeed," you shoot back. Hale grins at you and today more than ever with that poker-straight hair of his he has that Messiah look that some dudes just have. Jesus with a joint, that is. You often think your little saying is kind of stupid but you do it because it's one of those things that started four years ago and sort of stuck because tradition in a college dorm is saving twenty cases of empties so you can build a beer-can pyramid in the back of your room.

***

"Dude, you want more of this?" Hale passes the joint to you. "I think I've had more hits than the Rolling Stones."

You smoke for a good hour during which time you're joined by Nikko Desic—this real smart, round-shouldered, kind of pimply kid with an underdeveloped face that looks like it could have used more womb time, and your buddy Fuckin' Dan, a skinny guy who can barely put three syllables together without dropping the F-bomb like some kind of redneck Enola Gay. These are your best friends. In private, Hale often half-jokes about someday publishing a paper declaring Dan's profane condition as some sort of speech impediment or something. Right now you could care less.

At this moment, the only thing you know is that for the first time in almost a week you feel nearly human again. Somewhere just north of shit-fire awful and south of fine. You're in metamorphosis from homeless-looking, manic depressive dipshit into giggly, smiley, stoned guy and you feel your pain melt away.

To everyone's annoyance, you start to find every goddamned thing funny. You laugh like hell at the monster zit on Nikko's forehead, at a dirty cartoon titled Bi-curious George that Hale shows you, at your self-inflicted hair wound and more than anything else, you laugh at the bright orange Cheeto stains that look like they'll need to be sandblasted off your fingers. Suddenly you're engrossed, knowing there's no way whatever makes those damn things that godawful color could be anything other than exceedingly detrimental to your health. Your mind races to thoughts of wearing gloves to the dinner table when you go home so the Units don't ask why your hands sport a lovely shade of dayglow toxic-shock monkey piss. Maybe, you think, if it comes down to that you'll buy a pair of oven mitts so you can give your stepdad the finger whenever you feel like it, which incidentally is getting to be quite a lot when you're home.

In a way, you know the city is doing this to you. You're a suburban boy with soft hands. Maybe I don't belong here, you wonder. And as you feel a kind of bubbling euphoric moment of clarity, you stop laughing because of the wave of paranoia that hits you like a sucker punch.

Ten minutes ago you had gotten up to take a leak and when you came back, you were in such a rush to toke up, you forgot to put the towel back under the crack in the door to keep the smoke from leaking out into the hall. This year you couldn't even smoke cigs in this building, let alone doobage, and Hale was very adamant about the whole towel deal. Last year you watched as he got busted more times than James Brown at a wife-beating convention. So many times, in fact, the school threatened to boot his ass out entirely. His father, the ex-stuntman turned porn producer, a stocky fucker who went by the nickname "Bullet", got so pissed that he left the set of Anal Fisted Bitches With Badges 3 to come here and give Hale an earful that you could hear from your old room on the other side of the floor. The old man told him, in no uncertain terms, that if Hale got himself punted from yet another school he'd get his ass beaten Brooklyn style, whatever the hell that meant. So, like any good boy Hale swore he'd straighten up and fly right and that he'd stop smoking pot, a promise he kept for nearly six whole hours after his dad got in the Seven-series and pedaled his deluded old self back to his house in Topanga Canyon and the twenty-year old trophy wife with giant pillowy tits.

This year, Hale lives with you. You get along well but you feel fairly certain it's because you're here on scholarship and he wants his dad to think he's stopped hanging out with his burner friends. His parents buy into it — hook, line and stinker. They love you. You're on the cusp of making something of your life. Little do they know your grades are sinking, your habit is getting as bad as his lately and the two of you account for most of the narf smoked on this floor. You just have the common sense to confine most of your shaking and baking to that little park on Mulholland where you and Jackie used to go sit and watch the lights of Hollywood twinkle like a tray of jewels after a good backseat romp.

And as you toke it up with your pals in your room with what is probably half the floor getting ripped on the second hand smoke leaking out from the crack under the door, you look around and see nobody else has noticed the missing towel. You tell yourself if you can just put the damn thing back where it belongs, it's no harm, no foul, no big damn deal. You reach down into your crotch to check, and to your relief the boys are where they belong. Rock on, brother. Rock on.

As soon as Hale hits off the bong, you reach over to grab the towel and immediately see the thin shaft of light from underneath the door broken by the tree-trunk shadows of a large pair of combat boots on the other side. And even before the heavy knock on the door comes you know exactly that it's the last person on this whole spinning rock that you want to see right now.

Richard "Bo" Boyd, the Resident Assistant on your floor, is without a single iota of doubt, the epitome of low-voltage social reject Marine ROTC attracts on this campus. About guys like Bo, Hale has a theory he's dubbed the teenie weenie syndrome. Men with little dicks grow up over-aggressively trying to measure up against other males. Pity is that even though women can see right through this gross overcompensation, they get drawn to this type of mate because of how easily they can control him by letting him believe he's just as big as anyone else. The often overlooked and sad part of the whole damn thing is that if the woman remains unsatisfied sexually, she may decide to hunt down an extracurricular larger organ. Thus threatening her mate's newly found status of manhood and he in turn vents his aggressions on her. Deep down, you often think if Hale would ever get around to actually writing his thesis it would be about reducing domestic violence by making men less angry at their own dicks.

The school year didn't start with Bo or else you would have transferred to the newly co-ed girls' college down the street. In the Fall, when you moved in to find Becky Aldredge as the R.A.—kind of cute, kind of a chub-chub and a little bit granola around the edges—you all figured you had it made in the shade. You figured a little fiirting with the Beckster would ensure never getting busted for squat.

Well, if you had known that any right-minded man trying to wink at a feminist lesbian was apt to get his dick kicked in the dirt, you would have nixed the idea from the get go. Turned out the Beckster thought the four of you were goofing on her and got her panties all knotted in a bunch. Next thing you know, Hale was getting busted regularly and the simple easygoing life you'd worked so hard to attain had gone the way of the hot comb.

Two weeks before Christmas break and you were on the prowl at this Theta Delt party in Westwood and lo and behold, there was Becky's girlfriend hanging out looking like she was hoping someone would go and talk her up. Now, unlike the Beckster, this chick was borderline hot—nice frame and a slow gap-toothed smile on the marginal side of sexy. Nothing to break your arm writing home about but in the general all-around, not too shabby and there wasn't a straight man in attendance who hadn't done much worse at one time or another. You figured all the drunken frat jerks would be crawling all over her, right? Well, all the Theta Delts knew she batted the other side of the plate and everyone there was trying their best to score at least one last party lay before break. So, as a result, the Beckster's girl was flying solo.

You pooled your cash and came up with close to a hundred bucks and Nikko tossed it to one of his buds from the basketball team to go over and start flirting with her. Hale whipped out a camera phone and after an hour of googly eyes and a few more jello shots you became the proud owners of a snapshot of Becky's honey pie jamming her tongue down the throat of one of the biggest black dudes you'd ever seen in your life.

You end up in such a rush to get back to your room to e-mail it to the Wicked Bitch of the West Dorm that you actually miss the best part of the whole damn evening. It turned out that Nikko's buddy, Wallace, took Becky's girlfriend back to the jock dorm and gave her the time until the wee hours of the morning.

Becky found the picture in her e-mail the next day and went positively apeshit. They broke up, Beckster swallowed a handful of OxyContin, and after a long night of puking her guts out in the infirmary she went back home to Idaho and to the best of anyone's knowledge. No one had seen hide nor hairy leg of her since. "It just goes to show you," Hale had said as her taxi pulled away. "Pussy makes you crazy no matter who you are."

As the pounding on your door continues, Dan whispers, "Oh shit, it's Major fuckin' Dick!" and Hale bursts out giggling, blowing a mouthful of smoke right in your face. The laughter is completely contagious because Nikko and Dan can't help giggling like drunken ten-year old girls. Not you though. What you get is a major case of the jumpies that old Bo is going to hand you some noise about your orange-stained fingers or your shitty homemade haircut. You realize then, pot does some very weird stuff to you sometimes.

"I said, open this goddammed door right now! I'm going to write up the whole bunch of you misfit motherfuckers!"

Hearing the chuckling through the door was pissing Bo off even more because he starts barking it now, just like the way they teach when you're up to your ass in a river full of piranhas and God-knows-what and you have to give an order to all the other automatons in the platoon. In a whisper, Hale dares somebody to ask through the door if Semper Fi comes from ancient Latin for I am a fucking robot.

But you're still gaping at the shadows of Bo's shoes under the crack in the door when Hale calls your name, waking you out of your paranoid trance. You are completely sober again. That sinking feeling of depression has come back like a bad check.

"Scott, open the door," Hale says again.

You look over at him while Nikko just shrugs his shoulders back in a calm way that makes you think if you were to take his pulse right then and there it would barely break sixty.

Yours on the other hand beats like a dance club kick drum and you start to feel it in your temples. You reach over and turn the knob and the door slams open, crashing against the wall and startling all of you. Bo stands there for a second, puts his hands on his hips and does his best General Patton tight-ass walk into the room.

And this is the point where Hale unfortunately decides to show off his finely honed sarcasm.

"Can I help you?" he asks, doing his best impression of someone who never gave a shit about anything even remotely authoritarian.

Bo squints at him the way you'd look at a dog turd stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Then, making absolutely sure that he has eye contact with all of you, he blurts: "You little rat-fucks are big-time busted."

Busted.

The word hangs in the air like a stale odor and you can tell Bo is enjoying this far too much and you absolutely begin to hate his stupid jarhead guts for it. Right then, you get this feeling deep down inside that nothing good can possibly come out of all of this.

Your balls know.

Duck and cover.

"Now, I don't know what kind of bullshit Little Miss Muffdive let you jerks get away with but let me be the first to inform you that it won't be tolerated any longer. You little dopers make me sick. I'm not about to let this go down on my watch, especially by little stoner faggots like you!"

He works his way up to a cadence and you suddenly become aware of the need to go pee again. Major Dick looks at you with those crazy eyes of his and you feel your boys decide to go hibernate for the winter.

"Congratulations," he growls at you. "It looks like you'll end up with this whole room to yourself after they kick your loser roommate out of school."

You steal a glance at Hale but he just keeps his poker face.

"That is, if they let you keep your scholarship." Bo knows he has your full and undivided attention.

"Tell you what. I'm even going to confiscate your stash so you little drug addicts won't be lighting up until after they boot all of your asses out," he adds, and that becomes enough to loosen up Nikko's tongue.

"Hey man, you can't do that!"

"Shut your suck, fucknut. Maybe you haven't noticed it from your little drug-induced haze over there but there isn't a soul on this floor right now but you scumbags and me. That means I could throw all of you down the fucking elevator shaft and say it was a weirdo tragic accident or some little stoner faggot suicide pact. Since I'm in a good mood, I'm just going to take your precious little dope down to the can myself and before I flush it, I'm going to drop my pants and take a great big crap all over it."

You all flinch as Bo's fleshy paw shoots out to grab your weed off the desk behind Nikko's head.

"Just what I thought, just a bunch of little pussy-boys," he says, crunching the rolled up baggie in his fist like Custer taking a Cherokee scalp.

As he turns on his heels and walks out, your hope that he makes it halfway to Neptune before anyone says anything gets shattered by Dan.

"Fuckin' dick," he mutters underneath his breath.

As Bo stops in his tracks, you swallow hard. "What did you say?" Bo barks as he snaps around on his heels.

Silence.

Bo stands there, milking it to the point of sheer agony.

"What'd you say, fuckstain?" Bo's nostrils flare and it flashes into your head that he has at least three inches and no less than sixty pounds over any of you. Wiping up a room full of pot-smoking smartasses is probably stepping into wet dream territory for him.

Dan stands up, and you want to punch him in the mouth for getting you all in way deeper shit than you were in already.

He looks Bo square in the eye. "I was fuckin' wondering. If your parents got a divorce, would they still be considered cousins?"

You expect instant Hiroshima, but what Bo does scares you even more. He snorts, takes one step into your room and shuts the door behind him. Without a word he makes it very clear how this is going to be a very private ass-kicking for all of you.

"It's about to get busier than a pair of jumper cables at a Puerto Rican wedding in here." Bo grunts, puts his hand on Nikko's face and shoves him into your dresser, knocking over the newly re-framed picture of you and Jackie taken at the beach last summer. Helplessly, you watch as Jackie and you hit the floor and as the glass breaks, you suddenly want so badly to be on that beach with her, drinking margaritas and making love in the chest high water instead of facing the ugly prospect of a mouth full of broken chiclets.

You don't know how long you space out but when you turn around, Bo has Dan in a choke hold. Dan's face starts to turn purple and Hale tries to pry Bo's thick arms away with one hand while pushing his face back with the other. When you see Bo grinning like the Cheshire Cat after a blowjob, something inside you finally rages like a furnace.

"Do something!" Hale turns to you. The sudden blast of adrenaline feels like heroin jacking through your veins. A dry lump the size of Mexico fills your throat.

"Fucking do something!" Hale screams again and in one flash you know how to make it all go away. You know how to take control of the situation, make the yelling subside and bring back the calming sense of silence you now miss so much.

Your eyes dart to the relic mounted over your bed. Without a sound you feel the world stop turning as your fingers wrap around its handle.

You take a breath. You close your eyes.

And in one split-second you swing Excalibur again and change all of your lives forever.

*****

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Where's My F*cking Latte?: Book Preview

Read the Bestselling Kindle ebook featured on TV's "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD"!

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A HOLLYWOOD ASSISTANT?

Welcome to the best worst job in the world…

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS… Every movie and TV star has one. So does every agent and manager. Some producers and studio execs have two or even three. I'm talking about an assistant. Someone to answer your phones, pick up your dry cleaning. Someone to hide your drugs. Your assistant knows what you eat, who you're sleeping with and what medications you're taking. They listen in on your phone calls. They are the eyes and ears of Hollywood… and occasionally they talk. Culled from dozens of interviews with former and current Hollywood assistants, Where's My F*cking Latte is a no-holds barred insider's look at what really goes on behind Tinseltown's closed doors.

READ THE FREE PREVIEW

The Guest Star (GS)

We had a really cool GS on our TV show one week and since I had been a big fan of his for years, I practically begged to get the assignment to drive him.

The first day I picked him up, I was a bit nervous and didn't say much but he was pretty cool and we talked a little bit when I drove him home. I told him what time I'd be picking him up the next morning and I gave him my cell number just in case something came up.

On the second day we're in the middle of the twenty-five minute drive from his house to our soundstage when he says he has to pee. I tell him I can stop at a fast food joint nearby but he's very hesitant to do so. Instead he sees the half-full Snapple bottle sitting in my cup holder that had been there for days. He grabs it, empties the rest of my peach iced tea out the window and then proceeds to whip out his dick in my car.

"Don't look," he's telling me. I think he's just fucking around and I'm laughing so hard I'm afraid I'm going to get us into an accident.

Without spilling a drop, he fills up the bottle. He twists the cap back on and holds it in his lap the rest of the drive. It's such a weird moment that we don't even talk about it during the rest of the ride.

When we get to the lot, I park by the stage and he slips his pee-filled bottle back into my cup holder as he's getting out of my car. He thinks I don't notice but I do.

Later on, I tell a buddy of mine, another PA, about what happened. He practically falls down in stitches. He kids me that I should put the GS's pee up on Ebay. It becomes a running gag, for the rest of the day whenever we see each other.

"What's the high bid?"

"Last I saw it was twenty bucks."

"I heard it might go to twenty five."

And so it goes, all day long until it's up around eight hundred and fifty bucks in our little joke by the end of the day.

That night I got pulled off onto another job and someone else drove the GS home. But I guess that person must have told him something because as I'm driving home late from work, I get an angry call from the GS. He starts yelling at me that I better take his bottle of pee off of Ebay or he's going to hurt me physically and financially. I mean, he's really blowing a gasket. When I finally get a word in edgewise, I try to explain it was just a joke and that I never put his bottle up for auction. He told me that when I picked him up in the morning I better have the bottle with me to show him that I still had it. I told him fine and hung up before he got all heated up again.

And that's when I realized I was in trouble. I didn't actually have the bottle anymore. I had tossed it out into the trash back at the lot.

I thought about what I was going to tell him. I realized he'd never believe me if I told him the truth so I stopped at a 7-11 near my apartment and picked up an identical bottle of Snapple Peach Iced Tea and chugged it.

By the time I got home it had done the trick. I took the bottle inside and filled it up to what I was hoping was the same point he had that morning.

The next day, I showed up at the GS's house and sure enough, the first thing he did was ask me if I had the bottle. When we got to my car, I pointed to the cup holder and to the bottle I'd put in there that morning. He looked at it for a moment and I got scared he could somehow tell it wasn't the same bottle, wasn't his pee.

"Fine," he grunted.

It was the last thing he said to me all week.

*****

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PRAISE FOR WHERE'S MY F*CKING LATTE

"This book is a hilarious (and terrifying) read for anyone who works in– or wants to work in– the entertainment industry."

- CHAD GERVICH – TV Producer and author of "Small Screen, Big Picture: A Writer's Guide to the TV Business"

 

Number One with a Bullet: Book Preview

"For fiction that reads like a bloody summer blockbuster and makes you move in your chair like a first-person shooter, look no father than Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff." - NYT Bestselling Author SCOTT SIGLER

NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET

by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

CHAPTER 1

EXT. FRENCH ALPS VILLAGE – MORNING

Frost, the thin layer forming on the road crunches beneath the wheels of Rodrigo as he pedals his bike, the huff of his breath trailing in the frigid morning air. Muscular legs pumping furiously, sinews burning like fire. He leans hard to the left as he veers onto another street in the village without losing a single beat. Each lungful of air feels like icy needles stabbing from the inside, but it doesn't slow him one bit. His body is a well-conditioned machine, built up to endure any type of physicality needed to get the job done.

Behind, the Alps rise in all their majesty. Glorious peaks cloaked in snow reaching up into an immaculate azure sky. It truly is a sight to behold. In fact, a wonder. But to Rodrigo, his mind cares only about one single thing—killing the man he knows is right now coming down the mountain on his daily visit into town from a chalet inside a walled compound.

Quiet is the street. So much so he can hear the snow falling as he stops at the edge of a park to chain his bike to a fence by the side of the road. Carefully, Rodrigo opens the leather satchel strapped to the handlebars. Inside, sitting nestled against a five-pound hunk of solid-steel plate is a block of Semtex. With nimble fingers, Rodrigo rubs a hardened spot on the plastic explosive until it becomes malleable and then carefully presses a blasting cap into its surface. He then walks away and waits. As expected, he doesn't have to wait long.

He hears the music first, not the engine. The yellow Land Rover is pristine–all of the serious hardware: roll guards, bulletproof glass, twelve-speaker, 400 watt stereo with subwoofer. The car pounds like an Ibiza nightclub as it barrels down the street.

Rodrigo bends his wrist slightly and checks his watch. Without even realizing, he mutters in his native Portuguese, "Good little boy. Right on time."

Inside the Land Rover is a man with long hair. As is his custom, he drives like a banshee and wears shades to hide the emotionless dark eyes beneath. Seated next to him is the blonde from the night before, her face in his lap, bobbing up and down on his stiffening cock. He grabs a handful of her golden mane and pushes her head down further. Choosing a new song from the changer in the trunk, he cranks the stereo even louder. It's a dance mix by the band Spray, blasting so loud that each beat shakes the entire car with near-seismic force. Picking this song is the last conscious decision the driver will ever make.

A block away, Rodrigo reaches into his jacket and removes a small wireless remote no larger than a pack of cigarettes. With his thumb, and no compunction for what he is about to do, he presses the one button on top. Inside the satchel left strapped to the bike, a laser motion detector becomes active. A razor-thin beam of red light streams across the street to a reflector he had placed against the side of a trashcan the day before. The beam is practically invisible, even against the powdery snow falling from the sky.

Behind the wheel of the Land Rover, the driver thinks of his next job, his impending orgasm and how he's going to get rid of the girl. He suspects nothing, even as the front of his car cuts neatly through the laser's beam triggering the charge placed inside the satchel. The Semtex explodes, launching the five-pound steel plate toward the car at subsonic speed, Ka-whammo, obliterating the Land Rover in the blink of an eye.

All that remains is a smoking shell of steel and two charred figures burning in the middle of the street, melting all the snow in a three-foot circumference around it. The driver's head lolls backwards, his hair and skin melted to the bone. A slight sound lights from his mouth that is nothing more than the escaping steam from the boiling mess inside of his skull.

"One step closer," Rodrigo whispers, grinning to himself as horrified onlookers stream from quiet apartments and stores to gawk at the fiery wreck. Most are wordless, though one old woman begins to wail uncontrollably, having only ever seen this kind of thing before during a war long since forgotten.

Rodrigo turns and slips away from the crowd, unnoticed.

Mostly unnoticed.

He takes only a few steps before spotting the glint of light from an open window in the distance. A reflection of the sun off glass. Instantly in the cold, wintery air, his mouth turns dry as dust.

Just over a half mile away, inside an empty building, a German man with cropped platinum blond hair sights a Steyr Tactical .308 sniper rifle through a scope. He is Soeren Anton. Today, after nearly a month of tracking, he has found his man. Through the scope he watches Rodrigo's panicked face. He can even make out the words falling breathlessly from Rodrigo's trembling lips.

"Merda…" Shit.

Quick as a breath, Rodrigo turns and makes a run for it. After half a block, he starts to believe he has a chance to make it out of there alive.

He is wrong.

Soeren follows Rodrigo through the scope. He eases up on the Steyr's trigger. He pulls back. It's too easy. With a deep breath fresh in his lungs, Soeren closes his eyes and turns his head away. He keeps his target in his mind's eye. Not yet, not yet…

Calmly, his finger nestles the trigger, finally pulling it, firing the kill shot.

The bullet races, covering the half-mile in a split-second, passing between unsuspecting onlookers before ripping through Rodrigo's back and chest with a white puff of smoke. He falls to the ground, already dead, his blood staining the pure white snow a dark crimson.

 

EXT. MOROCCAN MARKETPLACE – DAY

A continent away, a beautiful red-haired woman takes her morning stroll. White Dolce & Gabbana linen suit, calfskin shoes by Prada, non-prescription glasses by Helmut Lang. Everything about her walk is sexy. Each step rocks her hips back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm. Her pink tongue moistens a perfect pair of red lips. She passes a grey-haired man who takes one look and wonders to himself what her pussy would feel like.

He has a better chance of stopping time.

Meet Jayden. She has been an assassin for nearly a decade. Those who know of her or her work say only cigarettes have killed more people.

What she doesn't see is Kadar, the dark-skinned man in the scarlet kaftan following twenty yards behind her. Marking her every movement. Biding his time in the crowded marketplace.

Kadar's mind, foolishly, is on the prize. In his head, he is already spending the money. He is already buying the yacht.

At a market stall, something catches Jayden's eye. She senses being shadowed, but does her best not to let on. Instead, she picks up a worthless trinket. She holds it up to the stall's rotund proprietor.

"C'est combien?" How much?

Without even looking up from his coffee, the proprietor brusquely shoots back, "Twenty."

"Ten," comes the response. Yet another game has commenced.

Kadar, sensing he will lose his chance by waiting another second, secretly withdraws a long dagger from his sleeve. Because of his experience in matters such as this, his movements and intentions are imperceptible to the untrained eye.

Jayden sees the dagger reflected in the worthless trinket. She sees the dark-skinned man closing the distance between them. Perhaps the trinket isn't so worthless after all. She will come back for it when this is over. Without continuing to haggle with the proprietor, she turns and walks away. Her steps become faster. Even in heels, she moves like a cat, weaving through the gauntlet of people in the marketplace–people who have no idea that they are brushing elbows with two of the world's deadliest killers. Jayden's senses are so heightened in the heat of the moment that she doesn't need to look to know her pursuer has gained on her.

The moment she gets to the end of the road, she turns left onto another street and pins her back against the aged and pitted brick wall of a small bank. This is where she will make her stand. Live or die. It's the way the game is played and the only way it can be.

Kadar, the dark-skinned man, turns onto the same street, dagger ready to strike. He rounds the corner and finds…

Nothing.

His breath chuffs in surprise. Suddenly, he hears a footstep behind him. He turns…

…to find Jayden.

Before he can move, she blows a handful of powder from her fist into Kadar's face. His airway closes on the inside like a vice, burning hotter than an open flame. His first instinct, though, is not to reach for his own throat, but to strike at his killer with his dagger, a blade that has tasted the flesh of more victims than one could count. But the knife drops from Kadar's hands as his nervous system begins a final shutdown. His knees buckle. As he dies seconds later, Jayden leans him against the wall. To a passerby, he may appear to be drunk, or praying. To a coroner, he will appear to have died of a sudden massive heart attack.

Neither is Jayden's problem. She is one step closer to the money, but no closer to figuring out how to collect it without ending up like the others.

 

EXT. MEDITERRANEAN SEA – SUNSET

The sun hangs low, seemingly willing to disappear into the water. On a clear day like this, it burns bright orange, looming large on the horizon. While the great ball of light slips further away, a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter glides above the water toward a hundred-and-sixty-foot luxury yacht named "Double Platinum". Within moments, the helicopter lands on the massive cruiser's fantail. Right on time.

As the rotors whine down, a muscular Russian man dressed in a black cotton turtleneck and Brioni suit, keeps his head low as he approaches the bird. Meet Mr. Vosler. He opens the side door of the helicopter to greet the arrivals.

"Hello, ladies." Vosler lends a hand, first to one thin and pretty blonde and then another. If it weren't for the fact that one has long hair and the other short, they could be identical.

Possibly models, Vosler thinks to himself. Possibly underage.

Both are tipsy and giggling and one of the blondes hands him a mostly empty bottle of Cristal.

"Show them to our finest guest quarters," comes a voice.

Stepping out of the bird behind the two girls is the one and only J.C. Richelieu. His white linen suit is crisp and his collar hangs open. It's a look he's nearly famous for, having appeared in similar garb in several magazines, including Business Week, the cover of Spin and a special pre-Grammy issue of Rolling Stone. Richelieu steps onto the deck of his forty-million-dollar yacht. In the last five of his fifty-two years on this Earth, he has never once stopped to watch a single sunset. Today is no exception.

"I have the conference call waiting," Vosler tells him out of earshot of the two models.

 

INT. RICHELIEU'S OFFICE – MOMENTS LATER

Below deck, Richelieu slips into a very large black leather Manos wingback chair as Vosler brings him a whiskey rocks, small splash. The surroundings of this humongous below-deck lair are entirely made of glass, steel and chrome. It is very much befitting the C.E.O. of Grantium Entertainment.

With a tap of his computer keyboard, a bank of several video monitors lowers from the ceiling. Each one tagged with the location its feed originates from. The faces staring back at him from around the globe wait for Richelieu to begin. He will run this high-tech teleconference, working it like a Vegas pit boss.

"Week number three of our contest, and the players are starting to light up the board. What a week it was, my friends."

On another screen by his left hand: numbered pictures of Land Rover Man (Number Five), Rodrigo (Number Ten), Kadar (Number Eight) sit alongside a photo of another man (Number Three). Each photo marked with the word "Deceased" in red letters over their faces. The numbers, randomly assigned, are not a reflection of their ranking.

Picking these killers was easy for Richelieu. He is a man who likes hits and knows how to use them to his advantage. Music hits. Coke hits. Even the kind of hits used to compel some and make others vanish. All have served him well in building his empire. Selecting ten top assassins is a task as natural to him as naming the ten biggest-selling albums of all time or the ten top vintages of Bordeaux.

Richelieu continues. "Three less players in our little game. Four down. Six to go."

With a stroke of his keyboard, another screen shows pictures of six other killers, presumably still alive, including Soeren (Number Seven) and Jayden (Number Nine). "Now… who cares to make it interesting?"

No answer.

Richelieu sips his drink. It's not fear of him that stops the others from speaking up. Rather it's the gambler's instinct of waiting until your opponent makes a move that brings the silence.

"Come on people, this isn't Miami Beach bingo. Ante up!" Richelieu barks, setting his whiskey rocks down with a hard clink on the glass top of his massive desk.

Finally, the man on the monitor marked Copenhagen speaks up first.

"A hundred that Number Nine is the next to die."

Richelieu taps a couple of keys on his computer. A photo of Jayden comes up on a screen. "Boo-Ya! One hundred on Number Nine to get picked off. Who wants it?"

From a monitor marked Paris: "Another hundred that Number Seven does it."

"Double it and you're on," chimes a man from Cape Town.

Richelieu grins as he turns to Copenhagen. "That's four-hundred grand to you, my friend."

"Done," responds Copenhagen, without a quiver of doubt.

"Now, who else wants a piece of the five-hundred burning a hole in my pocket?" Richelieu asks his captive audience.

From the monitor marked New York, a millionaire with a marked accent addresses the group. "Pardon me if I sound like I just stepped off the short bus, but this is my first time betting in your little contest and I'm still not sure if I quite understand how this here game of yours works."

Richelieu reaches into a desktop humidor and pulls out a Cohiba. "I'm sorry your late father didn't explain it better before his passing. The rules are simple. World's ten best pitted against one another. The last one standing wins the kewpie doll."

The man from New York blinks once, then twice, as if thinking. "A hundred million dollars is one hell of a kewpie doll."

"Which makes it all the more interesting when we bet on the action each week."

"And which one of youse controls this hundred million dollars?"

Richelieu snips the end off his cigar. He doesn't even look up. "An offshore shell corporation, the board of which is comprised of the seven men, including myself, that you are talking to at this moment. The money is held in escrow by a law firm in Singapore to be paid upon our instructions."

"And nobody in this group interferes?"

"Well, that wouldn't be sporting now, would it?" Richelieu grins. With a sterling silver butane torch, he lights the Cohiba while turning it gently in his other hand.

The gentleman from Moscow speaks up. "Speaking of sporting, when are we gonna hear from Four? Not even one kill or even proof that he is still alive."

With a tap of his finger, the monitor with Jayden's photo changes to show a picture of a handsome man with piercing eyes. He is tagged as Number Four.

Copenhagen questions. "Yes, who is this mystery man? I'm starting to think he doesn't even exist."

"What do we know about him?" asks Paris.

"His real name is Johnny Dane." Richelieu takes a puff on his cigar and savors it. "Orphaned at age six, Dane was raised on a cattle ranch in Arizona by an uncle. Early acceptance to Annapolis and then ran into some disciplinary issues, but nonetheless graduated at the top of his class. Recruited into the Seals where he did one tour of duty. Someone there must have noticed something, because after that, he was drafted by his government into their new covert wet ops program."

Richelieu touches the monitor again. Appearing onscreen are several digitized newspaper clippings. A Colombian general lies dead from a gunshot wound to the head. A large Czech mobster face up in a Prague steam bath, a white towel around his robust middle and an open gash across his throat. Dead eyes staring upward, never having registered the silent murderer who took his life.

"Four years later, Johnny Dane went freelance, racking up seventeen documented kills. All top-echelon targets," Richelieu continued. In his other hand he rolls the Cohiba, feeling the fine leaf against his fingers. A Cuban cigar is a masterpiece unto itself. This he appreciates—the aroma, the taste—knowing someone in another country slaved to make these things for his pleasure.

On the monitors, the other millionaires nod. An approving murmur drifts among the party as Richelieu continues. "Word has it he can sneak in and out of a hot zone like a ghost. That's why he gets no less than a million dollars for each job. As it stands, gentlemen, I still have Dane as my odds-on favorite to win this contest."

The man from New York pipes in, his skepticism as apparent as his Brooklyn manners. "Nice story, Richelieu. But is it true?"

Richelieu looks directly into New York's eyes. "Oh, I assure you, it's all true. Before his vanishing act, Johnny Dane was the single best assassin alive."

From London, this is met with some doubt. "Yes, but for all we know, this Johnny Dane could bloody well already be dead."

Taking a sip of his drink, Richelieu puts down his Cohiba. With his fingertip he reaches over and touches the picture of Johnny Dane on the screen. "Perhaps…" he says, hiding his eyes from the camera trained on him. "Or maybe our boy's just playing hard to get."

 

FADE TO:

EXT. GRAND CAYMAN ISLAND – BEACH – DAY

A picture-perfect blue sky, golden sands. If God had a beach house, it would be right here at the foot of an ocean as clear as blown glass. From the surf emerges a man in a pair of dark blue board shorts. Mid-30s, handsome, the tan on his taut frame masking a few small scars on his body. Meet Johnny Dane, his dark hair tousled and several inches longer than his last known photo. On his face, a week's worth of beard salted slightly with grey whiskers. In his right hand, he carries a snorkel and mask. In his left, a small metal cage holding several perfect red lobsters. Before he's even fully out of the water, three native boys run up to him. Their voices ring like music.

"Johnny! Johnny!" Their beaming faces eagerly eyeball the cage in Dane's hand.

"Two hours and that's all you catch?" The first boy chimes playfully.

Dane grins. "Well… if you don't want them…"

He pulls the cage away from the boy's outstretched hands. The bluff works like a ten-dollar rabbit's foot and the once-big grins on their young mugs momentarily falter. A wry smile crosses Dane's face like a tide as he hands the cage to the tallest of the three youngsters. "Just leave me two," Dane says.

The boys turn to the surf. Stepping towards them from the water is an olive-skinned beauty. Meet Ava. Her red bikini leaves little to the imagination. A body to die for with curves only a Formula 1 driver could survive. The tall boy turns back to Dane and raises an eyebrow.

 

INT. GRAND CAYMAN – SMALL HOUSE – MAGIC HOUR

A breeze blows. Thin curtains billow in the bedroom of Johnny Dane. He arches his back. Eyes closed. His body ripped and tanned, falls in concert with Ava below him. As he enters her, we see her face. It's breathtaking with features that would make Da Vinci cry. Their mouths find each other in an embrace of complete intimacy. No wonder nobody's heard from this guy.

 

CHAPTER 2

 

INT. GRAND CAYMAN – DANE'S HOUSE – LATER

Dane and Ava lay naked under the sheets. She rests her head upon his chest as he kisses the top of her hair. Delicately, she runs her fingers along the inside of his outstretched arm.

"It's only two hours until my birthday and you still haven't told me what we're going to do," she purrs into his ear.

Dane squeezes his eyes shut. Holy shit. He forgot.

"It's a… it's a surprise," he quickly mumbles.

"It's also our anniversary."

Dane isn't used to being caught unsuspecting in the crosshairs like this. "It is?" he asks. His voice sounding less like a question than he'd like.

"Six months since you swept a simple cocktail waitress off her feet."

"Maybe it's true what they say?"

"What who say?"

He grins. "You know… time flies when you're overcome with lust."

Playfully, she hits him with a pillow.

"So what do you want for your birthday?" he asks.

"No fair. I can't tell you."

"Give me a hint."

"How about…." she begins, "…your last name?"

If Dane has even one moment of hesitation, it doesn't show. He rolls out of bed and drops to one knee, right there on the floor. Naked as the day he was born.

As he opens his mouth, she puts a finger to his lips. The tip of one red fingernail traces along his mouth. Her eyes drop. "Not here, silly."

Before he can protest, she gets out of bed with the sheet wrapped around her and slips into the bathroom adjoining the bedroom, turning back momentarily.

"First a shower. Then, you can propose over dinner."

She disappears behind a closing door and the shower begins to run. Dane flops down on the bed, his smile showing a happiness he's never known before. This girl definitely has his number.

"Ava, will you marry me?" he asks softly, nearly a whisper. The life of an assassin seems a million miles away.

But that's all before he hears a slight noise—someone entering quietly through the small house's front door. Dane's smile vanishes.

Quickly, he slides into a pair of jeans at the foot of the bed. He looks at the closed bathroom door, the shower still running, and then at the open window a few feet away.

 

INT. DANE'S LIVING ROOM  – MOMENTS LATER

A dark-suited man creeps quietly towards the bedroom, his hands empty. As he crosses through a shaft of light coming through a window, it's apparent the intruder is a Rastafarian with his dreads pulled back.

Meet the man known in the game as Number Six.

His last kill, the first in the game, was the contestant known as Number Three.

 

FLASH CUT TO:

INT. BELIZE – WAREHOUSE – NIGHT (FLASHBACK)

The man in the black rubber butcher's apron is covered in blood. Meet Hugo, the guy you send when you want your killing to make a very strong impression. Even with the heavy black rubber gloves on, Hugo manages to light another cigarette from the embers of his current one and dumps the old butt into an already loaded ashtray. He picks up the chainsaw from the floor and goes back to his worktable. There lay the limbless torso of a local police commissioner's wife, the still-shocked expression on her face from the moment she bled out while having her legs severed in front of her eyes.

Hugo fires up the saw, this time he wants the head. Her blood, still fresh, sprays brightly across the floor as the power tool does its job, tearing through sinew and bone in less than three seconds. Lifting her up by her mane of bleached blond hair, Hugo examines it closely. Her features are still quite attractive for a middle-aged woman.

Too much plastic surgery, he thinks to himself. The massive amounts of Botox she's obviously had should keep the head looking fresh until it reaches its destination. Carefully, he places it, face up, in the plastic-lined box, tapes it shut and places it on the table with the other packages going to her husband.

Hugo wipes his sweating brow with the back of his sleeve. The air in the warehouse is still and humid. He walks across the floor to the barn door fifty feet away. With a bit of effort, he pushes it open, then closes his eyes and takes in the fresh breeze blowing from outside.

Almost done, he thinks. After tonight comes a long-deserved vacation. But it will be very much a working vacation at that. In his jacket is a plane ticket for Auckland, where he will begin his hunt for Derek Poole, his first planned kill in the contest in which he's been invited as a participant. He contemplates all the money and how it would mean never having to kill for hire again. In his mind he replays the fantasy, a nice ranch in Mexico where he could troll at night for border crossers–poor, desolate wretches nobody would miss. He would abduct them, take them back to his "special room" and do with them as he wished to his heart's content.

Halfway back to his worktable, Hugo senses something. He turns and sees the silhouette of the man standing in the doorway. His bushy dreadlocks casting a wide shadow at the top of his head.

Hugo's heart jolts, sending a burst of adrenaline through his system. Dashing for his worktable, he tries to pick up his pistol but the thick rubber gloves don't let him get a grip and the gun falls clumsily to the floor. Quickly, he reaches down to pick up the chainsaw and when he looks back toward the door, the dreadlocked man is nowhere to be found.

"Fuck," Hugo whispers. He keeps low, peering around the left side of the table.

Nothing. Nobody.

He then peers around the right side of the table.

Only to be greeted by the torso of the commissioner's wife falling on top of him. Hugo presses the saw's trigger, the chain cutting into the meat of her shoulder but the dreadlocked man is too strong and uses the weight of the torso to knock Hugo backwards onto the floor.

With a thud, Hugo hits hard enough to knock the wind out of his lungs and the chainsaw from his hand. Stars fill his head but he looks up just in time to see the Jamaican killer standing over him, a boot on the back of the commissioner's wife to hold them both down.

The Jamaican grins at Hugo with a mouth full of platinum teeth. With a flick of his wrist, a small pistol drops from his sleeve into his hand. Still smiling, he pushes his dreadlocks from in front of his eyes, points the gun at Hugo's face and pulls the trigger.

 

FLASH CUT TO:

INT. DANE'S LIVING ROOM  – BACK TO SCENE

The Rasta killer moves like a wraith, slowly approaching the bedroom door. His body flows like water. He doesn't even breathe.

His hand wraps around the knob, enveloping it, turning it slow enough to keep his movement silent. One second passes, then another. He turns until he can turn no further. He takes a slight inhale. In a moment, he's going to burst into the room. In a moment, he's going to pull the trigger on Johnny Dane…

Number Six pushes into the bedroom and finds it…

Empty.

Hearing the shower, Six's eyes flick toward the bathroom door. He takes a step. Suddenly the bedroom door swings shut behind him.

Revealing Dane.

Number Six knows he's caught. He doesn't move. Puts his arms up.

Dane looks at Six's hands, both empty. No weapon. "Who are you?"

"Hey mon, I'm just here to talk."

"You ever hear of using the phone?"

Six turns, slowly, and sees that Dane is unarmed. He smiles, showing off several platinum teeth.

Shwick! Just as the small silencer-equipped pistol shoots up his sleeve and into his palm.

"Nothing personal," he says to Dane. It's true. Business is business.

Before he can finish, Dane jump kicks Six in the chest. For his trouble, Six gets two broken ribs and a trip to the night table. Airborne, he comes down hard. Bam!

Six is back on his feet, gun still in hand. Dane is on him like a flash, kicking up a shirt lying on the floor, twisting it into a lasso that he wraps around Six's arm.

Except now… SHWICK! Another gun materializes in Six's free hand, a bead drawn on Dane.

"Johnny, you gonna be the sweetest slap of my whole career."

Just then, the bathroom door swings open.

Ava steps out, dripping wet, wearing only a silk bathrobe. "Wha—?"

Startled, Six turns the gun toward her. He pulls the trigger. Blam!

But Dane knocks Six's arm up. The bullet missing Ava's head by an inch. Her scream fills the room.

In the blink of an eye, Dane grabs Six's hand and turns the piece on its owner—KaBlam—and shoots the Rastafarian killer through the neck. The warm spray of Six's blood jets across the wall behind them. Dane drops the gunman to the floor and notices his assailant is still breathing, barely.

"You're dead and you don't even know it, Dane." Six's words come out as a hiss. He expires, blood pouring from his open mouth onto the front of his dark suit.

Dane turns. Ava's seen too much. She runs from the bedroom as fast as her feet can carry her.

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Tweet About My Books, Win a $50 Amazon Gift Card

 

Yes, it's just that simple. Between now and May 17, send a tweet about one of my books and you'll be entered into a drawing for a $50 Amazon Gift Card! The Rules are simple: Mention any one of of my books, add my Twitter handle "@MYN" so I can track it and you're entered. Say something cool and one lucky twit-wit will be picked at random on May 17th to win!

Try to get your post Re-tweeted because any retweet with your twitter handle (and mine) in it will count as another entry for you… so if you can get 100 people to retweet one post, that's 100 entries to win!

YOU MUST add the "@MYN " to your tweet or I won't see it. YOU MUST name at least one book in your tweet.

PLEASE add the appropriate link back to the book you tweeted about. I've posted shortened Amazon direct links to every book below.

I've even hastily scribbled several ready-t0-go tweets that you can cut and paste below!

You can tweet about my books as much as you want. No limit to the amount of entries one person can have… but for the sake of the people following you, please don't overdo it. Anything more than several hundred tweets about my books in a single day could possibly be seen as excessive.

Winner will be picked on May 17th. I will be the final judge as to what is an acceptable entry and reserve the right to disqualify any entry or entrant for any reason whatsoever. I also reserve the right to change the rules, prizes or cancel the contest for any reason at any time (though it is not my intention to). Winner cannot substitute prize for cash or any other prize. Entrants assume all responsibility if entering such a contest is prohibited by law in the jurisdiction in which they live and as such indemnify me from any such liability. Naked photos sent to me will be counted as contest entries but please only send them if you really would want other people to see you naked – Mostly, I just added this last thing to see if you were still paying attention.

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WHERE'S MY F*CKING LATTE? (And other stories about being an assistant in Hollywood) - Amazon link: http://amzn.to/i81NfQ

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Where's My F*cking Latte, #1 Kindle Bestseller

Where's My F*cking Latte? (and Other Stories About Being an Assistant in Hollywood) just hit #1 in the "Movies" category. I think it's been there before over the years but this is the first time I have documented proof, dammit! As of this posting, it's also #7 in the "Television" category (Damn you, Betty White and Meredith Baxter!) But I am currently beating out one of my childhood heroes, Dick Van Dyke… for now…

 

Listen to an excerpt from: Go Forth and Kick Some Ass

I've posted an extended preview of the introduction and first chapter, entitled "Courage" from the audiobook version of GO FORTH AND KICK SOME ASS (Be the Hero of Your Own Life Story).

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS EXCERPT FROM GO FORTH AND KICK SOME ASS

I know there are those of you who don't do the ebook thing so this audiobook is for you.

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PRAISE FOR GO FORTH AND KICK SOME ASS:

"Life is tough and this book reminds you of that, but it also reminds you that YOU are tougher than anything life can throw at you. Mark has taken years of experience and boiled it down to an inspiring, humorous and dead on serious look at what you need to do to be successful in life. It isn't as difficult as you might believe."

- C.C. Chapman, Bestselling author of "Content Rules"

 

 

Go Forth and Kick Some Ass: The Audiobook is out now!

Hey Audiobook fans… you can now get the audiobook version of "Go Forth and Kick Some Ass (Be the Hero of Your Own Life Story)"… and it's CHEAP! Pick up the entire audiobook today for just $2.37

CLICK HERE to go to the audiobook download/purchase page!

PRAISE FOR GO FORTH AND KICK SOME ASS:

"Life is tough and this book reminds you of that, but it also reminds you that YOU are tougher than anything life can throw at you. Mark has taken years of experience and boiled it down to an inspiring, humorous and dead on serious look at what you need to do to be successful in life. It isn't as difficult as you might believe."

- C.C. Chapman, Bestselling author of "Content Rules"