First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It's been a crazy month with the hacking of Sony Pictures over Seth Rogen's The Interview and the largest consumer electronic show in the country (CES) in Vegas.
I have to say, it's looking more and more likely that North Korea was responsible for the Sony hack, in yet another art-imitating-life twist. In my latest thriller â 4o4 â the villain plants evidence that makes it appear the North Koreans were responsible for several cyber-attacks on the U.S. because of clues found by the NSA implicating the "Hermit Kingdom". Hmmmm. Sound familiar? Has Kim Jong Un read my new book?
Meanwhile, CES has been all about the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data (plus drones, of course, which also play a big role in 4o4).
Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Edith Ramirez addressed the issue during a recent speech at the Show. "Connected devices that provide increased convenience and improve health services are also collecting, transmitting, storing, and often sharing vast amounts of consumer data, some of it highly personal, thereby creating a number of privacy risks," she said, noting that the integration of these devices into homes, cars, and even users' own bodies will give companies greater insight into the most private parts of peoples' lives. "We often hear the argument that to realize the benefits of big data, businesses should not face limits on the collection and retention of data because the value lies in its unanticipated uses," Ramirez told her audience. "But I question the notion that we must put sensitive consumer data at risk on the off-chance a company might someday discover a valuable use for the information."
The real danger comes when you combine silicon-generated data (what you do online all day long) with carbon-generated data (your behaviours in the "real" world). In other words, not merely your emails and online behaviours as you scour the Net but also all of the transactional data you generate in the carbon world (what you buy and where, how much you spend, what you read and what you listen to, where you go, etc.), most of it being tracked by huge data warehousing and analytics companies like Experian, who also have strong â some would say slavish â ties to the Intelligence Community (IC).
When you mix what the NSA is gathering with what Silicon Valley is tracking about you with what you do offline, you have a truly powerful view. Now, add what folks will soon be tracking via your car and home through the Internet of Things, plus biometric and medical/genetic data, and a 3-D image begins to emerge. And it's not just about privacy and violations of our 4th Amendment rights. Anything that's linked to the Net can be hacked â from your car to your fridge to your smartphone. For a chilling glimpse into where we might be heading, if this concerns you (and it should), check out my most recent novel, 4o4, just out from Cornucopia Press. Imagine your own home and appliances attacking you and you get the idea.
As the founder of the first digital ad agency (interactive marketing services firm) in the world (back in 1984), Einstein and Sandom Interactive, I fear what I helped to unleash.
Finally, the end of last month marked the 10th anniversary of the tsunami that struck much of the Asian coast a decade ago. One of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history, it killed 230,000 people and displaced millions in 12 countries.
For a terrifying look at what a mega-tsunami could do, check out the prequel to 4o4 called The Wave.
404 became an instant best-seller when it was published last November
If you've already had a chance to read 4o4, please don't forget to post a review at Amazon, Goodreads and elsewhere. (For this month's excerpt from 4o4, look below.)
And now for the moment you've all been waiting for, the winner of my #1 Fan of the Year Competition (2014). Drum roll, please.
As a reminder, the winning entry was selected based upon the following criteria:
- A photo featuring you and any one (or all) of my books that you've purchased (or borrowed from the library, if you still have them). However you want to showcase that you're my #1 Fan (e.g. holding a sign saying #1 Sandom Fan), that's up to you; you're in complete creative control. [HINT: The more creative, the better!]
- Documentation of the purchase or library rental of one or more of my books (which can be done by simply featuring them in the picture you send).
- A single paragraph (no more than 50 words) telling me why you like one or more of my books, or my writing in general.
The 2014 #1 Fan will receive a signed copy of all of my books (yep, all 10, in print format!), and their photo is featured immediately below (plus on my Facebook Fan page and Twitter stream).
Without further ado, the winner of the #1 Fan of the Year Competition (2014) is Deana W. of the DC Metro area.
Deana and her husband are both federal employees and would prefer to remain anonymous. But, here is a photo of her without a caption or identifying signage.
Deana W.
Homeland meets The Matrix
Planes crash into one another midair. Nuclear power plants go berserk. Railroad crossing gates rise, letting cars pass just as trains whistle by. Thousands are injured or killed. The only connection between these seemingly unrelated events is that the systems controlling them are all Internet-based.
FBI cryptanalyst forensic examiner John Decker, working at the National Counter Terrorism Center in Northern Virginia, uncovers a deadly plot to sabotage a key US defense contractor. When the plot leads to an old Islamist adversary, long thought dead, Special Agent Decker has no idea he is about to be thrust into a diabolical conspiracy that winds to the heart of our national defense.
In the course of a week, America is paralyzed by a series of devastating cyber-attacks that cripple the nationâs security, financial markets and transportation systems. Assisted by beautiful and brilliant computer expert Xin Liu (Lulu), Decker must unravel the mystery behind whoever â or whatever â is taking over the Net.
Whoâs responsible for these deadly cyber-attacks? Is it Jihadists of the Crimson Scimitar cell, led by Deckerâs old nemesis, El Aqrab? Is it North Koreans, working out of Dandong, China, instead? Or, is it somebody else?
An exciting, fast-paced, well-spun yarn of a patriot betrayed by his wife, his friends, his senses and, ultimately, even himself, 4o4 explores our nation's vulnerability to cyber-attack and how the United States is coping with the 21st century struggle to balance the right to privacy with our cyber-vulnerability.
This month's excerpt, Chapter 3 of 4o4, is just a little too long to view in this post, so here it is as a .pdf. Enjoy!
ORDER 4o4 TODAY!
Here is what the experts are saying about 4o4, written a year before the Snowden revelations!
"Team up with FBI code-breaker John Decker as he tries to stop a mysterious hacker, recently discovered penetrating government defense systems. Now, the cyber villain has set his sights on Decker and his family. As a former Special Agent, I found this novel not only plausible, but riveting and truly alarming. If you care about our nation's cyber-security, you MUST read this book."
Ron Jaco, Special Agent (Ret.)
FBI
"After reading 404, you'll never look at your tablet or notebook computer quite the same ever again."
Todd Watson
Social Media Communications, Influence, and
Outreach Director for IBMâs $20 Billion software business
"Strap yourself in . . . youâre in for a Mach 2 ride with John Decker. As someone who has worked national security issues for decades, this story is all too scary and all too real. Youâll love it!"
Colonel Jim âChipâ Marchio (Ret.)
US Air Force
If you want to read the first book in the John Decker series, check out The Wave.
ALREADY FINISHED WITH 4o4? GET THE PREQUEL @ AMAZON.COM
Here's an excerpt from the Kirkus review.
"Sandomâs strength lies in the verve of his story, with writing that has both muscle, in its pacing and violence, and a measure of brains as it goes about knitting Islamic calligraphy into the action, as well as making skirmishes into cryptography, vulcan stimulation and the higher physics of radiation and isotope decay without force-feeding the dense material to the reader . . . After a rather stately start, punctuated by little flurries of menace and barbarism from the stock bad guys, and a critical massing of feints and distractions, the story races from improbable to crazywild, all in good fun, with Sandom always one step ahead."
REDUCED FROM $10.76 TO ONLY $2.99!
When Cryptanalyst John Decker of the FBI is assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force in New York, he has no idea he is about to be thrust into a deadly plot of eco-terrorism masterminded by El Aqrab, a diabolical killer recently arrested in Tel Aviv whose calling card is to wrap his victims up with incendiary devices designed to produce flames in the shape of Koranic verses. Some call it aesthetic destruction.
Following the theft of 8 kilos of Highly Enriched Uranium, an ultimatum is issued to the West: Release El Aqrab or a nuclear bomb will be detonated. But, at the last moment, El Aqrab escapes . . . and the authorities never get the bomb.
While Homeland Security is convinced it's headed for New York, only Agent Deckerâassisted by brilliant and beautiful oceanographer Emily Swensonâbelieves the bombâs true destination is La Palma, in the Canary Island chain.
Now, Decker and Swenson have less than six hours to prove their theory, defuse the bomb, and prevent a mega-tsunami from annihilating the Eastern Seaboard.
The Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma is currently in a dormant stage, but will almost certainly erupt again. The western half of the volcano has an approximate volume of 500 cubic kilometres, and an estimated mass of 1,500,000,000,000 (that's 1.5 Trillion!) metric tons. If it were to catastrophically slide into the ocean, it would generate a wave with an initial height of about 1,000 metres at the island (3,300 ft or 300+ stories high, if it were a building; i.e. 3 Empire State Buildings tall), and a likely height of around 50 metres (164 ft, or around 16 stories high) at the Caribbean and the Eastern North American seaboard when it runs ashore eight or more hours later. For context, if you are a piano lover, the arriving wave will be about the height of the Steinway building in NYC.
The 16-story Steinway Building in New York City is the same height as the mega-tsunami wave will be when it hits the East Coast of the US.
Tens of millions of lives will be lost as the cities and towns of Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Havana, and countless others along the Atlantic coast in North, Central and South America, plus Africa and Europe, are destroyed, wiped out in seconds.
As Emily Swenson says about the inevitability of the fall of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, "Iâm afraid you donât understand, Agent Decker. It's not about likelihood. It's a certainty. The only variable is time."
At some point in the future, the island will come apart and a mega-tsunami will stream across the Atlantic at the speed of a jet plane, obliterating the entire Easter Seaboard of the United States, killing more than forty million people, thirteen percent of the U.S. population. And hundreds of millions will be injured, one out of every three Americans. It will cause trillions of dollars in damage. The entire U.S. economy will be disrupted for years, if not permanently crippled.
This is not speculation. This is a fact.
The last Cumbre Vieja eruption occurred in 1971. The next? Who knows. Click below to see what it might look like.
For an excerpt from The Wave, click here.
To purchase your copy of The Wave, click here.
Click here to check out my Pinterest board. [WARNING: Some of the images on this board may be disturbing to younger readers.]
In the meantime, my latest release, The Wall Street Murder Club, continues to sell well in both print and Kindle formats.
And The God Machine continues to reach new theo-thriller fans . . . especially as an eBook.
Caroline Thompson (author of Edward Scissorhands) said, "Move over, Dan Brown . . . All hail J.G. Sandom . . . (The God Machine) is a thrilling and breathless, rapturously-written and mind-blowing read. Itâll keep you up all night, turning pages as fast as your little fingers can manage." BookPage said, "Sandom has a knack for combining legendary gospels, ancient secrets, star-crossed lovers and Masonic puzzles to create a simmering stew of conspiracy, intrigue and danger that keeps the plot pot boiling until the very end." And the Historical Novels Review said, "History galore, violence, and intrigue fill the pages of this tightly plotted, twisting and turning adventure story . . . Those who love numbers, physics, and a truly unpredictable, suspenseful mystery will relish the facts and ponderings replete in this well-written, mysterious spin-off of The Da Vinci Code. The God Machine is a very impressive historical thriller!"
The Church insisted it didn't exist.
They lied.
They said it was just a Masonic legend.
It wasn't.
A two thousand year old secret.
Revealed.
The coded journal of Benjamin Franklin. A hidden map. A legendary gospel. These are the first pieces to an ancient puzzle so powerful it could destroy the very foundation of Christianity.Once before, Joseph Koster unearthed one of the Church's most deeply buried secrets . . . and it almost cost him his life. But some treasures are too hard to resist. And as Koster puts the pieces of Franklin's puzzle together, he discovers something even more startling . . . and infinitely more deadly.Now, along with beautiful Indian high-tech mogul Savita Sajan, Koster must race to decode Franklin's journal before it falls into the hands of those who would do anything, kill anyone to suppress it. But in a world of secret societies, ancient conspiracies and Masonic puzzles, locating the prize is one thing . . . staying alive, another.For as Koster and Sajan are about the learn, the same key that unlocks the doorway to Heaven . . . could open the portals of Hell.
For an excerpt from The God Machine, click here.
To purchase your copy of The God Machine, click here.
Click here to check out my Pinterest board for The God Machine.
Spread the good news. If you liked The God Machine, please pen a review at Amazon, BarnesAndNoble.com or Goodreads.
The novel was recently released in Spain where it rose to #1 on the Amazon best-seller list.
If you're looking for something uplifting to read on your Kindle, Nook, iPad, smartphone or laptop, check out this short story, After the Great Muskie Hunt, dedicated to my father, Zane, who always found time to take me fishing, and whose memory it honors. Please take a moment to download and read it. It's only around 15 manuscript pages, and it's only 99¢ at Amazon.
We live the lives of locusts, gone in a summer's day. I miss you, Dad!
"After the Great Muskie Hunt"
When his father loses his job, a young painter from New York offers to take him fishing for muskieâa barracuda-like freshwater fishâat Big Eagle Lake, in Ontario, Canada.
"Haunting and beautiful."
Mainsail Reviews
[Click here to check out my Pinterest board for After the Great Muskie Hunt.]
Meanwhile, from a land of water to a land of thirst, here's a black comedic adventure that takes place in the heart of the Sahara, released under pen name Veronica C. Wright.
When successful PR executive Ben Wright discovers his 17-year-old daughter Nicki has just had an abortion, he resolves to take her away on a European vacation. They travel to Venice, where Nicki becomes enamored with a tall, handsome young minister from the Islamic Socialist country of Kush, in the throes of a famine and civil war against an American-educated, pro-Democracy guerrilla leader named Omo of Amhara. Nicki eventually runs away from her father and journeys to the remote North African nation. But when Wright pursues her, traveling deep into the heart of the Sahara, he is captured by the guerrillas, and forced to employ his PR skills in ways he could never have imagined.
Mainsail Reviews said, "Take a 21st century version of Paddy Chayefsky's Network, add a dash of Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog, plus a jigger of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, and you have The Publicist, a tightly paced coming-of-age story â for both Nicki and her father â that eerily anticipated the Arab Spring, and delivers an absurdist look at how today's top news stories are packaged for consumption. The Publicist is a beautifully written and powerful black comedy which dramatizes the impact of today's new social media on politics and contemporary culture."
On June 15, 1904, over one thousand German immigrants on a Lutheran Church outing died when the General Slocum steamship caught fire and sank in the East River. It was the greatest disaster and loss of life in New York City history . . . until 9/11.
But was it a tragic accident or willful murder?
When her Jewish boyfriend Dustin is accused of the crime, an amateur teen detective, Mallory Meer, risks everything to solve the mystery behind the tragedy. Was Dustin guilty? Or, was someone else responsible for the fire that killed over a thousand men, women and childrenâincluding Mallory's own baby sister?
Only Mallory can understand what this crime truly means because she's not only one of the victims . . . she's one of the dead.
"In this extraordinary, award-winning paranormal romance and Gothic horror tale, Mallory uses all the powers of this world and the next in order to save her beloved and punish those responsible for the tragedy. Set against a backdrop that includes adolescent sexuality, corruption and pervasive anti-Semitism, Sandom presents the details of the disaster without flinching, and explores both the pain and self-serving motivations of all concerned. At once a ghost story, a courtroom drama, an examination of immigrant life, and a tale of love, redemption and revenge, Kiss Me, I'm Dead is a tightly wound novel that will keep haunting you long after you've closed the book."
Mallory Meer is like any other teenage girl. She likes to have fun. She thinks her sister is ridiculous. Her parents drive her crazy. She's got a terrible crush on Dustin and follows him everywhere.
Mallory even has a summer jobâfiguring out the truth about the fire on the General Slocum steamship, the disaster that killed her sister. Mallory is determined to get to the bottom of it, to find out who's guilty, and to finally bring them to justice.
Sometimes Mallory gets angry, very angry, and strange things happen when Mallory gets angry.
Yes, Mallory is like any other teenage girl . . . except Mallory is dead.
Twilight meets Titanic
Ranked one of the Top Ten Children's Books of the year by the Washington Post, Kiss me, I'm Dead was named a Notable Book for Teens by the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee, a Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Teen's Top Ten, and nominated for a Cybils literary award.
The Washington Post said, "(J.G. Sandom) writes with a precision and delicacy unusual for YA fiction," and called the book, "A subtle gem." In its starred review, School Library Journal said, "Kiss Me, Iâm Dead tells a remarkable story in a remarkable way." Horn Book Magazine called the work, "A decidedly unconventional ghost story . . . (and) a tightly wound novel." Kirkus Reviews termed it, "A remarkable account." Romantic Times said, "Kiss Me, Iâm Dead is a book you shouldn't pass up." Midwest Book Review termed it, "a wonderfully different kind of ghost story." And Bookslut.com said, "Kiss Me, Iâm Dead scores on several levels, most notably as a drama that blows apart all preconceived notions of how history can be retold."
Originally released in hardcover by Penguin/Dutton, KISS ME, IâM DEAD was recently released in softcover and Kindle formats by Cornucopia Press, andâas noted aboveâimmediately rose to #1 on Amazon's Best Sellers in Teen & Young Adult Horror eBooks list, and to #4 on the Teen and YA Paranormal list.
Click here to purchase your copy of Kiss me, I'm Dead!
Click here to check out my Pinterest board for Kiss me, I'm Dead.
Or, if you're looking for another scary YA story, check out CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BODY SNATCHER.
The beggar children of London are vanishing. They're disappearing . . . right off the streets.
Some say it's got something to do with the business of body snatching, grave robbers digging up corpses and selling them to doctors for medical research.
Some say it's far worse.
Now, racing against time, only Victorâa poor immigrant boy recently ship-wrecked and sold into the bondage of beggaryâcan uncover the identity of the ghoulish murderer at the heart of Londonâs furtive trade in human trafficking.
They killed his best friend.
They kidnapped the girl that he loves.
Now, there's only one thing worse than their finding him . . . and that's him finding them first.
Oliver Twist meets Taken
Previously named a Junior Library Guild selection, Publishers Weekly called Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher, âA haunting tour of London's underclass during the 1830s . . . Teens will likely be both captivated by Victor's harrowing story as well as his ability to prevail in the face of harsh injustices." VOYA said, "Teen readers will thoroughly enjoy the hair-raising suspense in this historical thriller." Kirkus Reviews called Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher perfect for, âaudiences that relish historical fiction." KLIATT said, "Like M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, this look at sinister events in history makes the era come alive and lingers in the memory." And School Library Journal said, âPart historical fiction and part adventure story, the novel brings excitement to Victorian England . . . Readers will be on the edge of their seats.â
Click here to purchase your copy of Confessions of a Teenage Body Snatcher.
Click here for the Pinterest board.
And if that isn't enough, BOTH titles are also available in Two Teen TerrorsâA Cornucopia Press Collection FOR JUST $4.99!
Click here to purchase your copy of Two Teen Terrors!
Recent Comments