Nostalgia City Mysteries

Mark S. Bacon

Category Archives: ebooks

The mysteries continue here !

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Win a free copy of The Woke and the Dead

The man’s T-shirt said, I’m proud of my— but the coagulated blood across his torso obliterated the rest of the slogan like the three bullets had obliterated him.

That’s the first line of my new murder mystery, The Woke and the Dead. It’s a sometimes gritty, occasionally funny mystery/suspense novel with political flavor, the kind of taste you can feel at the back of your throat.

For Nostalgia City followers, here is your next installment of Lyle and Kate who work at the world’s most elaborate theme park.  If you haven’t read a Nostalgia City mystery yet, you can still dive into The Woke and the Dead.

This novel gives you the background you need to get to know the regular characters as you’re quickly drawn into a story of murder, hate groups, racism, homophobia, corruption, and political espionage. Lyle’s sense of humor and Kate’s stick-to-itiveness flow throughout.

The book review blog, On a Reading Bender, calls The Woke and the Dead, “Fast-paced. Suspenseful. Full of secrets and lies [and] interesting, complex, likable protagonists.”

Check out the description on the Amazon page where you can pre-order the ebook book at the intro price of $2.99 until March 13. Print copies will also be available from Amazon in the middle of the month.

If you want a chance to win a free copy of the book, check out the giveaway on Goodreads, here. The giveaway ends, March26.

I’ll be a guest on a political podcast later this month talking about the book and its ideological and literary influences.  Details will be posted here soon, at https://baconsmysteries.com.

In the weeks and months to come I’ll be reviewing mystery/noir books and movies, posting excerpts from The Woke and the Dead, hosting articles from other mystery writers and holding another book giveaway.

In the meantime, you can find me on Facebook and Twitter (x) and soon on Bluesky.

 

 

Dark Ride Deception: Where did it come from?

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I love theme parks.  Four years ago I took my grown daughters to Disney World. I’d talked about such a trip for years, but we finally managed to find a time when both of them could take off work, bid their spouses adieu for a few days and jet off to Florida with old dad.

A trip of a lifetime for me and the best part, of course, was just spending time with the two of them. In addition, we were treated to all the distracting attractions the Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood can throw at you. We plummeted in an out-of-control elevator, rocketed into space and strolled along a peaceful lake while munching food from different countries.   

Although I grew up in Southern California, I live out of state and had not visited Disney’s Anaheim park in more than 20 years, so the Florida adventure was all the more exciting.  As my girls and I enjoyed each park, we saw construction, evidence that engineers were working to expand ways to tickle your fancy or even subvert your senses.

Over the past two generations, people have grown up watching movies and TV shows featuring increasingly sophisticated special effects.  CGI, for computer generated imagery, is a part of our twenty-first century vocabulary.  Theme park rides had to follow suit, and in fact, the latest additions to Disney World are Star Wars extravaganzas.

So I thought that Nostalgia City theme park, the setting for my mystery series, needed a technological boost.  More special effects, more imaginative rides for guests.

Tom Wyrick, a computer genius in Nostalgia City’s Park Attractions Development Department, created just what the park—and my new book, Dark Ride Deception—needed. His Perception Deception Effect (PDE) surpasses anything at any theme park. 

Just how mind-bending is his invention?  Here’s how a Nostalgia City engineer describes it in the book: “Unless someone invents a transporter room or time machine, once it’s finished, PDE could be the vanguard for more than a decade…it’s a technological game-changer.”

Unfortunately, before Wyrick’s plans could be finished, he disappears, along with his secrets. Is he dead? On the run? Trying to sell his creation to the highest bidder?

Dark Ride Deception is now available for pre-order at the places linked below.   The book will be released Sept. 30.

Amazon US

Barnes and Noble

iBooks

Kobo

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

‘The Marijuana Murders’ by the numbers

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Notable elements in the content and creation of my latest novel, The Marijuana Murders

86,044
Number of words in the book

1980
Year Pac Man was licensed for distribution in the United States

907
Number of cups of tea I drank while writing

900
Depth in feet of the Lavender Pit in Bisbee, Arizona

381
Number of days it took me to write it

374
Number of miles from Nostalgia City to Agua Prieta, Mexico

340
Number of pages

235
Horsepower rating for the 1974 Chevy Monte Carlo with the 454 cu. in. engine (More than 300,000 Monte Carlos were produced by Chevrolet that year.)

205
Top speed (estimated) in miles per hour for a 2018 McLaren 570s

74.5
Height, in inches, of my protagonist Kate Sorensen

67
Number of chapters

33
Number of states in which medical marijuana is available (Medical marijuana is also recognized in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.)

13
Number of beta readers and critique group members who read it before it went to my publisher

10
Number of states that have legalized recreational marijuana  (It’s also legal in D.C.)

8.2
Amount of estimated annual U.S. retail sales of marijuana, in billions of dollars

6
Number of hours of Ravi Shankar music I listened to while writing certain chapters

 

5
Approximate number of onion rings Lyle eats in a scene with Earl Williams

3
Number of times I use a form of the f-word