Hey everyone! I hope you’ve been keeping safe in 2020! Angelina Marin and the Eye of Amun Ra is finally done! I completely rewrote the entire book! I posted in April that I would post the Foreword well here it is! Book one of the Angelina Marin series should be dropping AGAIN this summer!
Foreword
Angelina Marin… was a passion project in more ways than one, steaming back over thirty years ago.
It all started with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom, when I saw them I loved those movies. I remember idolizing Dr. Jones, even to the point of playing out the epic scene, from Raiders with the cargo truck. I would hang from the front of my mother’s black and silver with red trim Chevy 4X4, while at the same time always looking over my shoulder because if she saw me doing that, it would be my ass. I had a shoulder bag, a collared shirt, and while I never had the fedora I pretended I did using a worn baseball cap as a stand in. I’ll never forget the disappointment and my sore butt when I realized using a whip to swing would never work.
When my writing career started, doing an Indiana Jones themed book was my intention, but it wasn’t on the radar just yet… I was still writing Priscilla Roletti, I hadn’t even written Time Immemorial yet. And then fate happened…. Carlos Marin died. He was my brother in-law, and everything you read about him in this book is true. He was the super dad, the trusting neighbor always open for having a beer, and a smoke.
When he died, it really hit me hard…. such a good man dying. I had regrets too, I never said goodbye and never talked to him as much as we used to. You know that thing called ‘Life’ happened. He moved, and started a new chapter in Florida.
I conceived Angelina Marin the week I was down there, while I was mourning and attending his funeral. I based her off my niece, because if that was my dad, I’d have wished beyond anything to bring him back, plus at the time I wasn’t good at writing from a man’s preceptive.
As I reflect on it now, it was my deep subconscious desire, that I wished I could have changed the fates, or at least do so in my mind. Heck I even asked God why not me? I had no kids, I was alone, I’d have traded places with him.
I wrote the book in under a year, you could say it was a book written in mourning, complied with the fact I was new in my writing and eager, I DIDN’T know what I knew now. I rushed things, and the overall product while it had good ideas, sucked and wasn’t written correctly. Like for example, I wanted to connect Angelina’s world to Priscilla’s, I even had John Derlin in it. It was kinda like a passing of the torch and my own MCU before there was an MCU, I even wanted to debut a character named Dr. Rosecroft, who would evolve into a little-known character named Ravyn Rosecroft.
In the end, I wrote myself into a corner. And what I wanted couldn’t be executed right. So, I took it off sale, and put it up on the virtual shelf, and went on to write other books. Until I felt it was time to revisit Angelina Marin, when I was ready and a better writer. That time is now, I rewrote nearly the entire book, and the end result is spectacular. I’m not saying I reinvented the wheel, and never tried. I like to write books, about things I love, regardless if it’s been done before.
So, Angelina Marin book 1 2.0 is ready, it’s the perfect homage to Indiana Jones and my effort to have Carlos live on. Carlos deserves this in more ways than one… he was one of the very few who knew I was writing…he took it seriously and was very supportive. He was even upset I didn’t do a character based on him.
Well, Carlos it’s been done… here it is… my regret is it took your death for this to happen… so I hope you are looking down at least happy with the end result.
This book… this series will always be dedicated to Carlos Marin, devoted husband, exceptional father and loyal friend…. Miss you.
mike declemente 