GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY
Executive Actions
(Executive Series Book 1)
(Executive Series Book 1)
by Gary Grossman
Executive Actions is the first book in the Executive Series by Gary Grossman. Also available: Executive Treason and Executive Command.
Executive Actions is currently on tour with Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours. The tour stops here today for a guest post by the author, an excerpt, and a giveaway. Please be sure to visit the other tour stops as well.
Description
In the midst of a heated presidential campaign, Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke gets an assignment that turns his world upside down. His investigation uncovers a plot so monstrous it can change the course of America's future and world politics. Roarke discovers that presidency is about to fall into the hands of a hostile foreign power. The power play is so well-conceived that even the U.S. Constitution itself is a tool designed to guarantee the plot's success. With the election clock ticking, Roarke and Boston attorney Katie Kessler race at breakneck speed to prevent the unthinkable. But they also know that it will take a miracle to stop the takeover from happening.
Book Video
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
Sunday 22 June
Sunday 22 June
“Topic one. Theodore Wilson Lodge. Presidential material?” bellowed the host at the top of his Sunday morning television show. He directed his question to the political pundit to his left. “Victor Monihan, syndicated columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is Teddy ready, yes or no?”
“Yes,” Monihan shot back. You had to speak up quickly on the lively program. There was no air between questions and answers. “If the cameras could vote, he’d be a shoo-in.”
“But they don’t. So again, will it be Mr. Lodge goes to Washington?” quizzed the host of The McLaughlin Group. The reference to the Frank Capra movie was lost on most of the audience. Even AMC and Turner Classics weren’t running very many black and white movies anymore.
“Absolutely.” Monihan didn’t take a breath between thoughts. The host hated dead air. Pause and you’re dead. Someone else will jump in. “He’s totally informed, he’s had great committee assignments and he can do the job. Congressman Lodge comes off as a highly capable leader. Trustworthy. The all-American boy grown up. And he positively looks like a president should look … presidential.”
“So a tan and a good build gets you to the White House?” the host argued.
“It means I don’t have to worry about him taking my job.” The overweight columnist laughed, which made his belly spread his shirt to a point just shy of popping the buttons. The joke was good, but he lost his platform with it.
“Roger Deutsch, freelance writer for Vanity Fair, right now Lodge is trailing Governor Lamden. Can Teddy make it up?”
“No. With only two days before the New York primary, there’s no way Lodge can do it. He doesn’t have the votes. And there’s not enough time to get them. Henry Lamden will be addressing the Democratic Party at the August convention in Denver. But even when he gets the nomination, he’ll have a hard time against Taylor.”
The discussion expanded to include the other members of the panel. They talked about Montana Governor Henry Lamden’s qualities. About President Morgan Taylor’s rigid persona. About the voters’ appetite. And back again to the possibilities. “Is there any way Lodge can do what fellow Vermont favorite son Calvin Coolidge did: go all the way to the White House?” the venerable host rhetorically asked. The panel knew this was not the time to reply. Turning to the camera the host said, “Not according to my watch.”
This was the throw to the video package from the campaign trail.
Teddy Lodge smiled as he sat on the edge of his hotel bed to get closer to the TV set. He was half-packed. The rest would wait until the videotape report concluded. Lodge pressed the volume louder on his remote.
“It’s on,” he called to his wife, Jenny.
“Be right out,” she answered from the bathroom. Lodge tightened the knot on the hand-painted tie he’d been given the day before. The gift, from a home crafter in Albany, would go into his collection and eventually into his Presidential Library. But first he’d wear it for the cameras. She’d see it and tell everyone she knew. More votes.
Mrs. Lodge leaned over her husband and hugged him as he watched himself on TV. “You look great, sweetheart.” He agreed. The footage was perfect: Lodge in the thick of an adoring Manhattan crowd, the wind playing with his wavy brown hair, his Armani suit jacket draped over his arm. He came off relaxed and in charge; less like a politician than an everyday guy. An everyday guy who saw himself as President of the United States. And at 6’2” he stood above most of the crowd.
Lodge knew the unusual statistical edge his height provided. Historically, the taller of the two major presidential candidates almost always wins the election. And he was considerably taller than President Morgan Taylor.
The host obviously wasn’t a supporter. But the coverage counted. He hit the bullet points of Lodge’s career.
“Teddy’s been fast-tracking since college. He graduated Yale Law School and has a graduate degree in Physics at Stanford. The man speaks three languages. He worked on various government contracts until he decided to return to his country home in Burlington, Vermont, and run for State Assembly. Two years later, so long Burlington, hello Washington. Mr. Lodge went to Capitol Hill as a young, energetic first-term congressman. He distinguished himself in international politics and now serves as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security. He’s as close to a rocket scientist as they come in Washington. He heads the House Committee on Energy and understands the complexities of the issues. But is he going to the White House?” the moderator asked in his feature videotape. “New Yorkers will decide Tuesday.”
And with that set up came the obligatory sound bite. It couldn’t have been better if Teddy Lodge had picked it himself. It was declarative and persuasive. The producer of the video package must have been in his camp.
“Tomorrow the world will be different. More dangerous. More hateful. Different times need different leaders. Make no mistake, there are no more safe harbors or promised lands. Unless … unless we make better choices today than yesterday. Better friends tomorrow than today.”
As he watched, Lodge remembered the clincher was yet to come. Things like that just didn’t get cut. He was right.
“So come with me and discover a new America. Come with me and discover a new world.”
Thunderous applause followed; applause from the audience at a Madison Square Garden rally.
Eighteen seconds total screen time. Unbelievable on McLaughlin. But Lodge was not an easy edit. He’d learned to break the sound bite barrier by constantly modulating his voice for impact, issuing phrases in related couplets and triplets, and punching them with an almost religious zeal.
Like everything else in his life, he worked hard at communicating effectively. He punctuated every word with a moderately-affected New England accent. Whether or not they agreed with his politics, columnists called him the best orator in years. Increasing numbers of them bestowed almost Kennedy like reverence. And through the camera lens, baby boomers saw an old friend while younger voters found a new voice.
The video story ended and the host brought the debate back to his panel. “Peter Weisel, Washington Bureau Chief of The Chicago Tribune, What sayest thou? Can Teddy un-lodge Lamden?”
“Unlikely.” Weisel, a young, black reporter, was the outspoken liberal of the panel and a realist. “But he’ll help the ticket. He’s a strong Number Two. A junior pairing with Governor Lamden can work. The flip side of Kennedy-Johnson. Let the Democrats make him VP. Besides, his good looks won’t go away in four or eight years. TV will still like him.”
Theodore Wilson Lodge, 46 years old and strikingly handsome, definitely could pull in the camera lens. He had the same effect on women and they held far more votes in America than men. The fact was not lost on the show’s only female contributor of the week. “Debra Redding of The Boston Globe, is Lodge your man?”
Without missing a beat she volunteered, “There are only two problems that I see. One, I’m married. The other – so is he.”
What a wonderful way to start the morning, the congressman said to himself.
[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]
Praise for the Series
"Executive Actions is the best political thriller I have read in a long, long time. Right up there with the very best of David Baldacci. [A] masterpiece of suspense; powerfully written and filled with wildly imaginative twists. Get ready to lose yourself in a hell of a story." ~ Michael Palmer, New York Times bestselling author
"Break out the flashlight, and prepare to stay up all night ... Once you start reading Executive Actions you won’t be able to put it down." ~ Bruce Feirstein, James Bond screenwriter, and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor
"Executive Command mixes terrorists, politics, drug gangs and technology in nonstop action! Gary Grossman creates a ... horribly plausible plot to attack the United States. So real it’s scary!" ~ Larry Bond, New York Times bestselling author of Exit Plan, Cold Choices, Red Dragon Rising
"Moving at break-neck speed, Executive Command is nothing short of sensational ... Executive Command is not just a great book, it’s a riveting experience." ~ W.G. Griffiths, award-winning, bestselling author of Methuselah’s Pillar, Malchus
"Executive Command ramps up the excitement ... A truly bravura performance from a master of the political thriller!" ~ Dwight Jon Zimmerman, New York Times bestselling co-author of Lincoln’s Last Days, Uncommon Valor
"Intricate, taut, and completely mesmerizing. Grossman expertly blends together globe-spanning locations, well-researched technology, finely crafted narrative, and intriguing characters to create a virtuoso tale. Highly recommended." ~ Dale Brown, New York Times bestselling author
"Executive Treason is more chilling than science fiction ... You’ll never listen to talk radio again without a shiver going down your spine." ~ Gary Goldman, Executive Producer, Minority Report; Screenwriter, Navy SEALs & Total Recall
Guest Post by the Author
A Novel Way to Get a Writing Career Going:
My Journey from Television to Print
My Journey from Television to Print
I’m a writer and I have a story to tell.
Little surprise there.
I write political thrillers. They’re books with plots that are grounded in research and reach high for excitement. They’re presidential thrillers with all too clear and present dangers.
They’re my escape. I hope they’ll be yours.
Enter my world and the world of Executive Actions, and the route I took to writing.
As I kid in a small upstate New York town, I went and did those old Cold War duck and cover drills. I watched the skies for Russian bombers, spotted Sputnik orbiting way overhead, and along with classmates, got released from school early the afternoon President Kennedy was killed.
We all grew up a lot that day.
In my 20s, I came of age politically during the Vietnam War. As a young Boston TV producer, I covered racial riots in Boston and presidential primaries throughout New England. A few years later was working on a CBS special in Miami when President Reagan was shot. We shut down production for the day to watch the news out of Washington, wondering again, how things might change.
And flash forward years later, I was in New York City on September 11, 2001.
To put it in a single paragraph, my principal day job is producing television shows, primarily documentaries and series. So many of those programs for History Channel, A&E, National Geographic, NBC, ABC, and NBC News are rooted in my experiences. As a consequence, through television, I’ve taken viewers deep inside White House scandals, through an actual plot that was designed to overthrow President Franklin Roosevelt, behind presidential assassination attempts, into a histories of racism, Civil Defense, war propaganda, the arms race, the power of hate radio, and advertising. I’ve delved into urban legends, potions, UFOs, and paranormal mysteries and profiled heroes and villains, great minds, and deadly killers.
How does it all connect with writing thrillers?
Research. In fact, triple that – research, research, research, and double it again.
My love of research made novels a very natural evolution for me. In fact, I approached my plot development and writing with the mindset of a documentarian. I believed that a novel from my keyboard would feel more real, the more real it was.
From page one, Executive Actions deals with real things: the intrigue of a presidential campaign. A long incubating plot to influence the American political system at the highest level. Russian sleep cell spies. The complexities of uncovering an International plot. The likelihood of missing important clues. The way people in the know must share what they know.
The book begins in my hometown, Hudson, New York, and travels the world – from a Soviet city where spies were trained to pose as Americans – to the Middle East, Europe, across the United States, and right to the Capitol steps and the Oval Office.
The characters are drawn from real-life observations and, I believe, relate to one another as real people. (Yes, there’s a strong woman character – Boston attorney Katie Kessler, who is the perfect match for Secret Service agent Scott Roarke). Scott and Katie discover a decades old mystery and face an assassin who prominently figures into the greater plan.
Executive Actions brings a deadly Cold War scheme forward to today, fuels it through hatred of a revengeful mastermind, and reveals the vulnerability of our political system.
Real and present dangers.
It offers a page-turning, nail-biting plot that will feel all the more relevant as you read it against our daily, ever-astounding breaking news. (I’m giving myself the shivers!)
Now, for my greatest wish. Can I flip this blog around? Reverse the notion of going from television to print? I’d sure like to see Executive Actions turn into a TV series or movie franchise.
I wrote it like a movie with multiple things unfolding at the same time, fast-paced action, clues, surprises, and a big climax.
Will it work as much on screen? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please let me know.
And if you get hooked on Executive Actions, as I hope you will, there are already sequels that pick right up. (No spoilers!) Look for Executive Treason, Executive Command, and a new one right around the corner, all from Diversion Books and available through Amazon, B&N, Books-A-Million, Kobo, and every major bookseller in print, ebook and Audible editions.
Oh, and as you peer around the corner, do so carefully, because the real political world is becoming as dangerous as what we create in fiction. And that’s the truth.
About the Author
Gary Grossman is a multiple Emmy Award-winning network television producer, a print and television journalist, and novelist. He has produced more than 10,000 television shows for 40 broadcast and cable networks including prime-time specials, reality and competition series, and live event telecasts.
Grossman has worked for NBC, written for the Boston Globe, Boston Herald American, and the New York Times. He is the author of four bestselling international award-winning thrillers (Executive Actions, Executive Treason, Executive Command, and Old Earth) and two acclaimed non-fiction books covering pop culture and television history (Superman: Serial to Cereal and Saturday Morning TV).
Grossman taught journalism, film and television at Emerson College, Boston University, and USC and has guest lectured at colleges and universities around the United States. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Board of Trustees at Emerson College in Boston and he serves on the Boston University Metropolitan College Advisory Board. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers Association and The Military Writers Society of America.
Giveaway
Enter the tour-wide giveaway for a chance to win a $15 Amazon.com gift card or the opportunity to suggest a character name for the next book in the Executive Series!
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