Mandate of Heaven: Now Available for Pre-Order!

/ Peter Martuneac / 3 Comments

At long last, the first entry in my new Ethan Chase series of thrillers is available for pre-order through Evolved Publishing!

You can find Mandate of Heaven just about anywhere you get your ebooks: Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, Kobo, iBooks, and more! Just click on those links to go to their respective websites where you can place your order now!

I’ve run out of words to describe how excited I am for you all to finally get a glimpse at Mandate of Heaven. The Evolved Publishing team did a great job on it, and I think you all will really enjoy this new series and fall in love with these characters.

My self-published series His Name Was Zach was a darker, bit more niche story; Ethan Chase should appeal to a much wider audience of readers, so whether you enjoyed my previous works or not, this new story might be right up your alley! Read on for the description:

Ethan Chase’s past has finally caught up with him, and the entire world’s future now stands on a knife’s edge.

Ex-Army Ranger Ethan Chase breaks his oath of allegiance to the military when he deserts from the Army while deployed to Afghanistan. Years later, he’s captured and sent to military prison, but the director of a shadowy government agency takes him into his direct custody. They offer Ethan his freedom and a blank slate, but only if he can track down and retrieve the lost Heirloom Seal of the Realm, an ancient Chinese artifact believed to grant godly powers to any ruler who possesses it.

With little choice, Ethan takes on this quest, joined by three cohorts: his best friend, the federal agent who arrested him, and a beautiful treasure hunter. Yet they’re not the only ones seeking the Heirloom Seal, and some will cross any line, betray any loyalty, for a chance at supreme power.

Mandate of Heaven: Coming Soon!

/ Peter Martuneac / 3 Comments

I’ve been hard at work this past week working on Mandate of Heaven, the first book in my upcoming treasure hunter series to be published with Evolved Publishing! My editor sent the manuscript back to me Thursday evening, and I’m already a little over halfway done reviewing his work. He’s made some excellent suggestions on some small revisions, and I’m pretty excited with how the story is shaping up in these final stages.

So, for those keeping score, that’s: 1) cover art received, check, and 2) edits underway, check! Yes, publication of Mandate of Heaven is fast approaching, and I can’t wait to give you all a hard date on when it will be available (it will be sometime this Fall). As subscribers to my new blog you’ll be the very first to know when and where you can get it!

What’s Cooking? Nothing at All.

/ Peter Martuneac / 5 Comments

They say that trouble comes in 3’s, and I sure hope that’s true because that’s how many major appliances I’ve had to replace in my kitchen in the last 15 months and I really don’t want anything else to break. First it was the fridge, which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly a need, but we’d been planning on getting a new fridge for a while. But then the dishwasher broke just a few months ago, so we had to get a new one.

And just this weekend, the oven stopped working too, so we’ve now ordered a new oven as well. And on my daughter’s birthday when we still had a cake to bake, the timing couldn’t have been worse! I probably could have fixed it with a new igniter, but the replacement part would have cost $100 and Lowe’s was running a big sale that ends on the 3rd, plus we were planning on updating the oven with next year’s tax return anyway, so I figured might as well do it now.

But seriously, this better be the last big appliance I buy for a very long time!

Replacing or fixing broken things is one of the worst parts of home ownership. Back when I was single and living in my 1-bedroom apartment, it was a simple matter of calling the landlord, who would send a repair guy out usually that same day and it didn’t cost me a dime. That was the nice part of renting, even if almost everything else about renting stinks.

But for some good news (not really sure if it’s good news. Maybe… gratifying news?), as I wrote this blog post I noticed that someone overnight had read the entirety of Her Name Was Abby overnight on Kindle Unlimited! So thank you, whoever you are, for apparently really enjoying my story, and I hope you read Books 1 and 3 next!

If you’re reading this and you haven’t taken a look at Her Name Was Abby yet, you can check it out here. Read some reviews, see if it’s the right book for you on this fine August day!

Work-in-Progress

/ Peter Martuneac / 14 Comments

Another weekend of writing is in the books… literally!

I’ve been making slow but daily progress on the third installment of my upcoming Ethan Chase series of thrillers as I await edits on the first book to be sent back to me. I’m now at 22,000 words and the story is starting to find its groove.

I’ve also received what should be the final cover art for the first book, and I cannot wait to share it with you all!

In short, this new series is coming together nicely and now quickly. It’s been a long wait for y’all to get this story, I know I’ve been working on it for a while, but I promise it will be worth it once it’s released 😃 So stay tuned!

Today is also the final day to get free downloads of my self-published ‘His Name Was Zach’ series! You can check that out here if you still haven’t got them!

Hearts and Minds

/ Peter Martuneac / 10 Comments

I read an interesting article over the weekend about the storyline of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. You can read it here, but the gist of it was that during the production of Winter Soldier the writers focused intently on making the logic in the plot so airtight that the infamous Honest Trailers YouTube page (a page that makes ‘trailers’ for movies with a narrator that shreds the plot to pieces) wouldn’t be able to lampoon the movie.

Well, they succeeded. So we’ll in fact that when Winter Soldier did show up on Honest Trailers, the narrator even admitted it was extremely difficult to find any plot holes or inconsistencies to make fun of.

This formula ended up working this time, but it started an avalanche inside the MCU studios. Starting with Winter Soldier, several movies that followed were constructed the same way: with logic so flawless and concrete that no one could ever poke fun.

Unfortunately for Marvel, this has resulted in some movies that appeal too much to the head, to the mind, and not enough to the heart.

It’s a fine line that authors, screenwriters, and the like have to walk. People come to your stories for a chance to be fooled in a delightful manner, to dream or to scream, laugh and love. But even though they want an escape, that doesn’t mean they necessarily want a complete departure from reality. Your story, while charming, has to be grounded.

Yet keep it too stubbornly rooted in reality and your readers/viewers will feel like your story is a chore. Something to be done, not enjoyed.

This balancing act is something I frequently struggle with when writing. I try my best to close any loopholes in the plot. Sometimes too hard, and I spend so much time searching for logic in that the story stalls. Suddenly I’m unable to make progress because I’m not letting the characters be themselves.

In Afghanistan, our mission was to win over the hearts and minds of the local populace. Show them the logic of your goals there, get them to buy into the mission, but furthermore get them to believe in it. Heart and mind.

So it seems to be the same objective now as a writer. It’s not enough to offer readers an escape if it’s utter nonsense, nor will it suffice to bore them with reality masquerading as a story. As I writer, I need to let my readers escape for a few hours but with the knowledge that they are safely still in this world they call home.