Archive for April, 2013

Fans of The Da Vinci Code bestselling author Dan Brown don’t have long to wait until the release of his latest novel, Inferno. May 14th is D-Day for the book’s release in North America by Doubleday and in the UK by Transworld Publishers, a division of The Random House Group.  The book will have a first printing of four million copies. 

Inferno, featuring the return of renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, is set in Italy and centers on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces, Dante’s Inferno.

On his own website, Dan Brown says:

Although I studied Dante’s Inferno as a student, it wasn’t until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante’s work on the modern world. With this new novel, I am excited to take readers on a journey deep into this mysterious realm…a landscape of codes, symbols, and more than a few secret passageways.

Check out Dan Brown’s website at: http://www.danbrown.com

As per below, the Dan Brown novels Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code are currently #1 and #2 respectively on Goodreads’ Conspiracy Fiction list. Our thriller series The Orphan Trilogy (The Ninth Orphan / The Orphan Factory / The Orphan Uprising) is #3 on that list…

Angels & Demons by Dan BrownThe Da Vinci Code by Dan BrownThe Orphan Trilogy by James MorcanThe Name of the Rose by Umberto EcoCatch-22 by Joseph Heller

For the Top 100 books on this list go to: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2407.Conspiracy_Fiction#17377036

Happy Reading! -Lance

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Hi All,

I am seeking distributors for my soon-to-be released feature film MY CORNERSTONE – an OZ-Bollywood romantic comedy filmed in Sydney, Australia and Mumbai, India. We will be promoting the film at Cannes next month. All territories worldwide currently available for a theatrical release.

IMDb listing: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527256/

Regards,

James Morcan

Morcan Motion Pictures

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Kim Jong Un, This One’s For You!

The 2013 Pulitzer Winner for Fiction.

In an insightful review of Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Orphan Master’s Son, Truthdig book reviewer Cherilyn Parsons wonders if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will read this novel.

Ms Parson’s review is appropriately headed ‘Kim Jong Un, This One’s For You’!

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

Citizens, gather ’round your loudspeakers! It is time for the final installment of this year’s Best North Korean Story, though it might as well be titled the Greatest North Korean Story of All Time!—from ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’.

I wonder if Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s new, poker-faced leader, will read this novel. If he does, he may be baffled unless his Switzerland schooling gave him a real understanding of Kafka, Nabokov, Pynchon, Swift and Borges. ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ by Adam Johnson—an American—is a rich, careening, dystopian tale that stretches the form of a novel to give us a visceral hit of life inside North Korea.

So Kim Jong Un, this review’s for you. This audacious and (to despots like you) dangerous novel set in your country is definitely the Greatest North Korean Story of All Time, no matter what you might decree.

‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ is about a lot of things—freedom and captivity, love and loss, truth and lies—but at its deepest level it’s about identity and story. It’s about who holds the power to say, “This is who I am.”

For the full review go to: In-Depth Review and Analysis of the 2013 Pulitzer Winner for Fiction

For PBS video interview with author Adam Johnson go to: http://video.pbs.org/video/2191584507/

For sample chapters of The Orphan Master’s Son go to: http://www.amazon.com/The-Orphan-Masters-Son-ebook/dp/B006UIUJ2A/

And for the latest on arts and culture, we recommend Truthdig. Check it out at: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture

Happy reading! -Lance

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Our international thriller novel The Ninth Orphan (The Orphan Trilogy, #1) was seven years in the making. We started writing the manuscript in mid-2004 with literally dozens of rewrites to follow…Those rewrites were driven by doing indepth story analysis after each new draft and most importantly being honest with ourselves. We also sought feedback from other novelists plus experienced figures in the publishing industry. The Ninth Orphan has a complex, layered plot set in various locations all over the world, so we refused to rush it. We knew the story needed a lot of research and thought to completely nail it. After seven years of blood, sweat and tears we were 100% sure we had the perfect spy thriller novel on our hands.

In mid-2011, The Ninth Orphan was finally published (by Sterling Gate Books). It came out in both trade paperback and kindle ebook editions. By December of that year the kindle edition became The #1 Best-Selling Spy Novel on both Amazon.com and Amazon UK. It remained in the spy bestseller list until early 2012 and has been a regular visitor to Amazon’s bestseller lists ever since.

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Since then we have written and published the remainder of The Orphan Trilogy, which includes a prequel and a sequel to book one. We have also written a screenplay adaptation of The Ninth Orphan and are now actively developing that feature film under our production company Morcan Motion Pictures. The movie will be filmed in various locations around the world including Paris, London, Chicago and the Philippines.

Plot summary: An orphan grows up to become an assassin for a highly secretive organization. When he tries to break free and live a normal life, he is hunted by his mentor and father figure, and by a female orphan he spent his childhood with. On the run, the mysterious man’s life becomes entwined with his beautiful French-African hostage and a shocking past riddled with the darkest of conspiracies is revealed.

Thanks for all your support!

James & Lance Morcan

In following the escapades of Nine, the ninth-born orphan, our conspiracy thriller series The Orphan Trilogy (The Ninth Orphan / The Orphan Factory / The Orphan Uprising) takes readers on one helluva ride through America, Europe and many Third World countries.

Book #1, The Ninth Orphan, starts in Montana’s Custer National Park then takes readers at break-neck speed from the Philippines to rural Illinois, London, Paris, the French countryside, Germany’s Black Forest, Cornwall’s Saint Michael’s Mount and finally the Marquesas Islands…

             

     

        

Book #2, The Orphan Factory, starts in Chicago. In this prequel to Book #1, a young Nine flees across country to Iowa’s Mount Pleasant, interstate through America’s Midwest, to Santa Monica in greater Los Angeles as he attempts to escape his Omega Agency masters. He finds himself in Guyana’s Amazon rainforest on his first mission abroad…

     

                 

Book #3, The Orphan Uprising starts in the Marquesas Islands. In this sequel to Book #1, an older Nine embarks on a frantic rescue mission when Omega Agency operatives kidnap his young son. His mission takes him to Tahiti, Chicago, Switzerland, Germany, Greenland, Africa, Las Vegas and finally Vanuatu…

  

      

  

To follow Nine’s adventures around the globe, read The Orphan Trilogy, available now as a Kindle box set (3 books in 1) through Amazon. Go to: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BFC66DM/

For more info about The Orphan Trilogy, go to: http://www.youtube.com/user/SterlingGateBooks

 

Happy reading! -Lance & James

 

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Hey Guys – Here’s two posters and a press article for a new feature film MY CORNERSTONE, which I acted in and wrote the screenplay for. It’s a romantic comedy that we filmed in Mumbai, India and Sydney, Australia. Thanks, James

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Magic New Poster for Aussie-Indian Film MY CORNERSTONE 

I’ve never paid much attention to Bollywood-style movies aimed at the Indian market until this past year, when I started reading J Hurtado’s reviews here at Twitch (shout-out to Eega). So it’s with a little excitement that I saw the poster for Aussie Indian film My Cornerstone, as I knew I could share it here with an already attuned audience.

Written by enterprising actor James Morcan (the dashing gent in the poster) and directed by Stanley Joseph, My Cornerstone appears to be three movies in one. The poster suggests everything from magic (sorry, illusions) to clones, while the official synopsis suggests a drama:
A young Indian nurse moves to Sydney where she’s placed in the household of a wealthy Indian-Australian family and given the task of caring for an elderly lady.
Meanwhile, the film’s only entry on Wikipedia lists it as a romance. Only time (and possibly, magic) will reveal what truly happens. There’s not much more information online, but we’ll endeavor to bring you updates when we discover more.
My Cornerstone on IMDb: http://imdb.com/title/tt2527256/

The passing of Margaret Thatcher has predictably sparked an outpouring of mixed emotions around the globe. Thatcher’s supporters have lauded her as Britain’s greatest leader while her enemies in one infamous London neighborhood have gone as far as throwing a street party to celebrate her death.

Love her or hate her, milestones in the tumultuous career of Britain’s first female Prime Minister will forever be etched in history.

One little publicized fact about Thatcher is she was the member of a very exclusive, very mysterious group. An invitation-only group. Its name: The Bilderberg Group.

The Bilderberg Group has some big names in its elite membership. Famous Bilderbergers include Bill Clinton, David Rockefeller, Prince Charles, Bill Gates, Ben Bernanke, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes who have all attended meetings of the organization.

Other notable US political figures to have officially attended Bilderberg meetings include current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Colin Powell, former President Gerald Ford as well as Texas Governor and 2012 Presidential also-ran Rick Perry.

On the international roster, Bilderbergers have included leaders of almost every Western nation, Swiss bankers, EU Commissioners and Royalty. Among past and present attendees are current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the King of Spain Juan Carlos I and the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip, as well as Thatcher.

Beyond these confirmed Bilderbergers, there’s also a raft of other high profile figures suspected to have participated in conferences – according to the conspiracy theorists at least. For example, shortly before becoming the US President, Barack Obama was rumored to have met with key Bilderberg members at or near their conference venue in Chantilly, Virginia, in 2008.

Other rumored attendees include Rupert Murdoch, George Bush, Sr. and George W. Bush. Hillary Clinton also denies having attended any Bilderberg meetings despite reported sightings of her at the locations of the 2006 (Toronto) and 2008 (Virginia) conferences.

Bill Clinton, however, was an official attendee of the 1991 Bilderberg conference in Germany while still a little known Governor of Arkansas; the following year he won the US Presidential Election.

Conspiracy theorists have long said the Bilderberg Group undermines democracy and influences everything from nations’ political leaders to the venue for the next war. Is there any truth behind this supposed political conspiracy? Well, that depends on who you ask. Certainly, it’s easy to see why conspiracy theories plague the Bilderberg Group.

Bilderberg takes its name from a hotel of the same name in the Netherlands where the first meeting took place in 1954. Ever since, every Bilderberg conference has received almost complete media blackouts despite being held at prominent five-star resorts.

Critics point out this dearth of media coverage is highly unusual given the veritable who’s who of world leaders and movers-and-shakers in attendance each year.

The Bilderberg Group features prominently in our conspiracy thriller, The Ninth Orphan (The Orphan Trilogy, #1). Okay, it’s a work of fiction, but it does raise some interesting questions about a secretive, invitation-only organization whose annual conferences for the most part remain mysteriously off the record. Questions that demand answers.

Still sceptical? Here’s some interesting bedtime reading…

bilderbergmeetings.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX-aEcF8Rjg

Want to learn more? Get your copy of The Ninth Orphan (The Orphan Trilogy, #1): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0056I4FKC

The Ninth Orphan exposes Bilderberg.

The Ninth Orphan, which merges fact with fiction, exposes a secret elite pulling the strings of various administrations.

Happy reading! –Lance

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Question: If wars create vast sums of money for the global elite, then could North Korea be a fabricated enemy ala the Soviets, the Viet Cong, Muslims etc, etc?

Kim Jong Un Hasnt Been Seen for Weeks as Kerry, U.S. Confront North Korea Aggression

I have been wondering whether there are enough natural enemies left in the modern world to lead to genuine wars involving superpowers…After recently researching the history of false flag operations, I would have to say no…Otherwise, why would there be a need for any of these false flag attacks? If the countries in question were invading other nations in broad daylight, then surely there’d be no need to fabricate anything.

A false flag operation is basically the act of committing a terrorist event or an act of war and having others blamed for that event. Usually those “others” are either mineral-rich countries (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan) or geographically important nations (e.g. Vietnam, Cuba).

False flag terrorism is employed by governments and intelligence agencies all over the world. It is cleverly orchestrated propaganda designed to provoke specific reactions from the masses in the build up to war.

Ancient Rome

Roman emperor Nero is said to be responsible for one of the first false flag operations. Most historians concur that Nero was the perpetrator of the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD in which a third of the city was torched. Nero’s motivation was to build Domus Aurea, an enormous building that would include the Colossus of Nero – none other than a statue of himself! Before to the fire, the Senate had blocked the emperor’s proposal to destroy a third of the city to make way for this complex.

According to Roman historian Tacitus (56 AD – 117 AD), Nero told the Roman population that the Christians (whom Rome were at that time at war with) were responsible for the fire…

The U.S. Government’s proposal to kill American citizens

In the early Sixties during the conflict with Cuba, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed carrying out acts of terrorism inside the United States.

Operation Northwoods’ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods ) plans included the sinking of U.S. war ships, bombs in major American cities, shooting down hijacked American passenger planes, and killing innocent American citizens. Every event would be blamed on Fidel Castro and the Cuban regime. The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s logic was that these events would help gain enough support from the American public and the world at large for a U.S. military invasion of Cuba.

Fortunately President Kennedy rejected the plan in 1962. However, the following year Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

The Vietnam War

On August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson alerted his fellow Americans on national television that North Vietnam had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Not long afterward, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson the green light to begin military operations against North Vietnam. American troops were soon stationed in Vietnam and neighboring countries and the ensuing war ended up costing approximately 60,000 American lives and three million Vietnamese.

The thing is, President Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, had successfully hoodwinked the American people. North Vietnam had not attacked the USS Maddox, as the Pentagon claimed, and the so-called “unequivocal” evidence of a second attack by the North Vietnamese is now commonly acknowledged as being a false report…The Gulf of Tonkin Incident ( http://fair.org/media-beat-column/30-year-anniversary-tonkin-gulf-lie-launched-vietnam-war/ ) was nothing but a phantom attack on the U.S. Military.

WWII was the last legitimate major war, I believe…Nearly all the other wars since (especially Iraq I and II, Vietnam and the various Afghan wars) have just been money spinners spawned by the fear of fabricated enemies or at least unproven enemies.

This all leads to other questions…

Were Communists ever a valid threat?

When the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, why didn’t the much hyped Domino Theory( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory ) ever occur? Why weren’t most other Asian countries overrun by Communism as expected?

Is it realistic to have a war on “terror” instead of a regular war against a certain nation or group of nations? Can bearded nomads living in caves really be a genuine threat to superpowers?

And can isolated and impoverished nations like North Korea prevent world peace if the rest of the world wants peace? Would North Korean president, Kim Jong Un, actually order his military to fire nuclear weapons and incite war? If so, what would be in it for North Korea when they’d obviously be committing suicide by inviting the rest of the world to invade their own country within days? And can any leader of any nation really be that stupid?

And why is it leaders of such independent countries (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Libya) are always portrayed as madmen while the likes of George W. Bush are said to be completely sane?

Maybe world leaders (and the invisible puppet masters who pull their strings) are not that different from Rome’s Emperor Nero all those centuries ago…

That’s my two cents worth regarding the current North Korea situation. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but I figure one must study the past to understand the present. Then again, I could be totally wrong and maybe North Korea is about to nuke us all!

Feel free to leave a comment below, no matter what your opinion on the matter. Would love to hear from you all.

And if you wish to read more about false flag operations and the nefarious activities of the global elite, then check out our international thriller series The Orphan Trilogy.

James

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0056I4FKC

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BGGM05U/

What’s All The Fuss About Amazon?.

This week’s bombshell announcement that online retail giant Amazon is buying book review site Goodreads has received a mixed reaction from authors. The naysayers claim Amazon is undermining and destroying publishing as we know it and the buyout of the world’s leading site for readers and reviewers is yet another example of the online retailer snuffing out the competition.

When you think about it, the marriage between the two was probably inevitable given Amazon’s undisputed ranking as the king of online sales and Goodreads’ spectacular growth with members registering 23 million reviews already.

For a snapshot of the debate that’s currently raging, visit Goodreads’ discussion pages at http://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/413  It makes for interesting reading.

For what it’s worth, here’s my spin on it…

It’s not all gloom and doom. In fact, I predict the advantages will outweigh the disadvantages.

I’m prepared to take Goodreads founder and CEO Otis Chandler at his word when he says –

We plan to continue offering you everything that you love about the site—the ability to track what you read, discover great books, discuss and share them with fellow book lovers, and connect directly with your favorite authors—and your reviews and ratings will remain here on Goodreads. And it’s incredibly important to us that we remain a home for all types of readers, no matter if you read on paper, audio, digitally, from scrolls, or even stone tablets.

Otis-Chandler

Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler

As a Kindle user and reader I especially like his promise:

For all of you Kindle readers, there’s obviously an extra bonus in this announcement. You’ve asked us for a long time to be able to integrate your Kindle and Goodreads experiences. Making that option a reality is one of our top priorities.

Bestselling author Jonathan Gunson sees the positives, too, in an excellent article in BestsellerLabs.com …Gunson says –

Every book you sell on Amazon is now likely to show up in the buyer’s Goodreads account, within easy view of 16 million readers, on an ever increasing scale, automatically. This will substantially increase the visibility of your books.

This also means that both Amazon and Goodreads deserve increasingly focused attention in your own book marketing efforts.

But it’s even more important to remember that your writing should remain the central focus, because it will eventually transcend all of these temporarily disruptive changes.

Jonathan Gunson

Jonathan Gunson

It remains to be seen exactly what this will mean, or how visible those links will be. Either way, with the acquisition of Goodreads, the Amazon universe has just expanded significantly, and maybe the light of opportunity for authors with truly good books just grew a little brighter too.

For the full article go to: http://bestsellerlabs.com/

Dear Follower, What do you think of Amazon’s buyout of Goodreads? Good or bad? Leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

 

Happy reading! -Lance

 

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