Tag: The Hammer of God

Brain function ‘boosted for days after reading a novel’

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That was the headline above the by line by Tomas Jivanda in an article in The Independent last week.

He reported on a research study out of Emory University.  The essence of it is summarized in this sentence from the piece.

“Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading, scientists have said.”

Here’s a new scientific postulate: Is the lingering effect enhanced and extended to say 10 or 20 days of mental optimization if the subject of said gripping novel is the brain itself?

Well, the world of my first, hopefully ‘gripping’ novel, was about the human brain itself.  It’s deep layers and the mapping of it. Therefore, if the average run of the mill novel with ‘great grip’ can increase your noodle powers for 5 days then certainly getting a grip on my first book, The Eighth Day, could prove to be mental Viagra.

As you know, a fancy-schmancy University like Emory has all kinds of funding for research projects, but here at The Avitabile Institute for Advanced Mental Studies, we’re asking for volunteers to read The Eighth Day and chart your increased mental activity in an effort to prove the above postulate. Just go to Amazon, B&N, and iTunes and order the book. Then just let The Eighth day do its voodoo that it do so well.

Please post your results on Amazon, B&N, and iTunes here. Your findings will be tabulated along with those of thousands of other participants and the results printed in the Journal of the American Mind in their March 2014 issue.

So be prepared for the increased and sustained mental proficiency and ecstasy this experiment may yield, but first a few words from the lawyer:

“The Avitabile Institute for Advanced Mental Studies, is not legally responsible for any costs incurred or psychological or medical side effects including but not limited to; euphoria, suspense, thrills, terror, tender moments, laugh out loud knee-slapping hijinks or any other symptoms associated in reading the author’s work. Participants will not be compensated for their contributions. They will however enjoy the gratitude of the author for their procurement of the work piece of the study, The Eighth Day.  The Hammer of God is also acceptable as a substitute.”

Everyday Heroes: TOM AVITABILE

Joseph BadalIt’s humbling to be recognized by people of high ideals and great character, as is the case when thriller Author Joe Badal came across some of my work and honored me by mentioning it.

from Everyday Heroes: TOM AVITABILE

“This month, I want to recognize author Tom Avitabile. Tom is a burly, gregarious New Yorker who has never met a stranger and who makes everyone he meets feel welcome. His smile is contagious and his quick wit will keep you in stitches….”

 Read Joseph Badal’s full article at josephbadal.wordpress.com.

Top it Like it’s Hot: The Eighth Day Tears Up the Barnes and Noble 100

The Eighth DayI’m proud to announce the first installment of the Bill Hiccock Thrilogy has crested the 50th percentile to reach #53 on the Barnes and Noble Top 100. This coincides with the start of summer reading season.

Ah, summer.

It means barbecues and tapped out kegs, but there is one cohort that is conspicuously missing. No scientists participate in this defiant disregard for the earth’s actual position around the sun because they know that summer does not actually start until the interval of time between June 201/4 June 213/4. So scientists everywhere will be abstaining from hot dogs, hamburgers and presumably beer.

QED.

Avitabile - Science vs BeerOf course the author in me can’t help but view Memorial Day as the official start of summer beach reading. This magical season has always been a time of mixed emotions for authors and publishers, who pray that people will buy their books and sit on the sands with the dust jackets on –  so everyone can see who’s reading what. It’s quite a thing in the publishing world.

Not being immune the trends of the industry, my elite marketing department has put together a Father’s Day promotion. Scientific dads will love Presidential Science Advisor Bill Hiccock – just like his dad does – even though Father’s Day falls on June 16th this year.

From June 2nd to the 16th, The Eighth Day will be available for $.99! If that doesn’t satiate your appetite and you need more Bill Hiccock, The Hammer of God is available for just $7.99. The perfect summer read and the perfect gifts for dad…for under $10.  

You might even see some of my ads around town – the ladies up in marketing will be doing their best to make sure I won’t be able to afford any parties until after Labor Day.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this selection of posts from my blog!

Summertime People Watching Tip: In this disputed summertime limbo, it will be easy to spot the scientists in any crowd as those not wearing white pants.

Avitabile
Tom Avitabile
https://tomavitabile.com/
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Argo, the True COVER Story…

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I am constantly amazed at how people connect things. In this case, my fans and specifically the realization for many of them of the resonance between Argo, the movie and The Hammer of God, my novel.  In response to the many e-mails and comments linking the two, I decided to see Argo. (I had already read my book)

Good movie, solidly crafted, good story, well told. Affleck did a great job, which he now knows having won a Golden Globe, but I am sure he appreciates my opinion anyway.  So, yeah… I guess there is some relationship but it’s as thin as Lindsey Lohan’s future prospects as a Nuclear Scientist at Brookhaven Laboratory. (Radio-isotropic co-generation of mononuclidic elements? WHAT-Ever!)

The commonality lies in that both stories highlight the universal power of movies. In fact, here’s an early set of cover designs for Hammer (by Lorenzo Concepcion), which were being considered right up to publication. The log line on this set of covers is a quote from one of the characters in the book,

“Movies… They’ll be the death of western culture!”

Two books

As you can see the movie industry played big in the cover sell. That’s because unlike Argo, where the U.S. used a fictitious movie production as a cover story to free Iranian hostages, in Hammer an Iranian movie company is using the power of Filmmaking permits and the general awe most municipalities treat movie companies with, to actually execute a devastating attack on New York.

Despite the few similarities, the stories are divergently different. However, I certainly wouldn’t mind if Ben Affleck were so moved to make a film of The Hammer of God. 

The Winners to my T-shirt Giveaway Are….

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Amanda Baros

Jane Sizemore Ritz

 Kaycee Mason

Kelly Brasfield

Arinna Black

Scott Brady

JS Ritz

Shaunda Adams Eppes

Ashley Marie Morrissey

Suzanne Gregg

 Congrats to the giveaway winners. Your prize is on its way.  

Iterations of the Apocalypse

Tom Avitabile | Iterations of the ApocalypseThroughout the evolution of mankind the Chicken Little gene has survived intact. Every 50 years or so, mankind decides things are too boring and we collectively embrace end of the world scenarios. Halley’s Comet was thought to bring poison gas that would wipe out all life on earth on May 18th, 1910. In the mid 50’s a group called The Seekers, I guess after OD’ing on films like ‘Earth vs. the Flying Saucers’ and ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’, were convinced that aliens had told them of a massive flood that would destroy the planet.

Last week, we escaped another cosmic billiard ball as those incredible prognosticators of science, technology and human sacrifice, the Mayans, got it wrong again. You remember Mayan Airlines, the Mayan cell phone and the ever popular Mayan Ginsu knife for human sacrifice. (Pay separate shipping and handling and get two.) Those chocolate coveting geniuses, who didn’t see Columbus coming, by the way, threw a dart at a calendar and it came up last week. Now December 22, 2012 is added to the pantheon of apocalyptic prognostications.

But who am I to talk! I now throw my Mayan headpiece into the ring announcing, for your nightmare pleasure: a little ditty called, ‘The God Particle’, my soon to be released third novel which continues the Bill Hiccock ‘Thrillogy’.

Now even though scientists are still searching for the God Particle and have spent billions on the largest machine in the world to find it, not unlike Jodi Foster in Contact.  I step ahead and use the really scary notion that it won’t be cosmic forces or the shifting of the magnetic poles or collisions with NEOs (Near Earth Objects) that will end the world – though NEOs make good reading if you don’t want to sleep for the next 30 years.

No, it won’t be anything so glorious, just one part of mankind embracing technology to destroy all of mankind. At this point we re-read the name of this blog: It’s only fiction til it happens, and hope I’m dead wrong.

But as laid out in The God Particle, historically there was a plausible, logical threat matrix that had been ballyhooed for years beginning with the fears that the atomic programs of the ‘40’s would get out of hand and all the world would be consumed in the dreaded ‘chain reaction’. The very same argument echoes today, with ‘Chain Reaction’ being replaced by ‘Black Hole’ as all the world’s geniuses gather near Geneva to recreate the Big Bang. What could possibly go wrong?

Big Bang: The unimaginable explosion that created everything and was so powerful that the most distant stars and galaxies were flung from the bang’s epicenter to the furthest reaches, trillions of light years away. Don’t even try to think about it.

But hey, that’s what Bill Hiccock and the White House’s Quarterback Operations Group was put on earth for, and boy do they earn their pay in this one. Oh, and by the way, get to know the name ISON, because around Halloween of this year some crazies somewhere on the planet will be screaming about ISON. The comet ISON, will be a dazzling omen in the night sky. I can just hear the tales of the apocalypse getting re-racked and reloaded for next year.

BS (BlogScript): Keep those letters to ABC going about not canceling “The Last Resort!”

Don’t Forget to Wash Your Hands

“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell.”

– Dr. Thomas Frieden, National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Tom Avitabile | The Hammer of GodIn The Hammer of God, the inciting incident of the book is a flu vaccine shortage which is caused by nefarious forces overseas, resulting in half the number of vaccinations necessary to guard the public.

That is step one of a two-step biological attack; take away the first line of defense – which would be the flu vaccine. Then the second part of the attack was to unleash a really nasty airborne bug on the public. So the bad guys weren’t contaminating the flu vaccine to be their vehicle to do harm. They contaminated the supply to take it off the market.

This created a situation, in my book, where during the onset of the attack, people had symptoms that mimicked the flu – and no one suspects anything is awry. The airborne bug’s dormant stage lasts five to six days, taking the world by surprise when the infected take an extreme turn for the worse and people start to die.

It seems like we should be very cognizant of foreign suppliers producing this and other vaccines because their production and distribution lines might be interrupted more easily.

Of course, this being a book about my hero, he thwarts the attack. The mastermind is arrested and becomes a bargaining chip in the escalated terror plot to follow. But the groundwork is there in the story; this is a weak pressure point in the threat matrix aimed at this country.

I am confident in the safeguards that had somebody tried to manipulate or add something nasty to the flu vaccine, it would set off alarm bells and triggers. The far greater insidious plot device is simply to render us unprotected and willing to accept high numbers of infections as the new normal – when in fact it’s anything but. It is the start of an attack.

Remember: wash your hand often.

Blogscript

ABC has decided to cancel my absolute, all-time favorite show: The Last Resort.

When you read The God Particle you’ll see one of my main characters is the USS Tom Avitabile | The God ParticleNebraska – a trillion dollar missile boat (luckily on our side). That’s why I am so distraught over the cancelling of this series, whose main star is the USS Colorado, the sister ship of the Nebraska.

Besides I looove the dialogue…to the point where I say “Damn, I wish I would have written that!”

Please take a moment and email ABC. Tell them to keep the Last Resort afloat.