Darlene's Book Nook: Guest Post and Giveaway with V. Frank Asaro, author of The Tortoise Shell Code

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Guest Post and Giveaway with V. Frank Asaro, author of The Tortoise Shell Code

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in V. Frank Asaro's The Tortoise Shell Code Virtual Blog Tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book.

About Frank:

For forty years V Frank Asaro, J.D., was a gun-slinging litigation lawyer. To escape the combat, he wrote for pleasure on the side, but kept the manuscripts in a drawer. Often he would switch to composing music and writing lyrics, and inventing, too- all to take a break. Disk jockeys across the U.S. played his albums, recorded by world-class guitarist Peter Sprague and his group, with Frank occasionally sitting in. For a time he had played professionally. The inventions also happened at this time –part of the continuing quest for sanctuary. He holds several patents. But the triumph he most would like to share is his inventive contribution to products liability law –Greenman v. Yuba Power Products. He made that as a young lawyer-clerk with the California Court of Appeal. The concept was expanded by the Supreme Court of California, and is now taught in every law school in the English speaking world, including the European Union. He reached the highest lawyer peer review rating by secret ballot, published by Martindale Hubbell, was named Whose Who in American Jurisprudence, and in Who’s Who in the World.

Welcome to Darlene's Book Nook, Frank!

What are these two related books about?

The Tortoise Shell Code is a high-seas legal/crime thriller, with romance, fisticuffs, prison breakouts, revolution, all with a philosophical twist – that of co-opetition.

Universal Co-opetition is a non-fiction work. It explains the axiom that we can better resolve issues and problems if we cooperate while we compete. I mean by that: we synthesize the behaviors of cooperating and competing into one dynamic. For example when we compete in business we’d better do it ethically or customers will evaporate.

The intended audience?

The audience would be pretty broad from the standpoint of those seeking inhalation of pure entertainment, but I would hope the deep thinkers out there would grasp and appreciate the universal application of the theory of co-opetition. Throughout the book I seed the story with concepts from my non-fiction work Universal Co-opetition. What’s wrong with employing the techniques of Orwell, Ayn Rand, and Huxley et al? Never could I rise to their stratosphere, but one shouldn’t shirk from the inspiration they gave.

Why did you choose this genre?

The Tortoise Shell Code novelized the concept of my non-fiction work Universal Co-opetition. I felt that a high-seas crime/legal thriller is the way to it.

I did not have enough self-doubts about my work to dissuade myself from the perseverance necessary to complete the works.

Early editors of publishing houses liked the concept of Universal Co-opetition, but did not have the courage to take a shot at it. Many years later some of my followers and others adopted the concept to business theory. It exploded from there. I find it now cited in the search engines by a hundred different authors. No. I never experienced self-doubts, only frustration because of delay getting out the concept.

Where is your favourite place to write?

My favorite place to write is at home.

I write at home in my studio where I enjoy sculpting phrases on my word processor. From there, it’s a short drive to the coffee shop discussions or to the back yard pool – I am in Southern California, you see.

What did you do to prepare yourself for writing these books?

I attended workshops on writing, read how-to books and combined those with my personal adventure experiences and those of friends and acquaintances. As a child, I have to admit, I was a book worm. Getting to high school and beyond, I gravitated to athletics – wrestling, track, cross-country, sailing, horsemanship, snow skiing, scuba diver, but always a book worm.

Who is your publisher and how did you get accepted by them? And did you pitch your book yourself or go through an agent?

I pitched my book myself and was fortunate that the publisher, Bettie Youngs Books and her top editor Mark Clements, actually read it. Their enthusiasm pleasantly surprised me.

What are my promotions thus far?

I am giving interviews to reviewers and hope they will find the material worthy of their endorsement. I have several wonderful endorsements so far, including one on the early draft of Universal Co-opetition from bestselling author Spencer Johnson, of Who Moved My Cheese fame, along with co-authoring The One Minute Manager.

If you could give one book promotion tip to new authors, what would that be?

If you know what you have is good, somehow let the readers know that. Persevere.

Can you tell us a little about your upcoming projects?

I’d like to have The Tortoise Shell Code made into a movie. Other than that I have a few manuscripts about regression in time and ghosts. One set in Alaska and California and one sent in Europe and California.

Thanks for interviewing me. You can find me on the web at:Universalcoopetition.com, or at Amazon.com, or Barnes and Nobel.com, or simply Google the Tortoise Shell Code, or Universal Co-opetition.com/blog. Or BettieYoungsBooks.com. My email is vfasaro@san.rr.com.

Thanks so much for joining us today, Frank! It was fun getting to know you better!

One lucky winner will win a paperback copy of Frank's legal thriller, The Tortoise Shell Code.

Off the coast of Southern California, the Sea Diva, a tuna boat, sinks. Members of the crew are missing and what happened remains a mystery. Anthony Darren, a renowned and wealthy lawyer at the top of his game, knows the boat’s owner and soon becomes involved in the case. As the case goes to trial, a missing crew member is believed to be at fault, but new evidence comes to light and the finger of guilt points in a completely unanticipated direction.

Now Anthony must pull together all his resources to find the truth in what has happened and free a wrongly accused man—as well as untangle himself. Fighting despair, he finds that the recent events have called much larger issues into question. As he struggles to right this terrible wrong, Anthony makes new and enlightening discoveries in his own life-long battle for personal and global justice.

Buy Links:

Amazon / Barnes & Noble

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until 12:00 AM on December 20, 2012.

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