If you ain’t first, your Dead Last

Today is the release date for my second novel, Dead Last. The story starts a few days after an airborne virus wiped out over half of the world’s population. A group of survivors take shelter inside a TV station. They board up the windows, seal the doors, and pray for rescue, but soon realize that it isn’t coming. They need to learn to live with each other, share food, and work together to survive. It doesn’t take them long to realize that the air outside isn’t their biggest problem.

Dead Last Volume 1 is a graphic series, so read with caution and don’t read it alone at night

Why is this different than most post apacolyptic stories? This is told from the perspective of five different characters.

Kurt- The looked at leader who struggles with every decision he makes

Jack- The tough guy who doesn’t care for the people he’s stuck with but is a born leader who isn’t afraid to make tough decisions.

Emily- A pediatrician who has to care for the sick without a single medical supply while also protecting her family.

Haylea- Kurt’s fiance who only wants to be with him during the crisis and can’t understand why he’d rather lead a group of strangers than take care of her.

Scott- A building manager who wants to do everything he can to help the others, until the isolation gets to him and he begins hearing voices telling me to do the worst things imaginable.

 

The book is graphic, yes, but will take you on a roller coaster of adventure, terror, and excitement.

Don’t be the last one to get your copy. Trust me, and the characters in this book, it is never good to be Dead Last.

 

Available in Kindle version (link below) or Paperback (search Amazon).

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Last-ebook/dp/B00CR4IKFY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1368711975&sr=8-2&keywords=dead+last+marc

Good luck surviving the apacolyspe.

Be the first to be Dead Last

That day has finally arrived. It’s the last couple of days before Christmas morning, the long restless night before a week long vacation.

Finally, the wait is over. Tomorrow. Thursday, May 16th 2013, Dead Last becomes available to YOU!!

When a group of strangers survive an airborne virus, they take shelter in a local TV station, but find out they’ll be there longer than anyone could have thought. They begin running low on food and the isolation of living in a station begins to get to them. They struggle over power and dominance. They begin hearing voices and begin giving in to the worst of their urges. It doesn’t take long for the group to realize that the air outside isn’t their biggest problem, but that it is each other they need to fear. It doesn’t take them long to realize that it is never good to finish…Dead Last.

 

Get the book tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter @MarcQuaranta or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/marcanthonyquaranta to find out more.

Lakeshow Shut Down

I’m back at school on this gloomy Monday, but I can’t get the Laker’s Sunday night loss to the Spurs out of my mind.

I didn’t cheer as hard as I usually do during a Lakers’ game. Three of their starters were out and two of their backups were out. They didn’t have a team to put on the floor. They didn’t stand a chance. So it was nice to see the players giving their all on the last home game of the season…well almost all.

 

I’m so torn on Dwight Howard right now. I just do not know if I want him to be in a Lakers’ uniform next season. Part of me thinks he is just too immature to build a team around, but the other part of me knows he can still be the best center in the league. I wouldn’t mind a sign and trade, although I think that option is dead once next year’s new collective bargaining agreement kicks in. But a trade to New Jersey, where he wants to be, is fine with me.

Dwight Howard for Brook Lopez, Andre Blatche, Marshon Brooks, and a 1st round draft pick works for me. Brook is coming into his own, Brooks would be a great fill in for Kobe next year while he is out with an injury, and Blatche is finally beginning to play the way people thought he could. Also, those three are young and athletic and would fit in Mike D’Antoni’s system.

What about Kobe, though? There is so much talk of amnestying him, but why? You want to know who should be amnestied? Steve Nash. I believe Steve Nash was the problem with the Lakers all along. They brought in a coach to play a more uptempo, “steve nash,” type of system. Why did we build our team and coaching style around a 38-year-old who was already out with a 4-week injury? Why not build it around our 28 year old All-Star center?

Steve Nash dealt with injuries all year and when he did play, he just didn’t fit in with these guys. Even at his age, he needs to have the ball 98% of the time in a pick and roll game dishing out 13 assists. Not with this team, though. Kobe, Dwight, and Pau should have the ball. 33% for each man…that leaves 1% for Nash. Cut him and bring in a young point guard.

Give Darius Morris some time to play decent backup minutes. The kid has shown during the injury plagued season that he can play. He is a decent shooter, solid defender, and he is quick. More playing time will lead to improvement.

Earl Clark needs to stay as well, it is almost time to say goodbye to Metta World Peace and Jodie Meeks, time to say goodbye to Antwan Jamison, get rid of Duhon, Steve Blake, and Devin Ebanks.

Next year’s “must stays” for me are Kobe, Pau, Earl Clark, Jordan Hill, and Darius Morris. Then make a decision on Dwight Howard. Give it one more year with this group of players and when Pau comes off the books…make some signings and make things happen.

In two days, I’ll probably change my mind because I, just like the professional analysts, can’t seem to get an idea of how to fix this team.

 

Be Here Now

Fans are fans

March Madness is upon us. The brackets were just put out yesterday and people are jumping on bandwagons, jumping off bandwagons, and starting to run their mouth before the ball is even tossed up for the first game.

The NBA is coming down to the most important part of its season. When the good teams play well, the bad teams fade out of the playoff race, and the fans begin to run their mouth before a champion is crowned.

Spring Training has begun and opening day of the MLB season is right around the corner. The weather is warming up, the fans are out with a beer and a brat, the long season will begin, and yes…fans will run their mouths before the very first pitch of the season is thrown.

So many people have problems with fair weathered fans. They hate when they go away when things are bad and hate even more when those “cry babies” come back to their team when they string together a bunch of wins. “Fair weathered fans are ridiculous.” I heard that all the time. I worked at a TV station with a lot of passionate fans and all I heard about, from a select few, was about how fair weathered fans should NOT be able to watch sports. Those fans are ridiculous. Well this little blog is a justification of why people that say fair weathered fans are ridiculous are the ones that are actually ridiculous.

For those of you that don’t know, I live in Indiana. Home of the Colts, the Pacers, and the IU Hoosiers.

Look at those teams. The Colts had years of success under Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy. Peyton gets hurt for a whole season, the colts win 3 games, Peyton is traded and everyone things the team is going to struggle. All I heard for the whole 3-win season was about fair weathered fans.

Lets look at the Indiana Pacers. A great team that is currently number 2 in the Eastern Conference and one of the strongest teams in the entire NBA. For a long time, after the Reggie Miller era, the Pacers were a joke. There was the Brawl, the terrible draft picks, the terrible coaching selections of Isaiah Thomas and Jim O’Brien, and the years and years of losing. Now the Pacers are great, and while the attendance doesn’t show it, all I’m hearing about is “Oh, now you love the Pacers? Where were you the last few years?” Let me answer. They weren’t watching a crappy team.

Finally, the Hoosiers. College teams are different because they have such cult followings by students and alumni, but living in Indiana I’ve seen it. I have so many Twitter and Facebook friends that ATTENDED Purdue and for four years were trashing IU in their messages and statuses. Hated IU. “When IU wins a game, what century will we be in?” were the jokes I heard. Constant hatred of Kalvin Sampson and the rule breaking was talked about, but now IU, just announced as a 1-seed in the tourney, is getting all kinds of love and here come the IU fair weathered fans comments.

So let me clear this up again if you think I am blogging to attack fair weathered fans…I’m not. I could care less. People that spend time to intellectually think of a way to bash fair weathered fans need to get their priorities straight (and for people that intellectually think of a way to bash people that bash fair weathered fans you ask? Touche)

I guess the only way to compare why this argument is so ridiculous is to go in the pop culture route. Everyone loves movies, right? But the love of movies is…a fair weathered theory, is it not? I gave three examples of teams in Indiana, let me give three classic movies.

I’ll go with the past, present and the future with Rocky, Die Hard, and Fast and Furious.

The Rocky movies were ground breaking. Inspirational. Motivational. Instant Classics…all of them? No.

Rocky 1-4 were absolutely fantastic. Ask any fan and they will say there was nothing wrong with Rocky 1-4, but then came Rocky 5. Seriously? We are going to get Rocky, after everything he went through, stripped off all his money, pride, and dignity and now he is going to be fighting in the streets? Oh come on. Crap. Now we are getting a Rocky Balboa movie, like what, fifteen years later? (Personally, I love this movie). But so many fans will say the Rocky franchise ended after Rocky knocked out the Russian. They were hoping Ivan would pick up Rocky 5 and Rocky Balboa and give it an, “I will break you.”

Die Hard just came out with Die Hard…5? Is that right? Wow. Die Hard was great. Die Hard 2 was good. Die Hard with a Vengeance was great. Live Free of Die Hard was eh. I haven’t seen a Good Day To Die Hard, but I’ve heard some pretty terrible things and just saw the other day that the movie is already playing in theaters that charge a dollar. Get it? I’ll jump ahead.

The Fast And Furious franchise is becoming one of the most popular franchises in the action genre in the last twenty years. Guess what? It wasn’t always like that. The Fast and The Furious was awesome. In the second one, Vin Diesel didn’t return and people were put off, and rightly so. That movie was sub par. Tokyo Drift had nothing to do with anything and was terrible. The franchise was dead.

But wait, the creators sat down and said, what if we bring everyone back and reintroduce the original storyline and just go further with that. They did and the movie was phenomenal. Then they went one step forward. Let’s get the biggest action star since Aaaanold in the 90′s when he was making Terminator movies that were actually good (another solid point), The Rock. The franchise blew up again and again and the FF6 is out this May.

So here is my point on this very long, boring (and quite frankly, pointless) blog of mine. If something sucks, why do some people expect us to watch it? Why are people expecting me to pay to go see the 2007 Indiana Pacers that finished 9th in the East with a 36-46 record and didn’t even make the playoffs? Because I should be loyal? They do a shit job putting together a team to make games interesting, but I should be loyal and pay my hard earned money to sit and watch a terrible game while eating a 20 dollar beer and hot dog? Really?

So for those fans that read reviews on Rocky (Age) 51, Die Nice and Hard, or (not) Fast and Furious (at all) Tokyo Drift and the reviews suck, we are supposed to pay ridiculous ticket prices to see these just so the movies make more money, people think they were actually good, and then they make more crap sequels? No.

The bottom line is that people do not want to support things that suck. If we didn’t, like I said, more and more would come out. Rocky will be fighting Father time in a retirement home in a theater near you if we continue to support the team. The Pacers may have never gotten their act together if the people “supported” that group of rebels playing in the NBA. Look at the Sacramento Kings. The best thing that happened to that team is that the people stopped going to the game, the ownership sold them, and they may be moved so they can start all over.

For your information, I would buy season tickets to a team that wins 3 games a year, but I love basketball. I love the action, the environment, I think it is a great way to spend a night, but not everyone feels that way. People want to support and watching teams that win, movies that are good, books that are fun. That is the way of the world. Let’s hop of the bandwagon of hating people that jump on the bandwagon.

Be Here Now…even if that means living in the moment equals writing a pointless blog.

*Sigh of relief*

C.O.D.E is coming

A small sample from a chapter in my new series C.O.D.E.

Enjoy…

 

Ryan turned to walk down the street, but bumped into another man a step into the walk. They knocked shoulder to shoulder. Ryan turned to apologized to the man but before he could, his shoulder caught on fire just like the iPhone cord. He quickly reached up and tried to pat it out, but after three slaps to his arm, his hand caught on fire. The fire traveled up his neck and onto his face. It surrounded his head and reached his hair.

The people around him all screamed and backed up. They made a giant circle for Ryan to stand in and try to put out the fire. Ryan stumbled into the street and fell to the ground to roll it out. A taxicab slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting Ryan.

Two brave New York men pulled their coats off and ran over to Ryan. They each tossed their coat onto him and patted at his body firmly. The crowd could hear Ryan screaming underneath the clothing.

They backed away and Ryan rolled away from the jackets. The fire was out. The two men rushed over to his side and bent over to help him in any way that they could.

“Are you alright?” asked one of the men.

“Somebody call 9-1-1,” yelled the other.

The panic in their faces turned to shock. Ryan sat up out of shear terror but it calmed quickly when he saw that there were no burn marks anywhere on his body. His shirt was burnt and one side of his pants was grilled, but Ryan was fine.

The man next to him gently grabbed his arm and held it closer to his eyes. He and the other man that helped connected eyes and were in awe. They had never seen anything like it before. Neither had Ryan. His skin wasn’t burnt. There were no scars. He wasn’t even blackened by the fire. The only difference between him pre-fire and post-fire was that his shirt was burnt off of his body.

“How the hell did you do that?” asked the man.

“Do what?” Ryan asked still trying to catch his breath.

“You don’t have a single mark on you,” said the third man.

“Are you in any pain?”

Ryan stared at both men as he thought about how his body felt. He turned his gaze toward the man that asked the question, “No.”

As the men helped Ryan to his feet, a siren sounded from a distance. The crowd fanned out so that the ambulance could make its way through to Ryan, but when the siren grew closer the people saw that it wasn’t an ambulance.

A white SUV with flashing lights pulled up. The lights flashing weren’t the normal red and blue that most police officers used. It was an interchanging blue and silver color that flashed from the car.

A professional lawyer-like man stepped out of the driver’s door. He wore a dark blue suit with a silver tie. His dark hair was combed over to the left side of his head. He removed his sunglasses and placed them into his coat pocket. He had a chrome watch on his left wrist. The face of the watch was the size of a half dollar.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for your help,” the suited man shook the hands of both of the guys that helped put the fire out. He held his finger up so that Ryan would know not to go anywhere. “If you have a business card, I will make sure that you get reimbursed for those jackets.”

Ryan watched the men hand him a business card. He thanked them again and the two men walked away without saying another word to Ryan. The suited man finally made his way over to Ryan and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Does that hurt?” asked the man.

“No.”

“Absolutely incredible,” the man moved around Ryan’s entire body and admired the perfect condition that his body was in.

Ryan’s gaze fell onto the crowd that hadn’t moved. The eyes of random men, women, and children were staring at him. Cars remained stalled on the streets. People from the surrounding buildings were looking down on Ryan like a zoo animal as he stood in the street. Ryan’s attention was taken by the man in the suit when he heard clanking.

He felt the cold steel being pressed against his wrists. Compared to the fire that engulfed his body, the metal of the handcuffs felt like an ice cube.

“What are you doing?” Ryan asked.

“I’m sorry that I have to handcuff you, Ryan, but it is protocol when we bring in a subject for questioning.”

“Protocol? And what subject? And how do you know my name?” Ryan began tugging away.

“All of this is going to be explained, but I need you to come with me now. Trust me. I’m not the enemy.”

Ryan tried to get his arms free, “Get off of me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Ryan, the world is growing extinct,” the man said to him calmly.

After Ryan heard that, he didn’t put up a fight anymore. Ryan looked into his eyes for a moment, and then away to collect his thoughts. His eyes bounced back and forth like an old game of Pong. He looked back up to the man and nodded slowly.

“Thank you,” he said.

He clasped the second cuff around Ryan’s wrist and escorted him back to the car. He opened the backseat’s door and helped Ryan in.

“Everything will be explained,” he said before closing the door.

The man put his sunglasses back on so that he didn’t have to look into the eyes of the hundreds standing around, but more importantly so that they couldn’t look into his eyes.

 

C.O.D.E.

Bring on the Spring

I feel like blogging has been more of a chore lately, so as you’ve noticed I haven’t been writing much lately. I haven’t even been doing much of my own writing lately. I’m trying to get my life settled before I start back into my books.

Things are getting exciting for me, though. Abilities 2 has been sent into the publisher and I can’t wait to get things started on it. For those of you that read Abilities, you know that things ended abruptly. Michael and Gazet were left standing in the middle school waiting to be taken hostage…or were they? Mitchel and Karen’s romance was beginning to grow more complicated and more heated while Brittany was waiting for her romance to get back on the right track. There were more questions asked than there were answers in the end of Abilities and so…

I guess you could say I got you right where I want you.

Along with Abilities 2, my graphic novel Dead Last could possible be published this summer. If you haven’t read it on Smashwords.com, you missed your chance at getting it for free I’ve pulled it off all websites in hopes that it will be picked up.

Since January 1st, I left one job and started 2 more, I’ve also been offered a 3rd and possibly a fourth (coaching, pray this one comes true) and my girlfriend, since January 1st, has left 1 job and started 2 new ones and I’m so happy for her because she loves her jobs. She’s working at the high school and then is a nanny after school. She is going to make bank! Especially during the summer. So if you see her, know her, or want to, congratulate her for all her hard work and courage.

The winter was tough. There were a lot of ups and downs, but that is life. I can’t wait for what the Spring will bring. Bring on Spring 2013.

So right now, the way things are going, I will hopefully have 4 books professionally published and available to the public.

Abilities
Abilities 2
Dead Last
And my part in a 7DS collaboration.

It’s going to be a beautiful spring

Be Here Now

Marc Quaranta 2.0

It has been a while since the last time I wrote anything on my blog. So I’m using this one to update everyone on what’s been going on in my life over the last several weeks and there is plenty to update.
When I graduated from Ball State in May of 2011, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I got a good job at Fox 59, but never considered it a career. I looked at it as a great first job. A way to get work experience and make a few connections. It turned out to be great in other areas, too. I met a girl and am now dating her and am happy to say in 24 days we will be moving in together. It is so fast, so crazy, and so perfect. I couldn’t be happier.

I left Fox to go to a place called World Media Group and to make a long story short, it was a terrible place to work. Bad management, bad environment, just bad all together. In the time I worked there, I did a lot of writing and a lot of soul searching. I left World Media Group because I decided what I want to do with my life…

Teach.

In July, I’m starting classes to earn my teaching license so that I can teach English/Creative Writing/Language Arts at the high school level. I am so excited to get the process started. It feels great to be excited about a career. Not a job, but a career and a life. I never thought I’d be doing this, but it seems to perfect. I’m actually upset with myself that I didn’t consider this earlier, but if I did, I wouldn’t have met all the people in my life that I love.

I am so excited to teach that I wanted to get in the classroom right away. Tomorrow morning I start substitute teaching with Carmel Clay Schools. I’ll be teaching at Clay Middle School tomorrow. Social Studies from 7:30-11:30. I wanted to only do a half-day on my first day in the classroom. I’m nervous, excited, and so ready for this.

I plan on subbing every day, but to make a little bit more extra cash for bills, I was also hired by Season’s 52. They seem like a great company. They are lenient to my future plans, flexible, and have great, friendly management. I love the direction that my life is going.

Oh, what could I be forgetting…I don’t know…Oh! Dur! My brother and sister-in-law had their baby girl today!!! Lil Harper Quaranta (No, Lil is not on her birth certificate so rest easy Lil Jon. What!) She was born this afternoon at 1:41 p.m. This is my first niece, and the first girl born into the Quaranta family.

I just can’t believe how things are looking right now. Nothing is great. I’m not a teacher yet, I still have to take classes. I never thought I’d be where I am at 24. But the future is so bright that I can’t even look into it without wearing sunglasses. I’m smiling, I’m laughing, I’m loving life. I’m finally living in the moment and I don’t want it to end. Today is so good I can’t even begin how happy I’ll be tomorrow.

Be Here Now!