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Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Sea Turtle Rescue now available

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You can now buy copies of the children’s book Sea Turtle Rescue through Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

 

The story: When an injured sea turtle shows up near their home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Jayne and Marie, along with their friends Javier and Monique, search the beach to find the turtle’s nest and protect it from danger. They know the time is getting short and if they don’t find it soon, the eggs might not get a chance to hatch. 

This is the third edition of Sea Turtle Rescue. The environmental organization Oceana published the first edition and for the last year and a half it was licensed to the Newspapers in Education program.  As an added bonus, this edition of the story is available in Portuguese. Russian and Spanish are coming soon.

 

Sea Turtle Rescue is a chapter book, aimed at ages 5 to 9.

 

In celebration of the release of Sea Turtle Rescue, my second children’s book Swimming With Sharkswill be a free Kindle download from July 2 to July 6, 2013.

Sea Turtle Rescue – English: Kindle and Paperback

Sea Turtle Rescue – Portuguese: Kindle and Paperback

If you read an earlier edition of Sea Turtle Rescue, and enjoyed it, please do me a favor and post a review on Amazon. Share this blog with your friends and let them know, too..

Re-release of Sea Turtle Rescue; coming next week

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Several years ago, after reading the umpteenth Magic Treehouse book with my daughters I decided to write children’s book for them. I asked them what they would like me to write about and I got various answers from fairies to unicorns. After thinking about it for a while, I decided my first children’s book had to be about two little girls and the ocean. I was living in North Carolina at the time and one of my favorite places to visit on this planet is the Outer Banks so it all came together.

 

My first children’s book was Sea Turtle Rescue. It is an early reader/first chapter book, modeled very much after the Magic Treehouse books by Mary Pope Osborne in detail and scope. 

The story: When an injured sea turtle shows up near their home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Jayne and Marie, along with their friends Javier and Monique, search the beach to find the turtle’s nest and protect it from danger. They know the time is getting short and if they don’t find it soon, the eggs might not get a chance to hatch.

 

Sea Turtle Rescue was originally published in cooperation with the environmental organization Oceana. After that, I licensed the story to the Newspapers in Education program and it was published all over the country (and in Bermuda) in serial form by newspapers for young readers. That arrangement has ended and I am re-releasing the story in print and as a Kindle ebook on July 2.
As an added bonus, the story will also be available in Russian and in Portuguese. Spanish is coming soon. (Many thanks to my translators: Daria Tsoukanova, Yanina Pagliara and Luisa Teles Baptista).

 

The second book in the series of Jayne and Marie children’s books is called Swimming With Sharks. It is currently available in both print and Kindle ebook form and features the same two main characters—two young girls living on the Outer Banks and discovering the ocean.

This is the most recent review for Swimming With Sharks.

 

Appreciation and respect for predators in nature June 17, 2013
This is a story for children and grownups too. Eric Douglas dispels a few misconceptions and replaces them with respect for these predators along the way….following a storyline that anyone should like…!!!!
To celebrate the re-release of Sea Turtle Rescue, Swimming with Sharks will be free as a Kindle ebook from July 2-6.

The third and fourth Jayne and Marie children’s stories are currently licensed to the Newspapers in Education program. They are Hurricane! and Fight for Fort Hatteras. Contact your local newspaper and tell them you want them to run the stories..

Re-release of Guardians’ Keep

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*** Update ***
Download Guardians’ Keep for FREE
Wednesday, March 20 through Friday, March 22 2013 you can download the latest edition of Guardians’ Keep for FREE directly through Amazon. Share the news with your friends!

Follow this link and then click on the Guardians’ Keep cover to go to Amazon.

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The publishing world is changing and in general that is a great thing for readers and a good thing for authors, too. Authors now have greater control of their work and how it is promoted.

Just a few weeks ago, I was able to regain the publishing rights to my third novel, Guardians’ Keep. The publisher was doing a terrible job promoting it and had it severely over-priced. It wasn’t selling, but that’s no small wonder.
I like all of my books but Guardians’ Keep is one my personal favorites. In my formative years of reading, the Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books were hot. People stood in line to get the latest release. Those books were incredibly complex with multiple, seemingly unconnected storylines converging on a single point by the end of the story. When I started writing my own books, Clancy was one of the models I had in mind; Guardians’ Keep was the first book I wrote where I felt like I truly hit that mark.

“Dr. Francesca DeMarco, a beautiful archeologist, is searching an underwater site on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Chasing stories of a mysterious group of Guardians, she runs into roadblocks as someone is trying to keep her from discovering the truth. News photographer Mike Scott is sent to do a story on the project, but when he and Dr. DeMarco are nearly killed in the process he decides to help her discover who is behind the attacks. To unlock the mystery of the Guardians, they have to overcome a group of delusional fanatics bent to stop them at any costs. If they are successful, they might just find a religious artifact lost when the Romans overran the Temple in Jerusalem. If not, they might be locked away in a tomb for the rest of their lives.”

 

One of my favorite reviews for the first edition of the book came from Jon Rusho: 

“Guardian’s Keep is an awesome book. How can you go wrong? Chemical weapons, conspiracy, diving, exotic locations, the wanna-be bad guy that is really insane and the monologuing bad guy that claims he won’t be caught monologuing. Awesome!”

Over the weekend I re-released Guardians’ Keep in both printand Kindle editions. This Wednesday (March 20), you will be able to download the Kindle version for FREE. The offer lasts through Friday, March 22. Let your friends know to get ready.

You can see all of my novels and other books at:

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Re-release of Flooding Hollywood

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Flooding Hollywoodis re-released; Kindle is FREE through Friday

The second novel in the Mike Scott series “went into the vault” as they say for a little while, but the Second Edition is now out and available for purchase. In celebration of the book’s return, you can download the Kindle version for free all week long. Get it now, because Friday at Midnight, the free offer goes away.
If you want the print version it is $9.99. After the FREE period, Kindle copies will be $4.95.
For more information on the book visit my website: Flooding Hollywood. To go directly to Kindle, get it here.
As a bonus, I’ve also lowered the price on the fourth novel in the Mike Scott adventure series Wreck of the Huron. You can now purchase a print copy of the novel for $12 and Kindle editions are only $7.99. The Amazon page for Wreck of the Huron is here:

About Flooding Hollywood
Flooding Hollywoodis an adventure novel that pits photographer Mike Scott against a group of fanatics bent on destroying Hollywood.

 

The story begins with Mike Scott on a photo shoot with up and coming actress Diane Taylor. They decide to combine some personal recreation with the shoot and spend a couple days scuba diving in an around Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California.

On a dive, Mikewitnesses another diver picking up stray packages underwater. He doesn’t think much about it the first day, but when it happens two days in a row, it gets his mind going. Assuming the divers are smuggling drugs into the city, Mike tips off the police. That act of curiosity and initiative places Mike on a collision course with fanatics bent on imposing their will on the city of Los Angeles.

 

Set underwater around Catalina Island and around the city of Los Angeles, Flooding Hollywood takes readers on a ride from LA Harbor to the Hollywood hills on a fast-paced ride of intrigue.

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Introduction to Russia: The New Age

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The following is the introduction to the ebook Russia: The New Age. The book is a collection of articles and observations based on more than six months spent in Russia. It is not intended to be the definitive work on Russian history. Rather, it is intended as a glimpse into the lives and thoughts of Russians as they lived through one of the most turbulent periods in their history—from 1993 to present.

Visit the book’s Amazon page to download a copy. And you’ll get to see nearly 100 images spanning 1993 to 2010 from Russia as well.

You can also read other blog posts about the book here and here and see a few selected images here.

Introduction


“Before 1993 I could predict the future, not now. We live all the time like we are on the top of the volcano.” Nikolay, 2008.

Twenty years ago, I visited Russia for the first time. That trip, and the place, changed my life and redirected my career in ways I never expected.
In the summer of 1992, I was working as a reporter in the Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail Metro Department and Dr. Virginia Simmons invited me to report on the West Virginia Governor’s Honors Academy being held at (what was then) West Virginia State College. The academy was a summer program for top students from around state. That particular year they were fortunate to have a Russian teacher joining the faculty along with two young Russian students as part of an international exchange program. Following that visit, the West Virginia Department of Education was asked to bring a group of educators to Russia, specifically to Kaliningrad, Russia, to help the city government rebuild its education system. Their text books were useless and their instructional system was outdated.
Remember, the Soviet Union only officially ended on December 25, 1991. The Russian people were struggling to recover from the dissolution of a system that had controlled every aspect of their lives for more than 70 years. I recall hearing many Russian friends say “We were told for 70 years that we had the best of everything. Now we find out we were lied to.”
Dr. Simmons asked me if I wanted to go along on that first trip to Russia. I thought about it for about half a second before taking out a loan against my car and signing up for the trip. My boss at the time, Diane Lytle (now Wallace) at the Metro Staff was kind enough to allow me to go. They weren’t going to pay for the trip, but she kept me on the payroll with the understanding that I would publish stories when I got home. That was exactly what I wanted to do so it worked out perfectly. I was the only journalist on the trip. I had a couple cameras, a rag tag collection of film (slide film and black and white negative film) and a lot of wide-eyed innocence. At the time, I’d never been out of the United States and had never been on an airplane.
The trip affected everyone tremendously. When we got home, we all ran into the problem that our friends didn’t want to hear about Russia nearly as much as we wanted to talk about it. We ended up having a couple parties to get together and share pictures and memories. Probably the most significant result of that first trip was the creation of a nonprofit foundation, called the Russia and West Virginia Foundation, with four areas of focus: education, culture, business and community. Dr. Simmons was the president.
That April we pulled off something that we shouldn’t have been able to do. The foundation hosted a visit from the Russian Presidential Orchestra around West Virginia with a final concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. It was the first time the orchestra had ever been outside of a Communist country. Consider the logistics of getting 70 plus musicians to concert sites all over the state, along with feeding them, housing them and promoting a series of concerts with just a couple months to put it all together. In hindsight, we were crazy. But, we pulled it off and got it done, largely thanks to Dr. Simmons and her attitude of not accepting “no” as an answer from anyone. West Virginia University and Dr. Phil Faini (Dean of the College of Creative Arts) were instrumental in this effort, with their knowledge of moving large groups of musicians around.
The Russia and West Virginia Foundation has organized more than 400 exchanges since 1993 for everyone from teachers to students, doctors, artists, pharmacists, cosmetologists and architects. A Russian sculptor worked with a sculptor from West Virginia and they erected a statue at Haddad River Front Park in Charleston. Several Russian folk music groups have toured in the United States and the music group The Esquires toured Russia, even ending up on Russian national television. There have been dance exchanges both ways alongside humanitarian efforts including arranging for a young Russian girl to have brain surgery to remove a tumor. It literally saved her life.  Russians have opened businesses in American and Americans have opened businesses in Russia.
True to its core, the Foundation has coordinated efforts between universities to write and publish books, public school teachers to publish a comparison of standards for the first through third grades, and nearly 100 exchanges with Russian and American students, with upwards of 25 students at a time visiting the opposite country for as much as month, staying with host families and studying language and culture. Other students have lived in Russia for up to a year while several Russian students have attended university in the United States beginning with Dmitri Saveliev. There are even 4-H programs in Korolev because of the Foundation.
Through Kaliningrad/Korolev’s connection to the Russian Space Program, Fairmont State University created a special Space Scholar program where students worked at various space-related sites and projects in the summer. Several groups of students attend the NASA Space Camp on United States Information Agency (USIA) grants.
I returned to Russia in March of 1994, this time with Dr. Simmons and Dr. Ted Calisto. They were doing more lecturing on educational processes and I was photographing everything I could and conducting interviews. In August of 1994, I did two things on the same day. 1. I quit my job at the newspaper 2. I opened an exhibit of my Russian photographs from those first two trips.
Just a few days after leaving my job, I left for Russia for the third time. This time I planned to stay for three months. I had my own apartment and a few days a week I went to School 11 and talked to English classes to let them practice. That trip was followed by another month-long trip in May of 1995. I took one more trip to Russia in April 1997 and then my career took off in other directions and I didn’t go back until 2008.
Flash forward 11 years and I was able to work out an opportunity to go to Russia and re-photograph many of the same people and places I had visited in the 1990s. Fortunately, through the foundation, we had stayed in contact with many of those people. On my return, after talking to dozens of people and exploring a number of different opportunities, and again with the assistance of Dr. Simmons and the Russia and West Virginia Foundation, I was able to put together a photo exhibit of my work that ended up being displayed in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 2009.
My work was part of a larger exhibit of art designed to bring people together organized by a nonprofit group in Myrtle Beach called the Global Awareness Project. One really interesting side benefit that came from that was the group decided to recognize the Russia and West Virginia Foundation in its annual calendar. They commissioned an artist to paint a picture that would represent all of the work done by the Foundation. The artist used two of my images as inspiration for the painting. It was featured for the month of July in the 2010 calendar.
After the success of the exhibit in South Carolina, we were able to take the exhibit to Moscow, Russia; Charleston, West Virginia and Bordeaux, France and back in Myrtle Beach in 2010.  You will find the 30 images, along with the Russian and English captions from the exhibit, at the end of this book.
Dr. Simmons, Ginny to everyone who knows her, was responsible for most of my opportunities relating to Russia and has had a profound influence on my career and my life. She opened doors for me I really never expected to see opened. Case in point, the opportunity to exhibit my work in Russia and France came about because Ginny met some Russian film producers on a trip to Russia in 2009 (immediately after the Global Awareness Project exhibit). She told them about my work and they invited me to exhibit my photographs at two film festivals.
What follows is a collection of stories, notes, blogs and photographs I made while traveling in Russia and working at home. I hope you find the stories and events included in here as interesting as I did when I was living through them. I remember saying in the 90s that it would take Russia 25 years to catch up to the West. They did it in less than 15.
For the record, the Russia I am talking about is not the Russia of government, policy and diplomacy. I am talking about the Russia of the people.

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