This month’s blog post focuses on my exonerated series and how my time working as a lawyer influenced me in writing that.
“After injuring my back, I left the military and embarked upon a journey into the legal profession and practiced law for fifteen years. As a lawyer, I defended many people in criminal cases and unfortunately saw the miscarriages of justice too often……”
Follow the link below to read more.
https://jcryanbooks.com/the-exonerated-series-blog-post/
Fact or Fiction
Check out the Fact or Fiction section of my website to read more about the research that has gone into my series!
What is in the works?
Book #13 in the Rex Dalton Thriller Series (Sequel to The Shanghai Strain)
In the aftermath of the discovery that President Li Lingxin of China was about to unleash a deadly virus globally, China’s leadership was in turmoil but only for a few days. They quickly installed a new president and resumed their hundred-year plan to control the world. After all, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) believes they have an obligation; in fact, they claim it is their right to rule the world.
This book is set in China, the USA, and Vietnam.
Have a look at the exclusive excerpt at the bottom of this newsletter!
Free Books
Available NOW!
Mysteries from the Ancients
Mysteries from the ancients is an 80-page e-book about thought-provoking unsolved archaeological mysteries. You will discover some of the most fascinating facts about archaeological discoveries that still have no clear explanation.
A Rex Dalton Thriller- No Doubt
Rex Dalton and his dog, Digger, visited the island of Olib in Croatia.
A girl was murdered.
The police said it was her boyfriend who stabbed her to death, but Rex and Digger had no doubt they were making a big mistake.
Dalton decided to conduct his own investigation and bring the real killer to justice.
A thriller with quirks and twists that will keep you guessing until the end.
Available free on my website jcryanbooks.com
Free December 5th to 9th
(The Rex Dalton Thriller Series Box Set Book 1, Books 1-3)
Exclusive excerpt
Be the first to read an exclusive excerpt from Book 13 in the Rex Dalton Thriller Series!
BEIJING, CHINA
PRESENT TIME
EVERY WEEKNIGHT AT 10:00 P.M., the buzzer on the door from the rear alley sounded, and one of the guards would let the cleaner in. They called her Lăo fù rén; it meant old woman. Her real name was Sun Jia. She wasn’t old; she was in her early fifties, 54 to be exact. But the privations of life had manifested in her features: dull eyes, deep lines on her face, hunching shoulders, and silver-gray hair. When she laughed, which was not often, gaps could be seen where teeth used to be when she was younger. In China, dental problems were considered a minor health concern. Dental care knowledge was all but non-exiting.
Pushing a trolley with cloths, bottles with liquid cleaner, a bucket, dusters, brooms, and a vacuum cleaner, she reached the office of General Lang Jianhong, Commander of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Ground Force. His was one of seven offices she cleaned every weeknight. General Lang’s office was the most prestigious of them all; that’s why she always started with his.
She had no husband; he left her thirty-four years ago when she told him she was pregnant. Her son worked for the government—something to do with computers. She didn’t understand anything about computers, but Sun Zexi was the pride of her life. He was married and had one child, a four-year-old girl Jia’s only grandchild, and the delight of her life. Once a month, on a Sunday morning early, she would make the one-hour train ride to visit her family and spend the day with them. On the other Sundays, she attended church in the morning.
She had always taken pride in her proletarian job, which was the best she could get with her basic education. Serving one of the top generals in the PLA and his staff, even if it were only to clean their offices five times a week, late at night when they’ve all gone home, was an honor not bestowed on many.
That was until she met General Lang, once, about seven months ago, when he came into the office late one night to get some documents from his wall safe. He was extremely rude to her, ordering her to wait outside with a barrage of invective. And when he came out of the office, he told her to spray air freshener in there when she was done to get rid of her disgusting body odor lingering inside.
His words were humiliating, degrading. Jia was dirt poor and uneducated, but she had dignity. She never neglected personal hygiene. Her mother would not have used the words ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, but she definitely understood the principle and taught it to Jia from an early age.
That was the day when Jia’s respect for the revered general and the joy of her job took a nosedive. But, she didn’t have another job to go to. She needed the money; the little financial support her son could afford to give her was not enough to keep body and soul together if she didn’t earn an income of her own. Even then, she had barely enough.
Though the joy of her job was gone, there was one thing she still relished: sitting in General Lang’s luscious leather swivel chair behind his desk every night and eating one candy from the big hand-painted ceramic bowl sitting on top of the general’s impossibly large desk. She knew what she was doing was not only a sin; she was also living dangerously—the general could have counted the candy. But this was her payback for his incivility.
She always took two candies, one she ate and one she kept for her granddaughter. Tonight, she studied the variety of candy bars and noticed one she had never seen before. It was red, rectangular, about half an inch wide by two inches long, and a quarter of an inch thick. She took it out of the bowl. It had no wrapping. It felt like plastic. She turned it around carefully; she had never seen any candy like that. She licked it. No sweet taste. It was plastic.
She put it in the top pocket of her overall jacket and retrieved her favorite, a pinyin, white rabbit, milk candy wrapped in printed waxed paper. She removed the wrapper and put it in the same pocket as the plastic candy. She put the pinyin in her mouth, leaned back in the chair, closed her eyes, and allowed the sweet sensation to fill her mouth and thoughts.
Trivia
The word “queue” is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
Many people ask me how I stay focused and productive when writing from home when there are seemingly so many distractions around beckoning for your attention.
study, or creative endeavor, they can often get over zealous with what they will achieve. They try to religiously keep track of everything they do every minute of every day. That is not time management- that is slavery.
Usually, your biggest enemy is not your boss, work, children, manager, or teacher but rather your lack of proper time management. We often aren't willing to put in that same extra effort for ourselves as we would say at work, school, other for other people, and the list goes on. This mindset of not taking your work as seriously as you should limits focus and progress because we allow ourselves to put tasks off until later. Again, you need to become your own project manager and stick to the plan.
Often times when my readers discover that I am from Namibia I get questions such as, Namibia? Where on earth is that!
oldest desert in the world.
We farmed with sheep, goats, and cattle. But the most exciting was the wide variety of wild animals.
Often times my brother and I would be on horseback and we would help my father check on the animals, mend fences, and rescue any orphaned animals.
Pictured here is the weaver bird nest, a common feature on the farm, weaver birds make giant nests and live in a small city of broken twigs and any other items they have found to make their nest comfortable with. A nest can be home to up to 400 weaver birds.
One of my favorites was a little beetle which we called 
Another favorite was the rain spider (Rooi fluweelmyt / Red Velvet Mite) that crawled out of the sand after we had rain on the farm. They were the most brilliant red color and soft as velvet. It’s as if this bright-colored little spider embodies the promise and excitement of the new life brought about by the rain.
A lot of my readers often want to know how much of my stories are fact, and how much is fiction. The Rowen is no exception, with some far-fetched concepts, as well as some that are grounded in reality.
