Thursday, October 2, 2014

Crime Writing: The Almost New York Times Bestseller

Fourteen years ago, on October 1, 2000, crime writer Cathy Scott's second book, The Murder of Biggie Smalls, was released by MacMillan. A few weeks later, she received a phone call that it had sold enough copies the first week to qualify the hardcover as a New York Times bestseller. It was fantastic news, something every author wants to hear. But with it came bad news too. Read full article


Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Former Drug Kingpin Rick Ross Pens Book

Rick Ross was a drug kingpin in the 1980s and early '90s running a multi-million-dollar operation that spanned across the U.S. His world came crashing down when he landed in prison during a federal sting operation after he'd left the business and gone legit. But he was lured back in by his main source, who was working for the feds.


Now, Ross has teamed with bestselling crime writer Cathy Scott and released a book that is a unique behind-the-scenes look at how a kid born into poverty in rural Texas ended up a high-profile player in the drug game. It's titled Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, and it is a powerful read. It's a thought-provoking memoir that holds nothing back while making no excuses for Ross's past actions. Here is an excerpt of the just-released memoir.
The San Diego skyline was the vista from my cell on the maximum-security floor of the federal high-rise where I was housed. The Million Dollar View, inmates called it. Looking out at the skyscrapers across San Diego Bay offered me time to reminisce. And reflect.
I ran from poverty, turning to drug dealing to get a head start as an entrepreneur. That was always the goal: Get into the drug business and go legit.
As a young kid in grade school, I wanted to be a Crip, but my mom wouldn’t have it. I never became a gangbanger, though I got close.
At Dorsey High School, playing tennis on the varsity team was the ticket out of the ‘hood. The dream of a tennis career after I made All City took a major shot, however, when
Coach discovered I’d never learned I couldn’t read or write. I wasn’t going to college after all, and I wasn’t gonna be the next Arthur Ashe, so there was no point in staying in school. I put down the tennis racquet and picked up a gun.
I kept a low profile with my street cred. I never joined a gang, never flashed colors. But I always had key relationships with people who did.
One day, I sat on my porch, dead broke and working out ways in my head to earn cash when Mike McLoren, one of the neighborhood homies, dropped by.
“I have a deal for you,” Mike said.
He pulled out a bag with some kind of white powder in it.
“It’s the new thang, man.” He waved the clear Baggie in front of me. “I can sell this for fifty dollars.”
The powder was cocaine. The real shit. Coke was right in front of me, just like in the movie Super Fly. Mike, who’d left South Central Los Angeles to attend college, explained how he’d been selling powder cocaine to students at San Jose State to make extra money. I barely heard the words “students or “San Jose,” or even “cocaine.” I was totally focused on “extra money.” I wanted in on the game.
It was 1979 and I was 19 when Mike introduced me to the drug that would forever change my life. Powder cocaine appeared as a bright, shining star of opportunity. I bought my first Baggie and doubled my money. Powder cocaine appeared as bright shining star of opportunity. I had no doubt it would take me to being rich in a way that up to that point I’d only imagined.
My instinct on breaking into the drug trade was on point: I was a millionaire by my twenty-third birthday. “Rick Ross” became a household name throughout the black ghettos of South Central L.A. and reached halfway across the country. A bunch of homies worked for me, and they had even more people selling for them. We cooked like a hundred kilos every night. We didn’t call it crack. We called it Ready Rock. We maintained houses where buyers drove up to a window to be served, just like at McDonald’s. We had money-counting houses, cook houses, rock houses, apartment buildings, a Laundromat, and a body shop.
I had everything I needed: money, cars, women, and a thriving business. As time progressed, I was making millions every day. By 1985, record executives were chasing me through South Central trying to invest in their artists. I was the man.
I approached the drug dealing as a businessman, even though the government associated me with gangs, like the Hoover Crips. It’s even in my federal file, because the feds said nobody could have sold drugs and made that kind of cash without being a gangster, so I must have been one. They had it backwards and thought the game was tied to gang violence. It was always about business, never about gangs.
Crack was not in the ‘hood before the ‘80s, so none of us knew the side effects that could and would occur amid the crack epidemic that would sweep over black neighborhoods across the land. Even the cops in the area didn’t know what crack was; they didn’t associate the small white rocks they saw on homies as illegal drugs. All we knew was people wanted it; back then, it was a party drug, recreational. Crack was the upper. And it was all about supply and demand. I was a young entrepreneur making a good living and building a business. I wasn't thinking about the repercussions or even that any existed.
Something else I didn’t know: My supplier was a paid federal informant for the CIA.
Most people are still unaware of what really went down in South Central with crack. My raw materials came from Oscar Danilo Blandón, a Nicaraguan national who, unbeknownst to me at the time, had ties to the CIA and sent his proceeds to fund Iran-Contra rebels. I was the first black drug dealer in South Central Los Angeles to forge a tie with a Colombian. I knew him only as Danilo. He supplied me with cocaine at bargain-basement prices that I converted to crack, and I passed on the savings to my clientele.
The U.S. government didn’t sell the drugs, of course, but they did supply the dealer, turning a blind eye to the operation and allowing massive shipments of coke into the U.S. until it became public and they needed a scapegoat—namely, me. The government wanted to put a face on the War on Drugs, and Rick Ross became the image of the kingpin behind it all.
Danilo was hired by the DEA as an undercover informant with the goal of taking me down. He set me up in a sting operation orchestrated by the feds, who arrested me. By my 37th birthday, I was in the pen serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. While inside, I kept thinking, “What can I do to better myself?” The one nagging thing that always came back to me was to learn to read. It was a second chance. I wanted to get out and help my community, to try and prevent kids from making the same mistakes I made. I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t read and write.
My self-education began by visiting the prison law library every day. I read more than 300 books. Each day I read the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, or Forbes. Most nights I fell asleep with a book on my chest or next to my pillow. It paid off: While behind bars, I went from being illiterate to over literate.
My name is Ricky Donnell Ross. People know me as Freeway Rick. This is my story.
Freeway Rick Ross is available in paperback and on Kindle and Nook. Click here to learn more.


Wednesday, May 21, 2014

How To Meditate the Easy Way

How To Meditate the Easy Way


Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Anger, Sterling and the Plantation Mentality

Anger, Sterling and the Plantation Mentality


Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Agony of the McCanns is Over: Scotland Yard Solves the Case of Missing Maddie

The Murderer of Madeleine McCann
By Pat Brown

It has been a long six years for Kate and Gerry McCann. After the Portuguese police bungled the investigation of the kidnapping of their daughter, Madeleine, who was abducted from their vacation flat in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, the McCanns have endured being made suspects in their own daughter's disappearance and then suffered years of fruitless searching by their own private investigators, never coming any closer to finding out what had happened to their daughter.

In 2011, The Met (New Scotland Yard) launched Operation Grange, spending two years and nearly ten million pounds following every lead and tip generated by the PJ and the McCann's PIs post-the-evening of May 3rd, making absolutely no progress at all.

But, in a stunning turnabout just as the McCann's libel trial against Goncalo Amaral comes to a close, Andy Redwood of Scotland Yard has uncovered who kidnapped Madeleine McCann and what they have done with her, according to an unidentified source of Bollux Media.

When Operation Grange reached no conclusion after an incredible number of man hours and money had been frittered away, Redwood decided to use a surprising investigative technique; he would go back to the actual events of the evening of the crime. Although he was unable to get the cooperation of the parents of the missing child or cooperation of any of the friends who dined together with the parents on the night Madeleine went missing, he was able to get the cooperation of the television media and a bunch of actors (including a very capable porn star) and scripted a very believable version of what occurred that evening. Redwood thrilled the public with his incredible breakthrough moment in the case wherein he disclosed that the Tanner sighting was really that of a vacationer who was wandering about in circles with his child trying to locate his apartment which he had misplaced. He then went on to reveal that the Smith sighting of Gerry McCann was now the correct sighting and he was looking forward to the public telling him who they thought it was now that they could show the world the sketches the McCanns had hidden for years.

Lots of callers identified Gerry McCann, but a couple of folks said it was a burglar they knew from the neighborhood and the pieces fell into place. Redwood discovered that a flurry of phone calls had been made by a three man burglary ring that this man was a part of, a number before 10 pm and another number of phone calls a couple of hours later.

Today, Scotland Yard detectives have interviewed the men of the burglary ring and through a clever investigative interrogation method in which the men were asked what they thought a bunch of burglars might have done if they were involved in the crime, they related the following story:

Just after Gerry and Kate's friend looked in on the McCann children, one of the burglars entered the apartment through the unlocked sliding door. Although he knew the layout of the apartment and that any valuables would likely be either in the living room or in the large bedroom, for some reason he felt drawn to go into the smaller of the bedrooms first. When he entered the room, a small girl awoke and began screaming. Without thinking of the possible results, the startled burglar put his hand over her mouth. Being a small child, his hand accidentally covered her nose as well and after a short time, the girl stop breathing. Thinking he had quieted the girl, the burglar released his hand and then made the horrific discovery that he had smothered the child. Panicked, he called his fellow burglars on their cells to ask what he should do and they decided the best plan would be to remove the child from the flat so as to leave no evidence of what had happened. One of the burglars posted himself at the back of the flat, the other in the front, and the burglar inside raised the window. When all was clear, he passed the deceased child through the window to the burglar waiting outside. Having worn gloves to the burglary, no prints were left in the apartment.

The burglar receiving the body of Madeleine then carried the child back to his Praia da Luz flat passing by the Smith family on the way. One of the burglars went to retrieve his boat and the other patrolled the area between the flat and the beach. During this time, the trio kept in touch by cell phone. When the streets became quiet enough to quickly move Madeleine's body from the apartment to the boat, this action was completed and Madeleine's body was disposed at sea.

Scotland Yard is hoping the Portuguese prosecutor will arrest the three suspects and take the case forward to court; however, they feel this is unlikely because the Portuguese prosecutor claims there is insufficient evidence due to the PJ mishandling the case for six years. There is no physical evidence remaining after all this time, and there is a refusal on the part of the suspects to make a full confession.

Kate and Gerry McCann have issued a statement thanking Andy Redwood and Scotland Yard for absolving them of any wrongdoing in the death of their daughter and uncovering a story of her death which is not too awful. They also want the public to know that The Fund will remain active until Madeleine's body is found and brought home for a proper interment.


This newslike article is brought to you by Bollux Media and

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

January 14, 2014


Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann available at Smashwords and Barnes and Noble.


 Cover for 'Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann'



By Pat Brown
Rating: 1 star1 star1 star1 star1 star
(5.00 based on 5 reviews)

Published: July 27, 2011

What really happened to Madeleine Beth McCann in Praia da Luz, Portugal in 2007? Was she abducted as the Gerry and Kate have claimed or did something happen to Madeleine on May 3 in the vacation apartment and the incident covered up? Criminal Profiler Pat Brown analyzes the evidence and takes the readers through the steps of profiling, developing a theory that is intriguing and controversial.