What Terrifies You? SAVING MIGUEL by John Bradford Branney



SAVING MIGUEL by John Bradford Branney. Click for Books

What really frightens you?

Does the boogeyman scare the living crud out of you? Do you have nightmares about lions and tigers and bears, oh my? How about that thing that hides under your bed? You know what I am talking about, that thing that has lurked under your bed since you were a small child. Yes, it is still there. Does it still spook you? As a grown up, will you let your arm drape down over the side of the bed or are you still afraid that the thing will pull you under the bed by your arm? What about Jason or Freddie Krueger? Both of them were quite frightening in the movies. What about the scare potential for the nightly news? There is some scary stuff on the news, and that is real!


Yes, I just added the nightly news!
There are stories on the nightly news that makes Freddie Krueger look like the Singing Nun! There are things going on in the world that can make your hair stand on end and unfortunately, these things are not make believe like Jason or Freddie!


Have you ever asked yourself why certain things frighten you more than other things? What is the secret ingredient that makes you terrified? What pushes your fright button? 

Some people believe that fright comes from those things that we perceive we have no control over. When we watch Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street, the victims seldom have control over Freddie or Jason and you as a movie watcher have even less control than those actors in the movies. I remember the first time I watched Nightmare on Elm Street. I was literally yelling at the television set at the clueless victims who always seemed to be doing the most idiotic thing possible to get killed. They were so dumb when it came to avoiding Freddie Krueger that you almost wanted them to get caught! I screamed at them to stay put and lock their doors, but of course, they had to go investigate what made that noise.                                                                                                                                                                  The actors did not listen to me at all. I had no
control over them or the script or the movie. Fresh meat, how sweet! I can still hear Freddie Krueger’s hideous voice growling.  


We do have some control over that thing that lives under our bed. What can we do? First, we should not drape our arm over the side of the bed! And what control do we have over our  spooky neighbors? It seems our only control over them is for us to move or hope they move or wait and see what they do next! The spooky neighbors could be harmless or they could be like Norman Bates in Psycho.           

Yes, we agree that there are real life things in this world that are truly frightening and depending on our experience, temperament, and lifestyle, certain things will frighten each of us more than other things. Let me meander back to the frightening events we see on the nightly news. When I first came up with the concept for my novel SAVING MIGUEL in 2011, the world was on the brink of economic

disaster. Global Economic Armageddon was on everyone’s minds. I have to admit, but this non-human, non-boogeyman called Global Economic Armageddon frightened the living daylights out of me, more than Freddie Krueger or Jason or anything else I could think of. I saw the possibility that my entire life’s work and savings could go up in smoke because of the greed of others. I was frightened by this possibility and I was not alone. To watch my family’s financial means disappear in a matter of days or weeks was absolutely terrifying to me. Global Economic Armageddon was more frightening than that thing under my bed or Freddie Krueger! Global Economic Armageddon could happen and I had no control over it!     


So, to help me cope with my own personal fear, I decided to write a novel about it, a novel that was both terrifying and hopeful. In the novel, I had to create a world that would exist after global financial markets collapsed, after hundreds of millions of people no longer had livelihoods and jobs. That is a a very frightening world, if you ask me! I modeled this world after the devastation in Communist Russia after the Berlin Wall fell, a world where the basic needs of human beings no longer existed and crime to survive became a normal way of life. I took that model and expanded it to the world-at-large.

Below is a scene from SAVING MIGUEL. In this scene, the head of the military and spy organizations for the Monarchy, Chief Security Officer Stewart had to visit the city without military escort after dark. Here is what happened.   

The noise from the collision with the gate had attracted seven homeless citizens who now walked down the middle of the street towards Stewart and his vehicle. Stewart saw these dark shadows approaching him and took a gander over his shoulder, pinpointing the location of his vehicle if he had to make a run for it. Stewart deftly chambered a round in his ten-millimeter semi-automatic pistol. When the seven shadows came closer, the tall one in the middle spoke first.

“Give us your valuables!”

“I don’t have any valuables,” Stewart replied, slowly backing up towards his vehicle.

The seven citizens continued to slowly advance while Stewart glanced over his shoulder, ensuring no one was behind him.

“Give us your valuables or we will take your life.”

“Now that’s an overused cliché, isn’t it, bloke?” Stewart replied. “I must apologize, but you can’t have either. I am keeping my valuables and my bloody life.”

Stewart raised the pistol and pointed it at the tall citizen, saying, “Lad, I strongly suggest you turn and walk away, otherwise you are going to have a bloody bad night!”

The citizen responded by holding up what looked like a tire iron and waving it in Stewart’s direction.

“That’s brill, just what I would expect from a doped up bugger,” Stewart asserted, “bringing a tire iron to a gunfight.”

The citizens did not appreciate Stewart’s attempt at levity, shaking logging chains and raising wooden clubs over their heads. Stewart made a run for it, sprinting for his vehicle while the seven citizens chased after him. Stewart had not run for his life in years and his legs were not working very well, but the adrenalin surging through his body made up for it. Once Stewart reached his vehicle, he turned around,

aimed, and fired the pistol at the closest citizen. The 180-grain full metal jacket bullet ripped through the citizen’s rib cage, penetrating his heart. By the time the citizen hit the pavement, his soul was already in hell. The loud explosion of the ten-millimeter pistol stopped the other citizens dead in their tracks. Stewart fumbled around in his pockets, desperately looking for his vehicle identification sensor.

Finally he found the sensor and jumped into the vehicle, firing it up.

The six citizens rushed the vehicle while Stewart threwthe vehicle into drive and stomped on the gas pedal. The powerful V 12 engine roared like a lion as Stewart turned the steering wheel and headed straight at the citizens. The vehicle hit the second citizen dead on, running completely over his body. Stewart then swung the steering wheel hard to the right, clipping the third citizen with the passenger side of the vehicle, knocking him down. Stewart aimed the vehicle for the fourth citizen and smashed into him head on, throwing the citizen’s body onto the front hood of the vehicle. Stewart drove past the three remaining citizens and screeched on his brakes.

Stewart jumped out of the vehicle just in time to see the three citizens running down the street away from him. Stewart took careful aim with the pistol and fired at the fifth citizen. He then quickly took aim at the sixth citizen and gently squeezed the trigger. The two 180 grain full metal jacket bullets raced through the city air at over thirteen hundred feet per second. The first bullet exploded into the back of the fifth citizen, shattering his T3 thoracic vertebrae and spraying shards of bone and bullet into his organs and blood vessels. However, the vertebrae only slowed the bullet down as it continued to corkscrew its way through the citizen’s body, passing through a lung and finally coming to rest on the inside of the rib cage, narrowly missing the heart. With a severed spinal cord, the citizen dropped to the pavement like a sack of potatoes, bleeding on the street and dying soon after from severe shock.

The sixth citizen fared much better. Stewart had rushed his second shot and only hit the citizen in the back of the shoulder. The bullet grazed the bone on the citizen’s clavicle and then came out of the flesh just in front of the shoulder. The drug-crazed citizen ran, completely unaware he had even been shot.

Stewart surveyed up and down the street, knowing that he had to get out of there and fast. Soon there would be more citizens showing up. Stewart shoved the moaning citizen off the hood of his vehicle. The citizen tried to crawl away, but Stewart came up behind him, aimed his pistol at the back of his head, and gently squeezed the trigger. The pistol belched flame and fury…

This was just a routine night in the city. Take away people’s livelihoods and this is what happens. But, in my novel SAVING MIGUEL where you find terror, sometimes you find hope.

 

Saving Miguel, the Novel - Good Guys versus Heroes

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In Post Number 7 of the blog for my adventure novel Saving Miguel, I discussed a couple of the bad guys appearing in Saving Miguel and the characteristics that transform just a run of the mill bad guy into a A-1 prime villain. In the volatile and explosive world of Saving Miguel there were many bad guys, but only a handful were legitimate A-1 prime villains. But since there were villains in Saving Miguel, it only appears logical to have a few heroes in the book as well to counterbalance the diabolical evil.

below is a short scene from Saving Miguel where an unlikely character named Rabbit transformed himself from a less-than-heroic and ordinary person into a hero. In this scene, Rabbit discovered a bad boy sniper named Blaylock on top of one of the buildings and decided to stop the sniper from taking the life of one of his friends. In the scene below, another character named Ian is Rabbit's best friend.



Blaylock quickly moved the riflescope off the old man’s chest back to the front door of the restaurant, waiting for his target. The next person out of the front door was a very large black man.
Blaylock settled the cross hairs of the riflescope on the black man’s dirty stained t-shirt. The big black man peered up and down the street, looking around at the crowd. Undistracted by the crowd, Blaylock held steady on the middle of the black man’s chest. Blaylock gently squeezed the trigger of the rifle and whispered, “Bang, you’re dead.” The black man moved to the side of the restaurant door and Blaylock moved the crosshairs of his riflescope back onto the front door.

Ian and Rabbit kept pushing through the crowd until they finally reached the entrance of the building. Inside the building, Rabbit looked around for the stairwell and found it. He pushed Ian towards it.

"I cannot see anything, Rabbit!" Ian exclaimed. "Go without me!" 

 

“I c-c-can-no-not le-le-leave you here,” Rabbit stuttered.

“Go. You must hurry, there isn’t much time.”

Rabbit ascended the stairs, two at a time, while grabbing the handrail with his one good arm. Rabbit was not sure what he could do to the man with only one good arm, but he did not care, he would do something.

 

So, there was Rabbit, living a quiet and unassuming life, but circumstances dictated that he had to take matters into his own hands or else the dangerous sniper would kill one of his friends. So, what characteristics turned Rabbit the Ordinary Guy into Rabbit the Hero Guy? What characteristics do heroes have in general?  What do YOU think?

 

Here is my short list of characteristics that I believe transforms an ordinary guy or gal into a hero. Tell me what you think.

 

A hero has to have heart, even at the expense of brainpower.  If you remember in Blog Post Number 6 on villains, I proposed that for a bad guy to be a good villain, he needed intelligence. The example I used was Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. However, when it comes to heroes and heroines, I believe that heart matters much more than a brain. A hero or heroine does not have to be that smart, but must have the heart to accomplish what is required. My example is the fictional characters of the Wizard of Oz. They were all heroes, even before they received their gifts from the Wizard, and the reason was they all had heart, even the heartless Tin Man.


Courage, brains, and heart - the three 
missing elements in the Lion, Scarecrow, and
the Tin Man.
 



A hero is willing to sacrifice his or her own well being for the well being of others. There are lots of good guys out there that would give you the shirts off their back, as long as it did not impact their own well being. An example of good guys sacrificing their own safety for the welfare of others was the 9/11 firefighters. They were willing to sacrifice their own lives to save the lives of others. Many of these hero firefighters paid the ultimate price by sacrificing their own lives to save others! These were true heroes!!

9-11 Firefighter - A hero, no doubt 

Courage and bravery. A hero must have the courage to take that first step into the unknown, that first step into danger. Courage may not be in the basic personality of an individual, but when the time comes, it will surface in a person who is a real hero. There are numerous examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds when the appropriate time comes along. Perhaps, the courage comes from adrenalin or from somewhere deep inside, but it does come out and catapults that person from ordinary to hero or heroine.

Situation, opportunity, and circumstances. Last, but not least, for someone to become a hero, the right situation and circumstances must exist. I am sure that there are plenty of ordinary people out there that have the above characteristics and given the right situation, they will become heroes or heroines. Heroism is a seed and given the four characteristics above, that seed can germinate.    

 

What other characteristics exist in heroes or heroines? Read Saving Miguel and find out! Available by Clicking here.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

  

A Book Review of Saving Miguel, a Novel by John Bradford Branney

Why Wait!! Click to Order Saving Miguel NOW! 

Novel from author John Bradford Branney portrays the aftermath of a global financial collapse.

Saving Miguel is a novel set in the near future and asks us to confront a world where pensions are gone, hedge funds have dissolved into smoke and the banks have all collapsed. Onto this canvas, Branney paints a stark picture of the rise of the Oligarchs, a few rich and powerful men to rule over this new world. These new monarchs govern their worldly fiefdoms and subjects through fear and intimidation, establishing a modern-day feudal system rivalling that of Medieval Europe.

Author Branney spent twelve years observing the world’s financial markets and watching them implode. During this time, the world has witnessed the technology crash, subprime loan crisis, an overall sluggish global economy, persistently high unemployment, out-of-control government spending and stimulus, the European banking crisis, and the slow growth in the previously

hot economy in Asia.

The green shoots of recovery are delicate at best and the first winds of complacency are likely to uproot them and cast them to the rocks. This book serves as a timely reminder of the need to tend these shoots with care.

“I watched the financial decline unfold like a horror story playing out,” said John. “I wondered what the world would look like if the global economy collapsed. What would happen to governments? What would happen to ordinary citizens who rely on pension funds and investments for retirement? Who would rule this new world?”

 Saving Miguel  takes place in the not too distant future when the global economy collapses into the

deepest abyss the world has ever known, pushing over seventy-five per cent of the world’s population into poverty. Most of these people lose to this global economic crash. Security, money, dreams, and most importantly, hope for the future all destroyed by the greed of a few. Out of this world comes an eight-year old boy named Miguel who initiates a roller coaster ride of events that turns this world upside down. Miguel is just a boy but he is the only hope the world has left…

John Bradford Branney was born and raised in the United States and attended the University of Wyoming where he received a B.S. degree in Geology. Upon graduating, John entered the oil and gas industry as an engineer. Over his career, he held various positions in field operations, sales and marketing, logistics, program management, and the supply chain. During his career, he also obtained a MBA degree from the University of Colorado. John currently lives in Houston Texas with his wife, Theresa. Saving Miguel is the second published book for Branney.

For more information, visit the author at John Bradford Branney, Author  on Facebook and at his other blog at http://johnbbranney3.blogspot.com/

Saving Miguel is available in all good bookshops and online retailers both in paperback and eBook formats

Mirador Publishing may be contacted via their website at www.miradorpublishing.com

Now, click the link to read what others are saying about Saving Miguel!! 

Click for Saving Miguel - Book Review

SAVING MIGUEL! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! No, It's Another Drone!



CLICK to JOIN Miguel on his Quest!!

It was a hot and sticky day in the city’s marketplace. Dust and the sour smells of decaying meat and vegetables permeated the stifling air. The large crowd of people bumped into each other as they attempted to walk up and down the bustling street, turning left and right through a maze of food stands set up along the street. For a few tokens issued by the Monarchy, citizens could buy one of the few gaunt animal carcasses hanging on hooks or the past ripe vegetables rotting in the sun.

A small metallic bird hovered over the marketplace, searching for a human who matched the facial features programmed into its tiny electronic brain. The metallic bird zoomed back and forth from one end of the marketplace to the other, recording the dimensions and measurements of each face in the crowd, so it could crosscheck these against its mission parameters.

A long haired man with a long, unkempt beard stood on one corner of the bustling marketplace selling cheap hallucinogenic drugs to any unfortunate citizen who needed them, but more importantly could pay for them. The long haired man looked up in the sky and watched the silver-colored bird buzz back and forth, up and down the length of the marketplace, like a bumblebee on steroids.

The long haired man ripped open his backpack and pulled out what appeared to be an old radar gun used by police officers from days in the past. He flipped on the radar gun’s power switch and pointed it in the little metallic bird’s direction. When the metallic bird zoomed past the man again, he aimed and pulled the trigger on the radar gun. The metallic bird’s tiny engine sputtered and then stopped midair, sending the metallic bird on a collision course with the ground. However, before the metallic bird met its fate, it had already sent to its master the GPS coordinates of its prey.

                                     

                                             Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (or drone) - A common sight
                                                   in the 'Big Brother is Watching You' world of Saving Miguel.   

       The above four paragraphs were taken from my action adventure called Saving Miguel.
The inspiration for Saving Miguel came from a haunting concern I have about the global economy
and my vision of what the world would look like IF and when global economic Armageddon
occurred.

      In Saving Miguel, the post-economic Armageddon world resembles Russia in the 1990s after the
Berlin Wall fell. A few super-rich opportunistic and well-connected individuals or Oligarchs in
Russia ended up controlling the resources and power of the country while ordinary people lived in poverty and did most of the suffering. In Saving Miguel, this same situation expands globally!         

       Like most people, I have watched the global economy with concern as it has flirted with disaster
off and on for the past twelve years or so. In my career in the oil and gas industry, I was trained to be
a scientist and a businessman, not an economist, but when I read and listened to what the media
was reporting and how the markets were performing in 2008, it did not take too much imagination to see how close the world was to unraveling, economically speaking. Even today, the symptoms are there for a global economic upheaval; an overall weak global economy, persistently high unemployment, out-of-control government spending and stimulus, the European banking crisis, the weakening of the U.S. dollar, high government debt, and the slowing of growth in the once hot Asian economy.

      Saving Miguel is not a story about the global economic Armageddon. It is a story about the
aftermath of global economic Armageddon and how people have learned to survive. More importantly, it is a story about the resilience of  common people and how they find hope in a world where there is little.   

       I hope you decide to give Saving Miguel a try and escape to another time and place! Enjoy the journey!

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John Bradford Branney's Latest Novel!