The future of journalism, a potential buyout and asking Americans what they see in Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are top of Waylon Choy’s mind as he takes two former Vancouver Sun newsroom colleagues on what he thinks will be a short spin in his restored 1965 AMC Ambassador 990 convertible across the border into the United States. While Choy likes his job as a features writer, newspapers across North America are shrinking or closing, he has been offered $150,000 to quit and wants to discuss career options with his friends, one of whom now teaches journalism and the other…
The FAKE NEWS Mysteries
What would you do if you found a person dead from a drug overdose while you were out jogging in your neighbourhood? And nobody could tell you her real name or where she came from? If you are freelance journalist Waylon Choy, you use your decades of experience as a reporter to interview people and chase down leads to write the story of one of the tens of thousands of people who die every year in North America’s opioid epidemic.
In Misogyny, the third book of the FAKE NEWS Mystery series, Waylon Choy must make another road trip to solve a crime for which he feels personally responsible. Everything about the trip to Calgary makes him guilty, leaving his children, spending time with his children rather than assisting a young woman who came to him for help, even his means of transportation, a restored 1965 AMC convertible, which as his daughter so forcefully, and correctly, points out, spews carbon into the atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming.
The author of a new mystery/thriller series about a journalist trying to uphold the principles of his craft in the era of Donald Trump says his “strange” background compels him to write stories that are both entertaining and thought provoking. “I was a playwright who specialized in comedy before I became a journalist,” said Gary Engler. “I really enjoyed sitting in the theatre listening to an audience laugh and have a good time. So entertaining readers has always been a priority.” “But then there’s always been a serious side to my work and I think that comes from my time…
Even serious people who understand the need to change the world need entertaining, compelling page turners to enjoy reading during their down time, says the author of a new mystery/thriller series. While the FAKE NEWS series is set in an era of resurgent right wing extremism, growing economic inequality, disappearing jobs for journalists and a U.S. president who constantly attacks the media, the stories are compelling and fun. “I wrote the first three books to be both entertaining and informative,” said Gary Engler, a former journalist at one of Canada’s largest daily newspapers. “We live in a time where knowing…
Donald Trump is right about at least one thing, says the author of a new mystery/thriller series that explores journalism, politics and murder in the era of a president who constantly tweets “FAKE NEWS”. “Of course the media has a liberal bias,” says Gary Engler “Especially when you define believing in verifiable truth as ‘liberal’.” Trump seems to have built a coalition of “Bible literalists, climate change deniers who trust oil billionaire-funded propaganda over science, grumpy old white men who listen to too much talk radio and white nationalists who want to make America great again and for them that…
“It is what it is because the mother of invention is necessity and sometimes an old dog is willing to try new tricks.,” said Gary Engler, with a big smile and a twinkle in his eyes. The author of the FAKE NEWS series was answering a question about why he decided to publish his first three mystery/thrillers at the same time. “It wasn’t my original plan,” he said. “But after writing American Spin and sending it around to agents, I’d pretty much finished War on Drugs before it became clear to me that no agent was interested in representing — or even…