Phil Rowan
Hi … and welcome! I have worked briefly as a UK tabloid journalist and I have just completed ‘A RISING STAR’ – a romance saga I greatly enjoyed writing. It is the story of Maria Reilly, a young Irish actress who ascends from acting in a Dublin play by her boyfriend to becoming a Hollywood star and a revered movie icon amzn.to/2or0PXN.
I have also written four dark humor thrillers where my main character, Rudi Flynn, is a London based US journalist who drinks too much, keeps getting diverted emotionally by attractive women, and reluctantly agrees to become a US/UK secret agent. In UNDER COVER, DARK CLOUDS and HARPS & TEARS, my man Flynn is up against nasty Islamic jihadists who want to nuke London, Paris and New York. While in WEIMAR VIBES his target is the evil Oscar ‘Führer’ Kerner, who is trying to drag the UK and Europe back into a Hitler horror scenario. I grew up in Ireland, where the Holy Ghost Fathers were grim, but girls from the Jacobs biscuit factory were great. I wrote short stories at Trinity College Dublin before moving to the Athens Daily Post. Here, in the port of Piraeus, worldly dark-haired women asked if one might like to have a good time, while in Syntagma Square tourists talked admiringly about the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Back in London on my first booze-fueled tabloid it was 'deliver, or you're out!' So as an assistant leader-writer I duly attacked the Germans in 60 words while praising the virtues of British farmers in 120. It was much the same on tabloids two and three where I occasionally invented disgracefully scandalous stories about celebs, politicians and others who happened to be in the news ... but then I started writing fiction ... which I love! My Amazon author page is at amzn.to/1B32gsa There are blogs and excerpts from my stories on my writerrowan.com website at bit.ly/1a4d4bt and I'm with Twitter @WriterRowan.
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Weimar Vibes
Dark Humor Thriller
My first novel, Weimar Vibes, won a gold star on the HarperCollins Authonomy site. It is a dark humor/satirical story that mirrors elements of 1930s German chaos in the UK and Europe tomorrow. Oscar Führer Kerner is whipping up an anti-immigrant frenzy when the British Security Services recruit my main man, Rudi Flynn. He is an alcoholic US journalist based in London and he is a reluctant undercover agent - but he has money problems, so his options are limited. His Whitehall brief is to first compromise the evil Führer Kerner with a lewd sex scandal in Athens and then try to win over his supporters. Flynn does his best, but he keeps getting distracted by seductively attractive women - including his traitorous UK Security Service Controller and a tempestuous Irish firebrand. He is wondering if his neighbour's lovely wife might elope with him to a Caribbean island when troops and tanks suddenly take over on London's riot-ridden streets. A sombre British Prime Minister then appears on TV to declare that upcoming elections must now be postponed. |
Dark Clouds
Dark Humor Thriller
In Dark Clouds Islamic activists are planning a nuclear incident in London, where a reluctant Rudi Flynn is persuaded to work with a UK/US Security Service team. His London Controller is Carla Hirsch: an awesome lesbian from US Homeland Security. Flynn knows a Swiss based Iraqi oil billionaire who is thought to be funding the Islamic activists. He is dangerous and his sister Sulima is in love with the terrorist organiser, Pele Kalim. She is however a decent woman, so Flynn attempts to win her over, first in Geneva and then in London. Carla Hirsch wants to water-board or sexually intimidate Sulima, which infuriates Flynn. But as he sleeps in the factory studio of his artist girl friend, Ingrid, he hears a train rumbling by outside. 'It's nuclear waste,' she says. 'They move it at night,' and it's a eureka moment. For the terrorists are planning to hijack and explode a trainload of nuclear waste in a London Jewish enclave. Sulima tries to dissuade her train-hijacking Islamist lover, Pele Kalim. But shots are then fired by British military snipers from tower blocks surrounding the lethal nuclear waste train on the Hackney Downs. |
Under Cover
Dark Humor Thriller
Under Cover has right-wing/anti-immigrant tendencies escalating in Europe with increasing conflict between moderate Muslims and radical Islamists. My UK based US journalist, Flynn, is once again recruited by a US/UK Security Service team to counter Iranian activists who are plotting to nuke soft targets in Europe. He starts by getting friendly with a murdered colleague's sexually pro-active and occasionally quite outrageous right-wing French Front National mistress. He also works with Sophia, a seductive and very attractive Israeli agent who briefly kidnaps him in India. He is then sent to Cuba to check out a French Algerian Muslim by Leah, his Controller at the US Embassy in London. Here he gets a pointer from the Guantanamo detainee, who professes to be a Muslim moderate, but is later shot as an activist. Flynn's double agent act finally falls apart in Paris. The Iranian nuclear bombers want to execute him, and it's about to happen when Sophia and her Israeli associates come to rescue him in the remote French Correze countryside. |
Harps & Tears
Dark Humor Thriller
Harps & Tears is a dark humor thriller that centres on Bronkovski, a nasty Polish American nuclear scientist, whose wife left him for a Jewish environmentalist. He is furious and intent on revenge against the state of Israel. When we meet him, he is making a nuclear bomb for Islamic activists in rural Ireland's West Cork. Rudi Flynn has been sent to Dublin by a New York editor who wants all he can deliver on Celtic Tigers and New Irish Women. Flynn, however, is more interested in a lead he has on the embittered nuclear scientist, Bronkovski, and what he may be up to in West Cork. Our frequently wayward journalist is lured in and overwhelmed by Irish charm and blarney - although he is aware of a powerful Dublin businessman, who knows Bronkovski, and who has politicians and cops in his pocket. Flynn's local contact, Muldoon, is up for a bit of devious blackmail, and our guy's hotel receptionist, Siobhan, agrees to seduce and probe the emotionally challenged nuclear scientist. There are ruthless rogues everywhere, but Flynn has a cool female ally in Siobhan, who helps to prevent nuclear mayhem in rural Ireland. |
A Rising Star
Romantic Saga
A couple of students at Trinity College in Dublin quickly get the attention of an influential Hollywood agent. Playwright Jack Flynn is contracted as a script-writer, but it is his girlfriend Maria Reilly - the star of his Dublin play - who really makes an impact, first in a ten-episode Hollywood series and then in a film as a widow who saves her deceased husband's floundering advertising and media business from collapse. She impulsively stopped taking contraceptives when she met and fell for writer Bertie Windsor in India, but she is now pregnant. He proposes on a bended knee, and she accepts. So they have a wedding ceremony with a few guests for a celebratory lunch in California, and Maria is taking a call from her Irish sister when her contractions start. She then delivers a boy, with assurances from her Hollywood producer that he will wait for six months before starting on her final series, which will have Maria as a US Presidential candidate. Sample A Rising Star |