Self Publishing the Truth

by Dave Meckanic

With Malice and Forethought

When I finished "With Malice and Forethought" in 2000 and the proof reading was complete, all twenty-three people told me it had to be published. To make matters worse, twenty-two of my "galleys" said it had to be made into a movie, but I countered with, "How does one compress fifteen years into two hours?"

I've written 100s of technical manuals, but my first attempt at autobiography occurred early in 2000 in the middle of a contract dispute valued at $32 million. I was despondent and enraged at the same time, waffling between invisible emotional peaks and valleys. I can honestly say that I wanted to kill again and I needed it to be personal this time, not the way it was in the past, which was quite simply business. I realize this may sound a little psychotic, but, I was employed by the military and military contractors to fix "things," like terrorists. Security, weapons systems and covert operations were my daily bread and butter. It didn't matter if it was at a distance using devices and weapons I had designed for the killing fields or if it was up close and personal, in either case my hands were still bathed in a red ochre hue that doesn't wash off.

Writing the book served a myriad of purposes; one was to keep a record of my past in the event I was called into court in The Hague or South Africa to provide witness against governments and individuals, a second was to appease my personal daemons and finally, I believed it would be cathartic. I had wrestled with post traumatic stress disorder for ten years before writing the book and wasn't getting any better. Once the book was completed, I passed it around for proof reading. It was a mistake to give it to my mother, she cried. Not because of what I had seen and done, but because of what I had become, I was now broken thing. The episode in 1997 had driven the final spike through me and impaled me psychically, as well as any man who may have fallen head first onto vertical iron rebar.

As damaged as I was, I still went out and tried to flog my book; it was necessary to channel my rage into something productive lest I became the monster I could be and there were times... but I'll take the 5th. I sent packages to many mainstream publishers, in most cases they ignored me, in some, they questioned stupidly. Others simply told me the content and context was socially dangerous and politically incorrect. The truth is hard enough to tell when you are at fault, when guilt and conscience ride you 24/7, it's even harder when the truth becomes illegal, as may soon be the case. After five years of waiting on the Penguins and Doubledays, I grew weary of the mainstream media game.

I searched around the internet and came across a number of self-publishing companies. Booksurge appeared the best and I researched their programs in depth. They were not expensive, at $99 dollars in 2006 I followed their program and the book was produced five weeks later, but not without some difficulty, as I had to do all the work.

I'm not one to give up easily and I followed their instructions. I had two problems, break points for chapters in the book and of course the cover, specifically the binding area and aligning the front and rear. I put together two photographs I had taken in Africa for the front and my own picture and a little "blurb" on the back, making the entire jacket in Corel. After three tries at setting up and submitting the artwork via email, I finally got it right and the book was published June 26, 2006. I had only started working with Booksurge at the end of May, 2006 so that says something for their efficiency and their instructions in helping self-publishing authors. They did an excellent job and were very supportive.

I already had a Canadian Copyright and ISBN number, but Booksurge also took out a second US ISBN - an excellent additional service. They also listed the book automatically on Amazon, Alibris and a number of other sites. I think at last count I was listed on about twenty-five retail sites and the book is selling at between roughly $26 on Amazon and $135 for used/signed copies. My contact at Booksurge has kept me informed of new programs and has always been courteous and helpful. I don't have the sales to support most of their programs, but if I did, I would use them.

I compared many services and quite honestly, for my purposes Booksurge came out far ahead of the competition. Chapter's company for self-publication, iUniverse, didn't even come close at the time, however some people may have found the inverse true. From a personal perspective however, I found iUniverse to be self serving and very expensive.

Instead of using "packaged" marketing programs, I have concentrated more on contacts in the movie industry as well as making the story known on blogs and forums related to the book's content. There are a lot of people who have interest in true life scenarios that place seemingly normal people into extraordinary circumstance. Take me, I was an engineer, adopted a child, was married for ten years. I worked myself out of the job by being too efficient, lost $800,000 under the old SRTC program and left for South Africa. Once in SA, Armscor/Counter-Intelligence picked me up, placed me with a military contractor, I was given a security clearance that made me invisible and I started designing weapons systems that were used to kill terrorists. What can I say... go figure? Then we escaped South Africa, while the Canadian Consul almost got us all killed through inaction and I made it back to Canada with my wife and kids after a fourth attempt on my life, this time on a commercial airline out of Brussels (shades of Pan Am 103 and the Helderberg, funny, there was either material for my projects, myself or people I knew who were supposed to be on all three flights).

I eventually ended up embroiled in a government/university/corporate $150 million tax and public funds fraud situation, where I was the victim, simply because I wanted to do "things" the right way and told the truth, which cost me $32 million in factorable equity. A lot of people might say I am full of "it," that this can't be real. Well sorry, I have all the pictures, documents, dates, names, passports, share certificates and court records, and if I ever get called into court it can all be made public. The National Prosecuting Authority in South Africa wanted affidavits from me and an interview under oath in 2007, but between the Canadian Government, CSIS and the ANC in South Africa, that meeting was quashed pretty fast. After all, we can't have Dave talking about the weapons the US sold to Saddam in 1988 to invade Kuwait two years later or why the US broke the embargo against SA and had the CIA in Angola or the reasons why the Helderberg was blown up with 160 passengers on board or why the US has a plasma weapon I design in 1987 or... I could go on. I even have a Canadian Superior Court gag order preventing me from releasing names or implicating government ministers, university officials, banks, stock brokers and corporations in the $150 million tax and public funds fraud. But now I'm ranting...

Concentrate your energies on reaching the people who will buy your book. Choose the right weapon for the job, if you need a head-shot, don't use a shotgun. I tried using the "shotgun" approach and spent about $100 on driving traffic to my site. The result of the program, I sold two books. I used a "sniper" approach and talked on forums and blogs and sold 1200 books. Word of mouth works well also, there I sold about 700 books. Another interesting marketing vehicle is e-books. I have a link on my site that allows people to purchase the book in PDF format for $12. They don't pay shipping and they get the e-book within a few hours, sometimes minutes. Personally, I deplore paying shipping or the evil triplet scams of taxes, customs/duty and brokerage.

About a year after publishing "With Malice and Forethought," I started getting inquiries from movie production studios and the producers of documentary dramas. At one point we were looking at character selection and writing the screenplay. I am holding out for a group that will work with me, rather than rework the story into something that can be spin doctored to support present governments and politio-corporate agendas. I did approach one docudrama company in Canada and pitched the idea of examining the Helderberg catastrophe, which they did, but I dropped out when I found their agenda appeared to be spin rather than truth. In the last year, I have found out that I am a national security threat, actually more like a global security threat. CSIS and the Canadian government seem to have defined my past or knowledge of my past as something that would seriously harm both domestic and international governments and institutions like the IMF, World Bank, CFR, ANC, etc.

So that's my story, I did everything right, told the truth about what I did and what I was involved in, without hesitation even if it paints me in a dark light. I've sold a couple of thousand books but there has been no silver lining, just an uphill battle.

After all, people don't want the truth, they want to live in their centrally heated houses with their insured bank accounts and their insulated little lives, they collect their little paychecks, get nailed to the wall with debt usury while being taxed to death. They don't dare to see what is really going on in the world, when it's so easy to simply change the channel, but they will wake up from their dream of reality one day to find that they are really living the nightmare created by their own apathy.

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