Welcome

Welcome, Substack Reader

NOTE: I am John T. Cullen, a Substack author of articles (essays, reportage, entertainment, etc.). On this page, I will briefly introduce you to my larger work. My main reason in bringing you to this page on my personal website (johntcullen.com) is to show you the free reading (half the book) for my political Constitution thriller, Washington Under Siege, or CON2: Autumn of the Republic. I think that is an ideal sample of my work to start your reading, because it is intensely relevant to the political and conspiratorial climate in the United States in recent years. I am writing this at the moment to give you a quick intro, not to bog us down in a history of the universe.

MY SUBSTACK: For reference, here is the web address of my own John T. Cullen Substack pages.

JUST INVENTED: MARA! Make America Real Again.

WHEN READY: When you feel ready, please click on the house icon above, or on the uppermost masthead (Clocktower Books), and you will be taken one level up to the index or main page of my personal website (www.johntcullenc.com). Then click on the Washington Under Siege logos to visit a series of pages with info and dozens of chapters of free reading. This is especially important at this juncture in U.S. history, because never in our history has our democracy and our republic seemed to be in so much danger. After the 6 Jan 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C. I immediately republished (Original title: CON2: The Generals of October) under its present title as Washington Under Siege: CON2, Autumn of the Republic. Added note: I know it is a long, complex novel... the overthrow of our vast nation would be a tangled mess...but the theme of a Second Constitutional Convention will surely be another angle by which the enemies of democracy may seek to turn us into a tyranny, a dictatorship, comparable to Putin's Russia and Xi's China to name just two.

MAIN INFO: I am interested, above all, in bringing interested readers (if you enjoy my Substack articles as introductions) to my larger body of written work. I will be revising this intro page over time, and I'll guide you to our Museum pages and more. Until then, please have a look through my work and I hope you find something you like. If you do, rather than pay for a membership, why not by a book?

BOOKSHOP METAPHOR: I will be rebuilding my bookshop metaphor pages shortly. Here's what that means: just as you can sit in a bookstore and read for hours, but you have to pay if you want to take the book home, so I have developed my own method for previews. I think the few pages of previews at major retailers online are not enough. My theory has long been: read half on a try-buy basis. That's a lot of free reading, and by half-way, you will know if you are interested enough to buy the book.

Read-a-Latte: There is another metaphor in play with the bookshop simile. Most of my e-books are inexpensive, just a few dollars, like a coffee (latte) you might buy at your favorite coffeeshop. So for example, you might pay $3.00 for a latte, which stays on your lips for ten or twenty minutes. Conversely, a $3.00 e-book will give you many hours of reading pleasure. And if the ending disappoints, the reader can always seek a refund if the situation is unpleasant enough.

GENERAL INFO: (I'll be working on this as time goes by). If you are intrigued, please explore my webplex. My personal website is johntcullen.com. My publishing imprint is Clocktower Books (ISBN Prefix 0-7433) at clocktowerbooks.com. And the bookstore metaphor site is Galley City (www.galleycity.com) where you can read over a million words for free, including some complete shorter works (all free). More info soon.

My webplex of linked websites, a few dating as far back as 1996, went through a computer crash in 2022. I've been able to recover most of the files, thanks to the wonders of using a cloud backup (Dropbox). That is why it may take me a while to fully connect all the info. I am rebuilding it all (lots of pages, several websites)

I have been a journalist, novelist, short story writer, and poet for many years. I have written over fifty books (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) in a wide range of subjects and categories. Let's focus in on one book today. That is a political thriller I wrote in the 1990s, involving a Second Constitutional Convention gone horribly wrong. It is a thriller patterned after my extensive reading and movie viewing. Maybe you remember Seven Days in May, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor. Those were just a few of the fine thriller movies/novels from that era.

If you are interested (I hope you are), you may explore my webplex of linked websites, developed over 30 years and thousands of hours of work while writing millions of words of fiction. I am, among other things, an Active Member of International Thriller Writers (since 2009) and a Recognized Publisher (Clocktower Books) by ITW as well. With my team of talented authors, artists, and web designers, I originated some pioneering websites and webzines that are featured on the Clocktower Books website in the Museum section. In 2022, we received several pages of historical commentary by historian and publisher Mike Ashley in the fifth and last volume in his definitive series about the history of speculative fiction magazines from their early print days to their recent appearances on the Internet. The website listing his book, at Liverpool UK University Press, can be found at (click)

I will leave the buy links for Washington Under Siege (originally titled CON2: The Generals of October) down below. Feel free to click and read what's at Amazon KDP. Meanwhile, I know all this is an overload of information, but I hope it leads to your further reading enjoyment. Many thanks, and happy reading!

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