Monday, December 16, 2013

Interesting Facts about The Voice of Scott Devlon

Hi Everyone! Thank you for reading my blog! Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books? For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

As some of you may know, the hero of the Summit Murder Mystery series is Scott Devlon. Scott is
an Afghanistan war veteran, mountaineer and occasional agent for the U.S. Defense Intelligence, and he is sent for various reasons to one of the seven summits in each book. Scott’s first climb up Mt. Everest was devastating due to the death of Derek Sodoc, Scott’s friend and fellow climbing enthusiast. Following the climb, Quentin Stern wrote a “tell all” book about the climb, which resulted in Derek’s Father being convinced that foul play was involved in the death of his son, instead of due to the natural elements and dangers the mountain itself presents. Mr. Sodoc gathers all the climbers from the first Mt. Everest trek to retrieve Derek’s body in which is told in Murder on Everest. It becomes quite clear however, that Mr. Sodoc has more than just laying his son to rest on his mind with this dangerous mission.

After barely making it off Mt. Everest alive, Scott next finds himself on Mt. Elbrus, Mt. McKinley, Mt. Puncak Jaya, Mt. Aconcagua, Mt. Vinson Massif and Mt. Kilimanjaro.

It was very important to me to find the perfect voice to represent the hero of my series. I couldn't be more thrilled with the work Greg Lutz has done. When I heard his voice, i knew he was the right man for the job. With just a few words he brings Scott to life. Reviews from listeners agree the Greg is great.

I thought it would be fun for you to get to know Greg better! Here are some fun facts about, Mr. Greg Lutz - the voice of the Summit Murder Mystery series!

Greg is filing a feature film with George Lopez ( Car Dogs) George Lopez jams his wife and him into a car trunk after selling it to them.

Greg Lutz' alter ego is world renowned comedian/singer Jackie Fontaine

Greg was seen on Knotts Landing and Beverly Hills 90210

Greg served on submarines in the us navy, and served as an independent duty corpsman with the scout snipers instructor school in Quantico , VA

Greg has cowritten a feature film screen play which will begin filming in 2014

Have you listened to the Summit Murder Mystery series yet??

Purchase yours now!!

Murder on Everest - http://bit.ly/1kAjoeg

Murder on Elbrus - http://bit.ly/1iXA4B6

Murder on Mt. McKinley - http://bit.ly/1e60ajf

Murder on Puncak Jaya - http://bit.ly/1iXAiYS

Murder on Aconcagua - http://bit.ly/1kAjOBv

Murder on Vinson Massif - http://bit.ly/1gpS3hC

Murder on Kilimanjaro - http://bit.ly/1f7Qdy7

For more information about my Summit Murder Mystery series, please visit www.summitmurdermystery.com

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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Living Hope Ministries Benefit with the Arizona Cardinals!

Hi Everyone! Thank you for reading my blog! Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books? For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

Living Hope Ministries founded by the wonderful Dr. and Mrs. Acho and their two sons Emmanual and Sam provides quality healthcare and medicines to African men, women, and children, while sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those we serve. Living Hope Ministries founders have recently spearheaded an effort to build a permanent hospital that will provide care to over 3,000 rural community residents.

I attended a benefit at the Ritz Carlton here in Phoenix to support Life Hope Ministries efforts. Here are some pictures, and for more information about how you can help, please visit http://livinghopeministries.us/

Arizona Cardinal Sam Acho

Arizona Cardinal Sam Acho and I

Arizona Cardinal Carson Palmer

UFC Lightweight Champ Benson Henderson

Arizona Cardinal Calais Campbell

Arizona Cardinal Larry Fitzgerald and I

For more information about me and my philanthropic endeavors, please visit www.charlesirion.com
For more information about my Summit Murder Mystery series, please visit www.summitmurdermystery.com
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Monday, December 2, 2013

Project C.U.R.E. Kit Pick Up

Hi Everyone! Thank you for reading my blog! Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books? For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

In December I will be headed to Colombia to meet my friend Sandra's family. While there, I am very excited to be delivering a Project C.U.R.E. kit to a city in need. Here is Sandra and I picking up the kit at the Project C.U.R.E. warehouse in Phoenix, AZ.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Suns and Cardinals Games

Hi Everyone! Thank you for reading my blog! Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books? For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

I had a really great time this week at the Suns game and Cardinals game! The weather was great and so was the company. Enjoy the photos!

For more information about me and my philanthropic endeavors, please visit www.charlesirion.com
For more information about my Summit Murder Mystery series, please visit www.summitmurdermystery.com Follow me on TWITTER
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Monday, November 18, 2013

Meeting Jessica Cox

Hi Everyone! Thank you for reading my blog! Did you know that I'm the author of not just one, but thirteen books? For more information, please visit www.charlesirion.com, www.irionbooks.com and/or www.summitmurdermystery.com

I had the honor of attending a fund raising event with 3000 club to raise money for victims of the Typhoon. The 3000 club is a great national and international group of like-minded individuals, small business owners, volunteers and non-profit agencies and organizations who bond together supporting its two flagship projects, Market On the Move and American Medical Aid. Click the links below for more information...

Market On the Move

American Medical Aid

The event featured the amazing, Jessica Cox. Jessica is recognized internationally as an inspirational keynote speaker. Born without arms, Jessica now flies airplanes, drives cars and otherwise lives a normal life using her feet as others use their hands. She holds the Guinness World Record for being the first armless person in aviation history to earn a pilot’s certificate. Convinced that the way we think has a greater impact on our lives than our physical constraints, she chose to pursue a degree in psychology at the University of Arizona. Since then she has traveled to 20 countries sharing her inspirational message.

Think outside the shoe™ – Let Jessica show you how...

Jessica is unbelievably inspirational, and I am thankful I got to meet her. Here are some photos from the event.

For more information about 3000 Club, please visit http://the3000club.org/

For more information about me and my philanthropic endeavors, please visit www.charlesirion.com
For more information about my Summit Murder Mystery series, please visit www.summitmurdermystery.com Follow me on TWITTER
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Thursday, November 14, 2013

My Visit to Alcatraz

Here's some history for you. Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, CA. Often referred to as "The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison and a federal prison.

Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Aboriginal peoples from San Francisco who were part of a wave of Native activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

Today, the island's facilities are managed by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area; it is open to tours. Visitors can reach the island by ferry ride from Pier 33, near Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Hornblower Cruises and Events, operating under the name Alcatraz Cruises, is the official ferry provider to and from the island.

The schedule changed a bit over the years, but most of the time an inmate's day was like this:

Wake up bell at 6:30. Stand up and be counted. Get dressed, clean your cell, march to the mess hall for breakfast. Return from breakfast to your cell and get counted. Get ready for work. March to the recreation yard, line up for work details and get counted. March to work and get counted. Counts every half hour at work.

Return to the cell house around 11:30 and get counted. Into the mess hall for lunch. Back into your cell after lunch and get counted. Back to work and get counted. Finish work at 4:30, back to the cellhouse and get counted. Into the mess hall for dinner, back to the cell, get counted. Get counted throughout the evening.

Lights out at 9:30, then you get counted, while sleeping, every hour during the night.

Weekends followed the same basic schedule, with chapel and yard time instead of work; holidays on Alcatraz meant a movie and yard time for the inmates. Twice a week, showers got worked into the schedule.

10 Things You May Not Know About Alcatraz

1. Al Capone played banjo in the inmate band.
The notorious gangster and mob boss was among the first prisoners to occupy the new Alcatraz federal prison in August 1934. Capone had bribed guards to receive preferential treatment while serving his tax-evasion sentence in Atlanta, but that changed after his transfer to the island prison. The conditions broke Capone. “It looks like Alcatraz has got me licked,” he reportedly told his warden. In fact, Convict No. 85 became so cooperative that he was permitted to play banjo in the Alcatraz prison band, the Rock Islanders, which gave regular Sunday concerts for other inmates.

2. There were no confirmed prisoner escapes from Alcatraz.
A total of 36 inmates put the supposedly “escape-proof” Alcatraz to the test. Of those convicts, 23 were captured, six were shot to death and two drowned. The other five went missing and were presumed drowned, including Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, whose 1962 attempted breakout inspired the 1979 film “Escape from Alcatraz.” The crafty trio chipped away at the rotting concrete cell walls with sharpened spoons and fashioned decoy heads complete with used locks of hair from the barbershop that they placed in their beds to fool the guards. Their possessions were found floating in San Francisco Bay, but no bodies were ever recovered, leading some to speculate that they may have engineered a successful escape.

3. Alcatraz is named for sea birds.
Before criminals became its denizens, the windswept island was home to large colonies of brown pelicans. When Spanish Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala became the first known European to sail through the Golden Gate in 1775, he christened the rocky outcrop “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” meaning “Island of the Pelicans.” The name eventually became Anglicized to “Alcatraz.” With the inmates gone, gulls and cormorants are now the most plentiful inhabitants of Alcatraz.

4. In spite of his nickname, the “Birdman of Alcatraz” had no birds in the prison.
While Robert Stroud was serving a manslaughter sentence for killing a bartender in a brawl, he fatally stabbed a guard at Leavenworth Prison in 1916. After President Woodrow Wilson commuted his death sentence to a life of permanent solitary confinement, Stroud began to study ornithological diseases, write and illustrate two books and raise canaries and other birds in his Leavenworth cell. He was ordered to give up his birds in 1931, and he was banned from having any avian cellmates during his 17 years inside Alcatraz, which began in 1942. The 1962 movie “Birdman of Alcatraz,” for which Burt Lancaster received an Academy Award nomination just weeks before “The Rock” closed, was largely fictitious.

5. After the prison stood dormant for six years, Native American activists occupied Alcatraz.
Following two previous brief occupations, a group of nearly 100 Native American activists, led by Mohawk Richard Oakes, took over the island in November 1969. Citing an 1868 treaty that granted unoccupied federal land to Native Americans, the protestors demanded the deed to Alcatraz in order to establish a university and cultural center. Their proclamation included an offer to purchase the island for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth”—the same price reportedly paid by Dutch settlers for Manhattan in 1626. Federal marshals removed the last of the protestors in June 1971, but some of their graffiti remains. When the National Park Service recently rebuilt an Alcatraz water tower, it made sure to repaint the red graffiti that read “Peace and Freedom. Welcome. Home of the Free Indian Land.”

6. Military prisoners were Alcatraz’s first inmates.
Once the Gold Rush of the 1840s turned San Francisco into a boomtown, Alcatraz was dedicated to military use. The U.S. Army began incarcerating military prisoners inside the new fortress in the late 1850s. During the Civil War, prisoners included Union deserters and Confederate sympathizers. The cells were also used to imprison Native Americans who had land disagreements with the federal government, American soldiers who deserted to the Filipino cause during the Spanish-American War and Chinese civilians who resisted the Army during the Boxer Rebellion.

7. Alcatraz was home to the Pacific Coast’s first lighthouse.
When a small lighthouse on top of the rocky island was activated in 1854, it became the first of its kind on the West Coast of the United States. The beacon became obsolete in the early 1900s after the U.S. Army constructed a cell house that blocked its view of the Golden Gate. A new, taller lighthouse replaced it in 1909.

8. The country’s worst criminals were not automatically shipped to Alcatraz.

The convicts housed in Alcatraz were not necessarily those who had committed the most violent or heinous crimes, but they were the convicts most in need of an attitude adjustment–the most incorrigible and disobedient inmates in the federal penal system. They had bribed guards and attempted escapes, and a trip to Alcatraz was intended to get them to follow the rules so that they could return to other federal facilities.

9. It was possible to swim to shore.
Federal officials may have initially doubted that any escaping inmates could survive the swim to the mainland across the cold, swift waters of San Francisco Bay, but it did happen. In 1962, prisoner John Paul Scott greased himself with lard, squeezed through a window and swam to shore. He was so exhausted upon reaching the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge that police discovered him lying unconscious in hypothermic shock. Today, hundreds complete the 1.5-mile swim annually during the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon.

10. Inmates requested transfers to Alcatraz.
While Alcatraz was certainly not Club Med, its tough-as-nails reputation was a bit of a Hollywood creation. The prison’s one-man-per-cell policy appealed to some inmates because it made them less vulnerable to attack by fellow jailbirds. Alcatraz’s first warden, James A. Johnston, knew poor food was often the cause of prison riots, so he prided himself on serving good food, and inmates could return for as many helpings as they wanted. Inmates who behaved had access to privileges including monthly movies and a library with 15,000 books and 75 popular magazine subscriptions. Overall, some prisoners considered the conditions inside Alcatraz to be more attractive than at other federal prisons, and several asked to be moved there.