Bob Jonas's Blog
November 24, 2025
The Old Cable House: launches
The Old Cable House, a YA political thriller, is set in Hong Kong. It will launch on February 13, 2026.
Isolated on a beach at the southern tip of Hong Kong island, there exists a twenty-foot, rock solid cube—construction circa, 1851. Unmoved, even after a school was built around it in 2011, there were no doors, or windows, its monolithic appearance offering no historical insights. Why it was there, who built it, why it was abandoned? There was no plaque, or any form of commemoration. Its existence had become commonplace, making it easy to ignore. Over time it would be impossible to believe the prying eyes of two overly inquisitive boys could ignite a series of events that would someday bring down a family empire
While dozens of historic buildings in Hong Kong had been razed and replaced with a commemorative plaque, this firmly planted tomb remained. It’s existance was protected by the Monuments and Antiquities Commission, the agency responsible for the safety of Hong Kong’s glorious, or not so glorious past. An agency not at all above taking a bribe.
Dangerous Beginnings
When they first decided on their topic, Jasper and Ricky had no idea their research would peel back historical layers that involved the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in1941, the Triad 14K—Hong Kong’s most infamous gangster organization—a 400,000 female union of Hong Kong maids, acceptance into one of one of the richest families in Hong Kong, and the building of their telecommunications companies.
Boys Will Be Boys–Maybe Dead
With a reputation for persistence, a knack for trouble, and curiosities as tall and wide as any skyscraper in Hong Kong. The boys would inadvertently revive an interest worthy of the most dedicated treasure hunters. Their involvment grew like a plot worthy of a Grisham masterpiece. They were thankful the project rescued them from both their greatest fear—boredom.Treasrue Worth Finding
At stake, a wild guess? Jasper had said, one morning as they were reviewing all their work. How about a billion dollars, give or take, in one form or another? On account, a million doesn’t buy what it used to—in the way of yachts, status, or reputation. But a billion? That’s a big number, big enough to gain widespread interest if I’m right. At first, Ricky thought his friend was joking. With a tiny bit of nausea growing in his gut, he knew Jasper was not.All they wanted to do was produce an “A” quality report, have the Old Cable House relocated, giving kids a better place to play. Who knew it would turn out to be an adventure that may end up costing them their lives?
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December 22, 2024
Phantom Patriot: Launch Date 02/13/2025
1967At fifteen, traveling alone, scrambling to stay ahead of a nationwide manhunt, Jake Garrity is forced to temporarily suppress the pain of his father’s recent death. He has no other family. The Commandant at the military school where his father had him enrolled was succinct: The mine exploded, his death was instantaneous, he never knew what hit him. Sorry for your loss. Vietfuckingnam. Jake has no alternative. He has to run, run like hell.
A Long JourneyAfter three months, he becomes another statistic. It’s January, he has until June to find his way to San Francisco, the Summer of Love, the epicenter for the new counterculture, a place he hopes to find answers. In the time of the hippies, he’s heard of a mythical order forming on the west coast, where his generation is about to reinvent itself, and the world. He has no place else to go.
At 6’2”, sporting a military buzz cut, he looks more man than a kid, more military than civilian. His training may have given him the survival skills, but he is not ready for a country that has gone sour on an unwinnable war. Not yet.
Halfway through his journey, he is robbed, stranded in a desolate outpost in Oklahoma. The need to survive finds him apprenticed to a mortician, a wild, crazed vet whose Vietnam stoked obsession with death is eased when he becomes mentor to a lost kid on a journey to the west coast. The death biz for Reginald Hoover has been reduced to nothing but farce and theater, a PTSD symptom his mother fears has detached her son from the real world. If only for a while, she is thrilled when Reg has a new friend and purpose, focusing his mind back to the living. Jake has no idea the education he receives from Reginald Hoover will one day put him at the center of a mystery that will take thirty years to solve, thousands of miles away.
1997
Portland police receive an anonymous tip about a body buried under the right field stands in Multnomah Stadium. The historic Portland ballpark is scheduled for demolition in two weeks. No one would have known.
JT and Griff, two homeless teens, occasionally sleep in the stadium’s catacombs. Freaked out when they hear about the body, they pray it isn’t one of their friends. When the coroner announces the remains have been down there at least thirty years, they’re relieved, yet intrigued: intrigued enough to pay the library a visit, always a safer, dryer venue than panhandling in the freezing rain.
The coroner’s timeline suggests their research begin around 1967. Digitized newsprint in the library’s microfilm readers is filled with three repeating headlines about: a prank-playing, anti-war protester the press nickname the Phantom Patriot; a vengeance-seeking cop who swears to kill the traitor; and the mysterious disappearance of a body—a fifteen-year-old vendor who tripped down a long flight of concrete stairs and died. And then disappeared.
For months the news alternates between pranks played by the Phantom Patriot and the search for the missing vendor. With the discovery of the grave, the two unsolved mysteries collide, revealing truths buried for over thirty years.
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September 17, 2023
Other Motorcycle Diaries–Apologies to Che
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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July 24, 2023
Jump Launch Party
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June 23, 2023
Guy Billout, the Ironic Illustrator
Appeared in All things Ruffnerian Blog, 2010. . .
. . and whose art will soon appear the cover of a soon to be released memoir entitled: Jump, by Bob Jonas
Guy Billout (b. 1941) is a French illustrator whose work has been featured regularly for years in The Atlantic Monthly. His style is characterized by delicate and economical line work, heavy shadows, beautiful gradients and almost always, irony. The following examples of his work have all appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. More great illustrations can be seen at Guy Billout’s Web gallery, here .
The story of our relationship, and how his work—the work of a world-famous artist—came to appear on the cover of my book, Jump, is so meaningful to me, that I decided to devote the entire Afterward of the book to this subject.
Cover Evolution
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June 14, 2023
Not fake news
Arkansas librarians sue to block new law that could jail them over explicit books
Daily MailMapped: The U.S. states where school librarians face years in prison and tens of THOUSANDS in fines for providing ‘harmful’ books for children
ABC News
Proposed Missouri book ban could jail librarians for loaning ‘inappropriate’ content
The GuardianWe’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bans
KVBT 7Measure that could fine, jail librarians passes Idaho House
Intellectual Freedom Blog—American Library Association
The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association
Beyond Book Banning: Efforts to Criminally Charge Librarians
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May 24, 2023
Jump Gets ready
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Ready to rumble
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May 18, 2023
Instant Gratification
Part 1:
Observations from a repatriating American and what it means to be back after being gone for twenty-five years.
. . . living in an age where instant gratification is not fast enough.
When I order online, I don’t need it delivered immediately, although now, the expectation seems to be, by the time you get off the pot, no matter the time of day, or where you live, your order will arrive.
Maybe it’s just me, in retirement, living a slowed down existence. As much as I hate to admit it, I do appreciate not having to go out for ever last thing I need. In fact, I hate to go shopping, period. Of course, this is a relatively new thing, since the pandemic. The package locker at our apartment is a well-designed convenience for tenants, but who would ever have expected that one day it would need to be big enough to hold half of Macy’s? So, what I now see is:
Texts at 5am telling me, guess who’s here—even on a Sunday morning.Or gosh gee whizz, we left it with a neighbor—which one I ask, because there are forty in this building and I don’t know a single name or where they live. But then again, I never got a chance to ask the driver, because this is all so high tech, no need to speak to anyone.Or gosh gee whizz, we left it outside, for some street person to see if one of Susan’s bras fit.Or when the delivery guy shows up on a tracking map on my cell, I go down to get the package, but he doesn’t believe I am Susan, and guess what—he doesn’t speak English and he will not give me the package no matter how I try to prove who I am. If it hadn’t been for another tenant who spoke Spanish, the package would have gone back on the truck.Repeated texts telling me to tap a special URL to get my special Amazon ODP, then copy and paste it back to the driver. Unfortunately, I am not fast enough, so not wanting to waste any more time, he leaves it behind with—who knows, or on the apartment’s front door step, out in the open.I can’t help thinking how many more trucks are now on the road, how many more jumbo, gigantic warehouses demanding tax breaks continue to be built, to expedite our relentless need for more stuff, and how many more injuries Amazon workers will sustain to fill over the top quotas to get us our shit.Not to mention how much more traffic and fuel consumption to get us our shit.And then I can’t help ponder how convenient it is for us to return anything, anytime. And how many mountains of returned shit are reduced to thousands and thousands of bundles that go to auction because the stuff is not even worth putting back on the shelves or to the dump. And how enterprising people are having a ball turning masses of unwanted shit into businesses and bucks. Onward, America.
Bundles and bundles o’shyte
We have always been a consumer society but now we have transcended, well on our way to wallowing in so much shit that one day for sure, it will consume us.
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May 10, 2023
JUMP Jumps the Gun
She warned me, but I just got so excited I couldn’t control myself. “Just a little hint here and there,” I promised. “Sure, honey, but I know you. There won’t be anything little about it.” And sure enough, with enough hints, people started to share my excitement. And then they wanted to know when the book was coming out, and then more people started asking, and more and more. And finally, I had to cave.
So, to meet Susan halfway, I said, “can I at least suggest a pre-pub date for the ebook, so it can be ordered right now, making it available June 1, automatically delivered to anyone’s Kindle library on that date? That’s not too far from launch of the paperback on September 1, the date I promised myself I would wait for, is it?”
By that time, it will be up on Kobo, Barnes & Nobel, and many more online sellers.” She said that sounded reasonable, and after all, she is the marketing director.
Thanks for all your interest, can’t wait to hear from your attorneys and cancel culture minions. Seriously, just a little sex, a few blue words, some politically incorrect—maybe more than some—undocumented opinions, and some knock down killer, can’t put it down entertainment.
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