Dave Buschi's Blog

But since you’re here, welcome to my author site! Great to have you here.

Yes, this is really written by me. No Ai churning out this garbage. It’s all me.

What’s happening my way, you say? Good question.

I’m working on another book for the Reality Recoded series and it’s going to be awesome. 

Feel free to click the tabs up top or read some posts. I don’t do a lot of posts, but they’re a few you may find interesting. Like what gave me the idea to write The Back Door Man. Or how a Russian journalist contacted me about Insider X. Or maybe you want to check my first blog entry, when I let folks know about the German translation that was coming out for The Back Door Man. Hard to believe that was ten years ago. That was pretty cool when it happened. If you read German, check it out and tell me if the book is any good. I have no idea. For all I know the translator may have just written a bunch of salad recipes and called it a day. Ditto for the French translation. But they both did pretty well on their respective Amazon sites, so who knows, maybe the recipes are awesome—the French translation was actually a #1 bestseller for a while. Yes, I’m famous! In France.

As for you Australians, I don’t have it in Aussie, yet. But I love you guys! And you seem to be making do with my American English version of the book. Which is incredibly cool to see. Love when you guys reach out. In fact, I even did a Tik Tok post about it. See link below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLgcNsYk/

I don’t want to forget my other fans. United Kingdom, you guys get five stars!

In fact, I’m going to do a quick shout out to all those readers from other countries who are getting my books. Just last month, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Italy, France, Chile, Philippines, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, South Africa, Spain, Canada, India, Indonesia, Germany, and Mexico all made the list. Love it! It’s so cool you guys are reading my books.

Now I’m guessing you haven’t tried them all.

How about Proportionate Response or Insider X? No? Then get on it! They came out a while ago, but both of those books are a fun thrill ride. Marks and Lip are both living rent free in my head and that tag-team duo is still doing their thing. Getting the bad guys and cracking really bad jokes. I keep promising them I’ll write about their latest escapades, and believe me I’ve been meaning to, but some of the stuff they do is just so flat-out unbelievable no one would believe those stories if I wrote about them. Just like when I wrote Insider X. At the time, people called it far-fetched. Well who’s Mr. Prescient now? Yeah, I called it all. In fact, I still have nightmares wondering if Russia just used my book as their FSB playbook.

But no more talking about that. In fact, forget I even mentioned it. I got way too many weird emails for a while when those books came out. I write fiction, but apparently I was writing non-fiction and just didn’t know it.

Not particularly fun. The bad guys out there were on to me and not in a good way. Probably the reason I switched to writing Science Fiction with the Reality Recoded series. Write a great book that won’t get you on any watch lists. Always a bonus! 

With my luck, though, I’m probably going to find out that Reality Recoded and Lucky High are not fiction and that I’m about to be recoded.

Did I say too much?

That was all a joke by the way. I know nothing.

Except that you’re still here and I dig that.

Feel free to leave graffiti.

Boris was here

Lip bites weenies

Marks sucks!

And mr. bush-ee is very handsome!

There are articles like this every day (see link below). In some city, somewhere around the world, a really amazing ‘coincidence’ occurs where numbers are involved. I see these articles occasionally and each time I get that feeling—you may know what I’m talking about, because maybe it’s hit you too—that this is no coincidence.

Such ‘coincidences’ inspired the storyline for my book, Reality Recoded. It’s a sci-fi suspense thriller that you won’t be able to put down.

Man said for this game, he happened to be seated in section 107, row 7 and seat 7. And 7 is the mother’s favorite number.

Link for article:

https://apple.news/AZ2rEiBKKQ4yzlQDSIA-rdQ

Link for Reality Recoded book:

https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Recoded-Dave-Buschi-ebook/dp/B075FGF28L?ref_=ast_author_mpb

Link for X post:

https://x.com/davebuschi/status/1779522275236041203?s=46

For suspense thriller fans and those who want a book that grabs them and doesn’t let go.

The big idea for LUCKY HIGH came to me one night when I was thinking about the hyper-demanding landscape our kids have today. Having two kids this was top of mind. The idea came to me when my oldest had just started high school. I was reflecting on their reality compared to previous generations. School, and the path to college, does not seem to have become any easier. If anything, students today have packed curriculums with constant testing and scads of homework that seem to defy what is humanly possible to do in a day. Add the fact the bar seems to be constantly raised to get into a good college. Great GPA? Definitely needed. Great SAT and ACT scores? Of course! Extracurricular activities? Are you a scholar athlete? Do you volunteer time for great causes that “round out” your profile? Do you have a part-time job, learning real skills? Are you taking enough AP level courses? Are you in a high school that is considered a top school? Does it have a track record of getting its students into the best colleges? And so on, and so on.

How many parents can relate to the idea that your alma mater probably wouldn’t accept you today with the standards those colleges have now? It’s like we’re trying to build the perfect prototype. Ramp up youth to being these super performers. This applies to scholastics and athletics. Stronger, smarter, better! And in many cases our kids today are. Just go to any feeder program for athletics. See what 12-year-olds can do on the field in any sport: football, soccer, baseball, softball, lacrosse, tennis. They’re incredible! By the time they get to high school they’re playing at levels that only college athletes did back in my day.

LUCKY HIGH takes this premise. It’s the best school. The kids are constantly told how lucky they are to attend a school that practically guarantees they are getting into the top colleges. The best athletes go to the school. They have the best teachers. The best coaches. These kids are the crème de la crème and they have mile-high ambitions. They’re going to play in the NFL. Be an Olympic athlete. Discover the cure for cancer. Become titans of finance! And they’re well on their way.

But it’s all a lie.

Yep. There it is. THE BIG IDEA. What if our kids today were being lied to? Their future was being stolen from them? 

What if there was no life for these students after high school?

Well with this big idea came this story. Sci-fi in this case. With a badass heroine. Name is Elle. And she’s not going peacefully into the night.

Dream school. They call it Lucky High. They’re constantly told how lucky they are to attend such an incredible school. But it’s all a lie. There is no life for these students after high school.

Just released on Amazon! LUCKY HIGH by Dave Buschi.

(book excerpt)

|Prologue|

Somewhere in New Zealand

DRAFT DAY. This year’s class was considered one of the best they had seen in years. The bid caller took the podium as a video began to run on the wall behind him. Those attending virtually, and those sitting in the large circular chamber, had a digital catalog showcasing each offering.

“50 bid to start,” said the bid caller. He acknowledged a raised hand. “Now 60, now 60, 70 is the new bid, now 70, 80 is the bid, 100! Do I hear 110? 120! Now 120, now 120, 150! Do I hear 160? Now 170. 200 to the gentleman in the back of the room!”

The crowd in the room stirred. The bid caller kept up the rhythmic chant as the bid steadily progressed upwards. When it crested 500 there was an audible collective gasp.

“Now 500, now 500, do I hear 520?”

A woman up front raised her hand.

“550!” the bid caller barked.

“Now 570, now 570, now 570. Sold! For five hundred and fifty million to the lady up front!”

The video for “Elle” faded out, and bidding on the next offering began.

|1|

HER MINDERS watched as she moved her legs furiously trying to keep her head above water. Her hands were bound and the weight kept trying to pull her down. They’d hobbled her with a heavy iron plate that was connected to a chain around her waist.

Another girl was kicking nearby. She’d been thrown in at the same time. Number 495 didn’t look at her. That way only led to fear and hopelessness. She focused on kicking, but the chain wasn’t making it easy. Her legs kept hitting it. And without being able to paddle with her hands, her body kept tilting forward. She managed to get high enough for another breath.

With each kick the weight grew heavier. Exhaustion was taking over. The other girl, No. 1210, was no longer beside her. She’d gone under. The minders made no effort to rescue her. They just stood there watching.

Anger surged inside No. 495, but there was nothing she could do. Nothing but keep kicking and damning their very existence. Time held no meaning. She didn’t know if she’d been in here ten minutes or ten hundred. She was singularly focused. Kicking to steal another breath, then dipping under. Repeating that action again and again.

She choked and coughed as water got in her lungs. She hadn’t kicked hard enough. She sank lower. In a panic, she put more into it, but it was short lived. She had nothing in the tank. She was spent.

She could see No. 1210 at the bottom—limp, not moving, tethered to her chain, hair splayed out like some jellyfish. Frantic, No. 495 looked up towards the surface as she sank. She tried to kick, but to no avail. Her legs were noodles.

With blurry vision, she could see her minders at the pool’s edge. They were looking down at her impassively with clipboards in their hands. Not doing anything, just watching. Next to them was him—the visitor—an enormously obese man with rodent-small eyes, which looked like black dots on that fleshbag face. His lips were curled in a cruel smile.

She choked and felt an unbelievable tightness in her chest as an explosion of white obliterated her world.

No!

She opened her eyes.

Realization set in. There was no pool. No water. 

Instead, she was awake. Her bedsheets were drenched from sweat, as were her tee shirt and pajama bottoms. It took her a moment to reconcile, remember where she was. She was in her bed. In her room. All familiar, down to the photos and posters on her walls and stacks of library books on her desk.

That had been a dream.

Not real.

But even as she reaffirmed this reality, and told herself she was safe, she couldn’t help but think that place and pool had been familiar. Like she’d been there before, and not just in a dream.

Shivering, Elle got up and went to the bathroom.

She stared at herself in the mirror, still haunted. Her face, most of it hidden by long strands of chestnut hair, showed a young teen with rosebud lips and hazel eyes that could look blue in certain light. There was something wistful and sad with the set of her features. It was almost as if some great tragedy had occurred in her life and its weight had forever marked her.

“DON’T FORGET your pills,” her mother said.

“I took them,” Elle said.

“You remember what happened when you didn’t take them.”

“I said I took them.”

“Oh … sorry. Ready? We’re running late.”

Elle checked the time on her phone. Practice started in eighteen minutes.

“We’re fine, Mom.”

Her mother started the car.

“What did you say?”

“I said we’re fine.”

“Oh … did you have a good sleep?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Her mother pulled out of the driveway. As they headed to school, Elle’s dream was fast becoming a foggy memory. Minutes later, she wouldn’t remember it at all.

“Lucky High” is the snarky nickname given to it by students. They’re constantly told how lucky they are to attend such an incredible school. They’re all academically or athletically gifted, with big dreams, and a desire to be the best of the best.

Elle is “average” here, by her own admission, but has oversized ambitions and is committed to the program. What she uncovers about this school will change everything.

Lucky High is a lie.

There is no life for these students after high school.

(LUCKY HIGH is a sequel to REALITY RECODED, but requires no knowledge of that cannon to be enjoyed. It is a stand-alone novel and riveting story of good vs. evil. For fans of thrillers and science fiction.)

I WAS SHOWING Kaprekar’s constant to some friends during a dinner party.  Had a napkin.  Pen.  Did that cool number thing that Kaprekar’s routine does.  For those not familiar with Kaprekar’s constant, it is a math thing.

I wouldn’t consider myself a math guy, but have to say that math, or more specifically ‘numbers’, fascinate me.  The links between numbers and the real world can be pretty cool.

Numbers are everywhere, even when you’re not looking for them.  But I do look sometimes.  Take calendar dates.  March 14th for one.  3.14.  π

Kind of a big number in the math world.  Did you know that 3.14 also happens to be the birthday of Albert Einstein?  Pretty cool coincidence, huh?  He’s kind of a big deal in the math world, as well.  Which brings to mind another guy: Stephen Hawking.  Brilliant theoretical physicist.  Author of Brief History of Time, among other bestselling works.  He died recently.  Just over a year ago.  Happened to be on March 14th.  Yeah.  That date.  π

Now that’s a crazy coincidence.  Two luminary brilliant math guys linked to that date.

Linked.  Numbers can do that.  When we’re born we are all linked to our birth date.  It’s our number.  A number we tend to remember.

Hawking was born on January 8th, 1942.  Which coincidentally was the 300th anniversary of Galileo’s death.  Galileo, as in the dude who has been called the father of everything associated with math.

Father of observational astronomy.  Father of modern physics.  Father of the scientific method.  Father of modern science.  Yeah that guy.  Was a polymath, which essentially means “knows everything”.  ‘Math’ is in that word, by the way, if you didn’t notice that.

Math.  Numbers.  Coincidences.

Three major, as in big time major, brilliant math men all linked by numbers.  π being one of them.  Cue the creepy music.

Keep that music going.  Take 6174.   That number is Kaprekar’s constant.  Also plays a small bit part in my book Reality Recoded.  It’s a number that happens to be a very cool number.

Want to see?  I’ll show you.

We’ll take any four-digit number, where at least one number is different—can’t use 0000, for instance, but we can use 0001—and then put them in ascending order and minus them by the descending order.  Whatever number we get, we’ll repeat the procedure.  It’s called Kaprekar’s routine.  That routine will yield 6174 in eight iterations or less.

Never fails.

So what number should we use? To keep this all linked, let’s use the first four digits of pi.

That would be 3141.

3141

(As mentioned… ascending order.  That would be 4311.  And descending order.  That would be 1134.  Subtract.  Repeat.  All shown below.)

4311 – 1134 = 3177

7731 – 1377 = 6354

6543 – 3456 = 3087

8730 – 0378 = 8352

8532 – 2358 = 6174

Not bad, huh?  Try it with any number.  I tell you what you’ll get.  6174 every time.

Mind blown?

That’s numbers for you.  Tip of the iceberg.  Somewhere below is the code.  The code to it all.

#realityrecoded

With each book I’ve written it was always important to have that clear and center before I put the first words on paper.  For me it’s like an ignition button.  The thing that gets me started.

So what do I mean by a big idea?  I’ll give an example.  For THE BACK DOOR MAN, my big idea happened during the 2-week gas crisis in Georgia.  A big storm hit the Gulf and had a ripple effect where refineries were affected, deliveries were put on pause, and suddenly gas stations were running out of gas in the entire Southeast.  It was a minor blip in the scope of things, but it was crazy for those two weeks.  There was a run on every gas station.  Once people heard that gas supplies were getting low everybody suddenly had to go top off their tanks.  Lines piled up at gas stations.  People became crazy.  My wife, while waiting in line in her car for a pump to get open, saw two people almost come to blows because one of them thought the other cut in line.  It didn’t take much.  Just eighteen hours into the gas shortage and this one guy was willing to kill this other guy because he thought the man cut in front of him.  I saw similar craziness.  Horns blaring.  People on edge wondering if they were going to be able to get gas before the tanks went dry.  And dry they went everywhere.  Every gas station, including the one at Costco near me, went dry by the end of the day.  The next day there were cars lined up at Costco at 8:00 a.m. just hoping that a gas delivery was going to happen.  Four hours later some of those same cars were still there waiting.

It was that second day into the Great Gas Crisis, as coworkers of mine were wondering if they should join the car line at the Costco across the street, when I got my big idea.  Not gas, though.  My big idea was this: What if credit cards suddenly stopped working everywhere?  I don’t know about you, but for me I’d be in trouble.  I never carry cash in my wallet.  Even when I do, it usually isn’t much.  Definitely not enough to pay for a tank of gas or groceries.  I figured I wouldn’t be the only one either.  We live in a digital age.  We expect those credit cards to work.  What if they didn’t, though, just for a day?  I could only imagine the panic that would ensue.

Once I had that big idea the juices started flowing.  A story developed, took shape, and before I knew it I was writing as fast as I could.

The big idea.  With each book I’ve written it was always important to have that clear and center before I put the first words on paper.  For me it’s like that ignition button.  The thing that gets me started.

So what do I mean by a big idea?  I’ll give an example.  For my book, THE BACK DOOR MAN, my big idea happened during the 2-week gas crisis in Georgia.  A big storm hit in the Gulf and had a ripple effect where refineries were affected, some deliveries were put on pause, and suddenly gas stations were running out of gas in the entire Southeast.  It was a minor blip in the scope of things, but it was crazy for those two weeks.  There was a run on every gas station.  Once people heard that gas supplies were getting low, everybody suddenly had to go top off their tanks (even if they still had half a tank left of gas or more).  Lines at gas stations were insane.  People became crazy.  My wife, while waiting in line in her car for a pump to get open, told me about seeing two people almost come to blows because one of them thought the other cut in line.  It didn’t take much.  Just eighteen hours into the gas shortage and this one guy was willing to kill this other guy if he didn’t get behind him in line, move his car back, and not cut in front of him.  I saw similar craziness.  Horns blaring.  People on edge wondering if they were going to be able to get gas before the tanks went dry.  And dry they went everywhere.  Every gas station, including the one at Costco near me, went dry by the end of the day.  The next day there were cars lined up at Costco at eight AM in the morning, just hoping that a gas delivery was going to happen.  Four hours later some of those same cars were still there waiting.

Absolutely crazy.  It was that second day into the Great Gas Crisis, when coworkers of mine were wondering if they should join that car line at the Costco across the street, when I got my big idea.  Not gas, though.  My big idea was this: What if credit cards suddenly didn’t work?  If just everywhere they stopped working?  I don’t know about you, but for me, I’d be screwed.  I never carry cash in my wallet.  Even when I do, it usually isn’t much.  Definitely not enough to pay for a tank of gas.  Or groceries.  I figured I wouldn’t be the only one either.  We live in a digital age.  We expect those credit cards to work.  What if they didn’t, though, just for a day?  I could only imagine the panic that would ensue.

Once I had that big idea the juices started flowing.  A story developed… took shape.  And before I knew it I was writing as fast as I could.