A Disturbance of Shadows, a short haunted-house-slasher-cosmic horror blend of mine is coming Dec. 2 from Crossroad Press.
It's a return to Louisiana for me and to the realm of Aismley where many of my early books are set.
Hopefully it's an intense little burst for readers as events unfold at an old Louisiana mansion where a reporter and videographer seek refuge during a storm. Dark secrets are housed in the house, of course, and details about a peripheral character of mine come into more focus in and around sightings of a couple of local ghosts.
Pre-order now for a nice price here. (Amazon is offering a Pre-order price guarantee.)
Very sad to read this morning of Sean Connery's passing. I'd thought of him recently, perhaps because of the not-much-loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cropping up on Amazon Prime.
My first Bond in the theater was The Man With the Golden Gun, for my friend and I, a fun, glossy action extravaganza despite how it's viewed these days, or by critics then.
My first Bond book however was the tie-in edition of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's return to the role. Ads on TV and even on the radio made it sound thrilling.
My old man bought me the novel off the drug store paperback rack when it cropped up and that introduced me to Ian Fleming's world. Combined with the radio ads, the cover helped me understand the disparity between spelling and pronunciation of Sean.
Here's the cover art for my new novel Disciples of the Serpent with artwork from multiple Hugo-winner Bob Eggleton.
My entry in the O.C.L.T. series is a Lovecraftian tale set in Ireland. Here's the full synopsis:
In Dublin, Ireland, academics and historians are dying. An unidentified venom is to blame. Strange markings from deep in the Emerald Isle’s past suggest adherents to lost and forbidden knowledge may have reorganized.
Detective Aileen O’Donnell of Ireland’s National Police Service, An Garda Síochána, has never heard of the agency’s sub rosa unit devoted to investigation of the strange and paranormal. That is, until a shooting incident leads to her suspension from the Special Detective Unit.
While awaiting disciplinary proceedings, she’s pressed into service by the secret division to investigate the deaths and what might be the tip of a conspiracy and academic cover-up.
Soon O’Donnell’s teamed with Geoffrey Bullfinch and Wendell "Mack" Macklemore of O.C.L.T. On a race through medieval ruins and holy sites, she must collect puzzle pieces, fragments from a forgotten pulp writer and bits of secret Druid history to stop the shadowy band of disciples before it awakens something long sleeping beneath one of Ireland’s most famous landmarks, something modern technology and firepower can’t defeat.
This novel, which stands alone, is a tie-in with the ongoing O.C.L.T. series.
There are incidents and emergencies in the world that defy logical explanation, events that could be defined as supernatural, extraterrestrial, or simply otherworldly. Standard laws do not allow for such instances, nor are most officials or authorities trained to handle them. In recognition of these facts, one organization has been created that can. Assembled by a loose international coalition, their mission is to deal with these situations using diplomacy, guile, force, and strategy as necessary. They shield the rest of the world from their own actions, and clean up the messes left in their wake. They are our protection, our guide, our sword, and our voice, all rolled into one.
They are O.C.L.T.
Other books in the O.C.L.T. series include the novella "Brought to Light," By Aaron Rosenberg, the novel The Parting, by David Niall Wilson, the novella "The Temple of Camazotz," also by David Niall Wilson, and the novel Incursion, by Aaron Rosenberg (in which the existence of the O.C.L.T. as a cohesive unit is finalized). Another stand-alone adventure can be found The Noose Club, by David Bischoff (writing with David Niall Wilson).
Somehow I missed the Valentino series from Loren D. Estleman until browsing the other day and hitting on the latest book, Alive!
Happy to be aboard.
Valentino is a film archivist for UCLA, and he becomes embroiled in murder mysteries that swirl around lost films. We're talking things like Eric Von Stronheim's Greed or, happily, the lost screen test of Bela Lugosi as the Frankenstein monster in Alive! The screen test is real and really lost, cleared away to make storage space in a time before its importance and value were recognized at Universal Studios. But Estleman imagines a world where the footage still exists, two reels shot with Lugosi hot off the success of 1931's Dracula and targeted for a role in the next big Universal monster movie. Of course the role went to Boris Karloff, but collectors and film fans would love to see what might have been, or what went wrong.
Estleman offers up an interesting blend of film history and fiction as Valentino races to find the lost footage after he realizes it's at the core of an old friend's murder.
His pal, a washed up star with addiction issues, has come upon the footage, but criminal elements are involved. There's also a collector who's an homage to the late great punster and editor Forrest Ackerman of Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Estleman's imagined a rich world of supporting characters for Valentino including an intern who's into Steampunk and a department secretary from hell plus a fun pair of San Diego detectives. They're fun for the reader, not so fun for Valentino. The bad cop of the duo is on bad cop overdrive.
There's a nice and fairly twisty mystery plot woven through the tale, and tension builds as Valentino strives to solve the case and keep the film footage from decaying in a police evidence room.
The tale's also a fabulous look into film preservation with even a few contemplations on Steampunk's importance. Van Helsing qualifies, and Valentino's intern and friends watch with the sound turned down for the enjoyment of the production design.
All in all, it's nice mystery read and great book to pick up if you're an aficionado of Universal Horrors.
Must check out the other tales in the series as well including a collection of short stories.
It's really beautifully done artwork as you can see above.
Sounds like a really interesting Southern novel. Here's the synopsis from the publisher, Immortal Ink, and you can view the trailer below:
Mississippi 1920: Nine year old servant, Hadley Crump, finds himself drawn into a secret world when he is invited to join wealthy Lucinda Browning’s dirty book club. No one suspects that the bi-racial son of the cook is anything more to Lucinda than a charitable obligation, but behind closed doors, O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright. What begins as a breathless investigation into the more juicy parts of literature quickly becomes a consuming and life-long habit for two people who would not otherwise be left alone together. As lynchings erupt across the South and the serving staff is slowly cut to make way for new mechanical household conveniences, Hadley begins to understand how dangerous and precarious his situation is.
The Reading Lessons follows the lives of two people born into a world that is unforgiving as a Hangman’s knot. Divided by skin color and joined by books, Hadley and Lucinda are forced to come together in the only place that will allow it, a land of printed words and dark secrets.
As mentioned in my previous post, Azarius, my first novel, is rolling out in a new e-book edition from Crossroad Press. As one buddy once put it, it's the tale of an arch-demon menacing a small Southern town. I like the way that sums it up.
I picked up a personal copy of the paperback the other day in telling a friend of the new edition, and a clipping I'd tucked there long ago fell out.
I think it's probably my first book signing ever at a Waldenbooks in Alexandria, Louisiana. I think it was fun, but it doesn't quite seem like yesterday anymore.
I didn't much updating on this book, as I did with some of the later ones that have already seen e-print. It's as it was created in that raw burst of energy as the ideas flowed when I was 26.
I saw an interview the other day with William Peter Blatty. He said that as he recorded the audiobook of The Exorcist he read a passage and said: "Who wrote this garbage?"
I think every writer does that, finds flaws, longs to change things. I've decided to save the energy of sweating over words and phrases for new work.
As I recall, Az is a good tale. I worked to make it an exciting excursion into the world of demons and darkness.
When I taught a creative writing class a while back, I showed a number of magazines as examples of good reading. One was a double issue of Tin House, which offered stories of hope in one half and stories of dread when flipped over.
"I bet I know which side you liked best," someone chimed in.
It may have had something to do with the tone of some of the assigned reading.
I do tend to lean a little toward darker fiction, falling back on the Kafka admonition that we should read novels that stab us.
I think I'm still bleeding from Daniel Woodrell's The Death of Sweet Mister, a rural noir excursion that pre-dates Winter's Bone. It rivals Jim Thompson or James M. Cain for dark brilliance, overlaid with a bit of Faulkner.
The Sweet Mister of the title is Morris Akins, known as Shuggie. He's the only son of Glenda, a sultry dark-haired beauty, who's wed to a violent petty criminal named Red.
Perceptive
Shuggie is a perceptive and resourceful 13-year-old, wise beyond his years but trapped by Red's brutality and Glenda's dependence on him.
He and his mother live in a house in a cemetery where Glenda and Shuggie serve essentially as grounds keepers while Red and a slightly more compassionate friend, Basil, spend most of their time devising small time schemes to garner money or drugs including prescription pain pills.
Shuggie's roped into several criminal efforts and complies passively, while shouldering more than a 13-year-old's share of responsibilities with Glenda.
Shuggie's dark, shattering character arc is the core of the novel and Woodrell unfolds it with occasional hints and a progression of illustrative events including one humiliating birthday experience for Glenda that rounds out a depiction of Red's character as well.
The title and subject matter suggest tragedy, but Woodrell twists the story in unexpected directions as Glenda begins an affair with a suave chef a a local spot who has aspirations toward returning to better restaurants.
When the book reaches its ending, all of the pieces fit perfectly, and all of the motivations are clear, prepared for and compelling.
It's indeed a novel that drives its cold blade deep, and it would definitely skew in the direction of dread.
What writer's should look for:
Woodrell's careful preparation for the ending through a mixture of character and events. This is a compelling read that employs the very best elements of genre fiction and character-driven literary fiction.
Long before Lost, ABC dropped another set of survivors onto an island. The series, from Aaron Spelling and Rod Serling, was called The New People. It would appear it ran 17 episodes in 1969 and had a hip and trendy style based on the tone of the back cover description.
I've read Damon Lindelof once said if he'd known about the show, he would have named Charlie Pace's band in "Lost" The New People instead of Driveshaft.
I learned about this series in one old TV book or another and picked up the novelization while browsing a used bookstore once upon a time. It's harder and harder to find lost gems like this just kicking around nowadays, though almost everything's available somewhere on the web, as evidenced by the TV promo below.
I'm a shy, retiring and modest type, so I don't like having to proclaim my own virtues, but for the new e-book editions of my novels, such as Blood Hunter and the upcoming Gnelfs, I'm mustering my courage and tenacity and doing interviews and what I can to get the word out.
It's pretty much a necessity. I've noticed about a million books out there. Most are written by James Patterson, but not all, so you've kinda gotta wave your arms and shout.
All of this is making me recall a lesson in self promotion I got at the opening session of a science fiction convention a few years ago.
John Steakley, author of Vampire$ was there. Maybe he was toastmaster, I don't recall precisely. But a microphone was handy, and The Scary Book graphic novel was just out at the time, so that's what got a mention when I was introduced.
"What was the name of that again?" Steakley asked, picking up a mic.
"The Scary Book," I answered when he tipped the mic toward me.
"The Scary Book, you say?"
"That's right."
"I don't think they heard you in the back. What was it? The Scary Book?"
"Yes, The Scary Book."
I was probably a little red by then.
"OK, The Scary Book."
He enlisted someone else to say the title, and this went on for a while. When it all wound down, and the mic was no longer in front of us, Steakley leaned in and said: "That's what you gotta do. Just keep mentioning your title."
So if you pass me somewhere in the various corners of the web, and I'm mentioning Blood Hunter, or the upcoming e-edition of Gnelfs, you'll know that's what I'm up to.
For those of you who don't own Kindles, by the way, Blood Hunter is available in .pdf and other handy formats on the publisher's website. That's Crossroad Press. Just click here.
And if you're a writer, remember Mr. Steakley's advice, because in most fan circles if you mention Armor or Vampire$, they know who you're talking about.
They really had me at "small coastal town," when the announcement from Dark Regions press hit my in-box.
Ouroboros, co-written by Michael Kelly and Carol Weekes, is coming out in trade paper soon, and it's going on my wish list.
It's set in said small coastal town, and revolves around "an ancient force" that "stirs, drawn by the cumulative power of life and death, grief and sorrow, and ultimately, endless love."
Coastal towns, those post-card-familiar places, have always seemed perfect for tales of fright. Maybe it's because one of the first scary stories that captured my imagination was "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," title story in a Scholastic book club collection, though Captain Company in the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland had teased me with H.P. Lovecraft
titles for some time before that.
It was OK with my parents to order from TAB, The Teen Age Book Club, if not from Famous Monsters back pages.
Dark Regions reports Ouroboros is the tale of Tom Christiansen whose wife of 35-yearshas passed away. As he grieves, the lines blur between real and unreal, and a strange, pale girl shows up in his back yard.
Sounds like a perfect autumn read, so maybe I'll get it for my birthday
My current MFA advisor has a reading list that was given to him by a professor of his, though he's refined it a bit. It's a wonderfully eclectic collection of titles, and I'm happy to have learned of a book called The Lime Works from that list.
It's a book that may not be to all tastes. It's a rather eccentric work, and I had to get it via interlibrary loan because it's momentarily out of print, thus used-copy costs have sky-rocketed, but I believe it's scheduled for re-publishing next year as a mass market paperback.
Originally published in German, it is the tale of Konrad, an eccentric scholar denied formal education by his parents but determined in later years to craft a masterwork on the science of hearing.
Toward that end, he thwarts a cousin's efforts to prohibit his purchase of a vast, abandoned lime works and moves his invalid wife to the dark, cold plant to conduct hearing experiments to contribute to the perfect book he's convinced resides inside his head.
Author Thomas Bernhard tells Konrad's story in a manner that virtually puts the reader inside the character's twisted mind, though it's not a point of view story exactly. Instead the virtually stream-of-consciousness narrative is the amalgamation of several accounts compiled by an insurance man after Konrad's murder of his wife, which occurs on the opening page.
It's a twisted, dark tale of obsession, madness and one of the worst cases of writer's block ever. If you see a copy for under $40 grab it, and immerse yourself for a little while in the chilly, shadowy world of the lime works.
As part of the MFA program, we have to write one long critical paper. It's a 20-pager. We all write 20 pages in our sleep, right?
Still it's a tough 20 pages to craft, must be thoughtful, analytical and meaningful.
I'm looking at how magic realism is harnessed in the books The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Ceremony. One is Japanese, and one is Native American. I recommend them both.
They're both great novels, fantastical and thoughtful, perplexing and engaging. Formulating all that into critical analysis is a little rough.
I'll be back when I come out the other side. In the meantime, like the protagonist of Wind-Up Bird, I'll be down a dry well confronting demons.
I received an ARC in the mailyesterday of Any Given Doomsday via Library Thing's early reader program. I will be fitting the reading of it in soon and hope to report back.
Looks like an interesting new series kickoff in the Urban Fantasy realm. It introduces Elizabeth Phoenix, a woman with a touch of psychic ability facing the end of the world and an assortment of demons and other dangers.
The ARC's letter from author, Lori Handeland, explains she had always wanted to write about a "character who rises and falls, moves forward, steps back and who lives and learns and loves like the rest of us--but in a world very different from our own."
Looks like it will include some laughs and chills. It's due for release in November.
Years--make that eons--ago my next door neighbor at the time mentioned Thomas H. Cook's Blood Innocents. I'd seen it on the stands, but it had a cover that made it look like a routine police thriller.
A few good words made me change my mind and I read it and enjoyed the story of a homicide cop working on a pair of murders which resemble the killings of a pair of zoo animals. It featured a strange solution and a few character flourishes that shined.
I've picked up more Cook novels over the years, and he's picked up Edgars and accolades, but for some reason I've never made it a point to pick up every title.
I'm not sure what prompted me back into the Cook fold, perhaps an interesting synopsis on a book called The Interrogation, but my new interest recently led me to Breakheart Hill.
It's a stunner, a literary mystery that as the first-person narrator puts it is "the darkest story that I ever heard."
A Small Town in Alabama We learn that he is Dr. Ben Wade, a doctor in the small town of Choctaw Ala. He once wanted to leave about as bad as Jimmie Stewart's character in It's a Wonderful Life, though this is sort of an anti-Frank Caprastory.
He returned to serve as a general practitioner after medical school. In the mid-90s he is looking back to 1962 and events surrounding Breakheart Hill where he still envisions a teen-age Kelli Troy whose battered body was found there one summer afternoon.
Kelli, we learn, at the beginning of that school year, was the new girl in school and we follow the course of Ben's unrequited love. He and Kelli are thrust together to edit the school paper, and he and we find her to be a beautiful, remarkable girl with a socially conscious spirit and a desire to change the world.
Civil rights and social consciousness Ben tells of how they visited a nearby town where some of the earliest civil rights protests were taking place and how that affected her, and gradually he reveals how--even as he tried to prevent it--she fell in love with another student.
Cook tells the story with a masterful skill, revealing facts carefully yet not with contrivance, building to a discovery of what really happened that is chilling and affecting.
I suppose this book may resonate with me for a couple of reasons. I and I suppose everyone can recall high school unrequited loves and how those emotions feel.
While I was in high school in the '70s, my mother was a high school teacher in the '60s and Cook, who is from the South, captures a keenly accurate sense of what those days were like both in the day to day and in the gradual awakening of social consciousness and change.
I'm working my way now through other Cook novel's I've missed including The City When It Rains, but if you've never read Cook Breakheart Hill will make a fine introduction.
This could be subtitled books I should have read in the '70s.
As I've probably mentioned here, I'm a biblioholic. When I'm not pouring over Proust, I am constantly working to read volumes from my vast collection of paperbacks.
The Sword of Damocles It's a little frightening now that I think about it, looking up at the stacks that ascend from the top of the bookshelf beside my desk. If they tumble I'm a goner.
But I'm gaining on the stacks, and at the moment I'm enjoying some titles acquired many moons ago, works by author Martin Caidin, an aviator turned author best known for creating Steve Austin, Cyborg, who would become the Six Million Dollar Manon TV.
The Bionic Woman remake--which I thought was a bit of all right--didn't really prompt it. I'm not sure what compelled me to pick up the title from my shelf.
My buddy and his book My buddy had a paperback of Cyborg when The Six Million Dollar Man TV movie debuted on ABC in the '70s. We couldn't get ABC at my house. Did I mention before the local station aired mostly Homer Formby in off hours?
Anyway my buddy had a copy of Cyborg which he read back then. I didn't. Don't know why I didn't borrow it, but we had distinct protocols of ownership as I recall. We both bought the Battle for the Planet of the Apes novelization from T.A.B. the Teen Age Book Club and then raced to see who could read it first.
You couldn't find any book in the universe in those days like you can now. You were limited to what was at the drugstore or the mall or the grocery with the paperback rack where your dad was the butcher, as in my friend's case. So in 1973 I didn't get to read it or see The Six Million Dollar Man except with a lot of snow, and the world marched on.
The Writing Life Down the road, I read an interview with Martin Caidin in Writer's Digest--the interview mentioned here, in fact--and that put Caidin on my radar. I picked up a copy of Cyborg when I ran across it used and also Wingborn, and I'm reading those books now. Cyborg first.
Wingborn's next and then I probably need to get around to the later books in the Cyborg series, slightly more intense adventures for Steve Austin than he experienced on TV, encountering Bigfoot and aliens and thwarting robberies while dressed as Robin Hood on roller skates. That was the point where I always thought the series jumped the shark. I did eventually get to see reruns.
But anyway I'm reading Martin Caidin's rather fascinating novel that introduced bionics, with an s--it's Latin or something not plural, into contemporary fiction.
A lot of the Cyborg is devoted to the treatment of Austin following his injuries while piloting a test craft, the introduction of artificial limbs and the psychological toll it all takes. Oscar Goldman is on hand to pay the six million dollars to fix Steve up. I can't think of Oscar Goldman without thinking of the scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin where Seth Rogen looks at Steve Carrel's action figure collection and asks: "Isn't that The Six Million Dollar Man's boss? Why do you have that?"
Oscar is about like he was in the series, I guess. Steve Austin is a little different, though maybe some of the luxury features for the bionics limbs--such as self-contained breathing apparatus--were used in television episodes I missed.
All in all, I like Caidin's writing style, and Cyborg is cool sort of '70s mainstream science fiction.
Tough guy tackles sexism Wingborn, which I haven't started, is Caidin's '79 novel focusing on Kate Brandon, a skilled pilot who struggles against sexism and other challenges. Looks like it's also a promising page-turner.
After that I may need to look to Book Mooch for more titles for Caidin, who died in 1997. I guess that defeats the purpose of working through my collection, but he was a prolific author and I really want to get around to some other works including his "Messiah Stone" series and a title called Aquarius Mission.
One of the good things about holiday down time is getting caught up on some reading. I sat up until I finished Michael Marshall's The Intruders last night. It was not an arduous task because it is an engrossing book, similar in flavor to the author's Straw Men trilogy yet filled with its own twists and thrills.
Like The Straw Men, The Upright Man and Blood of Angels, the tale revolves around a first-person narrator who is struggling to unravel a complex conspiracy linked to a loved one.
In this case it's Jack Whalen, a cop turned writer who's settled into a seemingly blissful existence in a small Pacific Northwestern town. It provides him a nice place to write while his wife, an ad agency trouble shooter, commutes to cities where her services are required.
Meanwhile... Meanwhile, triggered by events that are a bit foggy, a young girl named Madison begins a strange odyssey through Portland's mean streets and beyond.
Whalen is approached by an old school friend to investigate a strange double murder in Seattle, but he turns down the opportunity only to be dragged in when Amy, his wife, loses her cell phone and he discovers she's not staying the hotel in Seattle where he though she was registered.
Strange events swirl together and Jack gradually begins to uncover a shadowy group linked to his wife. To say more would spoil the fun, but suffice it to say it's more than just a conventional suspense thriller.
The solution may not be totally new territory, but it's handled with the same deft touch that kept me reading through the entire Straw Men experience, and that provides the same rewarding experience again.
I'll be waiting for the next Michael Marshall book for sure.
I'd just wandered into the main room at Portland's Wordstock--I made it home last night by the way--when I met William L. Sullivan, author of several hiking and travel books including Listening for Coyote and now a novel, The Case of Einstein's Violin, a thriller with humor and science backed by input from his son, who is a scientist.
The premise is that Einstein left behind a theory in a violin case he once owned. Ana Smyth inherits it and sells it on eBay, a mistake that soon puts her on the run from spies and other nefarious types.
She's soon globe trotting to places such as Germany, Italy and Greece, all places Sullivan has visited and hiked as well so there's authenticity to the locales.
I've read only the first chapter so far but it looks like loads of fun.
Christine purchased a couple of other books by Mr. Sullivan, a non-fiction account of how he and his wife built a log cabin over about 25 summers, Cabin Fever: Notes from a Part Time Pioneer.
The account has a real-life murder mystery built in, so I'll hopefully get to that after Christine.
The book is Hanson's memoir about window cleaning but also a meditation on his life after playing in a band and realizing rock stardom was not on his horizon.
More stuff I bought It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden from the Portland Museum of Art gift shop.
The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction from Murder by the Book.
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox from Powell's on Hawthorne Street.
Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldan from the big Powell's on Burnside
What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the New by Eric Alterman, a staff pick at the big Powell's.
City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate from Powell's Burnside
Becoming Vegetarian by Vesanto Melina, Brenda Davis and Victoria Harrison.
And again a big thank you to City of Readers for getting me around town and pointing me in the right direction many times.
After walking some streets filled with beautiful yellow ginkgo leaves, I went back to Wordstock Sunday to browse a little more and to attend a "Wordstock for Writers" session led by Lauren Kessler.
It was called a "12 Step Program for Writers: How to Stop Sabotaging Yourself and Start Writing." Workshop sessions, I find, are always inspirational and you always glean useful ideas. I won't give away her seminar here, but happily I was already doing a lot of the 12 steps. A few others should help add a little electricity to my motivation.
Powell's with a Map Went back to the main Powell's on Burnside for the afternoon and got their map this time, then cruised the shelves looking for things that wouldn't hit me in the face at Barnes and Nobel.
Powell's is color coded - Orange for home, garden and cooking, Gold for genre, Green for new arrivals, Blue for Literature etc. etc.
I wound up with a stack of books and not a heavy hit to my plastic.
More later on the books I found at Wordstock and Powell's.
was there. Maybe he was toastmaster, I don't recall precisely. But a microphone was handy, and 
