The Periodic Update Post

Hey, pals and gals...welcome to 2013!  Hope your holidays went well and January finds you healthy and happy.

I'm still hard at work on The Shadow Legion Casebook V.1: Four For Danger, and have reached the halfway mark on the book.  'The Ascension of Indio Blaque,' the Black Talon tale that sees our Predator of The Concrete Jungles of Nocturne reach back into his childhood knowledge to battle a sinister cult leader with lethal designs on the superhuman population of The City That Lives By Night, is halfway finished, and should be next to be done.  Of course, the most fun I'm having is with 'Final Innings,' the Dreamcatcher story, which sees our Sexy Sorceress trying to determine who is using magic to wreck the season of Nocturne's resident baseball team.  It's one of the reasons why I wanted to alternate between novels and antholgies for The Shadow Legion--the anthologies give me a chance to do different styles of stories with different tones and feelings to them.  And I hope that all of these stories will give you new insight into our heroes and heroines, and a greater concept of Nocturne and the world around it.

Also moving along is The Adventures of Tao Jones.  I've been concentrating on 'The Damocles Gun,' the story that will see Tao and her ally Mike Townsend trying to reclaim a weapon that kills with a thought before all Hell breaks loose in Sovereign City.  That one's still a ways away, but if you want to learn more about Sovereign City--and read some cracking stories in the pulp tradition--go to Pro Se Press and purchasing Derrick Ferguson's The Adventures of Fortune McCall and Barry Reese's The Adventures of Lazarus Gray and Lazarus Gray: Die Glocke!

There's something else I just signed on for--something from Pulpworks Press you won't see until the end of this year.  But that'll be something we'll discuss as it takes fuller shape.

Before I do close out this update--and hopefully the next time I'll finally be able to get you that long-promised interview with Lee Houston Jr. about his super-hero/space opera mash-up Project Alpha, also available from Pro Se Press--I want to alert you to two New Pulp Books I've been grooving on lately.

Ed Erdelac's Merkabah Rider: Tales of A High Planes Drifter(Damnation Books) is an excellent collection of four weird western stories featuring a Jewish mystical gunfighter known only as The Rider.  Ed is an excellent writer whose evocative prose mingles a number of different genres.  As for the Rider himself, he's a great addition to the New Pulp canon, the sort of figure that fans of Solomon Kane and Jonah Hex would feel right at home with.  Hell, any of these stories could have easily been retrofitted to become the Jonah Hex movie I really wanted to see!  And the best thing is that there are two other books in the series, and I can't wait to read more of The Rider and his quest to right wrongs and track down his mentor and betrayer, Adon.

I'm a sucker for alternative history novels, and Wayne Reinagel's Modern Marvels: Viktoriana (Knightraven Studios) posits a doozy of an alternative history--one where literary figures Mary Shelley, H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and others are part of a secret order that wages war against a vampire army headed by Countess Elisabeth Bathory.  Wayne's got a tendency for epic storytelling, and it is a Big Read--we're talking almost five hundred pages.  But it is a Big Read of wonderfully gothic setpieces, great characterization and lots of action and intrigue.  If you, like me, long to read stories where vampires are treated as monsters and not boyfriends with interesting dentition, this book is for you.

So check these two books out.  I'll alert you to other great new pulp reads as I get to them.  Come back soon for some interview-y goodness with Lee Houston Jr.!

(Oh...and if you're a writer or publisher who'd like to see me talk about your books in future Agency updates, please contact me through my Facebook page....)