HEROES AMONG SHADOWS Book Launch Day!

My first collection, HEROES AMONG SHADOWS, is now released!

It is available at Amazon. I have also put it through IngramSpark. If you prefer other platforms, check to see if it is available. (Or, if you want your local bookstore to order it!)

These stories will take you to tropical islands where spears and sorcery stand against gods and demons. You will meet a girl and her troll. Journey to a shadowy past where a veteran of the American Revolutionary War confronts dark forces. Travel to strange planets far away, and experience war in a North American timeline that never was.

There are two new stories in the book. The rest have been pulled together from previous publications.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Lono and the Little Gods
Pouring Whiskey in My Soul
The Pit of Punhaki
Claws of the Puma
The Island of Shadows
The Wreck of the Black Swan
The Vulture God
A Gate In Darkness
The Toll Taker and the Troll
Pearls of Uraton
Montreal Is Burning
Story Notes

Again worth a call out; Jeffrey Hayes of PlasmaFire Graphics did the cover!

recent read; LIGHTNING WEARS A RED CAPE

Bringing something new to the superhero genre isn't always easy. Making superheroes pop off the page in prose is a tall order, too. And then, if an author wants to bring a proper measure of reality to their superhero story without taking a "tear it all down, this could never happen in real life" deconstruction attitude, that writer needs a deft touch.

Errick Nunnally can do all that. His new novel, LIGHTNING WEARS A RED CAPE, proves he can.

From the city to the statehouse, a quartet of super-powered criminals are pushing the power of their gangs' influence as far and as high as it will go. At the street level, altruistic heroes--super-powered and merely human--find themselves pulled into the widening conflict. 

Nunnally's love of comics and superheroes comes through. His superheroes show roots and have their own angles. Atlas, the super-cop. Thunder, the Puerto Rican Amazonian Wonder Woman and her speedster sidekick, Lightning. Shade--the space war veteran who just wants to live in peace and help his community thrive--like a skewed reflection of Green Lantern John Stewart.

And Shango, the unstoppable wildcard, an African god of thunder.

Other heroes in the shadows, discovering new abilities, waiting for their time to shine.

Nunnally keeps the reader engaged throughout. The action scenes flow. The downbeats push the plot along exactly as they should. When novel rockets into the climax, the action does not let up.

I recommend you read this excellent book. It's an important genre novel--it opens windows on the minority experience woven flawlessly into the narrative. Something Errick Nunnally does extremely well.

LIGHTING deserves a sequel, and I can't wait to read that, too!

recent read; DARKER THAN YOU THINK

DARKER THAN YOU THINK by Jack Williamson

Will Barbee, an alcoholic small college town reporter, is pulled into a noir-ish nightmare of witchcraft and  lyncanthropy. The deeper he goes, he discovers horrifying secrets about the history of mankind and about himself.

Or, is it all in his head? Has the beautiful, red-headed April Belle bewitched him into devilish deeds, or is his unconscious mind simply playing out his jealous desires?

Written in 1948, by now most of the surprises in the story were predictable. But Williamson works with the suspense of Barbee not understanding what is happening, while the reader does. And that works, too. When will Barbee figure it out? What choices will he make?

Williamson, being a science fiction writer, injects the lycanthropy with pseudo-physics and it suspended my disbelief well enough. It's tricky to try to justify any trope with real world rules.

Near the end, there are reveals. Some worked. One in particular I didn't feel had been setup at all, though.

I don't know if certain writers were influenced or even had read DARKER THAN YOU THINK but there are threads seen later in THE OMEN and ROSEMARY'S BABY, to name a few.

I enjoyed DARKER THAN YOU THINK for its craft and darkness. It deserves its status as one of the great horror and/or werewolf novels.

DARKER THAN YOU THINK is also available via Audible.

Horseclans

I am constantly on the prowl for backlisted books getting the e'books treatment.  Today I thought of Robert Adams' Horseclans series.  I'd read the first two novels but never got back to the series.

It appears they were recently (October 2012) made e'available - at least, on Kindle.

That's the good news.  The bad news is .. well, the cover art could be a lot better.

The Coming of the Horseclans

I know - it's just an ebook - but I still like to see some thought and artistic effort applied to the covers.

Remember when it looked like this?

Also good news; unlike some other series that are back that I feel are overpriced, they're holding the Horseclans e'books to $4.99.  Still probably cheaper to find the used paperbacks, but really not a bad place to start.  Maybe there will be some sales in future.

On the wishlist for now.