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!

HEROES AMONG SHADOWS, May 14th, 2024

I've chosen May 14th for the release of my first collection of short stories. Nearly all of these tales have been previously published, and there is a new story here for the first time (the story, in fact, which the cover art illustrates.)

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.

I could probably get the book out earlier, but first-time jitters. I want lead time if I need it. As of now, I put the book through KDP. Awaiting the print proof.

I also plan on listing through IngramSpark, so that bookstores and libraries can (or, will be more willing) to order the book.

Because of the way KDP works, the Kindle edition is already listed for pre-order!

coming soon ... HEROES AMONG SHADOWS!

 Cover reveal!

COMING SOON! 

HEROES AMONG SHADOWS, a collection of adventure tales. This collection gathers my published-to-date action/adventure/fantasy/dark-fantasy tales--with a couple of bonus stories appearing here for the first time.

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.

Jeffrey Hayes of Plasmafire Graphics knocked this cover out of the park!

Welcome to the dawn of Frizzen Flash Press--where flint strikes steel and creative sparks fly!

writing update, January 2024

Last year, I tried to keep a daily writing journal. That was not a favorable experiment. Fact is, I just don't get to write each day. Things happen. I know time needs to be carved but we don't need to get into that here.

I decided this year maybe a monthly public pulse-taking would serve me better. We'll see.

I hoped to write a novel this year. But I'm ramping up with some short stories first.

Current state of the brag shelf

This month I wrote and submitted one story. I wrote half of another, but missed the open call deadline. I might finish it for another call. Or, it might go in the file for later. There are other calls (two, at least) in March I want to aim for.

Not a lot of writing, but I have been doing the business of writing. I've assembled the content of my first collection. This will be my action/adventure/fantasy tales. I'm gathering previously published stories, with a couple of brand new stories to fill out the volume. (Horror tales will come later this year, in another collection, timed for release around Halloween.)

I wrote the introduction, and the story notes. I've proofed through six of the eleven tales. I reached out to a cover artist.

And that's where I am at.

recent read; BLACK HONEY by Steve Van Samson

 

BLACK HONEY (And Other Unsavory Things) is a powerhouse eclectic collection of chilling tales. Touches of Hammer films, modern horror, wry humor, and twisted slices of everyday life can be experienced in this honeycomb of eleven tales of terror.

Come for the fantastic stories by Steve Van Samson, and stay for the incredible interior art by Derek Rook. It's a winning combination you won't soon forget!

recent read; COLD COMFORTS by Marianne Halbert

 

Cold Comforts by Marianne Halbert

Another spooky read for the Halloween season. Halbert writes quiet horror, and disturbing, haunted atmosphere well. There are thirteen tales in this collection, and each one pulled me in. From the clairvoyant girl in the morbid "A Bone To Pick," to the fairy tale folk horror of "Housing the Hollygobs," to gallows humor of corporate Hell in "Like Riding a Bicycle," the tales in this book do indeed deliver cold comforts.

recent read; SGT JANUS RETURNS by Jim Beard

SGT JANUS RETURNS by Jim Beard

I will try to avoid spoilers, but the big one can't be avoided. If you're reading SGT JANUS RETURNS, then you know Jim Beard killed off Roman Janus in the previous volume. (Or, more precisely, made him disappear with near certainty of death.)

Though Beard shifts to a single, Watson-esque, narrator for this book, if you're expecting a straight "Hurrah! He's back!" (a la THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES) in the opening pages, Beard wisely creates further mystery instead.

An amnesiac woman appears in a small village and solves a ghost problem. Thereafter, she whisks young Joshua Hargreaves into a life of adventurous "spirit breaking." As time passes, "Lady Janus" adopts more of Janus's habits and manners. Who is she? Is she possessed by Janus? Is she Janus reincarnated? Will we ever truly learn the nature and details of Roman Janus's disappearance?

These stories are much more tightly linked than the stories in the first volume. Beard builds a great sense of mystery and suspense as the stories stack on top of each other, creating further complications, rushing toward a thrilling conclusion.

With SGT JANUS RETURNS, Jim Beard has created the best kind of sequel. The book is its own story, with a familiar feel, but not falling to routine or re-treading the first volume.

Highly recommended for fans of pulp mystery and occult detectives. Just be sure to read SGT JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER first!

recent reads; Joseph Payne Brennan

Dover have reissued two hard-to-find horror collections by Joseph Payne Brennan. I'd been waiting to get a hold of THE SHAPES OF MIDNIGHT for a long time. Happy that NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM showed up, too.

These collections are a master class in writing short fiction. The stories contained in NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM are not flash fiction but with a few exceptions, they are short shorts. Brennan gets in, gets to the core of the tale, and gets out. The stories are lean and trim. The stories in THE SHAPES OF MIDNIGHT are slightly longer but still short overall.

Each volume is short. NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM is 106 pages. THE SHAPES OF MIDNIGHT is 124 pages.  (And they are printed in a decent sized font, too.)

My favorites were "The Willow Platform," "Canavan's Back Yard," and "The Mail for Juniper Hill."

If you are a horror or classic pulp horror fan, you owe it to yourself to add these to your collection and read them.

A few notes on these editions;

These are bare-boned editions. There are no introductions. Given that Stephen King wrote an introduction for the original THE SHAPES OF MIDNIGHT, and the fact that Brennan passed away in 1990, an introduction to the writer and his work would have been a value--especially for readers discovering him for the first time. (There is a Wikipedia page for Brennan, if you're curious.)

There is no information about the original appearances of the stories (where and when.) This might be the case with the original editions, I don't have them to compare. Not a deal breaker but I'm always curious about that.

Originally these collections appeared decades apart, so two stories overlapped. They have been cut from this edition of THE SHAPES OF MIDNIGHT but are included in NINE HORRORS AND A DREAM

recent read; SGT JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER by Jim Beard

SGT JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER by Jim Beard

Yup! Another entry from Derrick Ferguson's 75 New Pulp Book To Get You Started list. (which, you should keep handy.)

If you enjoy occult detectives, like Carnacki, Sgt. Janus needs to be added to your reading list.

Janus is a mysterious character. His use of rank title and manner of dress suggest a military background. Some people are convinced he is a charlatan. He tangles with ghosts and other occult manifestations.

Beard has a clever twist on the presentation. Rather than sticking with a single chronicler (e.g.; Doctor Watson,) Janus requests that his clients provide written reports of the incidents. This allows different points-of-view and adds variety to the tales.

Further variety is provided by Beard's plots. Some cases are undertaken in the field. Others take place in Janus's sprawling house in the country, where clients come to him.

The stories have wonderful atmosphere. Each story works alone, though there is a definite arc threaded through the collection. Clearly, this is a set of stories written to be presented together.

I'll be rushing to read the sequel, SGT JANUS RETURNS!

recent read; This Is Halloween

This Is Halloween by James A. Moore

James A. Moore serves up ten chilling tales dripping with Halloween atmosphere. Monsters, ghosts, malevolent haunted houses, deep dark woods. They are all here - waiting for you.

Jim pulled together a collection of previously published tales. Many take place on Halloween. If not exactly on Halloween, some of the other tales are still perfect reads for the season. Some of the stories are loosely connected by location. The Bedlam Woods are a dangerous place and many tales can be told about that dark forest. The town of Wellman, Georgia--featured in Moore & Rutledge's novels Blind Shadows and Congregations of the Dead--also makes an appearance in one story.

The scent of candle-singed jack-o-lanterns will stay with you long after you close the cover!

p.s. - Look at that gorgeous cover art by Dan Brereton!

recent read; Dark Melody of Madness

Dark Melody of Madness by Cornell Woolrich

Woolrich is known for his mystery, crime and noir stories. In this collection of four novellas, we see a side not often shown - Woolrich working in the supernatural & horror milieu.

"Graves for the Living" tells an updated (for the 1930s) tale of Poe-esque obsession with premature burial. After his father is buried alive, a boy becomes obsessed with protecting himself from premature burial. As an adult, the man stumbles on a graveyard cult where people are temporarily buried alive to overcome their fear.  He is left with a choice of joining the cult or being executed by the cult to protect their secret activities. He chooses membership. Of course, things go wrong when his girlfriend gets involved. Technically, there is nothing supernatural in this story, but the story fits better under a horror banner or a "tale of terror" banner than any other classification.

"Dark Melody of Madness" brings us a step closer to the the supernatural. The main plot element, from a high level, isn't that far removed from "Graves for the Living" - a musician gets caught in a cult and chooses to join rather than die. This time around, however, the cult is a voodoo cult. And the musician steals their ceremonial song. The song becomes his signature hit on the nightclub circuit of New Orleans. The voodoo priest, Papa Benjamin, puts a curse on the man. Or is it all in the protagonist's mind? This story was adapted for the television series THRILLER under the title "Papa Benjamin" and has sometimes been reprinted under that title.

"I'm Dangerous Tonight" is the most plot ambitious of this collection. And it has the most direct supernatural element. One night in Paris, a demonic entity visits a fashion designer and leaves its cape behind. The seamstress uses the cape's material in a new dress. But contact with the demonic material causes evil thoughts of murder and mayhem, some of which are acted upon by hapless wearers of the dress. The plot then follows the dress, and an American detective whose path keeps crossing the dress as he tries to take down an international narcotics smuggler. Murder, mayhem, demons, drug gangsters, trans-Atlantic ship voyage, night clubs. I also thought some of the violent imagery - imagined and acted on - were quite shocking for something from 1937.

This is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Anyone else trying to weave all these plot elements together probably would be left with a jumbled mess. Under Woolrich's pen, it all feels seamless. This was my favorite of these four novellas.

"Jane Brown's Body" was another surprise. This time, Woolrich tackled the "Weird Menace" genre. The tropes are all here - a mad scientist, an isolated lair in the deep woods, and beauty in distress, and our happy-go-lucky, rakish pilot of fortune, (Bad) Penny O'Shaughnessy.

This collection also starts off with a good introduction by crime writer and editor, Bill Pronzini.

I liked these stories a lot. Woolrich definitely puts his own stamp on this territory. He imparts frenetic, frantic desperation of panicked protagonists in a way that sweeps a reader along for the ride.

recent read; The Seeds of Nightmares

The Seeds of Nightmares by Tony Tremblay

Tony Tremblay has had horror stories published in various venues, and here he collects them together with a few previously unpublished offerings to round out the book. (Some of those tales were published under his penname, T. T. Zuma, for those keeping track.)

Tony shows variety and knows how to punch with a strong ending. His strongest strength is luring a reader into the story with grounded reality and characters, supplemented with a setting of quiet horror, before he unleashes the big horror, gore and/or darkly fantastical elements.

There are thirteen stories in this collection. I'll highlight a few of my favorites.

Things start off with a bang in "The Strange Saga of Mattie Dyer" - a Weird West tale, with plenty of weird to go around. "The Old Man" delivers straight ahead noir. "The Burial Board" is another tale of old times, featuring the gruesome practice of leaving a dead family member on a wooden board during winter until the spring thaw allows burial.

"Husband of Kellie" offers a zombie tale packed with emotional punch.

"The Pawnshop", from Wicked Tales, appears here, too. I really enjoyed its blend of noir meets Twilight Zone oddness.

"Chiyoung and Dongsun's Song" features the strangest twisted folk tale romance I've ever read.

The other stories are solid, too and all worth a read.

Another fun aspect of this collection are the author's notes that preface each tale. I enjoy author notes. For some reason, I enjoy them even more for short stories collections and anthologies.

Tony Tremblay is an author in the horror realm whose work is worth keeping an eye on - and more importantly - to enjoy reading.

more comic collecting; Marvel's TARZAN

This weekend, I scoured the 50 cent bins at a local comic shop. I am now two issues away from owning a complete set of Roy Thomas's & Ernie Colon's ARAK, Son of Thunder. I don't have a lot in mint, but they are all serviceable.

I've been reading the Marvel omnibus of the 1970s run of JOHN CARTER, Warlord of Mars. At the same time that was happening, Roy Thomas was working on Marvel's TARZAN, Lord of the Jungle. There were only 29 issues and 3 annuals, and they have yet to be collected in trades or an omnibus.

I picked up Annual #2 and Annual #3 this weekend. They were enough fun that I think I might just aim to collect the Marvel TARZAN run, too. Hopefully I can find them in the cheap bins, too.

recent read; Perchance To Dream

Perchance to Dream (Selected Stories) by Charles Beaumont

Beaumont wrote many episodes of The Twilight Zone, in some cases adapting his own earlier published short stories. Sadly, he died of a premature aging disease (Alzheimer's? - it's not really clear.) Like Bradbury - (who appears here via a recycled posthumous forward) - Beaumont was a machine who turned out story after story with original flare and sometimes wry twists.

His collections had gone out of print. Fortunately, in October, Penguin Classics released a new, solid collection of Beaumont's short stories. The book appears thin, yet it contains 23 stories. Beaumont was prolific. He knew how to strip and present a story at its bare essentials. Only a few of these stories are lengthy.

I won't analyze every story but they're all very enjoyable. Some of my favorites in this set were "Perchance To Dream," a tale of dreams within dreams that became a Twilight Zone episode, "You Can't Have Them All," a humorous story about a man determined to bed every woman who appeals to his personal taste in women, "The Howling Man," a story of the Devil (another tale later adapted to The Twilight Zone,) and "Place Of Meeting," which concerns certain survivors of nuclear war destruction.

Beaumont's talents outside of the weird and supernatural come through near the end of the collection with "A Death in The Country," about a desperate, washed-up race car driver and what he will do to stay in the game. And "The Music of the Yellow Brass" is a straight up story about a young, down-on-his-luck matador. It's a story that would seamlessly fit into Borderland Noir.

If you like the 1960s era golden age of genre-mixing-bending writers of weird like Bradbury, Matheson, et al, and you are not familiar with Beaumont, you definitely need to read this collection. I am very glad I did.

recent read; The Monster Club

One of my favorite horror movies filed under "far from a classic - campy - but I like it anyway" is the anthology flick, The Monster Club. Despite its goofy tongue-in-cheek framing device, it contains one of my favorite all-time creepy tales. The story involves a stranger driving into a lost village which he eventually comes to realize is populated by ghouls.

I finally read the book by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. As with collections spawned movies, only two tales from The Monster Club book (and the framing device) were used in the movie. Other material came from other Chetwynd-Hayes tales from other sources. Fortunately, the ghouls story was one of the stories included in The Monster Club collection. It goes by the title "The Humgoo" which is unfortunate - it is much better than the title. The title comes from the half-breed girl in the story, a human/ghoul. In fact, all the stories in The Monster Club deal with cross-bred monsters and their strange powers.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes includes more than a bit of humor in his tales, and some of his stories are played for laughs. Some are played straight with humorous moments. Either way, he still manages to convey some good chills even in the more humorous stories.

Thanks to yet another informative introduction by Stephen Jones, I now know that there is another movie of Chetwynd-Hayes tales, From Beyond the Grave. I'll be seeking it out, along with more Chetwynd-Hayes story collections. Right now, the only two in print are The Monster Club and Looking for Something to Suck (I just ordered the last Amazon print copy yesterday!) R. Chetwynd-Hayes appears in a few (or more) Mammoth Book of horror anthologies, too.