Upcoming Stuff

Some may have noticed that I’ve released very little work over the past year or two. Aside from a few short stories, I’ve written far less than I’d have liked. But, having said that, I’ve not stopped completely.

So what can you expect from me this year? I have short stories, coming up in a pair of anthologies from Pro-Se Productions, hopefully, later this year. One will be another Black Wolfe story in Black Pulp 2. The other will be a World War 1 adventure, featuring the notoriously sexy, Mata Hari, in High Adventure History 2.

Seriously, I’m considering a short story series about Mata Hari. I had a lot of fun writing one.

More exciting is a series of six novellas, being released one a month, starting in August or September of this year. The novellas will feature a Nashville detective named Thomas Dietrich. Set in 1951, Dietrich’s cases deal with the paranormal elements that infest his city. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts and demons, all attempt to find ways to make The Music City a Hell on Earth, but the city has a savior fighting for its very soul.

Dietrich’s Nashville will be a dark noir-styled, paranormal series. If the first set do well, there will be a ‘1952’ series.

On down the road, there are more stories coming. A revamped version of one of my first stories, Kaylana is in the works for both ebook and audio.

An audio version of History Now is underway. An outline for the next Snowflake Garden book is just waiting on me to pull out of the archives and get started.

Stay tuned for more.

Book Review: Will Save the Galaxy for Food

While glancing through the new additions of Audbile.com’s library, I stumbled across ‘Will Save the Galaxy for Food’ by Yahtzee Croshaw. The book blurb looked interesting enough, so I took a gamble forked over my money, and bought it. The author, as it turns out, was the narrator which in far too many cases, is never a good thing.

As it turns out, my gamble with worth it and Croshaw’s reading lifted what turned out to be a great book to an even higher level.

The book is described as a not-quite epic satirical science fiction adventure and it certainly lives up to that description.

The story is set in the distant future where humanity has established itself on hundreds of worlds throughout the galaxy. As we quickly learn, the Golden Age of space travel is quickly fading into history due to revolutions is wormhole technology, called Quantum Technology. All but gone are the days when Star Pilots ferried cargo and passengers from planet to planet, fighting off aliens and pirates alike, saving desperate worlds from disasters or invasions, and just generally being big damn heroes.

A lone Star Pilot, looking for work, finds himself thrust into the unlikely role of masquerading as the galaxy’s most famous hero, Jacques McKeown, in order to fool a mob boss who wants the legendary hero to take his son for a trip through the stars. The only problem is that the real McKeown has been writing a series of books, telling his adventures as the best Star Pilot. Only thing is, most of those stories are not his. It seems that McKeown has been stealing the real-life stories of other pilots and making money off their past. So, every Star Pilot in the galaxy have plenty of reasons to hate the man. Not a good thing when you’re impersonating him.

Needlessly to say, things do not go as planned.

I’m not going to go into the details but the story was well written and the plot turns more than a drunk mountain biker with an inner ear condition. Croshaw’s biting sarcasm is on full display throughout the story and makes for plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

On a personal note, the idea of the Golden Age of space travel being left behind in favor of the quick and easy teleportation struck a cord as I listened to the story unfolding. This book is a very modern take on the Sci-Fi movie, book, and comic serials of the past. The Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and the other tales from the early and mid 2oth Century were full of big, damn heroes, doing dashing deeds until our more modern, serious take on space travel began to dominate story telling. Yes, the old stories were cheesy, but they were also fun and offered up ideas of worlds where we, as kids, would want to live. This book offers a satirical look at that brand of Sci-Fi storytelling and will make you want more.