C. Steven Manley's Blog

Hello, dear readers. This week I’m going to forego my usual rambling because I am neck deep in finishing the Paragons Trilogy and the deadlines are coming up behind me with sharp knives and a murderous gleam in their eyes. Instead, I’m going to give a little sneak peek at Unveiled: Paragons Book 3 in the form of the prologue and first two chapters. Please bear in mind I’ve only given these the most cursory of edits for this, so the final product might not be exactly what you see here. I intend to have that final product available May 1, 2016.

If you haven’t read books 1&2, here’s the most pertinent info; The Jasper Island incident is a supposed domestic terrorist attack that killed thousand of people on U.S. soil. Israel Trent and Erin Simms- our primary protagonists -are searching for the man responsible for that along with the rest of the members of The Sentry Group,  the secret organization they work for. Enjoy.

 

PROLOGUE

North of Caverne Lafleche,

Quebec, Canada,

October 3,

12:30 A.M.

“Holy shit,” Greg Bouchard said, “they’re saying the body count in that Jasper Island thing has topped twenty-five hundred.” The phone lit up a face barely out of its teens as he divided his time between reading the display and watching the beam from his clip-on flashlight bounce along the trail before him. It was a clear night with a full, round moon, but the canopy of thick trees overhead reduced the lunar glow to thick bands of pale luminescence that cut through the gaps in the foliage. Early winter patches of dusty snow glittered where the light struck them.

Owen Mercier unconsciously settled the pack on his shoulders for the twentieth time and looked back at his best friend. “They’ve got that place quarantined with a naval blockade. How does whoever’s writing that know how many dead there are?” His breath rolled around his head in a fist sized cloud as he spoke.

Greg shrugged. “I don’t know. Surely they’re holding press conferences or something. I mean, a terrorist attack like that, they would have to. Maybe this guy was at one of those.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to believe everything you read on the web.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m reading a teenager’s blog. This is a legitimate news site.”

Owen smirked. “Right, because those are always reliable. Come on, man, you know as well as I that every bit of mass media is bought and paid for. Especially in America.”

“So? We’re not talking about elections or politics, Owen. This is terrorism that left behind a whole lot of dead people. You can’t just spin that.”

“Maybe not. If anybody can, though, it’s the Yanks.” He shifted his pack again and said, “Besides that, when does any government, anywhere, ever tell anybody the truth about anything. Give a person power and they suddenly turn into a magician who’s just talking to distract you while their cronies run the smoke and mirrors.”

Greg shook his head with a smile and shut down his phone, slipping it into his parka’s pocket. “Wow. A whole two years of University and you’re suddenly a political philosopher.”

“Yeah, well, all you need to do is pay attention, check your sources, and think for yourself. Politicians have to lie, it’s built into the system.”

“What does that mean? I thought-”

“Stop,” Owen said, his voice a sharp whisper, “shut off your light.”

Greg complied and then crouched down when he saw Owen do the same. “What is it?” Greg asked.

Owen pointed through the trees in reply.

Greg looked up. His eyes were still adjusting from staring at the glow on his phone but he could make out the lights through the trees. Even though they were distant, he could tell they were bright enough to cast shadows that moved across the open spaces in the forest.

“Is that a truck?” Greg asked.

In the dark, he could barely make out Owen’s nod. “Yeah, I think it is.”

“I thought you said this place was empty this time of night?”

“It should be. And unless I’m completely lost- which I’m not -they’re right on top of our descent point.”

Caverne Lafleche was the linchpin of an outdoor adventure park that operated a few kilometers south of where Greg and Owen were kneeling in the dark. They’d both been to the park many times and explored the public portions of the cavern system but knew that it extended far beyond what the tourists and thrill-seekers were allowed to see. Both of them had been avid spelunkers for most of their lives, so when they’d heard about this little known entrance into the restricted portions of the Lafleche system, they couldn’t resist the urge to check it out. The night approach was just to keep from getting into hot water with the authorities.

“You think it’s park security?” Greg asked.

“I doubt they have a use for a big panel truck like that in the middle of a forest. What are those guys doing?”

Greg moved his head slightly, trying to get a better view through the trees. More shadows were moving around now. Some were odd and low to the ground, like small horses or something. Greg pulled out his phone and swiped the screen a few times until he had the video function set for night recording. He tapped the record button and said, “What are those things?”

“I don’t know,” Owen said. “Let’s get closer and find out.”

“I don’t know, man. These could be drug dealers or something. Let’s just get out of here.”

“Like hell,” Owen said. “I didn’t hike all the way out here just to turn around and go home. If I can’t do the descent, I’m at least going home knowing why.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll just sneak over there. See what’s what.”

“Owen, dude, I don’t know about that-”

“Just stay here. Better chance of not getting seen if it’s just one of us, anyway. I’ll just get close enough to see and then we’re out of here.”

Greg started to protest further but Owen had already shrugged off his pack and was moving through the trees in a low crouch. Greg whispered a firm curse and watched his friend through the recording screen on his phone.

Owen was moving slowly, picking his steps as best he could in the heavy shadows. He had covered about half the distance when Greg noticed something odd and looked up from the screen and focused on the distant lights that had so captured his friends curiosity. They were still there, still shining in broken patches and irregular lines through the foliage but something was different. Greg studied the scene for a moment more before the realization rode into his mind on a wave of fear.

The shadows were missing. Before, large shadows had been moving around the truck’s lights doing whatever it was they were doing, but now they were gone. That meant something had pulled them away, gotten their attention. There wasn’t much that could do that in middle of the forest except maybe two guys who weren’t supposed to be there.

“Owen!” Greg said, his voice as low a hiss as he could make it and still be heard from that distance. “They know! We-”

He saw his friend’s body in silhouette as he turned back to Greg. Before he could call out again, though, another silhouette joined Owen’s, dropping from the trees in a rush of breaking branches and shredded leaves. It was huge, easily larger and wider than a man, and with too many limbs to be anything human. The thing’s shadow engulfed Owen’s and- for just a few seconds -the night was filled with the young man’s terrified screams.

Greg watched in horror, green light from the phone screen bathing his face in a pallor that seemed to highlight the sudden, terrified tremble that was vibrating up his neck and onto his face.

“O-Owen?” he whispered.

There was no reply. No sound at all, in fact. Even winter’s cold breeze seemed to be hiding.

“Owen?” he said, louder now.

Nothing.

Greg moved his trembling eyes back to the phone’s screen. He hoped it would give him a better view, but all it showed him was the blacks and greens of a deep forest bathed in broken moonlight.

Then, a subtle movement, right where he thought Owen had been. It looked like someone rising from the ground. It was just an outline, really, but Greg was sure he could make out the curve of neck and shoulders that you might see if someone were bowing their head to you.

“Owen!” he said, all pretense at stealth gone.

A head that wasn’t Owen’s- that wasn’t like anything Greg had ever seen -snapped up at the sound, but stayed low to the ground as though kneeling. Too many eyes glittered in black reflections through the phone’s screen set in a face that was roughly human shaped but longer and wider. The thing rose up then, bending at the waist until it was baring its naked chest and the flat, useless breasts that slapped against its wide sternum. It’s arms rose high, human in their shape, but ending in fingers that were too long came to too fine a point at the tips. Another set of limbs- long, hard, and segmented -snapped up below these as the monster’s jaw split into two sections and it screamed a challenging, bone numbing hiss over teeth that were narrow, long and clicked against one another in a wide maw that was large enough to cover a person’s head.

Greg screamed and bolted from his hiding place, sprinting through the trees on legs that were suddenly warm and damp, but he didn’t notice. His body shuddered with fear and adrenaline as he ran. Branches and icy air slapped at his face, but he didn’t care. He could hear it behind him, chasing him, coming for him.

Then, he heard it in the forest beside him.

And, then, in the trees above him.

He could hear all of them coming for him.

Terror filled his mind in a wave of panic and he ran harder, his legs burning with the effort. Greg wanted to scream, but he the chattering, gasping breaths that filled lungs and throat wouldn’t let him. He ran and harder and faster than he had ever run in his life, faster than he ever seen anyone run in his life and for one spark of an instant he thought he might- maybe -be fast enough to get away.

That spark faded and died, though, when he spotted the tall silhouette step out from the shadows just ahead and to his right. The lean shadow’s arm lashed out as Greg passed, too fast and too strong to avoid, and Greg felt his head snap back from the blow. His feet left the ground and pain bloomed through his face and neck as he actually flipped in the air and came down face first on the cold forest floor. The blow was hard enough to stun him and for one blissful moment he forget about the danger he was in. As his breath and senses returned to him, though, it was followed immediately by flood of cold fear. He lifted his trembling head and looked up at the man that was standing over him.

He was tall, well over six feet, and the patch of moonlight he was standing in showed Greg a face that was rough and cold. Tribal style tattoos covered the right side of the man’s face and surrounded the eye-patch he wore over the eye on that side. His head was clean shaved and uncovered, even in the frost of early winter. There was something on the center of his forehead- a wound? Scars? Greg couldn’t tell. When the man spoke, it was with a voice that seemed right at home in the cold.

“Well, don’t you just have the shittiest luck.”

Greg knew that face, but he couldn’t recall from where. Maybe, if he could talk to the guy, he could get out of this, but he needed to know why he was familiar. For a brief instant, he started to reach for his phone, then realized it was gone. Instead, he said, “I’ve seen you someplace.”

A smile blinked across the man’s lips without ever reaching his eyes. “Yeah, I’ve been on television a few times.”

A chorus of clicks started echoing from the dark. The trees shuddered and pines needles fell like rain over Greg and the tall man. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving a hand in irritation at the sound. “It’s not like I can talk to you freaks, right? Gimme a minute.”

Greg watched in confusion as the tall man gave a resigned sigh and knelt down in front of him. “Even I need a conversation every now and then, y’know? These guys don’t understand that anymore.”

Greg’s breath was starting to come in panicked gasps again. “Mister,” he said, his breath punctuating the words. “We need to go. We need to run.”

That smile came again, more genuine this time. “What? From these freaks? Naw, they’re with me. I’ll be fine.”

A splinter of confusion crept through Greg’s terror. “With you? How? What are they?”

This time the smile crept over his whole face and brought a soft laugh with it. The sound was chilling, like the laugh of a man contemplating things no sane person should. The tall man kept smiling as he stood and said, “Those? Those are the future, man.”

Greg was about to ask what he meant when the man said, “Take him. Don’t forget his friend’s backpack.”

The horrors came for Greg then; out of the shadows, dropping from the trees, jumping farther than anything that size had a right to and Greg screamed so hard he tasted blood on his tongue as they swarmed over him.

Off to one side, Carmine Screed watched and softly laughed.

 

CHAPTER 1

Twin Pacific Towers,

Seattle, Washington,

March 11,

11:15 P.M.

“Secure that vehicle!” Security Supervisor Wallace shouted. His words echoed through the sparsely lit parking garage and bounced across the underground surfaces with no rhyme or reason. The dozen security agents that were scurrying about loading the twin panels trucks added to the melange of echoes and kept moving as though he hadn’t spoken. Wallace trusted these men; knew they would get the job done, but also had been at his job long enough to know that a little extra motivation from the man in charge never hurt.

He walked among them, his pistol drawn and ready like he was prepared to put down anyone that disobeyed him. He wouldn’t, of course, since he was already short on troops and was a man of particular standards who abhorred waste and inefficiency. These were highly trained men, after all, and not easily replaced.

“Cranston,” he said to a passing man. “What’s left?”

Wallace’s second in command stopped and glanced at a narrow screen that was secured to his forearm by heavy black straps. “We’ve got the relevant research data,” he said. “There’s a couple more pieces of vital equipment that we can’t leave behind but the men are getting them on the elevator now. We should be rolling in less that ten minutes.”

“Make it less that seven,” Wallace said, his face hard with worry. “We need to be gone before they get here. What about the test subjects?”

“I’ve got two shooters ready to put them down just as soon as the equipment and data are clear. They should be able to get them all in less than a minute.”

Wallace nodded. “Good. Get it done and let’s get rolling.”

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Cranston asked. Wallace could just make out the other man’s eyes on the other side of the lightly tinted combat goggles and he saw a measure of fear there that he didn’t like.

Wallace swallowed his own consternation and tried to put steel in his voice. “Won’t matter if we’re gone, Chris. Get these men moving.”

Cranston responded with a sharp, “Yes, sir!” and started barking orders at the men.

Wallace turned and headed for the nearest truck, intent on climbing up onto the vehicle’s running boards to get a better view of the progress. Both doors were standing open and he pushed the driver’s side door closed to pull himself up onto the runner. That’s when he saw the man in black and everything went wrong.

The man was tall- easily topping six feet -and dressed in a combat suit that was a solid matte black and covered every inch of his frame. He was wearing a long coat with a hood that covered his head but did little to hide his face. Not that he needed it, the black outfit included a full face ballistic mask whose lines were broken only by a pair of sleek combat lenses that stared down at Wallace.

Wallace had heard the reports of the one they called Revenant, seen the blurry videos, but the reality of it was far more striking that he had thought it would be. Still, he shouted, “Contact!” and tried to snap his sidearm up at the man’s masked face. He barely made it half way before the newcomer grabbed his wrist and squeezed so hard that Wallace felt his wrist bones crunch under the pressure. Even though he tried hard not to, Wallace cried out at the searing pain that shot up his arm. His pistol clattered to the concrete and Wallace felt himself lifted into the air by a blow that sent him flying backwards on wings of breathless agony. He hit the concrete hard. Despite the impact, though, his years of command training forced his eyes up to watch his men’s response.

They had all dropped what they were doing and pulled their weapons. Pistols, sub-guns, and even a couple of shotguns sent a wall of death towards the man in black. Anyone caught in that barrage would have been shredded into bloody confetti; anyone, that was, but this man.

The man in black lowered his head, crossed his arms to cover his face, and charged into the fusillade like a bull. He moved without stopping, only occasionally jerking this way or that as a bullet scored a particularly solid hit, and when he reached the nearest shooter, one had lashed out in a blur and snatched the submachine gun from he man’s hand so fast that he man didn’t even realize he was unarmed until the butt of the weapon smashed into his face and shattered his nose to nothing but splintered bone.

Wallace saw his man go down and instinctively tried to rise, to go to his trooper’s side, but it was no good. His chest was a mass of pain and his wrist flopped loosely when he moved. He watched in helpless misery as the man in black moved through his men like a wrecking ball. Twice he saw bodies come flying over his head to land awkwardly on the concrete behind him. Guns roared, men screamed, and the man in black just kept moving through them snapping bones and throwing men around like they were a child’s playthings. It only lasted a minute or so and was punctuated by the sight of a shotgun- it’s barrel twisted into a warped, useless length of metal – sliding across the garage floor. The ruined weapon came to a stop a few feet from Wallace’s eyes and he looked up as the man in black walked towards him with careful deliberate strides. He stopped by the shotgun and give his coat a shake, like a man throwing water from a raincoat, but instead of cool drops of water, Wallace heard the sound of small pieces of metal hitting the floor.

He looked up at the taller man and said, “We don’t know where he is.”

The man in black didn’t move, didn’t respond.

“The last contact we had with him was Jasper Island. It’s all in the intel. You won this one. You don’t need to to kill anyone else.”

The black clad head turned slightly, as though surveying they men that he had laid low. He said nothing.

“What the hell did he do to you?” Wallace asked, his curiosity genuine.

The man in black’s foot lashed out and caught Wallace just below his left temple and the world went dark.

Israel Trent stood over Security Supervisor Wallace a moment longer, waiting to see if he was really unconscious or just faking it. The mask in his combat suit obscured his enhanced senses a little, but it didn’t take long to determine that the man was out for the count. He bent down and searched through Wallace’s pockets until he found a white, plastic security badge. He stood up and examined the card to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Satisfied, he activated the small communications device that was secured under his mask just behind his right ear. He spoke as he walked back towards the trucks.

“Overwatch, this is Revenant,” he said, using his new call sign. “Garage is secure. Send in asset extraction for the prisoners and these trucks. They were trying to bug out with them so it’s something we’ll probably want to see. How’s our eyesight?”

“20-20, Revenant. Runaway has planted the seed and is working down to you.” The voice belonged to Michelle Brandt, one of the genius twin sisters that operated the Sentry Group’s scientific wing. Michelle was a world class engineer and physicist who could do things with computers that the average computer scientist would consider impossible. The ‘seed’ she referred to was an intrusion module that would give Michelle unfettered access to the building’s computers and operational systems.

“I’d hardly call this work,” another female voice said. “There’s nobody up here.”

“Count your blessings and quick-clear it anyway,” Overwatch said. “Rendezvous with Revenant in the garage. The Sub-basement is on an independent system from the rest of the building so I don’t know what’s happening down there.”

Israel ground his teeth together beneath his face mask. The hunger was a distant whisper at the moment, mostly thanks to the damage that the combat suit had absorbed in the fight. If his body had had to repair all those bullet wounds, he’d be aching with the need for fresh protein.

“What’s your take on the sub-basement, Overwatch?”

“I’ve got no eyes or ears down there, but it’s drawing power and seems to be ventilated. If there’s anything alive left in the building, it’s in that sub-basement.”

Israel nodded and studied the security pass he’d taken off the last guard. “Copy that. I’ve secured access and am headed down.”

“Negative, Revenant,” Overwatch said. “Wait for Runaway.”

“She can catch up,” Israel growled. “Or not. I’m going in.”

“I said stand down, Revenant! Dammit, don’t do this again!”

“Sorry, Overwatch. I’m proceeding.”

“Isre…” Runaway started, then corrected, “I mean, Revenant; Stay there, I can be there in a few seconds-”

Israel reached up and tapped the comm, cutting the power and silencing his allies. He walked towards the elevator only stopping long enough to pick up one of the shotguns that was lying next to an unconscious guard’s unaturally bent wrist. It was equipped with a small side saddle of ammunition on the stock and Israel used all but two of the shells to reload the weapon. Satisifed, he stepped to the elevator and swiped his purloined key card through the reader.

A few seconds later, the doors opened and he stepped onto the elevator. The set up was like many he’d seen in the past few months; a standard bank of elevator buttons but with one or two that could only be accessed by swiping a security card through a reader next to the isolated buttons. Israel swiped the card and pressed the button for the single secured floor.

As the doors slid closed he muttered, “Damn if these assholes don’t just love their underground lairs.”

 

CHAPTER 2

The doors opened onto a short hallway that was well lit with lines of LED lamps that were spaced in close intervals along each wall. The corridor was wide and littered with the remnants of an office that had been evacuated with more haste than thoroughness in mind. Papers were scattered about the floor, the half dozen doors that lined the walls were standing open, and there was an office chair half exposed in one of them. Israel could hear soft hiss of the air conditioning and something else, too. The second sound was softer , but more pronounced and somehow intermittent.

He moved down the corridor with silent, measured steps. As he grew closer to the source of the second sound, the familiar scent of blood, viscera, and gun-smoke filtered through his face mask and into his nostrils. Israel inhaled deeply and felt the smallest quiver of hunger at the aroma. He tightened both his jaw and his grip on the shotgun and swung into an open set of double doors that was labeled “Main Laboratory”.

The room was large and sunken down another three feet or so from the hallway. A steel platform large enough for four or five people overlooked the rest of the room and the four steps leading down to the laboratory floor. Twin examination tables were set to one side with dark stains on the stainless steel surfaces and thick, equally stained straps dangling from the head feet and sides. Computers and other lab equipment he didn’t recognize were on the wall opposite the tables. The back wall was a series of a dozen or so doors that seemed to be operated by key card. Three of them stood open and the small cells beyond were visible. In one of them, Israel could see the remains of something that was the size of a man but far too hairy to be one. Blood ran in think lines from the cell onto the lab floor and mixed with the blood from the other two bodies in the room,.

They were dressed like the rest of the security team, but Israel had to look closely to be sure. There clothes and the flesh beneath were so torn and bloodied that they were nearly unrecognizable. One man’s face was slashed so badly that Israel could see the protruding cheekbone beneath his bloody skin. Eyes stared wide and unending at the ceiling. Their weapons lay near to hand bit it didn’t look like they had gotten much use out of them.

Israel carefully descended the stairs and looked around for whatever it was that had done this, whatever it was they had let out of those cells. He stepped onto the lab floor and slowly approached the nearest of the fallen security men. He met the dead eyes and tried to ignore them.

A sound then- the same one he had followed from the hallway -low and hoarse, like a soft, lingering snore. Israel took a second to pinpoint the source and his eyes drifted towards the ceiling.

At first all he could see was the dull, industrial gray that was painted over the concrete ceiling, duct work, and pipes that made up the room’s overhead space. Then, the things moved. There were two of them and they suddenly shifted colors right before Israel’s eyes from the uniform gray to a mottled and white and sickly green. They were naked, their humanoid bodies covered in scales and bony protrusions that ran in short spikes down the backs of their arms and crowned their head like vertical halos. Short, thick tales hung from their lower backs. Their eyes were red with black, reptilian slits for pupils and when they hissed at him, it was in that same, soft snoring sound that he had led him to this room. Their faces were more reptile than man with flattened noses and slightly mouths that showed narrow, flicking tongues and teeth like translucent needles.

Israel had just enough time to look them both in the eyes before they dropped from the ceiling and rolled their bodies in the air with inhuman agility so that they landed on their feet and came at him, bloodstained claws extending for his throat from thick fingers, rough fingers.

Israel dropped and rolled at a forty five degree angle from the attack, ducking under the slashing claws and snapping teeth. He came up on one knee and, rather than taking the second to stand, spun on that knee and took aim with his weapon. The shotgun bucked twice in his hand and- much to his surprise -missed completely.

The creature he had been aiming for had hit the floor and immediately launched itself into the air again to latch onto one of the ceiling pipes like some kind of hideous, scaled ape. Israel’s shots had blasted through the space where the monster had been and struck one of the locks beside the remaining cell doors. Sparks and smoke erupted from the wall and suddenly all the lights in the sub-basement turned a brilliant, strobing red.

“Unauthorized specimen release” a computerized voice said over hidden speakers, “Thermal sterilization in thirty seconds… twenty-nine seconds… twenty-eight seconds…”

Israel had just enough time to see the door with the shotgun blasted lock start to swing open to reveal something big and covered in coarse fur before the two lizard things were on him.

The first of them grabbed the shot gun and forced the barrel upwards before Israel could get off another blast. The second pounced on him and drove him backwards, bending him onto his back and pinning one leg under him. Israel roared as he felt talons puncture the Kevlar in his combat suit and tear into his flesh. There was no pain, but he felt a wave of frustration as he saw the reptile thing pull back its claw and send tiny lines of Israel’s thin, gray, infectious blood sailing through the lab.

He turned his attention from the creature than was on top of him and focused on the one trying to pull the shotgun from his grip. Though his leverage was nearly non-existent, Israel jerked the shotgun away with all the strength he could muster. Though it managed to maintain its hold, the sudden surge of strength pulled the creature off balance and down with the barrel as Israel shoved it into the second monster’s ribcage. He gave the trigger three fast squeezes and the thing that was in top of him fell away in a limp heap.

“…twenty seconds…”

The creature that had been holding the barrel howled its strange, hissing snore and stepped away, reptile tongue snaking out to lick at its burned palms.

Israel was trying to get his bent leg out from under him so that he could stand when suddenly a black, thick furred hand the size of a baseball catcher’s mitt wrapped around his weapon and yanked it away like it was a toy and Israel was an unruly toddler. A second hand- identical to the first -grabbed a handful of Israel’s combat suit and the Sentry Group agent suddenly found himself flying through the air. He collided with another of the closed cell doors and he heard something inside snarl as he fell to the floor.

“…twelve seconds…”

Israel was on his feet almost as soon as he hit the floor. The reptile thing was the faster of his two attackers and it reached him first, claws extended and mouth open to coming at his throat. Israel blocked the clawed hand with his left forearm and punched the lizard-man in the face with a solid right hook. The thing staggered backwards near senseless and Israel raised his leg and kicked it straight in the sternum hard enough to collapse its ribcage and send it flying over the tables of lab equipment and into the computers beyond.

“…seven seconds…”

He didn’t pause to savor the victory and spun to face the owner of the massive hands. The thing was huge- easily eight feet tall -and looked like a bear that had somehow mated with a porcupine. It came at him with spines and teeth bristling and Israel rolled to one side narrowly avoiding the thing’s undoubtedly fatal embrace.

“…five seconds…”

Israel came up next to one of the dead security men’s corpse and snatched up the man’s fallen weapon. It was a compact submachine gun and felt as though the clip was near to full. Israel pointed it at the furred behemoth and held down the trigger. The room was filled with the rapid explosions of automatic gunfire. He saw the thing’s fur ripple with impacts and it staggered backwards. There was sudden silence as the weapon emptied its clip. The furred thing roared and took a step towards Israel.

“…three seconds…”

Israel looked up at the lab’s entrance and saw a steel security shutter begin a rapid decent from the top of the door frame. He sprang up and started for the door but the bear-thing whipped out its massive paw and Israel felt his leading leg slip out from under him as a trio of spines wedged themselves into the Kevlar hard enough to throw him off balance. He met the thing’s eyes as the steel shutter clattered into place.

“…one second. Thermal sterilization in progress.”

There was a hissing sound and the stink of combustible chemicals as a fine mist filled the air. Israel looked at the monster looming over him and said, “Well, screw you, too.”

He waited for the rush of ignition, the searing heat, and then the oblivion of nonexistence. Instead, he felt a hand touch his shoulder and the sudden rush of cold night air.

They appeared on the roof of the Twin Pacific Towers as the lab forty stories below erupted into a fireball that was hot enough to cremate anything organic in a matter of seconds. Israel was still on the ground and the woman who had brought them there turned her back and stepped away from him. She tapped the comm unit that was secured to her right ear with a short, angry stab.

“Overwatch, this is Runaway, I have the assh… I mean, I have Revenant. He seems to be okay.” She listened for a minute and then said, “Copy that. The lab was in meltdown when we left so I don’t know how much good it will do you.” Another moment listening. “Don’t sweat that, Overwatch. I’ll get us back to base. You and the rest head out when you’re ready, don’t wait for us.” Erin Simms took a steadying breath to cool the frustration steaming through her before she turned to face Israel.

There was enough light on the roof to see that he had removed his hood and mask and was busy pulling the last of some kind of short, narrow spear from his leg. He tossed it in a pile with two others like and climbed to his feet, showing no signs of discomfort what so ever.

“Suit still needs work,” he grumbled. “One of those things managed to pierce it and splashed blood into the lab. The interior membrane doesn’t seal fast enough.”

Erin stared hard at him with her jaw clenched.

“When we get back to Silversky,” Israel said, “I’ll get Stone to help me-”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Erin said, her voice low and cold. “You wanna die? Is that it? Because, brother, you came damned close just now.”

“I’m already dead, remember? World’s only Paragon Necrophage?”

“You know what I mean, Israel.”

They stood like that for nearly a minute; Erin staring, Israel with his eyes cast down at the ballistic mask in his hands, neither speaking. A heavy mist that was just thick enough to be called rain blew around them in cold eddies.

“Six months, Erin. It’s been six months since that bastard took my dad and I am no closer to finding him now than I was then.”

“Yeah, I know, Izzy, I was with you when we got the video, remember?”

“Yes, I remember!” Israel said, his fists tightened around the mask and it cracked and broke like dry cord wood. “I remember every damn second of that video! But it’s been six months and we’ve raided…what? Eight, ten, of these damn Onyx facilities and not one of them had a lead to finding Carmine! Every minute that passes is one more minute that the trail gets colder and he gets further away!”

“I know! But I also know that going off by yourself like you just did is only going to get you deader than you already are! Then where’s your revenge going to be?”

“Justice, not revenge!”

“Whatever! That guy’s killed thousands of people, Israel, not just your dad. He’s going to get what he’s got coming and if I’ve got anything to say about it you’ll be the one that delivers it, but you can’t do that if you’re dead, you stubborn jackass!”

Israel opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it when he met her blazing eyes. Rain dripped from their faces- his dark and hers pale -before he spoke again. “How’d you get into that lab, anyway? You couldn’t see down there.”

“Thank Michelle,” Erin said, the intensity slowing fading from her eyes. “When you swiped that badge to get in, it opened some kind of digital port or something that she could access through the Seed. She tried to explain it but all I heard was technobabble. She hacked it, got me downstairs just as that security shutter was closing. Another two seconds and I wouldn’t have been able to see into that room to ‘port us out. You very nearly became a charcoal briquette, Izzy. It was pure luck I made it in. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

Israel stared at her, not having an answer that could justify such a gross error on his part. Finally, he shrugged and said, “I guess I lost it a little. It was stupid.”

“Yeah, it was, and running off on your own is becoming too much of a habit. I get why you keep to yourself back at the estate, but you can’t be doing this shit on mission, Israel. I need my partner.”

Israel was quiet again, and then a small, faint smile curved his lips. “When did you suddenly become the voice of responsibility and reason?”

“The same time my jackass best friend starting going all Dark Knight on me.”

Israel nodded. After another moment he said, “It’s a combat isolation suit. Not a costume.”

Erin snorted. “Dude, please. That is so totally a costume.”

“No, it’s not. It’s to keep me from bleeding all over the place.”

“It’s got a mask,” Erin said. She glanced down at the remains of the ballistic mask and said, “Well, it used to have a mask.” She walked over and put a hand on Israel’s shoulder. “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded and heartbeat later they had vanished.

And there you have it. If this is your first exposure to the Veiled World and you’d like to find out what sort of craziness brought our heroes to this place in their lives, I hope you’ll click the link below and check out my Amazon offerings. If not, I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Oh, and because I know there’s at least a couple of people that will call me on this, I wrote that scene before they started calling Felicity ‘Overwatch’ on Arrow. Just sayin’.

Have a great week and thanks for reading.

    THE DARKWALKER’S DEN FACEBOOK GROUP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A couple of weeks ago I put up a post about my first year as an Indie. It’s the only thing that I’ve put up that seemed to get any attention, so I decided to touch base with a few of the writing bloggers out there and see if they wanted to cross post it to their sites. I put it out to about a dozen or so and only got one response, which was a professional and polite rejection.

There was something, though, that the blogger said that’s been niggling at me, squirming like a worm in my brain apple. The response was that the post had an “underlying disdain for traditional publishing”. This bugged me, because I don’t feel like I have any disdain for traditional publishing. So, I went back and re-read the post. Then I re-read it again. And then again. I discovered that the blogger in question was absolutely correct.

I’m not sure what happened there. Maybe I was so focused on getting to the bits about what I’ve learned about indie publishing onto the page that I overlooked the tone I took towards my traditional publishing experiences or perhaps I was revisiting the frustration of those early days and some of my ire leaked through. I’m just not sure.

So, for the record, I do not bear any ill will towards traditional publishing. I’m not one of those writers who has an “us versus them” mentality towards the interaction of Indie Publishing and Traditional publishing. Even though I’ve never landed a trad-pub deal, I’ve spent decades educating myself on the process and the business, so I feel like I have a little knowledge on the topic. Trad-Pub and Indie-pub, to my eyes, are really two separate things. We’re like two groups of kids playing in two different sandboxes; we might be separated, but we’re all still digging in the sand.

There are upsides and downsides to both publishing routes. Indies like to tout the lack of gatekeepers in their world. Thing is, that’s not entirely true. In the absence of editors and readers and agents for the Indie world, the reading public becomes the gate keepers. You might be able put anything you want up on Amazon for sale, but if the public thinks it’s not worthy of their notice they will ignore you and let you starve. They might let you in their sandbox, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to play with you.

On top of that, I don’t believe that a certain level of gate-keeping is necessarily a bad thing. A first reader can spot a poorly written book right out of the gate and make sure it doesn’t clutter up the shelves at Barnes and Noble or where ever. In the Indie world, you can throw up whatever ill-conceived and poorly written piece of word booger you want and it’ll get roughly the same digital shelf space as its opposite. Trust me, I’ve read more than a few of those.

To me, the big victims of the Trad-pub system are the ‘almost good enough’ books. Those books that are well written, imaginative, and created with an eye towards craft, but just aren’t something that the reader or editor feels that their house can afford to invest in at that time. I’m sure there are lots of books languishing in closets or on hard drives that could have found an audience, but didn’t because of market concerns. This is where the Indie world shines. I count myself in that camp because my current work in progress doesn’t really fit neatly into an established genre. I sent Awakened out. It was rejected for exactly that reason and I totally understand the publisher’s position there.

Publishing house, especially the big ones, are global corporations and they have to make money; period. I can’t imagine the amount of overhead they must shoulder in production and shipping costs alone. Of course they can’t put out every single book that the readers and editors might like because they have to look at what’s going to get them the best return on investment. I’ve gotten a tiny taste of this in my indie endeavors as I’ve paid for covers and editing and marketing and have yet to break even.

My opinion- and this was one expressed by the blogger, as well -is that writers are best served by going hybrid, with some of their catalog in the traditional world and some in the indie world. That’s my ultimate goal, really, because exposure in one can lead to exposure in the other and that’s one of the keys to getting your books discovered by readers. How foolish would it be to turn my back on either of those opportunities?

The point? The point is I’m too busy to be hating on anybody for trying to run their business. I regret the tone of that previous post. As frustrating as it can be, I actually love the art and commerce intersection that is publishing and I love being able to be one of the creators that gets a shot at being part of it. Time will tell whether or not I’m any good at it.

Thanks for reading.

    Darkwalker’s Den 

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Now that I’m really getting into this blogging thing, I’ve decided that I’d like to do one post a month that focuses on book reviews. I don’t want to be another person reviewing the latest front of the store release from the big traditional houses, but mid-list and Indie books that I feel are worthy of more attention. That’s the goal, but like with most goals there are speed bumps on the road to success.

I have a difficult time reading for pleasure when I’m in the draft phase of writing a novel, which I currently am as I try to get Unveiled out the door. Couple that with a few extra family events this month and the bottom line is that I am way behind on my reading. So, I decided I would revisit two series / writers whose work helped me decide to dive into this writing thing again.

Anton Strout; Author and Curious Content Curator

First up is Mr. Anton Strout, author of the Simon Canderous series and the Spellmason Chronicles.  He is also the host and curator of curious content over at the Once and Future Podcast where he talks with and interviews other writers in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, as well as big shots in the tabletop gaming industry. Even though I’ve never met him and don’t know him in real life, he definitely seems like the kind of guy I could hang out and sling some dice with. This personality carries over into his Simon Canderous series well, because Simon has a nerdy, quirky likability that stands out in sharp contrast against so many male Urban Fantasy protagonists that seem to always be standing on- and often jumping over -the line between masculinity and misogyny.

The Simon Canderous books are just fun, Urban Fantasy reads that come across with just enough heart and humor to balance out the action and darkness of the big-bads that Simon comes up against. It’s the kind of thing I feel like I should be reading with a big  bowl of popcorn and a beer. It’s set in New York and, even though I was only there for a short visit back in the late-eighties, I feel like he really captures the city and its magical underworld in a way that pulls you in. If you’re just looking for an entertaining, escapist read that sweeps you up into a world filled with magic, this one is definitely on the go-to list.

Anton’s other series is The Spellmason Chronicles and it’s the one that provided me with the encouragement I needed to dive into my current work (more on that later). The Spellmason Chronicles centers around a woman who discovers that she is the inheritor of a kind of alchemical/magical power that allows her to breathe life into stone. She awakens a gargoyle protector and all sorts of shenanigans ensue after that. Again, it’s full of quirky characters, dire threats, humor, heart, and spectacle with the added bonus of being something original in a genre that seemed to be getting a little homogeneous at the time of its release (in my humble opinion, anyway). Give this one a read, you won’t be disappointed.

Amber Benson, but you probably knew that.

Next up is the lovely and diversely talented Amber Benson. Yes, the Amber Benson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No, we are not going to talk about Buffy, we’re going to talk about Amber’s books. Seriously, don’t bring it up again, or I will come over there.

I discovered Amber Benson’s books when she was a guest on The Once and Future Podcast and I learned that she and Anton Strout were friends. She was talking about her Calliope Reaper-Jones novels. I thought they sounded intriguing and when I heard she was born in the same state as me, I chose to take that as a sign. Despite being the least superstitious and not prone to believing in signs person you’re likely to meet, I was not disappointed. I listened to the first two books in the series, Death’s Daughter and Cat’s Claw  in audiobook format which was cool because Amber does the audio performance herself. I read the third one, Serpent’s Storm,  and it was like she was in my head narrating it since I’d had the audio experience first.

Remember when I said that Urban Fantasy had seemed to be getting a bit homogeneous back when I was reading these? Yeah, this series is not that. The whole time I was reading, I was reminded of the Piers Anthony Incarnations of Immortality series from back in the early 1980s. Take the first book in that, On a Pale Horse, then throw it into a blender with Sex and the City and you’ve got some idea what Calliope Reaper-Jones is all about. Sex and the City was never really my thing, but I really, really enjoyed these books. I thought Amber did a great job of blending the fantasy with the normal life of an average big city girl without resorting to the overdone tropes of the time. It’s original, the characters are strong, and I had a lot of fun with it. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, there are two more books in this series that I haven’t read, but that’s Amber and Anton’s fault.

What? How could two total strangers who wouldn’t notice me if they stepped on my neck be responsible for such a thing?

Easy; they wrote women really well.

See, when I was bouncing around the idea for this trilogy in my head, I knew I’d need to have two point of view protagonists and that one of them would have to be a woman. I was nervous about that because I’d never written from the female POV before and I just knew that the middle aged dad/grand-dad in me would produce something cliched and flat. There are subtleties to women’s perceptions that most men (of which I am one) often cannot get their heads around. After reading Jones and Spellmason, though, I realized that it really wasn’t anything to be intimidated about. I had been thinking of the female perspective as one big whole, like every female character would see everything the same way, which was really stupid of me. Once I started thinking of gender as one small aspect of characterization as opposed to some kind of defining whole, I got it. Besides that, I have plenty of women in my life that are more than happy to set me straight if I get it wrong.

With that realization in place, I dove head first into the Paragons Trilogy and haven’t really come up for air since. The point is this: if you’re a writer and you’re holding back because some aspect of the project that’s rattling around in your head is confounding you, find someone who’s already tackled it and see what they did. All creators steal from each other, I’m sure they won’t mind.

If you’re a reader, check out these books. They’re well worth your time.

As a side note, I decided to go ahead and create a Facebook Group for all the millions of fans that I just know that I’ll have one day. It’s called Darkwalker’s Den and you can find it HERE. In it, I’ll discuss life, writing, gaming, and all the other cool things that make existence fun. It won’t be a big promotion spew like a lot of groups, but a place where I can get to know the people that like what I do. Stop on by and join.

Seriously. I get lonely.

Thanks for reading.

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When I was eight years old I wrote a story. I remember it vividly; it was handwritten in pencil on four pages of lined paper with the title The Ghost Town written in big, wavy lines at the top. It was a Halloween writing assignment for school and told the tale of a certain young boy’s class trip to an old west ghost town where the rest of the class suddenly vanishes and our hero is left on his own to solve the mystery and rescue his class.

Buckle up, kid. You’ve got a wild ride ahead of you. And, yes, I invented the selfie.

What? Shut up, I was eight.

Anyway, the teacher loved it and read it aloud to the class. Then she read it to the other class that was the same grade as ours. Then she showed it to the principal and he put it up on the bulletin board outside the cafeteria door so everybody could read it. Needless to say, I was a pretty puffed up third grader and from that moment on had the writing bug welded into my DNA.

Fast forward 40 years and here I am. I’ve written more than a million words in all those years. I spent most of my teens and twenties collecting rejections slips for shorts and novel pitches, some of which I wrote anyway, and going through the requisite emotional upheavals associated with the rejection of things that I loved enough to create and throw into the world. Shortly after my 30th birthday I met a published thriller writer that I had a mutual friend with and he was kind enough to read some of my stuff and give me notes. Then, he started telling me about the business of being a pro writer. He was very open with me about the terms of his contracts and the dollar amounts that crossed his bank account and the number of people who took bites out of it. Even then, long before the advent of Kindle and Epub, it was obvious that the book biz was heavily weighted in favor of the publishing houses. (I’m not going to wax on about the inequities of most trad pub contracts, for more on that read this book.)

I came away from that encounter with a very negative attitude. I had been writing all that time with the same delusion that so many people had and still have: publish a book, become rich and famous, retire in luxury. While there are the occasional lightning strikes that prove the exception to the rule, the truth is more like write a book, work like hell to get the book noticed and land a contract, hope that MAYBE you get a little extra money off the book, and then put your head down and start writing the next one so you could start the process all over again.

30-something me responded to that system with a hearty, “screw that noise”. See, I love the writing, the telling of the tale. I’ve loved it my whole life. At the time, I was only pursuing the whole publishing thing because that was what everyone expected me to do and because of the aforementioned delusion. I had other outlets for my story telling that provided me with more immediate gratification and didn’t involve so many gatekeepers and fingers in the story pie. So, I kept writing things but put the submission/rejection grind away with a ‘gave it a good shot’ attitude.

Then, in late 2014, a friend sent me an email for a short story anthology that was taking submissions. I figured since he was kind enough to send me the link, I’d throw something at the thing and see if it stuck. It was my first submission in well over a decade, but I didn’t see the harm in trying.

It was promptly rejected.

HOWEVER, there was a silver lining because as I was researching the anthology, I was refreshing my knowledge of the publishing industry that I had turned my back on all those years earlier. I discovered the big wide world of KDP, Ibooks, and Indie Publishing . It changed my attitude and my life.

Awakened and Conduit; The first two books of the Paragons Trilogy.

So, I wrote Awakened:Paragons Books One  and uploaded it to Amazon at the end of February 2015. Despite reading everything I could to educate myself and listening to podcasts like The Self Publishing Podcast, The Creative Penn, The Sell More Books Show, and Rocking Self Publishing, I still don’t think I really had any idea what I was doing.

Now, it’s February of 2016. I’ve written and uploaded the second book of my Paragons Trilogy and anticipate having the third book up in the near future. I’ve run promotions and vetted covers and wrestled with all the business aspects of this writing gig that come about as naturally to me as aerial navigation does to a trout. I’ve spent far more trying to sell books than I’ve earned from selling them (a little over $500 in the course of the year, I’m not shy about it) and I’ve invaded and completely flubbed social media on more than one platform. All that said, I feel like I’m starting to get a little bit of a mental toe-hold in this whole Independent Author business. Here’s a few of the things I’ve learned.

 Writing a great book is no guarantee. You have to write the best, most professional book you can, but that in no way guarantees that the book will take off or even sell moderately well. What writing a quality book does is leave a reader/customer with a satisfying experience that will encourage them to buy more of your books and maybe tell their friends about it. This should be a no brainer, though, because who really wants to put out something with their name on it that isn’t the best it could be?
 Email Marketing works, either through your own list or a really big pay to play service like Bookbub. Having your own list is ideal, but that takes time and it’s own kind of management. Facebook is useful and Facebook ads work if you put in the time to learn the process and have the budget to properly manage them. Twitter and Instagram marketing doesn’t seem to sell books but is useful for connecting with an audience and building an email list. See my previous post on Social Media for more on that.
Unless you are a professional designer, you MUST pay for a professional looking book cover. This is non-negotiable. The market is flooded and if you don’t have a cover that shines then you will get glossed over in less time than it takes a customer to tap a screen. You also MUST have an editor and that generally means paying for a pro. There are lots of different kinds of editors, but I’m mostly talking about Copy or Line editors who are going to make sure all the punctuation, spelling, and whatnot are correct. Some people use Developmental Editors to help them with plot and such, but I’m too much of control freak when it comes to my stories for that. If you think that’s something you would like, then pay for that, too, but make sure you check references and get a reliable professional.
This is a marathon game with a really long tail. Don’t count on one brilliant masterwork making a living for you. The more books you have out (quality books- remember), the more there are for readers to purchase and the more chances you have to get paid. If you want this to be how you make your living, then you have to get a little mercenary about it. That doesn’t mean ignore what your gut tells you to write, but it does mean that at some point you have switch from this is my book thinking to this is my product thinking. Time, effort, and patience are you greatest allies.
Series sell better than stand alone novels. People like to get immersed in the worlds of the characters they love and they always want to know what happens next and right damned now, too. A good series plays well into that long tail game I was talking about in number 4.
Pick a genre. Readers like genres. My Paragons Trilogy is a pretty clear mashup of horror, urban fantasy, and superhero fiction. I think it has suffered for it. In fact, I believe that the fact it is so clearly and unapologetically a mashup has caused a lot of people to not want to take a chance on it. That might change one day, but I can tell you my next series will clearly fit into one of the established genres. So, pick a genre.
This is a job. Period. It’s an awesome job, one that most people do for the sheer love of it, but it is work. You have to treat it with all the get-up-and-do-it-even-when-you-don’t-want-to kind of discipline that you apply to any paying gig. It takes schedules and educating yourself and getting the words down even when- no, especially when -it’s hard, so suck it up, buttercup.

There’s probably more. This is such an ever growing and changing industry that things turn on a dime and what’s true today gets face-palmed when you bring it up tomorrow. You’ve gotta stay frosty in modern publishing and be ready to shift gears on a second’s notice.

As a final nod to my first year as an indie, I’m going to drop some names of other indie authors that I’ve enjoyed and links to their work. If you’re so inclined, give them a read and see what you think;

Robert J. Crane- Southern Watch Series, Garrett Robinson- Nightblade Epic, Gary Jonas– The Johnathan Shade Series, S.M. Reine- The Preternatural Affairs Series.

As always, Thanks for reading.

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WAAAAY back in the dark ages of 1982, I was invited over to a fellow high school freshman’s house so that he could introduce me to this thing called Dungeons and Dragons. I was intrigued by the title and accepted the invitation, expecting something along the lines of a board game similar to Risk or Axis and Allies.

Yeah. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all.

My first addiction

It started with him showing me a handful of these little plastic dice in all these different and odd shapes. Twenty sided dice, twelve sided dice, little pyramid shaped four-siders; he held them out to me like a crack dealer holding out a pile of rocks and saying, “First one’s free, kid.” The metaphor was more apt than I realized at the time.

Then, he said I needed to create a character. I was baffled. See, even then I was writing and telling stories. You say ‘create a character’ to a writer and immediately they will wonder if it’s an antagonist, protagonist, or supporting character. What genre of story? What length? How deep of a history do I need to give this character and so on. When I expressed all of this by giving him a befuddled look and a grunted, “Huh?”, he explained; In the realm of tabletop role-playing games, the players provide the protagonists- the characters -and the referee (often called a Dungeonmaster or Gamemaster) provides a setting and situation that the characters have to deal with. The players have characters with skills and attributes suitable

We’ve come for the all you can eat buffet!

to the setting. The players decide on the type of personality the characters they have created will have and then they respond to the situation the Gamemaster (GM) presents them with as the characters logically would. The GM- who is in the role of the antagonists -responds to the characters actions and then the characters react to that and so on and so on until the situation is resolved. Since it is a game and wouldn’t be so without the risk of objective failure, there are rules and game mechanics that oversee an action’s level of success. Beyond that, though, tabletop RPGs are really just another storytelling medium- cooperative storytelling, as it were (Okay, his explanation was really just, “man, shut up and trust me,” but I inferred the rest).

HERO System 4th Edition. Best RPG rules system ever in my opinion.

I took the crack-dice in hand and was immediately addicted. In the thirty plus years since then, I’ve played thousands of hours of these games in a variety of gaming systems and met some of the best friends that I’ve ever had. I’ve taken players on adventures across dragon infested fantasy landscapes, into deep space on faster than light starships, into modern cities filled with the walking dead, across the gulfs of time with caped and cowled superheroes, against mythological horrors in a modern world, into the 1930s where they raced against time to defeat the Rocket Nazis on the Orient Express, and into an old west where magic and monsters were very real. I’ve recreated settings from my players’ favorite media franchises and taken them along on adventures beside their favorite book/television/movie characters. I say I’ve ‘taken’ players because as soon as I could, I got my Gamemaster chops and started creating- started writing- adventures for my friends and players.

Why, you say? If writing was your first passion and your first love, why not turn those ideas into books that have at least a chance of lining your pockets and reaching way more people than the four to six at your gaming table? The answer to that lies in two words; instant gratification.

I could spend a few months writing a book and then (back then at least) I could spend a few more months submitting it to publishers and agents where it might (never did) get picked up and then make it onto a book store shelf where it might/maybe get bought and read. Odds are good

I don’t know these folks, but they look like they’re enjoying themselves.

I would never know whether or not anyone enjoyed what I’d spent so much time working on. Alternatively, I could spend a month creating a RPG Campaign and then- once a week or so -see the looks on my players faces as they enjoyed the fruits of my labor. I got to hear them laugh, see the surprise or revulsion in their eyes, and watch as they were pulled out of their world of everyday banality and into the one that I had created for them where they were the heroes, the people that mattered.

I don’t know many novelists that can say they got to see all that as people read their books.

These days, my gaming life is pretty much behind me. Thanks to Amazon and the opportunities in self-publishing, I can take all those ideas and plots that I established at the gaming table and write the books that they could have been. They won’t be the same stories that were told over clattering dice and pizza, but the basic premises will be the same. In fact, my current trilogy is the setting I created for a Savage Worlds campaign that I ran for my most recent group. The story isn’t nearly the same, but there’s enough of it there that I know the people who were at that table will get a smile as they read them.

The point? Only this; stories and the means to tell them are everywhere and we shouldn’t be too quick to judge one medium over another. Fantasy football leagues are role-playing games for people that dream of owning NFL teams. The vast majority will never get to trade players and negotiate contracts any more than the girl that plays a Sorceress in a D&D game will get to throw a real fireball, but each of those experiences carries some sense of comfort and escape for the player. As creators. we should not underestimate the value of different storytelling mediums or the potential for inspiration when other people start weighing in on the seeds of your ideas. We are all characters in our own story, reacting and choosing to the roll of circumstance’s dice. Gaming just seems like a natural extension of that.

Thanks for reading.

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 Ari Marmell’s Hot Lead, Cold Iron delivered the most fun in a reading experience that I’ve had in awhile. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a silly book or anything like that, it’s a hard boiled detective novel through and through with one little twist- the hard boiled detective in question is an exiled noble of the Aes Sidhe. It’s Raymond Chandler writing Irish and Scottish folklore. It’s not hard to see it as Harry Dresden’s Chicago in the 1930s (Ari? Jim? I know you guys read this, so get on that joint project, would ya?)

All of that makes it a great read, but here’s the real thing that makes this one a gem: Marmell exhaustively researched and used the history, the slang, and the common vernaculars of the 1930s to dress up the character’s dialogue without doing it so much that it became distracting. He did it so well that it got to a point that I found myself reading parts of it in Humphrey Bogart’s voice. Couple that with the unique magical system and a very likable main character and you’ve got a winner all the way. I haven’t gotten to the second book yet, Hallow Point, but it is definitely on my reading list. Check this one out.  Hot Lead, Cold Iron on Amazon

This next one is one that I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. Author Craig Schaefer is the writer behind the Daniel Faust series of Dark Urban Fantasy novels. They are- hands down -one of my favorite sets out there. Harmony Black is a spin off of that series starring the character of the same name who appeared in the Faust books as one of Faust’s antagonists. Do not take this to mean she is the villain by any stretch of the imagination. Harmony is a tough as nails, by the book, FBI agent who just also happens to be a witch. In her and Faust’s world, though, there is no wizened council of elders overlooking the magical world and enforcing its laws. In their world, the magical community polices itself because they all know that keeping their world a secret is the key to keeping their world alive.

That being said, though, the powers that be- ergo, the U.S. Government -aren’t ignorant to the existence of their world, so Special Agent Harmony Black gets recruited into a clandestine task force that is charged with dealing with threats from the magical world, often with extreme prejudice. I won’t ruin any of the plot for you, but if you like police procedurels with an edge of dark magic, this one will not disappoint; missing kids, terrifying monsters, conspiracies, plot twists, even a touch of the romantic- it’s all there. You don’t have to have read the Daniel Faust books to enjoy Harmony Black but I strongly  reccommend both of these series if you like the Urban Fantasy genre even a little. The second Harmony Black book, Red Knight Falling, is due out in April so grab this one now and get a feel for the worlds of Craig Schaefer. Harmony Black on Amazon

That’s it for this week, dear reader. I’m plugging away at the third book in my Paragons Trilogy, Unveiled and hope to have it out about the same time as the next Harmony Black book (though I’m quite certain I won’t see the kind of launch Schaefer’s likely to have ).  See you next week and, as always, thanks for reading. (Now go get those books. They’re really good!)

 

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Say the word “genre” to the average person and they’ll either not be quite sure what you mean or they’ll immediately think of the most popular examples: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Horror, and- perhaps -Erotica. The fact, though, is that genre is a tangled, overlapping web of story elements and sub-sets that encompasses not only all of fiction-dom, but reaches far into the bowels of non-ficton as well.  Dig deep enough and I’d wager you could easily find a hundred or more distinct genres and sub-genres .

Why is this? Why can’t we keep it simple and say that if it has advanced science that doesn’t exist in the real world then it’s Science Fiction? If it has dragons and characters with magic swords, then it’s fantasy? If its about a couple overcoming odds to find true love, then it’s romance and so on? I think the answer lies in this quote by Alan Moore:  

Authentic stories- stories that really feel like they’re about people that could actually exist -aren’t going to be easily pigeonholed. Everyone’s life has a little of this and a little of that going on at one time or another. On some level, we all deal with everything,  even if it’s the absence of a thing that everyone else chose. Authentic stories- even ones with dragons, spaceships, and bodice busting true love -need to mirror that confluence of experiences that exists in real life.

There’s a catch, though.

The typical reader doesn’t want real life in their genre fiction. They want the authentic story, they want the characters to feel real, but what they mostly want is that flavor of escapism that they most love. Whether they want to be swept up into a galactic struggle to defeat the evil empire, an epic, magical quest to throw a ring into a volcano, or a love affair on a doomed ocean liner, what readers want most is to get away from real life if only for a few minutes. They want a story that pulls them out of the real and into the warm embrace of something that thrills them or makes them cry or surprises them. Most importantly, though, they want to pulled into something that makes them forget about the stresses and banalities of everyday existence.

Thing is, we all have that sweet spot, that escapist bliss point that pulls us deeper and speaks to us more clearly than the other things do. When we find that, we need to isolate it so it’s easier to find when we want to come back to it. That’s how we end up with sub-genres like Epic Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Hard Science Fiction, Space Opera, Techno-Thriller, Cozy Mystery, and about a hundred others. We are humans and- in a very general sense -humans like labels. Labels make things easy.

That’s where word slinging, story stitching, dream catching people like me come in. We are the writers and film makers and poets and game designers and actors and artists- in short, we are the storytellers, the escapism dealers here to give you everything you need. It’s our job to dig through and add to the colossal genre salad that exists so that the consumers of this imagination salad can always get a fresh bite of what they most enjoy with just enough of a spicy tweak to make it stand out.

The danger lies in the tweaking, though. Once in awhile, something shows up that doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the salad. Some crisp, leafy thing that most people don’t recognize and are suddenly very suspicious of. It’s that new thing that we don’t have a label for and that makes us look away or- in the best cases -cautiously curious. That, dear reader, is where you will find my stories.

Now, I’m not trying to sell anybody here. Truth is, I tend to try and read outside so-called ‘genre restrictions’ and there are a LOT of great stories out there that no one is reading. My current books are about people with superpowers. Not superheroes- no capes, cowls, powered armor, secret IDs or any of the other tropes of pure superhero fiction -but, rather, authentic characters who can suddenly do amazing things and discover truths about the world that were previously hidden from them. There are also elements of the Horror, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Thriller genres. Because this trilogy has so many elements, though, and can’t really be pigeonholed into one specific genre, I have dubbed them “Superhuman Thrillers” thus creating my own sub-genre that- let’s face it -NO ONE gives a damn about.

What if they did, though? No one had heard of Vamperotica until Anne Rice and Laurell K Hamiliton showed us another side of the Horror genre. We can thank Tom Clancy for the Techno-thriller. Nobody knew what a super-spy was until James Bond came on the scene all those years ago. Go back even farther and you can find the birth of Superheroes in the seeds of the Men of Mystery pulps of the early 20th Century.

So, I want a new genre; The Superhuman Thriller. Not campy, not colorful, but authentic. Compare it to Jessica Jones, Heroes, The 4400, Chronicle, The Misfits, and a lot of other TV shows if you need video reference. In literature, you can site any number of examples (and I have in a previous post; Jessica Jones and the Superhero/Superhuman Dynamic). A normal person suddenly thrust into incredible circumstances with an amazing new ability to deal with. I like that. It deserves its own label.

Lastly, dear reader, if you are a person who likes their escapism in one flavor and one flavor only, I encourage you to branch out. Try something you’ve never had before. Romance reader? Pick up a Fantasy novel. Fantasy reader? Try a gritty Noir Mystery on for size. The breadth and depth of Genre Fiction is near to limitless. Dive in, drink deep, and savor as much as you can.

Thanks for reading.

The Paragons Trilogy

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For those that are paying attention;

 To be fair, though, there’s only about five of you and I’ve only missed three or four Monday posts, but I have reasons. Really, I do.

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! A little belated, I know, but see, one of the many things I’ve done this year is work with a builder to construct a new home. Now- fun fact -when you build a new home in my area that’s located on a street that didn’t exist prior to the house being built, law requires utilities be run to the house prior to occupancy- no brainer, right?Cable and Internet, though, are not considered utilities so you have to call your preferred provider and ask them pretty please with sugar on top to run said service to your house. To do this, though, they have to run service to that shiny new street you live on and that means that they have to do surveys and check on line placements and all this other digital thaumaturgy that eludes me. End result is; you get to live without cable and internet for at least a few weeks. Now, for a guy like me who’s trying to publish books and build enough of a secret society of readers so I can earn a little extra coffee money that’s kind of like …

Well, maybe not quite that bad. I may not share Dexter’s rage issues, but I understand.

Anyway, no internet, no posting because I have pudgy fingers that do not appreciate little phone keyboards.

SO, 2015, right?

It was kind of a weird year for this humble Wordstitcher. I wrote about a quarter of a million words worth of novels and other assorted keyboard wanderings, I moved twice while awaiting for the aforementioned house to be completed, I got involved in my local literary arts community, I started exploring social media and the online world (up to and including this website and blog) I watched my kid’s interests blossom into something a little more mature than stuffed animals and cartoons (Robotics and Equestrianism, respectively), and I submitted and was rejected- politely and professionally -by yet another big publisher leading me to go all in with my Indie Publishing efforts. What did I learn from all this?

I learned that two adults, two young kids, two dogs, and one cat who are all accustomed to having room to spread out for privacy should not live in a two bedroom apartment together. It tests their relationships. I learned that getting the work done means sitting down and doing the damn work every single day and- for me at least -word count goals and writing in sprints is the key to success. I learned that Social Media should be about 95% chit-chat and socializing and about 5% casually mentioning that you have something that people might be interested in reading/buying. I learned that the world of publishing and authorship is changing drastically from what the average Joe and Jane Doe think it is and that traditional author contracts are not the instant riches that those same Joes and Janes seem to think. They are, in fact, very heavily slanted in the publisher’s favor the vast majority of the time. I learned that readers of genre fiction really want variations on the same thing over and over again rather than something totally new (more on that next week). I learned that most people still think that most Indie published work is crap (they are sometimes correct, but for fuck’s sake look at some of the best sellers from last decade. There is NO accounting for taste.) Finally, I learned that I need to overcome my introverted nature and quit acting like I’m 78 instead of 48. No, I’m not handling aging well, but that’s another post.

So here I stand staring down the shiny barrel of a freshly polished and ready to rock 2016 and all I can hear is Clint Eastwood whispering, “Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?”

I do.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions because they’ve always seemed just kind of lip service to what we wish we actually had the conviction to accomplish. I’m more of a goal setter.  Last year, I set the goal of having three novels (completed trilogy) and two short stories for sale in the kindle store by February 2016 (I posted the first book in February 2015). Because of all the moving and the difficulties I’ve had settling into a workspace, I’m way behind on Book Three and will probably miss that goal by about a month or so. Still, you only fail if you quit and quitting isn’t really in my wheelhouse. I’ll take the second place trophy and the lesson that routine is my professional friend.

I’m going to stick to that model but expand it to this: I’ll have another trilogy on Amazon and a free book to give away as an incentive to join my e-mail list by 1 Jan 2017. I’ll have The Paragons Trilogy available on iBooks, Kobo, and anyplace else that looks like they might like me. I am also going to start exploring the audiobook space but that can get pricey fast and I’ll need quite a few more sales before I can seriously do that (doesn’t hurt to have a knowledge base in place, though).

More personally, I’m going to take better care of myself. I need to lose a large dog’s worth of weight and I’m WAY too fond of Vodka and Whiskey. I will make long walks or short, intense workouts a part of my week days and I will cut my drinking back to a more moderate level (maybe just on the weekends, not sure yet). My diet is actually pretty good (I call it paleo-ish) but I am going to start watching the portion sizes. I love to cook so it’s easy to get carried away.

Those are the goals. I’ll Let you know in a year how I did. Whatever your goals are, I hope 2016 is full of contentment and prosperity. See you next week.

Thanks for reading.

The Paragons Trilogy

 

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Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Vine, Flickr, Pinterest, YouTube, Periscope, and, of course the 800 pound gorilla, Facebook: Social Media. Social fucking Media.

Okay, that was a little harsh. I don’t hate Social Media, not at all. I actually find it a pleasant diversion most of the time. Like a lot of people, I had a Facebook page that I had put up at the request of friends and family for a long time that I looked at sporadically at best. Like I said, a pleasant diversion so long as I avoided the folks looking to debate politics or religion.

Then, about a year ago, I learned about Kindle Direct Publishing and decided to put all these years of writing in the dark out into the light of day. As I wrote my books and tried to learn about the mechanics of being a sawbuck chasing story-monkey in the modern era, one thing became abundantly clear: you have to be on Social Media. Social Media has the combined potential to reach billions of people. Social Media is a built in platform for your work and your message and your brand and your profile and your links to sell direct and your name and your…well, everything!

That is all true and reasonably common knowledge. So, I jumped in feet first and now I frequent Twitter and Instagram as well as having a Facebook page dedicated to my writing life (because, let’s face it, most people who are on my personal family page really don’t give a shit at best and think I have a cute hobby at worst), this blog and website and, most recently, I’ve started looking over Wattpad, a social media site for storytellers.

I’ve been juggling the Social Media chainsaws for a little less than a year now. I’ve run ads and promoted free giveaways and gained followers and posted and retweeted and Vined and reposted and posted some more and re-vined until-

 

 

Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

I’ve learned a few things in the months since I started my journey into Social Media land:

1) I’m getting old, because most of what’s happening online seems to be happening between people who I want to check IDs on. That’s more of a personal issue between writer-me and dad-me, though.

2) The biggest problem with finding readers and building a fan base on really any social media platform I use is that everybody in the freaking world and their entire family are trying to do the same thing or sell something to somebody- anybody – and we all get lost in the tsunami of commerce that ensues. Do not get me wrong: I’ve got nothing against people pitching their wares and products and trying to make an honest buck with a good product or service. Hell, I’m right there with them (BOOKS ONE AND TWO OF THE PARAGONS TRILOGY AVAILABLE HERE: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016QB9412 BOOK THREE COMING SOON!) but I think that in the tumult of information, we all get lost in the shuffle.

3) If you’re one of the hordes of us who are turning Social Media into a machine gun that fires digital billboards, then you’d better have a nice large fan base already in place if you want unpaid self-promotion to do you any good. I’ve got a couple of books out. They’re a genre mash-up really- a little superhero, a little urban fantasy, a little sci-fi thriller –but I think they’re pretty well written and edited and I’ve got a small number of reviews from total strangers who found them entertaining. I’ve tried promoting them with both paid and unpaid promotions. Unpaid- even on free giveaway days –barely moved the sales needle if at all. Paid ones did better, but I still have yet to have one pay for itself (that being said, I feel I should say that I have yet to get the oft lauded Boobkbub ad that Indies like me pine for). Just because millions of people have the potential to see your product doesn’t mean that they will or that they will click a link even if they do.

4) If you’re an author, I really don’t think Social Media is for selling.

Yep. I’ve been doing it wrong; Oh, so wrong.

You know what social media is good for? Connecting with people. Finding similar interests and experiences and generally conversing with people around the world you might otherwise never have had the chance to get to know. Even if you never lay eyes on them in the real world, you have a means to exchange ideas that didn’t exist a few decades ago. It’s good for, you know, socializing. Right there in the name. Who’d a thunk it?

Aside from mistaking it for my own personal marketing firm, I’ve made a few other Social Media faux paus, though, the worst of which was falling for the false sense of familiarity that you get when you follow someone long enough and read enough of their posts. I felt bad for a writer I follow because of a slew of harsh- and I felt undeserved –reviews that he was getting on a recent release. So, I sent him a private message offering him free copies of my books as a way to say thanks for all of his work that I had enjoyed, including the one that was getting slammed. I told him I didn’t want anything at all in return and I was sincere in that. Thing is, I did this to a professional, gets paid for this shit writer that I didn’t know from Adam like we were old buddies or something and I’ve never even met the guy.

He promptly ignored me and- after I’d had some time to think about it –I felt like a pathetic little wanna-be fanboy stalker. It was a stupid and poorly thought out thing to do, but is the essence of my bewilderment at the Social Media experience. Social Media is, indeed, social, but it’s like going to a party where everyone attending is some kind of undercover spy or criminal; you might be able to see their faces, but you really don’t know how much of what you hear or see is genuine. It’s a metropolis of open anonymity.

So what’s this old dog trying to learn new tricks to do? Well, when faced with things like this, I’m always reminded of a Maya Angelou quote; “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

So, I’m going to do better. I’m going to shift my focus away from pushing me and my work on the world and try to find the people who love the same things I love and talk about that. I’m going to try and make this new class of acquaintance that I’ve recently learned about- the internet friend.

In short, I’m going to try to makes connections more than sales and build relationships instead of a fan base. This will be harder for me. I’m an introvert by nature, but I’m also a man that knows life happens out in the world and not within the confines and safety of my little office. It’ll mean opening up a little more and being a little more genuine with that metropolis of strangers. I love what I do, though,- profitable or not -and in this day and age, this is how it’s done. So, I’m in.

Oh, and if by some chance the writer that I sent that awkward email to happens to be reading this (you know who you are); Sorry, man. That was a weird thing to do.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

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Anybody that knows me knows that poetry is not really one of my strengths. I only get it in the most basic of ways and it doesn’t resonate with me the way that it does with so many of my poet friends. I’m a story guy. Plot, character, theme, pace, verisimilitude: these are the sirens that sing to my creator self.

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, though, I accepted the good-natured challenge of said poet friends and took a stab at one. It’s not grandiose or world changing, but it isn’t horrible either. It’s not horrible enough that it actually found a home in the winter issue of Hypertrophic Literary magazine among a number of other- better -works of literary fiction and poetry that are outside my normal wheelhouse of high octane genre fiction.

With HL’s permission, I’m reprinting my poem below along with a link to the latest issue of the magazine. I encourage everybody to check it out and see if you don’t find a fresh new voice to follow. Enjoy.

I REMEMBER

I remember Kowalski,

Smallest kid on the basketball court,

A deeper voice than any boy had a right to,

A laugh that carried his soul on the wind.

I remember Wendy,

Blonde hair, eyes like thunderclouds,

Walking away from her boyfriend to dance with me,

My first in so many things.

I remember Mike,

Late nights and clattering dice,

Walking worlds that existed in the fields of our imagination,

Nerd rages and laughter that no ‘regular’ person could ever understand.

I remember Tony,

Beer, girls, and hotel rooms that would never be the same again,

Loud music, dark Chicago alleys, and bloody knuckles,

A treestump of a man that carried more spirit than any forest.

Tomorrow, I will wake and greet the sun that rises,

Over a world that they aren’t in anymore.

I will kiss my wife, hug my children,

And tell my grandchildren that I love them from afar.

I’ll laugh and sing and drink too much,

I’ll write and wonder and dream,

I’ll cook and dine and ignore the ache of time in my bones,

And do all the other things they never got the chance to.

Through it all, I will remember.

Because that’s all that I can do.

                                                  C.Steven Manley

 

Hypertrophic Lit on Amazon

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