Kane Gilmour's Blog

Hey. New book out today. A short story collection. I’ll keep it brief. A bunch of short stories. Some a little long. Some pretty short. One that’s not really a story but a collection of shorter, non-fiction writings. Some behind-the-scenes Afterwords for each tale.

Will there be more novels coming soon? Yes. Anything else I want to add? Paperback will be live soon if it isn’t already. This one will be in audiobook format by the end of the year.

Hopefully you’ll find something you like in it.

Take a look: https://amzn.to/3Uz0MFW

More like he hates my guts after lugging this 850 page behemoth up to my door. I’ve got the two Silver Age Omnibuses for the Legion of Super-Heroes, and now today, I have the omnibus for DC’s John Carter rip-off character, Adam Strange. Don’t get me wrong, I love the character. I probably even prefer him. DC Comics really used the better idea by having Adam be an archeologist and an adventurer who needs to travel the Earth constantly looking for another Zeta beam to take him home to his beloved.

This massive slab of book is beautifully recolored and reprints all of Adam Strange’s appearances in SHOWCASE #17-19, MYSTERY IN SPACE #53-100 and 102, and STRANGE ADVENTURES #157, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 226, 235 and 241-243. Takes you from 1958 all the way to the 1970s. Great stories from Gardner Fox, Dave Wood, Jerry Siegel, and Denny O’Neil and amazing art from Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowsky, Murphy Anderson, and more. A perfect slice of The Silver Age of American Comic Books.

Not sure when the hell I’ll ever get to read this, but it’s looking like I can start at Christmas.

Just delivered. I’m catching up on The Black Archives, the excellent series of critical monographs from Obverse Books on individual Doctor Who stories. I have yet to review this series, but I’ll get to it at some point.

Oooh. Shiny.

Pictured here, are volumes 29, 30, 33, and 34. The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Horror of Fang Rock, and Battlefield. While I haven’t read the other three authors, range editor Philip Purser-Hallard’s work on the series (4: Dark Water/Death in Heaven and 13: Human Nature/The Family of Blood, the latter co-authored with Naomi Jacobs) has been quite good. If you’re in the UK, you can grab these straight from the publisher’s website (or from Amazon.co.uk), but if you’re in the US or elsewhere, head to Lulu. Very affordable, and concise examinations of your favorite DW stories.

And the mail just keeps coming. I’m not complaining, mind you. I ordered this one back in July, and finally, it arrived. I have three things to say about this magazine so far.

1: It looks fabulous. Nicely laid out, good graphics, good chunk of reading at 80 pages, and even the ads are cool looking. I’ve started the Victor LaValle story in it, and I’m enjoying that, and all five of the poems throughout by Stephanie M. Wytovich are cool and creepy. I expect the rest of the stories will be great.

Here’s the actual Table of Contents, if you were curious.

2: The magazine that never dies is now edited by Jonathan Maberry (and this issue includes a story from him as well), so you know the content will be really good. This issue’s content was all curated, but at some point in the future, they will be accepting subs.

3: Their customer service is straight up lousy. That’s not to be a poor reflection on Jon, either. He’s in charge of content only. But literally everyone else involved with the magazine, from the publisher to the copy editors, to the webmaster, needs the sack. When I ordered a copy of this magazine in July, I received an automated email thanking me for my order. I also got one of those “You need to verify your account” things from a guy named Troy. The link Troy sent? Did not work. When I replied to Troy? No response. When I replied to Troy a few weeks later again? Nothing. When I checked the webpage for where I would enter my login details–if I could even get my account verified? No place to log in at all.

Speaking of that website, it has a cool motion graphic of a creature crawling on the ceiling, but it was missing crucial information like, oh, I don’t know–how to contact them! Or the table of contents for the sole issue of the magazine they have for sale so far. Or the dimensions of the magazine (it’s standard magazine size at 8×10.5, you’re welcome). Or how long shipping would take. There was no further communication. No “You issue has shipped” automated e-mail. Just stony silence.

Digging a little deeper, I did find not one, but two contact e-mail addresses, where I attempted to contact them and inquire about the magazine I ordered, which had not shipped. No reply. They have a phone number, too, if you’re very determined and you dig really deep. I’m sure you can see where this is going. No one answers it. And yes, once I received the issue, I found multiple typos in just the first few pages alone. So everyone, Publisher down through editors and web monkey? They all suck. Their designer deserves some top-notch credit, and so does Jon for curating what looks to be an outstanding selection of material. But the rest of the company needs to learn quite a bit about dealing with their customers.

13 bucks plus 5 for shipping gets you a copy of the magazine that never dies, but if you click here, you can count on the fact that the customer service is already dead.

I’ve got mail again. This time from my good friend and soon-to-be audio narrator for some of my books, Dan Delgado. Dan was kind enough to send me, unrequested and as a surprise, the following T-shirt, which I’ll wear the hell out of, and the very cool iron-on/sew-on embroidered “Baba Yaga” patch in the corner of the logo. Thank you, Dan! While I don’t really have anything I can put that patch on, it’ll live nicely next to some of my other souvenirs from having attended the John Wick 3 premiere in New York, this past May (seen below). Yes, that coin is real.

I’ve been a fan of Tony Harris’s artwork for many years, as I’ll expound upon soon here. Never read The Whistling Skull, so I’m excited about that one. And I gave the whole New 52 a miss a few years back when it came out, because I knew things would revert to the default continuity (and they did in 2016). So I hadn’t read Scott Snyder’s Batman back then. But when I was down in FL this summer, I picked up The Court of Owls, and it was pretty good. Helps that Books-A-Million has all these for dirt cheap, in their discount graphic novel section. Not pictured is Vol 1–The Court of Owls, and Vol 2–The City of Owls (which I’ve also read.) Also missing is Vol 6–Graveyard Shift, which arrived the day after I took the picture. But I got every third book seen here for free. Of course, it’s going to take me a few years to read these, because I only have so much time…But it’s nice to have the collection of Shiny New Things.

My nearly 15-year-old son, who is already 6’2″ (a full 2 inches taller than his old man), just returned from a 10-day trip to Seattle to visit his Aunt.

Knowing I like Doctor Who, he brought me a gift.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pleased to discover that The Crypt of Dracula has been chosen as #6 on this list of “9 Dark Books Full of Horror and Mystery” by the Ezvid Wiki. Thanks very much.

 

Check out the full list here.

 

 

New Year’s Eve. Second blog post of the entire year of 2018. That should suggest something about what this year was like for me.

When I wrote my 2017 year-end wrap up, I finished by noting I was sick. That was a year ago, December. I had no idea how long that would last. I was happy and in love (and still am) but I was ill. No biggie, I had thought. Just a cold. Or the flu. But it was far more than that. I was down until early May. Five and a half months of runny nose, congestion, coughing my brains out, and what turned out to be actual pneumonia. Four batches of antibiotics. All as a result of what was either one super-crazy infection, or multiple overlapping infections. Either way, after the year that was 2017, spending the first half of 2018 practically (and on many days actually) bedridden meant my productivity for the year was going to be crap. And that’s exactly what happened. There were precisely two publications in 2018 that had contributions from me. I’ll get to those in a bit.

But the first half of the year was shot. No writing occurred, but some was supposed to, despite my weakened condition. I was going to be doing a ghostwriting project late last year or early this year, but it fell through. Just as well, as I was laid low. I was barely making it through the day job, and a few freelance gigs to make ends meet. May finally arrived, bringing spring weather, and my lungs adapted to the slightly warmed air. I was expecting to get right on the productivity horse, but life had two more things to fling at me as soon as my health rebounded: my partner being ill, and me hitting a wall of exhaustion.

Michelle had been dealing with strange neurological symptoms, and was now seeing doctors and getting MRIs, and dealing with the (at that time) likelihood of a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Her doctors have since moved away from MS, but the spring was filled with doctor appointments for us both, and a lot of worry and concern. And each day when I wanted to write, I was wiped out. I could breathe, and I was well again, but the stress was just flaying me. At 5pm I was collapsing. So the spring bled into the summer with family stuff, medical stuff, and me making a concerted effort to spend some time with my kids after the hell of 2017 and the long months of me being sick. We did summer stuff and prepared Michelle for going back to college to pursue the studies she’d needed to put on hold in the past—and we dealt with the worries of whether a debilitating disease was going to derail her yet again.

That’s not to say I wasn’t busy. Kids were coming and going, and I was helping my friend Chris Kuzneski with many of the production aspects of getting his latest thriller, The Malta Escape, ready for release.

I was wrapping up my work with Scott Vaughn on Warbirds of Mars, the property he dreamed up back in the last decade. My work with the series is over, but Doc is keeping the Warbirds flying in his new partnership with artist Mike Debalfo.

My mom came for two visits, up from Florida, and Michelle and I had to deal with getting a new bed, as the one we had was causing us intense back strain.

Late summer meant Robinsonfest 2018 with me, Jeremy Robinson, and Xander Weaver. It was a slightly more subdued affair than 2017’s all-star weekend, but it was still a huge blast. We had a smaller, intimate group of folks, many of whom were returning for the third or even fourth time. We visited a farm, and dined at crazy-good restaurants. There were video games, sweaty lazer tag games, and a whale watching cruise that included plowing right through a storm at sea.

One of the things we do for folks who attend Robinsonfest is try to give the participants some cool gifts. And what’s the best thing authors can give voracious readers? Yep. Books. The last three years at the ’Fest, we’ve handed out copies of a little volume called Undisclosed. These books are only available at Robinsonfest, and are not for sale anywhere. The books usually include short stories and previews from upcoming books. This year’s volume, pictured below, included something a little different: story fragments from books that never happened, and in many cases never will. My own contributions were a slice of the sequel to Viking Tomorrow (which might happen some day), a chunk from a work in progress called Hollow Earth, a chapter from an abandoned espionage novel called Storm Front, and a preview of the upcoming final Chess Team novel, Kingdom (more about this one in a bit).

As I said, if you want a copy of any of the Undisclosed volumes (there have been three so far), then you have to come to Robinsonfest. But you should come anyway. We have the best time, make the best friends, and 2019’s weekend will be in the New Hampshire White Mountains during peak autumn foliage season (aka: “Leaf Peeping season”). Dates are finalized, even though the sign up information isn’t uploaded to Jeremy’s website just yet.

When I got back home from the fest it was time to get a different car, because Michelle and I each had one that wasn’t up to snuff for Vermont winters. It took a little time. We settled on a lovely little Subaru. A vehicle that seems to be everywhere up here. But I figured out why. All wheel drive and heated seats.

And then before we knew it, it was November, and everyone was sick again, although this time, thankfully, it was ordinary colds all around. November had another surprise for me, though. An anthology I contributed to, and which I had hinted at last year, was finally released. Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. This sequel to the breakaway hit first anthology from 2014 contains 16 all new Kaiju stories from greats like Lee Murray, Jonathan Green, Melanie Meadors, Jeremy Robinson, and yours truly. Just like the last volume, this one has beautiful illustrations, too. Unfortunately there have been some production problems that have led to the paperback being delayed, but the Kindle version is available now, and the paperback should come in spring.

Through December I was working on, and still am working on, Kingdom, which Jeremy and I had briefly called ‘Checkmate.’ The book will be the final Jack Sigler / Chess Team novel, and will also, for now, close the door on the Cerberus Group series of novels. Obviously as the last book in two different series, we’re aiming to make it bigger, bolder, and crazier than anything that’s come before. The book is due for a late spring 2019 release. Here’s the purty cover.

And I did get one other piece of writing accomplished in 2018, which will hopefully make the cut for Scarlet Galleon Publications’ 2019 vampire anthology, Dark Hallows III: Blood Moon. The publisher was kind enough to let me submit a vampire story well after the original deadline for the book. I decided to make the story, “No Hallows’ Eve,” a continuation of my short Dracula novel, The Crypt of Dracula. But the story takes place in Scotland, and it features a new protagonist facing down the dreaded lord of darkness. But for all you Dracula fans, fear not. If for some reason the story doesn’t make the cut for the anthology, I’ll release it as a standalone tale. I have a cover ready, just in case.

So that was my year. And if you couldn’t read between the lines on some of these, this is where the list of projects I mentioned in late 2017 currently stand:

Project Poltergeist: Cancelled.
Ice Sheet: Coming in 2019. No, really.
The anthology I hinted at was Kaiju Rising II, mentioned above.
Project Fletch: Will be done in 2019, but I’ll be submitting it to a Big 5 publisher in New York. If it sees publication from them, it probably won’t be released until 2021.
The New York Trip I mentioned last year was supposed to be in April of 2018. It was cancelled. The reason why should be something I can talk about in 2019. Which will hopefully also mean some very good news in 2019.
Project Velocity: This was a screenplay I was going to be bringing to a meeting in New York. Shelved for the moment. I still want to do the story—either as a screenplay or as a novel.
Project Phantom: 2019 will see some big things for this project, starting with a very small book collecting some short stories.
Project Checkmate: became the novel Kingdom, which I’m working on now. Release date of 2019.
Project Hammer: Hopefully 2019’s Halloween release.
The Pyrenees Incident: the Jason Quinn novella. Hopefully in 2019, but probably not until the end of the year. More likely 2020.

 

That’s it. 2019 is on the way. Literally. It’s 11:15pm on New Year’s Eve as I type this. Here’s hoping it’s a spectacular year for all of you. I’ll do my best to get you some fantastic reading. Hold on. The good weather is on the way, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

 

 

Kane Gilmour

(From his underground bunker,

Central Vermont)

I’m a long time DC Comics fan, so when I heard there would be a DC Universe streaming service with movies, TV series, and comics, I was all in to find out more. When they announced the service, I was first to sign up for the newsletter, and the Beta program, and I even pre-ordered a year of the service (saves you about 20 bucks a year). But then I didn’t hear anything. No Beta invite. No newsletters. About two weeks before the launch date, Sep 15, I sent them a polite note, expressing my disappointment, and I promptly got the Beta invite. (Sometimes it pays to be a whiner. And no, I’m not affiliated with them in any way.)

So, you’re on the fence and want to know whether it’s going to be worth your coin? What, exactly, is going to be behind that paywall? I’ve got your answers.

Now keep in mind, that in addition to the following list, DCU says they’ll be adding in more Batman stuff for the launch on Sep 15, since it’ll be ‘Batman Day’ (and yes, apparently that’s a thing). They have also stated that they’ll be dumping more content into the site on a regular basis. I noticed one thing removed in the week leading up to launch, also. 2010’s All-Star Superman was there yesterday, but is gone as I write this. But at the time of the writing, here’s what the site has:

Movies

1978 Superman
1980 Superman II
1983 Superman III
1987 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Animated Movies

1993 Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
2000 Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
2003 Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman
2007 Superman: Doomsday
2008 Batman: Gotham Knight
2009 Wonder Woman
2009 Green Lantern: First Flight
2010 Batman: Under the Red Hood
2011 Green Lantern: Emerald Knights
2011 Batman: Year One
2012 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1
2012 Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2
2013 Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox
2013 Justice League: War
2014 Son of Batman
2014 Batman: Assault on Arkham
2014 Batman vs. Robin
2014 Justice League: The Throne of Atlantis
2015 Batman: Bad Blood
2016 Justice League vs. Teen Titans
2017 Batman: Gotham by Gaslight
2018 The Death of Superman

*A word about the season counts on the TV Series: DCU counts their seasons a little differently than other sources. So for instance, they list 3 seasons for Teen Titans, but it’s actually all 5 of the seasons listed on Wiki.

Live Action TV Series

1952–1958 The Adventures of Superman (6 Seasons)
1975–1979 Wonder Woman (3 Seasons)
1988–1992 Superboy (4 Seasons)
1990–1991 The Flash (1 Season)
1993–1997 Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (4 Seasons)
2002 – 2003 Birds of Prey (1 Season)
2010–2011 Human Target (2 Seasons)
2014–2015 Constantine (1 Season)

Animated TV Series

Superman Max Fleischer Cartoons (all 17)
1973–1985 Super Friends (9 seasons)
1992–1995 Batman: The Animated Series (3 Seasons)
1996–2000 Superman: The Animated Series (3 Seasons)
1999–2001 Batman Beyond (3 Seasons)
2000–2004 Static Shock (4 Seasons)
2001–2004 Justice League: The Animated Series (2 Seasons)
2003–2006 Teen Titans (3 Seasons)
2004–2006 Justice League Unlimited (2 Seasons)
2006–2008 Legion of Super-Heroes (2 Seasons)
2008–2011 Batman: The Brave & The Bold (3 Seasons)
2010–present Young Justice (2 Seasons)

TV Movies

1974 Wonder Woman (Pilot for the unproduced TV series)
1979 Legends of the Superheroes
1987 The Spirit (at the time of writing inaccurately labelled as the 2008 film)

Serials

Superman (15 Chapters)

Documentaries

2006 Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman
2006 The Science of Superman
2008 Batman Tech
2008 Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight
2009 Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics

Shorts

Nearly all of the 150-ish DC Nation shorts, grouped by characters into ‘seasons’. Missing from these are the LEGO and Mad Magazine shorts. All the rest are there. You’ll also find the DC Showcase 2010 Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam Direct-to-DVD film. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, nine of the other shorts that were packaged with DVD animated films from 2003–2015 are available yet.

Comics

So what about the Comics? They have 2500 comics. I wasn’t really that impressed with the selection. It’s a cross section of tales from across their history. Some of the story arcs that you would think would be there in their entirety—like, say, The Dark Knight Returns. Instead there’s just Issue #1. They just give you a few issues, as a tasty sampler. Presumably they still want you to buy comics, so shorter story arcs and mini-series are incomplete. Other series like James Robinson and Tony Harris’s Starman might have 35 issues (out of 80 total) and all the specials. So the ‘curation’ is really a thing that will bother people, I suspect. It seems pretty random, and only a few series are there in their entireties. That said, DCU plans to dump more comics on the site regularly, and the actual comic-reader software is pretty great, allowing you to view a comic page by height or width, or even panel by panel. There’s even an automated function that will move the panels for you, so you can sit back on the sofa and read Batman comics on your 55-inch screen without touching your remote. My feeling, though, is that the comics section will be appreciated more by people new to comics and not long time readers. Veterans will want to stick with Comixology or buying the printed copies.

The Rest

There’s more. Of course, there is. The site also has a nifty Encyclopedia section, where folks with OCD will enjoy reading about every little detail of a character’s history, and DCU has cleverly linked their content up so that if you just discovered The Ray and you want to read or view more about him, it’s a click away. There’s going to be a merchandise Shop, which wasn’t open at the time of this review. There’s also a Community (read: forum) where you can chat with other DC fanpeople and discuss the merits of Hal Jordan or Kyle Rayner as the best GL of all time. So far, there are no threads on it.

 

SUMMARY (TL; DR)

So is it worth the 7.99 a month or the pre-ordered price of 75 bucks? My answer would be yes—if you are interested in watching older DC TV shows and films. Even though there’s a lot of content missing right now, they still have a ton of content, and a lot of it is really good stuff. Batman: TAS in high def? Worth the price of admission alone. The charming 1940s cartoons and 1950s tv shows? Yep. 22 animated films? Yes. Heck, just watching the content on there now would probably take you until next year, and they will have added new content by then. The service is pretty affordable, and they tried to pimp it out with other goodies. If you’re interested in the TV and movies, this is your bag. But if you were hoping to have access to all of DC’s hundreds of thousands of comic books that you can’t find in trade paperbacks at your local book store? You’re going to be disappointed. So, instead, look at the site for its video content. Give it a try for a month. My guess is you’ll be charmed by the older content, and you’ll be happy with the new stuff once it starts filtering in. And let’s not kid ourselves, in five years or so, all the CW shows like Flash and Arrow will probably be on there exclusively, along with the recent films. Plus they’ll be doing original programming. Titans might look like a flush waiting to happen (to many of you) but the other shows (Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, and Stargirl) sound promising.