Jeffrey Thomas's Blog

Over the past few years the rights to a number of my books have reverted to me. In former days, one might have become very dispirited by this development, but this is the age of the eBook, dammit, and a book no longer has to recede into oblivion. Thus, I’ve gone and rereleased most of these books myself for the Kindle (and sometimes, in print versions as well). Most recently, I’ve created digital editions of the novels MONSTROCITY, DEADSTOCK, and BLUE WAR – all of them set in my dark future world of Punktown.

Now, MONSTROCITY (published by Prime in 2003, and subsequently a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel) had a digital release in 2011 by the eBook publisher Anarchy Books, but sadly they ceased operations this year. DEADSTOCK (published by Solaris Books in 2007, and subsequently a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award) was actually offered as a free digital book as a promotional gesture upon the publication of its follow-up, BLUE WAR, in 2008. But the digital DEADSTOCK is no longer available through Solaris, and there had never before been a digital version of BLUE WAR for sale.

Though there are more Punktown-based novels beyond this trio out there, still offered by other publishers, these three are loosely connected in more than just setting. MONSTROCITY involves a Lovecraft-inspired threat, and ends up focusing on a sinister company that produces bioengineered comestible life forms. This company is also featured in DEADSTOCK, which also presents Lovecraftian horrors. BLUE WAR eschews the Lovecraft angle (I was going for more of a Martin Cruz Smith/international thriller – in this case, interdimensional thriller – vibe) but carries over from DEADSTOCK, as its protagonist, the shape shifting private detective, Jeremy Stake.

In any case, I’ve had many requests for digital editions of DEADSTOCK and BLUE WAR, and so here they are at last. In their new incarnations, I hope people find these three novels to be worthy reads.

Click on these links:

MONSTROCITY

DEADSTOCK

BLUE WAR

Is it a con report? A story? A tribute? Let’s just call it one of the “Numbers of the bEast.”

– JET

*****

Joe Pulver was holding court in his office, this being the sidewalk in front of the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. In front of the restaurant McCormick and Schmick’s, housed within the hotel, to be more precise. When I walked up to him he was in conversation with some of our mutual writer friends, also attending the NecronomiCon, whom I had already met earlier in the day. Pulver was in animated conversation; I heard him say, as he stabbed the air with his cigarette for emphasis (causing Mike Griffin to take a cautious step backwards), “I just have one word. Cisco.”

Pulver and his wife Kat had just arrived, having flown in from Germany, and it was Kat who noticed me hovering behind him first. Pulver turned, and with an exclamation of delight gave me a hug. I joined the conversation at that point, which turned out to be anthologies. Pulver and the others were lamenting how the editors of mass market horror anthologies were not only inviting people from a limited circle of “go-to” people, but choosing rather tired themes for these books: zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, the Cthulhu Mythos. (We didn’t complain too much about the latter, though, it being a convention in honor of Lovecraft, and all of us were guilty of mining that vein.) I praised Pulver for choosing much more imaginative themes for the indie press anthologies he had edited or was in the process of editing. The award-winning Thomas Ligotti tribute anthology, the forthcoming Ramsey Campbell tribute anthology, a bunch of others in the pipe. Caligari…Begotten…

“This is what I wanted to talk to you about, brother,” Pulver said, taking my arm. He drew me away, a little further down Dorrance Street. “Excuse us,” he said to the others in his distinctive baritone.

While our friends went on chatting without us, Pulver looked up and down the street furtively then passed me an object he had taken from his shoulder bag and secreted in his palm. It was small, hard, smooth, cylindrical. Having worked in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant for years, I guessed a 5ml glass bottle.

I said, “Ah, Joe, thanks but I don’t partake.”

“No, no, no,” Pulver said. “It’s not like that. Look…consider that your invitation to the next anthology.”

“Oh man, thanks, Joe…I always appreciated that you invite me. So what’s the theme?”

“Everything you need to know is in there.”

So was there a message in the bottle? Clever. Was the theme castaways stranded on a tropical island? Genies unleashed from a magic bottle? Genies stranded on a tropical island? “How about guidelines? Word count? The anthology’s title?”

“Listen, you just put that under your pillow every night before you sleep, okay? Just don’t let your daughter near it…you put it away somewhere safe every morning. Okay?”

This was odd. Pulver was talking like a purveyor of the magical or mystical, and that didn’t seem like him, but I figured whatever this mysterious item was he meant for it to simply stimulate my imagination. It was a prop, that he maybe hoped would spark my creative engine on a subconscious level. After all, another friend, Ted Grau, had given me a chunk of Ray Bradbury’s demolished home and I kept it atop my writing desk in the hopes that it emanated creative vibrations, or at least generated a bit of inspiration.

Pulver said, “I’ve given those to the others I want in this book, but I don’t want any of you to discuss things with each other. You just dream on that thing, and whatever you write that comes from those dreams, well that’s the theme of the book. Trust me.”

“Well, okay. But how’d you get these…whatever they are into the country?”

“I have my sources, brother. Can’t say more, but…I have my sources.”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll definitely play along and see what comes to me, but in all fairness I’ve got to warn ya…I’ve been going through a bad dry spell. Writer’s block, lack of enthusiasm or discouragement or something.”

Joe said, “Well I have faith in you.”

*****

In my room in the Biltmore that night I examined the bottle that Pulver had given me, and which I’d pocketed with an imitation of his secrecy. It was dark brown in color, a vial meant to protect its contents – say, vitamins – from the light. Since I couldn’t see through the dark glass adequately, I unscrewed the vial’s lid and shook its contents out into my palm.

It was a tiny, organic-looking object, a translucent yellowish color like amber but soft and rubbery. Two conjoined bulbs and a little bit of stem. “What is this?” I asked myself aloud. “Mouse testicles? Dr. Strange’s pituitary gland?” I decided it was some kind of seed. Ultimately, like I said, probably just something innocuous serving as a prop. Pulver was hoping his weird fiction friends would find unique interpretations for it, but didn’t want us influencing each other by putting our heads together.

I returned the amber, rubbery object to the bottle and slipped it under my too soft, too bulky hotel pillows.

Well, I did have a weird dream that night, if that was Pulver’s hope, but in the morning I wondered if it had less to do with his enigmatic seed and more to do with the bottle of scotch Jack Haringa had brought to the party in Laird Barron’s room, which I’d attended before staggering back to my own.

I dreamed that I was standing on a sunbaked mud pan that extended to the horizon, though I couldn’t turn to look behind me (I couldn’t tell if I actually had a physical body in this dream). The cracked floor of mud or clay, however, was of a distinct yellow color, which in fact reminded me of the yellow-painted chunk of stucco from Ray Bradbury’s home that rested atop my desk. When I woke I wondered if that souvenir had contributed to my dream, based on my thoughts of the night before. In any case, just before I woke up (feeling queasy and disoriented from, I assumed, the scotch) a wind across the shattered plain – a wind I couldn’t feel – started to stir up a dust devil right in front of me. It grew tall, taller than me, and began to form a kind of column like a tornado’s funnel spout. I remembered feeling anxious…no, downright afraid…even as I took note that the dust that composed the column had an odd quality, glinting yellow like dust motes swimming in a slant of afternoon sunlight. Like flakes of gold shed over centuries from a strange, gilded idol.

I woke up before the column could thicken. Before it could solidify, I thought oddly as I contemplated the dream.

When I caught Pulver standing alone in front of the Biltmore that morning, a cigarette in one hand and a Styrofoam cup trailing an Earl Grey tag in the other, I whispered to him, “Hey Joe, I tried that thing under my pillow last night. Man, yeah, I had this funny dream…”

He held up his hand with the cigarette to stop me. “Good, good…but try it at home, after the con. In your own bed, brother. See what it brings you then.”

*****

So Pulver and Kat returned to Germany, the rest of our friends also sadly scattered to the winds, and I drove back to Massachusetts.

About a week after the convention, after most of the fond reports of it had circulated on Facebook, I sent Pulver an email…even though I had sensed, at the con, that he not only didn’t want me to discuss his mysterious anthology with the others he’d invited, but – for now, anyway – him either.

My email detailed the dream I’d had at the Biltmore Hotel, and then two that I’d had back home when I’d resumed the ritual of putting his vial under my pillow at night. I wrote:

In the second dream, the twirling column of golden dust started to take on the beginnings of form, a translucent sort of outline hovering just off the desert floor and looming over me, and I remember being gripped in terror looking up at it…but then I woke up. I had such a headache that morning that I called in sick at work. (Of course, I’d had a couple of glasses of gin the night before but I’m sure *that* had nothing to do with it…heh.)

No dreams for the next few nights – none that I recall, anyway – but in the third dream of the mud pan the towering shape manifested again, and this time, as one might now predict, it was somewhat clearer in its outlines. The thing looked to be made of long draped layers, like cloaks upon cloaks, but not so much made from cloth as from a translucent, amber-colored and glistening material. Organic membranes? Still, the top of this tall, mostly formless shape had a cloaked kind of aspect, like a hood or cowl, black inside, out of which streamed long black hair. I felt an intense burning gaze on me, from within that black space. A fearsome mind was beaming at me…trying to control me, *direct* me. But then…yes, I woke up.

No more dreams of the mud pan since.

So…am I on the right track, here?

Jeff

Pulver wrote back, but his response – while encouraging – was not exactly illuminating, being written in Pulverese:

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY It’s working! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! OVERmoon to hear this. Can’t wait to see what you come up with. THXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

All my bEastly BEST!! !

Joe

Well, it seemed obvious to me what was gradually materializing in my dreams, but I had hoped Pulver would confirm it for me without me having to spell it out…which I was afraid to do because it seemed too obvious. Pulver being the biggest fan of Robert W. Chambers and the King in Yellow around, this was to be a King in Yellow anthology. But he’d already done one of those (though I hadn’t been a contributor on that one): A Season in Carcosa.

Still reluctant to ask Pulver to lay it out for me, I thought I’d try to get into his head a little from an oblique angle, to see if I was missing something between the lines. I had been the editor for his collection A House of Hollow Wounds, but I revisited a few stories from another collection of his called The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 from the Lovecraft eZine Press. The following Sunday I also participated in the Lovecraft eZine’s live web chat broadcast to listen to Pulver speak, as he was a regular guest on the program. Maybe he’d drop a few hints, either consciously or unconsciously, as to where he was at artistically right now…what his focus or inspiration might be.

When I joined the chat I caught him in midsentence, looking a little murky via his web cam and waving his cigarette around, saying, “I just have one word for you. Kiernan. Strantzas. Barron.”

“That’s three words, Joe,” I said.

“Thomas,” he said.

Though I enjoyed the show, nothing clicked into clarity in my mind, but that night with the brown bottle under my pillow and not a drop of alcohol in my system I had another of the vivid, strange dreams.

The looming shape formed from the shimmering golden pollen, stood over my body or disembodied consciousness like the specter of a robed giant, this time almost corporeal but still floating a little off the cracked desert floor. This time I felt that the seaweed-like streamers lashing out from within the hood, as if ripped by a fierce wind, were not strands of hair after all but…something else.

Something emerged from the membrane-like yellow folds, and I saw it was like a hand but just as much like a misshapen and charred tree root. The gnarled hand lowered toward me on what must have been an impossibly long and multiply jointed arm secreted within the glossy living folds.

In the palm of the giant’s hand was a tiny object. It was of a translucent yellowish color like amber but soft and rubbery. It looked like two conjoined bulbs and a little bit of stem.

I closed my hand around the thing, and I woke up.

*****

Having sat up in bed with a thudding heart, I immediately twisted around to reach under my flattened old pillow to take hold of the bottle there. I unscrewed its lid, tilted its mouth toward my palm, but nothing came out. I shook more vigorously. The vial was empty.

I hadn’t unscrewed the lid to examine its contents since I’d been at the hotel, but I knew I hadn’t dropped the seed-thing there, I knew I hadn’t, and if it had withered or decayed inside the vial there would still be some kind of residue.

I showed the bottle to my six-year-old Jade and asked if she had played with it, but she said she hadn’t touched it and I believed her.

It was a work day, and there was a fair amount to do when I got in, but I couldn’t help myself…almost as soon as I reached my work station that morning I pulled up a fresh word doc. and started writing a new story. My peripheral vision was the only thing really working that day as I kept an eye out for my boss or nosy coworkers. I type with one finger but that finger was flying. I had been going through a torturous spell of writer’s block for weeks at that point but today it flowed…it just flowed, unstoppered.

When I was home that night, after having banged out 2,400 words at work, and having reread what I’d written and polished it up besides, I sent Joe Pulver an email. I told him about my most recent dream, and my earlier conjecture about his mystery project, and I said:

That thing that visited me wasn’t the King in Yellow after all, was it, Joe?

I kept my eye on my email, and shortly before I turned in that night – with the bottle no longer under my pillow, now standing empty atop my writing desk alongside the yellow chunk of Ray Bradbury’s house – I received an email back from Pulver in reply.

No, he wrote. That was your muse.

Love ya brother!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joe

 

 

Yesterday, October 20th, an exciting crowdfunding campaign commenced at Kickstarter (and today, Kickstarter chose it as a Staff Pick in the comic category) — the project VISIONS FROM PUNKTOWN.

Taking its inspiration from my many stories set in the nightmarish far future city called Punktown, VISIONS FROM PUNKTOWN will be an anthology of eight individual short stories, brought to life via the talents of eight brilliant and accomplished artists from around the world. The scripts are adapted from my original stories by Christopher Taylor, who is also overseeing the whole publishing venture and thus the Kickstarter campaign. All of this is a heavy undertaking, but Chris has impressed me thoroughly along the way — not least, with his skillful and respectful adaptation of my stories into the comic book medium. But no surprise, there; Chris has written scripts for EERIE, CREEPY, and HELLRAISER comics.

His amazing crew of artists, and the stories they’ll be adapting, are:

THE REFLECTIONS OF GHOSTS: Rafa Garres

THE LIBRARY OF SORROWS: Huseyin Ozkan

WILLOW TREE: Sinclair Klugarsh

FORGE PARK: Eric York

THE PALACE OF NOTHINGNESS: Frank Walls

MONSTERS: Dug Nation

PRECIOUS METAL: Stephane De Caneva

THE UNBEARABLE BEING OF LIGHT: Steven Russell Black

For anyone who loves horror, science fiction, the weird, the bizarre, the fantastical, and vivid phantasmagorical artwork, I urge you to go check out the Kickstarter and consider pledging. Remember, this is not a charity asking for donations; you’ll be pre-ordering a beautiful book, projected as being 130 plus pages, that is guaranteed to whisk you away to a dangerous but enthralling alien world.

So please, consider taking a journey to Punktown. You may not come back, but then you may not want to. .

(A drawing by yours truly.)

Seeing respected writers like Brian Keene create pages at the crowdfunding site Patreon recently, I’ve decided to have a go at it, myself.

https://www.patreon.com/Punktowner

The rap I posted at my page will best explain how it all works:

Hi. I’m Jeffrey Thomas, an author of…well, you tell me, because I’m not good at classification. I’ve had stories reprinted in books with titles like THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES (DAW Books), THE YEAR’S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR (St. Martin’s Press), and THE YEAR’S BEST WEIRD FICTION (Undertow Publications). I’ve been in anthologies with such themes as New Weird, Cyberpunk, and the Cthulhu Mythos. If I’m diverse, it’s because I’m restless…I like to explore, and I like to believe I attract the explorative, open-minded reader.

Why am I here on this site, huckstering for your hard-earned money? Well, to date all my books have had a price tag on them, so this concept isn’t actually all that different. Making a monthly pledge for regular posts of new fiction here is like paying an author for a book in increments, rather than all at once, like those old serials that used to portion out stories by Charles Dickens in twenty installments. The main difference is that, as in the case of self publication of digital books, a publisher isn’t getting most of the proceeds to cover production and distribution expenses. Still, this is a relatively new approach — sort of a cross between crowdfunding and self publication — but as I say, I like to explore new territory.

So what am I specifically proposing, here?

Though I’m offering a couple of additional rewards in return for a slightly greater monthly pledge, mostly I’m just asking if people who might like to support my work would be willing to spend $1 a month in order to view currently exclusive content. (For instance, every month I myself donate $5 to the Lovecraft eZine, plus I’ve begun supporting some fellow authors at Patreon like Brian Keene and Nikki Guerlain — check them out!) You need only participate for as long as you want, and can increase or decrease the monthly pledge if desired. But yup, minimum pledge is just $1. Hey, if I shambled my pitiful ass up to you in Starbucks, just as you were about 3/4 of the way through your venti Caffe Latte, and asked you if I could finish that dollar’s worth of coffee in order to give myself enough energy to complete the story I’m writing, would you say no? WOULD YOU DENY ME YOUR ONE QUARTER OF A VENTI CAFFE LATTE WITH BACKWASH IN IT?

Sorry, got carried away. My mind takes these wild flights…see, that’s I mean. But where was I?

What I’m proposing for the minimum $1 monthly pledge is this: every week, and that’s 52 weeks in a year, I’ll add a brand new piece of fiction directly to my Patreon page (and I’ll attach it as a Mobi file, too, should you prefer to read it on an e-reader). It will most likely be a short story, but who knows — at some point maybe I’ll serialize something longer, too, like a novella. I’ll shoot for a weekly target of around 1,000 words, but muses are notoriously fickle — the word count could go below, could go over. All I know for sure is, whatever I write will be previously unpublished, so you’ll be reading stuff that may not see print in a book until quite a ways down the road…if ever. And I promise you another thing: whatever it is I write, it will be weird. It will be fantastical, maybe dreamlike, and very likely horrific. It might be set in my dark future milieu of Punktown. It might take place down the road from you. It could be tragic, or humorous. It could be any number of these things combined.

Whatever it is, you’ll get to see it first…if you’ll just share that quarter cup of latte with me.

I’ve added reward for various-sized monthly pledges:

Pledge $1.00 or more per month

For a monthly pledge in this amount, you will have access to fiction written for my Patreon page, one new piece of give-or-take 1,000 words posted every week.

Pledge $10.00 or more per month

For a monthly pledge in this amount, you will have access to fiction written for my Patreon page, one new piece of give-or-take 1,000 words posted every week. Also, I will immediately draw you a WEIRD drawing (I’m also an artist) and mail it to you with a handwritten personal note of thanks.

Pledge $20.00 or more per month

For a monthly pledge in this amount, you will have access to fiction written for my Patreon page, one new piece of give-or-take 1,000 words posted every week. Also, I will immediately draw you a WEIRD drawing (I’m also an artist) and mail it to you with a handwritten personal note of thanks, along with a one-of-a-kind handwritten flash fiction piece that will never appear in print.

Also, I have several milestone goals:

$300 per month — An e-book file of my novel SUBJECT 11 for all supporters.

If my monthly pledges reach the $300 mark, I’ll share a file at my Patreon page — for all supporters, no matter the size of the pledge — of my short novel SUBJECT 11. SUBJECT 11 is one of the books of which I’m most proud, telling the story of ten subjects in a mysterious experiment, isolated in an abandoned complex.

$400 per month — An e-book file of my novel BONELAND for all supporters.

If my monthly pledges reach the $400 mark, I’ll share a file at my Patreon page — for all supporters, no matter the size of the pledge — of my novel BONELAND. BONELAND is another of the books of which I’m most proud, concerning an alternate history United States influenced by unseen alien entities who feed off human violence.

$500 per month — An e-book file of my novel BEYOND THE DOOR for all supporters.

If my monthly pledges reach the $500 mark, I’ll share a file at my Patreon page — for all supporters, no matter the size of the pledge — of my book BEYOND THE DOOR. BEYOND THE DOOR is a series of short stories told within the framework of two men who meet in a train station and exchange weird anecdotes.

As I write this, I have already posted three brand new stories on my page, to be either read at the site or via an attached Mobi file. They are THE PROMOTION AT NEWCASTLE, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO HAMLETVILLE, and SOUTHERN CROSS.

So I hope you’ll consider pledging just that $1 a month to receive weekly weird fiction from me. Give it a try! As I say, you can cancel your pledge at any time.

Whatever you do…stay weird.

https://www.patreon.com/Punktowner

 

Though it has been available via Smashwords for a few years, I finally got around to making my book UNHOLY DIMENSIONS available for the Kindle. This is a collection of 27 Lovecraftian stories — pretty much everything of that type I had written up until 2005, when Mythos Books released the original paperback edition.

The regular price is $3.99, but as part of a special promotion, I am offering the ebook from now until July 1st for a mere 99 pennies.

As a matter of fact…the Kindle Boards blog will make UNHOLY DIMENSIONS their spotlight book on June 26th.

Click on the image to go to Amazon!

(P.S. – The cover art is by yours truly.)

On April 29th, 2014, my new book GHOSTS OF PUNKTOWN was released. On that day, the site SF SIGNAL ran a guest blog post by me that discussed the background of this short story collection. I’m going to rerun that blog post here, as a way of introducing this book to my own blog readers (such as there might be!). Following that will be ordering information. Thanks, and without further ado, I turn this over to guest blogger — me:

“Since 2000, when Jeff VanderMeer’s Ministry of Whimsy Press published my collection Punktown, a string of other books set in my far-future milieu of Punktown have seen print. Until this past March, however, with the release of my novella Red Cells (which features as its protagonist private eye Jeremy Stake, from the novels Deadstock and Blue War), it’s been a number of years since a Punktown book has been released. On the heels of Red Cells, though, comes my short story collection Ghosts of Punktown, from Dark Regions Press.

“Ghosts of Punktown has been completed for a few years, actually, but its publication was delayed as Dark Regions Press changed hands. A few of the stories are reprints, but the meatier pieces are original to the book. These newer stories reflect a period of transition in my life. During this period, I lost the ownership of my house. I lived at three different addresses, gained a daughter, lost a marriage, went through various jobs, long stretches of unemployment. It’s safe to say that aside from the birth of my daughter, this was the darkest period of my life. The stories I speak of reflect that darkness, and that sense of transition. Always in my Punktown stories have I blurred the lines between science fiction and horror, but perhaps in this collection the horrors are more cruelly edged.

“All is not utter gloom and doom, though. After all, I’m still here, doing better, and some of my characters made it out the other side, too. Maybe scarred, maybe changed, but they did the best they could in a hostile environment…which might be the appeal of Punktown for those who have been there before and dared to go back. It’s something we can all relate to: struggling in the shadows to preserve our dignity, our sanity, our individuality…to hold on to something solid in a madly whirling universe. And when we can’t, to at least go out fighting, flipping the cosmos the finger, as it were, like the protagonist of my concluding, Sam Peckinpah-on-another-world novella Life Work.

“Why am I even writing science fiction stories that reflect in any way the experiences or emotional states of my own life? Rather than focus on such puny terrestrial matters, why am I not orchestrating another battle between galactic empires, fought by a great fleet of starships led by a larger-than-life messianic hero? What can I say, I guess that’s just me. See, if I had to choose a favorite SF novel, it would probably be 1984. And if I had to choose a favorite collection of short SF stories, it would most certainly be The Martian Chronicles. Maybe Punktown lies somewhere between those two books…the nightmarish oppressiveness of the former, and the melancholy poetry of the latter. At the very least, striking such a balance is my aim.

“So don’t be afraid to venture into the dark city they call Punktown. Amongst its citizenry of aliens, robots, and mutants, it’s not only me you’re going to find, but yourself.”

*****

Ghosts of Punktown is published by Dark Regions Press, available in limited edition hardcover (300 copies), deluxe lettered edition (26 copies), trade paperback, and ebook editions:

http://www.darkregions.com/books/ghos...

It is also available at Amazon.com in trade paperback and Kindle format:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K08PBKG/?...

You can’t keep a good mutant shape-shifter down.

In 2007, Solaris Books released my novel DEADSTOCK, set in the far-future, crime-ridden, alien-infested city of Punktown. Its protagonist is Jeremy Stake, a former soldier in the Blue War, now a private detective with the ability to physically imitate any human (or humanoid) he’s looked at for long enough. In DEADSTOCK, Stake goes up against a Lovecraftian entity that starts out as a seemingly innocent bioengineered child’s toy.

Stake returned in 2008 in BLUE WAR, also from Solaris Books, this time caught up in a situation that might escalate into war on a blue-forested world in another dimension, where he is reunited with a blue-skinned female soldier who was once his lover.

I’ve written about Stake in several short stories, as well, but now he’s back in his meatiest adventure since BLUE WAR…my novella RED CELLS, released today from DarkFuse.

RED CELLS finds Stake fallen on hard times, so desperate that for a fee he agrees to imitate another man and serve his six-month prison sentence for him. But this is no ordinary prison. The prison in question exists in a man-made pocket universe, insuring that the inmates can’t escape. But once in the prison, Stake discovers that a series of violent deaths have occurred: a number of inmates have practically exploded inside their locked cells. When the inmates discover Stake’s identity, they prompt him to investigate these bloody deaths…and the unearthly answer to the mystery is far beyond anything Stake expected.

I started writing down ideas for RED CELLS while vacationing in Vietnam in the winter of 2009, in the home of my former in-laws, usually while I was watching over my then-infant daughter. I ended up filling many pages of my notepad. But due to other projects, it wasn’t until the winter of 2012 that I finally got around to writing the story. I chose the novella form, this time around, to keep the story tight and rapid-fire in delivery.

I’m very proud of RED CELLS. Shining reviews have been pouring in, making me all the prouder. Here’s a sample review:

(Click to see a review of RED CELLS in the Examiner)

I predict this won’t be the last time you’ll be hearing from Jeremy Stake. Why, he might be lurking right beside you at this very moment, wearing the face of your loved one. Or your own.

(There was a 100-copy print run of beautiful limited edition hardcovers, but your best bet is to catch RED CELLS on the Kindle. JUST CLICK ON THIS LINE TO GO THERE!)

 

 

 

http://www.darkfuseshop.com/PUNKTOWN-...

DarkFuse has done a reboot for the Kindle of my short story collection PUNKTOWN — my favorite far future, crime infested, dystopian playground. We have a very snazzy new cover going on, too!

Nineteen stories of mutants…aliens…clones…robots…oh yeah, and humans…all of them lost souls, all of them testing themselves on the mean streets of the city they call Punktown.

Just click on the image to go to the ordering page.

 

 

Today I received my contributor’s copies of the new anthology ELDRITCH CHROME, edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass. This book is especially important to me because it marks my first appearance in a title published by Chaosium, representing a real dream come true. Oh, how I envied those who appeared in the Chaosium books I encountered over the years…envied and despised them! Now others can despise me…HA! Happy to report, I’ll appear in several more Chaosium anthologies, forthcoming. (HA, I say!) This one, of course, has a theme of Lovecraftian cyberpunk, and appropriately enough my story herein — “Open Minded” — is set in my notorious far-future world of Punktown.

The book can be ordered directly from Chaosium, and from Amazon.com.

As if you had any more reason to check out the worthy LOVECRAFT EZINE, the latest issue (#28) is dedicated to W. H. Pugmire, the finest living Lovecraftian author and one of my favorite authors of any stripe.
*
What an amazing group of people have assembled for this issue (myself, too, with my story “Jar of Mist” — set in Pugmire’s beguiling milieu of Sesqua Valley). The contributors/contents include:
*







Introduction

In which eminent Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi sums up perfectly Pugmire’s literary gift.

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Cthulhu Does Stuff

A comic strip by Ronnie Tucker & Maxwell Patterson, that features a fun rendition of Pugmire.

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Echoes from Cthulhu’s Crypt, #5

The monthly column by Robert M. Price, in which he delivers a fascinating essay on “liminality.”

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A Massing of the Shades

By dark maestro Richard Gavin, in which he audaciously reinterprets the origin of Sesqua Valley’s “Firstborn,” Simon Gregory Williams.

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The Storm Horses

By my brother Scott Thomas; a dream-like, poetic, and lovely piece — as one would expect from him. (As in Richard’s and Jayaprakash’s stories, Scott is in tune with the yearning for transformation so prevalent in Pugmire’s fiction.)
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Vyvyan’s Father

By Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy, a thought-provoking look at the atrophy and rebirth of the vital human spark, and how our personal heritage can sometimes deliver us from life’s closing walls.

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The Winds of Sesqua Valley

A gorgeous poem by the always fantastic Ann K. Schwader

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Jar of Mist

By your own Jeffrey Thomas, featuring an absolutely perfect illustration (of the story’s weird “In-Betweener”) by Steve Santiago. (The art throughout the entire issue is superb.)
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(he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror

By that most unique and idiosyncratic of authors Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., for whom I am currently editing two collections of his work.
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The Deep Black Pit


By the legendary Jessica Salmonson, coauthor of several of Pugmire’s memorable early tales like “Pale Trembling Youth” and “O, Christmas Tree.”

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Now this important information from the LOVECRAFT EZINE site:

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“When buying online, please consider buying through The Lovecraft eZine Amazon portal.  It won’t cost you anything extra, but this magazine will receive a referral fee. Shopping through the portal helps support Lovecraft eZine.  Thank you! And please consider donating to The Lovecraft eZine. Even a small amount helps.”

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And here is the LOVECRAFT EZINE web site: http://lovecraftzine.com/issues/2013-2/issue-28-december-2013/
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LOVECRAFT EZINE’s creator and editor Mike Davis is to be highly commended on putting this issue together; it’s a tribute to his own loyalty and commitment to aficionados of weird fiction.

(Steve Santiago's beautiful illustration for my story "Jar of Mist")