Immortals of the Cannibal Coast

Immortals of the Cannibal Coast, a collaboration between author Martin Edward Stephenson and myself, has been picked up for inclusion in the third issue of Dark Worlds.

The heroine of the short story is Tarajel, a former Southern Raider who has taken to pirating and plundering Thraxian slaver ships. With a Thraxian warship in pursuit and a storm raging, her own ship founders on the reefs of the Cannibal Coast and things get worse from there...

Tarajel is Martin Stephenson's creation and originally appeared in the short stories Temple of the Mandricanth and The Storm Jewel, which appeared at Pulp and Dagger and through Electronic Tales.

I've collaborated with other authors before, but Martin and I approached things a bit differently than I've done in the past. We constructed an outline of the story and then alternated the writing of the chapters. Of course, I'll let everyone know when Dark Worlds #3 becomes available. In the meantime you might like to check out Dark Worlds #1 and #2 (available in electronic or hard copy format), which contain my space opera tale The Investment, and Lords of the Bitter Dark--a sneak peek at my upcoming fantasy novel, Through the Groaning Earth.

Burroughs, Lin Carter, and the Dire Planet

I was perusing a posting about the Green Star series of books by Lin Carter on the Dark Worlds blog the other day, and was pleasantly surprised to find a mention of my Dire Planet series.

I might not have been too pleased had it been in a negative context, but since it was quite positive I thought I'd share the link.

GW Thomas, the author of the posting lumps both the Green Star and Dire Planet series of novels into what he considers Burroughs ' inspired stories--and I'm going to have to agree with him on Dire Planet. When I set out writing it I was trying to recapture that sense of adventure and wonderment that I felt when I first read Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Warlord of Mars books.

The Dire Planet books can be picked up at Amazon.com, PulpworkPress.com, and in various digital formats at Fictionwise.com.

Short hand a Short Fall?

A little while back a short story by author Josh Reynolds, in which he incorporates such real life and fictional characters as Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (among others) got me to wondering how someone who was not familiar with those characters or historical figures would perceive the story.

This question was of particular interest to me because I recently wrote a story in which the historical Wyatt Earp encounters my fictional character, Lone Crow, and they spend some time encountering strange secrets beneath the freezing Alaskan tundra.

In pondering Josh Reynold's Mr. Brass and the Crimson Skies of Kansas I think that he is able to pull off the use of real historical figures and public domain fictional characters because he is able to imbue them with enough personality that we get to know the character, whether or not we were ever familiar with them in the first place. Being familiar with them is just a layer of icing on his literary confection.

I was able to contrast Reynold's work with the first couple chapters of a short novel, The Eldritch New Adventures of Becky Sharp, in which the main character is derived from a literary work I am unfamiliar with--namely, William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1947 novel, Vanity Fair. The author is able to effectively illustrate Sharp's character, but he quickly maneuvers her into an encounter with She--the title character of an H Rider Haggard novel written around the turn of the century (not this century but the one previous).

Now, I had previously read this particular Haggard novel, but it had been a few years--so though I recognized the character, I realized that this new author who had appropriated She was relying (either purposely or accidentally) on the reader's knowledge of the character to serve as a kind of shorthand to fill in She's characteristics. Even though I had some knowledge of the character, I didn't feel like the insertion of She worked within the story, because She was only vaguely drawn in this particular novel.

The Eldritch New Adventures of Becky Sharp is full of borrowed literary characters and is getting great reviews elsewhere, but I suspect that in this case a strong familiarity with those borrowed literary characters is required for a full enjoyment of the novel.

The summation of my ponderings on borrowing characters from history and public domain is that the author needs to be careful to draw the character into full life and not depend upon the reader's previous knowledge of the character. If the author can pull it off it adds an extra bit of spice in the story, but if the author fails to flesh out the borrowed characters the informed reader is left bored and the uninformed reader mystified.

Earp and Crow

I recently finished a section of my fantasy novel, Through the Groaning Earth, and though I've still got a few portions to write to complete the entire novel it's currently sitting at a fairly respectable 98,000 words.

In the meantime, I've taken a break to get a couple or three smaller writing projects written and off to the respective publishers that are waiting for them.

The first of these is a collaborative project for me--a Western tale for an anthology being edited by Russ Anderson. I'm working on this with artist, designer, and creative savant Damon Orrell who has provided me with quite a bit of background research that he's done.

The tale involves the meeting of historical figures Lone Crow and Wyatt Earp during Earp's tenure as the barkeep for the Alaska Trading Company in Nome and while Crow was in the employ of Miskatonic University in search of a professor who went missing while researching a pre-Tlinget civilization uncovered near Lake Bennett, about 50 miles from Skaguay, Alaska.

I'm hoping to wrap up a draft of it this long Thanksgiving day weekend.

Devil Take the Hindmost in Review

Pulp Fiction Review has posted a review of Devil Take the Hindmost. If you've got a few minutes cruise over and check it out, then check out some of the other book reviews posted by reviewer Ron Fortier.

If you haven't picked up a copy of Devil Take the Hindmost, yet, you can find them at Amazon.com, PulpworkPress.com or in digital format at Fictionwise.com.

The Pirates of Xonira Part 9

Be sure to check out the latest and greatest installment of Derrick Ferguson's Dillon and the Pirates of Xonira: Dillon, Toi and Shon scuba dive to the shores of forbidden Xonira in hopes of uncovering the secrets behind the Pirates of Xonira.

Dark Worlds Interview

G.W. Thomas, editor of the Dark Worlds magazine has conducted a short interview with me and posted it at the Dark Worlds blog. Check it out here. In the interview we discuss such topics as inspiration versus imitation, why write pulp?, which dead pulp-writer I'd most like to have a chat with, profanity in modern fiction, and my preference for vicious bloodthirsty vampires instead of brooding romantic vampires.

If you haven't already, do pick up the latest issue of Dark Worlds. The cover story (with fabulous cover art by M.D. Jackson), Lords of the Bitter Dark, is taken from my impending dark fantasy novel, Through the Groaning Earth.

Pumpkin Carving

The other evening we had a family night and spent some time carving pumpkins. After carving her pumpkin, my daughter Mikayla, spent a few moments examining the results and apparently noted that her jack 0'lantern bore an uncanny resemblance to someone that she had seen before.

"I'm going to name my pumpkin Hilary Duff!" she proclaimed.

I'm not so sure if Hilary Duff, former star of Disney's Lizzie McGuire and current pop star, would find the comparison flattering...
























Uncanny resemblance or not? Decide your yourself.

Lords of the Bitter Dark

I'm pleased to announce that, Lords of the Bitter Dark, a story extracted from my upcoming novel, Through the Groaning Earth, is now the cover story for Dark Worlds Magazine #2 and is now available for purchase at Lulu.com.

Lords of the Bitter Darkness revisits Bathos, the city of corruption, which is the setting for my previously published novel, Escape from Devil's Head.

When his ship is blown across the great oceans by a sudden storm and founders upon the reefs of an unknown land, Azark plunges into the depths of the fiend-haunted silver mines of the Monks of Racaovanj, in order to free some enslaved fellow sailors who have been captured and put to work mining the silver ore. Soon, he finds himself caught between the deadly monks that zealously guard the mines and the living dead that lurk within the deep caverns.

Besides Lords of the Bitter Darkness, Dark Worlds #2 is 120 pages chock full of pulpy goodness and features other stories such as "Voices" (Mystery) by Nick Andreychuk, "Cauldron of Life, Blades of Death" (Historical Fantasy)by David A. Hardy, "River Baby Weeps" (Horror) by Joshua Reynolds, "Trick Candles" (Horror)by Stephen D. Rogers, "The Clatter of Dry Bones" (Mythos)by Jack Mackenzie, "One Man's Trash" (Space Opera)by C. J. Burch.

Dillon & the Pirates of Xonira

Chapter eight of Dillon's and the Pirates of Xonira has hit the Pulpwork Press website. Dillon deals with the repercussions of a saboteur aboard his submarine, the Morgan Adams, and interrogates him as the ship slowly runs out of air, unable to emerge from the depths.

Check it out here. And if you've been enjoying Derrick Ferguson's Dillon tale, be sure to order up a copy of the full length Dillon novel, Dillon and the Voice of Odin which is for sale at Amazon.com.

Evolution of a Tale or How the Blood Vault Came to Be

Sometimes people will ask me where I get all my ideas, and the truth is that I have been blessed (or cursed) with an overactive imagination and I get way more ideas for stories than I'll ever have the time to write.

So at the risk of pulling back the curtain on the Great and Terrible Oz and ruining the magic by showing the gears and levers behind, I'll mention how the idea for The Blood Vault--a precursor story to my novel, Devil Take the Hindmost, came about.

In 2001, Chandra Levy, an intern for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington DC, disappeared. It came out soon that she had recently confessed to relatives that she was having an affair with Democratic Congressman Gary Condit.















So of course, I immediately asked myself--"Self, what if Gary Condit is a vampire and he is keeping Chandra locked up in his lair?"

Now for me, this is only a natural conclusion based on a long study and exhaustive research into the facts of this particular case.

The next logical step for me was to introduce a vampire hunter, Damon St. Cloud, that was going to uncover this horrible crime and do his best to rescue the kidnapped intern--and then I wrote a story about it.

And voila (a fancy French word which means there it is) -- the genesis of the short story The Blood Vault.

In honor of Halloween and all things vampiric I'm going to run that short story here on my blog, in several parts beginning next week. In the meantime, do order up a copy of Devil Take the Hindmost. It's available at the Pulpwork Press website, Amazon.com, and in various electronic formats at Fictionwise.

Halloween Horror Sale

With ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the stock market plummeting, rising, and plummeting again some people might say that they've already had enough horror this Halloween season. What? Not enough horror, you say?

Well, then click your way on over to the Pulpwork Press website and pick up some of Joshua Reynolds' horror tales, which are, in honor of Halloween, and for this month only, marked down 5 bucks off the cover price. If you're not familiar with Reynold's horror work, let me just describe him as follows: He's the Stephen King of South Carolina.

Now Stephen King, like any author from Shakespeare to Spillane, is not to everyone's taste, but if you like Stephen King's stories (and millions of people do) I think you're going to like Joshua Reynolds stories. The stories of both authors have the same twisted esthetics and while King often draws upon the state of Maine to provide color and background, just as H.P. Lovecraft drew upon Essex Massachusetts, Reynolds draws upon the kudzu-grown territory of South Carolina to provide color for the terror.

Because of its pulpy flavor and horror-soaked action esthetic my personal favorite of Reynolds' books is the Baxter Sarlowe tale, Wake the Dead. And I quote the back cover, because it's one of the greatest cover blurbs I've ever encountered--

Two men are eaten alive by insects.

A plane carrying Egyptian antiquities goes down in flames.

Yellow dogs and dead men prowl the streets.

Shadowy figures prepare to pay off a centuries old debt while the dead crawl out of their graves to greet an evil as old as time.

An evil that spreads from the burning sands of Egypt to the kudzu soaked streets of Columbia, South Carolina in an attempt to claw its way back into the light.

Evil never dies. It just sleeps...and dreams...and waits...

Note to readers, be forewarned that because of subject content, gore, and language many of the Reynolds tales earn themselves a solid R rating.

Dark Worlds #2 Cover Preview

As an author I always look forward to seeing the cover art for one of my novels or short stories with great anticipation or dread--since one never knows the quality of the cover that the publisher is going to come up with. So when I heard that I would be receiving the cover slot for Dark Worlds #2 I was quite eager to see what artist M.D. Jackson would create.

I've got to say that M.D. Jackson delivered in spades and that his painting marvelously depicts one of the scenes from Lords of the Bitter Darkness--a story drawn from my upcoming dark fantasy novel, Through the Groaning Earth. In Lords of the Bitter Darkness, a ship-wrecked sailor goes hunting for some of the survivors of that ship-wreck and finds that they have been enslaved by a cult of monks working a silver mine outside the wretched city of Bathos.

Dark Worlds #2 is not yet available, but I will--of course--let you know when it hits the shelves. In the meantime, pick up a print or electronic copy of Dark Worlds #1 at Lulu.com.
Or if you're not yet familiar with the devious ways of the City of Bathos pick up a print copy of my novel Escape from Devil's Head at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or an electronic version at Fictionwise. Buy it where you like, but if you're interested in a print copy I'd recommend picking it up on Amazon where it's currently about $7.00 cheaper for the same exact book!

Into the Weird West

Pulp Work Press has announced its forthcoming anthology of Weird West style of tales, which will be entitled Fistful of Devils. Editor, Russ Anderson, has hand-picked a number of authors to write stories for the anthology, and I'm fortunate enough to be invited to participate.

For those not familiar with the genre of Weird West it is an obscure sub-genre of the Western, but it must have some strange or supernatural element within the story. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday encountering the Clanton brothers in the OK Corral qualifies as a Western, but Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday encountering undead/zombie versions of the Clanton Brothers qualifies as a Weird Western.

Though I've dipped into the western general several times with my Porter Rockwell tale and the pair of Temple Houston tales I've written, Guns Against Temple and Six Feet of Cold Earth, this will be the first time I've gone exploring the Weird West. I'm looking forward to it, and more details will be forthcoming as the project proceeds. Fistful of Devils isn't slated for publishing until mid or late 2009.

Dire Planet Virtual Book Tour Wraps

Over the last week the Dire Planet Virtual book tour has been posted from all over the world (The United States, France, and Japan) and today Josh Reynolds wraps it up by posting the G.W. Thomas introduction to the first Dire Planet novel.

Check it out and then check out the special Pulpwork Press package deal on all three of the Dire Planet novels (Dire Planet, Exiles of the Dire Planet, and Into the Dire Planet). This offer is for a limited time only, so be sure to place your order before the end of this month, because that's when the offer disappears.

Dire Planet World Tour Continues

The Dire Planet virtual book tour has now circumnavigated the globe-- from the Pacific Northwest to the Eastern edges of the United States, and to France then Japan. Now it has come full circle with a posting from a good friend in my own neck of the woods, artist and creator extraordinaire, Damon Orrell.

His posting includes a picture from a few years back when I had a lot more hair, and was publicizing Electronic Tales during an Oregon road trip.

Check it out--some people have mistaken this photo as proof that sasquatch does indeed exist!

And just a reminder, Dire Planet and its sequels Exiles of the Dire Planet and Into the Dire Planet (from which the above image is taken) are available at PulpWork Press, Amazon, and in various digital formats at Fictionwise.

Percival Constantine Interviews Me

Percival Constantine, author of Fallen and Chasing the Dragon has taken the time to conduct a long distance interview (Japan to the United States) with me about the Dire Planet series and asks some very insightful questions.

Take a few moments to check it out!

The History of Mars

The Dire Planet virtual book tour continues with stop number four--the virtual home of author Joshua Reynolds musings and mutterings.

In what is an utterly awesome posting, Josh treats us to a history of fiction on Mars--with a cornucopia of links for anyone who wants to explore further. Ever hear of the 1898 book Inhabitants of Mars about mummies on Mars? Me neither. But Josh has not only heard of it, he's got a link to a website where you can buy the English version, which has been translated from the original French.

Ever hear of the 1908 The Vampires of Mars by Gustave LaRouge? Neither had I--until I read Josh Reynold's blog. And once again, Josh includes a link to a publisher and a cover illustration of a host of hungry vampiresses.

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you have any interest in Martian fiction, planetary fiction, or sword and science fiction check out Josh Reynolds latest blog.

Pirates of Xonira, Chapter 7

The traitor aboard the submarine, Morgan Adams, tips his hand just as Dillon and his crew reach Point Szardos of the rogue nation of Xonira. Check out this latest installment of the action-packed adventure serial by Derrick Ferguson.

Dire Planet Virtual Book Tour

The Dire Planet Virtual Book Tour continues with Russ Anderson's musings about Dire Planet and Conan the Musical.

Then cruise on over to Derrick Ferguson's Brooklyn back porch and eavesdrop on a conversation between Derrick and yours truly.

Dreams of Kubla Kahn and the Dire Planet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge reported that he awoke from a dream with two or three hundred lines of his famous poem, Kubla Kahn, composed in his head. He feverishly began to scribble them down, when he was interrupted by a person from Porlock on business. When business was finished the lines of the poem left unwritten had faded away, never to be recovered.

The novel Dire Planet, too, had its origins in dream. One night I dreamed of a stranded astronaut encountering a vision of a beautiful alien while his oxygen ran low, and when I awoke I feverishly scrawled notations on a handy scrap of paper I keep by my bedside in case of such nocturnal inspirations.

However, the duties of the day intruded and the haunting dream faded, evaporating like dew before the morning rays of sun, and I was left with a handful of notes to help me recall the images.

These notes languished for years in the bottom of a drawer before the opportunity to write a serial tale for Frontier Press inspired me to dig it out and write a first chapter based on that strange dream.

As I wrote, characters and situations presented themselves in my head, sometimes carrying the story into theaters of the imagination where I had not yet dared to tread, and taking the tale in directions I could not expect.

Unlike Coleridge and the lost lines of Kubla Kahn, I have, fortunately, been able to continue the tale of the Dire Planet. Over the years the story of Garvey Dire grew into three volumes, and I still hear his voice in my head offering to dictate yet another of his adventures on the ancient red planet.

Dire Planet, Exiles of the Dire Planet, and Into the Dire Planet are available at PulpWork Press, Amazon, and in a variety of electronic formats at Fictionwise.

This is the first stop of the Dire Planet digital book tour. Please be sure to check out Russ Anderson's Blog tomorrow for further thoughts on the Dire Planet.

Lords of the Bitter Dark

I just received notice a couple of days ago that my story, Lords of the Bitter Dark, is to be the featured tale in Dark Worlds magazine issue #2. Interior illustrations for the story will be done by G.W. Thomas.

Lords of the Bitter Dark is a preview of the yet to be released Through the Groaning Earth which is a dark fantasy novel that takes place in the City of Bathos--sometimes known as the City of Corruption. The first novel I wrote that takes place in Bathos is Escape from Devil's Head, which is available at Amazon.com in bound hard copy and at Fictionwise.com in digital format.

Lords of the Bitter Dark tells the story of an outsider ship-wrecked on the shores of Bathos who becomes involved in a centuries old feud. I'll spill a few more details as the release date of Dark Worlds #2 comes nearer.

In the meantime I encourage everyone to get familiar with the City of Corruption and a few of its denizens by picking up a copy of Escape from Devil's Head.

James Bond vs Max Damage

I missed Die Another Day when it hit movie theaters, but when it hit video I received an email that read, “You've got to see Die Another Day, it's EXACTLY like your Sun Stealer story.”

Now the Sun Stealer was the first of the Damage Inc stories that I wrote and was released via serialized emails to about 2,100 subscribers and was also concurrently featured on the Electronic Tales website. The main characters were the genetically improved, but still very imperfect Max Damage and his cohorts, the genetically improved Minnie Illyumzhinov who knows a dozen languages and nearly as many martial arts, and the diminutive but brilliant Seth Armstrong.

Max is a little different than many heroes in that every physical perfection he has comes with a drawback. Max is incredibly strong and heals very quickly but he has to eat an incredible amount of food or he becomes weak and fatigued. Max has eyesight as keen as an eagle, but this comes with a sensitivity to light so that he is unable to see in daylight unless wearing polarized glasses. Max has a high-threshold of pain, but his sense of touch is reduced and this sometimes makes him clumsy or even unaware of injury.

When I read the email I thought to myself, “How close could Die Another Day really be?” So I bought myself a copy and found out.

I've got to tell you it was with an eerie sense of deja vu that I first watched the movie. And though Die Another Day wasn't EXACTLY like The Sun Stealer there are a number of elements that are EXACTLY alike. What are they? Here's the quick rundown--

In both The Sun Stealer and Die Another Day:

• The main weapon is a satellite array which reflects and focuses the suns rays into a lethal and destructive weapon. I originally got this idea from an actual experiment that Russia conducted, which involved a solar array which was meant to beam sunlight into parts of Russia that had shortened days during the winter. Of course, my devious mind took it one step further and changed it into a weapon capable of immense destruction and I named it the Sun Stealer.

• The Sun Stealer device is used to (a) burn a plane out of the sky (b) burn missiles out of the sky, and (c) used in a large scale military attack.

• The central female character is genetically modified to be a superior combatant. Jinx in Die Another Day, and the redoubtable Minnie Illyumzhinov in The Sun Stealer.
  

• The villain of the story has a base of operations in an icy locale, which has become tropical due to the reflected heat of the Sun Stealer.
  

• The hero hops in a vehicle at the climax of the story and is chased by a beam from the Sun Stealer that devours everything in its path. Yes, it's true—Max Damage uses a motorcycle and escapes through subterranean tunnels and James Bond uses some sort of ice-mobile.
  

• The villain of the story is a former Olympic fencer.

Now this conglomeration of coincidences may seem merely a strange happenstance to you or it may seem just short of amazing. And since this case of possible copyright infringement will never see the inside of a courtroom (what, me take on Metro Goldwyn Mayer and their hundreds of lawyers and millions of dollars?) you get to be the judge. The law provides leeway for the creation of similar works independent from each other—and to be sure, the Die Another Day version of this story has been thoroughly Bondized by the writers (or adapters) of the movie. Max Damage isn't the type of hero that runs around dropping double entendres and bedding every woman that he runs into.

So the questions remains, is Die Another Day a pile of coincidences that created something quite similar to my previous story or were a number of story elements liberally borrowed from The Sun Stealer?

I've had some time to consider the question and as Max Damage is fond of saying, “I don't believe in coincidences.”


On a side note, I do hope to re-release The Sun Stealer as part of a future collection which will also include the Damage Inc tale On Wings of Darkness. In order to release this collection I've got to finish a third Damage Inc tale called The Black Hole of Madagascar, which is currently in the plotting stage (which means it's a long way from completion). I'd also like to see A More Peaceful World included within the collection—which is a story about 15,000 words toward completion, and is written by my good friend Derrick Ferguson that includes both Damage Inc and his dual-identity crimefighter Regency.

The only other existing Damage Inc tale is a completed novel (not yet available) called The Sea Witch.

Day of the Barbarian

Fleeing the incursions of the roving Huns, the Goths come to the Danube, the border of the Roman Empire, and ask if they might immigrate.

Rome is always looking for more laborers and soldiers to fill the ranks of its armies so it agrees to let them across the river, and even promises food and land.

However, when the Goths get across the river they find that food is in very short supply. It seems that Roman officials were quite corrupt, and the generals in charge of the immigration found that it was more profitable to keep the food that was shipped for the Goths and then sell it to them at exorbitant prices.

Well, hungry barbarians are dangerous barbarians, and it isn't long before the famished Goths revolt against their Roman escorts and began looting, pillaging, and raping. Most of Rome's soldiers are at the borders and they find themselves woefully unprepared for this savage horde roaming in their midst.

Day of the Barbarian recounts what happened and the events of the Battle of Adrianople. Author, Allesdandro Barbero, makes a case that this event was the beginning of the end for Rome, which fell approximately 100 years later. At first I wasn't convinced, but the more I think about it the more I see his point.

Whether or not you agree with the premise, Day of the Barbarian makes for a fascinating glimpse into the past.

The Dragons of Mars

Fellow pulpster, Josh Reynolds, may not have been the first author with the idea of using real life president and hero, Teddy Roosevelt, in a fictional story--in fact I seem to recall Caleb Carr having Theodore Roosevelt appear in either the Alienist or the follow up novel Angel of Darkness--but he may well be the first author to have Teddy Roosevelt to explore the inner core of Mars hunting dragons with an artificial man created by Fu Manchu by swapping the brain of a slain Pinkerton agent into its brain canister.

Yeah, sounds pretty bizarre doesn't it? It's also pretty cool.

Check out Josh's story, Mister Brass and the Dragons of Mars at the Thousand Faces Magazine website or order a print copy of the magazine.

Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peek at the Jack Mackenzie cover for my novel The Nuclear Suitcase, which is coming out from Pulpwork Press in 2009.

The Many Faces of Thrilling Adventures

As some of you may be aware, Derrick Ferguson and I collaborated on a short adventure tale entitled Dead Beat in La Esca which featured a team-up of his globe-trotting adventurer, Dillon, and the rock musician and erstwhile mercenary, Sly Gantlet.

This story was picked up by editor Barry Reese of 86th Floor Productions for a compilation of pulp-style adventures called Thrilling Adventures. The cover it was published with is shown above left with the logo and titles, but Noel Tuazon also produced a couple of alternative covers, which were not used by 86th Floor Productions.

Of course, as publishing editor Barry Reese gets final say in matters of cover art and what art might have been on the cover is just fodder for blog postings such as this one. Though, Barry did mention that if at a future date 86th Floor Productions decides to release a hardcover edition of Thrilling Adventures he may go with one of the Tuazon renderings.

Barclay Salvaging

"They still following us?" asked Rana.

"Close to twenty of them now," confirmed Tabitha, her super-sensitive auditory receptors able to pick up and distinguish the sounds in the surrounding jungle.

Aaron stopped atop a rise just before a thick wall of vegetation and consulted his hand held scanning device. "We're getting real close to the source of that Limthia alloy."

"Watch for the crew of the Devil's Own," warned Tabitha. "They've undoubtedly been running shipboard scans for the Limthia, and may already have landed to search the area."

The captain's forehead creased between his eyes, something that Rana noticed happened whenever he was concerned. "Right," agreed Aaron. "We already know that these guys will kill us on sight so set your laspistols to maximum strength."

Rana didn't bother changing the setting on her pistol; it was already set at maximum. The crowd of local fauna that was following them had already inspired her to make the adjustment. "I'm not so sure the crew of the Devil's Own even know about the hyperdrive."

Tabitha cocked her head sideways, her perfectly created features fixed into a quizzical expression. "Are you aware of some other reason why they might have ambushed us?"

"I'll be a son of a gun," said Aaron quietly, as he broke through the screen of foliage and looked down upon the valley that lay beyond. It wasn't a deep valley, but thrusting up from its floor was a great pyramid of moss-covered stone that loomed against the aquamarine sky. What race of creatures had erected that mammoth edifice and for what reasons, Aaron could not fathom, but he pointed his hand scanner in its direction and its erratic beeping turned a steady tone.

"The Limthia Alloy is inside the pyramid," he said

Suddenly the frog-like creatures that pursued them through the forests began to gibber and shriek in a manic frenzy.

The above excerpt is from The Investment, a sci-fi story recently published in the first issue of Dark Worlds.

If you haven't already, pick yourself up a copy today.