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.