Guns of the Crow

Check out Josh Reynold's Royal Occultist blog for an essay on Native American gunfighter, occult investigator, and mystical poet Lone Crow.  Also listed is a complete bibliography of the nine published stories featuring Lone Crow.

Coming in 2013

Old Mother Hennessy

The Gunslingers and Ghost Stories collection from Sci-Fi Trails is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in Kindle and Ebook formats for just $3.55.  Inside, you'll find a number of ghostly tails from the Weird West, including Old Mother Hennessy--a story, written by me, about infamous Native American gunfighter Lone Crow and his erstwhile companion-in-arms Six-Gun Susannah Johnson, the fastest (though perhaps not the most accurate) gun in the West. While running down some bounties they get caught between the vengeful dead and the murderous Hennessy Brothers who aim on adding Crow and Johnson to their graveyard of victims.

The Coming of Crow

I've had a Lone Crow story, entitled Old Mother Hennessy, accepted for publication in the upcoming Science Fiction Trails anthology Gunslingers and Ghost Stories.  Infamous Native American gunfighter Lone Crow and his erstwhile companion Six-Gun Susannah Johnson are hunting down the vicious Hennessy Brothers--a vicious lot of bank robbing, kidnapping killers--and come across a graveyard full of ghosts hungry for vengeance.

David Riley, the editor and owner of the Science Fiction Trails imprint, has been kind enough to forward me the advance art (minus the back cover blurb so we can better enjoy the artwork) as created by the inimitable Laura Givens.

I'll post more information once I have a release date.  In the meantime, you can find Lone Crow stories in The Science Fiction Trails #9: All Martian Spectacular, Six Guns Straight from Hell, Low Noon, How the West was Weird, How the West was Weird 2, How the West was Weird: Campfire Tales, Showdown at Midnight, and in the fifth issue of Dark Worlds Magazine.

Mouthing Off to Dillon

One of the awesome things about being an author is the multi-million dollar royalty checks I receive in the mail...wait, that doesn't happen.  The other awesome thing, which does actually happen, is that I get to chat with other authors, bounce ideas off of them and every once and awhile they are kind enough to immortalize me in print by tossing me into a story.

I've been lucky enough to appear as an agent of the Diogenes Club in the same story as Josh Reynolds' detective/ambassador Ulrich Popoca character (in two different stories!), and just recently a pair of rogues named Reynolds and Jenkins appear in Derrick Ferguson's Dillon and the Pirates of Xonira as part of the Morgan Adams submarine crew, which takes a cruise into pirate infested waters with a global instigator known as Dillon at the helm.

Most people with any sense wouldn't mouth off to Dillon or his right hand man Eli (page 207 and 208), but apparently I don't have any sense--and when I'm ordered to remove some limpet mines from the hull of the Morgan Adams I let Eli know what I think about it.

Pick up a copy of Dillon and the Pirates of Xonira at the PulpWork Press website and get 20% off by using the 5YRZ6A8W code.

The Art of the Gantlet Brother's Greatest Hits

Over at cover artist extraordinaire M.D. Jackson's blog he explains how he put together the cover art for my novel The Gantlet Brother's Greatest Hits.  To give further insight into the process I've included a couple of roughs below.  MD Jackson provided these to PulpWork Press after doing a read through of the manuscript.

Although I quite liked the image of Matthias Gantlet diving into the water with an awesome explosion going off above (and may ask M.D. to use it in the future), I thought that the assembled band members shown in the first sketch might be most like the cover of a rock album and fit the title of The Gantlet Brothers Greatest Hits best, and suggested that the female figures at the bottom be stricken, and that M.D. concentrate on the Gantlet Brothers.

M.D. did this with his usual gusto and skill, and you can see the final product at his SkyLarking blog.

Copies of  The Gantlet Brothers Greatest Hits can be picked up at a 20% discount at the Pulp Work Press site by punching in the code 5YRZ6A8W or pick up a digital copy for just $2.99 on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 

Twenty-One Authors

The following is an alphabetical list of the twenty-one fiction authors who are most influential upon my own work. To the right of these names I have mentioned one or two of their creations or titles.  Most of these folks are long dead, but a few still alive and some still producing great fiction.

Edgar Rice Burroughs  (Tarzan, John Carter Warlord of Mars)

Bertrand R. Brinley  (Mad Scientists Club)

Stephen J. Cannell  (Rockford Files)

Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell)

Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt)

Lester Dent (Doc Savage)

Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)

Mike Grell (Warlord, Jon Sable)

Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon)

Homer (The Odyssey and Iliad)

Robert E. Howard (King Kull, Solomon Kane)

HP Lovecraft (The Cthulhu Mythos)

Derrick Ferguson (Dillon, Sebastian Red)

Stan Lee (Spider-Man, Hulk)

Sir Thomas Malory (Le Morte D'Arthur)

Robert R. McCammon (Boy's Life)

Edgar Allen Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher)

Joshua Reynolds (Mr. Brass, St. Cyprian and Gallowglass, Ulrich Popoca)

J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings)

Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)

HG Wells (War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man)