Dispatches from the Flying M

So Much Going On!

I've literally been so busy I haven't even had time to write a post about all the latest developments. But I'm pulling myself away from my novel-in-progress (Passage to Pedregosa, the third Cody Cavanaugh Western, for Wolfpack Publishing) to try to catch everybody up.

The biggest news is the announcement of the historical epic I spent much of the pandemic year of 2020 working on, with a co-author of some repute. The book is called Blood and Gold: The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta, and the co-author is one Peter Murrieta. Notice a similarity between those names? Peter is a direct descendant of the legendary Gold Rush-era bandit, and he brought family stories to the book that have never been told in print. I've been fascinated by Joaquin Murrieta for decades, and my old friend Russell Binder of Striker Entertainment brought Peter and I together to finally tell his story. The book will be published on October 27 by Sundown Press, and the Kindle edition is available for preorder RIGHT NOW! The paperback will follow shortly.

Here's the amazing cover, by Emmy Award-winning, Golden-Globe nominated filmmaker and animator Jorge Gutierrez (The Book of Life):

Peter Murrieta is an accomplished guy as well. The two-time Emmy Award winner is the creator of the TV series Greetings from Tucson and has been a writer and producer on NBC’s Welcome to the Family, ABC’s Cristela, TV Land’s Lopez, Norman Lear’s Netflix reboot of One Day A Time, CBS’s Superior Donuts, and Netflix’s MR. IGLESIAS. He is the Director in Residence of The Sidney Poitier New American Film School at Arizona State University and a recipient of the Imagen Foundation’s Norman Lear Writer’s Award for his dedication to broadening the diversity of the entertainment industry. He recently inked a first-look deal with Universal.

Then there's this story out from Deadline: Hollywood:

EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Emmy-winner Peter Murrieta, who recently signed a first-look deal with Universal Television, is teaming up with Russell Binder’s Striker Entertainment to option and adapt Jeffrey J. Mariotte’s forthcoming novel Blood And Gold: The Legend Of Joaquin Murrieta. 

Keep reading at the link above.

So, yeah, that's happening.

But that's not all!

The October issue of The Big Thrill, the official magazine of the International Thriller Writers organization, just came out, and they interviewed me about my Kindle Vella thriller Flesh of All Sorrows. Check out that interview here! And read the book here (weirdly, you can't read Kindle Vella works on a Kindle, apparently, but you can read them on the site on any device).

And the October issue of the Sisters In Crime email newsletter came out, with this bit in it:

"Jeff Mariotte sold the first three books in a new police-procedural series to Wolfpack Publishing, for publication in 2022. The series, MAJOR CRIMES SQUAD: PHOENIX, focuses on detective Russ Temple, head of the brand-new unit. As an Army CID special agent, his partner and best friend was murdered by a corrupt agent causing Russ to leave the army and go home to Phoenix, AZ, where in addition to solving crimes, he's on the lookout for corruption in the Phoenix PD.  The first three books are THE SQUAD, THE STORM, and THE CASTLE."

And I have a new Western short story called The Snake and the Fox, published in an anthology called Six-Gun Justice! The anthology was put together by pals Richard Prosch and Paul Bishop, who host the super-fun Six-Gun Justice Podcast. My story is, in part, based on the true story behind the above photograph. I'm in the book with a crew of great writers, many of whom are also good friends. You'll want to give this one a read if you love Western short fiction (and who doesn't?)!

Like I said, kinda busy these days. I'll be working on these as soon as I turn in Passage to Pedregosa on November 1st. So I'd better get back to it. But first, one more thing--any day now I'll be launching my brand-spankin'-new website, with its own blog! So this one will be going away after a while. I'll give you plenty of warning, and I think we'll be migrating the most recent posts over to that one. Be sure to follow me there!

P.S.: Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell, brilliant wife and sometime collaborator, has been busy, too, selling stories and poems right and left. But her biggest news is something I'm not allowed to mention yet. Follow her at MarsheilaRockwell.com for all the latest!

Announcing a New Police-Procedural Thriller Series--Major Crimes Squad: Phoenix

I've been a fan of police procedurals ever since I read my first Joseph Wambaugh novel, back in my twenties. Later in life I got to meet and spend time with Joe, and he's just as entertaining and pleasant as one could hope for. There are lots of great writers working in the field, among them pals Michael Connelly, Robin Burcell, Paul Bishop, Don Winslow, T. Jefferson Parker, and many more. It's a natural genre for former law-enforcement officers like Wambaugh, Burcell, and Bishop, because they've already learned the ins and outs of police work and can convey it with absolute credibility.

It's harder for some of us, who have never been cops and may or may not have spent some of our younger days avoiding them.

I've done my homework, I think. I've been on ride-alongs with the San Diego Police Department's gang unit, in Arizona with the PDs of Douglas, Sierra Vista, and Gilbert, and with the Border Patrol. The chief of police in Douglas was a good friend and I've spent hours talking about the job with him. Another friend was a police officer there. And one of my good college friends became one of the most celebrated detectives in the history of the LAPD, and an advisor to Michael Connelly and James Ellroy, among others. I've taken Citizen's Police Academy courses in Sierra Vista and Gilbert, and have been through the Writer's Police Academy. We have an entire bookcase at home devoted to police procedure and true crime nonfiction.

In the world of tie-ins, I've written novels based on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Miami (I've also written comics/graphic novels based on both), NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: New Orleans, and Narcos, and of course I wrote the nonfiction true-crime tie-in to Criminal Minds.

But I've only really written original procedural thrillers twice. Of my first attempt, Empty Rooms, Michael Connelly said "Empty Rooms is a searing, no-holds barred journey into darkness. Jeffrey J. Mariotte knows the key is character, character, character and has delivered a story about men who relentlessly work the case at the same time the case works them. I was pulled in from the start on this one and it never let up. I highly recommend it."

T. Jefferson Parker added this: "Empty Rooms is as good and moving as a thriller can be. Keenly observed and deftly written, it’s something you’ll want on your shelf as long as you have one. Mariotte’s characters come off the page at you, and through them, the author spins a tale truly of our time. I couldn’t put this one down."

My second is the one that's currently being serialized on Kindle Vella, Flesh of All Sorrows. I don't know if anybody's read it yet, because Kindle Vella doesn't seem set up to tell people that yet (or if it's there, I haven't found it). I think it's safe to say that if you liked Empty Rooms, you'll like this one. It's set closer to home, in fictional Sossaman, Arizona, and involves a compelling and diverse cast of characters.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I'm here because I've just sold a brand-new police procedural series to Wolfpack Publishing (also the publishers of my soon-to-be-released Cody Cavanaugh series of semi-traditional Western novels)! Wolfpack is one of the fastest-growing private companies in the country. Although originally established as a publisher of Western fiction, it's branched out into mysteries and thrillers, action-adventure, and other genres, and I'm honored to have a second series in its lineup.

My forthcoming series is called Major Crimes Squad: Phoenix, and the first three books (which I'll be writing starting in November and wrapping up by August 2022) are tentatively titled The Squad, The Storm, and The Castle. They revolve around Detective Russ Temple, who's been tasked with forming and running the new Major Crimes Squad, the jurisdiction of which ranges across the whole of Phoenix, AZ. Temple operates in a police department firmly in our present moment, torn between reformers and defund-the-police movements and police unions trying to protect their own by any means necessary. His anti-corruption stance just might make him the target of some of his brothers and sisters in blue, but he'll do what he thinks is right--even when he's wrong. His fellow members of the MCS have their own ideas, of course, and they're an interesting lot (one of whom is Detective Deacon Glass, who has moved from the Sossaman PD to this one (and therefore from Flesh of All Sorrows to MCS: P). There will--I promise--also be some connection between MCS: P and Empty Rooms. It's all one world!

More detail to come, of course--I haven't even started writing yet, and can't until I finish the third Cody Cavanaugh novel. But I'm anxious to get going. This is going to be a wild ride! I hope you'll join me.

Tarzan and Me, or, You Never Know What a Weekend Trip Will Bring

Some people remember their first exposure to Tarzan. I'm not one of them. I'm pretty sure it was Johnny Weismuller movies on TV when I was a child in the late 1950s/early 60s. Later in that decade, I was a faithful viewer of the Ron Ely Tarzan show (in color!), which I considered truer to the character than Weismuller's monosyllabic portrayal. By then, I had learned that Tarzan had originated in stories and books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and I sought them out and loved them. Through my teen years I read the Mars, Venus, and Pellucidar books, too, and some of the standalones. I had friends who were Burroughs experts--none more so than the late Dick Lupoff, who wrote one of the best books on Burroughs's work.

As a tie-in writer, there are always those pop-culture characters you'd love to write but never have the chance. Conan and Spider-Man were two of those, but eventually I got to write them both. Tarzan, for a long time, was a kind of Golden Fleece, always out of reach.

But then, I took a weekend trip with pal Bob Boze Bell, artist and publisher of great True West Magazine, down to the 2019 Dum-Dum in Willcox, AZ. The Dum-Dum, also known as ERBFest, is an annual gathering of Burroughs fans and scholars. In 2019, Bob was the keynote speaker, and I tagged along because I wanted to meet those folks and see some cool Burroughsiana.

While I was there, I was fortunate enough to meet some of the people from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., including Christopher Paul Carey, the Director of Publishing, and Jim Sullos, the President. These are people with some of the best jobs in the world--and Chris gets to do his at a desk that Burroughs actually used. Burroughs wasn't thrilled with the way he was being published, and thought he could do a better job himself. He was one of the first authors to incorporate himself, and as the corporation, he put out many of his own books. The company still puts out Burroughs books, comics, and related material today, as well as handling the licensing for other products. They keep Burroughs's timeless work alive for each succeeding generation, and it's a noble effort. I had a couple of good, long talks with Chris, who's an author in his own right, and we agreed that we'd like to work together sometime.

That, in itself, was enough to make the trip worthwhile for me. But on the way back I started telling Bob about an idea I'd had for a Western novel. The idea was mostly the setup. Bob asked, "What happens next?" I didn't know. But I started to think about it.

That novel eventually became O'Meara's Gold, the first book in the Cody Cavanaugh series that Wolfpack Publishing will be putting out soonish (I'm working on the third one, Passage to Pedregosa, now). And the conversations with Chris ultimately led to this:

I'll let ERB, Inc. describe it: "Announced at PulpFest/ERBFest 2021 this past weekend in Mars, Pennsylvania: TARZAN AND THE FOREST OF STONE, a new novella by award-winning author Jeffrey J. Mariotte to be published in 2022 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The story will be published under its own covers in both trade and limited editions, and will be set during the classic canon directly after the events of TARZAN AND THE LION MAN by Edgar Rice Burroughs."

So I got to write a Tarzan novella, which will be published by the same publishing house that put out many of Burroughs's own works. And I got to tie it directly to a Tarzan novel by Burroughs himself. The writing life doesn't get much more fulfilling than that.

Four books eventually grew out of that one weekend trip to Willcox (more, if Wolfpack extends the series after the first three). That's a pretty good return on investment, I'd say. I'm having a very productive year, book-wise and word-count-wise, and I'm having a great time doing it.

      Johnny Weismuller, of course    

 

My wonderful wife and writing partner Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell is having a banner year, too, selling poems and short stories all over the place. Her latest published poem appears in the online and print versions of SF poetry mag Scifaikuest. Check it out!

 

 

CoKoCon Schedule, Another Book Done--Updated with New News!

Be sure to check out Marcy's posting of her CoKoCon schedule! She'll be busier than me.

Here's my CoKoCon schedule. It's virtual this year, so you can check in from anywhere in the world.

Both of my panels are on Saturday, September 4th.

The Weird, Weird West, 12:45pm - 1:45pm

David Lee Summers and I will be talking about weird westerns.

 

Married with Deadlines, 4:30pm - 5:30 pm

Marcy and I will be discussing how to handle having two writers in the family and still getting anything else done, with similarly hitched couple Yvonne Navarro and Weston Ochse.

 

Whether these panels will be moderated is something I guess we'll all discover together.

 

In other news, on Friday I turned in my third book of 2021. This one's my top-secret project, but it'll be announced next weekend, at Pulpfest 2021 (I won't be there, so don't look for me). After it's announced I'll share the news. Now I'm diving in to Passage to Pedregosa, the third Cody Cavanaugh Western thriller, due on November 1--my fourth and final deadline of the year. But that's just the ones I wrote this year--I'll also soon have an announcement about an epic I wrote with a  most unusual collaborator last year. And new chapters of my new procedural thriller Flesh of All Sorrows are still appearing on Kindle Vella twice a week. Please drop by, check it out, and leave thumbs ups on the installments. In case you don't think I can write thrillers, let me remind you of these words regarding my previous procedural thriller, Empty Rooms, from some folks you might have heard of:

Empty Rooms is as good and moving as a thriller can be.  Keenly observed and deftly written, it’s something you’ll want on your shelf as long as you have one.  Mariotte’s characters come off the page at you, and through them, the author spins a tale truly of our time.  I couldn’t put this one down.

--T. Jefferson Parker
Author of The Jaguar and The Border Lords  

Empty Rooms is a searing, no-holds barred journey into darkness. Jeffrey J. Mariotte knows the key is character, character, character and has delivered a story about men who relentlessly work the case at the same time the case works them. I was pulled in from the start on this one and it never let up. I highly recommend it.
--Michael Connelly
Author of The Lincoln Lawyer and The Gods of Guilt

Should you be curious about Empty Rooms, you can still grab a copy here.

Flesh of All Sorrows Update

A couple of notes regarding the Kindle Vella publication of my thriller Flesh of All Sorrows. I originally said I would post new episodes (what Kindle Vella calls chapters) weekly, but I've changed that to twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. Chapter 5 went live today.

Also, the book's going to be written up in The Big Thrill, the official magazine of the great International Thriller Writers organization. The writeup will be out on October 1. So if you want to get a head start before the hoi polloi come along, you should start reading now!

Finally, I've learned that reading it doesn't require a Kindle device or app. It's formatted to be easily read on a phone, tablet, or computer so all you have to do is go to the link and get reading. Please remember to hit the "Like" button at the end of each episode, and "fave" the book. That's the only way it budges in the rankings.

Thanks!

Flesh of All Sorrows: A Love Letter to 60s/70s Thrillers

It's easy to see that we're currently living in a golden age of thriller writing. Any era in which James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, T. Jefferson Parker, Megan Abbott, Don Winslow, Gillian Flynn, and John Connolly (and you can add your favorites--these are just some of mine) are all writing is hard to beat.

But what are not getting as much attention as they deserve, in this golden age, are what I consider the last golden age of thrillers--the decade spanning the mid-60s to mid-70s. Because the signature of the Bookbinder--the serial killer whose capture elevated protagonist Danny Mansfield's father to local fame and national prominence--involved choosing victims based on physical characteristics described in thrillers of his day, and rebinding those books in the flesh of his victims, my thriller Flesh of All Sorrows is somewhat of a love letter to some of the great thrillers of the day.

Here are just a few of my favorites (which, coincidentally, also appear in the novel).

Most people know Roderick Thorp today, if they do at all, because his 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever was adapted into a little movie called Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis as John McLane (called Joe Leland in the novel). It was a good, taut thriller, as one might expect given the nature of the story. But Joe Leland also appeared in an earlier Thorp novel, 1966's The Detective, which is my favorite of Thorp's works. It's a much, much longer book, with Leland investigating a case with more twists and turns, as well as being a character study of Leland himself. This one was also made into a movie, with Frank Sinatra as Leland and a terrific cast that included Lee Remick, Jacqueline Bissett, Robert Duvall, William Windom, and Jack Klugman. The Detective makes an appearance relatively early in Flesh of All Sorrows.

William Goldman is one of my favorite novelists and screenwriters. Not everything he wrote was brilliant, but his batting average was better than most in both fields. My personal collection includes all of his novels, most in first edition, and they're some of my most prized books. The Bookbinder was a fan, too, particularly of Goldman's best thriller, the 1974 novel Marathon Man (he also wrote the screenplay for the hit 1976 film with Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier). Both works still stand up today. Many years ago, I was on a long car ride with another great thriller writer, Joe R. Lansdale. We were talking thrillers, and he opined that the Marathon Man novel was a perfect thriller. I have to agree.

Goldman is one of the three Gs who were writing fantastic thrillers in the 60s and 70s. One of my favorites who didn't make it into the book was Thomas Gifford, whose first novel, The Wind Chill Factor (1975), which was published by G.P. Putnam's after winning the $15,000 Putnam Award. The book pitted John Cooper against Nazis and an international conspiracy, and it led to other great novels including The Cavanaugh Quest (which, in turn, provided a last name for my character Cody Cavanaugh, soon to appear in his own series of Western novels), Hollywood Gothic, and The Glendower Legacy. Gifford is largely forgotten today, but he shouldn't be.

The third G is James Grady, who I'm delighted to call a (Facebook) friend. He exploded into American consciousness with 1974's Six Days of the Condor, which was adapted in 1975 as Three Days of the Condor with Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, and Cliff Robertson. He's written more about Condor, as well as several standalone thrillers and a brief series about private detective John Rankin that I hoped would go on longer, and he's still going strong. Six Days makes a visceral appearance in Flesh of All Sorrows.

Danny Mansfield's mother in the book, Drew Laurel Winter, is also a novelist, though she only wrote one book, the semi-autobiographical The Strawberry Roan. It became a bestseller and enjoys new bursts of sales every time the Bookbinder's case hits the news again. The Strawberry Roan is fictional, but it also plays a role in the story.

A thriller about books--what could be better? Flesh of All Sorrows is now available on Kindle Vella. Please check it out, and spread the word. Thanks!

A New Book! A New Publisher! A Very Old Way to Publish Books!

A couple of years ago, my agent of 15+ years and I broke up. At that time, I decided to take what I knew about the book biz--from decades as a bookseller/bookstore owner, writer, and publishing exec--and handle my own career. I would write what I wanted to, and work only with publishers who understood what I wanted to do, who knew the genres I wanted to write in.

How's that going? Glad you asked.

As of right now, I have four books under contract, and a fifth (already written) that should have a contract any moment now. I've done some comics work and some short fiction. And now I'm trying something entirely different--a serialized novel, through Amazon's Kindle Vella program. You have to have a Kindle or a Kindle app to read it, but the app is free and should work on any device.

Serialized novels are new to me, but they're not new. Back in the old days, newspapers used to run serialized novels. Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers is widely considered to be one of the earliest successful serialized novels--proof of concept, if you will. More recently, the pulp magazines serialized novels. More recently still, Stephen King's The Green Mile first appeared as a serial novel, albeit in skinny little books instead of in a magazine or newspaper.

I've published 50-some novels, won some awards, earned some readers. But this is a fish of a different color, or something.

The book? It's called Flesh of All Sorrows (bonus points for you if you recognize the relatively obscure reference). The description you'll see at the Vella site is this: Newly minted police chief Danny's Mansfield's father, a former chief, became locally famous by catching the town's most notorious serial killer. When it seems the real killer isn't in prison, Danny risks destroying his father's reputation, his brother's political career, and his mother's legacy to learn the truth. Meanwhile, the grandson of the original killer has discovered the old man's trophy cache. He's a supremely troubled young man in search of an identity. And he thinks he's found it... 

It's about cops, killers, the modern West, courage, betrayal, love, fear, and honor. It grew out of two different areas--my friendships and interactions with police chiefs from different Arizona cities, and my extensive research--including reading, writing, lecturing, and teaching--into the minds of murderers. Most specifically, serial killers and mass murderers.

It's intended to be the first in a series that will not only explore how killers are made, but the nature of police work in a changing world. This one is set pre-pandemic, but the next one will look at cops in the age of George Floyd's killing, the "defund" movement, etc. Ripped from the headlines, you might say.

Of course, there'll only be a next one if Flesh of All Sorrows is successful. That's where you come in.

The first four installments will be live on Tuesday, July 27. I'll post here when they are. The first three are free, but after that you have to pay to keep reading (in tokens, which I'm guessing will not be the physical kind you earn at Chuck E. Cheese). I'm hoping you'll try the first three and be intrigued enough to keep going. Beyond that, I'm hoping you'll be enthusiastic enough to tell friends, to tweet, Insta, Facebook, whatever your favorite way is to influence your posse. Because I won't have a big publishing company (or a small one) behind me. It's just me and the faceless anonymity of Amazon. Jeff Bezos has billions, but he's not going to spend a nickel of it to promote my book (or, y'know, pay his warehouse workers a living wage). Especially if he sees this.

So please read. Please spread the word. That's the only way this serialization thing works. I'll keep the installments coming. The book's already done. It'll be complete on Vella, a week at a time (though I can speed that up if there's demand--I'm not sure yet, and don't know if anybody is, what the optimal interval should be. You can also "thumbs up" and "Fave" the installments, which will push it up the Amazon food chain.

Updated: It's alive! It's alive!  

The Pulse-Pounders Thriller Bundle

Nine out of 10 doctors agree that it's good to elevate your heart rate periodically. You could spend time on an exercise bike (boring) or go for a run (cold). Or you could read the books contained in the Pulse-Pounders Thriller Bundle, collated by bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson and released by the good folks at Storybundle.com. One of my very favorite of my novels, River Runs Red, is included in the bundle.

Why do I like RRR so much? in many ways, it's the most "southwestern" of my novels. It pulls together threads from some of my favorite writings about the American West, by people like Wallace Stegner, Edward Abbey (who even makes a cameo appearance!), and more. It also contains some of my favorite fictional characters and some of the most vivid characterizations of my career. That's all background, though, to the suspenseful and horrific goings on in West Texas.

You don't have to take my word for it. Here's what some of the most celebrated thriller and horror writers around said about it:

"Based on actual government programs, Jeffrey J. Mariotte's River Runs Red is a fascinating blend of espionage and the occult with several jaw-dropping plot twists and one of the best action sequences I've read in a long time."

 --David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Brotherhood of the Rose and First Blood (Rambo).

“Mariotte can flat out write. This is a smart, fast, terrific read. This river runs.”

--Don Winslow, bestselling author of The Force and The Cartel

"In River Runs Red, Jeffrey J. Mariotte seamlessly weaves our modern and ancient terrors into a breathless, fascinating novel of magic, murder, and friendship.  Mariotte's one hell of a writer, and this is his best work yet!"

--Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands

Reviewers agreed:

"Mariotte keeps you entertained and gives your gray cells something to chew on while they're helping you manufacture monsters in your mind's big-screen, surround-sound theater.... Nowadays, you can escape from horror fiction; but don’t let this horror fiction escape from you.'" --Trashotron.com

"River Runs Red is an ambitious epic of a supernatural thriller combining elements of spy fiction—and fact—with flat-out horror." --fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com

"Mariotte has created an entertaining, fast-paced tale of supernatural danger that takes as many twists and turns as a river ride... and, like most great rides, it picks up breathtaking speed toward the end. Fans of the unconventional in supernatural thrillers will enjoy this book." --sfrevu.com

But wait, you say. Aren't there some other books in this "bundle?"

Yes, and I'm so glad you asked. Here's the skinny, as described by Kevin J. Anderson:

D.J. Butler offers an omnibus of six complete novels in his Rock Band Fights Evil series. Heaven doesn't want them. Do they have a chance in Hell? In Animal, Dr. Munish Batra and Keith R.A. DeCandido present an edgy, intense thriller of a serial killer targets those who torture innocent animals—who is the real animal? Ignition, by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, is a tense terrorist hostage crisis at the Kennedy Space Center.

New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry and Rachael Lavin take you right into the zombie apocalypse in Still of Night. The dead rose. We fell. But not everyone thinks the war for survival is over. Heroes rise in times of crisis, and these are their stories....

As a StoryBundle special sneak preview, before the book is released to the general public, we're including Mike Thorn's Shelter for the Damned. While looking for a secret place to smoke cigarettes with his two best friends, troubled teenager Mark discovers a mysterious shack in a suburban field. Alienated from his parents and peers, Mark finds within the shack an escape greater than anything he has ever experienced. But it isn't long before the place begins revealing its strange, powerful sentience. And it wants something in exchange for the shelter it provides.

Wardenclyffe by F. Paul Wilson takes readers into the mind of genius inventor Nikola Tesla, in a 1906 experiment with a giant electrical tower to transmit power worldwide…but Tesla abandoned his experiment. Was it a conspiracy…or a terrifying discovery?

In Jeffrey J. Mariotte's River Runs Red—As teenagers, Molly, Byrd, and Wade faced inconceivable evil in an underground labyrinth on the banks of the Rio Grande. Reunited as adults, they discover that their terrifying experience was only the beginning.

In Craig Martelle's political thriller People Raged and the Sky Was on Fire, a terrorist plotting an attack on Washington DC. stays one step ahead by hiding in plain sight, always there, but never seen. Rick Banik—a patriot for the new age. A race against time. A fight against bureaucracy. A maze of red tape and dots that don't want to be connected. How many people must die for the plot to be uncovered? How many will die if it isn't?

Richard Fox offers a tense Iraq War thriller, Into Darkness. After a deadly ambush in Iraq leaves two soldiers in terrorist hands, intelligence officer Eric Ritter journeys into hostile territory to rescue them.

Turning farther from our normal world, in Michelle Cori's Convergent Lines, human-fae hybrids have existed alongside humanity for thousands of years. With long lives and magic, they shaped the world. Until a curse ...

Dean Wesley Smith shares a Cold Poker Gang novel, Freezeout, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch presents a new Diving Universe novel, Squishy's Teams and a bonus—a previous novel in the series, Boneyards.

That's fourteen books total that will keep your pulse racing, your eyes darting across the sentences, and your imagination engaged. Three weeks only. – Kevin J. Anderson

So what's the deal? you ask. What's all this great reading going to set me back?

Again, I'll pass the ball to Kevin:

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• Convergent Lines by Michelle Cori
• Into Darkness by Richard Fox
• Freezeout by Dean Wesley Smith
• Pulse Pounders: Countdown by Fiction River
• Ignition by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular books, plus NINE more! That's 14 books total!

• People Raged and the Sky Was on Fire by Craig Martelle
• Wardenclyffe by F. Paul Wilson
• Shelter for the Damned by Mike Thorn (StoryBundle Exclusive)
• Still of Night by Jonathan Maberry and Rachael Lavin
• Squishy's Teams by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Animalby Munish K. Batra M.D., FACS and Keith R.A. DeCandido
• River Runs Red by Jeffrey J. Mariotte
• Rock Band Fights Evil 1-6 Boxed Set by D.J. Butler

This bundle is available only for a limited time at http://storybundle.com/thriller. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!

It's also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

• Get quality reads: We've chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that's fine! You'll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there's nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to the Challenger Center for Space Education!
• Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you'll get the bonus books!

Me again. Three weeks. Fourteen gripping thrillers. Pick 'em up while you can!

In other news, my novel Spider-Man: Requiem is out in audio format. It's a terrific novel (he said, modestly)--a Peter+MJ love story mixed with creepy occult horror. If you pick it up from Audible.com, you can get it for free when you start a 30-day Audible trial. Even if you cancel at the end of the 30 days, you can keep the book. So, really, you've got nothing to lose and everything to gain!

UK: http://amzn.to/2J1Tzfz US: http://amzn.to/2ID0oBx

And don't forget, you can still get your hands on The One That Got Away: Women in Horror Anthology, Vol. 3, featuring Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell's terrifying tale "The Recliner." Marcy made some appearances around the web, and wrote about them here. She also discusses the forthcoming International Association of Media Tie-In Writers anthology Turning the Tied, which we're both in with separate stories.

My Western Journey, Part 2: Cody and Me + A Major Announcement!

Last month I began this series by talking about my new Hopalong Cassidy short story, "Behind the Tonto Rim" (and yes, the title is a node to Zane Grey's great novel Under the Tonto Rim, and is set at one of my favorite places in Arizona, the proper name of which is the Mogollon Rim). Here's the view from the rim's edge, looking south. Go back and read that installment, if you've missed it.

Okay, all caught up?

"Behind the Tonto Rim" will be out in March, in the anthology #TurningTheTied. You can preorder the ebook here (it'll also be in paperback, but no preorder option for that).

I wrote in that previous installment about some of my earliest Western writing, including the Desperadoes comic book series, which comprised four miniseries and a one-shot, all of it compiled in the Desperadoes Omnibus (which is now out of print, but available in various places).

After that, I wrote another Weird Western, Graveslinger, with my pal Shannon Eric Denton. Graveslinger was four issues, and is available in a collected edition. Graveslinger is also part of the Monster Forge Productions family, so keep your fingers crossed for a movie or TV series.

My love for Weird Westerns dates back to the single book that has had the greatest impact on my life. It's called The Mystery of the Haunted Mine, and it's a young-adult novel by acclaimed Western author Gordon D. Shirreffs. I got it in the sixth grade. It's a contemporary Western (as of the time of its writing in the 1950s), set in and around the Espectro Mountains, which even at that age I knew were a fictionalized version of the real Superstition Mountains. It includes Western landscapes, history, and action, but those are combined with elements of crime, thriller, and horror fiction. Anyone who knows anything about my writing career knows the things I love most are crime, horror, thriller, and Western fiction, so a single book blending all those genres really spoke to me. That one book set me on my career path, and my life path--eventually landing me in Arizona, where I can see the Superstitions from our bedroom window.

My first Weird Western novel was a tie-in to the RPG Deadlands. Thunder Moon Rising was a lot of fun to write, and I think a solid Western as well as a good novel.

All of this is leading up to a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!

My years of reading and writing Western fiction, including being a finalist for the Western Writers of America's coveted Spur Award and the Western Fictioneers' prestigious Peacemaker Award for my novella "Byrd's Luck," in the anthology The Untamed West, have all led up to this:

I've just signed a contract for a three-book series with Wolfpack Publishing!

Wolfpack is a fairly new player in the publishing business, but it's figured out how to sell books--lots of them--and although it publishes in many genres, its real specialty is Western fiction. My series--the Cody Cavanaugh series--will be right at home alongside the other Wolfpack series, written by some of the best writers currently working in the field (many of whom are old pals). The first book is due May 1, and will be published shortly thereafter, and I'll of course keep you posted through the process. In it, you'll meet Cody, a survivor of a horrific Confederate prison during the Civil War, and learn about his promise to his friend Sean O'Meara. That promise takes him west, after the war, where he'll meet up with ex-slave Freeman Douglas and the population of Pedregosa, in the Arizona Territory, including the women running the all-female-operated Empress Ranch. From Pedregosa, Cody and Freeman will travel around the west, righting wrongs and kicking bad-guy butt. These books will be Western thrillers--fun, action-packed, and as historically authentic as I can make them.

Stay tuned for more!

In other news, Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell is a contributor to an anthology that came out yesterday from Kandisha Press, in celebration of Women in Horror month. The One That Got Away: Women of Horror Anthology Volume 3 leapt out of the gate to land, before the end of its first day on the market, at the #1 New Release spot in the horror anthologies category. It's not a Western, but it's important enough to squeeze in here. Check it out!

 

 

 

My Western Journey, Part 1: Hoppy and Me

My heroes, as the song says, have always been cowboys. In the beginning, those heroes were Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy. As proof, I offer Exhibit A--me, at 2 years and 3 months, wearing my brand-new Hopalong Cassidy outfit. (My late brother Michael is garbed in Wild Bill Hickock). The year was 1957.

I've told the story several times, but the first comic book I can remember picking up and reading was a licensed Roy Rogers comic--what we'd call a tie-in, now--in a Russian barber's shop in an office building in Paris, France that was leased to the U.S. Department of Defense. We'd moved there when I was six, when my father was transferred to Paris, and that's where we all got our hair cut. In the early 60s, haircuts were a pretty regular thing.

That Roy Rogers comic led to a lifetime love affair with comics, so it was perhaps not surprising that my first real success as a comic book writer was a Western series--a Weird Western series, at that--called Desperadoes. Desperadoes was also, as it happened, my first foray into writing Western fiction.

But it was far from my last, and I'm not done yet. Recently I've sold some Western short stories, including the novella "Byrd's Luck," which was a finalist for both the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and the Peacemaker Award from the Western Fictioneers. The most recently published was "Midnight Train," in the Western Fictioneers anthology Under Western Stars, edited by Rich Prosch. There's more Western fiction on the way this year, but more on that in another installment of this blog series, because we're here to talk about Hoppy.

My first Hopalong Cassidy was actor William Boyd, who starred in 66 movies and then an insanely popular TV series from 1952-54 (which means I watched it in reruns, but just barely). Hoppy was silver-haired, smooth, faster at the draw than any mere human, and practically invulnerable. He was based on a character created by author Clarence E. Mulford in 1904. Mulford wrote dozens of short stories and novels about Hopalong. In 1950, when the TV series was anticipated, Western author Louis L'Amour--then early in his career--wrote four Hopalong novels under the name Tex Burns. These, like Hoppy and Roy Rogers comics, were also tie-ins, though I'm not sure that phrase was in use then.

Fast-forward to the more recent past. I've been a member, almost from its inception, of an organization called the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. For years, I was the keeper of the member's credits (and it was in that role that I first met my beloved wife, the incredibly talented author and poet Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell), and I've won three of the organization's coveted Scribe Awards. Last year, the org decided to put together an anthology of members' fiction. But although what binds us is our work in the licensed fiction field, we couldn't do an anthology of licensed stories, because the logistics would be insane. Instead, we decided to do stories based on public-domain characters--so we'd be applying the skills we bring to tie-in work, but without the legal issues involved with licensing characters.

The one I chose was Hopalong Cassidy. I re-watched a bunch of the TV episodes, read some of Mulford's stories, and read L'Amour's books. My Hoppy is a melange of the three (but he looks like William Boyd). It was a treat to write about one of my earliest childhood heroes. And because I am who I am, the story turned into a Weird Western--but, I think, very true to the spirit of Hopalong Cassidy.

If you're a fan, I hope you'll agree.

The anthology, Turning the Tied, is now available for preorder as an ebook. The print version will be along shortly. Note that this is NOT the final cover, but it's close. The book's theme is "uplift," and we all tried to write stories that were in some way uplifting. And none of us were paid--the proceeds are destined for the World Literacy Foundation, as good a cause as exists.

Check it out. Lots of great authors, lots of well-known and popular characters, and lots of fun.

Tell 'em Hoppy sent you.