Year Zero Writers is currently featuring four poems of mine on their site:
“Kate”
“Woman at the Bar”
“My Neighbor in the Apartment Across the Hall”
“Necessary Subterfuge”
You can find them all right here.
They also featured a short story of mine a few weeks back, “Make Moves, Chickie,” which you can read here.
So, I’m trying something new out here.
Below is the wonderful application known as Bookbuzzr. Basically, you can read my Western short story “Blood Quantum” by clicking the book image below (click the full-screen button), then flip through it like you would an actual (hardcopy) book. Crazy, huh!?
I won’t have this up forever, so…you know…do your thing…
Well, that headline (and obnoxious graphic) pretty much says it all. Lulu is offering free shipping until May 1st…all you have to do is enter FREEMAIL305 at the checkout and BOOM! You got yourself some quality reading material for way cheaper.
Check out both my chap books (Blood Quantum, in both print and digital formats, and College: Two Stories) at my Lulu storefront here, and get on this deal before it’s too late!
Read on!
Man, some days all your hard work really does pay off. In this case, getting a glowing review the newest Ex Occultus comic I wrote (“Seal of Solomon”) from the gang over at Aint It Cool News just makes any and all stresses melt away.
If you’re not familiar, this is one of the BIGGEST movie/comic/TV news sites on the web, so the fact they not only read and liked the comic, but featured it in their Wednesday post is just plain awesome. A bit of what the reviewer, Mr. Pasty, had to say:
What I like most about this book is how Russell slowly peels back the layers of his narrative so that as we get further into the story we begin to understand that returning the ring to its rightful (?) owner is just a small piece of this supernatural puzzle.
Yay! Check out the full review here, and, don’t make me remind you again, folks…you can get your very own copy of “Seal of Solomon” right here.
I got a chance to sit down and talk with Scott Rogers, co-founder of Black Coffee Press (a Detroit-based publishing company) and writer extraordinaire. We chatted about the trials and tribulations of starting your own publishing company, the craft of writing, as well as what it’s like working in the Digital Age. He also pimped my chapbook, College: Two Stories, which is always appreciated.
Check the Q&A out right here.
Hey, remember that Western short story I posted on my blog a while back, “Blood Quantum”? Well, I decided I wanted to try something new and offer it up as an eBook on Lulu.com.
Basically, I’m going to take my story down eventually from the site, so check it out while you can, and if you think it’s worthy of the $2.99 I’m asking, get yourself a copy by clicking the logo below. Cool?
As you may or may not know, I write a few series of comics for Saint James Comics. I’m proud to say that the newest one-shot I wrote for the Ex Occultus series is now available for purchase. Woo!
Series overview: Ex Occultus is a globetrotting, serialized epic combining elements of Indiana Jones, H. P. Lovecraft and The X-Files as it follows the exploits of adventurer and fortune-hunter Francis Wakefield, the gruff and grizzled Englishman with a tortuous past, and his protégé, a young man only known as Hollander, as they journey through the arcane in search of treasures and fortune, righting wrongs as they go.
The first one-shot I wrote, “Badge of Langavat,” was sort of a prequel to the series, following Wakefield before he met up with, and subsequently took under his tutelage, young Hollander. It involves werewolves in Scotland and you can get your own copy right here.
“Seal of Solomon” takes place in 1874 in Sofia, Bulgaria, and finds Wakefield and Hollander tracking down a ring of supernatural origins that may or may not have demon-culling abilities (hint: it does). You can get your own copy of this one right here.
On top of all of that, if you haven’t already heard me pimp them before, there are FREE monthly Ex Occultus adventures on the Saint James website available right now. These are 8-page mini adventures that fill in the gap between full issues, drawn by a plethora of talented artists. Check them out here (again…for FREE).
James Emmett (see below), artist of the Ex Occultus one-shot “Seal of Solomon” I wrote for Saint James Comics, attended I-CON this past weekend in New York. There he was invited to join nine different panels and talk about comics, film, Saint James, and “Seal of Solomon” itself.
There’s a nice little slideshow of pics over at the Saint James site, which you can check out here. There’s also a FREE 8-page preview of Ex Occultus “Seal of Solomon” right here.
I’m busy putting the finishing touches on a few short stories I started a while back, all of which I’m lumping together as “Westerns” even though they may not be Westerns in the traditional sense (I suppose Victorians would be more appropriate?). Anyway, one of my very favorites, “Dark Horse,” is about the Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster that happened in northeastern Ohio on December 29, 1876. At the time, it was one of the worst train disasters that had ever occurred in America, and resulted in more rigorous standards for bridge engineering. My story focuses more on the people on the train, rather than the disaster itself, but I love writing the details of landscape, as I’ve mentioned before, so took advantage of the grim scene. Anyway, figured I’d post one of my favorite bits, from the actual crash.
Hope you enjoy. More to come soon.
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At 7:28 PM Dan MacGuire heard a crack as the Socrates crossed the Ashatabula Bridge one thousand feet east of the Ashatabula station, more than two hours delayed from the intended schedule. He uttered “Goddamn” to himself as three I beams of the southern portion of the upper chord of the bridge buckled under the weight in a continuous lapse of time, the trailing engine Columbia sinking with the bowed structure in spectacular fashion. He was shaken from place then ran to the throttle and ratcheted it in a large fulcrummed pull in hopes the engine would clear the west abutment. As the lead engine passed safely over the span the deck of the bridge shifted heavy and leaned to the south causing the engine to derail. Dan coughed and wheezed and cursed and ran to the window and looked out to see the first express car slide down the west abutment and to the bottom of the ravine some distance below, tugging and pulling the Columbia with it until the meticulous and rigid tenets of physics caused the engine to land upside down on top of it, crushing the car like tin.
The second express car and subsequent two baggage cars followed and fell to the south side of the bridge as the rest of the wood from the bridge deck collapsed in on itself and cascaded down in a shower of splinters and bolted pieces. The first two passenger coaches likewise smashed into the ravine in crooked and jarred ways, the sound like drummed thunder while the smoking car crashed into both, decimating any trace of its purpose from that moment onward and killing all inside.
The drawing-room car and sleepers managed to land to the side of the bridge, spared from tumbling the length of the chasm but still bent and destroyed and spread among the white and ice. Car repairer Tim Sullivan gathered himself to his feet and launched himself from the train heaving a heavy-iron lantern above his head and shouting wildly for the station manager and repeating “No. 5 is off the bridge!” as the Socrates likewise whistled for attention. The crash attracted the attention of a throng of men and women at the station and like moths to light they crept forth in the night toward small fires that rose up in various increments of the wreck while telegraph operator John. P. Manning returned to his post, anxious to alert the authorities of what had transpired.
