Read “Blood Quantum” FREE for a limited time!

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…

Free shipping on all my books until 5/1!

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!

‘Ex Occultus: Seal of Solomon’ reviewed by Aint It Cool News!

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.

Q&A with the founder of Black Coffee Press

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.

In the land of the eBooks, I am king

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?

Support independent publishing: Buy this e-book on Lulu.

‘EX OCCULTUS: SEAL OF SOLOMON’ now on sale! Buy a copy and support a hungry artist!

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).

Photos from I-CON 2010

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.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

What follows is the abandoned opener to another Western short story I wrote a while back that I’m just now putting the finishing touches on.  I discovered, during my Sepia Phase (for lack of a better description) that I really enjoy writing about landscapes.  There’s just something melodic about it.  Anyway, I came across this and thought it might be good to share.

Clairmont sat nestled between peaks of the Mogollon Mountains that rose like green-mossed tortoise shells from the earth, humped in sloping arcs and generous inclines into rounded peaks thick with Sycamore and ash and cottonwood. It was a small town that originated as a mining camp but fell short of this ambition with a scarcity of rich veins in the vicinity. It now survived only as a supply center for itinerant prospectors bound for Glenwood or Cooney, sating its meager population with the lucrative draw of retail to the color-mongers. Scattered patches of range-land moated the settlement, filled with course grasses and dicotted forbs and mesquite with its narrow and bipinnated leaves drinking from some deep watertable, their wooded formations and needled thorns like some abysmal blanket on the land. The scrubland brushed back into dense clusters of Ponderosa that lied at the base of the rocky bluffs with its redbrown  knotted bark that tanged like vanilla if caught just right on the wind, encapsulated in what would later be known as the Gila Wilderness.