http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200445683610

This auction is for the chance to appear in an ORIGINAL SHORT STORY by horror, science fiction and fantasy author LINCOLN CRISLER.

The winner is responsible for providing email, phone and address information, may provide up to two additional names for supporting characters and can offer possible suggestions for situations, though the final decision rests with the author. Lincoln Crisler will conduct a brief phone or online interview with the winner in order to create a character sketch, and will produce an original 2500-3500 word horror, science fiction or fantasy short story featuring the winner of the auction. The winner may, if desired, purchase this as a gift for someone else and provide the recipient’s contact information to the author.

The winner will receive a signed print of the story (shipped at no additional charge) and a formatted PDF (via email) to share with family and friends. Lincoln Crisler reserves the right to reproduce this story at a later date in a future collection of his short work without notice or payment of royalties to the winner of the auction. All sales are final.

I’ll be celebrating my return from my latest exotic year-long Middle Eastern vacation with a string of book signings in Texas, New Mexico and California! These are the three solid dates and times I’m booked for at present; I’m also awaiting word on a possibly signing in Costa Mesa, California after the Riverside signing. Times are flexible; if things are going well, I’m not going to pack up and leave, and if anyone wants to grab a beer or two after the festivities, I’ll probably be up for that, too! If you can’t make the signing but would like an autographed copy of Despairs & Delights or Magick & Misery, I’d suggest calling ahead and placing an order. The El Paso/Las Cruces signings will be my last in the area for the forseeable future, so be sure to mark your calendar if you’ll be in the area! 

 Armageddon Bound is Tim Marquitz’ debut novel and is set in a world where God and Lucifer both said the Hell with fighting and took off for parts unknown, leaving the world, to include all the angels and demons, to their own devices. The general population of Earth hasn’t noticed a difference but the angels, fallen and otherwise, are locked in a struggle to bring about or thwart Armageddon.

The main character of the book is Frank Triggaltheron, a demon who just happens to be the Devil’s nephew and a former candidate to become the Antichrist. He’s no hero (or so he’d have you believe), but he’s in no rush to usher in the Apocalypse, either. He’s a member of an organization that includes angels, demons, vampires, magicians and telepaths whose covert mission is to stop the forces in favor of Armageddon. Frank ends up right in the middle of a huge plot by one of his Uncle’s former lieutenants to grasp power and bring about Hell on Earth.

The book was excellent, and appears to be the first in a series, though the story was completely self-contained and satisfying in and of itself. Two of my favorite things were Trigg’s self-deprecating nature (I like my heroes with a dash of humility) and the nonstop action. I’ve read my share of fast-paced books, but I can’t remember the last one I read with so many fights! The supporting cast of supernatural beings and magical humans was well-rounded; Marquitz seems to have a couple of options open to him when writing other books in the series: either to continue telling stories from Trigg’s POV or to write each one from a different character’s perspective. Each of them could hold their own in a novel, which is a rarity in and of itself.

This being a debut novel, I tried really hard to find something wrong with the book, either in the author’s approach or mechanics, or in the story itself. The book won. 5/5.

[disclosure: Tim sent me this book months ago, but a few weeks ago I found out he lives in my neck of the woods, and I invited him to join me at my El Paso book signing next month. Figured it was worth mentioning; I know how us crazy horror authors get blamed for being a "good ol' boy club" sometimes. Really, though; his book is that good. Honestly.]

… in the absence of anything profound about which to blog:

Dubaku is a short (40-someodd pages), fast-paced horror story set on a 1790’s slave ship. The protagonist, for whom the book is named, surrenders himself willingly to slavers in the hope of rejoining his wife, who had been sold into slavery by her own people as punishment for her marriage to Dubaku. A couple weeks packed into the ship’s hold with hundreds of sick, malnourished, abused and dying slaves awakens him to a harsh reality: none of them are likely to survive, and his chances of rejoining his beloved are slim to none. He is spurred to action, either by spirits or his own twisted sense of justice, and the horrfying results aren’t all that great for the ship’s crew, or the slaves for that matter.

Erdelac’s novella is expertly written, but for one small infodump near the beginning that probably could have been spread out a bit over the first half of the book. He does an excellent job of describing the misery of the slaves, the cruelty of the ship’s crew and the greed of the ship’s captain. The various indignities visited upon the slaves and Dubaku in particular are recorded in detail; I give Erdelac a lot of credit for choosing such an emotionally-charged setting and not shying away from the grim facts of one of mankind’s darkest hours. The crown jewel of the book is Dubaku himself, a powerful African shaman from a family steeped in magic. At the beginning of the book he stands tall and proud, assured of his mission’s success. He rapidly devolves into a man awakened to the truth of his situation, and he makes some dark choices that make it hard to consider him a hero by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever you think of Dubaku (the man) after reading Dubaku (the book), you can’t argue with the logic behind his decisions: the slaves were doomed from the start, and those bastard slavers definitely had it coming.

4.5/5. I already have Erdelac’s next work in queue and can’t wait to get to it.

Idea the First is a small group of auctions, probably on eBay: I’m thinking one for a custom-written 2500-3500 word short story. Starting bid maybe around $50; winner gets to give me three names and a situation, and I’ll likely conduct a brief interview with them to develop a character sketch. Maybe 3-5 more starting at $25 or so to be main characters in my short stories; nothing crazy, just the winners would have the MC named after them the next time I sit down to write a short. I’d shoot each winner a signed print of the finished work, and retain the right to reproduce the work at a later date in a collection or whatnot. I won’t be living under a bridge anytime soon, but if all goes according to plan I have at least seven signings coming in six states, and a little extra scratch never killed anyone.

Second is a short story available through Smashwords: I was looking into the Amazon Shorts program early last year as a way of making a piece or two available to interested parties willing to exchange a buck for something not available anywhere else, but that program seems to have gone the way of the dodo. I have a couple pieces in the 4000-word range that I’m considering for this. Ninety-nine cents seems about right for one of those. If you’re not familiar with Smashwords, basically it’s a website that hosts e-books of all sizes and varieties, distributes them through all the usual e-book suspects (Sony, Kindle, etc.) in all the usual formats, and gives the author upwards of 80% royalty.

Please advise.

Creeping Shadows is a collection of three novellas by Alan Draven, Brandon Ford and Jessica Lynne Gardner, and features stories about Jack the Ripper, a brutal fictionalized account of a real-life event and a series of curse-fueled murders. All three stories are excellent, though if I had to pick a favorite, I’d have to go with Ford’s  nonstop, brutal Merciless. The book’s a solid 4/5, and I thought it would be fun to get all three authors together for an interview. So, without further ado:

LC: How did the idea for Creeping Shadows get started? Were these particular stories included from the start, or was there a submissions process?

AD: I’m a big fan of novella collections so I thought it’d be a great idea to publish a book featuring three novellas from three different authors. I’ve known Brandon for a couple of years now and am a fan of his work so I asked him if he’d be interested and he was so all we were missing was a third partner in crime. Since a lot of today’s independent writers are women, I figured it’d be a nice addition to our trio to have Jessica come onboard with us. She accepted my invitation and it grew from there. I gave Brandon and Jessica the very large theme of stories about monsters—whether they be supernatural or not—and a few weeks later the project was a go.

LC: Alan, I love stories about Jack the Ripper, my all-time favorite being Richard Laymon’s Savage. Yours is different in that the Ripper is actually haunted by a ghost, a novel idea that I don’t think I’ve seen in any other stories about Jack. What made you think of it?

AD: I’ve been fascinated by Jack the Ripper for as long as I can remember. The idea for the story actually came to me in a very vivid dream where I was an ethereal bystander witnessing Jack the Ripper murdering a prostitute and seeing her ghost rise from her slain body only to come back and haunt him later on. I did a little bit of research to find out if something similar had been done before and it seemed no one had spun that twist in a Ripper story, so I went ahead and began writing.

LC: Brandon, your story, Merciless, is based on a true story. Can you give us some of the background on this?

BF: Merciless was inspired by a real-life kidnapping that took place in California back in 2002.  Two teenage girls were abducted at gunpoint and savagely assaulted several times throughout the night.  Their captor, a family man, was known by his friends and neighbors as a sweet and kind individual.  But, as those closest to him came to find, alcohol altered his personality drastically.  He’d become often times violent under the influence, but never had he done anything as vicious as this before.  This kidnapping was the first to utilize the Amber Alert system, which proved to be incredibly effective, as it played a key role in the girls’ rescue.

LC: All three of your topics appear to be research-heavy. What were some of your experiences doing the research for your stories?

AD: I’m not big on research unless it’s a subject that I’m really enthralled about. For Vengeance is Mine, my story in Creeping Shadows, I immersed myself for two months in a Jack the Ripper bible and a handful of reliable websites. I read Ripper resources exclusively for the duration of that period of time, scribbling furiously in a notebook all the details of the murders; street names, times of death, conditions in which the bodies were found, etc. When I was done with my research, I felt like I knew the historical aspect, facts, and all the theories on Jack the Ripper like the back of my hand. I was in a very dark state of mind at the end of this, having bathed in the subject for such a long period of time. I then made up my own mind about what had happened, meaning who I thought would have most likely been Jack the Ripper based on everything I’d read. I added to that the angle that he was haunted by one of his victims and I had a historical horror tale on my hands.

BF: I first learned about this incident through a 48 Hours: Hard Evidence special.  I then did a lot of online research for further details I could use in the piece.  However, I tried not to put the case under a microscope, as I wanted to put my own spin on what happened.  So, even though a lot of what is in Merciless actually happened, a large portion of it is pure fiction.

JLG: I’ve always loved researching different cultures. I was one of those kids that adored history and theology and my nose was always stuck in a book on ancient societies so it wasn’t that difficult to get me to read about Mexican superstitions, history and culture! I think Dia De Los Muertos, which is the Mexican Day of the Dead that my story revolves around, is a beautiful tradition because they view death so much differently. They honor the lives of the dead and do not fear death-instead they see it as a cycle of life. To further understand the holiday I actually got some recipes for sugar skulls and candied pumpkin (both are Dia De Los Muertos staples and are featured in Sugar Skull) and made them for my own family and friends. A writer should experience as much of what they are writing about as possible and I like to use all of my senses.

LC: Jessica, you have stories featured in a lot of anthologies from the last couple of years, but Sugar Skull is your longest published work that I’m aware of. How did writing Sugar Skull compare to the other work you’ve done?

JLG: Sugar Skull is my longest published work but I’ve actually been writing longer works from day one. As a child I worked on fantasy novels (which never saw the light of day) that I would give to my family and friends to read. This continued well up into my teens until I took my AP English class my senior year of high school. It was there that I wrote my very first short story. Because I’d never fully completed my novels (I think I was too young to focus properly) I decided to try my hand at short dark fantasy and horror. It was challenging at first to write shorts but it taught me much about writing and editing. Sugar Skull was a bit between both worlds but it made me get back into my novel writing groove and with all the experience I’ve gained from my short publications, it was a lot smoother and an easier transition. Now I’m back to writing novels! What I love about the longer works is the ability to have so much room and creative reign with the settings and plot. I feel that short stories are more about characterization and the details are limited. Being a detailed oriented person I love to spin a nice long tale filled with history, plot turns and lavish descriptions.

LC: What can we expect to see from the three of you in the near future?

AD: I currently have a Halloween short story titled “The Rattling Man” in the Horror Zine’s first annual anthology—And Now the Nightmare Begins. In March, The Odd Mind radio show’s Lesa Trapp will be publishing a book on writing titled Indies On Writing for which I wrote the Foreword and a piece on writing about the importance of self editing. And there is a chance that a collection of novellas and short stories of mine will be released in late 2010 titled Nocturnal Offerings through Pixie Dust Press.

BF: My third novel, Pay Phone, will be released by Arctic Wolf Publishing towards the end of March.  Set in the late ‘90s, it concerns a serial killer that uses the public phone located across the street from his building as a way to lure his victims.  Watching from his third floor window, he dials strangers on the street and lures them into his web.  It’s definitely the darkest out of the novels I’ve written so far and the one I’m most proud of.

JLG: Since I’m back in my favorite element with longer works, I have a newly finished supernatural horror novella based on master-builder legends and am finishing up my first novel and beginning a dark fantasy novel series. So hopefully you’ll be seeing a lot more from me very soon!