James Reasoner's Diamondback

A couple of pals say undeservedly nice things about me on their blogs: James Reasoner at his Rough Edges page and Juri Nummelin at Pulpetti.  It's all about James' novel, Diamondback, and an itsy-bitsy part I played in its twisty publishing history.  Thank you, guys! But the real kudos go to Juri, who worked hard to get the book published (you can read the details at Pulpetti), and to James, who wrote a very entertaining action novel. Diamondback would have made a great Gold Medal paperback novel back in the 1960s, the glory days of paperback originals. Lucky us, we get to read it these days as an eBook! Recommended reading.


Accompanying this post is a cover photo of the illo I produced for Juri's project. I may have another version of the art that I can post here later, if I can dig it up, that allows some comparisons for before-and-after the typography is added.

A Quiet Night in the Dark in La Plata, Missouri, 1942

My story for the Two-Fisted Tales of LaPlata, Missouri--a print anthology published by Mark Lambert for the 2007 Doc Con in Lester Dent's town--is now available for both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook.

Lester Dent is known today among pulp magazine and popular culture fans as the primary creator and writer of the character Doc Savage, hero of a monthly magazine published by Street & Smith from 1933 to 1949. Doc Savage -- Clark Savage, Jr. -- was the precursor to later popular heroes like Superman, Batman, James Bond, and Dirk Pitt. Dent's energetic prose for the Doc Savage stories always was published under a Street & Smith house name: Kenneth Robeson. So he was surprised when his editor informed him that Kenneth Robeson was the name of an actual person. And in "A Quiet Night in the Dark in La Plata, Missouri, 1942," a surprise visitor shares with Dent an astonishing story that leads to deadly consequences in his quiet rural home.

My buddy, Chuck Welch, who runs some web sites devoted to Doc Savage, wrote: "A fun story that captures the signature snappy prose style of Lester Dent."  I take that as high praise.

You can find the Kindle version here.

You can find the Nook version here.

For those folks who have other eReaders, I plan on having the story available at SmashWords soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy!  Thanks for your patronage. Feel free to post comments. And if you like this story (or Pretty Polly), please post a review at Amazon to let other folks know. (I don't think you can post reviews at B&N, but I may have simply overlooked that feature.)

Scott Hampton and Mike Mignola

I'm in the process of posting news about some new work of my own in the next few days. In the meantime, I'll promote some recent work by a Bleeding Horse buddy, Scott Hampton. Scott provided the painting for the dust jacket of Brian Showers' The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories, for which I provided interior black-and-white illustrations. Scott recently performed art chores for a two-part Hellboy tale scripted by creator Mike Mignola and published by Dark Horse, The Sleeping and the Dead. Neat little tale about vampires.  I've posted the cover image here that Scott drew.  There's another version with Mignola's drawing on the cover, which you can view by clicking here.

Doodle Day

Some days just deserve a doodle.

My day job requires my participating in a lot of teleconferences and in-house meetings. During the course of making notes for these, I'll doodle little squiggles and drawings. Instead of distracting me, as one might assume, the doodling occupies that artsy side of my brain so the more logical part of my mind can better focus and engage with the business at hand. It was the same way back when I was a young boy in school.

Anyway, the accompanying drawing came out of a teleconference. It seems well-suited for a Monday-morning-start-of-the-workweek mood.

The Bleeding Horse

In 2008, Mercier Press (a Irish publishing company) brought out a hardbound collection of short stories, The Bleeding Horse and Other Ghost Stories, by my buddy Brian Showers. This was a nice-looking book with a great dust-jacket painting by the amazing Scott Hampton, who has done a lot of work for DC Comics, including Batman and Simon Dark (the latter with Steve Niles, who created 30 Days of Night). I was very pleased to be a part of this work by providing the black-and-white interior illustrations, one of which I've included here.

Brian crafted his stories about actual locations along Rathmines Road, which leads through the community of Rathmines into Dublin. Woven among the factual and historical bits are the clever fictional elements of the ghost stories, and performs this task so very well that one really can't tell where the truth ends and the fiction begins. The book has some minor popularity among fans of ghost stories, and famed anthologist Ellen Datlow (former fiction editor for Omni Magazine and the Sci Fi Channel's web site, and co-editor of many annual Best Of Fantasy & Horror collections, among others) selected three stories from Bleeding Horse for Honorable Mentions in Best Horror of the Year, volume 1 (2008): "Father Corrigan's Diary," "Favourite No. 7 Omnibus," and "Quis Separabit."

The book's biggest honor came with winning The Children of the Night Award (2008) from The Dracula Society for "the best piece of literature published in the Gothic (including horror or supernatural) genre -- novel, short story, or biography." The competition was stiff that year, with nominations going as well to perennially best-selling author Neil Gaiman (for The Graveyard Book) and John Harwood (The Seance). While Brian's stories carry the show, I hope my illustrations added to the proper atmosphere.

By the way, the Bleeding Horse is the name of a pub. No actual horses were harmed during the writing of these stories.

Pretty Polly now available for the Nook

For those who have been asking, it's now available. Click here to check it out.

Thanks for your interest!

Pretty Polly soon available on Nook

For those who use the Barnes & Noble Nook eReader instead of the Kindle, I just formatted and uploaded Pretty Polly tonight.

It should be available for download in a day or two.

I'll post here when that happens.