Saw Captain America: The Winter’s Soldier on Friday.
That was a good damn movie. Best of the Marvel movies so far. Even better than Avengers. It kicked ass from start to finish.
Go see it. Go right now.
And I saw Gravity at the dollar theater in 3D.
I knew the ending and I was STILL on the edge of my seat. That movie in 3D is almost too intense. Damn. Find it in your town and see it while you can.
So in my copious amounts of spare time I sometimes do cover layouts for folks. Here is the cover I did for Mechanoid Press‘ BETRAYAL ON MONSTER EARTH.
Actually the cover artist did the front cover layout, I just did the back cover and spine.
You can buy it HERE
Pay attention to this one, it’s BIG.
I’m in a new anthology. I know, I know, I’m in a LOT of anthologies, but this one is a bit different. This one is a Crime Fiction anthology being put out by Gutter Books and Zelmer Pulp based on the songs of Bruce Springsteen. All the proceeds go to the Bob Woodruff Foundation which helps our veterans, cause dammit that’s what the Boss would want.
You may ask, WHY is this anthology different? Well, first of all it’s cool as hell, but secondly, it has some HUGE names in it. How huge? DENNIS LEHANE huge. HILARY DAVIDSON huge. Peter Farris, Chris F. Holm, Chuck Wendig, Les Edgerton, and Todd Robinson plus a shit-ton of other awesome authors huge.  Look at the cover:
Ain’t it loverly?
AND LOOK AT MY NAME RIGHT THERE ON THE COVER!
Cover credit. Hells yes.
And you all know my LOVE for crime fiction. I wrote about it HERE.
So what did I write about? My story is based off the song I’m On Fire. I’ve been listening to that damn song and been haunted by it for decades. It’s a spooky, creepy song full of human darkness. The second I was asked to be part of this by my good buddy Brian Panowich I knew I was writing that song. Got the official and wrote that beauty up in one sitting.
It’s dark. Real fucking dark.
It’s set in a place outside Culvert City, my crime fiction town, in a place called Butcher’s Holler and the time is somewhere around the 40’s.
Here’s what Joe Clifford, the editor, said after reading the piece.
“Finally started editing the Springsteen antho. Just read your story “I’m on Fire.” Wow. I mean, just wow . . .Â
. . . Got some Knockemstiff in there (which is my favorite short story collection), with just enough tongue-in-cheek nod to the Boss. Really, the perfect story for this collection. Well done, sir. Well fucking done.“
I’ll take that. So keep your eyes peeled for the announcement of it going on sale and be ready to enjoy some awesome noir, inspired by an awesome singer, for an awesome cause.
And go LIKE the Facebook page for this anthology HERE
and here is a link to the video.
HARK! all Loyals and True Believers the wait is over!
Now you can have an ALL NEW DEACON BOOK! (sorta)
Please welcome to the family SPECIAL FEATURES: A Deacon Chalk Short Story Collection
Look at it! I MADE that shit. Took the photo, did the layout, that’s all MINE!
Okay, let me explain. I look at the three novellas and three novels in the Deacon Chalk series so far as the first season of a really kick ass urban fantasy television show. Like the most kick ass show that ever was.
THAT THING AT THE ZOO, BLOOD AND BULLETS, SPIDER’S LULLABY, BLOOD AND SILVER, CIRCUS OF BLOOD, and BLOOD AND MAGICK. If you read straight through from the first you get one long story arc. This is the special features disc of that dvd set. (hence the clever title lol) Inside you will find short stories that happen around and between the published titles including DOLLY an all new, never before seen novelette that shows Deacon when he first started monster hunting. It’s Deacon: Year One.
You also get bonus material, character interviews, an essay, some special treats, a cut scene from BLOOD AND MAGICK, and a wrap up story set after BLOOD AND MAGICK that puts an elegant bow on the whole first season.
Damn right.
Some of this material has been published on the interwebs, but all of it has all been polished and a lot of it is new and all of it falls in a line. Plus it will look awesome on your book shelf.
More Deacon is coming. I promise. You will see some short stories, some novellas and a full novel soon because the second season is about to start and let me tell you something, I am upping the ante. You thought the series was wild before, well now it’s going completely off the rails!!!!!!!!!! THIS is the series with more balls than any other urban fantasy series out there and shit’s about to get buck.
But until that happens, buy this.
Here’s the BIG ASS BUY LINK FOR AMAZON which is where you can get it in print and kindle format.
Here is the BIG ASS BUY LINK FOR B&N where you can get it for your nook.
And while you are at it look over at my two other indie published titles:
THAT WAY LIES MADNESS
I drew the art for this as well as doing the layout!
Lovecraftian horror at the edge of space! Scary sci fi with a terrific character.
THAT WAY LIES MADNESS AMAZON LINK
THAT WAY LIES MADNESS B&N LINK
and
HIRED GUN
I took the photo and did the layout for this!
My crime fiction short story collection. It’s gritty and dark and awesomely violent.
And thank you for all your loving support. It means the world to me and I love you very much.
So there has been much brouhaha about diversity on the interwebs. Lots of fighting. Lots of name calling. Lots of accusations.
I won’t bother to point it out but you can find it.
It got me to thinking about my own work. I’m a straight white male, have been my whole life, don’t think there’s anything wrong with being that. None of those three things are inherently evil.
My main character in the work I am best known for is a straight white male.
I also don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
In the Deacon Chalk series you also have a ton of other characters. Some are white, some are straight, some are males.
A whole lot aren’t. Here’s a rundown.
Kat- Female and Deacon’s right hand.
Tiff- Female and Deacon’s love interest.
Charlotte- Female and Deacon’s Were-spider friend. Also black. Also Bi-sexual and polyamorous.
Boothe- Male and Deacon’s friend, ally, and employee. Were-rabbit. Also Gay,
Josh- Boothe’s partner. Gay and Were-rabbit.
Sister Mary Polycarp- Father Mulcahy’s understudy. Female and black.
Ronnie – Deacon’s friend who is psychically bonded to a cluster of supernatural ghost spiders. Female.
Sophia- Were-dog. Deacon’s friend and ally. Female.
Sasha- owner of Cordite. Deacon’s ally. Post op Transgender.
Katsumi Takakage – Deacon’s ally. A tengu, she is Asian and female.
Maasakki Hatsumi- Katsumi’s father and also a tengu. Asian.
Those are the highlights. Lots of female characters, damaged but strong. Lots of LBGT characters. Multiple ethnicities. Kinda the way it is in the real world.
The thing is, I never wrote these characters as a statement or to fill a quota. They just work as who they are. In fact Boothe is in the whole of book 2 BLOOD AND SILVER and it’s only in the last chapter that his sexual orientation is mentioned because it does not matter to the story. It isn’t the point of the character or his arc through the books.
Most readers never pick up on the fact that Charlotte is black. Seriously. I tell people that and they give me blank face. It’s there in the first description of her after transforming into her human state but still people do not catch it. Which I like because the fact that she is black is NOT the point of the character.
Anyways, this is a bit of a ramble but enjoy the books.
Sorry about that.
I kinda fell into the tattoo shop and have been doing that. Hey, I neglected it for most of 2012 and a LOT of 2013 for the writing gig so it was needed. But rest assured, it’s all coming up nicely.
Now I have been working on writing, never you fear. I have several projects in the air. Some from Big Publishers, some from Small Press, and some that are Indie Published.
Try this:
ROBOTS UNLEASHED! from Mechanoid Press.
My story GODRIDER is in here with two other stories of robot goodness. I didn’t do the cover art, but I did do the layout.
And don’t forget my two Indie Published releases
Both of them put a chunk of change in my pocket and they kick ass too!
Alright. This is hard to admit.
HARD.
Cause The Avengers pretty much came out and rocked my ass, your ass, and your grandma’s ass off. Cause Joss Whedon is a badass who can chew up corporate crap and spit out magic rainbows of love. Cause Clark Gregg is a bonafied Terminator when it comes to playing Agent Coulson, stealing a multi-million dollar movie from some of Hollywood’s biggest players. Cause, dammit, this is the Marvel Universe and the sumbitchin Avengers part of it.
But the really real truth of the matter is that Marvel Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. pretty much blows.
Hey guys, pose like you’re gonna kill a franchise.
I’m not the first one to say it so put your hair back on. The show is flat and boring. Nobody is engaging. I just don’t give a shit what happens because I know when the show starts that NOTHING is going to happen. There are no consequences. Everybody is exactly who they were when the show started and I feel they will remain that when the show ends. The actors have zero chemistry and even the indomitable Clark Gregg comes off as flat and muted.
Hell, it’s making me kinda hate Agent Coulson.
Yep He’s dead.
So what can be done? I’m glad you asked.
FIRST this show needs to remember that it is a part of the Marvel Universe. We were promised that it would tie in and we have seen almost NONE of that. Yes we got a 30 second appearance of Nick Fury at the end of an episode, but where are the small nods? The inside fanboy references? The freaking copy of the Daily Bugle with SPIDERMAN: HERO OR MENACE? plastered across the front of it. Why hasn’t this team started running into A.I.M. or Hydra or any of the other bad guy organizations out there? You have about 30,000 C and D list heroes and villains you can swing into this show for almost no money. Hell, Thor hits in two weeks, just give me a red and silver streak CGI’ed across the sky and have Coulson comment on it.
It’s like I made that shit up.
SECONDLY this show REALLY needs some consequence. Like the episode called EYE SPY. Crap episode. Nothing really happened. Had a glimmer of promise that quickly died. HOWEVER, they could have pulled that episode out by
SPOILERS WARNING!
simply doing one thing at the end. When the girl who they removed the eye from laid down at the end of the show and her eye began to flutter as she fell asleep they should have simply had the one eye left pop open and then do that zzzzt bloodspurt thing that happened to her handler.
BAM! all of a sudden you establish a few things. 1) Coulson’s team (and by extension S.H.I.E.L.D.) can miss things, which creates a helluva lot of tension. 2) It indicates that the person in control of the eye devices has a bigger plan and won’t simply disappear after this one episode. These two things could turn the show in the right direction because these two things are missing.
Truthfully they should call me and I can fix this show.
Here’s what the dealio should be: We all know that Coulson died in The Avengers movie. This Coulson is something else. He may be a Life Model Decoy, he might be a prototype of Ultron or Kang or a Doombot or a brainwiped Skrull or some other thing FROM THE MARVEL UNIVERSE that could possibly become the Vision. Regardless, he isn’t human and S.H.I.E.L.D. is field testing him.
He thinks he’s in charge of this team of misfits but truthfully THEY are handling him because he’s dangerous.
There are two scientists because they are both studying him using their different schools of training. Agent Ward and Agent May are there so that if he doesn’t work out they are the two with the ability to take him down. And the Rising Tide girl is the wildcard and the ONLY one who doesn’t know Coulson’s secret besides him. Of course her gig is to investigate and to mistrust S.H.I.E.L.D. so when tidbits of info that things are not as they seem come out, she is our way of finding out about it. She is our intro character. Once she finds out the truth she drops the knowledge on Coulson and he and her go off the rails.
Then we find out that this whole time they haven’t been working for S.H.I.E.L.D. at all.
Aw yeah son.
BAM!
Seriously Joss, give me a call.
Alrighty kids, gather round for another guest blog by a good friend of mine (and fellow Outlaw) Steven Shrewsbury. Steven’s a helluva guy writing some terrific sword and sorcery today. One of his stories appears in THUNDER ON THE BATTLEFIELD : Sorcery which is volume 2 of the double anthology I did for Seventh Star Press. (Go buy it and Sword which is number one)
He has new work coming down the pike. The newest Gorias Le Gaul, which he is telling you about today and shortly a sword and sorcery retelling of the story of Goliath. Yes, THAT Goliath. I read it, it rocked, I wrote the introduction for it. So sit back and enjoy!
the cover!!!!
STEVEN SHREWSBURY:
My novella sized story collection BLOOD & STEEL: LEGENDS OF LA GAUL VOLUME I will be out really quick here. It features yarns about my character, Gorias La Gaul (central figure of the novels OVERKILL, THRALL and more to come) in various stages of his long life.
Some fantasy works are considered character driven fiction, rather than the epic world itself being the star of the novel. Don’t get me started that most ‘world building’ exercises in fantasy are just masturbatory sports in rearranging ancient Earth history and geography. Gorias La Gaul’s tales take place in a pre-flood world of mine that I prefer to think of as a time forgotten in our own history. While I’ve told much about the 700 year old flawed hero, who is equally as interested in woman as well as risky adventures, Gorias remains a mysterious character. In the tales of the new BLOOD & STEEL release, I’ve told selective things about him, events that may help his fans or a casual observer understand a bit more about him.
Do the stories paint a picture of why he loves women so much, loves to drink and is such a kick ass fighting man? Not entirely, but I’m not through with him yet.
The first tale, DAY OF INIQUITY tells of the rather violent circumstances of Gorias’ birth. We get to see his father in this story (as well as ASHES OF THE ALL FATHER and then, post mortem in INSURMOUNTABLE) and learn a bit about the tribal nature of how La Gaul was raised. The events in DAY are pretty horrific and the end of that one has a jaw dropper of a punch line, but, that’s how I roll at times. ASHES OF THE ALL FATHER shows us Gorias at 11 or so, and the way his tribe treated children and his own audacity with weapons at the climax, notably a stone member of a statue of Marduk.
The other stories tell of Gorias as an older man, one where he is drunken and heartbroken, somewhat out of character to his older self in OVERKILL and THRALL, Gorias indeed is haunted by a woman (aren’t most strong men?) and she is seen in the take WHORE OF JERICHO the Sorcery anthology currently out from Seventh Star.
Will it totally make the reader GET what makes Gorias tick? Perhaps a little, but I’m telling things as they present themselves to me. Gorias is in no way CONAN but as Howard said of his Cimmerian, the tales are coming to me out of sequence.
A reader will get to see his birth, how he coped with death and action, and even shouldered the sadness of loss of love, plus a duty to his dead father that is bizarre to modern eyes, yet, all to real in the realm of the past and for men of courage.
But why Gorias? Why an aging character, from a once raw beginning to a lordship and back to a mercenary sort of vagabond life? Why write of an enigmatic guy more comfy with whoring and whiskey than proper protocol (but he does remember the ropes)? Writing about someone with the moral character of Clark Kent must be a challenge. Gorias does have a certain code, maybe even great chivalry buried in his bearded face that’s probably more at home on DUCK DYNASTY that in a high bred fantasy realm.
I created him to be the vehicle for a fantasy setting where he wouldn’t be a barbarian warrior, nor a trained assassin, or any other real templates. The story is what works in these yarns and novels, but he is passing through them.
Fair warning: These tales aren’t for the squeamish nor the easily offended. They are rough, but move fast. They are grisly at times, yet will have one stopping to be revolted or laugh alternately. Gorias, while a flawed character with a capital F, well, ya won’t be able to help rooting for him. That is my hope.
How did I create Gorias? Well, that’s a topic for another blog.
So I had this hankering about, ohhhhh, a year ago. I wanted a sword and sorcery anthology, done right by a press who would not only appreciate the genre but actively enjoy it, that I could submit a story to. I have this character Theok who is a Northland barbarian living and adventuring in a sword and sorcery version of the Old Testament. He is a follower of Yahweh translated through his upbringing as a barbarian so he views and serves Him as a warrior God. It’s like what the Bible would be like if written by Robert E. Howard.
Anyways, I have long liked the way Seventh Star Press runs their ship. They put out a top notch product, promote the hell out of it, and their authors are really happy. So I hit up Stephen Zimmer, the go to man for all things Seventh Star, and said to him “You should make a sword and sorcery anthology and let me put a story in it.”
Zimmer then comes back with “We’ll do it, but only if you edit it.”
Wait, what?
I’d never edited anything before. But you know me, unafraid of my own limitations, so I said yes.
Actually, I said Hell Yes.
So a few months of clearing stuff off my schedule and getting in stories (over 200) I narrowed it down to a slim, trim 22 stories of kick ass. With length of each story being a factor we split it into two anthologies and viola: THUNDER ON THE BATTLEFIELD Volume: SWORD and Volume: SORCERY were born.
Toss in two stories featuring Theok, a KICK ASS cover by Enggar, and a lot more work than I would have guessed and in a blink you have a release day!
Today the digital versions of both anthologies hit the E-stands and the print will follow in 2 weeks.
Go buy some, only $3.99 each for 24 stories of ass kicking sword and sorcery!
Here are the links for both volumes:
Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword
Kindle version: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-Sword-ebook/dp/B00EE0YL8Y
Nook version: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thunder-on-the-battlefield-james-r-tuck/1116359898?ean=2940148400639
Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery
Kindle version: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Battlefield-Sorcery-ebook/dp/B00EE15GY6
Nook verison: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/thunder-on-the-battlefield-james-r-tuck/1116359900?ean=2940148400660
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So, with the royalty check one of the things I bought was a new camera. Here is what I have been doing with it 🙂
Needless to say, all pictures are mine. Copyright James R. Tuck. See that big name across them? That’s my photography handle. Respect it.
NOIR MUSINGS 