I do covers. If you want one hit me up. You get print layout and ebook cover.
james AT jamesrtuck DOT com
(replace AT with @ and DOT with . and close the gaps)
On my personal books I did the artwork and took the photos….for FLASHING STEEL FLASHING FIRE I used a stock image I bought……for INTO THE WEIRD the artwork came from Karl Comendador (find him HERE)
If you want to buy any of these click the pictures and you can buy them in ebook and print!
My stuff:
and for other people:
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
Â
I’m feelin’ a bit under the weather today so this post may ramble a bit. Forgive me like I’m Jean Valjean and I just stole your silverware. (I saw Les Miserables’. I cried two tears. Deal with it.)
Two things happened recently that drive this post.
1) The Missus got me DEATH THREATS: The Life And Times Of A Comic Book Rock Star by Drew Hayes which collects the starting notes (an editorial rambling by author/artist) for every issue of POISON ELVES (along with selected portions of the letters column which were called Deaththreats) In these pages are the story of a man who self-published a comic book in a time when the comics industry was in a bit of turmoil, signed on with an upstart publisher, and went on to become a bit of an underground comic legend. In it you find him going through divorce, depression, childbirth, and an assortment of other bits of life.) Drew is no longer with us, having died in 2007 entirely too young.
Now POISON ELVES is a comic book series that ran from end of ’91 to 2004 which is when Drew’s health went tits up and he couldn’t do the book anymore. There were some spin off side story miniseries that had his oversight and approval that went on a bit after that. But for all intents and purposes there hasn’t been a bit of new material in 5 years.
2) I saw this: APE ENTERTAINMENT TO PUBLISH NEW POISON ELVES
Both of them made me feel……strange.
Let me explain.
I discovered Poison Elves on issue one of the “new” series when it switched from self publishing to being put out by Sirius Entertainment. My mind was BLOWN. I discovered an anachronistic fantasy world populated by humans, wizards, and elves. It was a dark, gutterpunk version of fantasy and followed the adventures of a don’t-give-a-damn, angry-at-the-world-and-sometimes-justifiably-so, homicidal, hair-trigger elf named Lusiphur who had a smart mouth and a propensity for finding trouble.
The artwork was…..raw. All swagger and substance and not so much technique. Stark black and white and full of cool touches like rock posters on the walls of alleys, t-shirts on the characters, and other assorted punk rock aesthetics.
Plus Drew didn’t give a damn about what you were supposed to do and would plop down columns of story in the form of text chunks. It let him cut through the problem of backstory and fix the issue of having one character tell another what was going on in long pages of conversation so the reader would have a clue. In other words it was pretty damn brilliant.
And to this day nobody has the balls to do it like he did.
Needless to say I fell in love with the comic, bought all of them and still have them in a long box. I got to meet the main man himself when he came to the ’94 or ’95 (hell, mighta been ’96 or 97) Atlanta Comicon. It was a shit convention but he was there so me and my good friend Kevin took off to meet him. We had comics in hand and this was our first time meeting someone who actually made the things we both loved so much. (Kevin’s just as much a fanboy as me and also loves POISON ELVES).
I wish I could say we had a crazy time with Drew. That we met and it was like the Three Amigos joined for the first time and me and him and Kevin went from the convention for a night of revelry that may or may not have included whiskey, rock n roll, and strippers with one or all of us winding up waking in jail. But this was the mid-nineties and I wasn’t cool like that. I met him, he was really nice and signed our books, including the ones we bought there. We talked about some bands and stuff, things I can’t really remember, but it was short and when it was over we moved on, happier to have met someone who MADE COMIC BOOKS WE LIKED. I know we sent him a Mike Knott cd cause Kevin loves LSU (the band dork, not the football team) and they talked about it in our five minute (if that) conversation. I never heard from him again or met him again other than every month in the pages of the funny book.
But he was an influence. Is there some of Lusiphur in Deacon? Hell yes there is. Plus, directly because of Drew Hayes and his contribution to the author DNA of yours truly, if I ever write a straight fantasy book (and there is one in there, somewhere deep down, just fermenting like a fine sword-edged bourbon) it will be a lot like POISON ELVES.
So they are making a new series. It’s written by Rob Horan, the founder of Sirius Entertainment, who is the holder of the rights to POISON ELVES and probably the man most capable of carrying the torch. The art looks good. It’s blessed by Drew’s daughter, Mary. So I’m in. I’ll buy it when it comes out and I really hope it kicks a ton of ass.
But I won’t lie. I miss Drew Hayes.
So first thing, I got some writing done today. About 1200 words. Whoo hoo! With the economy the way it is, the day job has been pretty doggone slow. Being a tattoo artist is pretty whimsical when it comes to the steady business. But, that’s ok.
When I got home tonight I dug out a stack of old notebooks that I had scribbled notes in for the Deacon Book and other things as well. There were some good ideas in there. Stuff that I will transcribe for later use.
Then I came across the novella I wrote. God it was horrible. I was trying to be Robert Jordan writing Conan, but not. The character was a celtic prince turned outcast who was a mercenary in Solomon’s army and thus became a believer in Jehovah who later was adopted by a clan of mountain warrior priests of the ninjitsu tradition called yamabushi.
No really, I am not kidding.
Ex-royalty warrior.
Trained in ninjitsu and as a yamabushi.
Believer in Jehovah from the Old Testament.
His name was Theok.
Really.
Fun, fun, fun. But I was young. I wrote it around the time I was 19. So it was awesome for 1989.
But reading it, even with it’s rank smell of old cheese, I did find some kernels of things I could mine again.
Anyways, it was a reminder of my roots.
NOIR MUSINGS 