eSpec Books has added four new videos to their reading series on YouTube, and they’re all from the upcoming Devilish and Divine anthology of stories about angels and demons.
We’ve got James Chambers reading from “Far from the Knowing Place”:
Russ Colchamiro reading from “Irradia’s Gauntlet”:
Robert E. Waters reading from “A Bluebird from Aspen”:
And, finally, me reading from “Unguarded”:
I did five bits of programming at the virtual Shore Leave convention this past weekend — the second year in a row the show was forced to be online-only thanks to the current apocalypse. With luck, we’ll be back in person next year for a proper Shore Leave 42.
Anyhow, here’s what I did:
Me moderating “The New Age of Star Trek,” as Kirsten Beyer, David Mack, Kelli Fitzpatrick, and Dayton Ward talked with me about Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Short Treks, and the upcoming Strange New Worlds and Prodigy.
Me and fellow author guests Aaron Rosenberg, Heather E. Hutsell, James Swallow, Joshua Palmatier, Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Roberta Rogow, Christopher D. Abbott, Michael Jan Friedman, and Paul Kupperberg pimping our latest offerings at the “New Release Party.”
Publisher/editor/author Danielle Ackley-McPhail leads “eSpec Books Presents,” joined by me, Hildy Silverman, Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg, Robert Greenberger, Mary Fan, Russ Colchamiro, and Aaron Rosenberg to talk about all the cool stuff from eSpec.
Kelli Fitzpatrick moderated this wide-ranging talk on “Characterization in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” that included myself, Amy Imhoff, Derek Tyler Attico, Mary Fan, and Glenn Hauman.
And finally, “How Did I Get In This Mess?” which had Howard Weinstein moderating a talk on how we all broke into the business, featuring me with fellow scribes Richard C. White, Christopher D. Abbott, Joshua Palmatier, and Robert Greenberger.
You can now preorder Devilish and Divine — the forthcoming anthology of stories about angels and demons edited by John L. French & Danielle Ackley-McPhail, and which will include a story by me — from any number of online sources:
And hey, you can see me reading my story, “Unguarded,” as part of my KRAD COVID readings YouTube channel…..
Last year, eSpec Books did a big-ass Kickstarter that included three novels and a short-story anthology. The latter was originally called Horns & Halos, and is now called Devilish & Divine, featuring stories about angels and demons. The anthology, which is edited by John L. French & Danielle Ackley-McPhail, now has a cover and back cover copy!
My story is one of the ones featuring angels, specifically Muslim ones, the hafazhah, a Yolanda Rodriguez story called “Unguarded.”
Here’s the back-cover copy:
Hell Bound or Heaven Sent?
Some of us will never know until it’s too late.
From an infernal fiend reduced to baking cookies to comfort a small child, to a pastor’s kid rescued from a fall from grace by an unlikely pair, and every iteration in between, Devilish & Divine explores the spectrum of mankind’s encounters with beings of power beyond our comprehension.
Are you ready to explore otherworldly hosts—both heavenly and otherwise?
With stories by
James Chambers
John L. French
Robert E. Waters
Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg
Christopher J. Burke
Michelle D. Sonnier
Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Keith R.A. DeCandido
Russ Colchamiro
Michael A. Black
Patrick Thomas
Hildy Silverman
and
John G. Hartness
I talked with the good Mr. Paul Semel on the subject of All-the-Way House, my contribution to the Systema Paradoxa series about cryptids. Check it out!
Here’s an excerpt:
Now, obviously, All-The-Way House is not your first published book. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that you think of as having a big influence on All-The-Way House but not on anything else you’ve written?
Probably the biggest literary influence for this particular novella would be Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell books and stories. A big chunk of All-The-Way House takes place in the past, in the early 20th century and the mid-18th century, and it’s a real challenge to re-create a past time period well. King is better than almost anyone at immersing you in a particular time and place, and she’s done a particularly superlative job of it in the Russell tales, which take place between 1915 and 1925 in various locales around the world.
It’s the official on-sale date for All-the-Way House, my contribution to the Systema Paradoxa series about cryptids from the NeoParadoxa imprint of eSpec Books! On Prime Day, no less!
This story provides the secret origin of the legendary Jersey Devil, and takes place in the same milieu as the Bram Gold Adventures novels and the Yolanda Rodriguez short stories.
Here’s the cover copy:
There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky–or unlucky–few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.
These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others that have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us.
These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.
***
When there are talks of a monster sighted in the waves off the Atlantic City boardwalk, Coursers Valentina Perrone and Sarah el-Guindi–supernatural hunters-for-hire–are called in by the local Boss to… handle it. But echoes of the past send them into the heart of the Pine Barrens, where more than one secret hides, along with their answers.
Will history repeat itself? Or will the monsters find safe haven?
Either way, in the end, they discover there is always more than one way to deal with a problem.
Here are some ordering links:
You can also read an excerpt from the book here, and watch and listen to me read a bit from the book at the video below, which is archived on the Tube of You:
In just five days, NeoParadoxa will release the fourth book in the Systema Paradoxa series of standalone novellas about cryptids: my own All-the-Way House, which is the secret origin of the Jersey Devil (and features a bunch of other cryptids as well). The story takes place in 2020, 1909, and 1735, and is available for preorder:
Don’t miss the excerpt and the reading I did, either…..
All-the-Way House, Book 4 of the Systema Paradoxa series of novellas about cryptids, is coming out this month from eSpec Books! To that end, we’ve got two promo pieces out now.
The first is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the novella. This bit takes place in Atlantic City in February of 2020 and sets up the storyline.
Next is me reading from Chapter 2 of the novella on eSpec’s You Tube channel:
Enjoy!
The fine folks at eSpec Books are having a holiday sale! If you order any of eSpec’s titles directly from their store site — including my “Precinct” series of fantasy police procedurals; my short-story collection, Without a License; my collaboration with David Sherman, To Hell and Regroup (or the omnibus of The 18th Race); or the anthologies The Side of Good/The Side of Evil, Footprints in the Stars, The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, or The Best of Defending the Future — you can use the promo code HOLIDAYCHEER to get 20% off if your order is $20 or more!
For the eSpec Books edition of Gryphon Precinct, I wrote an original short story that appeared as a bonus in the book. “Chaos Theory” — about what turns out to be a very strange series of seemingly unconnected, yet very obviously linked murders — started out life as the story for the Dragon Precinct graphic novel that I tried Kicstarting but failed to reach its funding goal. So I did a short story instead. Check out my reading of it!
