now available for preorder: Tales of Capes and Cowls

The Phenomenons series isn’t the only superhero anthology I’m involved in this year (and hey, Phenomenons: Season of Darkness is still crowdfunding for another week!). I’ve also got a new Super City Cops story in Tales of Capes and Cowls, edited by C.T. Phipps, published by Crossroad Press. It’s called “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and it’s sharing the space between the covers with C.T., Matthew Davenport, Richard Roberts, Michael Suttkus, my good buddies David Niall Wilson and Aaron Rosenberg, and actor/author Michael Boatman!

It’s available for preorder from Amazon (both Kindle and trade paperback), Barnes & Noble (just Nook at the moment), and Kobo.

Check it out!

irons in the fire update

Working on all the things…….

Medical thriller. My second collaboration with Dr. Munish K. Batra is in the midst of revisions requested by our agent. I’m hoping to have those revisions done in the next week or so said agent — who absolutely loves the book, but says it’s too short to be saleable, which has been an issue throughout my career — can start shopping the book around.

Space opera novella series. I’ve completed the first four of these novellas. Not ready to announce what it is yet in any detail. The current plan has Books 5 and 6 done by mid-June.

Precinct series. Phoenix Precinct now has an actual deadline from my publisher: 1 October! So I damn well will write it by then….

Cassie Zukav. I still have to write “Stop Dragon My Heart Around,” which will be the final story to go into Ragnarok and a Hard Place: More Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet. It’ll be the only wholly original story in the collection, which will otherwise include all the stories that were published in magazines and/or anthologies and/or collections since 2013, as well as all the Cassie vignettes I posted to Patreon.

Bram Gold. I’m still halfway through Feat of Clay. Sigh. Hoping to get this done before summer is over. Blorfle. Meantime, I’m also scheduled to write another Systema Paradoxa novella in this universe.

The Four ???? of the Apocalypse. One of the two stories we were waiting for has been turned in. Hoping to finally make progress on this…..

Various bits of short fiction for anthologies. Waiting for the go-ahead on one tie-in anthology that I’m really looking forward to. The stories for Zorro’s Exploits and Three Time Travelers Walk Into… are done and awaiting, respectively, proofreading and publication. My stories for the upcoming Tales of Grignr and Ludlow Charingtons charity anthologies are both turned in. I have forthcoming stories to write for Phenomenons: Season of Darkness (which is crowdfunding right now!) and Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022. And finally, I’m co-editing and writing a story for a tie-in anthology that’s going to be incredibly cool. It’s being shopped around to publishers right now.

Nonfiction. I’m still doing the weekly Enterprise Rewatch for Tor.com, as well as reviews of each new episode of Trek (currently Strange New Worlds) as they air also. On top of that, I’ll be reviving “4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch” in June and July with eight new movies (well, five new movies and three older ones), and I’ll be reviewing The Umbrella Academy season three when it drops near the end of June. I’ll also be doing a piece for Outside In Regenerates on “The Curse of the Fatal Death.”

Star Trek Adventures. Still waiting for the final approval on Incident at Kraav III. Meantime, I have ten mission briefs to write for this…

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness–The Beginning. I’ve done all my script work for this, and I think it’s all been approved. At the very least issue #1 is approved. I’ve seen some of the artwork for #1 and it looks fantastic. The series should start being published this summer.

There’s other stuff, too, but it’s all back-burnered while I get the above stuff done. Wheeeee!

read my stuff while you’re stuck at home, part 6: worlds of my own creation

So many of us are kinda stuck staying home a lot, and that means more reading time! Or, at least, time spent reading so you don’t go batshit because you’re stuck staying at home a lot……

As one possible thing to read, how about my writing? I’ve already posted about my various writings based on TV shows — including my Star Trek work and my work based on other shows — work based on movies, work based on games and gaming, and stuff based on comic books. Now we take a look at worlds of my own creation, including the “Precinct” series; tales of Cassie Zukav, weirdness magnet; “The Adventures of Bram Gold”; “Super City Cops”; Connie de la Vega stories; Shirley Holmes & Jack Watson stories; and assorted other bits and bobs.

The “Precinct” series

Novels

• Dragon Precinct — the members of a heroic quest start dying one by one and Lieutenants Danthres Tresyllione and Torin ban Wyvald of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard must find the killer before more heroes are killed
• Unicorn Precinct — the scion of a wealthy family is killed under mysterious circumstances and Danthres and Torin must navigate the fraught waters of the upper classes to learn the truth
• Goblin Precinct — a new magick-enhanced designer drug is working its way through Cliff’s End, and the Brotherhood of Wizards wants the rogue wizard responsible stopped
• Gryphon Precinct — Lord Albin’s death sends shockwaves through Cliff’s End, as the Castle Guard must find out the truth about his death while dealing with the wholesale changes made by his son
• Mermaid Precinct — the legendary Pirate Queen has died, and Danthres and Torin are tasked with finding the killer, an investigation that will lead all the way to the king and queen of the realm!

Short story collections:

• Tales from Dragon Precinct — collects ten stories of the Cliff’s End Castle Guard as we see Danthres and Torin’s first case together, plus the death of a wizard who animated his furniture, a family seemingly killed by a demon of which there is no actual sign, a vampire hunter gone missing, the dragon that appears every midsummer suddenly going berserk, a closet that spews filth, interrogations of a house fae and the brother of a murder victim, and old cases of Danthres and Iaian both come back to haunt the Castle Guard. Plus a look in at the surviving heroes from Dragon Precinct. (Collects “When the Magick Goes Away,” “Getting the Chair,” “Crime of Passion,” “Blood on the Water,” “Fire in the Hole,” “A Clean Getaway,” “House Arrest,” “Brotherly Love,” “Catch and Release,” and “Heroes Welcome.”)

Short stories

• “Gan Brightblade vs. Mitos the Mighty” in the eSpec Books edition of Dragon Precinct — a bard tries to tell the story of Gan Brightblade and his friends’ final battle against a mighty wizard, but the participants keep correcting him
• “Partners in Crime” in Without a License: The Fantastic Worlds of Keith R.A. DeCandido — Danthres and Aleta lothLathna must put aside their differences to work together to solve the murder of an elf
• “Baker’s Dozen” in the eSpec Books edition of Goblin Precinct — Danthres and Torin’s second case together as they try to determine why several bakeries around Cliff’s End are being vandalized
• “Chaos Theory” in the eSpec Books edition of Gryphon Precinct — several murders are committed by people in Cliff’s End who have no memory of doing so, yet every murder has the exact same MO
• “The Midwinter of Our Discontent” in Release the Virgins! — a locked-room mystery as a priest is found dead when he was in a room with several acolytes and several virgin sacrifices — one of whom is also a murderer
• “Used To Be” in Across the Universe: Tales of Alternative Beatles — the Castle Guard arrests Jahn the Bard, a member of the Fabulous Foursome, great heroes of Flingaria of the past who must reunite now

Tales of Cassie Zukav, weirdness magnet

Short story collection:

• Ragnarok and Roll: Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet — nine stories involving Cassie, who learns she is a Dís, a Norse fate goddess, and faces off against Loki, a soul-stealing musician, a water fae, a brutal collective spirit, Thor, and plenty more (includes “Ragnarok and Roll,” “I Believe I’m Sinkin’ Down,” “Undine the Boardwalk,” the three-part story “Cayo Hueso,” “Love Over and Over,” “God of Blunder,” and “How You Can Prevent Forest Fires…”)

Short stories:

• “Fish Out of Water” in Out of Tune — a mermaid is trying to get back home, and Loki may hold the key to her salvation
• “Down to the Waterline” in Buzzy Mag — people are turning up dead and naked in bodies of water, and Cassie has to figure out how before the creature responsible claims another victim
• “Seven Mile Race” in Without a License: The Fantastic Worlds of Keith R.A. DeCandido — Tyr and Thor’s sibling rivalry expresses itself in a most peculiar car race
• “William Did It” in A Baker’s Dozen of Magic — after visiting the eerie William the Doll exhibit, one of Cassie’s new friends starts acting very strangely
• “Behind the Wheel” in TV Gods: Summer Programming — a sports-cast is a little too interested in Jamie McIntyre’s life, and Cassie has to stop them from finding out he’s really the Norse god Tyr
• “Rán for Your Life” in Unearthed — a container found in the Gulf of Mexico may hold the key to a missing Norse god

The Adventures of Bram Gold

Novels:

• A Furnace Sealed — first book in the New York City-based urban fantasy series that has Bram Gold, who is a Courser — a supernatural hunter for hire — having to wrangle unicorns, mind werewolves, and figure out why immortals in the Bronx are being murdered

Short stories:

• “Under the King’s Bridge” in Liar Liar — Bram is hired to find out why the people of the Marble Hill neighborhood have all become strangely lethargic, and he uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery…

Super City Cops

Novels:

• The Case of the Claw — a spree killer who appears every few years is back, and Detectives Kristin Milewski and Peter MacAvoy must figure out who he really is before he kills again; plus the Super City Police Department must deal with numerous other issues from domestic situations gone bad thanks to a purloined ray gun to a hole blown in the drunk tank by a super-villain who sobered up to an alien invasion

Novellas:

• Avenging Amethyst — the mysterious Amethyst is found dead on a rooftop, but everything Detective Milewski and her new partner Detective Jorge Alvarado turn up just raises more questions
• Undercover Blues — an undercover operation to capture the mad villain Apollo goes horribly wrong thanks to the Cowboy’s unwitting interference, putting a detective in grave danger
• Secret Identities — Lieutenant Therese Zimmerman is shocked to see Spectacular Man unconscious on her patio, and that’s just the first of many devastating revelations as Milewski and Alvarado try to solve the murder of several homeless people

Short stories:

• “Stone Cold Whodunit” in With Great Power — Milewski and Alvarado have absolutely no clues why a woman died in an alley, nor why her brain is several degrees colder than the rest of her corpse
• “Send in the Clones” in The Side of Good/The Side of Evil — one of the Clone Master’s many clones has gone rogue and actually wishes to confess

Connie de la Vega

Short stories:

• “The Silent Dust” in Brave New Girls: Adventures of Gals and Gizmos — Connie de la Vega — a technician on the moon who’s got the brains to be an engineer, but not the money to afford the qualifying exams — finds herself in a position to save five people stuck in an airlock, assuming anyone actually listens to her
• “The Puzzle” in Footprints in the Stars — while doing maintenance work, Connie makes an amazing discovery that could indicate alien life

Shirley Holmes & Jack Watson

Short stories:

• “Identity” in Baker Street Irregulars — Jack Watson, a medical student, agrees to be the companion for a difficult young woman named Shirley Holmes, and he helps her determine why a friend’s fiancé has gone missing
• “Six Red Dragons” in Baker Street Irregulars: The Game is Afoot — several matching dragon figurines have been stolen and smashed, and Shirley and Jack must figure out why

Miscellaneous other original fiction

Short story collections:

• Without a License: The Fantastic Worlds of Keith R.A. DeCandido — a representative sampling of my original fiction, including a “Precinct” story (“Partners in Crime”), a Cassie Zukav story (“Seven Mile Race”), a Bram Gold story (“Under the King’s Bridge”), a V-Wars story (“The Ballad of Big Charlie”), a thriller (“-30-“), a mystery (“Editorial Interference”), a science fiction story (“The Stone of the First High Pontiff”), a funny animal story (“Sunday in the Park with Spot”), and three very short stories (“A Vampire and a Vampire Hunter Walk Into a Bar,” “Wild Bill Got Shot,” and “Behold a White Tricycle”),

Short stories:

• “Editorial Interference” in Circles in the Hair — Special Agent D.B. Annichiarico must find the connection among a series of murders all across the country where everyone has been strangled by a printer cord
• “Sunday in the Park with Spot” in Furry Fantastic — the great cat Mittens tells a fable about dogs, cats, and squirrels
• “The Stone of the First High Pontiff” in The Best of Defending the Future — the “human finder” Jin is hired to find something that can’t be found — except she does actually find it, much to her client’s chagrin
• “We Seceded Where Others Failed” in Altered States of the Union — the story of the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys, which seceded from the Union in 1925
• “House Hunting” in They Keep Killing Glenn — trying to find a house you like when you’re more than six-and-a-half feet tall and you just want to fit in the place you plan to live in for the rest of your life…
• “Alien Invasion of Earth!” in Thrilling Adventure Yarns — aliens have invaded — can American ingenuity and science save the day???

KRAD COVID readings #3: “Stone Cold Whodunit”

Having done a Precinct story and a Cassie story, I move on to the Super City Cops, a series about cops in a fictional city filled with costumed superheroes and super-villains. The story is “Stone Cold Whodunit,” which appeared in the 2014 anthology With Great Power, edited by John L. French & Greg Schauer, and has Detectives Kristin Milewski and Jorge Alvarado dealing with a very peculiar death…..

Check it out! And please subscribe to the channel!

a nice review of The Case of the Claw

Heather Grove on her Errant Dreams blog has reviewed my 2011 novel The Case of the Claw, the first story featuring the Super City Police Department. It’s a very favorable review, too!

An excerpt:

The pacing is excellent, with the police commissioner and mayor raining crap down on Garcia’s head with every day that goes by without the Claw having been apprehended. People continue to die, and various calamities pull the police in all different directions. There’s a hostage situation, a Pulitzer-winning gruff journalist, heroes with names like “Spectacular Man” and “The Bruiser,” and nifty pieces of technology passed along by Ms. Terrific. It’s satisfying as both a mystery and a super hero story!

more on the “Racing the Clock” Story Bundle

Lots of the contributors to the “Racing the Clock” Story Bundle — which includes my Super City Police Department novel The Case of the Claw — have been blogging about the Bundle. One of those is me, of course, and I also ran a guest blog from Lauryn Christopher about her Conflict of Interest.

Here are a few more blogs about the Bundle:

• Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Kari Kilgore
• Jeffrey J. Mariotte
• Sam Stone
• Dean Wesley Smith

Check ’em out, and check out the Bundle!

 

on Conflict of Interest in the new Story Bundle

Here’s a guest blog from Lauryn Christopher on her novel Conflict of Interest, which is part of the “Racing the Clock” Story Bundle, which also includes my Super City Police Department novel The Case of the Claw (about which I wrote in this blog entry). 

Take it away, Lauryn….

In most crime and mystery fiction, it’s pretty easy to spot the hero/heroine.

She’s the person in the wrong place at the wrong time, who often finds herself in some sort of peril, but, in spite of all odds, manages to rout the bad guy in the end.

He’s the intrepid investigator/police detective/average Joe, who hunts down the villain with steely-eyed determination and a resolve to see justice prevail.

Villains aren’t always quite so readily apparent, but are seldom the mustachioed characters we remember from Saturday morning cartoons.

They’re more often chameleon-like, with textures and variations that make them sometimes difficult to spot amid the Rogue’s Gallery of shady characters populating the pages of the story. But while each of these individuals may have had some combination of means, motive, and opportunity to have committed the crime-in-question, the villain is ultimately revealed – and usually captured – as the one who acted on their darker impulses as the story progresses.

Yes, I’m generalizing on the stereotypes, but since it’s so easy to identify the stereotypical heroes and villains, it should be just as easy for us to recognize the anti-hero, right?

Not always.

When I wrote Conflict of Interest, I didn’t at first realize that the main character, Meg, was an anti-hero. After all, she’s an assassin – not a typical hero’s profession; on the other hand (keeping spoilers to a minimum here), she actually chooses some heroic-type actions through the course of the story.

It was a fellow writer who read an early draft and pointed out that by telling the story from the assassin’s point of view, I’d entered the gray area and gritty streets inhabited by the anti-hero.

Of course, that suits me just fine. Meg is a complicated person, a woman with a dysfunctional past that has molded and shaped her into the person she is – someone who can kill quickly and efficiently when the need arises, who is not above selling secrets or using what she’s learned to her own advantage or to suit her purposes. At the same time, there’s a core of humanity in her that she frequently fails to recognize – a fierce loyalty to her few friends, a protective nature that asserts itself when she volunteers at a self-defense class or invests her ill-gotten gains in underdeveloped communities.

In her own stories, Meg never sees herself as the hero, but she doesn’t consider herself to be the villain, either. In her matter-of-fact way, she’d tell you that she’s just there, doing what needs to be done. A loner, a person who gets her hands dirty because there’s a job that needs to be done, and she’s not afraid of doing it.

Just don’t ask her to think too much about it.

“In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus what we know of life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them.”
–Ben Bova

This is Keith again. You can get Conflict of Interest as part of the “Racing the Clock” Story Bundle for whatever price you want, along with a Fiction River Presents anthology and novels by Sam Stone and Kari Kilgore. If you pay $15 or more, you also get my novel Super City Police Department: The Case of the Claw, as well as novels by Mike Baron, Robert Jeschonek, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Dean Wesley Smith. Do check it out!

 

on the Super City Police Department in the new Story Bundle

The latest Story Bundle is called “Racing the Clock,” and it’s available for another seventeen days. It includes a ton of fast-paced stories, including my Super City Police Department novel The Case of the Claw.

I first conceived the SCPD back in the early 2000s, originally wanting to do it as a comic book. I’d actually been in discussions with both Darick Robertson and Mike Collins at different times about providing the art chores. But we were never able to make it work.

The concept behind the SCPD goes back to when I first started reading superhero comics and wondering what happens next. I mean, okay, Batman punches Joker in the nose and hands him off to Commissioner Gordon — then what? He has to be arrested, prosecuted, and so on. And it’s not like Batman’s gonna fill out a witness statement or testify in court. (“Please state your name for the record.” “I’m Batman.” That won’t happen…)

Both my love of superheroes and my love of police procedurals have their origin in television watching of my formative years. My first exposure to superheroes was The Electric Company, a brilliant educational kids show in the 1970s (it featured folks like Morgan Freeman, Joan Rivers, Tom Lehrer, Rita Moreno, Mel Brooks, and many more), which had licensed Spider-Man from Marvel, doing live-action Spidey adventures. That led me to reading comic books (starting with Marvel’s Electric Company tie-in comic called Spidey Super Stories) and also watching reruns of The Adventures of Superman and the Adam West Batman.

As for cops, what got me into that was first Barney Miller and then Hill Street Blues. Both shows utterly captivated me, and led me to my continued study of police procedure and interest in writing cops.

And I always wondered, what’s life like for a cop in Gotham City or Metropolis or the Marvel version of New York City?

So I wrote it. I’m hardly the first — there’s the brilliant comic book Gotham Central from the 2000s, as well as Alan Moore’s Top 10 and Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers — but I have my own little take on it. I try very hard to approach them as cop stories first. The superheroes are incidental, though very much part of the fabric.

I also have always found it important in general to show what the ground-level consequences are of big-picture happenings. I’m less interested in the big-ass battle that levels buildings, I’m more interested in what happened to the people inside that building after it was leveled.

Which is why we see, for example, Officer Trevor Baptiste, who is in a long-standing legal battle over compensation for the death of his wife. She was on a job interview in an office building that was vaporized in a superhero battle — but there’s no proof that she was in the building, because she wasn’t an employee, and the records of her entry into the building (sign-in sheet and computer) were also vaporized, so the insurance company is refusing to pay.

It’s also why it’s sometimes hard to get a judge to sign a warrant to get a DNA sample when it involves a costumed hero because they don’t have a real name for the person. Even if the DNA they take from the guy in a costume matches what they have to compare it to, if they go to arrest him, there’s no proof that the guy in the costume is the same one they took the DNA from, because of his keeping his identity secret. They need his real name, which they can’t get without violating his fourth- and fifth-amendment rights.

The Case of the Claw is the first of many stories featuring the Super City Police Department, though the others are all shorter-form. I’ve written two (so far) stories in the milieu, “Stone Cold Whodunit” in the 2014 Dark Quest Books anthology With Great Power and “Send in the Clones” in the 2015 eSpec Books anthology The Side of Good/The Side of Evil.

And the sequels to The Case of the Claw can be found in novella form. Three are available now as eBooks from Bastei eBooks: Avenging Amethyst, Undercover Blues, and Secret Identities, which came out in 2016 & 2017. And I’ve got four more novellas under contract with Falstaff Books, which I hope to have out starting next year.

So check out the “Racing the Clock” Story Bundle and get to know Captain Garcia, Lieutenant Zimmerman, Detective MacAvoy, Detective Milewski, Officer Baptiste, Officer Fontaine, Officer O’Malley, Officer Fiorello, and the rest of the SCPD. For $15 or more (you pay what you want), you get The Case of the Claw along with eight other great, fast-paced novels by Mike Baron, Lauryn Christopher, Robert Jeschonek, Kari Kilgore, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, and Sam Stone, plus a Fiction River Presents anthology edited by Allyson Longueira featuring stories by JC Andrijeski, Thomas K. Carpenter, Scott William Carter, Dayle A. Dermatis, Brendan DuBois, Dan C. Duval, Steven Mohan Jr., Eric Stocklassa, and Rusch and Smith. (For less than $15, you just get the anthology and the novels by Christopher, Kilgore, and Stone.)

new Story Bundle featuring the Super City Police Department

There’s a new Story Bundle available, called “Racing the Clock,” featuring gripping, fast-paced stories in a variety of genres, including my own Super City Police Department novel The Case of the Claw.

Dean Wesley Smith put this particular Bundle together, and I’ll let him take over from here……..

I love reading stories that grab me and don’t let me go until I come up at the end of the story, sometimes breathless from the ride the author has taken me on. Those kinds of stories make me want to instantly get more stories from that author, repeat the ride like getting back on a roller coaster for a second trip around.

With the Racing the Clock StoryBundle, those were the types of books I was looking for to put together in one place. And since I love just about all genres, I didn’t care if the books were science fiction, mystery, fantasy, or thriller, as long as the author could take me on a ride. Fast-paced and gripping can be done in any area. I just wanted the feeling. The thrill.

So I went to find writers I knew had the ability (an advanced ability, actually) to take all of us readers on a breathless adventure. And in this bundle are some of the best writers in the business at doing just that.

My first stop when looking for writers who could hold a reader in a fast-paced book was four bestselling writers with careers very similar to mine, frighteningly enough. Mike Baron, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Robert Jeschonek, and Keith R.A. DeCandido are all known to write across many, many genres and in many forms. From comics to media books to original novels, they have done it all and successfully for decades.

Wow, do I feel honored to have the four of them in this bundle with me.

Jeffrey J. Mariotte is the author of over seventy novels among his many other short stories and comic books. He is a master of supernatural thrillers, but for this bundle he joins in with his dark thriller of kidnapping, Missing White Girl. Gripping doesn’t begin to describe this book.

Mike Baron, the creator of Nexus and Badger comics, among many other things and a lot of novels, gives the bundle Helmet Head, a fast-paced and crazed novel of Nazi biker zombies. Yup, I said that. Got to read it to believe it.

Keith R. A. DeCandido is the author of over fifty novels and more comics than he can count. He writes in a lot of different universes, but for this bundle he gave us Super City Police Department: The Case of the Claw, a police thriller in a town where superheroes exist, but it is up to the police to find and stop the Claw.

Robert Jeschonek is the bestselling author of more books, comics, and short stories than he can count. One reviewer called him “the love child of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman.” Yup, I agree with that completely. In this novel, Bloodliner, Robert’s hero joins forces with a vampiric Shakespeare and King Arthur to fight for their lives against an ancient evil. As Robert says, Bloodliner is not a typical throat-biter.

Bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith (that’s me) fits right here with these first four. I have written around two hundred novels, comics, and more short stories than I can count. Death Takes a Diamond is a Mary Jo Assassin novel where immortal assassins take down a massive diamond smuggling ring.

Next, I added New York Times bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch to this all-star bundle. She also has written hundreds of novels, comics, and short stories, but is more known for her award-winning science fiction and her award-winning mystery under her Kris Nelscott name. I talked her into giving the bundle The Tower, a fast-paced time travel short novel of an attempt to steal the Crown Jewels.

Then, for good measure, I asked another multi-genre and prolific writer, Lauryn Christopher. Lauryn is not only a writer under many names, but under another name yet is also a well-known editor. I wanted her novel Conflict of Interest, a Hit Lady for Hire book, mostly because it makes a fun companion to my Mary Jo Assassin novel in this bundle.

Since my novel, Lauryn’s novel, and Kris’s The Tower are all fast-paced crime stories at their heart, I wanted to add one more crime story to the mix. So Sam Stone fit right in with her wonderful supernatural crime thriller Posing for Picasso. Like the other writers in this bundle, Sam has also had a multi-faceted career with over a dozen novels, a lot of short stories and numbers of screenplays.

But I needed to round everything off. So to go with Robert Jeschonek’s crazy Bloodliner novel of vampires, I added in Kari Kilgore’s wonderful and very strange Until Death, which was on the preliminary ballot for the Stoker Award and a finalist for the Golden Stake Award. Until Death takes us deep into the history of Transylvania, in a way not done before. And Kari also fits right into this mix because she too writes across many genres and is very prolific.

Then, for even more breathtaking, fast-paced fiction, Fiction River: Racing the Clock fills out the bundle. Ten short stories by top writers.

So strap into your chair, get some time set aside, and dig into ten of the most diverse, wild, fast-paced books you have ever seen in one bundle.

Edge-of-your-seat fiction by top writers.

But wait, it does get better if you decide to support our fantastic charity AbleGamers.com. I hope you do. There is no better feeling than helping a great cause and then reading a great book.

Or ten.

—Dean Wesley Smith

 

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

Posing for Picasso by Sam Stone

Conflict of Interest by Lauryn Christopher

Until Death – Death and Redemption Book 1 by Kari Kilgore

Fiction River Presents: Racing the Clock by Allyson Longueira

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!

Bloodliner by Robert Jeschonek

Helmet Head by Mike Baron

The Tower by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Case of the Claw by Keith R.A. DeCandido

Missing White Girl by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

Death Takes a Diamond by Dean Wesley Smith

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books!

It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards—which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle—and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

• Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
• Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
• Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
• Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to AbleGamers!
• Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!

 

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

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more Super City Cops in 2019 and 2020

Today, I signed a contract with the fine folks at Falstaff Books for four new Super City Cops novellas.

I debuted the stories of the Super City Police Department — cops in a city filled with superheroes and the nightmares they have to deal with — in the 2011 novel The Case of the Claw from Crossroad Press. Did a couple more stories in the With Great Power and The Side of Good/The Side of Evil anthologies, then did three new novellas with Bastei eBooks in 2016 and 2017, Avenging Amethyst, Undercover Blues, and Secret Identities.

BE declined the option to do more novellas, so I was forced to move on, and John Hartness at Falstaff Books expressed great interest in the continuing the story of Detective Kristin Milewski, Detective Jorge Alvarado, Lieutenant Therese Zimmerman, Officer Trevor Baptiste, and the rest of the Super City Police Department as they deal with the craziness of a city in which the Superlative Six, the Terrific Trio, the Cowboy, and the rest run amok.

Look for those four new novellas to come out from Falstaff over the course of 2019 and 2020!