Kickstart the Week 71: the Thrilling Adventures of Zorro and zombies!

It's been a couple months since the last Kickstart the Week feature on this blog. It's been a long-standing mainstay that I like to focus attention on great new works over at that site. So I'm bringing it back as a part of a rotating set of features on Monday designed to bring attention to super powered fiction of all varieties. With this change, we're also be focusing on multiple Kickstarters, all of which I think are worth a look.


Robert Greenberger is a name recognizable to long-time comics fans for his work as an editor for many years at DC Comics. He parlayed that success into a run as a Star Trek prose author and has since teamed with several alums of both comics and Trek to form Crazy 8 Press. Now he's producing a new anthology from that press that should make fans of superheroes and pulp adventure excited! It's called Thrilling Adventure Yarns.

The project looks to tell stories in the tradition of the pulps, although it seems to have its major focus on the heroic side of things. It features several names that should be familiar to comic and pulp fans like Paul Kupperberg, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert T. Jeschonek and Jim Beard. It apparently even will feature an unearthed tale from the legendary Shadow creator Lester Dent never published before this book. That's an impressive line-up and is only about half the contents!

Give it a look and get ready for some great adventure yarns in the future.

Speaking of pulp heroes with a superhero flair, the folks at Gallant Knight have set out to finally create the first full-fledged role playing game based around the hundred year old hero Zorro!

2019 is the character's anniversary, so it's great to see old Los Angeles being brought to life in all its glory using the classic West End D6 system well known to a lot of gamers.

The company has been sharing bits and pieces of the rules online for the last few weeks, so be sure to check out the Kickstarter for more details!


William Tucci most famously created Shi, one of my favorite all time characters. Now he's making a big comic comeback. First, he has a new series with Axe Cop creator Ethan Nicolle called Appalachian Apocalypse. Now he's mounting the finished version of a story he started a decade ago, about a samurai fighting the undead: Zombie-Sama!

I'm all for Tucci branching out to producer more great work. I'm equally excited to see the talented John Broglia continue to produce stupendous art for the series. But I'm probably most excited that the project offers an ashcan of the upcoming return of Shi, a character I've waited for decades to see more stories about.

Head over to the Kickstarter and check out all the fun of Zombie-Sama and throw some support to a talented creative team!

Looking back at Lulubelle Rose Jensen and Big Top Tales

Every Tuesday we look back at a great post from the previous years of this blog. This time around we go back to a character not quite in my regular wheelhouse, yet the star of one of my favorite stories. 

I am incredibly proud of the work I did as part of Flinch Books' Big Top Tales, now available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

Co-editor Jim Beard developed basic characters based around the various occupations of the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus, and based on choices and the time people joined the project, assignments were made. While I had ideas in my head for both the Human Skeleton (scored by the amazing Rocko Jerome) and the Knife Thrower (written by the always great Frank Schildiner), it was my third and final pick that Jim assigned to me. I got to write the Trapeze Artist.

Part of me suspects I might have received my writing assignment because no one else wanted to spend the amount of time I spent researching the trapeze before I started to write. I must have visited a half dozen websites and watched a couple dozen Youtube videos, before I stumbled upon a biography that helped me really get into the head of a trapeze artist in the days before television regularly brought amazing performances to the screen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean Jensen helped get me into the mind of the strange mix of isolation and adulation being a star of the trapeze might bring. The true story of Lillian Leitzel isn't exactly a happy one, but it was one that could help me get inside the head of my own Jensen: Lulabelle Rose Jensen.

From Jim's two paragraph description and Leitzel's story, I created a far more modern woman than one might expect from a story set in the mid-1950s. Rose is a woman more than willing to take what she wants, including a man to bed for a one night stand. But it is just that action that embroils her in a murder mystery from the very first page of my tale “Deadly Triangle”. As the story continues, she must balance the fine line of her circus career, her own wants and desires, and a serial murderer that may just want her as his next victim!

And while I think Rose's tale is more than worth the $12.99 print price and the $3.99 Kindle price, the best part of Big Top Tales is it is not alone. In addition to the talented Mr. Jerome and Mr. Shildiner, it also features tales from Ralph Angelo, Jr., John A. McColley and Sam Gafford. Together it makes one complete collection telling the tale of one amazing summer for the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus that cannot and should not be missed.

Monster motorcyclists and the women that love them (WIP Wednesday)

Chris Hebert's cover for Dino Force.

Since Jim Beard has already hinted at his next project to be published by Metahuman Press, I can reveal that my current PROJECT DEMON is actually a short story called Moon Chopper. The new book is something of a sequel to the Super Swingin 1968 Special. This time the heroes are coming out of the 1970s however and get to play with two of the eras' major tropes: bikers and the supernatural.

Obviously, one such character stands out as a prime example of those combined genres, but I hope I'm making Moon Chopper unique enough that he doesn't just seem a clone of any other ghostly riders.

My new tale will introduce the world to Gordon Bridges, a simple man on the road with a dark secret. After nearly dying, he was given the powers of the Moon Chopper. Now he can transform into a beast of the night, but one with a purpose. His quest to defend the open road often brings him up against dark threats. His only ally is his girl, Friday, an intrepid reporter with a knack for trouble.

While working on that, I'm also giving a second pass to my Dino Force offering. Paolo may be the most unique character on the book, and perhaps the one with the strongest redemption story. I'm hoping it can do justice to the great work T. Mike McCurley, Don Gates and Travis Hiltz are also bringing to the book.

With those two short works filling my time, I am also in the development stage of my next long work. I haven't finalized which book will be my next, but I hope to get to all three works over the rest of 2017. Right now, I don't want to go into any more details on any of them, outside of their codenames: EARTH. FAITH. GRAFT. One of these works will be a sequel to a previous release, but the other two will be all new novels. Of the two others, I expect one might be the first novel I release under a pseudonym. The genre moves outside my usual undertakings and I suspect starting the new series with a new name might be the best way to help get it off the ground.

But that's of course a long way out. For now, I've got some short stories to work on. Wish me luck.

Saucy Robot Stories is now available!

I may not have written for it, but I am proud of editing the delightfully different adventures of Sam the Robot in Saucy Robot Stories. The tales of a robot in 40s New York embroiled in a half dozen misadventures has truly been one of the highlights of my time as EIC of Metahuman Press, even if other problems delayed its production for far far too long.

Please give Saucy Robot Stories a purchase over at Amazon in print or Kindle editions.

And don't forget to give it a review!

What's up: June 17, 2016

What's Up is a simple post where I give you links to the books, comics, movies, games and/or music I have been enjoying as of late. Feel free to check them out if you would like to enjoy them as well or give your opinions of these works in the comments below (though do try to keep it spoiler free.)

Meet Lulabelle Rose Jensen, Big Top Tales' Trapeze Artist

I am incredibly proud of the work I did as part of Flinch Books' Big Top Tales, now available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats.

Co-editor Jim Beard developed basic characters based around the various occupations of the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus, and based on choices and the time people joined the project, assignments were made. While I had ideas in my head for both the Human Skeleton (scored by the amazing Rocko Jerome) and the Knife Thrower (written by the always great Frank Schildiner), it was my third and final pick that Jim assigned to me. I got to write the Trapeze Artist.

Part of me suspects I might have received my writing assignment because no one else wanted to spend the amount of time I spent researching the trapeze before I started to write. I must have visited a half dozen websites and watched a couple dozen Youtube videos, before I stumbled upon a biography that helped me really get into the head of a trapeze artist in the days before television regularly brought amazing performances to the screen. Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus by Dean Jensen helped get me into the mind of the strange mix of isolation and adulation being a star of the trapeze might bring. The true story of Lillian Leitzel isn't exactly a happy one, but it was one that could help me get inside the head of my own Jensen: Lulabelle Rose Jensen.

From Jim's two paragraph description and Leitzel's story, I created a far more modern woman than one might expect from a story set in the mid-1950s. Rose is a woman more than willing to take what she wants, including a man to bed for a one night stand. But it is just that action that embroils her in a murder mystery from the very first page of my tale “Deadly Triangle”. As the story continues, she must balance the fine line of her circus career, her own wants and desires, and a serial murderer that may just want her as his next victim!

And while I think Rose's tale is more than worth the $12.99 print price and the $3.99 Kindle price, the best part of Big Top Tales is it is not alone. In addition to the talented Mr. Jerome and Mr. Shildiner, it also features tales from Ralph Angelo, Jr., John A. McColley and Sam Gafford. Together it makes one complete collection telling the tale of one amazing summer for the Henderson & Ross Royal Circus that cannot and should not be missed.

Writer's Update for March 17, 2015

It has been a weird couple of weeks, both writing and editing.

My next story release will see publication at the end of the month as part of a new anthology from my friends and colleagues at the Pen & Cape Society. I helped determine the book would be for the aid of one Mr. James Hudnall, the long time comic creator left without a home and job due to the recent loss of a foot from diabetic complications. I provided the introduction for the book and the first of my stories in “The Second Life of D.B. Cooper” series. In the spirit of Mr. Hudnall’s years writing ESPers, I thought writing my own psychic antihero would be perfect for this book. Coop will definitely resurface again in the near future.

My writing has been split between slowly putting Lightweight 11 together while also working on a new anthology project tentatively titled Punchline, that will follow a super-villain through multiple stories. I am hoping to take some time to get them both wrapped up in early April so that I can get everything set for them by the end of May, but we will see how time falls.

I am also editing the first story in a new anthology project with Jim Beard, whose G.I. JOE: Adventure Team: MYSTERY OF THE SUNKEN TOMB you should go buy right now! The first tale is in the can now that sets up that one, so I will probably be sending out some feelers to folks to get that one set-up in full soon.

Today’s image is the classic FBI drawing of Dan Cooper.