Have you joined The Good Fight yet?

I'm going to get real here. I talked about my story in The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age already, but apparently that's not brought quite enough readers to our amazing anthology. Our classic era super-heroics aren't attracting the level of readership for our previous four volumes of the Pen & Cape Society's premiere superhero anthology. Each volume features new stories from a variety of authors and superheroic worlds, and I'm proud to make this my fourth appearance in one of these books.

I could conjecture a hundred reasons as to why the book hasn't found success, but I know one thing that's definitely hurting it: lack of reviews! After just over a month out, it still only has one review on Amazon and none on Smashwords. The digital edition is $3.99, a steal for a book featuring twelve new stories by yours truly and a host of talented authors including the late great James Hudnall.

In order to encourage more reviews and in return, I have five digital copies available for reading and review. If you receive a copy, you must be willing to read it and give it a starred Amazon review within one month of receipt. I will give these away to the first five people that respond to this post here, on social media or by emailing me at nick {at} superpoweredfiction {dot} com.

If you have even a fraction of the love for super powered fiction that I have, I know this is a deal too good to pass up! And even if you don't get a free copy, please buy the book and review it when you're done. Every single review helps immensely. I know you see that a lot, but it is incredibly true.

The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age is now available on Amazon, Smashwords and pretty much everywhere you buy books.

The Good Fight returns... to the past!

I've proudly been a member of the Pen and Cape Society for several years now as the group of superhero fiction writers have put together four great anthologies and worked together in all kinds of unique and fun ways. Now the fine folks at Local Hero Press have prepped the fifth edition of our shared anthology series The Good Fight and this one takes us back a few years. Previous themes have wrapped around villains, "the homefront" (supporting cast) and sidekicks. This time around, the series goes back a few years as the focus turns to "The Golden Age."

Twelve writers answered the call for new stories of World War II superheroes, pulp age adventurers and everything in between. For those that have followed my previous The Good Fight contributions, you know that I like to make my focus a new tale in my "The Second Life of D.B. Cooper" series of short stories.

How do I place a story about the later life of a 70s era plane hijackers into a thirties era setting? I will reveal that in a couple more weeks, but be reassured that the story's title does start with "The Second Life of."

And I'm not alone. I have a mega-talented eleven other creators in this book with me: Leonard Apa, Stephen T. Brophy, David Court, Jeff Deischer, Adrienne Dellwo, Psychopomp Gecko, Ian Thomas Healy, James Hudnall, T. Mike McCurley, Scott A. Story, and Tom Warin! If you're interested in supporting great new fiction, be sure to head over to Amazon or Smashwords and pre-order your copy! The book launches on April 30!

Catching up is hard to do! (WIP Wednesday)

You might have noticed my complete disappearance from blogging in the second half of January. It was not without good reason as I struggled to get things up and running with Patreon stories through a seemingly never-ending fight with sickness and general malaise. I used the time to get closer to back on track with all my projects so that I hopefully can keep steady releases throughout 2019.

A lot of focus went into making sure the next month's stories are ready or close to ready to go for their impending release. The Patreon site now comes with a handy image to let everyone know the release dates for the next couple months and this will update once a month to keep the schedule out in front of me.

It's nothing fancy, but it does let everyone have the dates for the impending releases of the next two Lightweight chapters as well as the first stories in Shockwave and the second volume of Quadrant.

I also used that time to wrap up a story for the new Pen & Cape Society anthology due in just a few months. I'm not going to reveal the nature of the new anthology or the story until the book is officially announced, but I will say it continues to develop the Secret Life of D.B. Cooper series without featuring Coop himself.

Right now, I've got a couple super-secret projects in the works, one on a tight deadline I'm not sure I'll be able to finish and another long in production and looking to finish by the end of the month. Plus I'm continuing edits and writing on the upcoming Patreon stories as I work to keep well ahead new of my new biweekly schedule.

Hopefully, this blog will be back on a semi-regular schedule for the foreseeable future, so you don't miss out on what's happening out there in the fine fine world of the Quadrant Universe!

Adventures on the Homefront now available!

The fourth installment of the Pen & Cape Society's The Good Front series is now officially available!

Head over to Amazon or Smashwords for your copy of The Good Front 4: Homefront. This new volume turns the focus towards the supporting cast of the heroes of thirteen different writers.

My tale returns us to the world of D. B. Cooper, where an aging Coop comes face to face with his daughter for the first time. She's not quite what he expected though and that quickly makes complications in Coop's life!

Check it and the other twelve tales out in print or digital format.

It's almost time to fight the Good Fight again!

The latest entry from the fine folks at the Pen & Cape Society is now up for preorder! The Good Fight 4: Homefront brings 13 new stories by folks like T. Mike McCurley, Ian Thomas Healy, Jim Zoetewey, Christofer Nigro and a whole heck of a lot of other talented writers!

My personal contribution will be my third tale in the Second Life of D.B. Cooper. (Coop made his first appearance in The Good Fight 2: Villains.) As the focus on this book is on the family and homes of our heroes, this new story skips ahead twenty years from Coop's last appearance. Set in the early 2000s, it introduces his daughter, a young woman that inherited some of his own psychic abilities!

I think this will be a great addition to the Coop's developing life, even if it does skip past some of his other upcoming adventures. And of course, it is only one of thirteen stories. The full line-up also features Stephen T. Brophy, Samantha Bryant, Frank Byrns, Shielding Cournoyer, Adrienne Dellwo, Warren Hately, Palladian and Scott A. Story. For more on the upcoming book, please check out the Facebook event page.

Head over to Amazon and make sure to preorder the book before it launches on May 1st!

Get your copy of The Good Fight 3: Sidekicks!

I talked about my contributions to the new Pen & Cape Society anthology a couple weeks back. It is now available on Amazon and Smashwords, so go get yourself a copy already!

It features my Annabelle Montalvo / Backoff story, plus new stuff by Samantha Bryant, Stephen T. Brophy, Marion G. Harmon, Ian Thomas Healy,
Michael Ivan Lowell, Landon Porter, Jim Zoetewey and Metahuman Press contributors T. Mike McCurley & Caine Dorr

Reminder: enter the PCS Winter Giveaway!

I posted about the Pen & Cape Society Winter Giveaway just last week, but as the month hits its midway point, I just wanted to remind everyone to go over to the Pen & Cape Society site and make their entries!

The top prize is a ton of great books, ebooks and an Amazon gift card! Plus a bunch of other great prizes with ebooks, t-shirts and more. Get in on it before it's too late!

Get your entry in today!

Win the Lightweight books plus a whole lot more in the PCS Winter Giveaway!

I am a proud member of the Pen & Cape Society, the world's first (and maybe only) association of super powered fiction writers. The fine and astute members of the group have done wonderful things already to promote the ever burgeoning super powered fiction market, such as two great anthologies, The Good Fight (did I mention it's free?) and The Good Fight 2: Villains (did I mention it is for a great cause?)

Now the group has upped the ante with our next big event, the first ever Pen & Cape Society Winter Giveaway.

Click here to head to one amazing giveaway!

Over fifteen books, in both ebook and print format, t-shirts, an Amazon gift card and a bunch of other great prizes are all on the line as part of the giveaway. And I am definitely part of the giveaway with both volumes of Lightweight currently available, Lightweight: Senior Year and Lightweight: Black Death both free to the lucky winner!

So head over to Pen & Cape Society's official giveaway page for all the details on entering for your chance to win a ton of great sway.

Kickstart Lightweight 6: time is running out!

I may be quoting Bavmorda there, but it is true about the Lightweight: Beyond Kickstarter. As of this morning, about a day and a half remains to the funding goal for Lightweight.

The project is over the $500 mark now and all backers will receive a free copy of F.O.R.C.E. Book 1 when the book reaches its goal.

With final funding within spitting distance, I just wanted to send out one more message encouraging every fan of super powered fiction to get out there and help make Lightweight happen. Without the support of the people that understand the greatness of superheroes in prose form, people like myself and the other writers of the Pen and Cape Society could not continue to make the great works we bring to life. Thanks for everything all of you do.

The Lightweight: Beyond Kickstarter finishes funding at 6:00 p.m. Central time on Friday.

Kickstart Lightweight 5: more news from around the web!

Over the past few days, Lightweight has made more appearances on three great sites. Over at the comic site Bleeding Cool I wrote a piece about super powered fiction and the Kickstarter. For the great super-fiction group, the Pen & Cape Society I wrote a piece called Lightweight, Kickstarter and series fiction. Finally, the fine folks at the Free Choice E-Zine were nice enough to interview me about Lightweight. All were great pieces and I'm extreme grateful for all the sites to let me have some time.

As I write this, we just went under the 5 day mark on the Kickstarter and we have $218 left until our funding goal. It is quite possible to make up that amount, but I will need all of your help to continue to spread the word about Lightweight. Point people to the free first chapter, let them give it a read and then encourage them to stop by here and help out. With all three books digitally for $10 and in print for $25, it's incredibly easy to get in on the project at the ground floor for anyone.

With only about 72 hours left, now is the time to get in on keeping the adventures of the greatest new hero in super powered prose alive!

New at Pen & Cape Society: Helping Hud

The trades are out of print now, but I
highly recommend hunting down ESPers
second-hand.

I make no secret of my membership to the wonderful collection of writers known as the Pen & Cape Society. However I have not always been the best at regularly posting to their site.

Read about The Good Fight 2
& its charitable purpose at the
Pen & Cape Society.

That changes today as I talk a bit more about The Good Fight 2: Villains there as well as the importance to me of helping James Hudnall in his time of need. James Hudnall’s comic work inspired a lot of my outlook on super-writing, and I talk about that a bit more as well.

Read the whole Helping Hud post at Pen & Cape Society.

The Good Fight 2: Villains now available for pre-order!

As I mentioned earlier this week, I have a story appearing in the upcoming Pen & Cape Society anthology The Good Fight 2: Villains. I am more than happy to announce the book is now available for pre-order with a March 30 release date. You can easily pick it up right now at Amazon or Smashwords for just 99 cents.

As a reminder, the new anthology is a benefit for James Hudnall, a truly talented comic and prose writer that has recently fallen on hard times due to diabetic complications.

The team rallied to make a great book for him and the illustrious Mr. Mike Baron of Nexus and Badger fame (and now a great prose writer in his own right) was kind enough to deliver a story for our collection as well. Plus a gaggle of other true talents like Scott Bachmann, Ian Thomas Healy, Drew Hayes, T. Mike McCurley, Cheyenne Young and a whole lot of other folks! My own story takes a bit of inspiration from James Hudnall’s ESPers as I introduce my own psychic corner of the Quadrant Universe in the first installment of The Second Life of D.B. Cooper.

So, please go out and pre-order a copy today. We are proud to bring you some great writing and encourage you to help support Mr. Hudnall in his time of need.

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.

Writer's Update for February 3, 2015

I have spent the last couple weeks in between trying to get sites online working on the first story in a new series called The Second Life of D.B. Cooper. I finished the second draft on it just yesterday and it is off to the publisher now. It should pop up in just a few weeks as part of the Pen and Cape Society’s The Good Fight 2: Villains anthology. I missed out on the first volume of the series, but this one was a can’t miss for me, but I will talk more about that in the future.

The new story kicks off a tale that blends my work on Pulpsploitation with the Quadrant Universe and introduces D.B. Cooper in 1982 Key West, Florida. It also touches on psychic mind experiments, mystic esoterica and a few other oddball figures out of weird history.

I suspect Mr. Cooper will see a return appearance before the end of 2015, but I will have to wait on that announcement for awhile.

Now I am hard at work on kicking off the second year of Lightweight stories. Anyone that read the end of Lightweight: Graduation knows exactly how far away from the first year the new story will be. It should offer some interesting conundrums in the life of Kevin Mathis.

A Kickstarter will be on its way for year two in a couple more months, but I plan to finalize all orders on the first year of Lightweight first.

Today’s image is DB Cooper by Brian Churilla. Check out his The Secret History of D.B. Cooper for another oddball take on the mysterious hijacker well worth a read.