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 past brings a new Second Life! The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age is here!

The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age came out last week. The book features stories with a pulp twist and set in the time period between the 1930s and 1950s. I was happy to be back for this one, though the nature of the book meant much like the third volume of the series, it didn't exactly work for a new story of The Second Life of D.B. Cooper, a character I always like to go back to in these volumes.

This time around though, it seemed like a great time to give a prequel to that series. Thus was born my story "The Second Life of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin."

I thought about putting Mignola's Rasputin here,
but he looks nothing like the real thing. So here's
Riley Rossmo's version from an equally oddball
take on the character. 

Grigori popped up in the first of Coop's story back in The Good Fight 2: Villains. His connection to Coop has never really been made clear, but the legendary Mad Monk now gets to live his own second life in a story set in the late 30s.

Though he's probably best known these days as a character in Hellboy, Rasputin's place in Russian history is the stuff of legend. The stories of his powers are all over the place and the insanity surrounding his death makes it clear he's just the kind of guy to have another life after the Bolshevik Revolution. Now he's in America, on the trail of a mysterious threat in a small Washington town.

I've always loved the legend of Rasputin. Much like D.B. Cooper, his legend is larger than reality and that makes him a perfect figure for super powered fiction. Yet more often than not, he's played usually as a villain or at best, an enigmatic meddler. Yet history showed him to have some history in Russian democracy, which certainly seems a noble cause to any American. I built my take on Rasputin with that in mind. After twenty years traveling the world, he's a very different individual, a man with a noble heart but a willingness to do bad things for the good of all.

The story serves as a prequel to the three existing Coop stories, but it will also have ties to an upcoming project as well. But I'll talk more about that in a future column.

The story's appearance in this volume will now serve as something of a bittersweet point in my career. The volume features the first Pen & Cape Society story by James Hudnall, a true inspiration to me as a writer. Sadly, it will also be his last as he passed away last month at the far too young age of 61. I knew James only through a few brief encounters online, but his work on ESPers directly inspired the idea of a psychic D.B. Cooper. I will talk about the meaning of his work more in a future column, but his death leaves me heartbroken for what could have been.

You'll be missed, Hud.

Goals achieved and worlds destroyed! My 7th Camp Nanowrimo is in the books!

Image by Javier Estaban via Unsplash.

Over the weekend, I hit my goal for my seventh Camp Nanowrimo event. The twice annual free-form writing event has always been a fun one for me, and while I developed some issues with my pacing midway through the month, it's been all engines forward for the last week or so.

The main focus was playing catch up on Quadrant and I managed that quite well. I'm fast working through the latter half of volume two, otherwise known as the time travel arc. I don't want to give away much on this one, but I will reassure everyone that it continues to prove how much fun developing new tales of the Morgan brothers is for me.

I'll have more on the future of Quadrant in updates very soon. Over the next year, I hope to make the brothers' saga as important as Lightweight currently is in my publishing schedule. With that in mind, I have big plans for the characters in the weeks and months ahead!

Before I wrap this blog up I wanted to remind everyone that The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age will be available to read as of tomorrow. Go get your copies pre-ordered now!

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!