The Adventure Begins...

I once read that; "an adventure is something dangerous that happens to someone else a long way away." Amusingly, when I googled the quote, I couldn't even find where I originally read it. I don't know if the quote is a rephrasing, or original to the author who wrote it, though I'd imagine someone, somewhere else, wrote something smilier. At some point. Monkeys with typewriters and all that...

My point in taking up blogging again is much more about self-promotion rather than self-endangerment. Yesterday, I received the email from the hive-mind known as Amazon saying that the paperback edition of my first (of many, one hopes) book, Black Mesa, is now live and available for purchase. Right here:

https://a.co/d/3B8lYFM

Black Mesa is actually a collection of three stand-alone novellas that fall solidly in the horror genre. Don't worry, the killing and bloodletting serves a purpose. Each novella explores a theme, as all stories should, I suppose, though my novellas themes center on the themes of disaster capitalism and the atomization and alienation of individuals in contemporary America. 

Does that all sound remarkably dreary, or if you feel you could just step outside and check out the real-world effects of disaster capitalism for yourself?

Well. You're not wrong. 

Care to guess the median price of a house in this country?

The answer might horrify you more than anything I can write...

But if you'd rather explore those themes and ideas, through the lens of the supernatural, all while riding on the shoulders of characters forced to make ethical and moral decisions you might find familiar, hop on into the book.

For instance, whatever could be happening in a story involving swords, gavels, and books of forbidden lore?

Because the internet is an amusing place sometimes, and the controls on the KDP website have some quirks to them, the e-book version is available only for pre-order until the release date I set of January 29th. The website led me to believe the paperback would go live at the same time as the e-book. Not to belabor the point, but here's a link to the e-book:

https://a.co/d/cObzHq7

My father created the cover art for the book, as well as the image on the back cover of the paperback. A pair of illustrations didn't make the paperback version, so I will post both of them here:

As you can tell, the drawings are mock floorpans for the house in Distressed Property, the first of the novellas.

Currently, I'm working on four more novellas, one is the second part of the title novella Black Mesa, while the other three offer more stand alone mayhem and mysticism. 

Stay tuned, cause there's alway more...