2024 IN REVIEW

It’s that time of year again, when we decide to look back at what we’ve done over the past twelve months. Frequently it’s a shock (for me, anyway) – sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad. This year’s a good one, since I appear to have done far more than I thought I had (an aspect of that good ol’ imposter syndrome, I suspect).

I had a Sherlock Holmes story published in the The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part XLIV: 2024 Annual 1889-1897 (that’s one away from XL5, for readers of a certain age): “Hollingbourne Grange”. Considering I once thought how nice it would be to write a Sherlock Holmes piece, somehow that had become several. I’m not complaining. I have one more in the pipeline, and I think that’ll be it. I’ve done everything I wanted with the character (and more!) so time to quit while I’m ahead (although I think Conan Doyle had thoughts along similar lines).

Peripherally connected was “The Return of Madame Sarah” in Sherlock & Friends: Eldritch Investigations edited by Lyndon Perry for Tule Fog Press, an anthology pitting investigators from the Holmes era against Eldritch horrors of a Mythos nature. I went with L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith) and Robert Eustace’s Madame Sara and her nemesis police surgeon Eric Vandeleur (as narrated by his assistant Dixon Druce) versus Nyarlathotep (or Nyar-lat-hotep, as I had it).

Also from Tule Fog, in their Swords & Heroes e-magazine, was the short story “Two Swords Waiting”, a heroic fantasy tale of twin sisters Brindglais and Brandguin and a couple of magic swords in what I have come to call my A World of Gods and Monsters series (quite likely a book in the making). The sequel – “Sisters of the Swords” – will see publication in the future.

From Sarob Press came The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Landscape Figures, edited by Rosemary Pardoe, which reprinted “All I Ever See” in a lovely, limited edition hardback. I shared the ToC with old friends David Sutton and John Howard along with many other notable authors and it was quite a privilege to be published in such a prestigious volume.

Then there was Phantasmagoria magazine #24, and the second part of my swords and dinosaurs serialised novel (presently of no fixed title), “Beyond the Ghost Caves”. We meet the remaining two protagonists, witness more cross-time oddness, and know that soon all of the characters’ disparate paths will cross. Issue #25 published an interview of yours truly, conducted by Allison Weir and Sarah Graven Weir in what was little more than a broom cupboard at Cherry Red’s in Birmingham at the Alchemy Press 25th anniversary get-together (which also celebrated certain significant birthdays for some attendees, and the 50th anniversary of my first published short story – “Designs of the Wizard” – in the BFS magazine Dark Horizons, for which I published a very limited edition chapbook of the story with cover artwork by Jim Pitts; no one at the place was allowed to leave until they took one).

I also turned up on Lee Benson’s Sunday lunchtime radio and streaming show – Listen with Lee on Black Country Xtra – making very little sense I suspect, even for a Sunday.

And as if that wasn’t enough, alongside Alchemy Press Supremo Peter Coleborn I co-edited an anthology of strange fiction for PS Publishing: Shadowplays. With fiction from Stephen Volk, Ray Bradbury, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Nancy Kilpatrick, Paul Kane, Robert Bagnall, Colleen Anderson & Tom Johnstone, Gary McMahon, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gail-Nina Anderson, Tim Jeffreys, Marion Pitman, Bret McCormick, KC Grifant, Garry Kilworth, John Linwood Grant, Wendy Purcell, Joanne Anderton and Reggie Oliver, it’s a book of which I feel justifiably proud. A signed, limited edition hardback will be available in 2025.

The major event of 2024 however was me dipping my toes into self (or independent) publishing. The first was a slim volume, Drawing Down Leviathan, collecting all three stories featuring (to date, anyway), the submarine USS Oswin: “Cradle of the Deep”, “Echoes of Days Passed”, and the previously unpublished title novella. My plan was to make all the mistakes and learn from the experience before launching into a novel, Hail the New Age – a fantasy thriller in the sub-genre spies and sorcery (which I invented, maybe, with any luck). Reviews for both books follow (with permission) so I’ll not say another word about them.

***

Lyndon Perry, Tule Fog Press:

Mike Chinn’s 3 novelettes collected in the volume Drawing Down Leviathan is simply fun, wholesome, pulpy adventure. The action takes place on a new experimental US submarine set in the late 1930s at the ramp-up to WW2. These tales are high sea battle romps with enough navy lingo to lend credibility and verisimilitude but not so much as to get in the way of the story.

First two tales (“Cradle of the Deep” and “Echoes of Days Passed”) involve a bit of sea monster mystery – man vs supernatural beast trope. Entertaining, nothing ground-breaking, but they definitely hit the right notes of cinematic nostalgia – think of the childhood excitement of shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The opening story features the author’s pulp-styled action hero protagonist, Damian Paladin and his enigmatic sidekick, Leigh Oswin; and it ends with a sly bit of nomenclature humour. I was hoping for a return of Paladin in the second story, but the tension and mystery weren’t lacking even though the focus switched to the submarine captain and his crew. (BTW, Paladin appears in a couple different collections of the author’s stories, namely, The Paladin Mandates and Walkers in Shadow. Worth looking up if you enjoyed “Cradle of the Deep”.)

In the final story “Drawing Down Leviathan”, we have an encounter with a dangerous female ‘bad guy’ – the Captain-Admiral of a floating fortress. I liked the steampunk feel to this story, my mind going to Jules Vern’s famous antagonist, Captain Nemo. Action-packed and satisfying. I’d like to read more stories where our brave submarine captain and crew go up against this evil mastermind.

If you’re on the lookout for some quick adventure (about 100 or so pages) that brings back the pulpy action heroics from your childhood, this short collection is just the thing.

Trevor Kennedy, Phantasmagoria magazine:

Sea monsters and Nazis! Just a couple of the perils faced by the crew of the submarine, the USS Oswin, named after pulp hero Leigh Oswin, who, along with her dashing pilot partner Damian Paladin, appear in the opening story of author Mike Chinn’s new trilogy of nautical fantasy adventure tales. It’s 1936 and Chinn’s recurring characters serve to help introduce the reader to the crew of the submarine cruiser, helmed by Captain Dave Bannon and Commander Brad Munrow.

In the first story, “Cradle of the Deep”, the new team assigned to the prototype sea craft are assisted by Damy and Leigh and together they soon encounter a strange sea beast. “Echoes of Days Passed” sees the Oswin boarded by navy top brass just as they face off against another terror of the deep, and in the final title story they come up against a nefarious world conspiracy involving Nazis and a huge, fully-armed ship. Gun battles of a seaborne nature and within the air ensue.

 

Drawing Down Leviathan is some old-school pulpy enjoyment and exceptionally well researched at the same time – Chinn really does know his stuff in terms of naval and aviation terminology and technical details of the era, along with other relevant historical knowledge. This, of course, lends an air of authenticity and believability to proceedings.

Plainly inspired by Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, this is strongly recommended for those of us who are into these types of underwater adventures from a seemingly bygone age, something that the author himself clearly still has a strong enthusiasm for, this being made quite clear inside the pages of Drawing Down Leviathan.

Chris Morgan, Birmingham Science Fiction Group newsletter:

Ninety years ago Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express was published. Now Mike Chinn has written a great fantasy version of it. In a more-or-less 19th century world, where wizardry competes with science and technology, a railway track has been laid between Ramini’s two major ports, Scan Leroth and Scana Carsofi. The inaugural two-week train journey is about to begin. On board are the technological genius responsible for the project, Professor Alva, and a small number of invited guests. They are meant to be celebrating the technological innovation of the steam railway. But nothing is as it seems to be and at least one of the guests is secretly a wizard (they are now out of power and beyond the law) determined to make the journey a total failure.

The Hercule Poirot figure here, who must work out who is who and prevent the failure of the trip, is Wilonek Scilli (dare I say that all the characters have been given silly names?) an unprepossessing youngish man. He has survived years of training at the wizards’ seminary without becoming a wizard or in any way favouring them. He’s also rather like a US crime fiction investigator, in that he’s often beaten up and bleeding. His weakness is this: his wizardry training has left him needing a liquid drug, chavet, every day or two, or else he suffers awful withdrawal symptoms.

All the power of wizardry on this world emanates from crystals of abaston, a rare mineral of which wizards control the supply. An important part of their training is the handling of abaston.

Aboard the train are a marvellous group of eccentrics. There’s the artificially created heteromorph, Batrix, currently in female shape, who is a military lieutenant-commander (in charge of the venture) with whom Scilli has numerous encounters, trying to convince her that they’re on the same side. Others include Thryme (Alva’s mentor), Senator Nachollni, Dr Tork (a medical man) and Scendik Boz, a fiction writer from a nearby country. Also present is Major Rengalet, a former military hero and current alcoholic, who commands a group of about a dozen Sharpshooter militia, who seem to be non-speaking characters, only there to be killed. This being 19th century-ish, the Sharpshooters all have muskets, while most of the others carry repeating pistols (another Alva invention) which are sometimes reluctant to work properly.

The journey is beset with a multitude of problems. There are appearances by various swamp creatures and other monsters. The main train driver (or pilot, as Chinn would have it) is Sanej, a planted detective and a great friend of Scilli. When he is killed, Scilli is accused of the crime. The steam-driven locomotive is revealed to be abaston-powered. There are crashes and uncouplings of carriages as characters and their pasts are revealed. Every scene contains tension, excitement and surprise.

Just when you think the novel is ending, along comes an advert for a second exciting adventure starring Scilli and Batrix. Hail the New Age is privately published with a wonderful cover illustration.

Benjamin Kurt Unsworth, British Fantasy Society Online:

Given the popularity of the murder-mystery genre, it is always nice to see a new spin on it; one of the latest of these comes in the form of Mike Chinn’s Hail the New Age. Set in a world where the fantastical and technological have been clashing in civil war, the Ramini Republic has emerged, most of the magical Chrysomancers have been weakened, and distrust prevails. But the herald of the new technological dawn is the Novandik, a train whose inaugural coast-to-coast journey is beset by spanners in the works, of which a wizard determined to end the Novandik’s journey and many a backstabbing, metaphorical or otherwise are just the start.

The Ramini Republic manifests like a serrated version of a Studio Ghibli universe, vibrant and with the steampunkish mix of societies coming across smoothly and without delay. However, whereas Studio Ghibli leans more into the world of dragons, capes, and breathtaking vistas, Chinn’s universe is a drastic step in the other direction. The protagonist Wilonek Scilli, a not-wizard but with wizard training and an addiction to a drug called “chavet”, finds himself being beaten up at every turn as he tries to stop the Novandik being sabotaged. Less the Hercule Poirot figure, his role as detective feels more an involuntary manoeuvre, since the whole affair is styled less like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and more Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express – you can picture Telly Savalas playing many of the grumpy, affronted characters in a film adaptation.

Although Chinn’s prose is attuned more to action than description, the fantasy realm bleeds off the page in a no-holds-barred sort of way, and for readers who naturally go towards the crime or horror sections of the bookstore, it’s a nice segue into a fantasy universe. And yet for all its vibrancy, there’s a deathly sense of chill running through everything; the characters opposite Scilli all possess the kind of internecine causticity you’d expect from a disgruntled werewolf, and lieutenant-commander Batrix aboard the Novandik embodies that. Although Batrix functions as quite a nice metaphor for non-binary or gender fluid people, being a heteromorph who flicks between genders on a semi-regular basis, they’re also impossibly distrusting, and you can’t help except imagine their many speeches prefaced by a scowl and an angry hiss.

As a murder mystery though, it does keep you on your toes, and the action sequences, some of which do involve fantastical beasts, never detract from that even though they’re the overriding aspect. Not to say some of the surprises you can’t see coming, but there are also enough there which feel fresh and distinctive to keep you turning the pages, and the fantasy elements are never used as a Deus ex machina, rather a tool to enhance the tension and make Chinn’s prose that little bit more vivid and unexpected.

Ultimately, it leaves each genre time to stand on their own and make its mark; however, as a mix of the two, its smorgasbord of gritty fantasia achieves something greater, both breathtaking and savage with to-the-point prose. For what seems like a very unassuming novel, the almost romantic sense of bitterness is very much at the fore, and as you turn the pages – because, don’t worry, you will feel compelled to do so – its crisp sense of humanity, or perhaps inhumanity, knows how to beat you down. Reading this is a fabulous way to spend a few hours.

***

I’ll just leave you with a taster for 2025. Proving I learned nothing from the above experience I plan to publish two more books. Warriors of the Boundless, more heroic fantasy which I am proud to say will feature artwork by Argentinian artist Enrique Alcatena, who drew some of my fantasy scripts for DC Thomson’s Starblazer digest comic, and an introduction by another old friend, Adrian Cole. Then there will be a sequel to Hail, entitled Citadel of the Moon and featuring Batrix and Scilli, once again rooting out enemies of the Ramini Republic.

SWORDS 'N' STUFF

I’ve recently gotten back into writing sword and sorcery fiction again. Don’t know why (although by a strange coincidence, S&S does seem to be getting popular again, so maybe, for once, I’m tuned into the zeitgeist). I dug out some old stuff and gave it a good polish (or major re-writes, to be fair) and, miracle of miracles, actually had some of it published: in two of Parallel Universe’s Swords & Sorceries anthologies, and an edition of Phantasmagoria. Naturally, spurred on by this, I just had to have a crack at some new stuff.

The story published in issue 18 of Phantasmagoria in 2021 – “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” – was set in a corner of my own multiverse (known variously as the Internection, the Boundless, the Infinite Tiers) where immortals have finally tired of their immortality and descended to the earthly plane in order to fight themselves into extinction, causing inevitable mayhem among humans as they go. They’d call it collateral damage these days. At some point I even jotted down a few notes (a grandiose term for the odd sentence, or even just a word or two) for more tales set in the same milieu, building up to a grand finale (with hints of The Magnificent Seven, or more appropriately, The Seven Samurai).

Recently I needed to submit something to a writers’ group I’m involved with and, firmly believing that no one should suffer alone, rattled off a second tale set in this universe (now labouring under the trite and – I hope – temporary title of ‘the God War’). However, I couldn’t find the notes I’d originally set down (imagining I’d deleted the file, either by accident or due to a lack of enthusiasm) so I used what was lodged in my memory (always a mistake).

Needless to say, when the hurley-burley was done, I found the original notes, stuck in a folder marked ‘Archive’. I had of course misremembered quite convincingly, with what I’d written actually being a mash-up of two separate ideas. Never mind: I now have half a dozen separate notes that I can fill out into proper plots at some point (one of which is a cheeky reworking of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, but with a red sword) and what I think is a more apt title for the second story.

It does go to show, though, never throw anything away. You never know when – or even how – it’ll come in handy.

THAT WAS 2021, THAT WAS

As 2022 kicks into high gear, I thought it might be about time to look back at what I’ve published in the last twelve months (and maybe a hint of what’s to come).

The year started with the delayed first issue of the relaunched Startling Stories from Wildside Press, and edited by Douglas Draa. The lead story was my “Cradle of the Deep” – ostensibly a Damian Paladin story it was also what they call in TV land a backdoor pilot. Leigh Oswin and Damy investigate something lurking off the US Atlantic coast on board the new, 400-foot long experimental submarine cruiser the SC-1. By story’s end the boat had been officially named the USS Oswin, much to Damy’s disgust (I think he was expecting it to be USS Paladin). Sub and crew resurfaced later in the year in The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors: A Miscellany of Monsters in “Echoes of Days Passed”, a tale deliberately constructed to mimic its Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV series inspiration, with something big in the North Atlantic sinking a Royal Navy secret testbed and eating its crew, before the Oswin gets involved due to a somewhat obsessional admiral. Death and destruction inevitably follow.

There’s a third Oswin story in the works – “Drawing Down Leviathan” – about to be revised and polished, involving a worldwide, seaborne organisation with huge ships that make 1930s aircraft carriers look like pedal boats, and an aircraft inspired by a Bel Geddes design. And even though a couple of Nazis get a walk-on part, I think I’ve found my series’ main baddies.

Next up was Phantasmagoria #18. This not only had a previously unpublished sword & sorcery piece of mine – “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” – but also included me being interviewed by Allison Weir. A double strike if ever there was one.

And by one of those minor coincidences, Parallel Universe Publications’ Swords & Sorceries volume 2 also published a fantasy story of mine almost simultaneously, “The Essence of Dust”, which was an old piece that consisted of the original plot and very little else, having been pretty much rewritten from the ground up. And like “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” it took place in my own fictional multiverse (although I prefer the terms Internection, or the Boundless), so there were the most tenuous of links. There’s also a vague connection with some of the fantasy strips I wrote for DC Thomson’s Starblazer (and illustrated by Quique Alcatena) for those who care to look. A few months later, Swords & Sorceries volume 3 published “The Rains of Barofonn”, a follow on from “Essence of Dust”, once more an old piece that has been revised, polished and expanded slightly. The submission period for volume 4 starts on April 1^st (I hope the date’s not significant) and I will be most definitely throwing my hat in the ring once more.

Another Wildside publication edited by Douglas Draa – the Weirdbook annual, Zombies – contained “O Mary Don’t You Mourn”, a story set in mid-1860s New Orleans and featuring a Native American protagonist I dreamed up decades ago for an absolutely dreadful Western novel I abandoned halfway through (you’re welcome). He felt like the perfect fit for the story, and I may well write more Mattan fiction in the future.

Another anthology that was delayed for a year, due to the Covid pandemic, was The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror, from Skyhorse and edited by Stephen Jones. My contribution, “All I Ever See” took its title from a line in Status Quo’s early hit, “Pictures of Matchstick Men” (repurposing song titles or lyrics is something I’ve been doing for a long, long time). Anyone who’s read the story will have made the connection, I hope.

Finally there’s Gruesome Grotesques: Carnival of Freaks from TK Pulp. Editor Trevor Kennedy asked me if I’d like to contribute and I said I’d do what I could. Inspiration came from a weekend break to the Lake District. I wasn’t entirely happy when the final documentation came and I found that not only would we be staying in Blackpool (a town I have no love for, embodying as it does – in my opinion – all the worst aspects of British seaside resorts) and a Britannia hotel. Luckily, the hotel had previously been the Blackpool Hilton and the shine hadn’t rubbed off yet (although Blackpool remained Blackpool). The first night, the sound of small feet running up and down the corridor outside our room – combined with what I later realised was a slight panic attack at breakfast the first day (the restaurant became increasingly full as we finished eating, and I’d grown unused to crowds) – were the seeds which quickly grew into “Hall of Dreams” and its dark themes of childhood abuse and repressed memory. The small fictional seaside town of Byemouth was no Blackpool, though.

And that’s it for 2021. I already have a list of stories to be written, polished or edited within the first quarter of 2022. Beyond that there’s nothing planned. No doubt something will turn up. It always does.

Happy New Year!

ZOMBIE SEE, ZOMBIE DO

I don’t think it’s much of a secret that I’m no great fan of modern, so-called zombies in fiction (written or filmed). Mainly because most of the time the revenants aren’t really zombies – just the living dead (by means explained or not), and generally with a taste for living flesh (brains!!!!). I don’t think anyone has ever explained how they’re supposed to digest their meals, or moan, for that matter (they’re dead – they don’t breath!).

Yes, I get that Romero’s living dead are meant to be metaphors for capitalism, but most of the time the so-called zombies are clichéd, shambling corpses that can still somehow overtake a running healthy person (The Walking Dead TV series really did miss the clue in the title).

However, I have been guilty of committing my own zombie stories a couple of times – although in my defence I do try and go for the traditional, raised from the dead and used as slaves motif (no doubt clumsily).

The first was “Zombie Dance” in the second Damian Paladin collection, Walkers In Shadow, and the second has just been published in the Weirdbook Annual: Zombies!. Entitled “O Mary Don’t You Mourn”, it’s a kind of Weird Western (if New Orleans can be said to be in the West), set around 1866/67, and featuring a Navajo character I came up with back in the late 1970s (when I started work on a truly appalling Western novel – long consigned to the trash-heap of history), and resurrected not-quite-dead that are a little closer to the zombie of voodoo legend – and inspired by that nasty fungus which turns insects into suicidal spore spreaders (not to mention imagery from William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night”, which gave me the heebie-jeebies the first time I read it as a kid).

So, Weird Western zombie story. Another phrase I never thought I’d be applying to my fiction.

HORRORS OF ALL SORTS

 

There seems to be an unwritten rule with regard to writing. As time passes we edit and polish our work, submit it, and await the acceptance (hopefully) or rejection (sadly inevitable sometimes). Then we sit back and wait for publication.

And that’s where this rule comes in.

You can have stuff accepted over a period of a year or more, then – because of the vagaries of the publishing world (and the last couple of years has seen more vagaries than usual) – nothing for months. Then, like buses, everything turns up at once (which is fine in a way, because if people aren’t paying attention, it can look like you’re really prolific).

Which is a roundabout way of explaining why three short stories of mine are all seeing publication within a short time of each other, when they’ve been accepted over quite a range of time.

“All I Ever See” was accepted for The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror (Skyhorse, ed. Stephen Jones) back in 2020, but due to the pandemic the book was delayed for a year or so. The Kindle edition is now available, while the paperback will be out in October (and is available to pre-order here)

“Echoes of Days Passed” is the second salty tale of the submarine USS Oswin (first encountered in “Cradle of the Deep”, Startling Stories magazine 2021 [Wildside, ed. Douglas Draa]) and was accepted for The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors 3: A Miscellany of Monsters (The Alchemy Press, ed. Peter Coleborn & Jan Edwards) at the beginning of the year. This anthology is also due out in October, and is available to pre-order here.

“Hall of Dreams” is the baby of the bunch, conceived during a couple of nights’ stay in Blackpool in July. It will be seeing the light of day in Gruesome Grotesques Vol 6: Carnival of Freaks (TK Pulp, ed. Trevor Kennedy) in – you guessed it – October. You’d think there was some sort of festival celebrating spooks and other horrors at that time of year. Details for this as and when.

Three tales, acceptances spread over more than a twelve month period, being published within a few weeks of each other.

Odd business, this writing one.

RETURN OF THE SWORDS

Decades ago, back in the mists of time, my earliest attempts at writing revolved around what I later came to know as Sword & Sorcery (somewhat influenced initially by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series, and then Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion books). These primitive, immature scribblings morphed over time, and my earliest printed work was a very short story in the British Fantasy Society’s magazine, Dark Horizons #10 – “Designs of the Wizard” – in 1974. Two sequels followed – “Shadows of the Weaver” and “The Closing of the Days” – in Dark Horizons #12 and #14 respectively. All were bundled under the overarching title of “The Second Dragons”, and told an epic tale of human versus humanoid lizards in a post-apocalyptic desert Earth in well under 10,000 words. I returned to that particular world a couple more times – “Nightfall of a Dying World” (Dark Horizons 28, 1985) and “Fair Dues” (Dark Horizons 33, 1992) – when the mood struck, and may well do so again. I even wrote a novel, expanding on the original three stories; posterity will be relieved to know it no longer exists.

Now and then I’d dabble in other S&S tales [“The Pistol and the Sword” (Dark Horizons, 1979), “But the Stones Will Stand” (Fantasy Tales 10, 1982), “Sword of Light” (Victor Summer Special, 1987), and “Day of the Dark Men” (Fantasy Tales Vol.12 #6, 1991)], but over time I drifted away from that particular genre, for some reason. (Although I never entirely left: the jokey “Saving Prince Romero” was published in Unfit for Eden: Postscripts 26/27, in 2012).

Then, during 2020 – whether it was the unusually summery weather, or lockdown madness, who can say – I discovered a new enthusiasm for the form. I found time to dust off some of my unpublished S&S fiction and give it a good polishing (read: re-writing from the ground up) and I’m glad to say the exercise bore a little fruit. And so – by one of those typical coincidences which often plague the writer’s world – two pieces are appearing within a sort time of each other. “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” has just been published in Phantasmagoria #18, while “The Essence of Dust” will shortly be released on an unsuspecting world in Swords & Sorceries Volume 2. And although there is little to connect either tale, they do take place in a shared universe (or should that be multiverse?).

I think it’s fair to say my S&S days are actually far from over.

PALADIN FLIES AGAIN

The new expanded edition of The Paladin Mandates is now out from Pro Se Press. In addition to "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" (which was only in the original Kindle edition), and "Deck the Halls" (published in the Occult Detective Monster Hunter anthology in 2015) there are two pieces unique to this new edition: "Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking" and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf".

Available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon US and Amazon UK