• The story “Bad Beat” is currently available for view on Raygun Revial.It’s the first of what I hope to be an anthology of Jet Age Mars stories, which I’m shooting to complete in 2013.
• “Make Him Talk,” a short story set in the Rag and Bone ectopunk universe, will be coming out in the anthology Postscripts to Darkness later this year. More details as they become available.
• I’m doing a bit of an experiment. I’ve published a short story through Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library (as well as for purchase.) I’m making it as easy as possible to spread around, as I’ve refused DRM and want to see it spread far and wide. It’s called The Ballad of the Wayfaring Stranger and the Dead Man’s Whore and I’m more fond of it than someone who casts something into the void should be. Or maybe I’m just fond enough of it to cast it wide.
• Zobop Bebop is in edits, the cover art’s done and I’m ready for it to move to print.

So… it’s shaping up to be an interesting year. Watch this space.

BACKGROUND:

For a major metropolitan area with a population of more than a million people, Central City has only recently come into its own as a superheroic mecca.

That’s just how its previous masters liked it.

In 1928, the leaders of the ruthlessly mercantile Brotherhood of Opportunity, the expansionist Knights of the Golden Circle and the warmongering Order of Ares met on the top floor of the Central City Club and decided to join forces in order to establish an American empire based on their ideals… and, of course, one that would benefit their goals. The three groups dissolved, making the collapse of the country’s economic structure the maiden voyage of the newly formed Secret Empire.

The Secret Empire clashed with heroes around the world, but only found scattered opposition at home only. Multidisciplinary genius and adventurer Melchior Onyx made it his mission to eliminate the Secret Empire, disappearing during a battle with the Empire’s Praetor Maximus in 1939. The darknight detective known as The Sentinel clashed with some of the tendrils of the Empire in the 1950s, but his focus on corruption and vice (and his personal crises) made him easy to distract.

Aside from that, the city’s few heroes focused on street crime, allowing the Secret Empire to use Central City as a gladiator academy and training ground for its own ranks of superbi. Learning from the lessons of Doc Onyx and The Sentinel, the Secret Empire made sure to give industrious or clever heroes more appetizing targets in other cities or to quietly eliminate them before they became an issue.

The conspiracy’s most implacable foe came from within its ranks. The mysterious superspy known as Everyman was one of the Empire’s Arcani, and used misdirection, sabotage and an amazing ability to infiltrate and destabilize organizations to bedevil the Secret Empire after his defection in November 1963 until his disappearance on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Everyman leaked a full breakdown of all of the Empire’s activities since its inception to uncompromised world leaders, law enforcement agencies and superheroes before the Empire’s planned takeover of the U.S. government under the guise of a Y2K emergency. The organization was brought to light, its leaders imprisoned and its minions jailed or scattered to the four winds.

In the decade following the Secret Empire’s fall, Central City has boomed. The previous mayor and Chief of Police were ousted when their complicity with the Empire was brought to light, and new blood has come in to make a clean sweep of the city. With the fall of the Empire, criminals of all stripes have moved in as well to take advantage of the power vacuum and make their mark.

For those who notice, there’s a Kickstart campaign in progress. We’re eight days out and ahead of schedule… once again, its own thing. A very good thing, too, as it’ll keep this from being more scratching in the basement and once I get this dead and in the ground I’ll be able to start in on one of the other novels bumping around my skull.

Below is the first scene I wrote for the book, something like eight years before I decided to write the thing at all. The rhythm worked and I decided to let it swing.  I’m lucky sometimes.

King Shit Hoodoo Man

When being rousted by the police in the middle of the night, one expects a certain order of things.

The first hits are tentative, almost playful, as the cops take the prisoner’s measure and see if he’ll be any trouble. By the time they reach the car, the cops are putting the boot in with authority.

They barely touched him, which was surprising. It’d been too long for reputation to be on his side, so he figured that the cops didn’t want to raise a sweat over one ex-con. That or they knew they had him.

He played the part, cringed and squinted and kept his head down as he was walked past the holding cells. The cell, full nearly to bursting, went quiet.

Not just an ex-con, then. This was something else.

He was placed, gingerly, in a brightly-lit, spare interview room. The walls twitched and jerked with the remnants of half-aware ghosts.

The detectives came in, unaware of the eyes dropping to the floor, hands and mouths pulling away as they sat. They were standard issue, one young and angry and the other old and tired. Desamours could see that Angry had been on the scene, saw whatever it was. Tired was here to hold him back.

“Narcisse Desamours,” Tired said, opening a battered folder. “Naturalized, so we can’t punt your ass back to Haiti. They wouldn’t take you back anyway. Racketeering, assault, possession with intent, kidnapping, pandering, conspiracy to commit. Hell of a rap sheet, back in the day.”

Desamours decided to play the old ex-con card and hope for the best. “I was a bad boy, boss,” he said, adding thirty years of subjugation to his bearing, head swaying like an old boxer. “That ain’t me no more.”

“Never charged, though,” Tired said to Angry, ignoring the act. “Never stuck. Know what stuck?”

“Taxes?” Angry stared at him, waiting.

“Taxes and…” Tired looked at the file. “Animal cruelty. Last man standing, Esperanza Morales, Sok Rithisak and you beat the hell out each other, fill the streets with bodies, pop pop pop.”

“Bodies?” Angry closed his eyes. This was a bad one, then. Bodies wouldn’t bother this one, but civilians would.

“Not real people,” Tired said. “Morales dies in a house fire, Sok up and fucks off back to the killing fields and you’re still there. King of the anthill.”

“King Shit Hoodoo Man,” Angry said, standing up. This was where the first hit would come, then. Desamours braced for it, but it never came.

“Numbers, prostitution and smack king, more like,” Tired said. “And we put you away for beating a dog. Fucking a goat. Something. What a world.”

“I did my time, boss,” Desamours said, adding a vacant half-smile to his wobble and sway. “What I do?”

“Dante Moore,” Angry said. “You know Dante. Little punk, had a corner where some littler punks slung for him.”

Angry fanned a set of crime scene photos, laid them out like a bad poker hand in front of Desamours. He saw blood and parts laid out like a jigsaw puzzle, remembered this body from his dream.

“Dante got jointed last night,” Angry said. “Kind of thing your boys used to do.”

“Allegedly,” Tired said, looking at Desamours through half-open eyes.

“Of course, Dante’s bits didn’t get sent home to the islands because he’s a native born piece of shit,” Angry said.

“Saved you postage, so that’s good,” Tired said. “Start up fees can be a bitch and a half, right?”

“Lawyer,” Desamours said, keeping the bob and losing the smile. “Nothing else to say to you without a lawyer.”

“We’re just talking,” Angry said. “Talking about the girl. See, you put Dante in the ground, it’s the price of doing business. His girl, though. Good girl, from what I can tell.”

He tossed another picture on the table. This one, a class photo of a young girl, pale blue eyes a little too wise and smile a little too broad not to be in the know. Desamours could feel the sanctity off of this one. She’d been spoken for.

“Valentine Belno,” Angry said, his voice flat. “Age sixteen.”

“Valen-TEEN,” Tired said, looking slightly more interested. “You know how they pronounce it. Nicknamed ‘Teenie.’ Cute kid.”

“Was Teenie part of the plan,” Angry said, growing animated, “or did your boys just get their blood up? This new crew a little less disciplined than your boys back in the day?”

“Not me, boss,” Desamours said, staring Tired in the eye. “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Sure looks like you,” Tired said with a slight frown. “Did ‘em the way your guys used to do.”

“Allegedly did.”

“Right, allegedly.” Angry tossed down the last few pictures. Desamours glanced and looked away. “Left one of those bebop flags on her after they finished.”

“Zobop flag,” Desamours said, letting the act drop.

“Right,” Tired said. “Zobop flag. Allegedly. Maybe you can cool down here for a while, see if you remember anyone you might want to let hang on this. Otherwise, it’s all you.”

Angry and Tired left, the photos scattered on the table in front of Desamours painting a picture of old, familiar mayhem.

It didn’t look good.

The Kickstarter campaign for Zobop Bebop is in its final stretch… sort of. We’re looking at 20 percent of the total requested with two weeks to go.

I’d love to see this become a going concern, and I’d really like to see the ebook side of the equation bump up as much as possible. After all, five dollars for a book is not half bad.

And the book is, if I dare say so myself, pretty solid.

Boat Brothers

Desamours spent the night in a vacant hotel room, trying to clear the smell of dead flesh and the rattle of plastic out of his head.

Je Rouj was wrong. How wrong, he couldn’t quite tell.

As he fell asleep, he could feel himself falling into a younger man’s skin, the smell of barbecue and gunpowder filling the air.

It was the Fourth of July, right after they’d won the war. He’d taken his inner circle, his bizongue, to the riverfront to celebrate, cooking all day and eating and drinking all night.

He watched Janjak dancing with Chantale and Elsie, two of the girls they’d pulled for the party. The big man had been running protection on four or five shopkeepers before he came under Desamours’ arm, walking the streets with his crowbar over his shoulder. Now, he had an army of smash-up kids keeping ten blocks paying on time.

He saw Frantz and Edgard playing craps, while Toussaint manned the grill, talking up a storm. His field marshals, he’d called them. The brothers pulled heists, set up ambushes and ran, laughing, into battle with their soldiers at their backs.

“Happy days, hired man.” The voice rattled and popped like burning gunpowder, and Desamours could smell rancid fat and old rum. He looked to the voice and saw himself, dressed in black and red, lit by moonlight.

“M’sye Kalfu,” he said, sliding slowly away. “Welcome to the party.”

Kalfu nodded, watching the scene. The loa, lord of misfortune and injustice, smiled.

“All the Boat Brothers, happy and secure in their victory,”     he said. “None around now, of course. Bad luck.”

“You would know,” Desamours said.

“Let’s not focus on the past, hired man,” he replied quickly. “This should be a welcome home party, yeah? Back in the game, balls swinging and ready to mix it up again.”

The music grew louder, faster. Desamours focused on the loa‘s eyes as he heard sobbing and the sound of bones crushed under heavy hooves.

“Heard you made the rounds, Narcisse,” Kalfu said. “You oughta come to the source, baby.  All of the truths of the world can be laid out before you, you ask the right question.”

“My mistake, M’sye,” Desamours said, feeling hands on his wrists. “Were you there, at the end, with Teenie?”

“I’m everywhere I need to be, Narcisse. Everywhere I’m called for, and some places I’m not.”

“But were you there?”

Kalfu looked away. “Wasn’t worth my time.”

Desamours felt a hand around his ankle, heard a low, wet giggle.

“Like I say, focus on the future,” Kalfu said. “You’re back, you’re in the game. You need anything at all, let me know.”

Desamours woke up suddenly, a hand over his eyes. He smelled rum and rancid fat, heard Kalfu’s gunpowder hiss as the hand receded.

“Because, the way it’s looking now, baby,” Kalfu said, fading into the shadows of the room, “you could use some friends.” 

Everyone Eats

The next morning, Desamours walked to the hotel, head high and coco macaque swinging. Time to make a big splash, he thought, see if anyone comes calling.

He heard the drums as he came closer, a low, stuttering beat that grumbled just outside of his hearing. The grunts of rooting pigs and the smell of burning wood seeped from the building, and no one moved inside.

He walked through the front door, heard rustling from the walls. The foyer was empty, tattered paper and rotting furniture speaking to a long abandonment. The wallpaper bulged and tore under the weight of ages, and dust lifted from the carpet with every footstep.

As he walked up the stairs, Desamours could hear louder drumming. Feet stamped out an unsteady rhythm, rattling the floor and walls in counterpoint to the squeals and grunts.

He opened his door to find a wave of people moving through the room. Some of them were stomping and leaping, lashing out at anyone who came too close, while others crawled on the floor, grunting, squealing and rooting at the ground. In the center of the room, stroking the dead cat that Desamours had left to draw unwelcome attention away, sat the hotel’s desk clerk, left leg curled up to his chest and a burned chair leg in his hand.

“You open up a door,” he said in clipped, precise tones, “you shouldn’t be surprised if someone take that as an invitation. Figure I make the place closer to home.” He smiled a thin, mirthless smile and gnawed on the chair leg, sparks flaring from the smoking wood.

“Good morning, Ti-Jean Petro,” Desamours said, closing the door. “Thought this was too small-time for you, mon oncle.”

The loa spat, blood and burned wood staining the floor. The dancers stopped, dropping to the ground with an occasional quiet whimper among them.

“Small-time? No such thing, bokor,” he said. “You work my patch, you pay the toll! No exceptions!”

He pulled himself up, leg twisted beneath him. If the clerk came out of this in one piece, he’d favor that leg for the rest of his life and never know why. Touch of the divine, Desamours thought to himself.

Ti-Jean Petro peered up at him, lip twitching.

“Rules is rules. Black pig, slaughtered and given to me. Songs to my glory. Burning and drums.

“Rules,” he said, “is rules. Everyone eats in turn. My turn now.”

Desamours raised his hands, beseeching. “This is a little operation,” he said. “This honfour, it’s passing through, like me. I finish my work, I’m in the wind.”

“Don’t matter,” Ti-Jean Petro said, limping forward. “I’m hungry, bokor. Ain’t ate in a long time, and you the only table serving.”

The dancers began to grunt and squeal, his room sounding like a pigpen in Hell. Desamours knew he was losing time.

“My bizongue’s not all gone,” he said. “You should be eating good off of them, Oncle.

The loa swayed, pouting. “You been gone too long, bokor. Your bizongue’s long gone, to a man. The smooth one, he die of la SIDA five year gone. The others, they gone after you go down. No one remembers poor uncle.”

Desamours fought back a smile. Ti-Jean Petro was a powerful loa and worthy of respect, but he’d beg before working if it got him his way.

“What about my girl?”

“What about her,” the loa said, scowling. “She doin’ nothing.”

Desamours frowned. “She’s got a honfour. She’s doing the work.”

Ti-Jean Petro shook his head. “It’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “Maybe she found Jesus or the love of a good man, but she don’t ask nothin’ from her Oncle and she give nothing in return.”

Desamours nodded, hiding his confusion as best he could. “I’ll talk to her, oncle. Until then, I’ll set you a good table soon. Leave these people alone and I’ll make it right.” 

The loa limped back to the center of the room, nodding. He shook, shoulders rolling, and let the body fall as the rest of the throng trooped silently out of the room.

Bebe had a bit to answer for, Desamours thought. If she was lucky, she’d just been playing marks with colored salt water, grass clippings and chicken bones.

If he was lucky.

Hello, Sean. Look at this manuscript, now back to me, now back to this manuscript, now back to me. Sadly, it isn’t me, but if it stopped sitting on a hard drive and received funding through Kickstarter it could read like it’s me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re in a comfortable chair with the voudoun noir novel your novel could read like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s a horror-crime thriller with those plot points you love. Look again, the plot points are fully-realized story elements, engaging characters and infinite potential. Anything is possible when your book is ‘Zobop Bebop’ and not some lady-smelling potboiler. I’m on a horse.

And then I wake up.

Short form, I’ve launched a Kickstarter account to get the thing rolling. Take a glance, if you’re interested. Donate if you’re willing. If it gets picked up prior to completion, the account will go away and funds will return to their rightful, not-my-pocket homes. If it gets picked up afterward, funds will be used to get books to those who’ve asked for them.

Thanks for your consideration: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1475856569/zobop-bebop-a-voudoun-noir-novel

When asteroid mining magnate Roy Singleton declared himself “His Ducal Serene Highness Royal I, Grand Duke of 52 Europa,” the central Earth government saw it as one of dozens of publicity stunts the eccentric billionaire had undertaken in his career. As one of the first people to engage in large-scale exploitation of the Belt (and the first to make space profitable after the Martian fiasco,) he’d earned the right to call himself whatever he wanted as long as he kept the raw materials needed to maintain the Marrakesh Miracle.

When Grand Duke Royal I offered to “hire” California’s prison population, housing them in the twelve mining stations he’d built in the belt and putting them to work until they finished their sentences or bought out their contracts, he was seen as an innovator using his bully pulpit to help his former home state while helping himself in the process.  TIME Magazine named “Duke Roy” its Man of the Year and ran a cover photo of the mogul, dressed in gold braid and epaulettes with a platinum circlet and chain of office, holding a lever in reference to Archimedes’ oft-repeated quote of “Give me a place to stand and, with a lever, I will move the whole world.”

When Grand Duke Royal I moved off-world and declared an embargo on Earth unless he was declared Lord Protector of the planet and all of its holdings he was seen as an irrelevant crank. The Pallasite Combine had been running smoothly for decades, automated shuttles from the hundreds of mining companies in the Belt delivering a constant supply of mineral wealth to an Earth that had grown comfortable and bucolic as its raw material needs were met as part of a flat trade for food and technical innovations not easily built off-world. When the Combine reported that Roy Singleton had died in a shuttle crash and that his assets had been passed on to his shareholders, the CEG hierarchy responded with a collective shrug and moved on.

Of course, the Pallasite Combine didn’t tell the whole story. They didn’t talk about the Accord that brought the noble houses of the Belt together into one rough, brawling family under the eye of their Elector, nor did they talk about Duke Royal’s denial of the Elector’s right of rulership. They didn’t talk about the fleet of fighter craft that Duke Royal’s corsairs had put to use against his brother and sister nobles. They didn’t talk about the saboteurs Duke Royal deployed to destroy life support systems, leaving miners to gasp and freeze in the endless wastes of space. And they definitely didn’t talk about how Duke Royal’s master-at-arms, a lifer brought to space from the Pelican Bay maximum security penitentiary, captured the tyrant at dagger-point and allowed him to walk the airlock rather than facing a trial before surrendering all of Royal’s holdings before the Pallasite Throne of Her Ducal Serene Highness Titania I, Grand Duchess of Ceres.

Now, with the eyes of Earth turned away, the nobles of the Belt enjoy a golden age. As their elders duel at the negotiating table or before the Pallasite Throne, young scions of wealth and privilege “take the G-cure” among the clannish, insular Barsoomist separatists of Mars, race through the void or in the ice oceans of Ceres and engage in tangled games of vendetta and romance in gilded space stations and jeweled asteroid estates. As countless indentured workers drag the wealth of a thousand Earths from the asteroids, they while away their lives under the unchanging stars.

Of course, there are uncountable dangers in the Belt. Mining camps go rogue and house guards put down worker revolts while corsairs and pirates flying under the banners of Bad Duke Royal, the Grand Pasha of the Void or the Free Traders of Libertatia seek blood and plunder in the spaceways. Inter-house rivalries can grow bloody, whether solved through duel, through the delicate dance of space combat or through sabotage and atrocity. Some even worry that Earth may rise from its slumber, seeking to bring its errant children to heel. Some say that the Pallasite Throne should take the initiative and make good on Royal I’s threat.

But not before Racing Season ends, of course. And after the 2125 Chateau Lafitte is uncorked.

I’d been thinking about cities and superheroes, how they fit together and where they didn’t, and decided to create a Spooky City. Most classic comic book worlds have a hint of spooky somewhere, whether it’s the creepy characters who get trotted out for Halloween special issues or a full-bore Gaslight Ghetto where the creepy superheroes and macabre supervillains live. Some supercities even have spooky cycles… Gotham has them regularly (when it’s not being Sick or Hard,) and James Robinson’s Opal City had them regularly during his superlative ”Starman” run.

I wanted to go a slightly different route, though. I wanted to create a city that was all Spooky all the time, but that stayed true to a superheroic vibe. I wanted wise-cracking urban heroes with uneasy relationships with the police, mighty redeemers from the stars and superteams that weren’t collections of moody loners glowering and then skulking into the darkness. Admittedly, these characters would fit the “moody loner who highlights the brightness of the main character and gives the sulky kids something to read” role in other peoples’ books. In their own, though, they’d be the show-runners and, thus, they’d be… superheroes. 

Who happened to be spooky.

Wrote up two issues of a four issue limited series set in New Jerusalem, a city that’s a little bit Richmond and a little bit Baltimore. Plotted the whole thing out to my satisfaction, splitting each issue into a deadline-based, rush-against-the-clock adventure and a setting piece.

It’s in the “someday” pile at this point. I’ve cannibalized a chunk of it, but the remainder’s hale and hearty and ready for a good home.

Someday’s a long time, and filled with possibility. I look forward to holding this in my hands at some point or, even better, watching it unfold on screen.

Here are the first five pages of Issue 1 and a couple of character descriptions: 

MEPHIT is our entryway into the story, so he’s worth some focus.

A firefighter who breathed in during the wrong fire, Mephit became a smoke para-elemental. He can create simple tools out of smoke, generate noxious smoke at will and disperse or coalesce his body at will. After a short period of misunderstood man-beasthood, he joined the side of right and good and became one of New Jerusalem’s defenders.

Mephit’s lost quite a bit and is still trying to find his footing. Although he enjoys helping others and he’s learned the heady joys of power, he hasn’t quite made peace with the fact that his powers (and the associated difficulties that the powers bring) were thrust upon him.                                                                                                                                

Mephit looks like a tall, well-built black man made entirely out of smoke… his eyes and teeth are very white, but the rest of him’s roiling clouds of smoke with the hint of faces and eyes occasionally boiling to the surface. He manifests smoky imps who serve as his eyes and ears at a distance, and he occasionally takes a more infernal appearance when the mood hits him.

THE PENITENT is, as previously mentioned, a fallen angel tasked to collect the souls of a thousand truly evil men in order to reattain theKingdom of Heaven.

That being said, he sees no reason to be terribly gloomy about it.

As an angel, he was the expression of the Divine Will and, thus, a worker. His fall gave him free will and the desire to reattain paradise as a willed being, but he’s a fundamentally blue-collar, put-on-your-black-funereal-wrappings-and-get-stuck-in kind of guy. Upon his very public return to Earth (Falling into a bank during a zombie-manned crime spree and providing a bulwark for the innocent before routing the foe), he’s become one of New ‘Salem’s most public heroes.

In any other continuity, The Penitent would be the brooding outsider, offering morose proclamations and vast swaths of blood at every pass. In New ‘Salem, though, he’s Superman: a mysterious stranger from the skies with powers beyond the ken of mortal man. He’s found it remarkably difficult to find a truly evil man and, thus, he does good works where possible and maintains his vigil. He’s also got an apartment in a quiet part of town, a cat and an avant-garde photographer girlfriend (Sherri, the “girl who doesn’t mind the scars”) who’s used him as a model in some of her more daring artwork.

The Penitent’s built on the model of Michaelangelo’s David, with huge black wings sprouting from his back. His face is covered by a metal full-face mask that’s been bolted into his skull, and he has various mystical and holy sigils branded and carved into his flesh. He wears loose black funereal wrappings around his lower body.

THIRTEEN O’ CLOCK

PAGE 1: Four panel

Panel 1: We’re on a rooftop in a warehouse district, looking through the eyes of MEPHIT, our narrator. Below, we see people unloading scientific equipment from a van into a warehouse with a large clock on the outside.

Caption: Sometimes I hate New Jerusalem.

Panel 2: Ground level. A cigarette-smoking crook leads a bound, blindfolded woman out of the back of the van. Several other crooks unload a heavy safe.

The smoking crook’s smoke should look a little thicker and clumpier than cigarette smoke normally does. Make it look like smoke from a film noir movie, with a couple of dim red sparks in the midst of it.

Caption: New ‘Salem. “The City of SecondChances.”

Caption: Last place in the United States to hold a witch burning.

Caption: July 4, 1976, incidentally.

Panel 3: Forehead and above level. We see the heads of the crooks and hostage and, more importantly, we see the smoke separate out and grow the vaguest hint of arms and legs. It drifts upward, unnoticed.

Caption: We don’t get the normal bad in the ‘Salem. Robots, mutants, that sort of thing.

Panel 4: Back on the rooftop. We’re behind MEPHIT, looking at him from about mid-back up. He’s got a smoky demon on his shoulder, whispering in his ear, and tendrils of smoke drift around him.

Caption: We get demon rampages, plagues of the undead, Elder Gods looking for a re-up…

PAGE 2: Four panel, equal size.

Panel 1: We see KING FEATURE in front of the safe. He looks like George Raft made out of papier-mâché; we should see the hint of words and pictures on his face and hands. He’s got one hand on the safe; the safe rusts under his fingers, growing corrupt at his command. One thing to note in this and every other panel where it makes sense: there’s a clock here that’s showing the time as almost 1 a.m.

KING FEATURE: Gather round, youse mugs. You might learn somethin’.

Caption: And this guy. “King Feature,” he calls himself.

Caption: Doc Abraxas made him in 1930. Summoned an “eikone of crime” into a body made out of crime page papier-mâché to banish to the Outer Dark, eliminate crime forever.

Panel 2: The door to the safe sloughs off, revealing stacks of documents.

KING FEATURE: Cake.

KING FEATURE: No need for the skirt. Smoke ‘er.

Caption: Worked as well as you’d think.

Panel 3: A pillar of smoke shoots up around the hostage. The THUG falls back, choking, while KING FEATURE falls back.

SMOKE: “Smoke ‘er?” Don’t mind if I do.

KING FEATURE: Be happy, go lucky…

Caption: See, this is why I hate New ‘Salem.

Caption: Anywhere else, a firefighter gets enveloped in mysterious smoke and turned into a walking smudge pot, it’d be Science Gone Wrong and he’d become… I dunno.

Panel 4: Smoke begins to fill the room. The pillar is clearish, showing that the hostage has disappeared. KING FEATURE pulls a long-barreled Colt Lightning revolver with a small flame flickering from the end of the barrel (John Wesley Hardin’s gun, by the by) from his jacket.

KING FEATURE: Boys. Spread out. He’s still here.

Caption: Captain Cohiba. The MarlboroMan.ClevelandSteamer. Something.

Caption: But because I’m ‘Salemborn and bred, I become…

PAGE 3: One half-page, two quarter page panels below

Panel 1: The smoke erupts into very solid activity. Thugs get swept up to the ceiling, pinned by huge, cloudy arms of smoke as the MEPHIT coalesces up from the floor, a smoke imp lounging on his shoulder. MEPHIT looks like a tall, well-built black man made entirely out of smoke… his eyes and teeth are very white, but the rest of him’s roiling clouds of smoke with the hint of faces and eyes occasionally boiling to the surface.

MEPHIT: Evening, King.

MEPHIT: Mind telling me when you got into the pharmaceutical research business?

Caption: The Mephit.

Caption: Some reporter actually came up with it, back when I was a gray hat.

Caption: Only in the ‘Salem.

Panel 2: KING FEATURE walks forward, gun aimed at MEPHIT. He’s grinning with a mouth full of mismatched teeth (yes, teeth from the mouths of executed killers) and his eyes are glowing. MEPHIT’s pushing as if trying to get out of a box.

KING FEATURE: You know me, Lucky Strike. Always tryin’ to expand my horizons, look into new opportunities.

KING FEATURE: Take my shot at the big time.

Panel 3: MEPHIT is crouched down, trying to escape from the rapidly shrinking box. KING FEATURE holds the gun to his head. He’s grinning broadly and blood drips from the barrel of the pistol.

KING FEATURE: So long, lawman.

KING FEATURE: See you in the obituaries.

CAPTION: King Feature’s got one thing holding him back… besides the ascot, I mean.

CAPTION: He’s a perfect incarnation of criminality. So if he gets a chance to, say, execute a superhero, he’s gonna jump at it. 

PAGE 4: Five panels; one large panel at the top of the page, four panels taking equal space below.

Panel 1: MEPHIT’s body erupts into a cloud of cinders surrounding KING FEATURE, who recoils and drops the gun. The real MEPHIT coalesces out of the smoke behind him, gesturing as the cinders surround KING FEATURE.

CAPTION: No matter how transparent of a trap it is.

CAPTION: The fact that he’s flammable doesn’t do him any favors.

Panel 2: Post-fight. Police are on-scene, and a plainclothes cop’s talking with MEPHIT. KING FEATURE is being taken away in handcuffs and the rest of his crew are being taken out on stretchers.

PLAINCLOTHES COP: Good collar. Any idea what he was after?

MEPHIT: With Feature, who knows? Sometimes he does it just because it’s a caper to pull, you know?

Panel 3: Everyone stops and watches the clock as it begins to chime.

CLOCK: Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

Panel 4: Smoke begins to billow around MEPHIT, who’s lifting off.

CLOCK: Ding. Ding.

PLAINCLOTHES COP: Thirteen o’clock.

MEPHIT: I should probably go. Stay safe.

Panel 5: MEPHIT flies at street level, a cloud of smoke flowing behind him. We see bars closing behind him and, on every corner, a clock ringing out the hour.

CLOCKS: Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

CAPTION: This is what I mean about ‘Salem. Anywhere else, you get a little warning before things go to hell.

CAPTION: Here? You get the clock. Not every night, but often enough.

PAGE 5: Four panels. One big panel at the top of the page, three below.

Panel 1: We see the balcony of an old clocktower. We see MEPHIT landing next to THE PENITENT, who’s gazing out over the city. A horrific-looking zweihander is propped against the balcony next to him, and ice glazes over that section of the wall.

CLOCK: BONG.. BONG.. BONG..

CAPTION: The Penitent’s first on the scene, as usual.

PENITENT: GOOD MORROW, BROTHER MEPHIT. THE GATES OF HELL YAWN HUNGRILY ONCE AGAIN.

MEPHIT: Yep. You been here long?

CAPTION: Guy still creeps me out.

Panel 2: Panel focuses on THE PENITENT. He’s got one hand up in the classical oratorical pose.

CAPTION: Don’t get me wrong, he’s saved the world a dozen times and he seems sincere enough…

PENITENT: I END MY ROUNDS HERE EVERY NIGHT, CONSIDER MY SINS AND AWAIT THE CALL.

PENITENT: THE FIRST THING ONE LEARNS IS THAT ONE ALWAYS MUST WAIT.

CAPTION: … but the whole “fallen angel collecting the souls of truly evil men in order to find salvation” thing is something you never get used to.

Panel 3: Frame shared with MEPHIT and THE PENITENT, who’s lowered his arm.

PENITENT: VELVET UNDERGROUND.

PENITENT: SHERRI IS FOND OF THEIR MUSIC.

MEPHIT: Oh.

MEPHIT: Funny!

CAPTION: This being New ‘Salem, he’s made a go of it. Got the key to the city a dozen times, found a girl who doesn’t mind the scars. Better than the Pit, I gather.

Panel 4: PENITENT points to street level.

PENITENT: BEHOLD! THE WITCH-FINDER AND THE LIGHTBRINGER APPROACH!

MEPHIT (under breath): About time.

“SLOW BOAT TO FAST CITY”

Synopsis by

Sean Demory

SLOW BOAT TO FAST CITY is a hard-hitting, action-oriented retro science-fiction epic with the potential to move beyond a single story. Combining tropes from classic noir and classic science fiction, SLOW BOAT TO FAST CITY provides a rich, detailed and accessible setting for an exciting genre experience.

SLOW BOAT TO FAST CITY is set in an alternate 1958, thirteen years after the Red Army stormed the walls of Berlin to find space arks streaming through the sky from the Brandenburg Airport.

One jury-rigged Allied space program, six years and 60,000 casualties later, the inner solar system is at a simmering peace.  Queen Elizabeth II has added Luna to her dominions, the Reds have turned the asteroid belt into a new Gulag Archipelago and French plantations are carving order into the green chaos of Venus.

And Mars? After dragging Hitler and his inner circle to Nuremberg from their ramshackle Valhalla on the summit of Olympus Mons, the Americans opened Mars to all comers. The first wave of settlers came looking for solitude and struggle, building New Deseret, Nicodemus II, Barsoom and a score of other waystations in the wastes. 

When the big money came, though, the desert bloomed. The Strip, a superhighway linking the Olympus elevator and Elysium City, glows day and night with the light of a thousand spaceports, ten thousand refineries and a hundred thousand neon-lit Outfit-run boomtowns catering to zero-g roughnecks, factory workers, commodity traders and soldiers on leave.

Some of the first-wave colonists embraced the coming of civilization, lobbying for off-ramps and spurs from the newly built railway system. Others, though, took a harder stance, responding to any intrusion from outsiders with rapidly escalating violence and covert support from Soviet agents provocateur… and, rumor has it, some more mysterious allies the homesteaders met in the arroyos.

Cue Deputy U.S. Marshal Frank McGinnis. A former Las Vegas homicide detective, Frank’s used to rough justice and hard choices and, as one of a handful of federal cops working the Strip, he’s used to cutting corners to get results. Frank’s called in on a killing in an upscale casino hotel. Victims are a known prostitute and her john, who’s been holed up in the hotel for a week. McGinnis assumes a simple tale of sordid passion and skipped bills but, as he works the case, he finds that the john is a physicist with no priors, Top Secret clearance and connection to Hughes Aerospace. He gets advised to put this one aside and, after pocketing a notebook with strange symbols scrawled inside, he does so.

McGinnis finds out that the physicist’s partner, a disgraced “xenoanthropologist” from Oxford (disgraced equally for making time with his students and for being a “xenoanthropologist,”) who was investigating hints of previous Martian civilizations. McGinnis is skeptical, as the only aliens that anyone’s found in the solar system are froglike troglodytes on Venus who’ve recently mastered the spear and leaves the bent egghead behind as he spins stories about the War of the Worlds broadcast and the Tunguska blast. 

As McGinnis leaves, he’s rolled by some grimy homesteaders who toss him into the back of a truck and drive into the arroyos. McGinnis is taken to a compound where “Barsoomist” separatists with Marsdust-encrusted skin train with hunting rifles and Red-purchased AK-47s. McGinnis is worked over and interrogated by the homesteaders, who are looking for the notebook as well. The interrogation is cut short by gunfire as Mob torpedoes storm the place, taking no prisoners and dragging McGinnis out to a waiting Cadillac.

The mobsters drive McGinnis into the desert, where Schlomo “The Spaceman” Moscowitz, the Syndicate’s man on Mars, is waiting. The two of them walk in the cold Martian night, and Moscowitz tells the Marshal that he’d been interested in space since his crew killed a little green man in Union City on October 31, 1938.  Flashback to mobsters preparing to “lose” a body in a trainyard and Greys preparing to bleed a livestock train.  Hijinks ensue. Apparently, the dead scientist was working on a project for him, that he’d just about finished when someone killed him and that he’d really like his notebook now, please.

McGinnis claims he doesn’t have the notebook but promises to track it down. The physisict’s bent egghead partner tracks him down, promising to reveal all about the notebook and their research.  He takes McGinnis to a set of caves outside of Elysium City where, with the Barsoomists and the mob in hot pursuit, the two find the door for which the notebook is the key and learn why Schlomo and the Barsoomists all want the notebook.

SLOW BOAT TO FAST CITY is a fast-paced, hard-boiled detective story, an accessible science fiction story with a retro flavor to add some depth and a strong, active lead character. It’s an alien invasion piece in a world that’s recognizable but alien in its own right, and it’s a raygun gothic piece focused at a market that’s hungry for pulling the past into their futurism.

1) A Rag and Bone story’s been picked up by a quarterly anthology out of Ottawa. Watch this space for more.

2) I’ve got something new bouncing through my head. It’s a little bit Orpheus, a little bit Silver John and a little bit of a murder ballad. So, we’ll see.

1.

In a small, quiet house near a large, quiet graveyard, the Dead Man’s Whore puts out her red lantern.

It’s Friday, after all. The eagle’s flying, and old habits are hard to break.

The Dead Man’s Whore looks at herself in the mirror, sees cornflower blue irises swallowed whole by eightballed pupils. She brushes rouge over blue-white cheeks, traces cold blue lips with hot-red lipstick and smiles, baring long, strong teeth at a world that needs gnawing every now and again.

 She hasn’t aged since the dead man took her. She’s gotten old and cold and stiff in that time, but she still looks like a flower plucked in her prime.

She worries that she may never die.

2.

She remembers walking through the woods in high summer. The jar flies screamed in the still, hot air and she sang for lack of anything else to do.

She couldn’t remember where she was going or why, but she could hear the screams grow silent as she began singing the old song.

My husband was a railroad man
killed a mile and a half from here.
His head was found in a driver’s wheel
and his body ain’t never been found.

As she walked, she felt the shadows grow sharp edges and the sunlight become muted and powdery. She could hear slow creaking and the steady tap of hail from the woods. She jumped as something landed on her head and fell on the path. She looked down and saw a jar fly, coated in frost and cracked where it had fallen.

The creaking grew louder as she walked, and she could hear whispers from the branches.

She sang, because she knew not to stop.

Young girl, young girl, where will you go
I’m going where the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine
I will shiver the whole night through.

She heard a quiet wheeze behind her on the path, smelled old hair oil and rotting meat. She could hear a cold, dry hand scrape over cold, dry stubble, hear him lick his lips slightly.

“Young girl, young girl, don’t lie to me,” it said, each word landing like a shovel in wet dirt. “Tell me, where did you sleep last night?”

And she ran.

She left the path, stumbling over twisting, exposed roots and slipping on dark, thick patches of moss. Strangled voices from the trees shouted as she passed.

She ran deeper into the woods until she reached a tall tree next to a wide, dark creek. The tree’s branches were heavy with bound men, heavy black shoes kicking slightly. She turned and saw the haint, drum-tight gray skin stretching over its face in a pitiless grin, patting back its greasy hair as it walked toward her. She looked at the river and saw bodies float by.

The haint scratched its bony, bare chest under its overalls with thick, yellow nails, looking down at her.

“Heard you sing, my darlin’ gal,” it said. “My crops need tended, my dinner needs cooked and my bed’s so cold, my darlin’ gal. You get on home, my darlin’ gal.”

She closed her eyes and ran toward the sound of cold water, feeling it close over her head.

She felt calm and cold as her vision dimmed and, unbidden, the words drifted through her mind. In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine/and I shivered the whole night through.

And then she felt a strong hand grab her by the hair and drag her out of the water.

 “REYNARDINE”

Synopsis by Sean Demory

“REYNARDINE” is a dark, postmodern fairy tale set in an unnamed metropolis. A kinetic, atmospheric story, “REYNARDINE” uses few special effects and easily-reproduced sets to provide an exciting genre film on a limited budget.

“REYNARDINE” is the story of Jack Reposa, an unsuspecting man who finds himself the quarry in an ancient game. After a strange dream, Jack is confronted by an old man who gives him a battered fox-head pin and advises him to run quickly before disappearing in a crowd. Jack ignores the man’s advice, only to be cornered by a pack of well-dressed, bestial-acting men who chase him through back alleys and side streets, barking and baying as they call out “Reynardine!” Jack escapes the men, finding reserves of agility and cunning that he didn’t know he had, before finding a moment’s rest in a small flower shop run by an old woman.

The woman sees the pack go by and explains Jack’s predicament: he’s been chosen to be the entertainment of the Gray Lady, a creature that the woman is loathe to call a “fairy” for fear of catching her attention. The Lady chooses people to serve as playing pieces in vast, elaborate games that she invariably wins, the woman says, explaining that she’d been chosen to play Beauty when she was young in a game that killed her fiancé. Jack has to survive the hunt against him, find his true face and sword (most likely still held by the last Reynardine) and present himself to the Gray Lady in order to win… maybe.

As Jack makes his way through an increasingly otherworldly city, he runs into past and current “gamepieces,” both helpful and dangerous, and learns that the world that he thought he knew was a scrim covering a reality stranger, more beautiful and infinitely more dangerous than he’d ever imagined. Before it’s all over, Jack will transcend his own limitations, becoming something more and less than a man in order to win this dangerous game.

“REYNARDINE” is a high-energy, richly-textured story of betrayal, suspense and high adventure. It’s a fairy tale writ fast and dark, with a memorable cast of characters and an ending that is both grand and damning… because, like any good fairy tale, no one comes away clean.