July might be ending, but that doesn't mean there are no surprises to be had! For instance, here is a new book sale created for male readers. Looking for a good read for a guy in your life? Here is the chance to join in on something really fun!
Running from Wednesday, July 30th (today!) to Tuesday, August 5th, you will have your pick of exciting books made for a male audience. Find the sale over here!
Books on the sale page will be rotated among the selections every day, so new books will be at the top of the page as it goes. Therefore, if you missed something there's always a chance it will be more visible on another day. So be sure to keep checking. We're going to need more male readers going forward if we want to create a better industry, after all.
After awakening in the woods, Christopher Archer finds himself trapped in a world outside of time. Fog monsters, armed gangsters, and a legendary spear, all await his arrival. But what about the fiancé who disappeared months ago?
As Archer explores this eternal midnight, he can only wonder—is this all just a dream, or is there something more hidden in the dark, watching his every move?
There is one choice. He must traverse the nightmare and learn the truth.
In other news, as mentioned earlier I am currently serializing my next non-fiction work, Fantasy Isn't Real, on the Patreon, as I work out the details on a few other projects. If you enjoyed my previous works in this style, you're going to want to read this one. It's going to be very much in the style of those controversial ones.
There's more to come but since this summer has been way too hectic and unpredictable it'll be some time before I can shake out exactly what is coming next. Regardless, if you want a preview, the Patreon is the place to be. I also have nearly 30 podcast episodes and two exclusive complete serials up on it with more to come. Joining definitely helps with production in these crazy times. You are also free to join in on the comments and offer feedback yourself. There's quite a lot there.
That's all for this short update post. Thanks for a wild July and I'll see you again in August!
It's been a strange week with a surprising amount of celebrity deaths, and the heat has yet to calm itself down even a little, but at least it's done. August isn't that far away. With that out of the way, lets get into it!
I know you're probably wondering, if you're over a certain age, when the internet stopped being a fun place to visit with a lot to see and do. If you're under a certain age you might even be resentful over why so many people spend so much time in a place as boring as the internet. These two views are obviously opposites, but they are also both correct. The answer is that the internet was once a much different place than it is today, and what it is today is a far cry of what it once was.
Of course we have discussed the phenomenon of Dead Internet Theory (which is no longer a theory) before, but what we haven't really talked about is the deliberate moves made to get us to this place. We all made the choice to be here, after all. Where the internet was once the last frontier, the wild west of open spaces and the unknown, decades ago, it has now been tamed and razed, leaving little left but the same lame corpo jargon as every place else outside of it. Chances are you only go online now for a small handful of things these days, no longer is it to explore and find new things. Not that you could anymore if you wanted to.
Without even getting to the growing glut of AI generated nonsense, the untold truth is that the internet had already been heading in this direction before we got to that point. Just like in the arts and entertainment, the goal became to automate a constant flow of Content out into the world and into our overstimulated brains, quality be damned as long as it has certain expected Tropes and aesthetics, and that's exactly what it does now. No longer is the internet about exploring or seeing or creating new things: it's about consuming Content.
It's also flooded the world with noise. Yes, even the offline world.
We're overstimulated and obsessed with both blending into the crowd and sticking out from it, our identities as concocted as the formula we desire in the Content we Consume. All this, once again, before the AI issue is even a speck on the horizon. The AI is just the most straightforward way we learned of making it easy to do.
What to be an artist? Generate an image. Want to be a songwriter? Generate a song. Want to be an author? Generate a story. Now you can get any identity you want with the push of button. That's the heart of the whole issue. It is to keep the old Baby Boomer lie alive that "You can do anything you put your mind to" which is very obviously untrue, but as the post-9/11 world has shown: reality is the enemy. It isn't about the art or the people, it's about the self. The atomized and abandoned individual struggling to find a place in a flooded world of noise with no connections to others. This is what the internet is about today, and it's where it was always going to go once social media came into existence nearly two decades ago.
We aren't connecting anymore; we're turning inward and making sure everyone sees us as we do. It's very contradictory, obviously, but that's the nature of where we are.
This is obviously reflected in everywhere else in our modern world, but the internet was once the last escape. It was once the last vestige of freedom from the safetyism that had been strangling the rest of the outside world since the '90s turned into the birth of Safetyism. Now that online space has begun to fade just as the youngest generations have had enough of the artificiality and wish to blow it all up. They will eventually succeed, regardless of what you believe the "good" or "bad" faction in all this is. It's been a long time coming.
One can always bring up how trends come and go and how times will always change, which is true, however this is different from just a trend or a fad. It's different because the internet has reshaped the way day to day life is performed and the expectations around it. It's changed how people react to one another. It's changed how we see every aspect of the world and raised our tolerance for unreality in everyday life while also diminishing our sense of whimsy and fun. Turns out the real Fantasy is what the Cyberpunk dystopia ended up being. Unreality in every day life, constantly pumped into your brain through ever-present screens.
And even as the digital world implodes, it's still making strides into invading the physical. Constant monitoring, constant pressure to be "on", and the constant elbowing in on strangers' personal spaces continues unabated. It isn't getting any better.
And, once again, this is before we get into the flood of AI Content, mass censorship, or the slow death of social media platforms at the same time as local communities have all but vanished. Everybody is sick of the state of things, but they're going to stick around where they hate to be as long as they can, because there's nowhere else to go.
The truth is that all this is happening because we don't really care anymore. The despair of the '00s lead to the madness of the '10s, which lead to the cracking and breaking that is the '20s. At the rate we're going, the internet will not last into the '30s, an amazing feat for something that was once taught to be eternal. Now it probably won't outlive any of us, at least not in any kind of useable state.
So why do we refuse to reassess our situation? Why do we continue to live in a world that no one seems to want? Why do we refuse to admit the mistakes we made that lead us to this very position we are in today and look for a better course forward? Perhaps it might be that no one has an answer, but it seems more likely that we all know what to do but we are unable to make the move to do it. It's mainly that no one believes they have anywhere else to go. Bowling Alone became real, as it was destined to, and the only way to reverse it is with a lot of effort to rebuild local communities and actually offer something better, something we once had and squandered.
Until then, enjoy the slop future of the internet. There isn't any other place it can go as long as we live our everyday lives virtually and our virtual lives as if they are our everyday ones. Whatever comes next after that is a mystery for the ages, but it won't be this.
What can we do but hope for something better? At some point we have to want more than constant Fantasy. Here's hoping we don't take too long to figure it out.
In other news, I have a story in the upcoming Mistcreek Tales called "Lightning Jim". The only thing I will say is that if you enjoyed Y Signal, you might want to check this one out. It's the first in a new series of shorts I'm working on, and these are going to be really out there. I'll talk more about it when the new anthology drops on August 4th.
I also started a new non-fiction book over on the Patreon called Fantasy Isn't Real, so if you enjoyed The Pulp Mindset and The Last Fanatics, I recommend checking that one out. While the other two are more focused on the present and the past respectively, this one is aiming towards the future. See what I mean by signing up for the Patreon today!
That's all for this week. Have yourself a good one until next we meet!
One of the things audiences of art and entertainment have been craving for a number of years has been an art scene that doesn't beat its audience over the head with what it's doing. Few seem to understand that this has been a problem that existed much longer than the current woes in every media-adjacent industry has. In fact, we have a blueprint for how such an industry was shaped.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s a "Christian" Industry for different forms of media arose. There was a "Christian" space for music, movies, books, and everything else you could imagine. What that ended up doing was creating a cargo cult mentality around it, creating its own language and code of conduct to separate it from the mainstream. Instead of trying to adapt to or communicate with the mainstream, it divorced from it and left everyone outside the bubble to their own devices.
This ended up being a mistake, as both the "Christian" industry and the mainstream would eventually implode into a pile of tired tropes and expected ideas, never to come to together again.
The reason this doesn't work is that Christianity is meant to face the mainstream head-on, not ignore it or talk around it. It's about the destiny of man in the face of the Perfect Man, after all. And art, as we've discussed many times, is meant to connect us and find meaning together. We're meant to have art poke and prod and point us in the right direction while showing us more we might not have considered. If you truly believe in the Savior of the Universe, then you should not hold that belief to yourself. Unfortunately, that is more or less what the "Christian" media complex evolved into being in record time. It's now just another industry with a particular image slapped on top to make it seem different while it sells pale imitations of what the already poor mainstream offers.
However, there are a lot of believers out there who don't want to be part of such an isolated island. There are plenty that want to connect and reach out to others, and find a Higher Meaning to it all.
The above video shows a list of authors who did just that. While being Christian and believers of the One True God, they never forgot their vision was also to reach people who either might not believe or might not even know what the author is talking about in the first place. They released the point of connecting means going outside yourself and doing more than preaching to the choir, and as a consequence their work is much more enduring than you'd figure it would be.
What happened in the 20th century was the siloing of ideas and interactions, backed up by corporations to give the illusion of community based on perceived tastes, at the same moment local community was falling apart around us. We're currently in the last days of such a system as both the internet works to destroy itself, and the old companies struggle to make a profit without turning something into a formulaic franchise or digging up corpses to put in modern skinsuits to attempt the same thing. The climate is changing, and it's a necessary change, but it's going to hurt when it does. It's happening right now in certain places.
What we need now are people who not only believe in a better possibility for what is to come, but also aren't afraid to reach others with their ideas. The old battle lines are faded now, slipping away with both the passage of time and new generations questioning if they were ever really there to begin with. When can we finally work together again to build a better future? It has to happen at some point. It's inevitable.
I know plenty of creators working out there to make a change, and I know many audience members doing the same. We all know it has to change. Eventually, these efforts will cause a shift and the old paradigm will be just a memory. Until then, we can't stop pushing.
In other news, I just put up a new episode of the podcast on the Patreon (Can you believe it's been a year now?) talking about what from the 1990s is worth salvaging. We usually talk the opposite so it was interesting looking it what actually worked. It's a long episode so I made the preview a bit longer to compensate, so if you want to listen you can find it here.
I'm also starting a new post series that may or may not lead into another book in the vein of The Pulp Mindset and The Last Fanatics. Join now and you'll get to see it as its written and see how it shapes up. I can only do this because of the readers, after all.
There is a lot to look forward to. Don't despair over the future because of the dilapidated state of the mainstream: that is temporary. What is to come in the future will offer a much different world, one where all of this falls away. You always gotta have hope, after all.
As the old saying goes, keep your eyes on the prize. Just don't make the mistake of the 20th century and forgetting what that even is to begin with. There's much more than we can even imagine.
Been quite the scorcher around here since July started. I hope you're managing to keep cool. The heat doesn't look to be easing up anytime soon. But enough of that, let us get to today's topic!
Let us talk about heroism.
For a long time, ever since at least the 1990s, there has been a problem in understanding the purpose of heroes and heroism in storytelling. Before that decade that believed subversion was the future (a vision that eventually lead downhill to complete bottoming out completely in the 2010s), writers and authors had a clear vision for what it meant to be a White Hat in a story. That was eventually lost. Now, because of this modern misunderstanding, it has taken an entire industry of people divorced from the mainstream to basically figure out how to get that lost notion back. The 2020s has been a real relearning experience over this and many other subjects. As has been said, a lot of it is like relearning to ride a bicycle.
The above video by The Second Story channel (the same one that exposed "Fantasy" as being a Del Ray formula, not a genre) has decided to weight in on the muted nature of heroism and good in stories these days. What happened to what was once so obvious an idea and why can even a series with such wanton death and subversion like Attack on Titan still manage to understand heroism more than our comparatively simple superhero movies. It is a good video that seeks to answer the question we've all been asking for years now. What even is a hero anymore?
As has been mentioned before, the modern obsession with villains and "anti-heroes" came about because morality was thought of as simplistic and lame. This was brought about because out culture had lost what made a hero so admirable and worthy of imitating. Heroism became a weak frame that holds do-gooders back from "doing what is needed" and keeps them one note "paladins" who have to meekly follow whatever law that binds them. They're all weak and feeble-minded dupes who can't possibly be as cool as the rogues who do whatever they want, morality be damned!
Of course, none of this is what good actually is (nor what real paladins actually do, believe, or act like), but it has been a misunderstanding festering for decades now. In fact, the source might be traced way back to the age of Saturday Morning Cartoons when Peggy Charren told parents that heroes shooting villains is uncouth and it is a moral duty for heroes to spout textbook catchphrases and government approved laws directly back at the viewer so that they don't forget to become a good citizen. School never ends for children, after all.
This generation then grew up, and brought this mutation of morality to full flowering in mainstream storytelling, whether by aping it or by subverting it, but neither side seeming to understand that the entire frame is warped to begin with. That is what has lead the current industry to have such a superficial version of Good and Evil as concepts: it is all filtered through the ACT, and few from back then have realized its influence on every corner of modern life. "You are what you eat" doesn't just refer to food.
It is much how you come across people who speak like sitcom characters or use internet vernacular in real life. It is learned behavior, and it has affected everything.
That's right, much of the modern idea view of heroism, and it being entirely western in creation, comes from the already backwards understanding of morality embedded in the heads of the Saturday Morning Cartoon generation, a medium that was deliberately heavily neutered and watered down to get children to understand the importance of recycling, listening to teachers, and preventing the third (and first) world from breeding by equivocating them to rats (Captain Planet & the Planeteers still airs on TV, by the way), and how all villainy in the end is just one-note buffoonery or evil for evil's sake. To the Saturday Morning Cartoon generation, you either are good by doing what the Good Guys say, or you are an evil scourge to be eradicated. It is this absurd now because we let absurd people talk us into this.
And now you also know why the modern political climate is the way it is, and why a whole generation cannot seem to understand the motives of people they see as cartoon villains needing to be thwarted like the heroes in their cartoon shows always manage to do. Don't you know Sonic the Hedgehog shares my thoughts and beliefs on the constitution! It's this ridiculous now for a good reason. None of this came out of nowhere, and it is not normal or natural to think like this.
Regardless, everyone used to know why The Shadow gunned down villain and why Mack Bolan went on his revenge quest, and they were not called "anti-heroes" at the time, because they weren't, and aren't. They only come across that way when filtered through Saturday Morning Cartoon logic that was picked up by generations under the Baby Boomers who then carried it into other mediums like comic books and video games as they grew older, as well as the ever-popular video essay on YouTube. This misunderstanding of morality has poisoned everything in the west. This is why heroism is so massively misunderstood today. For generations, this was seen as normal and The Way It's Done, which is what lead to the dead end we cornered ourselves into. We had an artificial morality as a frame and we've yet to fully cast it aside into the dustbin of history.
But it is being cast aside. Slowly and deliberately, it is being done.
There is a realization here and that's that we don't live in the Saturday Morning Cartoon era anymore. A generation of kids have come of age never experiencing that mutation of morality and are now working on their own stories without even considering those once expected rules. That leaves the rest of us to make a decision to finally decide whether we want to continue down this path, or finally admit we might have been wrong all along. Heroes are not what we thought they were: they really are so much more.
Heroes were never boring, we just became boring and forgot what heroes were supposed to be in the first place. Once we rediscover that lost art, we'll be on the right track again. It's going to take some time, and a lot of arguments and butting heads, but it will eventually happen. You can see the change everywhere outside the mainstream.
The future is as inevitable as the Truth prevailing in the end. Good always wins, just not always in the way we might expect it to.
In other news, there's only a few days left to get two of my books for a buck! You can get both The Last Fanatics and Y Signal on Amazon for some quality summer reads. I particularly recommend The Last Fanatics if you only read the blog version. It has been edited quite a bit to fit into book form, and those are my preferred version of the texts. Either way, enjoy yourself! Summer should be a good time.
That's all for this week, and I will see you next time!
We've been talking about the Dead Internet for awhile, and now we can perceive the form of our destructor. The end of the internet is in view. It might not be tomorrow, but it is coming, and probably sooner than you might think.
Today's subject is a multipart series to show exactly what is happening. ClownfishTV usually spends their time speaking of pop culture news and whatnot, but some of their videos have also been focusing on the growing trend of megacorps slowly strangling the digital space while everyone is busy focusing their time on other issues. The above video focuses on the largest 20 year old video website that basically defined the era of modern media we live in. We are, of course, talking about YouTube. The company that helped create an alternative to dying mass media is now attempting to dismantle it and run roughshod over what made the internet what it was to begin with.
They have become what the once claimed to offer an alternative to.
As is well documented, from the time YouTube was created, it quickly became the site that defined how the video medium would be presented for generations to come. Before the '00s were over, Blockbuster and Cable TV were already on the way out, soon to replaced on the site itself by a slew of different styles from documentaries to original songs to political debates to, eventually, even livestreams, and news. The old paradigm had been completely destroyed. By the 2020s, videos were defined by YouTube's format, and no one would argue with that.
But those dying news corpos, movie and TV studios, Hollywood, and just about every big party in the old media space has hated how instrumental sites like YouTube were in weaning the public off of the mainstream that had detested them for decades, and have been dying to squash alternatives and become top dog again. And as the video above has shown, they are working overtime to do just that. They want the terrible old paradigm back, and the owners of the new spaces are letting it happen. These shambling dinosaurs (somehow) have lots of money behind them, after all.
It is not just YouTube, either. Make no mistake, they want the entire internet crippled, which will eventually destroy it. They are well on their way to getting it, too.
The second video I wanted to present is what is going on with Google, the world's largest search engine. But make no mistake, it is not just about Google. Every search engine is currently compromised and being demolished as you are reading this.
It did not start with YouTube! This is an issue that has been going on for some time, and does not appear to be stopping anytime soon.
Google Search was first casualty of their play, in the process breaking just about every search engine out there from selling your information to deliberately hobbling certain search terms. It has gone from being highly accurate two decades ago to being unusable today. This is the fate of what was once seen as the immortal internet.
The fall of Google and YouTube has been long documented, but what is gearing up to replace them? That is the main question. What is the purpose in all of this? If it was to gain control of the levers of power in the former Wild West space it is being done in the most incompetent way possible, and will eventually lead to the destruction of the very websites that form a large portion of how the online space worked. It's all going to be decimated.
While bots and studio plants have been a problem for a while, the advent of AI learning has made the issue explode all over in a more dramatic fashion. If anything, this has only accelerated the end of the internet that is obviously on the way.
But of course, it doesn't stop there. It has also spread to areas meant for discussion. Yes, even those have been neutered and rendered even more artificial.
For the final piece we are taking a look at, this one is on the meltdown of the last real news aggregate forum, Reddit, and how it has been infested with bots and glowies (unironically) in a last bid to finally break the system down. Reddit has always been a negative influence on online discussion and it has been made considerably worse.
This mirrors how many old BBS message boards would eventually get so flooded with spam that they would simply not be able to operate at all. The difference in the two is now they've learned to weaponize AI in a way that is trained on human behavior to blend it in better. The AI is now trained on the very behavior of the people they hope to fool.
In other words, the more you act like an NPC the more you become indistinguishable from the very bots themselves. Considering the climate of discussion we currently already have on social media sites, this makes them a prime tool to push for engagement. It is only going to make these site worse and more useless.
If you've used any social media in the past year, and you almost certainly have, you have seen this decline in usability first hand. It is not going to get better, and as the internet is flooded with more and more junk, and the human junk becomes just is as unrecognizable as the AI algorithm junk, people are going to begin turning away from the entire mess, simply because there is no other choice. Eventually there won't be any way to engage with humanity at all. We're nearing the end of the road for this once eternal space.
The internet is winding down, and it is a strange site to see. It is unknown how much time remains, it could even be longer than one might think even based on the above information, but it is definitely going to happen in our lifetimes. The internet is not forever, like was thought to be common knowledge even five years ago. The wild west we once marveled at is tamed and currently being broken in. The digital space is very much heading towards that cliff and its speed is only picking up, oblivious of what is coming ahead.
So what does all this mean? Not much, in the long run. It doesn't change what has to be done with what time we have left. Create, share, converse, and do it for the Good, for as long as you can. We have to break through Cultural Ground Zero before the rotting zombie of the 20th century attempts to drag us back into the grave once again.
The internet isn't forever, but that shouldn't stop us from doing what we need to do. We have to use every opportunity we have for as long as we have it. Do what you've have to do, same as always! Just be aware of what is lurking on the path ahead.
That's it for this week, and I will see you again soon. I've got some projects to get to. I promise they will be worth the wait!
Get yourself 300 books, each for either a buck or free for one week only! Have your choice of some of the best NewPub has to offer from writers you already enjoy or maybe new ones you've never stumbled across before. There is no limit to what you might find.
It's a bit overwhelming with choice these days, but with the mainstream offering little of value you have more than enough choice in the independent NewPub space. With over 300 to choose from, you won't be bored anytime soon.
For myself, you can find the Gemini Man series on sale and, for the first time ever, The Pulp Mindset! I would jump on that one if I were you, because this is a one time thing. Amazon's parameter's for sales are getting more obtuse, which makes the time to be able to even do sales in the first place bizarre. Heck, sometimes you can only choose specific regional stores to do it. So be sure to jump on it for one of the few times I can guarantee it'll be there at all.
Aside from myself, there is quite the selection. Let me highlight a few to jump on, if you have yet to do so yet. I'm going to try more obscure books that even I might have missed on previous posts like this one. I myself haven't read (most) of these, it's just a chance to highlight a work or author that might become lost in the shuffle. See for yourself if it's for you.
There exists a fine line between truth and legend, in the heart of Atlameria.
Following an encounter in a deadly forest, two unlikely souls must join as one—or perish alone. Outcast shape-changer, called Ursakar by his people; Thorn struggles to understand the mysteries of his shadowed past while bearing the burden of an even more uncertain future. Meanwhile, the huntress tasked with the execution of his kind, Keira is forced to question the nature of her mission and whether those of her ruling order are as noble as they appear. Past and present soon collide with the discovery of a relic both ancient and prophetic in design.
Drums of war resound from the north, yet the two find themselves beset by a far greater threat near at hand—the same darkness that prompted the downfall of those who dwelt amongst these lands long ago. Against an enemy all but forgotten to the sands of time, even the unlikeliest of allies will prove better than none. A harbinger of the end approaches, but only those with the eyes to see can forestall its inevitability.
Mauregal wants to marry his girlfriend, run his brewery, and enjoy his friends in sixth-century Britain; but the valley of Palavel is ruled by a series of capricious tyrants whose every whim is enforced by the mysterious Corona. Then a knight and his squire visit with news of a king named Arthur of a different sort, and things begin to change--but the power of the Corona must still be reckoned with. This is a young-adult Arthurian fantasy mystery tale, with a sprinkling of libertarian and Christian themes.
The central city of Cathedral is tumultuous at the best of times. These are not the best of times for the troublesome big city. Murderers masquerading as werewolves terrorized Cathedral. Corrupt law enforcement masquerading as justice seekers handicaps the city. False falling crimes statistics masquerading as actual facts haunts Cathedral. Bad intentions masquerading as good intentions intensifies the woes of the mega metropolis.
It is difficult to be a police detective in the twisted city of Cathedral at the best of times. Again, these are not the best of times. Cathedral homicide detectives, Lt. Eddie Knighton and Detective Emily Oftenmarch, known as the mud tusslers, diligently work to solve the ongoing homicides in the city of Cathedral while encountering the wrongdoings of killers dressed as werewolves. Those killers cloaked as werewolves leave a trail of unsolved murders. It becomes the pair of detectives' duty to sort werewolf themed homicidal maniacs from everyday homicidal maniacs.
To make the mud tusslers' job more difficult, private law enforcement companies focused on profitability disguise themselves as institutions for serving and protecting the public. Cathedral police policy disguised as departmental improvements impedes their progress. Malicious misdeeds camouflaged as madness complicates their investigations. Criminals are not as they appear to be, crimes are not what they seem to be, and the crimes of the evil are shrouded by the crimes of the wicked.
What a tangled web the citizens and employees of Cathedral weave when they practice to deceive. Emily and Eddie battle to untangle the devious deceptions of lycans, liars, and lunatics. The more they sleuth the more the dastardly duplicity in Cathedral becomes complicated. Crime begets crime, skullduggery begets skullduggery, and the masquerading murders continue to befuddle the police. Sin never ceases in a city that never sleeps. The sum of all this deception and macabre crime is enough to drive a detective in the urban supercenter to insanity. Or are they insane?
Where will the werewolves strike next? What is their motive? Wait, was that a werewolf over there?
His mother had died so long ago, he could barely remember her. Now he lives with his alcoholic janitor father in the basement of the 150-year-old New Territorial Military Institute. Growing up at the prestigious, low-profile military academy, Danny had watched as the Territorial discretely provided a college education for the sons and daughters of politicians and royal families across the world, as well as the children of the rich and dysfunctional.
Beginning his freshman year at the Territorial on a “child of an employee” scholarship, Danny has a simple plan: graduate, leave behind his widowed drunk of a dad, and get the hell out of Wyoming.
That was before his home exploded. Before he met the sickly, spooky Tatiana who could See. Before the whispers in the night.
In a war-ravaged solar system where Earth clings to the remnants of its fractured colonies, the only thing more dangerous than venturing into the unknown is what lies within it.
The elite Star Core have been tasked with an impossible mission: to infiltrate the uncharted territories beyond the Kuiper Belt—known as Wild Space—and neutralize a threat that could plunge the entire system into chaos. But Wild Space is no ordinary frontier. It’s a lawless expanse filled with rogue warlords, ruthless pirates, and remnants of humanity’s darkest secrets.
The Star Core’s mission will push them to their limits, testing their courage, loyalty, and their very humanity.
When the team uncovers the shocking truth about a legendary war criminal thought long dead, the stakes are raised higher than they ever imagined. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, the Core must navigate a deadly game of cat and mouse, where every decision could mean the difference between survival and oblivion.
Filled with heart-pounding action, relentless suspense, and deep space intrigue, Star Core: Into Wild Space is a thrilling ride that will leave you breathless. In the farthest reaches of space, where the lines between friend and foe blur, how far will they go to protect the future of mankind?
Prepare for a journey like no other, into the heart of darkness, and beyond.
The Tyrhennians struggle to survive in the dried out basin of an ancient ocean. Inez knows no other world than this endless cycle of heat and brine, but listens to the stories of a distant land of great cities and endless seas.
She never believed them, until the day her brother is injured by a strange craft crossing the desolate plains. So she discovers that the stories are true. But as she tries to find her brother in a strange city she realises that she is not the only person from the salt plains here. Others from the Arid Lands have infiltrated the city - and they have a plan.
There’s another Earth, just a few steps away from ours, and it’s under siege by a dark, hungry god. It’s a planet where ancient enchantments still rule, where human society is built on the ruins of something greater. It’s calling for a hero.
An angelic guardian finds Jon on the run for killing his best friend’s murderer in defense. The spirit gives him a way out - travel to this other Earth and fight.
It brings him into the battle, praising him for being the first to answer the call in ages. Blessed with magic he could never have imagined, Jon begins his quest for the bloody shadow.
But the mad god knows he’s coming, and he’s got a legion of monsters ready and waiting.
A man wakes up in his car, unaware of how he got there...
Shaken by his loss of memory, he drives home, not knowing that in twenty-four hours he will be in jail, arrested for the kidnapping and murder of a missing college student. Though a mountain of evidence points to his guilt, this man, Julian Gutierrez, maintains his innocence. He is sentenced to Death Row, set to be executed for a crime he knows he did not commit, yet having no way of escaping his deadly and unjust fate.
That is, until the day a postcard arrives.
It claims to be from a witness that knows he is innocent. It is now up to Julian's sister and her husband to find out the truth before his time runs out. What they uncover is a mystery bigger than any of them could possibly imagine.
And in the shadows is a foe, calling himself The Fulcrum, waiting for the day that someone comes knocking, knocking at the door of the mousetrap he has constructed.
In 1954 budding blues virtuoso Waymon "Tornado" Fuller is executed for the murder of a North Carolina woman.
In 1994 nomadic hot-rodder, moonlighting private investigator and blues aficionado Deke Jones stumbles upon Fuller's guitar, triggering a mudslide of buried truths. Fuller's innocence is one revelation. Another is “Shadow Hand Blues”--the last song he recorded, which Jones has never heard of.
An impromptu search for the studio where the recording session took place leads Jones to a small hippie town seemingly still enjoying the Summer of Love, where the psychedelic atmosphere turns from surreal to hostile when he begins asking questions.
Vintage Fender Telecaster in one hand, steering wheel of his radical Cyclone Spoiler II in the other, Deke Jones launches a one-man crusade to exonerate the infamous musician and find the obscure recording. The blood trails are 40 years cold, but neither corrupt good ol' boy cops, sex industry sadists, nor fanatical pyramid-schemers can throw Deacon Jones off this case. This investigative pilgrimage propels Jones right into the bloodstained fingers of a clandestine power elite Tornado Fuller called the Shadow Hand.
In these thrilling tales from yesteryear, Coyote Cal and his trusty sidekick Big Yap encounter a wizard able to change his shape at will, a scheming witch, a confused zombie, la chupacabra grande, bloodthirsty vampyres, and other sordid fiends. Our heroes will have to rely on their wits, skills, and loads of hot lead to ensure justice prevails.
This volume collects all 9 weird western stories in the Coyote Cal Adventure Series, including:
"Fool's Gold" - Coyote Cal and Big Yap encounter their most challenging adversary yet: a Portuguese wizard able to change his shape at will. Our heroes will have to rely on their wits, skills, and loads of hot lead if they hope to foil this shape-shifter's evil schemes before he ends them, once and for all.
"Coyote Cal's Guide to the Weird, Wild West" - Coyote Cal must match wits with Donna "the Witch" Jamison, a master of the dark arts intent on planting him in the ground. Cal has stood toe to toe with his fair share of villains in the past--but this time, he's up against something altogether different in the form of a metal-mouthed gunslinger named Sleepy Rider and his dead brother, Easy.
"El Diablo de Paseo Grande" - Something's attacking the livestock outside the little town of Paseo Grande, and our heroes are hot on the monster's trail. But Coyote Cal, Big Yap, and Donna "the Witch" Jamison may have bitten off more than they can chew this time, and only one of them will be able to save the day -- or die trying.
"Harbinger of Arroyo Seco" - Like many heroes, Coyote Cal was once a boy... There's a storm brewing over the town of Arroyo Seco, and a sheriff with his uncanny eye on the future sees nothing but trouble for our hero-in-the-making. In love with an older woman and hunted by a gang of outlaws seeking retribution, young Calvin must walk a fine line between protecting the one he loves and becoming a ruthless killer.
On the borderlands of Wales, the newly knighted Sir Thomas of Barley Mill Cross, astride his mighty warhorse Rooster, recklessly challenges an evil Witch. Through her black arts, the Witch gets the better of Sir Thomas and Rooster. In the aftermath of the encounter, Rooster is an actual rooster, and Thomas is left size of a child’s doll. Torn from their own world and cast down among the small creatures of forest and farm, they are drawn into a savage conflict...the vicious weasel clans are conquering all the small creatures.
The small creatures need a hero. Desperately.
Thomas and Rooster’s only wish is to be restored, the witch magic broken, to return to their old lives. But Thomas is a knight who will live or die by his Oath, and he will not turn his back on those in need. Finding his way among the small creatures, knight and steed make friends willing to die by their side in battle, and make enemies willing to sacrifice themselves to send Thomas and Rooster to their doom.
In the chaos of war, Thomas and Rooster must find a way to stop the weasel clans and their wicked allies in time to have the spells binding them undone. This must happen before the witch is executed for her crimes. But will they make it? Or will they be forever cursed in their altered states, to follow the Oath along a path unlike any a knight has ever travelled?
WHEN THE GODS GO TO WAR, YOU HAD BETTER BE SURE THE ONE YOU SERVE WILL PREVAIL...
The invisible god, El Elyon, has promised the young nation of Yacov their own homeland. Trouble is, the land is full of giants, backed up by a pantheon of gods who would rather see Yacov slaughtered to a man.
And they are just men. The Yacovites are desert nomads without even enough swords for all their militia.
Salmon and Othniel are two of the young soldiers who must face the gigantic warriors in battle, starting at the fortress city of Bet-Yariq, with formidable walls that only giants empowered by gods could build.
Brave men's hearts melt with fear. The very planet reels to and fro as if ready to tear itself apart. But though El Elyon is outnumbered by the enemy gods, and his warriors are far outclassed, he has assured them that he himself will lead them into war, and together they will beat all the odds.
"...as with everything in my life, all this began with dreams..."
American ex-pat, father and widower, Roger Rommel, did not believe in dragons. Unfortunately, they did not return the sentiment.
After returning from a self-imposed exile to his adopted country of South Africa, Roger is confronted by these legendary fire-breathing reptiles who risked exposing their hidden world simply to hunt him. Gifted with the ability to create and enter dreams, as well as to see the future, he tries to survive and protect his son from enemies he does not understand. But the past is alive, and he finds himself linked to a conflict thousands of years old.
The world he knew is now stranger, more fantastic and terrifying than he truly knew, especially when everyone is out to get you.
What if the hero of a savage and ancient land returned from the deep mists of time?
Samuel Rider is a man out of time and place. A man with a destiny undreamed of. Necromancers and demons, werewolves and the undead. The villains and monsters of legend lurk still in the night, unseen by most.
Samuel battles the strange, the deadly, and the unholy with a band of on-again-off-again allies in the Ancient Order of Chandlers.
Sword & Seventies – High adventure in the age of the birth of Heavy Metal!
Inga Alenir is a Swordbearer. She is the latest in a long line of women to inherit a magical weapon called Deathbringer. She's also dead, murdered on her wedding day by the ruthless and covetous noblewoman Yenda Avard, who steals the sword after killing Inga and her entire family.
And yet, some secrets won't stay buried. Deathbringer has a will and a consciousness of its own, and even has the power to raise Inga from the dead for a short time. It warns her that she has one week to find and retrieve the sword before death reclaims her—permanently. With each day bringing her doom and final demise ever closer, Inga will have to see just how far she's willing to go to achieve her vengeance.
DEATHBRINGER is a compositional mix between the violent, grisly hunt for revenge in the film THE NIGHTINGALE and the tale of Vasher and his talking sword Nightblood in Brandon Sanderson's WARBREAKER. Other inspiriations are Fred Saberhagen's BOOK OF SWORDS series and Michael Moorcock's ELRIC stories. Fans of dark fantasy, of tragic love stories and tales about seeking revenge against long odds will enjoy this debut novel by Blake Carpenter in the world of Agareth where a scorned, young widow fights back against the powerful elites that wronged her, and begins a journey that might turn the entire world against her.
The last thing Kenneth Jericho needed was a gunfight and car chase with human traffickers. What started as a bad morning only got worse.
A flash of light sends Ken to a strange world filled with magic, hideous monsters, beautiful women, and seemingly unlimited ammo.
With pistol in hand, Ken is thrown into a race against time to stop a local ganglord's reign of terror. But is the thug the brains behind the violence, or is someone - or something - else pulling his strings?
Welcome back to a world filled with horrors beyond count. A world where madmen fly across galaxies chasing forbidden power and ancient evil seeks to infect and eradicate all life. A world filled with heroes ready and willing to fight the darkness. To raise the crucifix and the blaster rifle to send the evil straight back to hell.
An ancient evil is returning to threaten the world—at least, that’s what one of voices in Serivak’s head is telling him.
As the only dragon in the kingdom and technically a prisoner of war, Serivak’s position as the King’s Hand via his friendship with the young king is precarious enough before the voice of one of his ancestors warned of the new threat. With the help of two young foreigners, Serivak endeavors to avert disaster—but as evidence of a conspiracy grows, his political enemies close to home may be even more dangerous.
The unleashing of a biological weapon across the United States forces the government to begin rounding up high-profile individuals, in hopes of preserving American society. Famous rockstar Thomas Wylde, fresh off the catastrophe at his latest concert, is taken to a shelter in the sky. That is, until a member of his band falls victim to the weapon's infection, convincing him to escape into the post-apocalyptic city of Pittsburgh, now plagued by undead horrors, cults, cocaine junkies, and even the mafia. Their only hope is to find a cure to this disease before the transformation occurs. But not everyone is convinced of this new bioweapons' origins -- like Boston police detective Dick Kennedy.
It's up to Thomas and his band of survivors to discover the truth, not only about this new world, but about his government, his friends, and himself, all the while trying to carve out a slab of life for everyone and everything he cares about.
Eight stories of rockets and robots, monsters and Martians, fistfights and beauties, wonders and awe...
A young man's blind date is kidnapped by Martians and he is drawn into her secrets. A brotherhood outside of time seeks to mend a Solar System devastated by lunatic machines. Men from a Plutonian research base confront metaphysical chaos on Charon. Two runaway sisters resolve to rescue the implanted helper-sentience of a deceased warrior. And more!
The Department of SuperHuman Activities observes and polices the superpowered community in the United States. Though cooperation and open dialogue, the DSHA ensures the safety of superhumans and the public in general. Only during emergencies that regular law enforcement aren't equipped or trained to handle do they send in their emergency response team, the Operators. Led by Major Peter Hicks, the Hunter, and composed of superhumans from all over America, the Operators handle threats that others can't.
When people are killed in a series of strange animal attacks, the Operators are called to New Mexico to investigate. There, they discover a factory where monsters are made by an underground society of scientists and terrorists bent on world domination. The Operators are hard pressed to stop these monster makers in a war where safety is an illusion and not everyone will come out alive. Still, facing threats like this is their job, and it's time to get to work.
But in what direction? Whoever said that never clarified whether time had to always go forward, or backward, or in a straight line. In this collection, we invite you to delve into five tales that explore the beautiful, bendable, breakable nature of time itself.
“The Camera” by D.L. White A haunting portrait of a young man who is stuck in his grief over the sudden loss of one of his best friends. A story of frozen moments in time, it is a supernatural snapshot of what happens when past regrets turn into an obsession.
“The Ladies Three” by Chad Olson Want safe passage for your ship and crew? You can have it. The price the Ladies Three require is but an hour of one sailor’s time. An hour, and perhaps something more. But what happens when the sailor selected has plans of his own?
“The Annuity Squad” by James Kenneth Rogers Divorced and down-on-his-luck, Ralph receives an unexpected windfall, and the promise of even more money in seven years’ time. Should he sign on the dotted line, or is it all too good to be true?
“The Theatrica Mechanica” by Eric Nilles Discover a world of wizards, kingdoms and unusual beasts during a time of great upheaval. The peaceful and the wicked are destined to clash, a peace-loving king will discover he has been granted little time to prepare, and only by enlisting the most cunning members of his court does his kingdom have a chance to endure.
“What If?” by Debra Robic Sylvia and Alan have lived long enough to be involuntarily housed in the State old folks’ home. Dispossessed and disempowered, they find a strange book that suggests the path out of this dystopian future might lie in changing the past — if they are brave enough.
Father Tanner treats the sick and injured on a dusty backwater planet. Desperate for supplies, he takes a job to treat a visiting alien official, teaming up with Damien Rogers, an out-of-work smuggler, to get him there. The problem? They’re on the wrong side of enemy lines in the middle of a cold war.
Forced to hide their identities, Father Tanner and his team are stumped by the bizarre patient, whose condition steadily worsens. To make matters worse, the alien crew catches onto the ruse, and the missionary is forced to turn to kidnapping. Can they find the diagnosis before their only bargaining chip dies on the operating table?
One Faith. One Galactic Empire. A Thousand Worlds To Convert!
In the 51st century, man has spread throughout a great swath of the galaxy without having found any sign of alien life or another habitable world. Instead, mankind has splintered into a score of bio-engineered sub-species spread out across more than a thousand terraformed worlds. The Holy Terran Empire rules over three hundred of these man-made planets. Earth, the One, True World is the Empire’s Capital. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome governs the Empire, hand-in-hand, with the Imperial Family.
Not everyone is pleased with this arrangement.
Zephyrinus Zapatas, a dutiful citizen of the Empire and loyal son of the Church is more than happy with the Co-Dominion of Emperor and Pope. At sixteen, Zeph leaves home, seeking a life of service to the two crowns, hoping to find his opportunity by earning an invitation to join the Emperor’s Own, the elite Corps of Imperial Marines.
The Corps’ training will be arduous; its moral code, exacting, but; Zeph looks forward to the trials and the strictures. The Corps will demand sacrifices. In return, the Imperial Marines offer its recruits little more than a career fraught with peril to life and limb. Zeph is eager to accept the life, however short it might prove to be, because it comes with the chance of achieving his greatest ambition: reaching the rank of Knight Defender of the Faith and Empire.
The Holy Terran Empire is a new space opera series for anyone who can't get enough sword & blaster action.
Spengler's Future: An Outline of the Next 7 Centuries of Western History
This projection of the future into the 27th century uses a simple computer program and even simpler interpretations of the Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and Arnold Toynbee's Study of History. No, this is not a serious exercise, but it does suggest what the future would look like if the modern age really is analogous to the Hellenistic Age. Important years include 2080, 2309, and 2603.
So there you have it, 25 books out of over 300 in this year's sale, all for a buck or free. Check them out for yourself to see if they are for your liking, or maybe you might find something else that strikes your fancy instead!
I tried to focus on works that fall short of the review threshold on amazon (20 reviews) and works that have descriptions a bit out of the ordinary, of that would interest myself and any readers that share my interests. There is a lot to go through, so enjoy yourself and make some author's day by giving them a shot.
Also, as a reminder both my Gemini Man books and The Pulp Mindset are both included! Now is the chance to grab them.
As a reminder, the sale runs through Tuesday next week, so be sure to check on it before it's too late! Find yourself a new favorite NewPub writer!
That's all for this week! Have yourself a fun summer, enjoy the upcoming holiday, and I will see you again soon.
