Eddie McCloskey #3 is FREE RIGHT NOW ON AMAZON

ZOMG! You can get The Accused and the Damned for free right now. Don't wait - this deal will be over real soon.

When people ask me which is the best book I've written, it's difficult to answer. They're all my babies so I can't in good conscience pick one over the other. The Unearthed will always hold a special place in my heart because it's the first, while my collaborations with Nate Green in historical fiction I consider my best-written (and bad-ass) novels to date.

But among my Eddie books, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to answer the impossible question, I'd probably tell you The Accused and the Damned is my favorite of the series (so far).

Why, you ask?

Creatively, it was such a fun book to write. I mashed two genres together that nobody in their right mind would have tried to mix: paranormal suspense and the legal thriller.

This is also the book where Eddie comes into his own as a character, finally assuming the role of a true hero. He's still flawed, still struggles with those flaws, but he overcomes those personal shortcomings to emerge a better person. Even though everybody and their mother counts him out, he finds that hidden reserve of self-belief and figures out a way to get the job done.

And, this is also the book where I came into my own as a thriller writer. Don't get me wrong. I think books 1 and 2 are good page-turners, but with TAATD, I feel like I took things to the next level. It's fast, it's fun, it's scary, it's holy-shit-did-that-just-happen crazy, and most of all, it was a challenge. I dared myself to write something that had never been tried before (AFAIK): a paranormal legal thriller. Based on the feedback I'm getting, I think I pulled it off.

So grab it while it's free - I know the premise is off-the-wall. But you might just dig it ;-)

*******

In other crazy news, one of the best writers working in post-apocalyptic / prepper genres, Boyd Craven, was kind enough to give my new story, After the Fall, a read and leave a review on his website. I wrote After the Fall under a pen name, Elliott Ryan. It's only $0.99 and also enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. If you like end of the world as we know it stories populated with every day characters, you might dig it.

If you like post-apoc / prepper fiction...

Check this out.

My Love For The Road Warrior

I've often spoken of my unadulterated (and unapologetic) love for George Miller's cult classic, The Road Warrior. The sequel to his first film, Mad Max, was basically a bigger, better, more outlandish remake of the original, with the director essentially trying to one-up himself in every possible way.

The Road Warrior is one of the best pure action movies ever made. Miller and co. trimmed all the fat off the story: it's basically guns and cars. They borrowed their ideas pretty heavily from westerns here, Rio Bravo (good guys trapped in a small space and possess what the bad guys want) and the spaghetti westerns (man with no name and mysterious past rides into town and ends up saving the day) come to mind. To describe the movie in such easy terms though does it a disservice. It is also: a startlingly still relevant post-apocalyptic tale with an offbeat, quirky sense of humor and dim view of humanity. Everybody thinks of Mel as Max (and he is perfect in the role), but there is no shortage of great characters, or great character moments, in this movie either.

The practical special effects employed here STILL hold up today and in fact look a helluva lot better than almost all of the CGI being used for action flicks these days. But what I admire most about this film is Miller's ever-present why-the-hell-not attitude to filmmaking. It's low budget. It stars nobody. It's genre. It's one long car chase. But it's also extremely well-crafted, shot, and especially edited and the f--king score is brilliant. The opening montage captures the mood of the story perfectly, grim and foreboding and sets the stage for the relentlessness to follow. The film is capped off by wonderful narration as the camera pulls away from Max, the Road Warrior, a character the movie has turned into a mythical hero: enigmatic, scarred, conflicted, but ultimately good...and also badass.

Can't wait to see Mad Max: Fury Road this weekend

GET YOUR FREE COPY OF IN THE BLOOD

HERE

When I wrote In The Blood, my intention was to tell a simple, standalone story about a family driven apart by a viral outbreak and the difficult decisions they were forced to make to survive while trying to retain their humanity. I had a blast writing it as I got the chance to tell some of it from a zombie’s perspective. To me the story wasn’t about whether the Robinsons reunited as a family. What was more important was exploring the decisions they made along the way, so that at the end of the story the reader could fill in the blanks and come up with what they thought happened next.

Lo and behold, readers enjoyed the story enough that they started asking me for a sequel. In my mind that was an interesting hypothetical—I’d never intended there to be one. But the demand was there, so I sat down and started thinking about where I could take the story and characters and the larger world next.

And I came up with a few ideas...

So enough with me burying the lead, what I'm really here to say is THERE WILL BE MORE SHORT STORIES SET IN THIS UNIVERSE.

Two of which will be out in December.

I have to thank the readers, because without your urging, these stories might never have existed.

Pretty cool, huh?

All of this has got me jazzed to write a bunch of connected short stories that, when all is said and done, will hopefully form a big sweeping story that spans years and dozens of characters.

At least, that's the plan anyway ;-)

But I can only do that if there’s interest, and the best way to let me know there’s an interest is to leave me a review HERE.