Did Tom Sullivan really read lil’ Stevie and Chris Jones a bedtime story from Evil Dead’s Book of the Dead? Heck yeah he did!
Joining me on the podcast is The Birdman and Bleakhaven writers Stanley Bostwick and Alex McCaulley. And if you haven’t checked out the great stuff Bleakhaven has to offer then run, do not walk to their website to find out more about Welcome to Bleakhaven, their anti-bullying comic Stand for the Silent, and some awesome merch! Also be sure to check out their audio series The Tome of Daniel Blake.
Hey, all, it’s time for me to get back on the convention scene! And what better show to start at then Comics Curing Cancer (C3)? It’s this Saturday, November 12, from 10:00 to 6:00 at Davis Applied Technology College in Kaysville, UT!
So here’s the deal … I have a brand new short story in SECRETS IN SCARLET, the latest Arkham Horror anthology from Aconyte Books. The book was released on October 4 in the United States and will be released December 8 in the United Kingdom but you can order it RIGHT NOW from Amazon.
Which is pretty cool, but you may be asking, “What is Arkham Horror?”
And this year Arkham Horror is expanding with a new campaign called The Scarlet Keys. It features new characters and new challenges, and as part of its much anticipated launch the tie-in anthology SECRETS IN SCARLET is introducing many of these characters by running them through their own individual adventures.
So, yeah, if you’re thinking my transition to writing more short stories continues along with my association with HPL, you’re right. But the really cool part about this story, “Forty Grain Weight of Nephrite,” is its protagonist Kymani Jones.
Just another day on the job for Kymani Jones!
I love rogues, scoundrels and bent heroes. Historical figures like John Henry “Doc” Holliday (“This is funny.”) and fictional characters like Captain Louis Renault (“I’m shocked! Shocked!”) from the 1942 film CASABLANCA.
Now there is Kymani Jones. If Kymani had a job description it would be freelance insurance claims adjuster and expert in objet d’art by day and picaresque vigilante thief by night.
Strange disappearances have been haunting the city of Arkham for a while now. I mean strange disappearances. Objects, buildings and persons aren’t just vanishing. They are being erased from history and memory. Now disappearances like these are occurring in other parts of the globe and a secret organization called The Foundation hopes to defend humanity against this otherworldly threat by researching and collecting paradimensional objects known as The Scarlet Keys. Helping The Foundation learn about and locate these eldritch items is an eclectic group of folks like Kymani with not-your-average skills and education known as investigators. But The Foundation isn’t the only secret organization searching for Keys. The Red Coterie is also collecting them and its members are much more cavalier when it comes to their methods and their concern towards mankind.
In “Forty Grain Weight of Nephrite” Kymani warns the renowned archaeologist/adventurer Professor Aron Vayner that an attempt might be made to steal his most precious possession, the Xiamen Bi, from his fortified Nob Hill estate. When it is inexplicably stolen Vayner hires Kymani to retrieve the priceless artifact no matter the cost, unaware that the Bi is a Key that Kymani intends to return to China if it is recovered.
But getting to the Bi is not going to be easy.
Standing in Kymani’s way are a warrior dedicated to protecting the Bi, an Interpol agent determined to expose and apprehend Kymani, and a Chinatown cabal led by one of The Red Coterie’s most dangerous members.
Want to know more?
Okay!
To read brief interviews with me and the other SECRETS IN SCARLET authors just click this link!
Click HERE to read The Cosmic Circus review of SECRETS IN SCARLET by reviewer Luna Gauthier!
Click HERE to read the Trans-Scribe review of SECRETS IN SCARLET by reviewer Amy Walker!
Click HERE to read the Ihate00 Critics review of SECRETS IN SCARLET by reviewer David Annadale!
You can also check out these Youtube gaming sites for more information about THE SCARLET KEYS and Kymani Jones, who has been generating a lot of excitement:
And that’s all for now, but be sure to check back here for more information as the release of SECRETS IN SCARLET draws nearer!
More now than ever, please take some time this weekend to remember the reason for Memorial Day. Pray and hold close to your heart those who gave their lives that our nation might live. God bless them all.
Time for yet another shout-out to inform ye all that the latest Caliber Comics re-issue of my H. P. Lovecraft adaptations is now available for order through Diamond Distribution! This time up is ARTHUR JERMYN, also known as “Facts in the Case of Arthur Jermyn and His Family” and “The White Ape.” (Phew!) Cover and interior art by the great Wayne Reid. Like all the Caliber/Lovecraft re-issues this graphic novel features re-scanned artwork and updated editorial material along with an illustrated copy of the original story by HPL.
William Heitman’s illustration for Lovecraft’s “Arthur Jermyn” as it appeared under the title “The White Ape” in the April 1924 issue of Weird Tales.
Speaking of that original story, Lovecraft gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of his inspiration for it in this snippet from a letter he wrote to Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird in 1923:
“Somebody had been harassing me into reading some work of the iconoclastic moderns — these young chaps who pry behind exteriors and unveil nasty hidden motives and secret stigmata — and I had nearly fallen asleep over the tame backstairs gossip of [Sherwood] Anderson‘s Winesburg, Ohio. The sainted Sherwood, as you know, laid bare the dark area which many whited village lives concealed, and it occurred to me that I, in my weirder medium, could probably devise some secret behind a man’s ancestry which would make the worst of Anderson’s disclosures sound like the annual report of a Sabbath school. Hence Arthur Jermyn.”
The focus of LOVE GONE WRONG is … well … love. Familial, romantic, dedicated, obsessive … you name it. The one thing that truly unites all these love stories, however, is a misstep occurs which leads into a slide into the uncanny.
“Expiration Date” is a tale of a marriage left to sour and how even the best laid plans of vengeance involving the supernatural can go terribly awry. “Expiration Date” is also my homage to those wonderful portmanteau sixties and seventies films from Amicus Productions like DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS, ASYLUM and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.
Nope, flowers and candy aren’t going to save the day here.
Just a quick shout-out to let you all know that the latest Caliber Comics re-issue of my H. P. Lovecraft adaptations is now available for order through Diamond Distribution! This time up is THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN with cover and interior art by the ever-awesome Aldin Barzoa, who worked with me long, long ago on NIGHTLINGER and TATTERS (both available through Caliber). Like all the Caliber/Lovecraft re-issues this graphic novel features re-scanned artwork and updated editorial material along with an illustrated copy of the original story by HPL. I also want to add that, after THE LURKING FEAR, this is my favorite of the Lovecraft adaptations and am so happy to see it available again in a better-than-ever presentation!
It is almost year end. Time to take a look back at 2020 (which I forgot to review last January) and 2021 and then take a look at what’s ahead in 2022.
The pandemic made 2020 an unpleasant and often tragic year for many people, but even before the shutdowns started in March the year got off to an unhappy start with the death of Clive Cussler on February 24. Mr. Cussler left behind a truly memorable legacy and remains sorely missed.
Clive Cussler was true to character until the end, as demonstrated by his epigraph on the tombstone he shares with his wife Barbara.
On a more personal note, the shutdowns meant no comic conventions which meant no get-togethers with fans and old friends at places like MSP or local cons. I missed you all and hope we will have the opportunity to gather again in the future.
Meanwhile “The Adventure of the Ambitious Task” was adapted into a one-man show called “The Adventure of the Inescapable Crypt” by Jonathan Goodwin, winner of the 2020 Hamilton Dean Award from The Dracula Society. Goodwin wrote the adaptation and performed as Holmes (but also some other characters) for his Don’t Go Into the Cellar theater group as a Halloween program that was available live throughout the world as an online Zoom broadcast. If you didn’t catch it and would like to get an idea of what the production was like, you can click on the image below to see Goodwin portraying Holmes for the Kickstarter promotion for the production.
Getting settled in our new home will be the priority. That said, I am very excited to be writing a short story for an all-new anthology to be published later this year dedicated to an overlooked pulp hero created by one of the medium’s most popular authors. That is all I can right now, but I promise to share details here as soon as I have the okay to do so. Meanwhile Trey Baldwin is working on our latest Lovecraft comics adaptation, The Call of Cthulhu, which will hopefully be available from Caliber Comics before the end of 2022. I have also been submitting to various publishers more than I have in many years, but there is no way of knowing right now if any of these will be accepted. If anything is, I will let you know here. Work also continues on the second novel in my Lovecraftian series and I recently began outlining a possible second Sherlock Holmes novel. I have also been whittling away on a non-fiction book that looks at how superhero films have changed from their inception with Adventures of Captain Marvel in 1941 up to the launch of the Marvel Comics Universe with Iron Man in 2008. I am not going to lie, my finishing this is a long shot, but it is a manuscript I come back to when I need a break from other writing projects or there isn’t enough time to start working on a new project before something time-consuming happens, say like moving across four states.
So, hey, I’m keeping busy.
And that’s it for now. It has been quite a couple of years. Things are improving in some ways, but not so much in others. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do have every faith that we are near the end of this pandemic and that we will be all the better and stronger for it
Steven Philip JonesPosted on
Posted in Audio, Books, Comics, Conventions, Cool Stuff, Creature Feature, Fiction, H. P. Lovecraft, Nonfiction, On Writing, Personal, Promotions, Sherlock Holmes, Talented Friends
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