Shocking News! With Teaser!

It wasn't so very long ago I finished the new Markhat book, which by the way will be entitled 'The Broken Bell.'


Now, I'm done with an entirely new novel.  Not a super short one, either -- we're talking a hundred thousand words here.  It's not a Markhat adventure.  It's not even set in Rannit.


No, this is (gasp) a young adult novel called 'All the Paths of Shadow.'  


But Frank, you ask.  Where may I obtain, purchase, procure, and/or otherwise come to posses this new novel of which you speak?


I smile knowingly.  All in good time, I say.  For plans have already been laid.  Deals have been struck.  Dates have even been discussed (September of this year).  


I'll provide all the relevant details soon -- we're talking a few days here, no more.  Honestly, I'm exhausted right now, and I've still got miles to go before I sleep tonight.  Have to save my energy for the manuscript I'm working on.


But I'm very excited about this new venture.  YA fiction is a genre I myself still enjoy, and to be working in the field is a huge thrill.  I hope to find a whole new audience.


No, I'm not stopping the Markhat series!  The next one is already laid out.  I'll be starting it any day now.  My goal is to finish it and get it to market before the year is out.


That would be three novels in 2011.


Not bad at all, for a slow writer like me.


But man, am I tired!

Hold the Dark

Bang! Bang! Bang! 

I jumped, spilled warm beer and felt my head begin to throb.

Mama’s voice rang out. She tried the latch, cussed and shoved hard at the door.

I threw the bottle in the trash bucket and managed to get out of my chair and to the door before Mama broke it down.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I said, fumbling with the latch. The daylight through my bubbled-glass door-pane was faint and yellow, more blush of dawn than actual morning.

I yanked the door open. “Damn, Mama, it’s barely daylight—”

She pushed her way in beside me. The look on her face—it’s never a good look, mind you—was worried and grim and if I didn’t know her better I’d say it was frantic.

“Boy,” she said, huffing and puffing. “Boy, where you been?”

I shut the door.

“Right here sleeping. Why? Where’s the fire?”

She fell heavily into my client’s chair, her hands tight around the neck of that big burlap sack she sometimes carries. Once she let a little snake crawl out of it and get loose on my desk. I’d told her to leave it at her place from then on.

“You ain’t been here all night.” She opened the bag and started rummaging around inside it as she spoke, and I got that lifted-hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck feeling I’d always gotten when the Army sorcerer corps had aimed new hexes at us troops.

“Whoa,” I said, harder and louder than I meant to. “You got mojo in that sack, Mama, you’d damn well better leave it there. I took hexes in the Army because I had to, and you’ve slipped a few on me because I didn’t see them coming. But hear this, Mama Hog. No hexes. Not today. Got it?”

She clamped her jaw and met my stare. I could see her hands moving, see the beginning of a word form on her lips.

Then she sagged and let out her breath.

“Wouldn’t do no good anyhow.” She pulled her hands out of the bag and tied it shut with a scrap of twine. “Wouldn’t do no good.”

When she looked back up at me, she had tears in her eyes.

“Mama, I didn’t mean—”

“Ain’t you, boy. Ain’t nothin’ you said. Ain’t nothin’ you done.”

My head pounded. I took a deep breath and ran fingers through my hair, which was wild and stiff and probably bleached white from Mama’s soap.

“What is it, then? What’s got you so upset?”

“I seen something. Last night. I seen something bad.”

“I thought your cards were clueless where Martha was concerned.”

“Wasn’t about Martha.” She wiped her eyes and leaned close. “Was about you.”

“Tell me.”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t tell. Can’t tell ’cause I still can’t see real clear.” She shuffled in her seat, and I knew I’d caught her in a lie.

“Tell me what you can.”

“Cards. Glass. Smoke. Bones. All come up death, boy. I called your name and a whippoorwill answered. I burned your hair and saw the ashes scatter. I caught blood on a silver needle and saw it turn toward your door.” She shivered, and her eyes looked tired. “Ain’t never seen all them things. Not the same night. And then, when I saw them dogs tearin’ at your clothes—well, I thought you was dead for sure.”

“I’m not surprised. I came pretty close, just after midnight. Maybe that’s what you saw.”

She shook her head. “I reckon not. Something still ain’t right about all this, boy. I oughtn’t to be seeing some things I see, and ought to see things I don’t. We got a sayin’ in Pot Lockney—it’s them things under the water what makes the river wild. Somethin’s messing up my sight on this. You reckon you know what it might be?”

I shook my head. I had suspicions, but they weren’t for anyone but Evis to hear.

“I don’t know, Mama, but I will tell you this. The Houses are mixed up in this, somehow.”

She snorted. “Figured that.”

“Maybe not that way. At least not all of them.” I gave her just enough of the night’s festivities to steer the Watch and the Hoobins toward Avalante, should I have a fatal boating accident in the next few days.

None of that helped her state of agitation. “Running around after Curfew with vampires?” she shouted. “Boy, have you hit your fool head?”

I had to agree, at least partly. But I’d lived. Thanks partly to Evis, who was probably pacing anxiously in a well-appointed crypt across the river.

“Look, Mama, I’ve got to go. But there’s something you can do. For me. Maybe for Martha.”

She gave me a sideways look, nodded.

“I’ll need a hex. A paper hex. Something I can tear. Something you’ll know I’ve torn, just as soon as I’ve torn it. From twenty, thirty blocks away. Can you do that?”

She frowned. “I reckon.”

“Good. And I’ll need you to talk to Ethel. I need you to tell him we may need men to get Martha. Men who’ll break Curfew. Men who’ll fight. Men who’ll keep their mouths shut.”

“How many?”

“All you can get.” I was hoping for fifty.

Mama nodded. “You think you know where Martha Hoobin is?”

“Not yet. But when I find out, we won’t have much time. She’s got maybe four days left. That’s all.” A thought struck me, and I held up my hand to silence Mama’s unspoken question. “Humor me, Mama. What’s special about the night four days from now?”

She frowned. “Special what?”

“I mean is it some old rite of spring or solstice or something. Is there going to be an eclipse? Will the skies turn blood red and rain frogs—that kind of thing?”

“Nothing special about it at all. It’s Thursday. There’s a new moon. Might rain.”

“That’s it,” I said, aloud. “New moon. No moon. Darkest night of the month.”

Vampire picnic day.

Mama saw, and the same thought occurred to her.

“Damn, boy,” she piped. “I done told you I seen death! Death on your name. Death on your blood. Don’t none of that mean nothin’ to you?”

I rose. “It does. But look again. You see me telling Ethel Hoobin I quit? You see me leaving Martha Hoobin at the mercy of those who have her? You see me just walking away?”

She gathered her bag. She rose, and she was crying when she hit the door.

I sat. “Whippoorwills,” I said, to my empty chair. “There aren’t any whippoorwills in Rannit. Haven’t been in years.”

None sang. Ogres huffed and doors began to open and slam outside and old Mr. Bull’s broom started its daily scritch-scritch on his pitiful small stoop. Rannit came to life, sans portents and whippoorwills, vampires and doomsayers.

I listened for a while and then got up, combed my hair and headed across town to speak with Evis about corpses, new moons and ensorcelled silver combs.


-- end excerpt.

The above is taken from Hold the Dark, a pivotal novel in the Markhat series.  Pivotal because Markhat meets Darla; 'Hold the Dark' is very much a boy-meets-girl-then-loses-her-to-vampires sort of romance.


I'm aware, by the way, that film noir detectives have less than stellar track records with the ladies.  Bogart sends his up the river in the final moments of 'The Maltese Falcon.'  Archie Goodwin never quites solidifies things with Lily Rowan.  Mike Hammer -- well.  Enough said there.


If you've read any of the Markhat books, though, I think you realized right away that Markhat wasn't going to continue in the love 'em and leave 'em tradition established by many of his predecessors. Frankly, for a long time, I wasn't sure what Markhat was planning on either. 


Until he met Darla.  Then it became obvious, to Markhat, at least.  


Does Darla survive the events in Hold the Dark?  If so, does she pop back up in The Banshee's Walk or the upcoming 'The Broken Bell?'


It'll cost ya to find out.  But not much, and most readers agree it's 
well worth the price of admission.


Follow the links below to find your preferred version of Hold the Dark, including old-school print!


Hold the Dark, various formats - Nook, Sony, pdf, etc.
Hold the Dark for the Amazon Kindle
Hold the Dark in print!

The Mister Trophy

“Smells like you’re brewing up something special, Mama,” I said, while Mama Hog settled her stooped old bones into a chair and motioned for me to be seated as well. “Wouldn’t be Troll after-shave, would it?”

“Might be a drought to shut smart mouths,” said Mama, brushing a tangle of matted grey hair out of her face. “Then where would you be, boy?”

“Out of work.” I shoved the owl aside and picked up a worn deck of fortune cards. “What’s in my future, Mama?” I asked. “Trolls? Gold? Angry vampire hordes?”

The old lady snorted. “The half-dead are no joke, boy,” she said. Her eyes might be old, but they’re sharp as knifepoints, and they glittered. “No joke.”

I plopped down a card. “Neither are Trolls, Mama,” I said. “This bunch might wind up losing their tempers. Soon.”

“They might,” said Mama Hog, her voice softening, losing some of the old-hag put-on rasp. “Certainly so, if they find that which they seek.”

I threw down another card. “So you know?”

“I know.”

“They tell you?”

“They told me.”

I shuffled, cut, tossed down a card. “So who else knows? Eddie? The Watch? Who?”

Mama Hog smiled and scooped up the three cards I’d tossed out. “No one else knows,” she said. “I told them to trust you, and only you.”

“You told them that? Mama, why in the Nine High Heavens did you tell them that?”

“Your fate and their task meet now, Finder,” she said, her eyes bright and hard in the candlelight. “Meet, and mingle, and merge.”

“Drop the carnival soothsayer act, Mama,” I said. “It won’t wash with me.”

She slammed a card—one of my three cards—down on the table, face up in the flickering light.

I could just make out the worn, faded image of a man running away, a sack slung over his shoulder. Coins dribbled out of a tear in the sack.

“Greed,” said Mama Hog. “Flight. Abandonment. How much can they pay you for your soul, Finder?”

“I don’t know, Mama,” I said. “How much do you charge for fate?”

The second card went down. Crossed daggers glinted against a half-full moon. “Vengeance,” hissed Mama Hog. “How many lives will you waste to avenge a single death?”

“Six,” I snapped. “Maybe five, if it’s wash day.”

The third card hit the table. On it a skeletal hand beckoned, bony forefinger crooked in invitation.

“Death,” I said, standing. “Even I know that one. Death, the Final Dancer, the Last Guy You’ll Ever See and Boy Will You Hope There’s Been a Mistake.”

Mama Hog stood as well. “Jest if you will, Finder,” she said. “But take care. You stand at a crossroads. One way leads to the dark.”

“How much do I owe you, Mama?”

Mama Hog went stiff. All four feet of her puffed up and for a moment I honest to gods thought she was going to slap me. Then she let out her breath in a whoosh and broke into chuckles.

“No charge to neighbors,” she said. “Even disrespectful unbelieving smart-mouthed jackanapes who don’t know their friends from their boot-heels.”

“My friends don’t usually send feuding Trolls to my door, Mama.”

“This one did,” she replied. “Now get out. I’ve got an appointment.”

I stomped blinking into the street, telling myself that Mama’s cards were just so much tattered pasteboard and third-rate flummery.

The street stank, and in the absence of my Troll friends, it bustled. 

Wagons creaked, carriage drivers cussed, horses snorted, and everywhere people rushed back and forth, hurrying against the daylight so the night people could have the city by night.

A man passed in front of me, a sack slung over his shoulder, just like on Mama’s card.

I fell in step behind him all the way to Haverlock.

-end excerpt.

Yep!  Another excerpt, this time from The Mister Trophy, which is the very first Markhat story.  It's still one of my favorites.

The Mister Trophy first saw print in 1999.  The magazine was "Adventures in Sword and Sorcery," and it was a print magazine.  For all you digital age youngsters out there, 'print' magazines were composed of a flimsy physical substance called paper.  That's all we had, back in the dimly-lit days of prehistory before iTunes and the Kindle.

The editor of AS&S kept 'The Mister Trophy' on his desk for a full year before deciding to buy it.   He told me in a letter that he loved it, but it was 'so weird' he wasn't sure his readers would get it.  Well, he took a chance, and 'the Mister Trophy' was voted favorite story in that issue. 

It was also scheduled to appear in an anthology (Best Fantasy of 1999, or something similar) before the editor and the magazine simply fell right off the face of the Earth.  

If you're out there, Randy Dannenfelser, drop me a line!

I loved writing 'The Mister Trophy.'  I set out to do something new and fresh, and I still think I nailed that.  Writing as Markhat is always a blast.

'The Mister Trophy' is the shortest of all the Markhat entries.  It's a fun, quick read, and a good introduction to Markhat's world.  If you liked the excerpt, here's where you can buy the whole piece, in whatever format your little heart desires:

The Mister Trophy (Nook, Sony, pdf, others).

The Mister Trophy for Amazon's Kindle.

The Mister Trophy in print (part of The Markhat Files anthology).

The Cadaver Client

“Happy birthday, you mangy fleabag, you.”

I scratched his battle-scarred head. He rewarded me with the merest flick of his long, black tail.

I sat in my chair, my shiny new boots propped on my battered old desk, and watched Three-leg Cat lick the stump of his missing paw.

That’s how I celebrated the tenth birthday of my business. It had been ten years ago today that I’d scraped together enough coin to pay the rent on the office on Cambrit Street and hire a man to paint a finder’s eye on the bubbled glass pane set in the weather-beaten door. Three-leg, then a mangy injured kitten, had been the first living soul to pass through my open door.

For the last ten years I’d done what every finder does—I’d found things. Sons or daughters or fathers or trouble. If you’ve lost something, or someone, you can seek out my painted finder’s eye, and I’ll pull my feet off my desk, and for the right handful of coin I’ll see if I can find it for you.

I’d done very well, right after the War, finding fathers and sons left abandoned by the Regency when the Truce was declared. These days, I didn’t look for missing soldiers nearly as often as I looked for straying wives or errant husbands.

I reflected on that as Three-leg Cat washed his scar. For awhile the soldiers I’d found often brought their families joy, but the news I brought my clients lately was anything but joyous.

Three-leg Cat looked up, as though he’d heard my thoughts, and gave me a scathing look of feline contempt.

“Buy your own breakfast then,” I muttered.

Three-leg Cat leaped down from my desk, and it was then I heard Mama’s voice close by my door.

I groaned. I’d inherited Mama Hog along with the office. Her card and potion shop was two doors down from mine. She’d taken me on as a project the very first day, and ten years later she was still trying to browbeat me into the Mama Hog version of respectability.

I hoped she’d pass on by, but as usual, luck was showing no love to Markhats near and far. Mama banged on my door, then tried the latch.

“You in there, boy?”

I swung my legs down to the floor. “I’m closed, Mama. No, I’m retiring. Going to sell off my business and buy a barge.”

Mama guffawed and swung my door open, and it was then I saw Mama Hog wasn’t alone.

I gaped.

Mama Hog is old. She claims to be a hundred and twenty, and though I doubt that, I’d buy even odds she is on the bad side of eighty. Mama carefully cultivates every clichéd Witch Woman affectation ever spoken—a wild tangle of grey hair, fingernails that could scare a grizzly bear, and a mole that sometimes changes cheeks from day to day. That’s Mama, and I gather the look is good for business, even in downtown Rannit.

But if Mama was two-dozen clichés stitched together with wrinkles and cackles, her companion was something straight out of myth.

She was a head higher than Mama, which put her just a bit below my shoulders. If she had hair at all, I couldn’t see it, not beneath that trail-beaten black bowler hat. She wore a faded poncho that might have been striped in orange and black zigzags half a century ago, and six or seven layers of castoff rags under that, all clashing, all tattered and trailing threads or bits of cloth.

Her face, though—there were eyes, tiny and black, recessed so far beneath wrinkled grey brows I wondered how the woman saw. Her nose was a wart-encrusted proboscis that sprouted its own crop of fine, white hairs from within, and her chin protruded far enough forward to nearly meet the tip of her nose.

She had hands the color and texture of old leather, and black fingernails four times longer than Mama’s and sharpened to points besides.

She held a gnarled walking stick in her right hand and a handful of dark rags in her left. She was muttering, and though her black eyes were turned up toward mine, I didn’t think she was talking to me. She confirmed this by raising the rags to her lips and whispering to them, then shaking her head as if they’d replied.

“Boy, this here is Granny Knot,” said Mama. “I brung her here myself so I could make inter-ductions. Granny Knot, this is that finder what I told ye about. His name is Markhat. Markhat, this be Granny Knot.”

Mama caught my sleeve and hissed at me. “Don’t you dare make no mock of her, boy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Granny Knot.”

Granny whispered into her handful of rags, then held it to her ear, listened and cackled.

“Granny here needs to be hirin’ herself a finder,” said Mama. “I told her you was the best, boy. And I told her you’d deal fair with her. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

I groaned.

“Mama,” I began. “I just took on a big case, I was just headed out the door—”

“I pays,” said Granny Knot. Her black eyes sparkled, back in the shadows. “I pays good. Got old coin. Three hundred crowns. Pays you fifty.”

I almost snorted. Three hundred crowns, especially in pre-War old coin, was a small fortune. I didn’t figure Granny Knot of the handful of rags had ever seen three crowns stuck together, much less three hundred.

“Granny here is a spook doctor,” said Mama. “Best in Rannit.”

“Nice meeting you, Granny.” I rose. Spook doctors claim to converse with spirits. For a price, of course. Always for a price. “Nice hat.”

And that’s when Granny cackled again and pulled a canvas sack from somewhere beneath her rags and let it fall onto my desk with a tinkle and a thump.

“Three. Hundred. Crowns.”

And then Granny cackled again and went back to her whispered conversation with her pet rags.

Mama grinned at me, her two front teeth shining in triumph.

“I’ll leave you two alone to talk business,” she said. She made a small courtly bow to Granny, who plopped down in my client’s chair while a pair of grey moths escaped her wardrobe and began to dart around my office.

Mama stomped out. Granny beamed at me, and the coins in the sack shifted with that magical sound of gold on gold.

“You’ve hired yourself a finder, looks like.” I said. “So, tell me what it is you’ve lost.”


-- End Excerpt

Another excerpt, you ask?


Indeed it is, I reply.  This one from The Cadaver Client, in which Markhat takes on a dead man for a client.  This is a novella-length tale (hence the reduced price) which is set early in Markhat's career.  Fans refer to it as one of the 'pre-Darla' tales.


If you've been on the fence about trying the Markhat series, The Cadaver Client is a good place to start.  You'll meet Mama Hog, Markhat's next-door-neighbor and a major source of exasperation for the streetwise finder.  you'll also get a feel for Rannit, Markhat's rough-and-tumble home.  


Yes, the Markhat books are fantasy, but you won't find any winsome Elves or cute fairies here.  Or dragons, for that matter.  I based the mean streets of Rannit on what I've seen of the seedier parts of Memphis, Tennessee, and believe me, any Elf that tried to charm the masses with ancient songs would quickly find he was missing his wallet, his rings, and a significant volume of his blood, probably not in that order.


Why did I decide to drop a 1940s film-noir private eye into a world where magic works and the dead don't always stay buried?


Your guess is as good as mine.  Some will claim I must have suffered a recent head injury.  Others will speak of an excess of over-the-counter cold medicine and a bout of insomnia.  Still others will just make that finger-spinning motion by the side of their head when they think I'm not looking.


Any or all of them might be right.  But I've had a blast writing Markhat.  I think we've all wanted to be that guy who always has the perfect retort, who's never at a loss for words.  That's Markhat.  Cynical, quick-witted, weary enough of the world to see it for what it is, yet not so calloused that he can turn away from the suffering of innocents.  


No wonder I enjoy pretending to be the guy.  


I think you'll enjoy reading about him, too.  If the excerpt hooked you, follow the links below to choose which version you'd like.  Kindle, Nook, pdf for your PC, a version for your Sony e-reader, heck, even print -- choose below!


The Cadaver Client - Various Formats (Nook, pdf, Mobi, etc.)


The Cadaver Client - Amazon Kindle version


The Markhat Files - Printed book, 3 stories, includes The Cadaver Client!


The e-book versions are less than 3 bucks and the print book from Amazon is around ten (it includes 3 Markhat novellas -- The Cadaver Client, Dead Man's Rain, and The Mister Trophy).


Thanks for reading!

Dead Man's Rain

The Widow Merlat sat across from me, breathed through her scented silk hanky, and did her best to make it plain she wasn’t one of those Hill snobs who think of us common folk as mere servant-fodder. No, I was all right in her book—not a human being like her, of course, but as long as I kept my eyes on the floor and knocked the horse flop off my boots, I’d be welcome at her servant’s entrance any day.

“You come highly recommended, goodman Markhat,” she said, daring Rannit’s unfashionable south-side air long enough to lower her hanky while she spoke. “The most capable, most experienced finder in all of Rannit. I’m told you are discreet, as well. I would not be here otherwise.”

I sighed. My head hurt and I still had cemetery dirt on my shoes. I did not need to have my face rubbed in my humble origins by a Hill widow who doubtlessly thought her son was the first rich boy to ever take a fancy to the half-elf parlor maid.

“I’m also told you are expensive,” said the widow. She plopped a fat black clutch purse down on my desk, and it tinkled, heavy with coin. “Good,” she added. “I’ve never trusted bargains, nor shopped for them. Money means nothing to me.”

“Funny you should say that, Lady Merlat,” I said. “Why, just the other day I was telling the Regent that money means twenty jerks a day, to me. Plus expenses. And that’s only if I decide to take the job.” I leaned back in my chair and clasped my hands behind my head. “And, despite your generous display of the money that means nothing to you, I haven’t said yes yet.”

The widow smiled a tight, small smile. “You will, finder,” she said. “I’ll pay thirty crowns a day. Forty. Fifty. Whatever it takes, I will pay.”

Outside, an ogre huffed and puffed as he pulled a manure wagon down the street, and all the silk in Hent wasn’t going to keep the stench out of the widow’s Hill-bred nostrils.

The widow shoved her purse my way. I shoved it back.

“Tell me what you want,” I said.

She nodded, once and quickly, and took a deep breath. A hint of color fought its way past the powder on her cheeks.

“My husband is dead,” she said.

She was wearing more black than a barge-load of undertakers. “No,” I said, straight-faced. “How long?”

“Two years,” she said. More color leaked through. “Two years. He caught fever.” The widow’s voice went thin. “He caught fever and he died and I buried him.” She took in a ragged breath. “But now he’s back, goodman. Returned.”

“Returned?” I lifted an eyebrow. “How? Rattling chains, wearing a bed-sheet?” I stood. “Nice talking to you, Lady.”

Her small bright eyes got smaller and brighter. “Sit,” she hissed. “I am neither senile nor insane. My husband has returned. He walks the grounds at night. He rattles the windows, pulls at all the doors. All but four of the staff left after his second visit.” The widow Merlat gave her hanky a savage twist. “I had to hire caterers for the Armistice Day Festival,” she said. “The canapés were spoiled, and two of my guests fell ill after sampling the stuffed mushrooms.”

“Tragic,” I said. “Shocking. And the wine?”

“Goodman Markhat,” she said. “Are you mocking me?”

I sighed, eyed the coin-purse, sat. “Lady Merlat,” I said, “this sounds like a matter for the Watch, or the Church, or both. Why me? What can I do that they can’t?”

She twisted her hanky and chose her words. “The Watch. The Church. Don’t you think I tried, goodman? Don’t you think I tried?”

“I don’t know, Lady,” I said. “Did you?”

She glared. “Sixty crowns a day,” she said.

“So your husband is a revenant,” I said, slowly. “And he’s tracking up the flower beds and scaring the neighbors and the coachman is also the butler and nobody can cook a decent meal.”

“Sixty-five crowns,” she said, her voice glacial, to match her eyes. “Seventy, if you vow to hold your tongue.”

I grinned. “Sixty-five it is,” I said. “And I need to make one thing perfectly clear, Lady Merlat. I saw a lot of folks get suddenly, tragically dead during the War. What I didn’t see was anybody walking around afterward complaining about it.”

“You doubt my word?”

“I believe you believe, but that doesn’t make it the truth,” I said. “Have you seen your husband, Lady Markhat? Really seen him?”

She shuddered, and went corpse-pale underneath the powder. “Once,” she said in a whisper. “The second time. I’d moved upstairs, kept the windows shuttered and bolted. But I heard the dogs barking and Harl, the footman, shouting and I peeked outside and there he was, standing there, looking up at me.” She shivered all over, fought it off. “It was him, goodman Markhat. Two years in the grave—but it was Ebed.”

She hesitated. And then she lowered the hanky and looked me in the eye. “Please,” she said, and the word stuck in her throat, so she repeated it. “Please.”

“All right, Lady,” I said. “All right.” I opened my desk, pulled out a pad of ragged pulp-paper and a pair of brass dipping-pens. “I’ll do this much. I’ll try to find out who or what you saw,” I said. “Give it three days. If I come up empty, you only owe me for two.”

“I saw my husband,” said the widow. “I saw him, and others have seen him, and I’ll pay you sixty-five crowns a day to find out why he has returned, and how I can put him to rest.”

I sighed. “I need to know a few things, Lady Merlat,” I said. “Names, dates, addresses. And the location of your husband’s tomb.”

She found a fresh hanky and took a big breath.

Revenants and funerals and aching in the head.

Happy birthday to me.

Yep.  I sneaked another promo into the blog.  For Dead Man's Rain, which is a fan favorite in the Markhat series, at least judging from the emails I get.

The excerpt is from the opening.  Later on, you've got a haunted mansion, a mob of ruthless heirs, and Ebed Merlat, who may or may not be the walking dead.  Oh, and there's a storm.  A stormy night, in fact.  Dark, too.  So, one might say, a dark and . . . .

One might say that but I certainly won't.  It's a spooky little tale of (literally?) undying love and a guilt so profound it can't even be buried.  But don't take my word for it -- here are a few reviews I've received via email:

"...tons better than anything I ever wrote."   W. Shakespeare, deceased. 

"...and if we do not receive your payment by the 15th, we will consider the account delinquent."   MasterCard.

"Greetings of the day to you dear.  I am Dr. Reverend Mbai Basoli, and I have a 100% safe and legal business deal for you."  drbasoli@yahoo.com

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By now you're either hooked or you long ago hit the back button, so I'll list the various formats below.  Choose your poison!

Dead Man's Rain (Various formats - Nook, Sony, etc.)

Dead Man's Rain (Kindle version)

Print Version -- Contains Dead Man's Rain and two other Markhat tales!

Free Sample Tuesday: THE BANSHEE'S WALK

When I'm not ranting about miscreants and ne'er-do-wells, I write books.

At infrequent intervals, I mention these books here in the blog.  Who am I kidding?  I plug my books shamelessly, hoping a couple of you will follow the convenient links below the sample to get your very own copy.  

Today's excerpt comes from my Markhat novel THE BANSHEE'S WALK.  Markhat, the feckless hero, is a finder, which is what private eyes in his world paint on their doors.  People who've lost wives or husbands or sons or hope come to see Markhat, and if they're lucky, he finds what they've lost.  

But what Markhat usually finds is trouble.  In THE BANSHEE'S WALK, Markhat is hired by a wealthy patron of the arts to determine who has been surveying her estate in the dead of night, and why.  Markhat suspects nothing but a petty land grab, or a squabble over property lines -- but what he discovers in the forest called the Banshee's Walk is something much older and far more sinister.

Enjoy the excerpt.  Links to various e-book versions and the printed book follow...

Excerpt from THE BANSHEE'S WALK

Moving through a forest at night is a perilous business. You can’t see briars before they tear through your clothes and into your skin. You can’t see rattlesnakes until you’ve annoyed them and they bite. And Heaven help you if you run into a wild boar sow with piglets nearby, because boars are worse than snakes and briars combined.

I never saw an example of any of those. All I saw were soldiers, some mounted, most on foot. These weren’t all kids, either. Half were my age, which meant they were vets who done this sneaking around business before.

I just hoped none of them were better at it than me.

The stars wheeled by above. The coward Moon never rose. The wind kept blowing, howling now and then, reminding me of Buttercup. I still had a hunk of corn bread for her, mashed flat and wrapped in one of Lady Werewilk’s good cotton napkins.

I topped a tiny little hillock, made my way between the trunks of two mighty oaks, popped my head up long enough to count fires. I saw two.

And something else. A faint blue radiance, bobbing and trailing sparks that lay there glowing but didn’t touch off any fires.

I bit back a curse word. I’d watched five of the black robed bastards be yanked up into the sky and I’d been sure, absolutely sure, that I’d seen the last of sorcerers at least for the night.

But here was at least one more, still on the hunt.

I hoped Buttercup was somewhere safe. I wondered why they were so determined to snatch her.

I eased my way back down the hill on my belly, and then I crawled on, heading for the Faery Ring.

I chided myself a dozen times on that dark journey, about my destination. I was making an awfully long leap of faith, going from two mentions in an old Werewilk family history to being sure something ancient and potent was hidden along a creek that had dried to nothing generations before the War even broke. You’ll feel pretty foolish, I told myself, if you reach the Ring and all you find are oaks and midnight.

You’ll feel even more foolish if someone sees you and puts an arrow through your gut.

I couldn’t argue with either sentiment, but I kept going.

Halfway there, I began to see signs that I might have been right after all.

I found rutted wagon tracks, in the forest. Wagons had left the old road. I counted at least five. Men had cleared the way with axes, oxen and ropes. Some of the cut timber was so fresh it still wept sap.

But there were no men. Not a single sentry had been left in the wagons’ wake.

Although men had accompanied the wagons, in single file on either side of them, in numbers I couldn’t even estimate.

I stayed thirty feet or so off the new-cut road. I moved as quietly as I could, but I no longer crawled. Instinct told me that, at last, I was about to learn just what the fuss was about.

I smelled smoke from the fires before I saw them. A few moments later, I heard the first voices, and the first sounds of hammers and picks and axes. And then I topped another gentle rise, and it all came into view.

A ring of torches. Wagons. Men moving and shouting and working. Most were digging. Others were erecting a scaffold of fresh-cut timbers over the deep wound they’d dug in the soft, wet earth.

As I watched, chains were dragged from a wagon, and a heavy block and tackle, and ladders were propped against the scaffold and men clambered up them, chains and tackle in tow.

I felt a tiny hand slip into my right pocket. I didn’t even smell her over my own enthusiastic stink.

“Hello, Buttercup,” I whispered.

She found and unwrapped the corn bread, frowned at its mashed state, and then shrugged and began to gobble it down, using the napkin to keep the crumbs in place.

She stood pressed to my side, her right hand filled with corn bread and her left wrapped around my waist. 

The top of her filthy little banshee head failed to even meet the middle of my chest.

She was shaking. I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want to spook her, even though the realization that she was probably being tracked by at least one determined sorcerer was sending shivers up and down my spine.

“Did you lose your blanket?”

She looked up at me again and grinned.

And then she coughed, choking on a mouthful of dry corn bread.

It wasn’t the loudest cough I’d ever heard but it was close. But I dropped to my knees and dared putting an arm around her as I did so.

She didn’t bolt. She was shaking. She huddled close, still chewing, her eyes locked on mine.

I raised a finger to my lips.

She hesitated a moment, and then did the same.

I almost laughed. But instead I watched and listened.

The workers down below kept working. The movement of the torches and lanterns kept on as before, with none of them heading suddenly our way.

No booted feet rushed towards us. No iron hooves, either. I decided we’d found Fate’s favor, that time. I hoped the rest of the night would prove as fortunate.

“Do you know what they’re doing, down there?” I asked, in a whisper. I wasn’t really expecting a reply. I had no way of knowing whether Buttercup could speak or understand speech.

She tilted her head and eyed me curiously. I shrugged.

“No matter. We’ll just watch for a while.”

And we did. They dug. Dirt was hauled the edge of the light and dumped. I tried to pick out the ringleaders by looking for anyone not carrying a tool. Part of the activity right at the edge of the excavation was obscured by a tent that was being erected as I watched, and I wasn’t willing to risk moving just to see around it.

A horn blew, three short blasts. In the Army that meant archers to the fore. To the men below, it meant more shovels, on the double, because a mob of them leapt from the backs of various wagons and hoofed it toward the hole.

It was then I caught a brief glimpse of what I decided was the man in charge. A small group of men made a slow circle of the pit. Three of them carried odd glowing implements that they held out over the hole on lances.

The fourth was twice the height of any man I’d ever known, and as thin as he was tall. If he were a he at all. No way to tell, since he or she was wrapped in white robes from head to toe.

I tried very hard to sink back even further into the shadows. My knowledge of Rannit’s sorcerous crowd was by no means exhaustive, but anyone that odd would have been mentioned, here or there.

Which meant an out-of-town wand-waver was in the mix.

I thought back to those stories we told each other in the trenches. There had been something about an inhumanly tall wand-waver, way up in the Northlands. Longshanks or Longlegs or some such, fond of using plagues as weapons. The diseases had killed humans as well as Trolls. There had been grumblings that our losses to illness had been at least as numerous as those of the enemy.

After the War, the bulk of the Regency’s sorcery corps moved with the Regent to Rannit, which had survived the War with relatively little damage. The sorcerers who didn’t make the move were generally the ones who’d made powerful enemies among the wand-wavers who did.

Buttercup gobbled down the last of her corn bread. She then licked the napkin clean of crumbs and butter before deciding my other pockets might bear more yummy treasures.

“Whoa, sister, that’s no way to act.”

I grabbed her hands. They were tiny, but strong. She smiled and before I realized what was happening she leaped up in my lap and kissed me, square on the lips.

I fell over backward. Dry leaves crunched. Tattletale twigs snapped. Buttercup fell with me, giggling and redoubling her grip. I tried to pry her away without hurting her, but her tiny stature belied a powerful frame.

I was about to stand up and take her by the shoulders and just push her an arm’s length away when we both heard the sound of a horse trotting through the trees.

She let go. She drew her hands up over her mouth, covering a tiny mewling noise.

The blue glow shone through the limbs, coming our way.

--- End Excerpt

Want to read more?  Then clickety-click with your nimble little finger, dear reader.  Your choice of formats is below.

THE BANSHEE'S WALK as a printed book

(Pre-order now, comes out June 7)

THE BANSHEE'S WALK for the Amazon Kindle

(Available now!)

THE BANSHEE'S WALK all other formats!

Enjoy!

Trash on Parade: Kage Games LLC

UPDATE 4-26-2011 1612 CST -- The game app has been PULLED from the Android store.  VICTORY

The world, as you know, is filled with worthless, reprehensible scum.

This week, I present to you the creators of the Google Android app 'Dog Wars,' who have just edged out Westboro Baptist for the top spot in my coveted 'Waste of Skin and Air' list, which showcases the most flagrant examples of humanity gone horribly, terribly wrong.

I know that some of you believe no person is bad through and through.  Some of you believe that hidden in even the darkest heart, a tiny spark of goodness survives, needing only patient, compassionate nurturing to blossom forth into the flower of human kindness.

People like you are so cute.  Clueless, of course, and nearly defenseless in a world that eats kittens for breakfast, but you're cute nonetheless.

And utterly mistaken.  Take for instance the Dog Wars game I mentioned earlier.

The creators of this travesty find it amusing to equip and fight virtual dogs in bloody VR death matches.  I suspect they and their mutant scum customer base use the app between actual dog fights and felonies, i.e., passing the time between violent home invasions and hanging around various alleys in search of their next fix.

Because those are the sorts of people who enjoy dog fighting.  They also enjoy rape, murder, and of course armed robbery, and they'd do them all at the same time if they had just a few more appendages.

The owners of Kage Games LLC know their market base (scum, worthless, see also Trash, Vermin, etc.) and are pandering directly toward it.  Of course, they defend their wares with a variety of mentally-challenged arguments,  claiming their 'game' is a harmless simulation.

Sure it is.  Just like 'Wife Beater 2.0,' and 'Mega-Rapist 2000.'

What?

Those last two aren't games?  Why not?  After all, they're just harmless simulations.

Oh, right, because they not only depict but glorify violent crimes.  My bad.

I've looked for contact information for Kage Games LLC.  There's a web page, but it's a static image with no links or contact info.  I suspect the 'owners' pulled anything resembling an actual page when news of their disgusting game hit the web.

I'd love to let  Kage Games LLC know what I think of them.  Too bad they don't have the guts to put their names out in public.  But since they're hiding, the best I can do is call them out here:

An Open Letter to Dog Fight Fans, the Makers of the 'Dog Wars' App, and the Defenders Thereof:

You are filth.  Trash. Aberrations. Utterly and wholly contemptible.  Without worth or value as people of any sort.  Even the base chemicals which comprise your gap-toothed, foul-smelling bodies are worthless, since they must be riddled with impurities and laced with raw sewage.  


I can only imagine what sort of creatures brought you into the world.  Siblings, of course, who were in turn descended from a long line of siblings.  I suspect you were raised up in a remote cabin, where you practiced random cannibalism when you weren't molesting livestock or trying desperately to evolve opposable thumbs.


And now you've discovered the Internet.  Wonderful.  And you saw a need among your like-minded brethren for a 'game' that glorifies the killing of innocent dogs.  Lacking any sort of compassion or other higher mental functions, it's no surprise that you dived in with both club feet, eager to make a few fast bucks off your two favorite things, suffering and violence.


It appears that your 'game' will be yanked from the Android market any moment now.  And that's good.  Your sort of 'entertainment' has no place in a civilized society.


And neither do you.  It is my most sincere wish that each of you and your 'fans' contract something both truly nasty and inexorably disfiguring.  Huge anal warts, for instance.  Untreatable.  Incurable. And slow.

Now that would be fun.  Maybe you could even make it into a game app!  Plot the spread of the cancer through your system, maybe even have the raging tumors fight.  


Sounds like a fun game to me!  

If you'd like to email android and ask them what in the **** they're doing keeping such a piece of trash on their Market, do so here:

press@google.com

Westboro Baptist -- Ya'll Don't Come Back Now, You Hear?

I don't follow the gap-toothed meanderings of the inbred loons who comprise Westboro Baptist church much these days.  I do have a Google alert set in case a headline containing the words 'Westboro Baptist church bus plunges flaming explosion carnage' pops up.  I'm always ready for a good laugh.

So I had no idea the whole wretched Westboro mob was heading for my home state just last week.

But they were.  To Brandon, Mississippi, to 'protest' during the funeral of USMC Staff Sgt. Jason Rogers, who was laid to rest last Saturday.


I can't imagine what Sgt. Rogers' family was going through.  I can imagine their reactions to seeing the misshapen, drooling troglodytes from Westboro waving signs that mocked their son's untimely death.  No one should be forced to endure that.


I know, I know, free speech, even for those who don't deserve it.  And I agree with that.


I also agree with the people in Brandon who decided the Rogers family had quite enough to deal with without adding the Westboro protest to the list.


According to my sources, trouble started early for the Westboro 'faithful,' in the form of an impromptu beat-down outside a Brandon gas station at which a passer-by demonstrated to a loudmouthed Westborite that yes, you have a perfect right to defile the memory of a dead man, and by the way have you met my fist?


The pugilistic stranger left the scene, and due to poor lighting conditions and a sudden uptick in sunspot activity witnesses gave conflicting descriptions of the assailant to the Brandon police.  Some claimed the stranger was tall and white.  Others maintained he was short and African-American.  Still others produced elaborate sketches of Gandalf, or the Green Hornet.


The Westboro street preacher waddled back to his hotel, sadly unavenged.


The actual morning of the planned  protest brought even more difficulties for the various primates from Westboro. When the Westboro bunch emerged from their motel rooms, after doubtlessly spending their night picking through each other's hair in search of lice and ticks, it seems careless motorists had parked their large and unwieldy pickups behind all the Westboro vehicles.  Inexplicably, the drivers of the poorly-parked trucks could not be found.


The Westborons demanded a tow truck.  Such was dispatched, but became lost in the teeming metropolis that is Brandon, Mississippi.  The delay was such that the 'protesters' were unable to travel to their appointed spot in time to disrupt the funeral.


What a shame!  They are after all such lovely, wonderful people.  I do hope their experiences here don't sour them on the state.  


In fact, I'd like to extend to each and every Westboron a special invitation.  


Come back to Mississippi anytime. 


We are, after all, the hospitality state....