W.B.'s Book Report (in progress): Choose Yourself

Kindle tells me I am 70 percent of my way through James Altucher's fine manifesto Choose Yourself, which has much to say about the way things are in this day and age and about how best to live during this new era. As Altucher guides me along, I find myself in greater admiration of Paul Phillips, the central figure in my Myke Phoenix universe.

When first we met Paul in the early 1990s (or 2008 when the stories first saw light of day), he was an everyday radio news reporter for WACR, a news-talk station in Astor City, a city that sort of reminds me of Green Bay, in whose orbit I have spent the last 30 years. But local radio news has faded toward obscurity, and Paul found himself in need of a new day job.

He latched onto the Astor City Times-Gazette as a newspaper reporter. You may have heard about the newspaper industry. Yep, Paul was laid off again.

What happened next brings us to Altucher's point, which you can sample in this YouTube video from a TEDx talk a few months ago. Paul Phillips chose himself.

His traditional jobs telling the story of Astor City dried up and went away. But Paul still believed that the people of Astor City wanted and needed to hear their story.

So, using the tools of modern technology, he made his own platform to tell that story: The Astor City Beacon, a local news website that does the things that WACR and the Times-Gazette used to do – that is to say, it tells Astor City's stories as seen and reported by Paul Phillips.

Altucher's thesis is that day jobs are swiftly becoming a thing of the past and that's OK because happiness is found not when someone else chooses you, but when you choose yourself. And he goes about telling how he did that and making suggestions about how you can do something similar.

I still have 30 percent of the book to become disillusioned, but through this point I've found quite a lot of valuable insight about how to navigate this brave new world. And for that I heartily recommend the book.

Oh, and I wouldn't object if you explore Paul Phillips' world while you're at it, either the original Paul or the more recent Paul.

W.B. Origins: The Great Comic Book Heroes

One of my most cherished possessions is a beat-up hardcover book with the spine in questionable shape, the cover and pages battered but not torn with use and overuse. The dustcover reproduced at left is long gone, tattered beyond recognition and finally discarded decades ago.

It is a first edition of The Great Comic Book Heroes, a wonderful collection “compiled, introduced and annotated” by Jules Feiffer, and inscribed, “To Warren — the comic book fiend of 1965, From Dad and Mother, December 25, 1965.”

For the previous year and a half, ever since I found that copy of Amazing Spider-Man #4, I had been feverishly following the adventures of the Marvel Comics universe of characters, and anyone familiar with that universe knows I’d stumbled upon it at just the right time, as the characters found themselves and began to fly.

Feiffer’s book celebrated the heroes of the 1940s, when he was a teenager himself. He turned my age at an even more magical time (at least for the comics), when costumed superheroes were all being introduced for the very first time, and he actually worked as an apprentice for the legendary Will Eisner starting in 1945 at the age of 16.

He writes about each of the heroes in turn, but then the real magic appears: Here are the actual reprinted stories of Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman, the original Human Torch (my first encounter), the Flash, the Green Lantern, the Spectre, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Plastic Man, and the Spirit.

It was a wonderful peek at the Golden Age of Comics, and although I had a problem with some of Feiffer’s conclusions (”Comic books, first of all, are junk. There are a few exceptions, but nonjunk comic books don’t as a rule, last very long.” OK, maybe in 1945 …) I loved Feiffer’s descriptions and histories, and I especially loved the reprints. 

Each character was given a full story to give the flavor of his/her adventures, except there was a single page from Captain Marvel’s origin tale. “More can not be printed without unsettling the settlement between Clark Kent and Billy Batson,” a footnote explains. That enticement led to a curiosity that was not really settled until DC Comics started publishing Shazam! a few years later.
It is not reading and rereading those ancient stories that beat up this first edition, however. The oversized book was slightly bigger than 8.5 by 11 inches, which made it perfect for use as a workbench.

I would sit on my bed with a piece of paper pressed against the inside front cover, and I’d write and draw the adventures of Greatman and Brink The Atomic Man and the Fabulous Five and Captain Zap. I wrote hundreds of songs and poems. It was the beginning of a passion that led, in my later years, to Myke Phoenix and The Imaginary Bomb, and who knows what to come.

Sometimes I look at a memento from the far distant past like this and think, “Wow, that was almost 50 years ago now, it doesn’t seem that long.” Oh, but yes it does. The thousands of days that were lived in the meantime transformed that kid into this guy typing on a computer, and we are two remarkably different creatures who happen to share the same frame.

I continue to metamorphize into something new as time goes on. What an incredible life this is.

Black Friday special: Duck Man Walking Free

This Friday, Nov. 28, is your opportunity to use the immortal "Duck Man Walking" as your gateway into the Myke Phoenix universe - Free! Free! Free!

How do you trust a guy after he’s tried to kill you a few times? That’s the dilemma facing Myke Phoenix, superhero extraordinaire, in “Duck Man Walking.”

One of Myke Phoenix’s most impossible foes, the half-man-half-duck Quincy Quackenbos, is released from prison. Rumor has it that after years of trying he cracked the code and has developed the formula that can kill Myke Phoenix.

Are the rumors true? Or is Quackenbos telling the truth when he claims he’s turned his back on his criminal past? Find the answers mere moments from now in “Duck Man Walking,” just a click away.

BONUS: Two stories for the price of one. This special double-sized ebook also contains the chronicle of the very first time these two adversaries met, “The Strange Ultimatum of Quincy Quackenbos.” There’s no better time to introduce yourself to the Adventures of Myke Phoenix!

This is a pivotal episode in the wild dodecology Myke Phoenix: Year of the Dinosaur. Ask your Kindle app if Myke Phoenix is right for you: Claim your Black Friday freebie of "Duck Man Walking."

Free entry into Myke Phoenix universe

There are now several ways to sample the world of Myke Phoenix without risking your hard-earned Federal Reserve Notes. You have always, for example, been able to sample Our Best Hope: The Origin of Myke Phoenix by joining my mailing list, which also entitles you to regular updates from Astor City chock full of valuable clues to upcoming adventures. You can do that here.

But now you can download the first three breathless stories in the Year of the Dinosaur dodecology via Kobo, for free. Yeppers, hard to believe, but now you can have The Song of the Serial Kisser, Firespiders and Invasion of the Body Borrowers on your Nook or iPad or Aura or other .epub reader for the breathtaking price of zero dollars. You risk the chance you will have so much fun you'll invest your hard-earned pennies on other Myke Phoenix material, but that's all. Here's a link to all of the available Myke Phoenix material on Kobo.

(At some point Amazon's vaunted price-matching system will kick in and Kindle app users will have the same opportunity, but as of this writing this is an offer exclusive to Kobo.)

You can also follow these first three stories via Wattpad, if you don't want to download the stories.

Of course, my fondest hope is that you'll be motivated to spend the $4.99 to download Myke Phoenix: Year of the Dinosaur for Kindle or Kobo, or perhaps even to buy the massive 572-page paperback from Lulu or (coming very soon) Amazon/CreateSpace. But first you might want to see if it piques your fancy, and that's the point of this permanent-free offer. Go check out one or more of the first three stories in this 12-story arc, on me. I hope you like them! Thanx.

Launch day - Myke Phoenix: Year of the Dinosaur

For nearly two decades Myke Phoenix has protected the people of Astor City from the forces of evil in the world, battling crime bosses and costumed villains and strange creatures who want to rule the universe. But lately it’s been quiet in the old town – almost … TOO quiet!

“Lately it’s just been everyday crooks and the occasional mobster,” Paul Phillips (Myke’s everyday alter ego) says one night. “It just seems like we don’t need Myke Phoenix anymore.”

But then —

A bizarre lunatic starts kissing the women of Astor City at random. A fire-breathing spider the size of an elephant wreaks havoc downtown. Aliens land in a hill outside town and start borrowing people’s bodies. An old familiar villain returns and holds Paul’s wife, Dana, hostage on a dark and stormy night. Another old familiar villain, half man half duck Quincy Quackenbos, goes straight and is kidnapped after being released from prison.

Suddenly Myke Phoenix was working overtime. Could it be the work of his old nemesis, the evil talking dinosaur, Deinonychus?

In a story that evolves over the course of 12 episodes – mainly because your humble narrator liked the sound of the word “dodecology” – the protector of Astor City fights the fight of his life with a growing cadre of strange and wonderful new friends. By the time the story rumbles to its jarring conclusion, the lives of Paul and Dana Phillips have been changed forever – nor will Astor City and their world ever be the same again.

This massive volume collects the 12-part series that rebooted the story first told in “The Adventures of Myke Phoenix,” with a special bonus story (“A Myke Phoenix Christmas”), author’s notes and other fun content.

If you like superhero stories that don’t take themselves too seriously, if you like your adventures told with a dash of whimsy, you’ve come to the right place. Join the Myke Phoenix revolution with this baker’s dozen power pack.

Click here to download it for Kindle apps. Here is one version of the paperback. Wait a few days for other options.

Who is this guy anyway?

The completion of a project gives a guy a chance to stop and take a deep breath. As the world awaits Tuesday's release of the Myke Phoenix compilation Year of the Dinosaur, I find myself taking a deep breath and contemplating what the bibliography so far means.

Since I was 10 years old and found a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #4 at the old IGA in Milton, Vermont, I have enjoyed superhero stories. Well, even before that - I do remember enjoying a Legion of Super-Heroes story or two before the summer of 1963 - but Spider-Man and Marvel Comics made me a fan. A few years later I heard about a series of 1930s pulp hero reprints of a superhero named Doc Savage, and Cold Death started me on the path that would lead me to Myke Phoenix.

My Myke stories are designed to take you about an hour to read, approximating the comic book experience or perhaps a TV show. Year of the Dinosaur collects the 12 stories I've written in the past year or so, with a bonus short called "A Myke Phoenix Christmas."

I first conceived of Myke when I was a late-30s radio news reporter. I finished four stories and started several others, but the lack of a practical outlet to share them with the world led me to set the project aside. The indie publishing movement provided that outlet, and those earlier stories have been available since 2008 as The Adventures of Myke Phoenix.

But of course, my world view goes beyond the confines of the superhero adventure. (That is not to say we couldn't have a lengthy conversation about the superiority of Marvel's The Avengers to any Superman or Batman movie ever made.)

I've always thought war was stupid, and I've come to think of states as counterproductive to individual human endeavor. That led me to write The Imaginary Revolution, the memoirs of the man who led the planet Sirius IV to independence from Earth and beyond to a commonwealth that had no state government apparatus. As discussion raged over what form of government to establish for the newly free world, protagonist, Ray Kaliber, asked the simple question, "Why do we need a government at all?"

The story is a sequel of sorts, or at least set in the same universe, as The Imaginary Bomb, a space opera perhaps best known as a series of podcasts I voiced in 2006. The universe is based sometime in the future from now, when humanity has discovered how to tap the power of the imagination as an energy source. As too often happens with new technology, someone has considered the implications of weaponized imaginary power, and my interplanetary truck drivers get tangled up in stopping the imaginary bomb before it hurts someone.

I also have a collection of short stories, Wildflower Man, anchored by the story that has gained quite a following in its podcast form, if I may say so. I haven't transferred that book to digital form because, to be honest, I wish it was a little longer. I keep meaning to write a few more short stories to pad it out. One of these days.

I've also collected some of my essays on a couple of themes. Refuse to be Afraid is about empowering yourself to battle through the fears and impulses that keep us from the greatness we could accomplish: Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself. Dream.

And A Scream of Consciousness discusses ways to fight past the distractions of everyday life and concentrate on the needs of this moment, right now. These two books, and the "What I Believe" section of The Imaginary Revolution, probably sum up what I might pretentiously describe as my life philosophy.

So there are seven books, five fiction and two non-fiction, that hopefully will entertain you, perhaps could change your life, and at least will tell you a bit about who this guy is anyway.

If you're reading this on Friday, Nov. 14, 2014, the day I wrote this, you have until tonight to get a free download of Firespiders Unleashed, the pivotal Myke Phoenix story that opens the trilogy that also includes March of the Alien Dead, Claws of Death and Talons of Justice. Yes, it's a four-part trilogy. I blame Hollywood. Or perhaps Douglas Adams.

Starting Saturday I'll be devoting most of my shameless self-promotion to the collection that climaxes with those four stories, Year of the Dinosaur. But I really do like the way the saga ends, so if you want to cut to the chase and save a couple of bucks, buying the individual stories is a pretty good investment.

In any case, those are the motivations that drove the bookshelf of my stuff to date. So now you know.

The daughter of Mychus

Back in the second story in my Myke Phoenix magnum opus that is about to become Year of the Dinosaur, I introduced a father-daughter scientist team, Jacob and Terri Travers, who were based rather obviously on the characters played by Edmund Gwenn and Joan Weldon in the 1954 giant-monster thriller Them! More than one Easter egg await in that original story, Firespiders.

I also inserted a bit of intentionally heavy-handed foreshadowing as we introduced them and Dr. Jacob Travers sang the praises of his brilliant arachnologist daughter:

"Stop it, Dad, he's going to think I'm Wonder Woman or something," his daughter said. (If you think this is not a throwaway line but a foreshadowing of a plot element that I'm tucking away for years from now, you may be right. But it works as a throwaway line, too.)

Here in the ninth episode, Firespiders Unleashed (available through Friday for FREE at Amazon.com - free, free, free, download it now, limited time only, act now!), we get the payoff on that line as we discover Mychus had a daughter.

Mychus, of course, is the ancient warrior with amazing powers whose body Paul Phillips borrows when he goes into action as Myke Phoenix, as the Phoenix and the Soulkeeper of Kiribati have explained over the years. What they never got around to mentioning was that there was another ancient body available in case the forces of evil in the world got too much for one superhero to handle alone.

Dr. Terri Travers would be aghast if I referred to her alter ego as Myke Phoenix's sidekick, but it is safe to say that in Firespiders Unleashed we complete the little team that will work together to combat the great menaces that face Astor City in the concluding episodes of Year of the Dinosaur: March of the Alien Dead, Claws of Death, and Talons of Justice.

I'd love to entertain you with these four stories, and even more so with the entire 12-story arc that will be collected next week, but first things first: Get a taste for the adventure for free this week by downloading Firespiders Unleashed at Amazon.com. We can talk after you finish reading.

What a Year of the Dinosaur it has been

And so it is finished. My 12-story Myke Phoenix series -- quantity-wise the most ambitious writing project I've ever undertaken -- is out there ready to be consumed in small bites or in one ginormous collection.

For those of you who've been waiting for an enticement to get on the Myke Phoenix bandwagon, now through Friday you can sample Firespiders Unleashed, Chapter 9 of the dodecology, for free. My hope, of course, is that you will be sufficiently motivated to jump into chapters 10-12 for a breathtaking 99 cents each, but even if you don't, I hope you'll take advantage of this chance to check it out for nada.

It's all collected in Year of the Dinosaur, which you can pre-order now for download into your Kindle app on Nov. 18. The $4.99 cover price is less than half what you'd pay for all 12 episodes separately, plus you get the short-short story "A Myke Phoenix Christmas" and some other DVD extras. The downside is you have to wait an extra week, and the big finale is here now.

Paul Phillips, Quincy Quackenbos and the denizens of Astor City have been wandering around in my mind for 25 years, and the indie publishing revolution allowed me to bring those early stories to the rest of the world in 2008. It has been a hoot expanding that little universe over the past year or so, and though the wheels fell off my "write a new adventure every month" goal last spring, I did manage to make my "in your Kindle for the Christmas 2014 shopping season" deadline.

The writer breathes a sigh of relief, releases his work to the world, and thinks, what next?

The market will decide if the hints of future fun that I've sprinkled through the denouement of this project are sufficient to warrant another round of Myke Phoenix Adventures. In the meantime I have other things on my mind, stories and projects and observations that have settled on the back burner while I have put Myke and his friends through their paces. I am Ray Bradbury at the beginning of his TV episodes, looking around the cluttered attic to decide what story to tell next.

In the meantime I hope you'll take advantage of this opportunity to sample the Myke Phoenix phenomenon risk-free (ends after Friday, Nov. 14). My whimsical soul believes you'll have a good time, but only you can answer that question. Bon appetit!

I have been busy

... It only appears that I have not, since the only change to this blog in the last three weeks has been that the deadline dates for Myke Phoenix #10-12 keep moving back.

Here are two of the three covers, plus a pledge: Firespiders Unleashed will be available for free during the first five days of November, and at least these two stories – and probably the third – will arrive then, too.

My, what an interesting year it has been!

The new covers #1: The Song of the Serial Kisser

I’ve redone the covers of the first five episodes of our current Myke Phoenix saga. Here’s The Song of the Serial Kisser.

I admit this is a weird story to begin a new series. As the pilot episode of a quirky, whimsical superhero adventure, it’s an epic fail. It’s a sometimes dark tale that parodies a classic film about the search for a serial killer, and the superhero doesn’t appear until the final act.

If you’re looking to start with a story that is more of a “normal” episode, you’re better off reading Duck Man Walking or Firespiders or Invasion of the Body Borrowers.

But this is the story that came out first, after about 20 years of trying to advance the story I first set down in The Adventures of Myke Phoenix. I moved the timeline forward 18 years and caught up with Paul Phillips and Dana Dunsmore as they grappled with a serial kisser. I also planted some seeds that grew over 11 more episodes to become The Year of the Dinosaur, a dodecology.

In addition to the new cover, this edition of Serial Kisser is restructured and tweaked in minor ways to follow the four-act format that the rest of the series follows.

I tried to make each episode stand alone, so you can join at any point. But if you want to experience the adventures in the order I wrote them, this is the place to start.

Firespiders Unleashed

The firespiders are back in Astor City. Months ago an elephant-sized spider the size of, well, an elephant terrorized the downtown area and wreaked havoc on the arachnophobia of thousands. The new wave of fire-breathing, eight-legged creatures is not as large but far more plentiful.

When a cluster of dozens of spiders overwhelms a wedding party, the situation calls for superpowered intervention. Meanwhile, Dr. Terri Travers, badly injured in the first spider attack, samples a cure that her biologist father believes could repair her crippled hand – and (as usually happens when science meets superhero fable) something goes terribly wrong.

For years Myke Phoenix has been fighting the forces of evil in the world alone, commissioned by a mysterious mythical bird and endowed with the body and powers of an ancient super-warrior. Almost nothing can penetrate his skin and he has strength and speed beyond those of mere mortals, but when a college campus is overrun, even he can’t stop the menace by himself. The solution will surprise and delight.

Got an hour? Dive into the world of Myke Phoenix, and come back every month for more.

3 things to know about the next Myke Phoenix adventure

OK, four – it's got an awesome cover, as people who subscribe to the Astor City Beacon already know.

1. This is the beginning of a saga within a saga that leads into the next Myke Phoenix saga.

2. The original Firespiders had two giant spiders that breathe fire. This one has several more, as you read in the prologue excerpt the other day.

3. The most important plot twist does not involve the firespiders. Well, it does, but not directly. Well, maybe directly. (Why does the cover feature a woman's silhouette?)

I believe you'll find this one will be worth the extra month's wait.

Firespiders Unleashed: (Part of) the Prologue

The next episode in the Myke Phoenix saga is officially one month late, but I have it on good authority that it will definitely arrive less than two months late. Because you've been so patient (or don't care to the point where you still haven't even sampled these wonderful tales), here is a significant chunk (but not all) of the prologue to Firespiders Unleashed:

. . .

Arnie Rogers was still getting used to being the sheriff of Astor County. He had been perfectly happy being chief deputy and letting his old boss Rod Skjorte handle all the administrative stuff, but then Rod had to get himself killed when aliens invaded town. That fact in itself was very difficult to accept.

It had been a weird year anyway, starting with that nutbag who walked around kissing women. That goofy superhero had to break up a fight when a bunch of angry boyfriends and husbands surrounded the guy. That was nothing next to the giant spiders that spit fire, the aliens, the big storm, the bridge collapse – what was happening to his sleepy little town?

When the phone rang in the middle of the night, it was never a good sign.

“Rogers,” he muttered into the phone, hanging onto the last shreds of a dream where he was on a Hawaiian beach with his wife 25 years ago, when they both were young and lean.

The accidental book cover

Willow and Dejah were wrestling, as dogs and puppies are wont to do, and I grabbed the camera to see if I could get them in action. For the most part, the session was a failure. They wouldn’t turn their faces toward me, and just as I clicked the photo they would move. Wrestling dogs don’t pause to pose.

When I looked at the dismal results of the session, however, one shot popped out at me – the puppy, caught in mid-snarl in a blur. It was not long after she’d had emergency surgery, and she still was wearing the cone that protected her stitches. Through the blur you could see her eyes, wide with the frustration of wanting to get to Willow through the cone.

I knew I would be writing a story about a man who makes the transition from one life to the next and becomes a puppy trying to solve his own murder. And an ebook cover was born.

Sometimes artwork is the result of painstaking planning and careful thought. Sometimes you get lucky.


The Puppy Cried ‘Murder’ is available now at an ebook distributor near you.

I drive me crazy

I went looking for an old folder in the basement boxes the other day, and I found a note to myself that looked very familiar.

It had a plan to get out of debt by a certain date. It had a goal to write a certain amount of creative content every day. It had a list of stuff that needed to be done around the house. It had a target weight goal. And it had a strong exhortation: “DO THIS!”

Except for the specific details, I could have written the note yesterday.

The date on the note was October 1989.

Today, I’m not out of debt, I still have goals for creative content and household contributions, and I still from time to time slap myself upside the head and say “WHY AREN’T YOU DOING THIS?”

I’m no slouch. I meet content goals every day at the day job, and nobody has to kick me in the ass to get that stuff done, not even myself. But the personal stuff? The dream of making a living with my creativity? The desire to be a better mate? Doing something about the extra chin and the beer belly? So reliable, I am not. (A belated little nod to Star Wars Day, there.)

That’s why I went into full panic mode a month ago when it looked like I was going to miss deadline on The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur. For at least a quarter century I have hectored myself to take my dreams and personal life more seriously. And lately I finally feel like a grownup because so far I’ve met the goal I set at the beginning of the year – write a 10,000 word Myke Phoenix story and release it on the first Monday of the month – and I like feeling like a grownup.

(Well, OK, I acknowledge I prefer feeling like a big kid, but grownups have to fulfill their commitments, not only to others but to themselves.)

So releasing the talking dinosaur story on April 7 was a big deal, and I was pleased with myself that I released another story a little more quietly on May 5, and I’m excited about my plans for June 2.

I think I’m not the only guy who ever let the quotidian of everyday life get in the way of his hopes and desires. So I feel like maybe if I keep making this monthly deadline, I can be an example you can pin your hopes on, too: If the guy with the 50-60 hour a week editor’s job can carve out time to write his version of the Great American Novel, maybe you can, too. So I have to make that goal so I don’t let you down, either. 

It’s easy to be the brand I’ve earned over the years – the guy who promises a sequel to his novel or a weekly podcast, gets started and then peters out. Time for a new brand, the author of the monthly Myke Phoenix adventures, and maybe some other stuff down the pike.

I don’t care if the ebooks don’t sell and I make 5 bucks a quarter in royalties, because that’s not the point at this stage. If you want to try out the stories, I sure won’t object. But as a wiser kid than I once said, the journey is the reward, and my joy for now is in staying on the path.

It's he-ere: The Second Warrior

a k a Myke Phoenix #7, the latest in my current dodecalogy. Slowly but surely behind the scenes, the plot is thickening.

Load up your Kindle here.

Coming Monday: The Second Warrior (Myke Phoenix #7)

Available Monday at Amazon and Kobo, the latest in this year's Myke Phoenix dodecalogy. A brief excerpt:

“And what are you, then, telling me all this?”

“I am the Second Soulkeeper, and you shall be the Second Warrior, fighting side by side with Myke Phoenix.”

“What?”

“Mychus had a powerful ally named Coronius. All these years while Mychus has walked the Earth again, the powers that formed this miracle have been preparing the second ancient for this moment, the moment when evil in the world is becoming palpable and a worthy holder is needed to bear Coronius’ standard.”

Read the rest of the excerpt here.

Release party: The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur

Today at last, at Amazon and Kobo, you can snag a tale decades in the making – the legendary Myke Phoenix adventure, The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur.

It was a cast of a dinosaur foot that resembled the impossible cast made from a footprint of the invisible monster in the classic science fiction film Forbidden Planet. But this cast was on display in a “Dinosaurs!” exhibit at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, sometime in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

At the time I was tinkering with the idea of creating a superhero series, and every hero needs an arch-nemesis. Here was an ancient creature built for speed and craftiness, armed with a deadly-looking talon on its feet so formidable that the beast was given the name Deinonychus – the terrible claw.

Read more here.

4 days to go - In the nick of time

It is with considerable relief that I can now announce there need be no delay in the April 7 release date for The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur, the sixth in the current 12-story series of Adventures of Myke Phoenix, protector of Astor City and super guy extraordinaire.

I will spend the next three days reviewing and preparing this story-you-must-read-if-you-read-no-other-Myke-Phoenix-story for its scheduled release Monday at Amazon and Kobo.

Thank you for your patience this past week as I suspended all other musings about the world to concentrate on wrestling the dinosaur to the ground and extracting her story to share with the world. It has been an interesting exercise that taught me a few things about what it will take to get back on schedule and complete the entire arc on time. I am a fool for asking a mere 99 cents for this amazing tale, but it is no surprise to me that I am a fool.

I certainly encourage you to take advantage of the links in the right column to introduce yourself to the legend of Myke Phoenix. I try to write these stories in such a way that you can join in at any time, but why deprive yourself of the pleasure of the entire journey?

Objective: Release The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur on April 7
This morning's output: 1,456 words, finished first draft.
Session: Approximately 2 hours.
Total words to date: 13,555 (goal 13,500)  

Talking dinosaur update 8 - 5 days to release date

© Ralf Kraft | Dreamstime.com

I have waited 20 years to say it, and only the epilogue remains to be written of the first draft and the speaking of the word: "Finished." This darkest Myke Phoenix story of deadly danger has eluded my grasp since I first conceived of the prehistoric predator who runs Astor City's underworld. I'm hoping this last desperate plunge of authorial activity will give it the punch The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur has always needed.

This story is so special, so important to the Myke mythos, that I'm going to experiment with putting out a print edition. I'm not confident it can be available Monday, when the ebook comes out, but certainly by the end of next week. So if you prefer the crispness of ink on paper to the plastic feel of e-ink, wait a few extra days.

Objective: Release The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur on April 7
This morning's output: 432 words, finished first draft of Act 5.
Session: Approximately 25 minutes.
Total words to date: 12,099 (goal 13,500)