Fight Card Books has released the cover to the upcoming paperback edition of Irish Dukes by Mike Faricy. Currently available as an ebook, Irish Dukes will have a paperback release in the near future.

ABOUT FIGHT CARD: IRISH DUKES–
Dublin, Ireland, 1951

After winning his latest bout in Berlin, US Army boxing champ Sergeant Kevin Crowley is on military leave in Ireland.  Raised in St. Vincent’s Asylum For Boys in Chicago, he has finally returned to his place of birth, where he is sure he will find the family he never knew and lay claim to his dream of a royal fortune.

What Crowley actually finds is the fight of his life … A near destitute grandmother, crippling debt left by a father he never knew, a feisty redhead with hatred in her heart, a villainous landlord and his gang who’ll stop at nothing to settle a score going back a generation …

Kevin Crowley has never backed down in the ring or out … The treasures and truth awaiting him in Dublin are not what he first imagined.  But with his past, his family, and his future at stake, Crowley will put up his Irish dukes and fight like never before …

Learn more about the Fight Card series at www.fightcardbooks.com.
Listen to Paul Bishop’s Fight Card interview on the Earth Station One podcast here.

Terovolas, the latest novel from New Pulp Author Edward M. Erdelac is now available from JournalStone Publishing. Erdelac describes Terovolas as being an excerpt from The Van Helsing Papers. The novel covers Abraham Van Helsing’s incredible 1891 sojourn in Texas following the events portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Read an excerpt here.
Pick it up on Amazon here or from the publisher here.

Want to win a free copy? Leave a comment at the author’s blog today. At midnight on Black Friday, November 23rd, a random winner will be chosen to receive a free signed copy of Terovolas.

Good luck!

Stephen Amell as Arrow

Art Sippo wasn’t able to join The Book Cave this week due to work obligations. Rumor has it that his experiment escaped and the villagers were approaching with torches and pitchforks. Joining the podcast this week as a new member of the Book Cave crew is Bruce Rosenberger. Bruce is the host of his own podcast, KomicsKast, the show where Ric first learned what a podcast was and became hooked. In this episode, Bruce and Book Cave host Ric Croxton talk about the popular new TV series, Arrow. They cover the character of Oliver Queen from his beginning to the present. Plus, hear who Ric and many others think Queen is representing as a character on TV.

The Book Cave Episode 206: Arrow is live. Listen now at http://thebookcave.libsyn.com.

Well! They are certainly biting the dust, aren’t they, these “heroes”? A few weeks ago, I lamented the steroid-fueled fall from grace of that bicycling phenom, Lance Armstrong. And for quite a while we’ve been learning about perverse clergymen who can’t keep their cassocks buttoned and their hands to themselves. Now, we have the sorry spectacle of two of our nation’s high-profile warriors behaving like eighth graders enthralled by their female classmates’ sudden bumpiness. Could they be taking their cues from a rather impressive list of horny congressmen? Don’t know. Is this a matter of national security? Shrug. Are they dumb asses? Well, I have no rocks to throw when it comes to asinine concupiscence, so let us hurry past this and ask the big question: Are they heroes, these horn dogs?

Okay, what’s a “hero,” anyway? The answer, if you don’t mind regressing past a lot of centuries, is that a hero is something pretty close to a god. Heroes first presented themselves in mythology, and often, maybe most of the time, they were half-deity themselves: Gilgamesh and Hercules and that crowd. We worship gods; we venerate heroes. And the need to perform these acts of worship and veneration seems to be pretty deep within us. Our genes seem to like them; every culture seems to have its pantheon of über-beings. Might have some survival value – uniting folks unrelated by blood into a social unit, the better to grow crops and defend against enemies and invent video games.

And here’s where it gets vexing for those of us in the hero business: maybe the time for heroes is almost past. Not just any one hero, or group of heroes, or class of heroes – the very concept of hero. Going, going, gone. Because it’s hard to venerate something you know, in your synapses, does not exist – not just on Olympus, or heaven, but nowhere at all. Which is what contemporary experience is telling us: no Santa Claus, no Easter bunny, no heroes. Now move along…

Oh, there are still plenty of extraordinary feats to admire. Physicists and mathematicians and delving into realities that their forebears didn’t know existed and if you doubt that athletes are amazing, just check out any random season of a major sport or watch the next Olympics. But the “hero” idea has accumulated a lot of baggage over the millennia: our heroes should be noble and honest and honorable and self-sacrificing and, as the Greeks had it, should “serve and protect.” They aren’t any of that – not the ones that exist outside make-believe.

Still, we go to the movies and watch the television and get entertained by heroic figures, so, bottom line, whatever prompts us to hero worship is still with us. And if our heroes are a bit more smudged than those our fathers and grandfathers favored…hey, our air isn’t as clean as theirs, either, and we’re still breathing, at least for a while.

Before I go…did I tell you that I’ve finally seen the new Arrow TV series and…

RECOMMENDED READING: Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

Cover: Sherin Nicole

Prime Books has announced their newest anthology, Weird Detectives. The cover art by Sherin Nicole has been released as well. Look for Weird Detectives in April 2013.

PRESS RELEASE:

Paranormal investigators. Occult detectives. Ghost hunters. Monster fighters. Humans who unravel uncanny crimes and solve psychic puzzles; sleuths with supernatural powers of their own who provide services far beyond those normal gumshoes, shamuses, and Sherlocks can provide. When vampires, werewolves, and thing that go bump in the night are part of your world, criminals can be as inhuman as the crimes they commit, and magic can seep into the mundane—those who solve the mysteries, bring justice for victims or even save the world itself, might wield wands as well as firearms, utter spells or simply use their powers of deduction. Some of the best twenty-first century tales from top authors of the century’s most popular genre take you down mean streets and into strange crime scenes in this fantastic compilation.

Contents (alphabetical by author):
“Cryptic Coloration” by Elizabeth Bear
“The Key” by Ilsa J. Blick
“Mortal Bait” Richard Bowes
“Star of David” by Patricia Briggs
“Love Hurts” by Jim Butcher
“Swing Shift” by Dana Cameron
“The Necromancer’s Apprentice” by Lillian Stewart Carl
“Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell” by Simon Clark
“The Adakian Eagle” by Bradley Denton
“Hecate’s Golden Eye” by P.N. Elrod
“The Case of Death and Honey” by Neil Gaiman
“The Nightside, Needless to Say” by Simon R. Green
“Deal Breaker” by Justin Gustainis
“Death by Dahlia” by Charlaine Harris
“See Me” by Tanya Huff
“Signatures of the Dead” by Faith Hunter
“The Maltese Unicorn” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
“The Case of the Stalking Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Like a Part of the Family” by Jonathan Maberry
“The Beast of Glamis” by William Meikle
“Fox Tails” by Richard Parks
“Imposters” by Sarah Monette
“Defining Shadows” by Carrie Vaughn

Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations
Edited by Paula Guran
Type: Trade Paperback
Pages: 480
Size: 6″ X 9″
ISBN: 9781607013846
Publication Date: April 10, 2013
Price: $16.99

Learn more about Prime Books at www.prime-books.com.