The Return of Las Cruces Comic Con

This weekend, Las Cruces Comic Con returns. I’m very excited because this is our hometown convention and I love connecting with people right here in Las Cruces. The last time the convention was held was five years ago in 2017. Unfortunately, I missed that year because I’d already made a commitment to be at another convention that same weekend. In 2018, the City of Las Cruces began renovating the visitor center, which we knew could take a couple of years. Then 2020 happened to further delay things. So, I’m delighted the convention is returning this year and I’m delighted to be able to participate.

Las Cruces Comic Con will be taking place this Saturday and Sunday, August 20 to 21 at the Las Cruces Convention Center. Guest include Aleks Paunovic who has appeared in such shows as Battlestar Galactica and Van Helsing, Joe Station who has been an artist for DC Comics and drew Dick Tracy in syndicated newspaper strips for ten years, and Cris George who has done voice work in such anime series as My Hero Academia, One Piece, and Dragon Ball: Super. You can get more details about the convention at: https://www.lascrucescomiccon.com

I will be sharing a table in the dealer’s room with Tamsin L. Silver. Be sure to drop by and see the amazing selection of books and story collections we have available. We’ll be at Booth 37. Other great vendors at the convention include Zoodoo Dolls, Asylum Comics, and Portillo’s Artisan Jerky.

For those who don’t know Tamsin, she is a writer of Urban Fantasy, YA Urban Fantasy, and Historical Fantasy. Originally from Michigan, Tamsin has lived in the Carolinas (North & South), New York City, and now resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She holds a BA in Theatre and Secondary Education (with a minor in Creative Writing and Shakespeare) from Winthrop University in South Carolina and has taught both middle and high school drama. She’s the author of such books as The Curse of Billy the Kid and Mark of the Necromancer. You can learn more about her at https://tamsinsilver.com. She always has great things to say on panels and it’s awesome to have her discuss her thoughts on writing speculative fiction at Las Cruces Comic Con.

Tamsin and I will also be hosting two writing panels during the convention. Just to note, there is only one panel room at this convention. The schedule is:

Saturday, August 20

4-5pm – Getting to Know the Characters in your Head: Authors Tamsin Silver and David Lee Summers discuss how to breathe life into characters you’re writing no matter how far from your own experience they may be.

Sunday, August 21

1-2pm – I have an idea, now what? Authors David Lee Summers and Tamsin Silver discuss how to develop your cool ideas into really awesome stories or novels.

If you’re in Las Cruces this coming weekend, I hope to see you at Las Cruces Comic Con!

The City of Crosses

Vampires of the Scarlet Order

I’ve told the origin story of my novel, Vampires of the Scarlet Order, numerous times. In short, it got its start in early 2000 during a conversation with a fellow author. We began to imagine what a vampire would make of Las Cruces, which is Spanish for “the crosses.” Soon after that discussion, a title popped into my mind, “Vampire in the City of Crosses.” That title demanded an exploration of vampires and their relationship to crosses.

Over the years in movies and books, vampires have had many different reactions to crosses. In Hammer Studio’s Dracula films, Peter Cushing could practically grab any two sticks and put them together into a cross form, which would make Christopher Lee cower in fear. Some books I’ve read have suggested that vampires are repelled by any faith. Crosses then serve as a focal point for Christian faith. In the great Doctor Who vampire story, “The Curse of Fenric,” a Soviet agent repels vampires with a hammer and sickle! Then there’s Louis in Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire who declares his fondness for crosses. So I wanted to explore this idea of vampires and crosses.

When I moved to Las Cruces in the mid-1990s, Main Street stopped at downtown. Traffic had been routed to two side streets and a pedestrian mall had been installed. Unfortunately, once that had been done, most of the businesses moved away to other parts of town. The only reason to go to the mall at the time was to visit an amazing used bookstore called COAS or the farmer’s and craft market held on weekends. That said, the place where traffic was diverted had three flower beds in the form of giant crosses. Here they are in a photo courtesy courtesy fellow Las Cruces author David G. Thomas.

David G. Thomas has several other photos of downtown from this period in the post https://lascrucesblog.com/history/2007/las-cruces-worst-mistake/

If you’re at all interested in the history of Southern New Mexico, where people like Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett lived, it’s well worth reading David’s blog at https://lascrucesblog.com

I don’t want to throw out any spoilers, but while the vampire Daniel learned there’s a good reason to be cautious around crosses in the story “Vampire in the City of Crosses,” I had to send him on a longer quest to learn why they have those properties. After his encounter with the cross, the vampire Mercy resuscitates Daniel at a nearby memorial, commemorating the Don Juan de Oñate’s entrance into New Mexico. I picked the location because both the vampires Mercy and Rudolfo actually would have experienced the events the memorial commemorated. The memorial has since been moved, but here’s what it looked like in the early 2000s when we took a friend to see it.

At the time, the memorial sat next to an abandoned theater, which serves as a lair for a family of vampires in the novel. Today, the Rio Grande Theater is a nice venue for plays and performances, but at the time of the story, it was gutted on the inside and boarded up on the outside. Here’s the memorial next to the theater.

The work on the theater was on-again, off-again over the years as funding came and went. I met a worker at the time, who told me whenever he was in there, he could imagine spectral eyes watching him from the balcony. Here’s the boarded up front of the theater as it appeared at the time of the novel.

If you’d like to delve into the world of the Scarlet Order Vampires, this is a great month to do so. The novel is the featured selection of the Vampyre Library Book Club. The club is all online at Facebook and you can join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/663608917753704/. If you want to learn more about the novel, visit: http://davidleesummers.com/VSO.html.

Vampires of the Scarlet Order’s Fifteenth Anniversary

Vampires of the Scarlet Order

Over the past year, I’ve been so focused on the silver anniversary of my first novel, The Pirates of Sufiro, that I almost forgot that another novel of mine also celebrates a milestone this year. With fifteen years in print, Vampires of the Scarlet Order celebrates its crystal anniversary, which seems appropriate given a scene in the novel where the vampire Rudolfo is transported to a parallel universe and encounters a world of crystal palaces.

Vampires of the Scarlet Order got its start in my Las Cruces, New Mexico home in the spring of 2000. I was talking to my friend Janni Lee Simner about writing. As the conversation progressed, the subject of vampires came up and Janni said, “I wonder what vampires would make of Las Cruces, being the city of crosses and all.” We knocked a few possibilities around and finally she said that if a story idea came to mind, I was welcome to it. She had no plans to write a vampire story. A few days later, I drove to work at Apache Point Observatory and had the idea of a vampire telescope operator who moves to Las Cruces to work at a small observatory. I wrote up the story and called it “Vampire in the City of Crosses.” In 2001, I sold it to Margaret L. Carter, editor of The Vampire’s Crypt.

Over the next two years, I wrote six more stories set in the same vampire world. “Vampires in the World of Dreams” and “The Weeping Woman” both appeared The Vampire’s Crypt. “Pat, Marcella, and the Kid” and “The Scarlet Order” both ran in Night to Dawn magazine. “The Last Conquistador” ran in Parchment Symbols magazine and “Bat Flight South of Roswell” was published as a stand-alone chapbook from Anxiety Publications. These stories became the core of Vampires of the Scarlet Order.

The Vampire’s Crypt

Over the next year, I updated the stories, figured out how they tied together and then assembled them into the novel Vampires of the Scarlet Order. The novel as assembled in 2005 tells the story of how a band of vampire mercenaries working for the Spanish Inquisition went their separate ways only to be reunited in the early twentieth century when the government figures out a way to build vampire-like super-soldiers who threaten world security and peace.

Earlier this year, my contract for Vampires of the Scarlet Order reached the end of its term with Lachesis Publishing and they returned the publishing rights to me. So, I set out to reedit and revise the novel. Even though I didn’t stop to think about this being an anniversary year, the novel is getting a special anniversary release with a brand new cover. Unlike The Pirates of Sufiro, I did not heavily revise the actual prose of Vampires of the Scarlet Order. However, given that my first vampire novel was very much a fix-up novel composed of short stories from three narrative arcs, I felt I could present the stories in a more effective order. I’ll discuss that on Saturday and show off the new cover by Chaz Kemp. If you would like a sneak peek at the new edition, and even learn how you can get your hands on an early copy, drop by http://www.davidleesummers.com/VSO.html

Celebration in Isolation

In my post one week ago, I mentioned that my family was celebrating numerous anniversaries and milestones. It should come as no surprise that these celebrations had to be adjusted in the wake of restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, we did our best to mark the occasions in a suitable fashion.

Before I continue, I note that as I write this, the death toll from COVID-19 approaches 100,000 in the United States. I’m very sorry for those who have lost loved ones at this difficult time. At the same time, I’m grateful to all those who take social distancing guidelines seriously so that we don’t find ourselves in an even worse situation.

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Looking it up on line, the thirtieth is the Pearl Anniversary. Because my wife and I are fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, this brought to mind Dr. Pearl Forrester, the evil genius who sent cheesy movies to the Satellite of Love during the show’s SyFy Channel years. With this in mind, my wife and I decided to get each other Mystery Science Theater 3000-themed gifts. We ended up getting the two Netflix seasons of the show along with a 1000-piece puzzle to work on together.

Although it wasn’t technically an anniversary present, the same day as the puzzle and movies arrived in the mail, my wife bought me the code to upgrade my copy of Microsoft Word to the 2019 version. I discovered that the software has a feature that will read the text to you. I’ve long been an advocate for reading your own work aloud when you edit, but this is a nice additional tool. It has already helped me find unintended commas or wrong words in documents I’ve edited. This looks like a nice feature for an author to add to their toolkit and I likely will say more once I gain more experience with it.

Normally we would go out to dinner for our anniversary, and while there are some restaurants opening up with some seating, we decided this wasn’t the time to do that. We grilled steaks for our anniversary and then ordered a to-go meal from one of our favorite restaurants two day later when our daughter graduated from high school.

Las Cruces High School held a “drive-thru” graduation. Parents drove the graduating seniors through the line in cars. My daughter wanted me to drive her through in my Smart Car with its airship pirate logos. A masked and gloved staff member handed out the papers and flowers. I drove the car, so this marked the first time I went through a graduation procession since my own university graduation.

I wrapped up last week with another interview at Las Cruces Community Radio Station 101.5FM KTAL-LP. “All About Books” host Lynn Moorer interviewed me about my novel Firebrandt’s Legacy. Even though this was an in-studio interview, we maintained good social distancing. We sat well over 6-feet apart and she made sure to clean the chair and microphone I used. In the interview, Lynn was especially interested in the jumps ships in my universe use to move faster than the speed of light. My means of faster-than-light travel was an idea I came up with while studying General Relativity in grad school at New Mexico Tech. You may listen to the entire interview at: https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/all-about-books-david-lee-summers9615141

You can learn more about the novel, read a sample chapter, and find out where you can obtain a copy of your own at: http://davidleesummers.com/Firebrandts-Legacy.html

Radio Interviews

One of the difficult things about the current COVID-19 crisis has been the cancellation or postponing of events all around the country. Last weekend, I had been scheduled to attend El Paso Comic Con. Hopefully, circumstances will allow me to make the rescheduled event in October. These events are vitally important to independent authors and publishers. They’re my opportunity to meet you face to face and talk to you about the books I’ve written and those written by others that I’ve felt passionate enough about to publish.

A little over a week ago, I made a pleasant discovery. Here at the web journal, I’ve promoted interviews I’ve done on Lynn Moorer’s show, “All About Books” at Las Cruces Community Radio Station KTAL-LP 101.5 FM. Thanks to the internet, you didn’t have to be in Las Cruces to hear these shows, you could stream them as they aired. Unfortunately, you did have to listen to them at the time they aired. I have now discovered that Radio Que Tal has archived many of its shows and you can now listen to two of my interviews at your leisure. Lynn asks me about the books and has me give a couple of readings. It may not be quite as good as meeting me face to face at a convention, but it will give you a taste and best of all, you can listen on your schedule!

• 

• 

• 

The older interview featured on line is for my steampunk novel Owl Riders. This novel is the fourth in my Clockwork Legion steampunk series, but it’s set about a decade after the other books in the series, so it stands very much alone. Taking place in 1885 with protagonists Fatemeh and Ramon Morales settled in New Orleans, Ramon, now a U. S. Assistant Attorney, is called upon to settle a dispute between the Chiracahua Apache and the U. S. Army over a sliver of land in southern Arizona.  Healer and pharmacist Fatemeh is kidnapped by Hamid Farzan, a Persian merchant to whom she was originally betrothed.  Fatemeh’s and Ramon’s daughter Alethea uses her intelligence and resourcefulness to help rescue her mother. You can listen to the interview at: http://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/all-about-books-david-lee-summers

In October, Lynn spoke with me about my science fiction adventure, The Solar Sea, the first in a series, about a solar sail ship, the Aristarchus, which travels to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, battling hazards in space amidst conflict among crew members.  As the fascinating story develops, readers learn how whales and their songs fit into the universe and into the hierarchy of beings. You can listen to this interview at: http://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/all-about-books-david-lee-summers-author-of-the-solar-sea

I’ll be visiting with Lynn next month to talk about the next book in this universe, Firebrandt’s Legacy. That interview is scheduled for May 22 at 12:30pm Mountain Daylight Time. Hopefully I’ll be able to share an archive link soon after the interview airs, but you can mark your calendars and listen live at: http://www.lccommunityradio.org/listen.html

Another thing I’m pleased to announce is that my website http://www.davidleesummers.com now lives on a devoted web server. Until about a week ago, I relied on web forwarding from the name registrar to point to my site at the internet service provider. Unfortunately, the forwarding wasn’t very reliable and there were times it just didn’t work, making it look like my website was down. Links to my site throughout the web journal should work much better now.

Holiday Owls

Since today is Christmas Eve, I thought it would be fitting to share a short excerpt from my novel Owl Dance. In this scene, Ramon and Fatemeh find themselves on the run with little money in San Francisco. It’s a simple moment that gets to the heart of the season. Keep reading after the segment to learn about a special event later this week.

---

Ramon returned to the room he shared with Fatemeh late on Christmas Eve. Fatemeh noticed he wore a new pair of glasses. Like his old pair, they were round and gave his face an owlish appearance. He held his hands behind his back. Fatemeh stood and wrapped her arms around Ramon, but was surprised when he didn’t return the embrace. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Ramon’s voice held a sly edge.

“It looks like you were successful in finding new glasses.”

 Ramon smiled.“Yes, these are even better than the old ones.” He shrugged. “The optometrist thinks my eyes have been getting a little worse.”

“That’s too bad.” Fatemeh returned to her chair.

“However, I did have enough money left over to get you something.” He brought his arms out from behind his back. In his hand was a narrow box, about eight inches long. “Merry Christmas!” Just then he pulled the box back. “Do Bahá’ís celebrate Christmas?”

“Not normally,”said Fatemeh, “but as I’ve said, we respect the teachings of Jesus. I’m happy to celebrate his birth with you, Ramon.” She held out her hand and Ramon handed her the box. She opened it and saw a necklace. Adorning it was a hand-carved wooden bead in the shape of an owl.

“I bought the necklace. I carved the owl myself, though.”

“It’s very sweet.” Fatemeh smiled and put the necklace on. She stood and kissed Ramon, but held his hands as they parted. “How is our money doing?”

“I think I can find a job, but it’s not going to pay much,” admitted Ramon. “We could stay here about six more days and I could keep looking, or we could move on.”

“I like the idea of moving on.” Fatemeh returned to her chair. “I really didn’t like the reception we had on our first day and it’s loud here, even late at night.” She looked out the window at a saloon across the street.

“Where would you like to go?”

She pulled out a map and set it on the small table between the room’s two chairs. “What do you know about Los Angeles?”

“It’s a small town. There’s some farms and some industrial work.” Ramon shrugged.

“What does Los Angeles mean?”

“It means ‘belonging to the angels,’ The name’s short for something like town of the queen of angels.”

“Sounds lovely. Can we leave tomorrow?”

Ramon laughed.“Tomorrow’s Christmas. I doubt the trains are even running. What about the next day?”

“That sounds perfect.” Fatemeh put her hand to the new necklace. “I’m afraid I didn’t get you a present. What else do people do on Christmas?”

“We sing songs.” Ramon sat in the empty chair next to Fatemeh.

“Teach me a Christmas song worthy of the angels, Ramon.”

---

I hope you enjoyed this little snippet of Owl Dance. On Friday this week, Lynn Moorer of KTAL Radio in Las Cruces will interview me about the fourth book of the series, Owl Riders. If you’re in Las Cruces, you can listen from 12:30-1:00pm mountain standard time by tuning in to 101.5 FM on your radio dial. If you aren’t in Las Cruces, or just don’t listen to shows on the radio, you can stream the show at  https://www.lccommunityradio.org/stream.html. I had a great time earlier this year when I spoke to Lynn about The Brazen Shark. Be sure to mark your calendars so you can catch the show live!

Las Cruces Events

I’ve been on the road a lot this past month, so I’m looking forward to a week at home. That said, a week at home doesn’t mean a break from promoting books. It just means I’ll be promoting them in my hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico at a pair of terrific events.

The first event is a signing at COAS Books downtown at 317 North Main Street from 10am until noon on Saturday, September 15. What’s especially fun about this event is that it happens during the Farmer’s and Craft Market downtown, so my daughter will be selling her crochet items nearby.

The second event will be the fifth annual Celebrate Authors event held in the Roadrunner Room of the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library at 200 E. Picacho Avenue from 2-4pm on Sunday, September 16. There will be 30 authors in all at this event including my friend R.H. Webster. The event is hosted by the Friends of the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library and they always provide a wide range of tasty snacks. It’s a great opportunity to discover local authors and discover what they’re doing.

I will have a selection of all my books at both of these events. That said, I will be featuring three recent releases.

Owl Riders

First is my latest novel, the steampunk adventure Owl Riders. In the year 1885, Apaches have captured a large swath of Southern Arizona and former lawman Ramon Morales must negotiate peace. Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, his wife is kidnapped by a man from her native Persia. A band of outlaws and pirates called the Owl Riders must assemble to reunite Ramon and his wife so they can tame the Wild West.

The Solar Sea

The next book I’ll be featuring is the reissue of my novel The Solar Sea. Whales around the world changed their songs the day scientists announced the discovery of powerful new particles around Saturn’s largest moon which could solve Earth’s energy needs. The Quinn Corporation rushes to build a solar sail space craft to unlock the secrets of these strange new particles. Along the way, they discover humans may not be alone in the solar system.

Straight Outta Tombstone

Last but not least, the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone is now out in a mass market paperback edition. These tales may not be the ones your grandpappy spun around the chuck wagon campfire, unless he was talking about soul-sucking ghosts, steam-powered demons, and wayward aliens! This collection of weird western short stories features tales by Jim Butcher, Larry Correia, Alan Dean Foster, Kevin J. Anderson and more. Among the tales is my take on the disappearance of Albert J. Fountain, best known from history as Billy the Kid’s defense attorney.

If you’re in Las Cruces, New Mexico next weekend, I hope I’ll see you at COAS Books, the Branigan Library, or both!

Gamera

I think it’s fair to say that I grew up watching a lot of media from Japan. A lot was anime such as Tetsujin 28, Mach Go, Go, Go, and Gatchaman, perhaps better known here in the United States as Gigantor, Speed Racer, and Battle of the Planets respectively. However, I can’t overlook the role of giant monsters, or kaiju. Godzilla is clearly the most famous, but when I was a kid, my hero was Gamera.

I was thrilled to find Blu-ray copies of Gamera’s first eight films a few weeks ago. I’ve slowly been working my way through them. I’ve run into some people who think Gamera is part of the menagerie who battled Godzilla during his ongoing reign as King of Monsters. In fact, Gamera was the property of an altogether different movie studio. Godzilla’s stories were filmed at Toho Studios. Gamera was competitor Daiei’s entry into the kaiju arena.

For those not familiar with Gamera, he’s a giant fire-breathing turtle with tusks awakened from arctic ice during a dogfight between US and Soviet forces. Although he goes on a rampage for energy in the first film, he seems to have a soft spot for humans, and children in particular. In later films of the series, he’s revealed to be something of a guardian for humanity, protecting them from other monsters. The first eight films take place during Japan’s Shōwa period—the reign of Emperor Hirohito.

To be perfectly honest, the first eight Gamera films are far from great cinema. There’s a good reason several of them were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, I’ve long had the sense that the people behind the film series knew their limitations and had fun with them. At one point Gamera defeats a shark monster called Zigra, then plays a couple of bars of his own theme song on its back. Afterwards, he does a little dance. Another great moment comes in Gamera Super Monster when Gamera is ordered to go on a rampage by aliens and knocks over a sandwich board advertising a Godzilla film. Scenes like these make me think the Shōwa Gamera films have more in common with the 1960’s televised Batman than with films like Manos: The Hands of Fate filmed just down the road in El Paso, Texas.

As it turns out, Gamera was reimagined for a trilogy of really good films in the 1990s. These Heisei-era Gamera films gave a solid backstory to the titular turtle. He still attempts to protect mankind as a whole, but he’s still a giant monster and is prone to mass destruction. Not everyone likes Gamera in these films. The Heisei-era Gamera films also presented some cool glimpses into life in many different parts of Japan. I highly recommend Gamera: Guardian of the Universe and its two sequels.

My love of these films is a small part of what makes me the writer I am today. As a kid, I was drawn to the action and good-natured humor of these films. If it weren’t for these films, I probably wouldn’t have sought out more serious Japanese films like those of Akira Kurosawa, which gave me a deeper appreciation of Japanese culture and storytelling. Writing what we know is, among other things, writing what interests us. So watching Gamera films as a kid, was a first step toward writing my novel The Brazen Shark about samurai resisting cultural change in an alternate, steampunk Japan.

If you’d like to learn more about The Brazen Shark and my inspirations for the novel, I’ll be interviewed on the radio this Friday, July 13 on KTAL Community Radio from 12:30 to 1:00pm Mountain Daylight Time. My friends in Las Cruces can listen on the radio on 101.5 FM. For my friends outside the area, you can listen at: https://www.lccommunityradio.org/stream.html

Branigan Library Book Talk on Wednesday

On Wednesday, June 13 at 1:30pm, the Friends of the Branigan Library in Las Cruces, New Mexico have invited me to present a Book Talk about my Clockwork Legion novels. I’ll be presenting at the library’s main branch at the corner of Picacho and Main Streets.

I’m proud to have called the Mesilla Valley my home for the last 23 years. It’s a real honor to give a presentation and reading in my home town. Garnering an interest in history from family trips as a child, I brought my interests together in the Clockwork Legion novels. The Clockwork Legion series includes four novels: Owl Dance, Lightning Wolves, The Brazen Shark, and Owl Riders. In the Clockwork Legion novels I combine science fiction and history to imagine a world that wasn’t, but could have been, weaving stories reminiscent of those told by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

The Clockwork Legion novels follow the adventures of Ramon Morales, a former sheriff of Socorro, and Fatemeh Karimi, a healer from Persia. During their adventures together, they meet inventors, outcasts, misfits, and even pirates who they gather together when the Russians use airships to invade the Civil War-ravaged United States in 1877.

The third novel in the series, The Brazen Shark, was voted Best Steampunk Novel in the 2017 Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll. The fourth novel in the series, Owl Riders, was just released. I’m an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a former vice president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. My poems have been nominated for the Rhysling and Dwarf Stars Awards by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

In my presentation, I plan to talk about the history of steampunk and weird western stories. I also plan to talk about how I got started writing steampunk and weird westerns in general as well as how the Clockwork Legion novels in particular came about. I’ll give a couple of readings and I will have books available for sale at the talk. I gather refreshments will be served as well. If you’re in Las Cruces, I hope you’ll join me for this fun Book Talk. I look forward to meeting you.

If you want to learn more about the books before the talk, visit: http://www.davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Las Cruces Book Signings

For my friends here in Las Cruces, I hope you’ll join me today for my signing and informal discussion of “Fountains of Blood” from the anthology Straight Outta Tombstone at the NMSU Campus Bookstore from 1:00-3:00pm. I’ll also have copies of Owl Dance and Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order if you want to know more about the characters who appear in the story.

If you can’t make that, or you’re looking for books I didn’t have available at the NMSU signing, I’ll be at COAS Bookstore downtown next Saturday, October 21 during the Farmer’s Market from 10am until noon. Noon isn’t a hard cut off, I’m happy to stay as long as there’s a demand, but don’t delay!

The picture above is the poster I made for the signing. It features a sneak peek at the trailer we did for The Astronomer’s Crypt. Claire is looking out the control room door, considering whether or not to investigate the strange noises she’s heard. If things stay on schedule, we’ll be debuting the trailer at TusCon in Tucson, Arizona next month.

As the poster implies, the primary focus of the signing will be on The Astronomer’s Crypt since it’s such a great book for getting into the Halloween spirit. I’ll also have my other books along with me, including Maximum Velocity: The Best of the Full-Throttle Space Tales. As always, if there’s a book you’re looking for and you’ll be there, drop me a note in the comments and I’ll make every effort to have it available.