HUGE EBOOK ... REALLY HUGE SPECIAL OFFER!

I've collected the first 5 full-length novels in my Raine's Landing fantasy series into one enormous Kindle eBook. And it's now available from Amazon at a Very Special Price.

BACK TO PAPERBACK

I've been self-publishing my own eBooks -- both on Kindle and from other outlets -- for a good few years. But now that Amazon have made the whole process considerably easier, I've started bringing out a few more novels and short story collections as paperbacks as well.

Some of my novels were already in that form ... the 6 books in my Raine's Landing supernatural series, for instance, two of which are pictured above. The same was true of my Californian detective thriller The Tribe.

And of my non-fiction handbook How To Improve Your Writing: The Art of Creating Professional Fiction.

But it used to take a fair amount of effort  to bring these books out. Now that Amazon have speeded up and simplified the work involved, I've started producing p/b editions of some of my other work, with plenty more to follow. Already out is Under The Ice, my Scandinavian-based chiller.

And there is also my collection Classic Pan and Fontana Horror, which has been so popular as an eBook in the UK.

Soon to come in paperback will be my first detective thriller, The Desert Keeps Its Dead, my near-future mystery novel The Electric Shaman, and my modern-day ghost novel Postcards From Terri.

And that's just for starters. As they say -- whoever they are -- watch this space.

MY FANTASY SERIES IS ON SPECIAL OFFER

There were REAL WITCHES in Salem back three hundred years ago. They fled from there before the Witchcraft Trials of 1692, moving to a lesser-known community … Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts. And that town has been filled with magic – both the good kind and the bad kind – ever since.

That's the premise for my Raine's Landing series of fantasy thrillers. And now 5 of the 6 novels (DARK RAIN, MIDNIGHT'S ANGELS, DEADLY VIOLET, SPEAK OF THE DEVIL and WITCH HUNTER) are on special offer at minimum price on Kindle ... that's 99p in the UK, about $1.28 in the States.

You can also pick 3 of the novels up on Nook, Kobo etc. for around the same price, with the other 2 due in those formats in the next couple of weeks.

You can view the Raine's Landing series on Kindle HERE.  

On B&N Nook HERE. 

On Kobo HERE.

And on Smashwords HERE.

WELCOME TO BIRCHIAM-ON-SEA

I haven't done much in the way of blogging -- or anything else on social media -- for a good long while. Why? Because the work of writing novels has been eating me alive of late. I honestly believed that I would finish the sixth in my Raine's Landing series -- Witch Hunter (see below) -- by Xmas 2015. It had already been through seven or eight drafts, after all. But I started reading what I'd done a few days before the holiday break, and realized that I still wasn't satisfied with it. Christmas and New Year passed, and I started work again. And it took me three more very intensive drafts to get the story reading just the way it should. It was mentally fatiguing work, but well worth it to get Ross and Cassie's latest, greatest, and most heart-gripping adventure right.

And I was planning to take a long break after that, but ... what is it they say about no rest for the wicked? My second full-blown crime novel -- The Tribe, a follow up to 2014's The Desert Keeps Its Dead --  is due out later this year from Cemetery Dance Publications. And since there is a third installment in the story of my fictional detective, I realized I'd better get cracking and start writing it. Which is what I'm doing right now (I am on a break this afternoon), only stopping every so often to do some research on stuff like assault weaponry and helicopters (yes, you read that last word right).

But however much you try to hide behind your laptop, the world moves on regardless. The world of publishing especially. And so much has been going on the last few months, it is going to take me three whole postings to describe it all.

The first matter to deal with is the book above.  I've been writing short horror and dark fantasy stories set in the fictional south-coast English town of Birchiam-on-Sea for the past ten years. The first -- The Waiters -- appeared in Weird Tales. And since then, Birchiam stories have shown up in Black Static magazine, the Black Book of Horror, and top anthologies like The British Invasion. And now all of them have been collected together by Trevor Denyer, editor of the esteemed Midnight Street magazine. It's a truly wonderful-looking book, and there's even an introduction -- explaining the whole concept behind Birchaim -- by a certain T. Richards. Moon on Dark Water: The Birchiam Chronicles is available both as a Kindle and as a good old-fashioned paperback book.

NEAR-FUTURE DETECTIVE FICTION

Short stories don't always sell immediately. Far from it.

Many years ago -- for instance -- back when it was still safe to do so, Louise and I visited Zimbabwe. She was in a conference for most of the first week. I spent my first few days wandering the streets of the capital, Harare, and having a good but slightly edgy time ... I narrowly avoided getting robbed by a street gang on one occasion. Then I hired a Land Rover one-ton pickup truck, and drove about a lot, visiting nearby nature reserves and the amazing Chinhoyi Caves, or simply stopping in the middle of plain nowhere for a while to drink in the near limitless views. Once Louise's conference was over we moved on, first to the ancient walled city of Great Zimbabwe, then to the Victoria Falls, and finally to the vast Hwange National Park on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. It was a spectacular trip, one I'll never forget.

Arriving home, I wanted to write something about the place, and wound up finishing a novelette set in the near-future and featuring an African homicide lieutenant. I spent the next couple of years sending it around to all the science fiction magazines and regular anthologies, with absolutely no result. And so I put the MS away in a drawer and forgot about it for a good long while.

Until one day I thought, It's a mystery story too, isn't it? So why not at least try it on a couple of mystery magazines?

I was slightly dubious that this would work, but got the story out again, polished it up, and submitted it to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which I had sold a couple of much shorter stories to about a decade back. And blow me down ... editor Linda Landrigan snatched that novelette up straight away. And so I wrote three more, each with the same central character and each story interlinked and following on from the next to form a continuous narrative. 'The Very Edge of New Harare' first appeared in AHMM in January 2012, 'The Hunting Party' in October 2013, and 'The Clan' and 'The Danua Boy' in March and April of 2014. And then I wrote a final long tale featuring not only my detective and his new family, but also bringing back a very devious criminal from one of the earlier tales. And now the whole sequence of stories is out as one book on Amazon Kindle.

In the not too distant future, the Dark Continent has changed. It’s become Federal Africa, with all of the old countries now united into one great nation. The separate tribes are gone, technology has boomed … it is a very modern place. 

 But if you think that it’s completely changed, meet Lieutenant Abel Enetame of the Zimbabwe State Police Force, a single father with a great deal on his plate. He doesn’t only have the usual crimes to deal with, murders, assassinations, kidnappings. There are violent Black Supremacists. There are fanatics like the Tribalists, who want to take the whole place back to the old days. And there are egotistic billionaires and power-crazy politicians.  

 And when those kinds of people start getting their hands on brand-new devices that can do startling things, like change the past, for instance … well, that’s when the sparks really start to fly. Because the future of the whole of modern Africa might well rely on one police detective. 

 You can find out more about THE ELECTRIC SHAMAN here.

INTRODUCING RAYVEN BLACK

I don't sit down and write a story as soon as I get a new idea. I mean, not usually. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. For instance, coming back from Kyushu -- the southern island of Japan -- I grabbed a couple of hours sleep and then went staggering to my laptop to write a tale about the place, 'Hanako from Miyazaki,' which got snapped up by the first editor I sent it to (a little tip to other writers here: Western editors just cannot resist tales with Eastern settings).

More normally though, it takes a while, and that's very definitely the case with this one. I got the idea for my first ever superhero story years ago. I had the character, the setting and the circumstances, even the full title. But I didn't sit down and write it for one very simple reason ... who on Earth would buy it?

But then, two Decembers back, I dropped in on the British Fantasy Society's Xmas gathering, as I almost always do. And among the indie publishers showing off their wares was Pete Coleburn of The Alchemy Press. He took me over to his table, saying: "Maybe you'd like to write something for us?"

And there, right in front of my nose, were the first two editions of The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes, and Peter informed me that antho #3 was looking for submissions at that very moment. What happened next? I think you might have already guessed. The very next morning, I sat myself down at my beaten-up old desk and started writing my first Rayven Black tale. Editor Mike Chinn bought it straight away, it appeared in print back in September, and now it is in eBook form at Amazon, with other outlets hopefully to follow.

I'll be working on more tales about this hero in the near future. Meanwhile, you can find out more about her first adventure HERE.

FREE FICTION FOR THE YOUNG (and YOUNG AT HEART)

When I first started writing professionally, I produced a good number of stories -- mostly supernatural and spooky science fiction ones -- aimed at younger readers, mostly for the likes of Mary Danby's Armada anthologies and Richard Davis' sf collections. I've not penned many of them since those early days, but I have since written a few more tales that -- although aimed at adults -- are perfectly suitable for younger readers too. And I've recently collected my personal selection of the very best of them into this little book on Kindle. About half the fiction in it can be found in other places, but four of the stories -- my Armada Ghosts chiller 'The Girl in the Cellar,' for instance, and my dystopian future fantasy 'Summertime' -- are available to the general public for the first time in several decades.

And the book is absolutely free on Amazon from today until Wednesday 11th, inclusive. But why wait until Wednesday? Pick up a copy straight away, and take a look at some early stories that I'm still extremely pleased with. You can take a look at the book's Amazon page HERE.

I'VE FINALLY TURNED TO CRIME!

Down the years, I’ve largely become known as a writer of supernatural fiction, dark fantasy, and horror. I’ve written science fiction too, and even some short mystery stories, but those have almost always had either a supernatural or a futuristic twist. But now my very first full-blown crime novel – THE DESERT KEEPS ITS DEAD – is out from Telos Publishing. No spooks, no sf, nothing but action and intrigue and evil-doing. It’s available in eBook format and in a paperback version too. The back-cover write-up is below:

The desert … it prefers to keep its dead. It wraps them up in its hot, dry arms, leeching the moisture from their skin ….

Ex-FBI agent turned private eye Matt Barrett arrives in Sunset City, Arizona searching for a teenage runaway, only to find her dead and buried in the desert sand. Investigating further, he learns that other young girls have gone missing. It seems there may be a serial killer on the loose. But Sunset City is an unwelcoming place of dark, closely-guarded secrets, and Barrett is resisted at every step of the way, soon finding his own life in danger …

A gripping, noirish debut crime novel from acclaimed horror and dark fantasy author Tony Richards.

‘He’s convincing … convincing enough that the locals will read about their city as described by Tony Richards and shudder. And that’s what we call a writers’ writer’ – John Pelan.

THE DESERT KEEPS ITS DEAD is available in eBook format from Amazon, B&N Nook, Kobo, or as a fine looking trade paperback from Telos Publishing.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how my readers react to this new change in direction. Who knows? I might even pick up some new ones. And a second novel featuring the same detective ought to be in my agent's clutches early next year.

IT'S RAIN(E)ING AGAIN

As I promised a couple of postings back, Dark Rain - the first novel in my Raine's Landing fantasy adventure series - is now available on Amazon Kindle, and for a fraction of its original price. There are five books in total in the series so far, with a sixth on its way this year. So here's your chance to start finding out about this strangest of Massachusetts towns and its peculiar inhabitants, grouchy hermit Lehman Willets, tough former criminal Cassie Mallory, the bizarre entity simply know as The Little Girl, and all the rest, not least the skillful but demented master magician Woodard Raine. Want to know what other people think of these books? Well, here are some Amazon reviews.

MEET MATT BARRETT

For most of my thirty-six years as a professionally published author, I have written fantastical stuff. I started off with science fiction, and then moved very quickly on to supernatural and horror. And both those genres have colored the majority of my output over more than three and a half decades. Even my Sherlock Holmes stories have had a good strong touch of fantasy to guide their plots. And my Future Africa mysteries have been partly science fiction.

True, I've written one straight mystery short, 'Hamadryad' for Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which can be found in my Books of Shadow on Kindle. And one wholly mainstream story, Balancing Act. But those two have been very much the exceptions to the general rule.

Only now, all that is changing. Because Telos Publishing have just bought my very first straightforward detective novel, The Desert Keeps its Dead. NO sci-fi. Not even a HINT of otherworldly spookiness. Just a murder, followed by more, and a tough detective who is tasked to solve them.

The Desert Keeps its Dead is a noirish, hard boiled thriller set in -- as the title suggests -- Arizona. The central character is Matt Barrett, a former FBI agent who quit the agency for personal reasons, now works for himself, and dispenses his own very rough brand of justice. You'll be learning more about him in the coming years, because I have plenty more novels to write in which he plays a very active part. And I'll be letting you know about the whens and wheres of Desert as soon as I hear myself.

But in the meantime, I just thought that you would like to have your very first meeting with Matt Barrett.

NON-SPARKLY, NON-ROMANTIC, NASTY, EVIL, BLOODTHIRSTY VAMPIRES

Late last year, Samhain Publishing took my short novel Under the Ice -- which had previously been a self-published Amazon e-book -- and brought out their own version of it. And this year they're doing the same again, with a much longer novel this time.

Hot Blood runs to over 120,000 words and is a vampire epic, starting in New York, taking in Central America, and finally moving on to Eastern Europe ... Prague, then Budapest, then finally the Carpathians. And these aren't any Twilight kinds of vampires I'm describing. No, these bloodsuckers are very definitely not nice ones.

After all the swooning and white weddings, I get the feeling some readers will be extremely glad to see some non-sparkly vampires back. But for those who prefer a little romance mixed in with their dark fantasy, the heroine of the novel is a supernatural being herself, although of a very different kind. She ...

No, I cannot tell you too much in advance, now can I? Hot Blood will be out as a Samhain e-book in September 2014.

THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Down the past few years, I’ve been writing small batches of 3 or 4 Sherlock Holmes stories and publishing them as little 99c ebooks on Kindle. But now I’ve pulled them all into one big collection, 13 tales in all. Here's a rundown of the stories:

In ‘The House of Blood,’ someone is draining lucky Vegas gamblers of their vital essence. In ‘The Desert King,’ a self-styled shaman holds unnatural sway over his followers, and more. In ‘The Hidden Shore,’ vacationers are inexplicably taking their own lives on a Caribbean island. In ‘The Terror in the Park,’ something monstrous is killing financial workers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In ‘The Vanished,’ a San Francisco newspaper owner has gone missing without any warning, and he’s not the only one. In ‘Shiny Trinkets,’ very valuable jewels are disappearing from heavily secured vaults in New York. In ‘A Shadow in the Harbour,’ cargo-workers in Hong Kong are dying in a most mysterious fashion. In ‘The Hunters and the Hunted,’ a swarm of bees in Africa appears to have developed a mind of its own, with deadly intention. In ‘Vermillion Moon,’ something is robbing the customers of an Amsterdam bordello of their minds. In ‘A Ghost in Tokyo,’ Holmes confronts an extremely modern apparition, and meets his match in the form of a female Japanese detective. In ‘Flight of Fantasy,’ he finds himself trapped aboard a doomed jetliner bound for Europe. In ‘Above the Boulevards,’ a bizarre vigilante is at work in Paris. And in ‘The Crimewave,’ Holmes is summoned back to London to confront his most puzzling and lethal case of all.

And here’s my Introduction to the book:

FINALLY FINDING SHERLOCK

It was at the World Fantasy Convention of 2008, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. World Fantasy traditionally takes place around Halloween, and goes on for four or five days. And some of the people who attend seem capable of spending almost all their time in the hotel, hanging round the bar and showing up for the various panels. But I’m afraid I’m not one of those types. After the first day or so, I begin contracting a powerful dose of cabin fever. I start getting stir crazy. I just need to get out.

It was a brisk day, but a sunny one, and so I headed out through the pleasant streets of what is essentially a fairly prosperous oil town, albeit that it has as many panhandlers as downtown San Francisco. I was gone a couple of hours, dropped in on a couple of bookshops along the way. And I was finally making my way back to the Hyatt when I noticed a small knot of conventioners grouped outside the entrance, including one person I’d met several times before and really, honestly liked.

There were a small handful of things that I already knew about Charles Prepolec. One, he is not only a very pleasant feller but a genuine, well-mannered gentleman, which is a rarity these days. Two, he happens to be a resident of the same city I was visiting, and owns a bookstore there. And three, he is a total Sherlock Holmes fanatic.

So we exchanged pleasantries and swapped news for the first few minutes. But then Charles sprang a question on me that left me genuinely stunned. Namely:

“I’m editing a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories at the moment – supernatural ones. Would you like to try submitting one?”

And some thought processes can be terribly complex ones, for sure. But not my reaction to this particular request. I can sum it up for you extremely neatly. I thought:

WHAT?????!!!

Because – don’t get me wrong, I love the great detective just as much as the next reader – but it had never occurred to me, not in all my wildest dreams, to personally sit down and write a Holmes tale.

But hold it just a second. I make my living as a freelance writer. Which means that when an editor asks me for a contribution, the very last thing that I do is immediately turn him, or her, down. I don’t go burning bridges or slamming doors behind me, however unexpected the subject matter that is being asked for. And so … after a few seconds of stunned silence … I managed to force out the words:

“I’ll certainly give it some thought.”

And we nodded at each other and left it at that.

On and off over the next couple of months, I thought about it quite a lot, and with no small degree of anxiety. There was a huge problem attached to writing such a piece of fiction, so far as I was concerned. And the huge problem was this.

I generally don’t write period fiction. I’m just not that kind of author. The stories that I write are based on places I have been, things that I’ve encountered, people that I’ve met. All reflected and distorted into fantasy in the dark mirror of my warped imagination, for sure. But I almost never write stuff that I’ve had no kind of direct experience of.

So what to do? How to get across that hurdle? It was a dilemma that I worried at intermittently for the better part of eight weeks, until I finally saw a possible solution.

And it went like this.

Back in 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle finally tired of writing about Sherlock Holmes and killed him off in a story called ‘The Final Problem,’ sending him on that famous plunge down the Reichenbach Falls. But he misjudged the fervour of his audience. The great detective’s fans were having none of it and pestered Doyle constantly, begging him to bring their hero back.

And so eight years later, in 1901, Sir ACD put into print perhaps the best of all his Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles. He revived the character, in other words. Dragged him back out of the grave, not as any zombie or revenant, but as the brilliant man that he always had been.

And I thought: Okay so, in a way, Sherlock has simply popped back into existence, rather like Captain Scarlet in those old Gerry Anderson shows. Which means he is effectively immortal. Which also means that he could still be around in the present day.

This was a good couple of years before either the Cumberbatch or the Johnny Lee Miller TV incarnations … I feel I should point that out. But I sat down at my laptop and began writing ‘The House of Blood,’ setting Sherlock Holmes in modern-day Las Vegas, a city that I’d long wanted to set a piece of fiction in. I finished it relatively quickly, emailed it to Charles and his co-editor J.R. Campbell, and it finally appeared in 2011 in Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes from Edge Publishing.

But that was hardly the end of my encounter with Holmes.

Because I absolutely loved writing ‘House of Blood.’ I had more fun behind my laptop than I’d had in years, and not simply because it is an exciting adventure. My version of Holmes might still be living in the present day, but his heart belongs to the Victorian Age. He’s frequently critical of our society. Some of our attitudes and habits surprise and appal him. Which is not to say there are not modern things he isn’t rather fond of. Mr. Spock in Star Trek, to give one example. Why exactly? Well, that’s a no-brainer. And he’s swapped his cocaine habit for a partial addiction to pina coladas into the bargain… pineapples were very rare and a genuine delicacy back in the London that he came from, and so that makes sense.

I saw more possibilities, and didn’t want to stop. So I began writing some more fiction about the great detective trapped here in our era. And – since he now has an entire eternity to go on fighting crime – I couldn’t see any genuine reason to confine him to just one location. I had him travelling and solving cases all over the globe instead. The whole way across the United States. In the Caribbean. Africa. Paris, Amsterdam, Japan and Hong Kong, and even Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I’d write three or four of these tales over the course of a few months, then publish them as little 99c collections on Kindle Direct.

But here they all are now, pulled into one big collection and topped off by a final story in which Holmes is called back to his native London. He’s finally found his way home, much the same that I finally found a way to write Holmes. I hope that my enjoyment in penning these thirteen tales rubs off on you in some way. Let’s find out. Read on.

Tony Richards,

London, 2014.

You can find out more here. And here's the UK link.

AN XMAS GIFT FOR ALL MY READERS

The 4th Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century is free on Kindle for today, Xmas Day, and Dec 26th (Boxing Day in the UK). It contains 3 stories. In 'Vermilion Moon,' Holmes finds himself mired among the fleshpots of Amsterdam. In 'A Ghost in Tokyo,' Holmes not only visits Japan but meets his intellectual match in the diminutive female form of Inspector Haruko Minoshi. And in 'Flight of Fantasy,' heading back from the Orient, Holmes is trapped aboard a stricken jetliner with no obvious way off.

You can find out more and get your free ebook here.

A SMILE COSTS NOTHING

And here's another free pre-Xmas giveaway. My humorous modern-day fantasy story 'Real Life' -- based, as you ought to be able to tell from the cover, in downtown Manhattan -- is free on Kindle all today. Get your copy here.

Enjoy!

SHERLOCK HOLMES BREAKS FREE

The third volume of my modern-day Sherlock Holmes supernatural mysteries is absolutely free on Amazon today. Here's the 'back cover' material:

Sherlock Holmes didn’t die when he plunged down the Reichenbach Falls. He turned out to be unkillable, and is still with us to this very day, travelling the world and delving into all its most confounding cases. But these are not merely ordinary crimes … supernatural forces are at work. In “The Hunters and the Hunted” Holmes is confronted with a deadly insect swarm in Kenya … but what is directing the creatures toward their victims? In “Above the Boulevards” a powerful and mysterious vigilante is protecting women on the streets of Paris. And in “The Crimewave” Holmes is called back urgently to his beloved native London. And he no longer has Watson by his side … so here’s your chance to make the journey with him.

You can get your copy right HERE.

A ZOMBIE REBORN!

“Out at the edge of the ice, something dark appeared, rising from the water and then closing downwards on the frozen surface. I squinted. And was sure it was a human arm.”

David and Bobby are a pair of twin brothers, both in love with the same woman. But on a trip to Finland, the matter gets resolved in the worst way imaginable – Bobby drowns in the icy waters just outside Helsinki. Two years later, David is still in that city and living with Krista, when a supposed magic artifact comes into their possession. And when David makes a wish upon it, dark things from the past begin resurfacing. Things like old-time sins and misdeeds. Like guilt and awful memories. And things like Bobby himself, two years drowned and trapped under the ice ... but still here with us.

My zombie novel Under the Ice first appeared as a collector's hardback from Sarob Press back in 2005. It had long been out of print when I published it again myself as an ebook on Kindle at the start of this decade, where it quickly became my best-selling title. And now it's available from Samhain Publishing as a smart new ebook edition. Here's its first (rave) review:

“Every now and then you’ll stumble upon a low-key piece of work that totally and completely stuns you. Under the Ice is a stellar tale ... brilliant, well thought out and perfectly delivered by Tony Richards, who understands the balance that must be upheld between fantasy and reality. The story boasts numerous layers, fine character examination and a final curveball that’s going to leave readers pleased. Whether you opt to label this one a revenge tale, a ghost story or a zombie tale matters not. It’s original, creative, and somehow successfully blends all of the aforementioned classifications, wrapping a plethora of ideas into one. This is an excellent read, and you want to get your hands on it as soon as possible!” – Horror Novel Reviews. 

You can read the complete review here.

Under the Ice is available directly from Samhain Publishing, or from Amazon, B&N Nook, Kobo and a variety of other outlets. 

THREE 4 FREE

The last in my 3 collections of horror tales is free on Amazon Kindle for the whole of today and Sunday. Like its two sister books, The Books of Shadow: Volume III only contains stories that have previously seen print, and includes fiction from Weird Tales, Midnight Street, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

SHERLOCK HOLMES IS FEELING LIKE A BRAND-NEW MAN

 Fans of the great detective might like to know that I've revamped all 4 of my books of modern-day Holmes stories on Amazon Kindle, with linked ToCs and new information about the humble author and his other books. You can find out more about the Immortal Holmes series here. And if you're a true blue Brit (cold, wet, and hacked-off, in other words) here the UK link.