The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature film by Origin, releasing in 2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate was the second of his books to be adapted into film in 2015, followed by Cult of the Shadow People in 2017. Major Japanese publisher Takeshobo recently bought the reprint rights to his Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova) and the mass market, Japanese-language version was released in late 2017. Ring of Fire Press has released a collected edition of his Monster Society stories (set in the New York Times Best-selling world of Eric Flint’s 1632).
In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes an award-winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash.” Eric lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children, where he continues to write tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.
Learn more about Eric’s books and find new titles at http://chriskennedypublishing.com/.
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Turning Point:
A Time to Die
___________________
Mark Wandrey
Available Now from Blood Moon Press
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from “A Time to Die:”
An hour later, Ken tried to drink some of the water and eat some of the food Erin had left for him, only to vomit it up moments afterwards. His head swam with pain and confusion, and sweat poured from his forehead despite the cool evening breeze. Suddenly he stumbled to his feet, not knowing why, completely unable to concentrate. “Wha—what?” he choked, spinning around and searching for the source of the disturbance with blurred vision.
He heard something behind him, and he spun again to find only darkness. “Damn you,” he snarled and took a step in that direction, only to fall over a root in the gloom and sprawl in the dense pine needles. His mind exploded in lights, pain, and voices. Whispers and screams, thoughts and ideas he could not understand. “Stop it, stop it, stop…stop…STOP!” The last word came out as an anguished wail from the depths of his soul that echoed through the woods and down to the Rio Grande thousands of feet below. He shuddered in the brush, and the man that was Ken succumbed.
Small animals and night birds flitted around for a time, sniffing the air and trying to sense if the man had become food. But after a few minutes, it was standing again, wildly searching the darkness. It noticed the birds and scurrying creatures, and it shook its head and snarled. The snarl turned into a clipped scream, more visceral than the previous one. It turned toward a narrow goat trail that descended the cliff.
The descent would have terrified Ken and likely sent him plummeting to the rocks below. The creature that now walked in his skin, though, felt no fear and held close to the sharp rocks with single-minded, painless determination. By the time it reached the river, its hands were torn nearly to the bone in several places. It paid no mind to the blood-dripping wounds as it scanned the opposite riverbank. Moonlight illuminated the far shore where it saw a group of people, all moving slowly to the west. A little moan escaped its lips, and its teeth gnashed as it jerked forward and plowed into the water.
* * * * *
Get “A Time to Die” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0787VQ8RJ/.
Find out more about Mark Wandrey and “A Time to Die” at:
http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.
* * * * *
The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle:
Cartwright’s Cavaliers
___________________
Mark Wandrey
Now Available from Seventh Seal Press
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from “Cartwright’s Cavaliers:”
The last two operational tanks were trapped on their chosen path. Faced with destroyed vehicles front and back, they cut sideways to the edge of the dry river bed they’d been moving along and found several large boulders to maneuver around that allowed them to present a hull-down defensive position. Their troopers rallied on that position. It was starting to look like they’d dig in when Phoenix 1 screamed over and strafed them with dual streams of railgun rounds. A split second later, Phoenix 2 followed on a parallel path. Jim was just cheering the air attack when he saw it. The sixth damned tank, and it was a heavy.
“I got that last tank,” Jim said over the command net.
“Observe and stand by,” Murdock said.
“We’ll have these in hand shortly,” Buddha agreed, his transmission interspersed with the thudding of his CASPer firing its magnetic accelerator. “We can be there in a few minutes.”
Jim examined his battlespace. The tank was massive. It had to be one of the fusion-powered beasts he’d read about. Which meant shields and energy weapons. It was heading down the same gap the APC had taken, so it was heading right towards that APC and Second Squad, and fast.
“Shit,” he said.
“Jim,” Hargrave said, “we’re in position. What are you doing?”
“Leading,” Jim said as he jumped out from the rock wall.
* * * * *
Get “Cartwright’s Cavaliers” now at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRZKM95/.
Find out more about Mark Wandrey and “Cartwright’s Cavaliers” at:
http://chriskennedypublishing.com/imprints-authors/mark-wandrey/.
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The following is an
Excerpt from Book One of In Revolution Born:
The Mutineer’s Daughter
___________________
Chris Kennedy & Thomas A. Mays
Now Available from Theogony Books
eBook, Paperback, and Audio
Excerpt from “The Mutineer’s Daughter:”
Kenny dozed at his console again.
There he sat—as brazen as ever—strapped down, suited up, jacked in…and completely checked out. One might make allowances for an overworked man falling asleep during a dull routine, watching gauges that didn’t move or indicators that rarely indicated anything of consequence, perhaps even during a quiet moment during their ship’s long, long deployment.
But Fire Control Tech Third Class Ken Burnside was doing it—yet again—while the ship stood at General Quarters, in an unfriendly star system, while other parts of the fleet engaged the forces of the Terran Union.
Chief Warrant Officer Grade 2 (Combat Systems) Benjamin “Benno” Sanchez shook his helmeted head and narrowed his eyes at the sailor strapped in to his right. He had spoken to the young weapons engineer a number of times before, through countless drills and mock skirmishes, but the youthful idiot never retained the lesson for long.
“Benno, Bosso,” Kenny would plead, “you shouldn’t yell at me. You should have me teach others my wisdom!”
Benno would invariably frown and give his unflattering opinion of Kenny’s wisdom.
“Get it, ya?” Kenny would reply. “I’m a math guy. Probability, right Warrant? The Puller’s just a little ship, on the edge of the formation. We scan, we snipe, we mop up, we patrol. We don’t go in the middle, tube’s blazing, ya? We no tussle with the big Terrans, ya? No damage! No battle! So, something goes wrong, back-ups kick in, buzzer goes off, we mark for fix later. And when’s the only time you or the officers don’t let a man walk ‘round and don’t ask for this, don’t ask for that? When’s the only time a man can catch up on the z’s, eh? One and the same time! So I doze. Buzzer goes off, I wake, make a note, doze again till I can work, ya? Such wisdom!”
Benno usually lectured him about complacency. He asked what would happen if they were hit, if the shot was hot enough, deep enough, destructive enough to burn through the backup of the backup of the backup. What if they did have to face the Great Test, to rise and work and save the Puller themselves?
Kenny would always smile, relieved. “Well, then I be dead, ya? No more maintenance either way. Good enough reason to doze right there!”
Benno could have repo
rted him any number of times, but he never had. Putting it on paper and sending it above them was a two-edged sword. It would solve Kenny’s sleepy disdain for order, of that Benno had no doubt, but he also knew he would lose Kenny’s trust and the vigorous drive the young ALS plebeian applied to every other task. Plus, it would signal to the officers above that Benno couldn’t handle a minor discipline problem on his own. And it would indicate to the ranks below that Benno was no longer one of their own—when he had gone from Chief to Chief Warrant Officer, he had changed his ties, forever.
So Benno growled, but he let it slide, content only he would know about Kenny’s acts of passive rebellion. No one else would ever know why the young tech kept getting extra punishment duties. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kenny was actually wrong, in the fullness of things.
Then, before Benno could check his own side of the console to verify whether things were indeed alright, his internal debate was blown away by the unforgiving, indiscriminate lance of an x-ray laser blast.
The single beam struck the Puller a glancing blow, centered on a space just beneath the outer hull and aimed outboard. Armor plate, radiation shielding, piping, wireways, conduit, decking, internal honeycombed structure, atmosphere, and people all ionized and ablated into a dense, mixed plasma. This plasma exploded outward, crushing the spaces surrounding the hit and dealing further physical and thermal damage. Combat Systems Maintenance Central, or CSMC, lay deep within the Puller’s battle hull—three spaces inward from where the x-ray laser struck—but that meant little next to the awesome destructive power of a Dauphine capital-class xaser warhead.
The forward and port bulkheads in front of them flashed white hot with near-instantaneous thermal energy transfer and peeled away, blown out by the twin shocks of the outward-expanding plasma and the snapping counterforce of explosive decompression. The double blast battered Benno in his seat and threw him against his straps to the left. As the bulkheads vanished, their departure also carried away the CSMC monitoring console the two watch standers shared with them into the black, along with Kenny’s seat, and Ken Burnside, himself.
The young engineer disappeared in an instant, lost without ever waking. Benno stared, dumbfounded, at the blank spot where he had been, and of all the possible panicked thoughts that could have come to him, only one rose to the forefront:
Does this validate Kenny’s wisdom?
Benno shook his head, dazed and in shock, knowing he had to engage his brain. Looking beyond, he could see the glowing edges of bulkheads and decks gouged out by the fast, hot knife of the nuclear-pumped xaser. Only vaguely could he recall the sudden buffeting of explosive decompression that had nearly wrenched him through the straps of his acceleration couch.
He knew he had things to do. He had to check his suit’s integrity. Was he leaking? Was he injured? And what about Kenny? Was he gone, unrecoverable? Or was he waiting for his poor, shocked-stupid boss Benno to reach out and save him?
And there was something else, something important he needed to be doing. He wasn’t supposed to just sit here and think of himself or unlucky, lazy Kenny. Oh no, thought Benno, still trying to marshal his thoughts back together, Mio is going to be so angry with me, sitting here like a fool…
“CSMC, report!”
Benno shook his head against the ringing he hadn’t realized filled his ears. He reached out for the comms key on his console, swore at how futile that was, then keyed his suit mic. “Last station calling, this is CSMC. We’ve taken a hit. I lost my technician, console is…down, hard. Over.”
“CSMC, TAO,” the Puller’s Tactical Action Officer said through the suit channel, “pull it together! We just had a near miss by a capital class Dauphine warhead. The battle with the Terrans has spread out of the main body. I have missiles up but zero point-defense. I need guns and beams back, now!”
* * * * *
Get “The Mutineer’s Daughter” now at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BRTDBCJ
Find out more about Chris Kennedy and Thomas A. Mays, and “In Revolution Born” at:
https://chriskennedypublishing.com/thomas-a-mays/
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