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The Reviews Keep Rolling In for BURN ME OUT!

7/29/2020

A couple more advance reviews to share for BURN ME OUT!

Very different reactions, but both five stars! I'm very grateful for folks' kind words and I hope you'll take the time to see what you think of BURN ME OUT for yourselves!

Pre-order your own copy here on Amazon!

The book's official release is in a few weeks, so please let me know what you think when you get your copy!

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Whoo hoo! Story news! More Azuma Kuromori is Coming!

7/22/2020

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I've sold my third Azuma Kuromori story, entitled "Angel Scales", to Occult Detective Magazine!

"Angel Scales" has not yet been slotted to a specific issue as far as I know, but I'll provide more information as it's available. In the mean-time, please check out his previous adventures!

Azuma's second story, "Beyond the Faded Shrine Gates", appeared in ODM number 7, published in May.

And last year saw the publication of Azuma's first story, "Shadow's Angle" in Occult Detective Magazine (formerly Quarterly) #5.

More information coming soon!

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BURN ME OUT gets its first Advance Review!

7/15/2020

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My hard-boiled crime novel BURN ME OUT is coming in September from Black Rose Writing, but it got its first advance review already!

Check it out!

That's as high praise as I can imagine! Thanks a lot, Philip and I'm sincerely glad you enjoyed it!

If you're one of the other folks who have an advance copy, please do me a HUGE favor and leave a review on Goodreads, as well. It doesn't have to be much, just a sentence or two about how you liked it.

And if you haven't pre-ordered your own copy, you can do so right here!

Al Vacarro is a made man, with all the honors and responsibilities that entails. But after a literal lifetime of violence in service to the Castella crime family, Al's past is catching up with him and neither his present nor any future he can imagine seems to hold any hope for salvation.

For the sake of his family and his very soul, he needs out of "the life."

But how does a man escape the only world he's ever known?

This is a story of blood and desperation, and these are the last twenty-four hours of life as Al knows it.

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Summer Movies: IT Conquered the World

7/8/2020

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This should give anyone an idea of how bottom-barrel this thing is right out of the gate. Drive-in fodder, playing in the background while cool teenagers made out. A lot of these low-budget movies were made with the expectation that the films themselves would be ignored. So why do I do this to myself, almost seventy years later?

Oh, yeah.

A lot of people respect Roger Corman for many reasons: his drive to make movies, his variety and prolificness, the fact that he gave a lot of people their first work in film. In his own way, he's definitely an auteur. That doesn't mean he wasn't a hack, though. DON'T GET ME WRONG! There's nothing wrong with being a hack. Someone has to do it and there can be a lot of enjoyment in bad cinema. MST3K wouldn't exist without it, after all.

Speaking of early work, recognize this guy?

Yep. Lee Van Cleef, famed for being a bad man in literally dozens and dozens of westerns. This was far from his first movie, despite it being less than four years into his career (he had already made thirty movies by this point). Here he plays a scientist who's been communicating with Venus. Don't think he ever played a scientist before or after this. At any rate, he's deluded himself into thinking this alien is his friend and helps the creature find its way to Earth, hoping to usher in an error of peace and goodwill and all that stuff.

Does this look like a creature who wants peace and brings goodwill or does it look like a man-eating space-potato?

Of course it wants to conquer the world. It's in the title of the movie.

It doesn't, though, it just causes panic and wastes a lot of people's time and then the army gets smart and this happens.

Corman did make some good films, but this isn't one of them.

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Happy Fourth of July! Check out some all-American Fiction!

7/3/2020

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New post is a couple days late this week to more closely coincide with Independence Day, the Fourth of July!

To celebrate, here's some all-American fiction by yours truly! All westerns, the period that perhaps best defines our country!

I hope you'll check out these works that celebrate a piece of Americana and enjoy them! Please let me know your thoughts and as always, stay safe and have a happy holiday weekend!

A Hanging Matter - the first Marshal Ernie Farrar story! Free to read at Crimson Streets eZine!

Noose-Hungry - the second Marshal Ernie Farrar story! Also free to read at Crimson Streets!

Trail of Lead and Gold - a standalone western! Free to read at Crimson Streets!

The Home Place - available on Kindle as a Full Speed Singles ebook! Only 99 cents!

And last, but certainly not least, my novella Wild Yellow - published in StoryHack Magazine #4, available in ebook or in print!

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The Reviews Keep Rolling In for BURN ME OUT!

Whoo hoo! Story news! More Azuma Kuromori is Coming!

BURN ME OUT gets its first Advance Review!

Summer Movies: IT Conquered the World

Happy Fourth of July! Check out some all-American Fiction!

Brandon Barrows

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