Joe Bonadonna’s Dorgo the Dowser novelette “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” part of Joe’s first swords and sorcery collection, Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, is one of the most popular pieces of fiction ever posted at Black Gate. Joe’s other contributions to the Black Gate Online Fiction library include an exclusive excerpt from Waters of Darkness, his supernatural pirate dark fantasy novel co-written with David C. Smith, and his recent story “Queen of Toads,” an old-fashioned pulp horror tale.

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Part Three of Mad Shadows II — Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent, published in trade paperback and digital formats this month.

Here’s a brief taste.

It was the charred remains of a small book, lying like a discarded afterthought beyond the rim of the circle. The bizarre worms watched me walk over and pick it up. The book looked as if it had been struck by lightning. The front cover bore an embossed sigil of a winged serpent swallowing its own tail, and there was a scorched hole in the center that had burned straight through to the back cover. Every page had been seared black, every word obliterated.

There was something else I noticed: two sets of cloven hoof prints in the snow, one set led to the outer rim of the circle, the other set led away from the clearing. Too small for a cyclops, the prints could only have been made by satyrs, fauns or some form of demon.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, Michael A. Armstrong, C.S.E. Cooney, Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

Mad Shadows II is 236 pages, priced at $12.95 in trade paperback and $2.99 for the digital edition. The book cover art, illustrations, and interior design are by Erika M Szabo.

Read the complete excerpt here.