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Author: Joe Bonadonna

I write mostly sword and sorcery stories with a film noir sensibility, set in a world I call Tanyime. I've published a few stories in the past, and have written 3 novels and 5 screenplays--none of which were published or produced. I am a former board member of the Chicago Screenwriters Network, where I lectured on writing screenplays. I played rock guitar and wrote songs during a 20-year span. I recently published my first collection of sword and sorcery tales, MAD SHADOWS: THE WEIRD TALES OF DORGO THE DOWSER, through iUniverse. Dorgo is the "Sam Spade/Dashiell Hammett" of my alternate world of Tanyime, and he solves crimes using a dowsing rod that can detect the ectoplasmic residue of any supernatural presence or demonic entity, and sense the vestiges of vile sorcery used in the commission of crimes. It's available online from iuniverse.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and other online retailers. It's also available as an eBook for Nook and Kindle. I recently sold a new Dorgo the Dowser tale to Weird Tales magazine: "The Order of the Serpent." It should be published sometime in 2012. You can find me on Facebook, under Joe Bonadonna Author.
An Interview With Author and Artist Tom Barczak

An Interview With Author and Artist Tom Barczak

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I first met Tom some years ago, through mutual friends on Facebook, as so often happens. We soon became friends and then colleagues, writing for author and publisher Janet Morris’ anthology of Heroic Fantasy, Heroika: Dragon Eaters, as well as her wonderful and legendary series, Heroes in Hell, which this spring (2017) will launch its 18th or 19th volume, (I lose track, LOL), Pirates in Hell. Tom is not only a very fine artist and excellent writer, he is also a great father, a wonderful husband, and a true and kind gentleman I’m proud to know. Here are a few things about Tom you may or may not know… things you definitely should know about this talented man.

Thomas Barczak is an artist, turned architect, turned writer, who finally got around to actually writing the stories he started dreaming about as a kid. His work includes the dark epic fantasy, Mouth of the Dragon, the illustrated epic, Veil of the Dragon, the Kindle serials, Awakening Evarun (Parts I-VI) and Wolfbane (Parts 1-2 of 3), along with numerous short stories and flash fiction, including those published in Heroika 1 – Dragon Eaters, Nine Heroes, Terror by Gaslight, and What Scares the Boogeyman, as well as two volumes of the award winning Heroes in Hell series, Dreamers in Hell, and Poets in Hell. He writes simply because he can’t not write. He writes because he needs to tell the stories he already started on way before, in his paintings, in his poetry, and even before that, sitting around a table with friends, slaying dragons.

Here, then, is Tom Barzcak, in his own words, in a wonderful interview that will surely touch your heart.

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A Wonderful Fantasy Novel for Young Adults: Protected By the Falcon by Erika M Szabo

A Wonderful Fantasy Novel for Young Adults: Protected By the Falcon by Erika M Szabo

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Erika M Szabo is both a prolific author and artist, and owns Golden Box Books Publishing Services. Her numerous children’s books, such as MeToo, The Annoying Little Sister, A Basketful of Kittens, and Look, I Can Talk with My Fingers, are delightful and very successful, and many of them have been translated into Spanish.  A nurse by profession, she has written Healing Herbs for Nervous Disorders and Keep Your Body Healthy.

She also writes Young Adult Fantasy, such as Chosen by the Sword — Book Two in her series The Ancestors’ Secrets — and The Curse. A friend of mine recommended I connect with Erika and hire her to do the book cover for my Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent, as well as the interior design and layout, formatting and all the technical details that go along with publishing a book. Well, I linked up with her on Facebook and we got to talking, and right away I knew we were on the same page, no pun intended. So I sent her my manuscript, and she started working almost immediately. She even revised and polished up the original map I drew for Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser.

While Erika went to work almost immediately, I purchased her Protected by the Falcon and started reading. I had never read a Young Adult Fantasy before (unless you want to count The Hobbit and the Harry Potter series.) Needless to say, as evidenced by this review, her novel was not what I was expecting. Indeed, it was a surprising pleasure to read because it was written and told so differently and in so many ways from the fantasy I usually read. Plus, Erika gave me something in her novel that will always keep me reading: believable characters I can relate to, care about, and even hate. I’ve even read a few of her children’s books, too. So let me tell you a little bit about Protected by the Falcon, and why I liked it. (By the way, Erika works hard and she works fast, too!)

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From Texas to Chicago: An Interview With Author B. Chris Bell

From Texas to Chicago: An Interview With Author B. Chris Bell

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B Chris Bell and I share a publisher, Airship 27 Productions; I’ve also reviewed a few of his novels for Black Gate. I first “met” Chris on Facebook back in 2011, and later that year met him in person at Chicago’s “Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention.” We hit it off right away, having so many things in common — books, TV shows, movies, and music. Plus, he lives in Chicago, not very far from me. He also knows more about pulp fiction than any three people I know. Over the past few years we’ve become good friends, and he, his lovely wife Darlene, and I get together on occasion to watch movies of all kinds, talk about books, life, and how we can solve all the world’s problems. Chris is a pretty prolific author, and I think everyone should his Bagman series, set in 1930s Chicago. Great fun — and he captures perfectly the era and attitude of Chicago. Not bad for a guy raised in Texas. And like another Texas writer I admire, Larry McMurtry, Chris has a natural-born gift for storytelling. I hope I can talk him into writing that western he talks about writing. I especially love for him to write a weird western.

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In the Hot Seat: The Reviewer Gets Grilled: An Interview with Fletcher Vredenburgh

In the Hot Seat: The Reviewer Gets Grilled: An Interview with Fletcher Vredenburgh

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Fletcher is no stranger to the readers and fans of Black Gate. His articles and reviews are not only well-written, insightful and entertaining, they are extremely popular, as well. He is the “reviewer extraordinaire,” and his reviews have led me to read many books. I trust his opinion and his taste in what makes for a good novel. Fletcher is also one of the most voracious readers I have ever met; even in my prime, when I was reading about 2 books a week, I couldn’t top him. Tireless and energetic, Fletcher amazes me with his wonderful reviews, which are also very well written. He is not a “book critic,” however, as you’ll find out when you read my interview with him. He is a reviewer of books. A Master Review Writer. I’m happy I met him through social media, proud to call him my friend, and grateful to him for his great reviews of my books.

So let’s begin, shall we? Let’s see if we can find out what makes him tick, what he likes to read and his whole process for reviewing a book.

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A Scare You Straight Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare: B.C. Bell’s Bipolar Express

A Scare You Straight Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare: B.C. Bell’s Bipolar Express

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Bipolar Express-smallI’m a big fan of B. Chris Bell’s film-noirish, pulp fiction stories, and his wonderful novel, Tales of the Bagman Volume 1, The Bagman Vs The World’s Fair, and Tales of the Bagman, Volume 3, all published by Airship27 Productions (and previously reviewed by me here at Black Gate.) So I jumped at the first chance I had to read his excellent, and very hard to pigeon-hole, Bipolar Express. Now, when I say it’s hard to pigeon-hole, I mean it. You can’t slap a label on this one, folks. But I will say this — it’s an important novel: serious, with that element of scary realism, gallows humor and touch of madness that will keep you laughing while the story shakes you up.

This is a novel of truths and wisdom that casts an observant eye on a certain segment of society many of us don’t like to think about: alcoholics, drug addicts, rehab centers and asylums. Bipolar Express has much in common with The Man with the Golden Arm, The Lost Weekend, and Trainspotting, with a macabre touch of Philip K. Dick to add a whole other level to the novel. It’s a “scare you straight,” post-apocalyptic story with a science fiction element that I won’t spoil for you: is what’s happening to the characters reality? Or is it all a shared hallucination? This would make one hell of a freaking movie! It’s also quite a wild ride. I’m not even sure how to tell you about it. So first I’m going to tell what Chris says about it, and then I’m just going wing it from there.

A misdiagnosed mentally ill man spends thirty days in a mental institution. Four years later he finds himself rescued from his own destructive impulses by his fellow patients, who inform him that the magnetic poles have begun to shift, just as they have every 250,000 years. Regardless of the truth, now he’s trying to survive the worst winter in Chicago history along with his mentally ill friends, a man with no fingers, and a cannibal dog. And, if the cold, starvation and illness don’t kill him, there’s a gang roving the city that will. Along the way he’ll discover magnetism affects the behavior of birds, elephants, ants, even humans. And then there are those ‘radioactive’ rays in the sky… this is a novel about failure, redemption, and the end of a world.

Okay, now it’s my turn. And whether or not you think I’m writing in any sort of logical order is your problem.

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An Introduction to B.C. Bell’s The Bagman

An Introduction to B.C. Bell’s The Bagman

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Author B. Chris Bell is one of the bright lights of the New Pulp world. For Airship 27 Productions he’s written stories appearing in Secret Agent X, The Green Ghost, Jim Anthony Super-Detective, Gene Fowler: G-Man and many others. His wonderful story, “How Pappy Got Five Acres Back and Calvin Stayed on the Farm” was a winner in SFReader.com’s 2007 Annual Short Story Contest. He made the Horror Writer’s Association Reading List for 2012. His Kindle novel, Bi-Polar Express, is a wild ride of genres, almost impossible to label with its mix of the true-to-life horrors of addiction, rehab wards, hospitals, and post-apocalyptic science fiction.

Chris Bell was born and raised in Texas, and now lives in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago, and still live here. But Bell writes about Chicago as if he were born and bred to the mean streets of the Windy City. Heck, he knows so much about 1930s Chicago that you swear he’d grown up during the Depression. And that’s the period in which he’s set his wonderful Tales of the Bagman (Vol. 1): 1933 Chicago, during the last days of Prohibition.

The Bagman is one Frank “Mac” McCullough, a one-time courier and thug for a crime family during the Great Depression. At an early age Mac’s life took a major turn when he became an orphan, spent time in a reformatory, and then later got involved in the rackets. But he’s always had a core of decency and honesty buried in his heart. So when he chooses to help and old family friend who got in hock to the Mob, Mac turns his back on crime and his Boss, Slots Lurie, and suddenly finds himself taking another turn on the road of life. In a last-minute decision to conceal his identity from the wise guys he’s hunting, Mac dons a paper bag over his head, and soon he’s known as the mysterious Bagman. (Later he acquires a mask more appropriate to being a man of mystery and a crime-fighting avenger.) And then, in the first part of this origin story, he becomes a fugitive wanted by both the Mob and the police.

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Prowling and Howling Through the Moonlit Forests of Lycanthropia: Thomas McNulty’s Werewolves!

Prowling and Howling Through the Moonlit Forests of Lycanthropia: Thomas McNulty’s Werewolves!

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Werewolves! A Study of Lycanthropes in Film, Folklore and Literature
By Thomas McNulty.
BearManor Media (215 pages, including Notes and Sources, Selected Werewolf Filmography, Bibliography, and Index; $19.95 in trade paperback, November 17, 2011)

Thomas McNulty’s Werewolves! is an insightful, informative and scholarly look at the legend and cinestory (film history) of werewolves.  Now, I consider myself a pretty fair hand when it comes to all things “lycanthropic,” but McNulty has me beat by a mile.  I learned about films I’d never heard of before, such as The Werewolf, a lost 1913 silent film; 1995’s Huntress: Spirit of the Night; and 2003’s Dark Wolf (which I have finally viewed and highly recommend.)

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Thrilling Pulp Fiction in the Tradition of Lester Dent, Henry Kuttner, L. Ron Hubbard and Mickey Spillane: Jack Ripcord, by Thomas McNulty

Thrilling Pulp Fiction in the Tradition of Lester Dent, Henry Kuttner, L. Ron Hubbard and Mickey Spillane: Jack Ripcord, by Thomas McNulty

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Jack Ripcord
By Thomas McNulty
Wounded Outlaw Books (182 pages, $12.95, March 13, 2014)

I’ve enjoyed every book that Tom McNulty has thus far published. From his Life and Career of Errol Flynn (the best bio of the late actor I’ve ever read) to Werewolves, his in-depth study of werewolves in myth, legend, literature and film. His westerns, published by Black Horse, are fantastic. Trail of the Burned Man, Wind Rider, and Showdown at Snakebite Creek, to name three, would each make a great film, the kind of western that Burt Kennedy and Budd Boetticher used to make, and starring actors like Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin.

But now, with his latest, Jack Ripcord, McNulty has entered the field of old-school, fantastic, pulp fiction storytelling — and he does so in grand style. This is rip-roaring, high-speed action-adventure, the kind of story that was so popular in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, the kind of stories that Republic Studios used to film as Saturday morning serials… the kind of story that Steven Spielberg should film.

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Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound

Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound

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Hell Bound-smallHell Bound
By Andrew P. Weston
Perseid Press (464 pages, $23.85 paperback/$8.90 digital, November 5, 2015)
Cover art and design by Roy Mauritsen

Hell Bound is the latest novel by Andrew Paul Weston, best-selling author of The Guardian series, The Cambion Journals, and The IX, (which I reviewed for Black Gate here.) Hell Bound is also the latest novel in the Heroes in Hell shared-world universe, created by author/publisher Janet Morris.

The main character in Hell Bound is Daemon Grim, Satan’s bounty hunter, also known as the Reaper. Not only does he hunt down any damned soul in Hell who gets on the wrong side of His Satanic Majesty, he has the power to visit our world and harvest those who belong in Hell, souls Satan wants in Hell now. Grim can travel between Earth and Hell using a special sickle or scythe that can open portals between the two realms. This scythe also possesses a powerful weapon called God Grace’s, which gives Grim the ability to utterly destroy souls. Since there’s no death in Hell as we know it, (the Damned are already dead) there is instead Reassignment, a twisted version of resurrection handled by an unsavory character known only as the Undertaker. However, there is Oblivion — total obliteration into non-existence. Grim’s weapon gives him the power to send souls howling into eternal nothingness.

The plot concerns Grim’s mission to track down Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, the English physician who in real life was the brilliant and infamous Lambeth Poisoner. Cream has been stealing long-hidden relics and angelic weapons from the Time of the Sundering, when Satan and his followers were cast out of Heaven. All history and knowledge of the Sundering is banned in Hell, but Cream may have illegal access to Satan’s bureaucratic network.

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When Mankind Shares the Earth with Vampires, Werewolves, & Trolls: Dean R. Koontz’s The Haunted Earth

When Mankind Shares the Earth with Vampires, Werewolves, & Trolls: Dean R. Koontz’s The Haunted Earth

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The Haunted Earth
Dean R. Koontz
Lancer Books original paperback (192 pages, $0.95, 1973)

Last time out, I did a retro-review of Koontz’s early 1970’s science-fiction murder mystery, A Werewolf Among Us. This time around, I’m looking at another of the genre mysteries he wrote early in his career, The Haunted Earth. I enjoyed it when I first read it in 1973, and I enjoyed it again, 42 years later. For those of you who are familiar with Clifford D. Simak’s Out of Their Minds and The Goblin Reservation, as well as the works of Ron Goulart, most notably his The Chameleon Corps, Koontz’s The Haunted Earth has much in common with those: wild imagination, fast-paced narrative, interesting characters, and plenty of humor.

The premise is this: in the “future” year of 2000, Earth is visited by a race of Lovecraft-inspired, benevolent aliens called the Maseni. Not only were we introduced to these tentacle-wearing ETs, they brought with them their supernatural brothers. Furthermore, the Maseni showed us how to “release from bondage” our own mythological and supernatural entities. Thus, Mankind now shares the Earth with vampires, werewolves, minotaurs, dryads, trolls, et cetera, et cetera.

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