Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’

One Upon a Time…

It’s the thing I really dislike. You’ve sweated for weeks and months over something that’s 70,000 or more words in length.  Punchy start that launches well-crafted characters out across story arcs that see them rising, falling, crashing, burning, surviving or dying, and ultimately succeeding or failing as all the threads come together.  And then you have to take all that work and condense it down into a few lines that don’t just read like the contents of a tin of dog food. You’ve got to couch it in terms so compelling that a person might even consider eating that tin of dog food because you’ve made it sound so good.

I’m about to go through an overhaul of all my novel cover designs (bloody 7 of them!), either going for a much muted, graphic template approach or just some typographical first-aid to what I’ve currently got (create a more consistent feeling to show they’re all unique, independent stories, but all part of the same universe).  Working with a freelance designer on this.

But it’s made me review the back of book blurb’s I’m currently using and there is much nose wrinkling on my part. Don’t like what I’ve got. So, I’m in the process of re-writing them. Cue pained expression and a face like a dog chewing on a thistle.

Here’s five of them:

God Seed

God Seed { novel } For acclaimed documentary film-maker, Adam Kyle, this was going to be another feather in his cap. Embedded within a team of highly trained corporate mercenaries, he was covering the start of an operation in England. But when the operation goes terribly wrong, Kyle finds himself battling for his life, his sanity, and maybe even his very soul as a new and dramatic story unfolds, dragging him across the globe…and beyond. It isn’t just his documentary that is at stake, but the fate of every living thing in the Universe. David J Rodger delivers a gut-wrenching and epic journey in a novel that plunges deep into the crawling chaos and takes you to the edge of the membrane of human existence.

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Dante’s Fool

Dante’s Fool { novel } Detective Sergeant Louis Cloud is a hard-boiled cop hungry for power and promotion, and he’ll do anything to get it. When a courier descends from orbit and is murdered by an armed gang who rob him of precious gemstones, DS Cloud sets eagerly upon their trail, but he quickly learns there are other forces out there – and things from other realms of reality – that will also stop at nothing to get what they want. DS Cloud’s life is literally torn apart as he plunges headlong towards a terrifying confrontation with one of the sub-princes of Hell. Thrown into this violent mix of corporate corruption and demonism is Natalya Dorganskya; previously the adorable daughter of a now deceased movie-megastar, she has turned to crime to give her the kicks she once got from a borrowed fame and fortune. Once a world-class pilot, her neural network ravaged by custom drugs, can she overcome the torments of her past to defeat the horrors of her immediate future? Non-human things that have come stalking through time and space to take back what she and her compatriots stole from the courier. David J Rodger delivers a dark and edgy vision of the near-future in a novel that reveals the boundaries between the Satanism and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Iron Man Project

Iron Man Project { novel } Former special-forces operative, Vincent Brent, is tough, ruthless and highly trained; he’s now using his skills for whoever will pay him without cashing in the bounty on his head. In this world of the near future, the UN has failed. Wars are fought in boardrooms through attorneys and politics, and on our streets with private armies of military or criminal assets. In Sicily, Jean-Luc Korda, the Chief of Security for one such corporate alliance struggles to survive as hidden forces attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Both these men find their fates intertwined. In the cross-hairs of powerful adversaries, they must both make decisions of life and death in a choice between command and conscience. David J Rodger delivers a palm-sweating ride in a complex novel that will keep you turning pages until the end.

BUY > paperback : from LULU
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EDGE

EDGE { novel } Ethan Carmichael, technical wizard and prolific inventor is close to burn out. Taking time out at a luxury snowboarding resort in New Zealand seems like the perfect opportunity to refresh his mind and spirit. But the mountain is a gateway to something much older than humankind, a malign and alien force that even now is oozing back into our reality, hungry for flesh and fear. On the other side of the world, Halo Santana, an unscrupulous concept scout scrambles onto the trail of a new technology that has vanished from a corporate R&D lab. Quickly out of his depth, he enters a frantic race to track down the missing components to save his life. Both men find their fates tangled in a deadly web of lies, treachery and a cosmic horror that comes from beyond the stars. David J Rodger delivers relentless narrative pace in a tense action-packed novel.

BUY > paperback : from LULU

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Dog Eat Dog

Dog Eat Dog { novel } Ten years after the Earth has been devastated by a viral pathogen seventy per cent of the population is dead and only a handful of cities survive intact. The majority of urban spaces have been abandoned to the Infected, creatures that were once human.  Whilst above, the orbital colonies spin within their artificial gravity wells, helpless observers to the shocking events below.  Mikhail Drobná and Carlos Revira.  Two survivors, both hungry for money and power, and fuelled by a desire to carve their names onto this new world.  One provides services of violence and protection for powerful corporate criminals in New York; the other is a renegade intelligence agent forever running from the demons of his past. Strangers, until events conspire to bring them together. There’s a complex and deadly political power play in progress. Private armies. Corruption and murder on a massive scale.  Both men seek to seize their opportunity at whatever personal cost.  But a cosmic Evil has infiltrated the remote corners of these brutalised lands and it has its own plans. Will these men work as one to defeat it or will their bitter rivalry bring about their destruction. In the end, who will devour who?  David J Rodger delivers a novel of epic vision, character depth and nerve-popping tension.

BUY > paperback : from LULU
BUY > kindle: US ($), UK (£), DE (Euro)

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YOU CAN SEE MORE OF MY SCI-FI DARK FANTASY WORK ON MY OFFICIAL WEBSITE

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Work in Progress

I’ve been away for a few days. An interesting break in Krakow, Poland, that allowed me to indulge in late night bars and cyberpunk-vibe cafes; daytime spent drifting through corridors of medieval history and across the cobblestone indentations of ancient warfare and intellectual innovation. I also paid a visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, something that’s left an indelible impression of horror on my mind. You can see pics and a write-up of the trip here.

Now I’m back I’m looking to settle back into The Social Club: currently on chapter 4. Being in Krakow also gave me inspiration for a new novel; mainly based in London, pre-Yellow Dawn (just)

I’ve got the working title of:  Kalinka

I’ll be posting some early samples of The Social Club in the next few days.

EDIT @ 1st September

Got the weekend on my own. I’m wrapped in Starsky and already through the first mug of tea of the day (always like to ease in gently) and now necking last dregs of the first coffee. Spent this morning sat with Santiago notebook madly scribbling plot notes for Kalinka, another novel idea, which I guess I’ll probably start writing around 2015? I was out with my editor last night and talked her through the plot. I got to the end and she looked stunned, “What, no darkness? No horror?”

Erm, no. I thought I’d try writing a human drama set within my pre-YD universe. She smiled and says I’m getting soft in my old age. Maybe I’ll have to throw in an encounter with an Outer God for good measure. Ahem.
Right, two days with nothing in front of me. Chapter 4 of the Social Club. Let’s see how far we get, eh? :o)

EDIT @ 10.33

First da Vinci break coming up. Just finished chapter four. 17,800 words in. So a word count of only 800 words so far. Good words though, eh? ;o>

EDIT @ 14:33

18,900 words in. Nearly 2,000 today. Creative bliss. Although the walls of my reality are starting to blur a little now. Ever get that when you’re so focussed on something. Time melts.
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Work in Progress

I managed to find some “me time” and distance from the recent distractions of social shenanigans and DIY duties. The new novel, The Social Club now has 10,000 words to its name. Deep into chapter three and loving it. Senior Verifier Jadon Purgo, great character to work with; a detective style story in the remains of London following the apocalyptic event known as Yellow Dawn. I’ll post up some sample chapters soon.

Meanwhile, check out the “Yellow Dawn” novel I launched earlier this month: The Black Lake.

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I just got pinged by Google Alerts: a review had been posted about my latest novel, Living in Flames. Thought I would share the good words.Reading feedback like this makes it all worth it.  :o)

Book Review - Living in Flames - a Sci-Fi Cyberpunk Dark Fantasy Horror set in UK

Taken from Floyd Hayes.com - click to go there

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Purchase Links:

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DESCRIPTION:

Living in Flames { novel } Bristol, UK, the near future, the lives of three people collide in a gruesome twist of fate. A former marine turned to crime, and two enigmatic figures concealing their true identities, skimming the city’s underworld of drug-cartels and shadowy tendrils of old merchant families. A carved African idol is discovered clutched in the hands of a dead man who is barely human. Greed unlocks a centuries-tarnished mystery about the origins of the idol, and brings back to Bristol a banished bloodline hell-bent on vengeance and diabolical glory. A carrion God lying dormant for three hundred years risks being returned to the world of Man.

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digital art showing humanoid robot in thinking man pose - from science fiction short film HENRI 2

Artwork from science fiction short film HENRI 2 - All Rights Reserved

An interesting little find. Eli Sasich has put together a crew and set and already completed this short science-fiction film – according to promotional material. He’s been looking for $20K funding to give the film the best post-production possible, and it looks like he’s reached this target and he’s now in the hell of delivery schedules.

Eli posted a production update back in October 2011:

Hi All,

It’s been a while! We have been working like crazy and the film is really looking great.

I want to update everyone on our timeline. Our post-production is extremely complex; therefore, it is going to take longer than initially expected. I believe this extra time and attention is essential to finish the film in the best way possible. Please be patient with the process. Rest assured that all the rewards will be fulfilled when the film is completed. I cannot wait to share the final piece with all of you. Thank you again for the extraordinary support!

Best,
Eli

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The concept of the short film is very appealing.

What does it mean to have consciousness, to be self-aware?  A human brain, wiped-clean of memories, has been locked into a space vessel. Now that vessel is floating through the darkest reaches of interstellar space – the crew dead, and the mind inside has started to regain glimpses of what is once was – a human – a living being.

HENRI 2.0 – sample video

Here’s a video showing some of the daily-rushes sans colour correction or other post-prod touches.

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Kickstarter pitch

Here’s a link to their pitch for funding on kick-starter – it contains a great video with shots from the film, artwork, set-design and behind the scenes concepts.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/920784759/henri-20-a-science-fiction-short-film

.You can follow progress with the film’s evolution through production to launch via the company’s official blog  or via Twitter.

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In the shared science-fiction universe of God Seed; Dante’s Fool; Iron Man Project and the post-apocalyptic spin-off Yellow Dawn (see the novel , Dog Eat Dog) – the concept of consciousness is tackled through two different strands.

One strand is the idea of non-human entities invading the consensual hallucination of cyberspace – a virtual reality realm built on the bedrock of the Internet;  these entities use the wireless connections and digital constructs to skim the edges of the Quantisphere  – the reality that humans have been bound within. They can present themselves free of the limitations often experienced by them in the solid and tangible realm of human flesh.   See the short story Flinch or Cypher for a quick example of this.

Short science fiction story that explores the theme of non-human intelligence invading the human realm through cyberpsace

available in print or download

The other strand is through the singularity that heralded the arrival of true machine intelligence – what pundits like to call Artificial Intelligence.  The Borgendrill Corporation (referenced in Dante’s Fool) was the somewhat unwitting partner in this, with machine-controlled ships sailing out to far rim of the Solar System where they encountered [something] that changed the fabric and nature of the synthetic, problem-solving logic matrixes that had been woven into the hardware.  The Borgendrill vessels, completely un-manned, came back altered in some way… and the rest is down in the history blogs as the Borgendrill Enigma.

Before it actually happened, most people assumed that true Artificial Intelligence would be the product of Humanity tinkering with computers.  The reality was an event known as the Borgendrill Enigma.  Years before Yellow Dawn took place, the corporate computer system of Borgendrill was the focal point of a Singularity.  What happened is still not clear.  Before B.E. every form of Artificial Intelligence put on the market by manufacturers was nothing more than clever computing, stuff that now is known as AI Emulation software.  After B.E. the Borgendrill computer network became self-aware.

- taken from Yellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur – Primary Rulebook version 2.5 (still in development)

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<<< YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY THIS >>>

short science fiction story Dilemma by cyberpunk horror author David J Rodger

Available in print or download

Dilemma : 6,700 words. Science fiction. A tense and fast-paced plot that plunges into the heart of our fear of the ‘monsters’ we make to serve us. Biological intolerance clashes with the vain attempt to rationalise cold-blooded murder. Preview or purchase here.

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Quite flattering to get approached by the French publisher Didier, who are planning to release an English language textbook called “Password Terminale” in April 2012.   They’re going to reproduce the cover of my novel Dog Eat Dog in a chapter entitled “Tech-less world”.  The novel is a political crime thriller (science-fiction and dark fantasy) set in the post apocalyptic world of   Yellow Dawn  – The Age of Hastur and is, ahem, available in paperback from LULU or Amazon Kindle format in US, UK and France.

Nice to be noticed!

And particularly pleasing for me as I actually planned the novel whilst spending time in the South of France and the story has scenes taking place outside Montpellier, a post-apocalyptic Marseille and within the medieval walls of the incredible crusader town Aigues-Mortes.

:o)

Cover of Dog Eat Dog a sci-fi and dark fantasy novel set in the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn by David J Rodger

Available in paperback or Amazon Kindle format

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Relevant Link:

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I’ve been working on the overhaul of the current version of Yellow Dawn (2.1) for over 8 months now. Here’s a chunk of text that’s going to be bolted into the start of the chapter on Occult & Mythos, it’s a narrative overview that gives you a picture of the Quantisphere.  The Quantisphere is a key theme within the dark fantasy aspect of my sci-fi and cyberpunk fiction, and so naturally follows into the world of Yellow Dawn which is based on the shared universe of all my fiction – following a Mythos Apocalypse (on Earth).

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In a world where vast areas of earth and sea have fallen from the scrutiny of men, there is great opportunity for dark designs to take root. These can be Occult in nature, through Demons and negative elementals or, the truly terrifying machinations of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

Overview

The realm of the Occult is considerably smaller and less powerful than the realm of the Cthulhu Mythos.  The Cosmic Horror of the Mythos and the insignificance that humankind has within it was first described by the American writer, H.P.Lovecraft, best known for his fictionalization of the sanity-shredding knowledge he received.  The true nature of our reality can never be fully defined or described because humans do not have the innate ability or sensory organs to perceive and comprehend it; a very simplistic analogy is to see our reality as a bubble of form, structure and order within the Outer Chaos of the Mythos.

We, as humans, share that bubble with all living things of the Universe – and every other universe – from the animals of the sea and land on Earth, to the organisms that pulse, crawl, fly, flutter and stampede through landscapes and atmospheres of astronomically distant planets.  We also share it with the new minds that have formed through computer evolution, true AIs that have gained some of the Divine Spark that fuels and feeds all Intelligence, and the subsequent robot Minds that those AIs have engendered.  Likewise, as humans we share our reality with the things that are less seen and more felt and feared: the entities of the higher-planes, spirits, ghosts and elementals, and further, deeper into the recesses of human reality, Demonic forms and Angelic beings… part of the God-complex that pervades all human thought, whether we choose to accept it or not.

Quantisphere an invisible membrane that protects our reality from the outer chaos of the Cthulhu Mythos

Image source: Paul Nylander, bugman 123.com - All Rights Reserved

There are other Things, creatures and minds that have nothing to do with the human condition, technically a part of the Mythos – from the Outer Chaos – but not bound by it and so able to penetrate, travel and occupy our reality; some people know of these Things, some call them monsters, others call them aliens or simply non-human species.

Inside this bubble the laws of physics, quantum mechanics and overarching mathematical theories hold true – until stronger forces bend them out of shape.

And, within this bubble is the domain of the Occult.  This is where Magick is merely a science that humans do not yet fully understand (although the advent of Road Mages and Schools of Magick are drawing those dark days of ignorance nearer to a close).  The power of the Mind is key to this, as is an understanding of elemental systems (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) and the duality of Nature and those forms that thrive off it: Angels and Demons.

The Occult allows you to shape thought into energy that can be directed, either as a weapon, a tool or a shield.  It allows you to manipulate the fabric of space and time, to warp it (but not permanently change it) to your Will… you can create illusions, starts fires, make howling winds blow with freezing frenzy, call in giant Tsunami or flood rivers to bursting point.  You can detach your mind from your physical body and travel via the Astral Plane.  You can sense the location of things far from physical sight by tuning in to the vibrations.  You can call upon Demonic Circles for diabolical assistance and command these dangerous forms with words of Angelic Power  - at the peril of your eternal life force, what some would call your soul, for these are entities that excel in trickery and manipulation.

demons and dark forces behind reality

Dark forces press against all boundaries

Throughout human history these feats have been available to all of us but very few have ever taken up the mantle to do so.  The reason is simple: fear.

Manipulating these energies requires great mental fortitude, a strength of Will that most humans do not posses, and the ability to transcend the fear of the pain and mortal danger that comes from engaging with Occult powers.

What is it then that separates the realm of the Occult from the Mythos?

The answer is known as the Quantisphere.

To those who study these things it is an invisible membrane; not the boundary of a bubble, but something that exists between your thumb and forefinger when you squeeze them together, wherever and when-ever you may be.  This is something hyper-dimensional.

Beyond, beyond lies the Outer Chaos, the often formless, seething, sometimes mindless energies that exist where even the notion of Time has no remit.

There is intelligence out there, but so alien, so awful and jarring to our human senses, that to even perceive the existence of such things can drive any normal man or woman utterly insane.

The Mythos is an abomination to us, and to anything born of the Quantisphere – anything with that Divine Spark as part of its mind.  This includes the animals and sentient machines.  Even the Angels and the Demons.

To those Things that lurk and fester within our reality, unhindered by the boundary that protects us, the non-human species of the Mythos, the Quantisphere is nothing more than a shift in terrain: like us going from land to sea, or from a terrestrial atmosphere into Outer Space, there are Travellers from the Void.

And then there are those gargantuan and terrible entities of the Mythos; the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, immortal, eternal, and yet for all their staggering power, only capable of coming through into our reality in rare and specific conditions: when the stars are right, when the “fabric” of the Quantisphere is thin enough to rip, or when their human and non-human worshippers expend enough energy in gruesome ceremonies of blood sacrifice to burn a hole right through, creating temporary doorways from Beyond.

The energies of the Mythos are potent, dangerous, infectious and can even have a Will of their own.  To dabble in the Mythos is to open yourself to the risk of becoming ensnared by the lure of incredible power, and tangled in tendrils of dream-like influence from utterly alien and unfathomable intelligences.

Exposure to the Mythos leaves a taint, a stain upon the physical and psycho-emotional construct that defines a living mind whilst contained in a reality-sensing vessel.  Such a vessel being anything from a human tampering with arcane techniques, or a dolphin streaming through ancient temples on the sea floor, or a machine mind tumbling through the distant rim of space where the Great Old Ones have left their physical marks within the Quantisphere.  The taint is like radiation damage, burned tissue and scarred thoughts, infused with an alien energy that slowly burns like embers caught in the invisible vortices of a cosmic breeze.  A taint can never be removed and lingers like a cancer, always threatening to spread and increase its corrupting influence on the mind in question.

Outside the Quantisphere there are substances and fibres of physical and non-physical matter that defy human understanding, the rules of space and time crumple like a tin can appearing at the bottom of an ocean, or fly apart like a water when a drop of oil strikes the surface.  Nothing is certain.  Nothing is consistent.  Every aspect of the Mythos can be the same but different.

Knowledge of all of these realms and entities, and of the operations that allow an individual to wield Occult and Mythos energies and to call upon Things greater than themselves, can found and learned by those willing to accept the risks and confront the Fears of their own mortality and sanity.

All of us can trick ourselves into believing we are brave, but how often has an unusual and isolated setting, a disconsolate group of people or even just a strange and inexplicable mood left you feeling unsettled and vulnerable.  Humans are by default fragile creatures; a consequences of our mental agility where our emotional state rides the edges of reason and metaphysics.  Our emotional state and our psychological will is the powerhouse of our energy.  They are our energy (our POW)… on the higher planes of Quantispheric reality.

Beyond the Quantisphere such forms of energy are feeble compared to the cold yet furiously burning and incomprehensible forms of the Mythos.

Only madmen go there.

With Mythos Magick an individual can permanently change fragments of reality, sometimes whole bodies, locations, even worlds, depending on the energy being expended.  And that is the lure, which is why some people strive to engage with what lies beyond the Quantisphere regardless of certain destruction.

The potential for madness and mayhem are at the heart of any Mythos encounter.

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If you’re interested in tales of the occult then check out the plethora of cyberpunk horror short stories on my Facebook Page; there’s also the demoniacal novel, Dante’s Fool.  Alternatively if the Cthulhu Mythos is your thing, take a peek at God Seed (an avatar of Nyarlathotep tries to bring about the destruction of all humankind) or EDGE (a new Great Old One to the Mythos begins to re-emerge within our reality after millenia of absence – at a site that is now a snowboard resort in New Zealand: all hell breaks loose).  All novels are available in paperback from LULU or on Amazon Kindle in US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Finally, if you’re a gamer, check out the free scenario I wrote for Yellow Dawn RPG: Kingdom of Shadows – based on Roman Polanski’s classic occult thriller – The Ninth Gate. Also playable with Call of Cthulhu.

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Cover for Stories from the Cantina by Harvey Stanbrough  ISBN 978-1-4581-8047-6 where magic meets realism

Available on Amazon Kindle - click to view

Former US Marine and Arizonian, Harvey Stanbrough, has recently published a collection of short stories. Cantina Tales revolves around the life of young Maldito and the fictional village of Agua Rocosa: a place where magic meets realism.

Stanbrough is handing out a sweetner (free short) to everybody who subscribes to the blog that’s been created as a platform for the expanding world of Agua Rocosa and the many diverse and interesting characters that occupy it, plus you’ll get to enjoy periodic musings and short tales from the point-of-view of the storyteller: Juan-Carlos Salazár.

UPDATE (24th Nov)

Alternatively, send the author an email and he’ll bounce a story right back at you.

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I caught up with John Houlihan last month to talk about his first novel, “Tom or the Peepers’ and Voyeurs’ Handbook” and his experience of the Amazon Kindle publishing mechanism.  Here’s the output of a brief Q&A session I ran with him, touching on where he’s at as a first-time author; his attitude towards the traditional “old school” publishing route and, I suppose, a slice of life from the perspective of the man himself.

Tom or the Peepers' and Voyeurs' Handbook a voyeuristic novel by John Houlihan

Available on Amazon Kindle

Tom or the Peepers’ and Voyeurs’ Handbook is the story of a young, suburban Telephone engineer in a northern town in the UK in the late Eighties and his secret life as a nocturnal voyeur.

Using his job as cover, Tom stalks, stakes out and observes his round of specially selected girls and records his adventures in his self-penned Peepers’ and Voyeurs’ Handbook.

But underpinning this apparently lurid premise, lies an exploration of the character and motivation of this self-appointed ‘public voyeur number one’, during what proves to be the most significant day of his life.

Subtitled an unconventional love story, Tom shifts between past and present, chronicling Tom’s current addiction while slowly revealing the tragic motivation which has driven him to this life.

But as events unfold, Tom faces a stark, defining choice, should he choose a delicious but always ultimately unsatisfactory fantasy existence or explore the dangerous, uncharted waters of an uncertain but very real relationship?

DJR: This is your first published work. Would you describe it as a one-off or the start of something prolonged? Essentially “where are you” in the landscape of your writing?

JH: Well I hope it’s the start of something prolonged, it’s taken me long enough! Tom is my first novel but was actually finished when I was around 25. It got a bit of interest at the time, a few agents and publishers and even a BBC producer who wanted to turn it into a film, but ultimately it didn’t get picked up.

Bills to pay and the sheer time it takes to write a novel, meant I was seduced away from fiction and got diverted into more the more lucrative fields of sports, tech and games journalism. So Tom languished in some odd corners of the internet and on various hard drives, abandoned and neglected, while I climbed the greasy pole and somehow ended up as an editor in chief.

I guess turning 40 a couple of years ago was some sort of jolt and somehow after 15 years of coal face hackery, to my surprise as much as anyone’s, the sleeping writer awoke.

I started a new sci-fi novel A Late Flowering Deity and various other writing projects and blogs like World of Spurt, always keeping an eye out for the advent of the e-book.

Then Kindle arrived and it is the biggest revolution if you’re a writer. You can just put your work out there to a global audience and see what happens. Publishers are no longer the gatekeepers, it’s an amazing and profound change.

So I guess Tom’s the first step on a road back into making a real go of it as a writer. I’m doing a new blog  called 101 very short stories (101veryshortstories.blogspot.com), which is sort of a side project and a real sharpener for technique as each tale is under 150 words. For a writer it’s like a joy button,  instant gratification when you get it right.

So it’s a bit of crazy time, I’m suddenly back in the game and wanting to write fiction which is a good feeling after all these years. I hope to have A Late Flowering Deity finished this year, there’s a strange little cricket book I’d like to do – and after that? Well who knows, maybe another novel.

DJR: Predictable question, sorry – but what led you to write this book. Why this book, this story?

John Houlihan author of inquisitorial Tom or the Peepers' and Voyeurs' Handbook

John Houlihan

JH: Well the idea for the character came first, I do remember that and I think it was probably inspired by an actual engineer fixing the phone in the student pit I shared at Poly. I don’t think he was anything like Tom, probably a middle age Yorkshireman, but the idea of this guy going on a round, going to lots of different houses and seeing lots of different people stuck with me.

It sort of provided a framework and I began to imagine this young, strange awkward guy doing this round and the rest just sort of filled itself in from there. It’s strange how your mind can take something apparently so simple and spin a new world out it.  The idea of this peeping tom who used this Peepers’ and Voyeurs’ society fantasy to justify his compulsion, seemed compelling and full of interesting possibilities.

So I started writing it without any real plan, just exploring this weird character and his world and I was about three quarters of the way through the first half, when the whole Rachel plot line suggested itself, which allowed me to go deeper and explore the darker motivation behind his behaviour. That’s the point when I thought this could go to novel length.

Lastly of course, I felt I had something to prove, you can’t be a writer – and I’ve always wanted to be a writer – without some end product. There was more than an element of having to do it, to see if I actually could sustain a story over novel length.

DJR: I’ve heard this book described as a romantic technology story. Is technology your background or just your passion?

JH: That’s an intriguing description, I’d never really thought about it that way, though it’s a very interesting perspective. One of the hardest things I’ve actually had to do since publishing Tom is answer the question ‘so what’s it about?’ and I  usually babble all sorts of nonsense. It’s so hard to summarise something that took you two years to write first draft and then umpteen edits to get into shape. I guess the subtitle ‘an unconventional love story’ is about as close as I’ve got.

One thing I noticed that has really changed when I re-edited for publication at the end of 2010 is the change in technology. Tom’s a bit of an electronic genius for his time, but we’ve moved on so much since then, lord knows what havoc he’d create with the modern array of bugs, spy cams and surveillance  that’s freely available now.

But to answer your actual question a bit of both. I do like shiny gadgetry, music and snowboard tech  and still have an abiding love for games, though sadly I hardly get to play much nowadays. Still loving the day job at CVG and I do get strangely excited when we add something funky to the site.

DJR: What is your favourite theme within the book – what makes you really excited about other people reading it?

JH: Voyeurism I suppose is the big one and  I hope I’ve got some of the feeling of what it actually might be like to be someone like Tom, bound up in this fantasy world and driven by this strange compulsion. Although he’s perhaps not the most likeable of characters, that readers might understand and even empathise with what has driven him to this peculiar life.  I also hope it asks the reader to what extent we are all voyeurs, not just sexually, but in every sphere of life, from the simple act of  looking to enjoying that strange illicit thrill  of observing someone without their knowledge.

DJR: You’ve made the book available through Amazon’s Kindle. Are you also approaching agents and publishers for a print deal?  What’s this experience been like for you? And what’s your ideal outcome?

JH: A traditional publishing route would be ideal and I’ve always said I’d like to hold a physical copy of Tom in my hand one day and that certainly hasn’t changed. I’d like to think I’m an okay writer, but I know there are much better representatives, publishers and marketeers out there than me, so I’d be delighted to get any kind of deal.

However for the moment, it’s all on Kindle and just little ol’ me, though I’m looking to release on other e-book formats as well. It’s kind of fun, I get absurdly happy at small things like my first US sale and of course self-publishing has a long and noble tradition. The web and social media offers lots of possibilities.

I suppose I’m hoping that the Kindle edition will fall into the right hands, that someone will like it, want to back it and get in touch (johnh259@hotmail.com). It’s tough to get a deal, tougher still to get an agent, so I’ve sort of gone the other way around and try to find my audience first. I just think it’s important to be out there and being read, that’s probably the most important thing for me.

My ideal outcome? Hehe, right now,? A Stephen Fry @stephenfry retweet and recommendation would be immense. Come on Stephen, you know you want to.

DJR: What else do you think you need to do to achieve what you want? Tell us a bit about what’s it’s like being at this stage of a writing career?

JH: It’s exciting, though in many ways I feel like I’m just starting out. ‘More product less procrastination’ should be my watch words for this year, but it’s incredibly gratifying just to have a book out there which  people are kind enough to buy and read. It was a very big step in a lot of ways, putting Tom out there, but once I’d crossed that particular  Rubicon, there wasn’t any going back. When people ask me what I do now, I feel quite absurdly happy to be able to say  ‘writer’ amongst a bunch of other things. It lights me up inside.

Relevant Links:

  • Tom or the Peepers’ and Voyeurs’ Handbook, available on Amazon Kindle – click
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David J Rodger – DATA


WiP: inserting the great “missing piece” from current YD rulebook – the Influence of Hastur on this post-apocalyptic world.

Venice at night photo: David J Rodger

The oily waters of Carcosa seep into Venice at night. Photo: David J Rodger

The overhaul of Yellow Dawn (2.1) continues.  It’s been going on since March, 7 months later and I’m only just starting to see a glimmer of an end in sight.  Definitely one of the toughest creative projects I’ve ever tasked myself with.  Should be worth it though: a lot of new narrative flavour is getting packed into the next version of the rulebook.  Launch date now looks like Summer 2012.

Couple of days ago I started  working through Dead City runs and Scavenging, streamlining the existing rules to give GM’s more opportunity to throw in their own narrative spin rather than everything being determined by reference tables and dice.

Today I’m getting into the meat of the Dead City / Scavenging chapter; now looking to finally insert the great “missing piece” from the current Yellow Dawn rulebook (2.1) which is how the Influence of Hastur manifests in this post-apocalyptic world.  At the moment there’s a lot of narrative descriptions, great for some GMs but I also want to create a brief structure to give more methodic GMs a chance to just run the system with a few dice and see where it takes them (and the horrified characters).  So that’s today’s mission.

Looks like Dog Eat Dog is getting some exposure somewhere as sales have spiked in the past few days.  No idea where or who as LULU and Kindle don’t give me any info about who buys my work. Never mind.  It’s all good! *beams a smile*  Dog Eat Dog is the SF & DF novel based on the world of Yellow Dawn.

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Living in Flames – sneak preview of first chapter of this sci-fi & dark fantasy novel set in Bristol UK.

This novel isn’t due to be published until next year but I thought I’d give you a taste of what’s coming.

Sci-fi and dark fantasy author David J Rodger Arnos Vale cemetery Bristol

David J Rodger

Bristol, UK, the near future, the lives of three people collide in a gruesome twist of the hand of fate.  A former marine turned to crime, and two enigmatic figures who are concealing their true identities whilst skimming the city’s underworld of drug-cartels and shadowy tendrils of old merchant families. 

A carved African idol is discovered clutched in the hands of a dead man who is barely human.  Greed unlocks centuries-tarnished mystery about the origins of the idol and brings back to Bristol a banished bloodline hell-bent on vengeance and diabolical glory.

A carrion God lying dormant for three hundred years risks being returned to the world of Man.

David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a novel that drags open a shocking legacy of one wealthy family’s trade in slaves, and reveals the consequences on those who dabble with unnameable cosmic horrors.

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OPENING:

Four of the figures were reposed further back from the edge of the roof, silhouetted by the alabaster light of a half-moon; they surveyed the city of Bristol in contemplative silence.  The fifth figure, their leader, was leant forward with both arms locked straight supporting himself against the stone balustrade as he scoured the tangle of small lanes below him with an intense gaze.

The fifth figure uttered a solemn statement with a slow, brassy voice, consonants cracking like bones in the lazy swirl of his vowels.

“This is where it all began.”

- From the private journal of Cray: my flesh, my blood, my faith, my disease

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Dex Rašković knew the city; he knew the quiet places where most people didn’t walk after dark.  Hopefully the drones wouldn’t be programmed to come looking down here either.

He strode through the back streets as fast as he could without looking like he had something to hide; head bowed against the persistent rain, with the hood of the hydrogel poncho pulled up.

Something big and bad was going down; police were everywhere, creating snap cordons and road blocks on all the main routes; the shitty little drones swarming through the pedestrian areas, scanning.  It was the scans he was worried about.

With a handgun tucked into his pouch and three kilos of unlicensed gene-twister strapped around his waist, getting stopped would not be good.

Dex was still assuming all the police activity had nothing to do with him; just a case of being in the right place at the wrong time.  There had been gunfire and lot of it down by the harbour.

The sounds had brought back uncomfortable memories of fighting skirmishes in the Gulf. Operation Metal Hammer.  He’d done the whole slog out there: went in when the war started and came out when it ended, if you could call it an ending.

Maybe Bristol was being hit by terrorists – yet more repercussions from the war?  Maybe it was a cop sting gone bad?  Or some of the demonstrators camped out by the Carthew Tower deciding to up the ante with a few automatic weapons; not likely, in his view, but crazier things had happened.

He crossed a busy main without looking; all the traffic at a standstill, headlights glittering in the rain.  Brisk pace, he entered another deserted lane; things seemed to be getting calmer the further he walked, moving away from the danger zone.

His planned destination was the Strontium.  A nightclub situated in the heart of a shabby part of the city known as St Nicholas Market.  It was the place he’d been calling home for the past three months, ever since he’d bailed out of Switzerland fed up with low wage private security work and bored of a country where people got angry if you had a shower after nine P.M.

The club and the drugs around his waist were part of his retirement plans.

Bristol was just a big turf war between the Manchester, Cardiff and London syndicates.

The club belonged to Jerry White, Manchester’s longstanding crime guru.  Dex thought ‘guru’ was a lame word for a man like Jerry White. Psychotic bulldog with a hard-on for maiming people was more appropriate but he guessed ‘guru’ had eloquence and helped Jerry cross the boundary when selling crime to ‘good’ people.

His departure from Switzerland had followed the relocation of his good pal Duke, to the Tonga Islands, who had left to run security for the royal family out there.  Duke was a lucky bastard but he’d arranged the introduction to Jerry White and the rest was history.

The club gave Dex presence, access to a lot of people and a grubby income.  The gig came complete with a bunch of White’s dealers who were there to shift the pentathene IV coming out of Jerry White’s labs.  It should have been a lucrative cash builder but the dealers were a stable of lame horses and White refused to let Dex recruit his own talent.

It meant the income was nowhere near what Dex had planned on and now exposed him to a risk of defaulting on the drugs-for-cash advance White had started him with.  Defaulting on Jerry White would be an invitation for getting his face re-arranged with a sledgehammer.

He had a few grand tucked away in an investment portfolio but again, nothing close to an amount that would let him press eject on England and go live The Life somewhere.

Besides, he didn’t want to go on the run.  The Strontium might not have been his business, but it was his to manage and that gave him a sense of belonging, of ownership, of sanctuary, that he’d never had before.  Not even when in the Forces: always on the move, never more than a month in one place; everything temporary; everything disposable, broken, barely working or dead.  That all ended in the Gulf with a dishonourable discharge and the blood of a Norwegian reporter on his hands.  Could have been worse; his CO could have managed to prove he’d pulled the trigger and he’d have been serving twenty for murder.

So being the kind of man he was, quick to identify opportunities outside the box, Dex had grabbed the chance to make a lot of cash in one strike

The three-kilos of gene-twister strapped around his gut had come from Jerry White’s gland-farm up North.  Sixty grand’s worth.  It had been smuggled out by somebody in White’s organisation; somebody willing to get butchered for a chunk of easy money.  Dex had bought it tonight, down by the harbour just before all the guns started going off.  If Jerry White ever found out what Dex had done…

It wasn’t a scenario he chose to consider.

The whole deal had been set up by Henry McVee.  Dex didn’t know McVee and was a long way from trusting him, but so far the operation had played out the way the skinny kid had said it would.  McVee seemed to have a needle into White’s organisation; knew the people, knew the operation.  Dex didn’t know how and knew better than to ask questions.  The next stage of the plan was to hand the three-kilos over to McVee who had a buyer lined up in Glasgow.

And there was the rub.  Dex didn’t trust McVee but he had to rely on him for the final bag.

Dex stepped out of the lane through a metal archway into St Nicholas Market.  The market was a decrepit, historical structure of old stone; its open-plan interior converted into a labyrinth of small carbo-plastic stalls selling everything from tarot cards and incense to specialist software services, eclectic paper-format magazines, and the myriad sub-strata of dance music.  This time of night everything was closed and the market was deserted; but it made a convenient short-cut to the club.  The police and their drones didn’t seem to have pushed their snouts this far.

He had only met McVee once, about three weeks ago.  Short ginger hair, a weird goatee beard bleached blonde, and as skinny as a rifle barrel; but Dex had sensed a bristling aggression that told him McVee wasn’t a stranger to violence.  McVee was probably a couple years younger than him; Dex had him pegged as around twenty-five.  Man wore shades like he thought he was a rock star.

If the Glasgow deal turned true then Dex was in line to pocket one-hundred and eighty grand.  Not a bad return on the sixty he’d just spent.

That’s if the ginger twiglet can shift it.

One hundred and eighty grand bought a lot of opportunities.  Opportunities Dex knew he’d be able to convert into bigger cash returns.  His ticket out of here; but perhaps more importantly, with this pride intact.

He heard the muffled thumping of the club’s sound system seeping above ground through ventilation ducts.

It gave him a flutter of euphoria.  He was almost home.

The euphoria vaporised when his eyes caught sight of the body on the ground.

Dex stopped and ripped back the hydrogel hood from his head; glancing around quickly he checked there was no-one observing.  He stepped a bit closer; the hairs on the back of his neck prickling up.

The body was lying where it had fallen between a row of empty packing crates against one wall. A sticky rivulet of blood was pooling beside an outstretched hand.

Fuck.

He had seen plenty of corpses in the Gulf, he had almost gotten blasé about it back then, but this was the middle of the city and it was close to the Strontium. Too close to ignore. The police would come asking questions.

Another glance around him: the bleak empty passageways of the market stretched off in three directions.  No sign of any onlookers.

This was his find.

The rain was hammering down on the corrugated plastic roofing three-stories overhead.

He reached up to the DVFrames he wore on his face and pressed a small stud on the upper edge of the right lens.  He’d configured the button to launch a ‘sweep’ application installed on his PA device, tucked away in the pocket of his cotton cargo pants.  The Personal Assistant polled the immediate area for visible broadcast tags.  Most people broadcast something, even just a nickname or a “Who Am I” tag.

The DVFrames presented the results as digital overlay superimposed within his field-of-vision.  A cluster of red dots about twenty metres to his right described the people waiting to get into the Strontium.  But there was nothing broadcasting nearer than that, and the body wasn’t broadcasting anything.  No PA, stolen, or simply not activated.

Time to find out.

Dex squatted down so he could take a closer look.

The hand was striking: the fingers thick and muscular, covered in calluses; the nails cracked and caked with ingrained dirt.  The blood was dark red, almost purple in the poor overhead lighting.  Dex moved closer, his heart beating a little faster. The drumming of the rain on the corrugated plastic seemed to grow more intense as if providing a soundtrack to the moment.

The smell of the body hit him then, and Dex had to angle his head away and suck in a breath.  Sweat and urine and something else that was indescribable yet offensive to his nose. The man was wrapped up in a dirt stained raincoat; his legs were twisted beneath him, wearing jeans that were wet with water and maybe blood, and a pair of filthy worker boots.  A homeless person, he suspected.  A wide brimmed hat hid his face. Dex frowned, staring at the visible flesh of the man’s jaw and neck. It looked wrong somehow.  Easing forward he went to reach out, lift the hat and take a closer look but paused as he noticed an object clutched in the man’s other hand.  Hard to see clearly in the poor light the object looked like a wooden statue, like one of those African tribal knick-knacks you could buy anywhere.

An empty bottle was kicked nearby, the sound of it skittering and clinking against stone echoed around the deserted passages.

Shit!

Dex stood upright and stepped back from the body.  He glanced up and down the passage but saw nothing. His attention went back to the long shape clutched by the dead man against his chest.  Dex stepped forward, leant over and grabbed it from the dead man’s grip.

# # #

See more  tales of sci-fi & dark fantasy  – click

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Dark Art: photograph of demon in human form – Evil Mockery, by Danielle Tunstall

Evil Mockery - photograph of demon in human form - Dart Art by Danielle Tunstall

Evil Mockery, image copyright Danielle Tunstall - all rights reserved

Part of a series of images from the shadowy fringes of the Internet.  Visuals that stir my sense for the eerie and macabre.

I like this image because it’s brutally simple and conveys a concept that spans the totality of human history: the existence of Evil spirits and the obsession by some of them to gain possession of human flesh.  Like people who become demented and intoxicated with an excess of alcohol, drugs or physical glory… lesser demons behave with malevolent and turbulent glee, a runaway frenzy of vicious acts and psychopathic babbling.  The creature in this photograph is taunting the viewer with its tongue sticking out, mocking us, snarling behind the mask of tissue, sinewy muscle, engorged blood vessels and spongy cartilage.  What it sees with those glassy, black, insect-like eyes is nothing that you or I could convey in words or even images: they are twin orbs that give us a glimpse into the absolute darkness of what lies just beyond the veil.  The Inner Chaos.  The shadows of the Quantisphere.

Danielle Tunstall has a vast repository of images she’s created and showcasing on her website, definitely worth a look if you’re into the darker side of Cyberpunk, verging on horror, smeared in blood and infection.

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You might also enjoy this:

  • Dante’s Fool is sci-fi & dark fantasy novel set in the near-future; demons nuzzle the evil men who carry out ritualistic mutilations of random victims abducted from London streets;  Detective Sergeant Louis Cloud, already busy hunting criminals who carried out the armed robbery of a courier recently arrived from orbit, is given the case and rapidly discovers the true horror of the invisible things that feast and glut themselves on our fears.  Available in paperback, Amazon Kindle and iBook formats. More…

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David J Rodger – DATA

I caught up with David Sharrock last month not long after he’d fed his first paperback, Transitor into the Amazon Kindle machine.  Here’s the output of a brief Q&A session I ran with him, touching on where he’s at as a first-time author; his frustrations with the traditional “old school” print world.  More brain than man, the work of David Sharrock is certainly one to taste if you’re interested in new and exciting science fiction.  Here’s what Sharrock had to say for himself:

Transitor is a hard sci-fi horror novel by David Sharrock

Available in paperback and PDF

DJR: This is your first published work. Would you describe it as a one-off or the start of something prolonged? Essentially “where are you” in the landscape of your writing?

David Sharrock author of the hard science fiction novel Transitor

David Sharrock

DS: I’m hoping I have more than one story inside me, but Transitor was the culmination of a lot of research, planning and angst about getting the right framework to hold the themes of the story in place. I think the formula I chose works well, but it really did take me rather a long time to get there. That said, I’m currently working on an idea for a second book (which I’m exploring loosely in ficblog format on my website). I sketched out a first person narrative based on this idea but wasn’t happy with the research. I now have a much better idea of the physics involved and feel slightly better equipped to get some solid ideas down on paper. So that’s where I am and what I’m working toward right now. I work slowly, however, so I won’t say watch this space. More like, tell your kids to watch this space.  Of course, a nice publishing advance would speed things up I’m sure!

DJR: Predictable question, sorry – but what led you to write this book. Why this book, this story?

DS: I’d held the idea in my head for a while and started the story a few times but quit because I felt the scaffolding for themes I wanted to explore just wasn’t there yet. Back in November 2009 I found myself highly charged with creativity and approached the Transitor idea anew. The book seemed to flow in an organic kind of way from then on. It’s a cliché to say the story wrote itself, but in many ways it really did. I’m a strong believer in firm foundations (being grounded in the building and property trade as I am) and I think the long planning, thinking and studying I undertook before writing gave Transitor an excellent footing.

The central premise of the book came first, of course, and is a simple ‘what if’. As in, what if the natural ability to travel freely in time existed? No time machines. No nifty gadgets or unlikely messing around with wormholes, just a shift in thought and the owner of this marvellous ability could zip backward and forward through time as they wished.

Furthermore, what if those blessed with such a gift were firmly in the minority and what if their movement outside the natural states of time prolonged their life to levels of near immortality? I started, erroneously as it turned out, by building an idea in my head of how these individuals might change society in their manipulations of time. Would they become caretakers of time, being careful to ensure their actions had no negative impact on future timelines, or would they use their ability in a criminal way, dipping into the future to see tommorrow’s stock market reports then returning to the present to make their billions? Pretty soon, as the idea evolved, I realised these were naive assumptions, that our modern society, to the traveller, would no longer be the anchor we all assume it to be and that they might never choose to return to the present, or continue a life there. All of the past and all of the future would be the traveller’s new environment. The very basic mechanics of what we think of as life, cause and effect, physical proximity, dimension and the forward flow of time, would alter completely. The traveller, with their new perspective on the universe, would become as aliens to us. When I realised this, I knew I had the bones for something interesting.

DJR: I’ve heard this book described as hard sci-fi. You’ve got a strong scientific flavour to your thinking; is that your background or just your passion?

DS: Writing is my passion. Science… well, I’m in the middle of a physics degree, so science is an interest. But my first love is philosophy… and people. People, and in particular people’s brains (or minds, if you prefer). Both fascinate me much more than mathematical science. The human question has always intrigued me, as in why we are here, who we are and how on Earth we came to be where we are today? The more I study philosophy and in particular modern ideas about ancient arguments, the more confusing the issue becomes for me personally. On the one hand, the cold scientific approach is both logical and rational, bolstered by peer review and proven with physical, verifiable and repeatable experiments.

On the other hand, the study of science with regard to the quantum world shows us that reality is actually spookier than we ever imagined.

Science itself suggests that the universe is a very random and improbable place! The more random it potentially is, the less trust we can comfortably place in logic and rational debate without deferring to the idea that we have no solid way of stating absolute truths. In reality (which is where we spend most of our time) there can be no such thing as absolute conviction. For this reason I tend to mix a great deal of metaphysical in with the ‘hard’ or ‘crunchy’ aspects of my science fiction. Horror is also something I enjoy playing with, if only to shock the reader out of their comfort zone and make *them* question the realities proposed by the story (or even the genre) they thought they were reading. Use logic to suspend the reader’s disbelief, order to present a believable world and believable characters, then hit them with random, uncomfortable chaos. The result – I hope! – is something akin to a psychological fairground ride.

DJR: What is your favourite theme within the book – what makes you really excited about other people reading it?

DS: The most prevalent theme explores the nature of duality, the juxtaposition of chaos and order, birth and death, infinity and zero. Not necessarily a study of opposites, but certainly one of bedfellows. This theme repeats throughout the entire story, in the personalities of protagonists and even in the makeup of environmental settings. I think those readers I’ve spoken to so far, however, enjoy the play on time travel more than the contrasts I find in universal truths. There’s the classic ‘if you killed your own grandfather’ question, but I’ve also approached, I believe, an entirely new idea in the time travel modus which links with the explorations I make of humanity’s relationship with zero and infinity. I won’t say more. You’ll have to read the book!

DJR: You’ve made the book available through print-on-demand service but you’re also approaching agents and publishers. What’s this experience been like for you? And what’s your ideal outcome?

DS: It’s a somewhat depressing experience. There’s an advert I’ve seen recently on TV that depicts a man playing tennis on what looks like a Wimbledon court. He serves and his opponent returns the ball, but just as he makes to strike the return, spectators descend from the stands in their hundreds, all whacking new balls into play or going for the original ball themselves. The original player, clearly dressed to play and eager to prove himself, gives the referee an exasperated look, but the ref merely shrugs. What can he do? I think this is the perfect analogy, not only for job hunting in a depressed market, but for seeking representation and a publishing contract in a world where every other person you pass in the street has a story to tell and a publishing deal in the offing.

 I think it must also be incredibly frustrating for the agents and publishers whose job it is to sift through reams and reams of submissions to find and reveal the true talents of this world.

Personally, I intend to keep scratching the itch until someone takes notice, if only because my incessant scratching has become an irritant to them. Until then I shall join the masses on court and keep whacking that ball across the net.

DJR: What else do you think you need to do to achieve what you want? Tell us a bit about what’s it’s like being at this stage of a writing career?

DS: There’s a great deal to do before I come even close to my goal of becoming fully dedicated to writing. Recognition, I think, is what I want to achieve first and foremost so that I can relax a little and get on with the business of story-telling, which is, after all, my true passion. As a new face on the sf scene I not only have an enormous amount to prove but I also face a daunting challenge in getting my work known. Right now I’m just ploughing forward with the PR and having fun with it, finding new and creative ways to draw interest and grab the attention of as many potential readers as I can, one person at a time most of the time. In terms of my work I’ve always felt that quality was more important than quantity. Not so, however, when it comes to an audience. I still have a long way to go.

DJR: Any last words?

DS: Just a link, if I may, to my website www.farcountry.ukwriters.net (my ficblog charting the end of the world one day at a time in real time can be read there).  I’m also working feverishly to keep up with current technologies and convert Transitor to eReader format (you can, if you prefer, already buy the book as an Adobe PDF on Lulu).

Relevant Links:

  • Transitor, available in paperback from LULU – click
  • Transitor, available on Amazon Kindle – click
See more posts like this – click

David J Rodger – DATA

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Some fan feedback about the cyberpunk horror short story, Killing Candy.

Subject: Re: Killing Candy
From: tad.xxxxxx@gmail.com
To: cl0venfeet(at)h0tmail(dot)com

So I am starting to note your patterns. How you open your stories, use of PA for all tech like communication/laptop type devices, [...]. I like this pattern, taken me this many stories to note it though.

I am learning from you about setting design and how well you re-use similar elements with cosmetic changes and they work wonders. I love how you are able to do that. I know I have tried, and I see you succeeding.

[...]

Ahh another repeat, the conqueror shows up in Killing Candy and Merchants [of Oropas], nice. I would not have noticed had I not read them back to back. I am digging how Candy is evolving. She would be a formidable [...] villain I suspect.

Yes, that is one bad mojo [...]. I think this setting would make a wonderful port to Call of Cthulhu or some such, and add in some of the other setting elements you have in other stories, a worthy contender with expansion to CthulthuPunk and the sorts.

Candy is an evil [...] and I like this story a whole lot.

Thanks
Tad

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Killing Candy - cyberpunk horror short story download by sci-fi and dark fantasy author David J Rodger

Available in print or download

You can download the story immediately or have a printed copy shipped to any address.

Short story. (Sci-fi & dark fantasy; 4,500 words).
It’s not strangers you should worry about.  It’s their friends.
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BUY THIS TODAY

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Get this short story sent to you free!

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Join my Facebook fan page: Every fan gets a free short story of their choice.  You’ll also get to enjoy first peek at new releases, see previews of work-in-progress and communicate with other fans.  I regularly run free prize draws giving away a novel to fans on the page and give head’s-up of flash discounts on my products. Guaranteed Spam-Free.  What’s not to Like. :o)

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David J. Rodger (born 1970 in Newcastle Upon Tyne) is a British science fiction & fantasy author and game designer best known for his novels set in a near-future world of corporate and political intrigue. So far he has published five novels; four that are set in the same world: God Seed; Dante’s Fool; Iron Man Project and Edge, and one, Dog Eat Dog, set within the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn.


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Yellow Dawn The Age of Hastur, an RPG written by David J RodgerYellow Dawn – The Age of Hastur is an RPG based on the science fiction & dark fantasy world of David J Rodger; it’s the universe shared by those novels, taken through an apocalyptic event caused by agents of H.P.Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos; the stories pick up 10 years after this  event has devasted planet Earth.

I’m currently going through a massive overhaul of the current version of the rulebook (version 2.1). You can follow updates about this project here.

This excerpt comes from the work-in-progress, drafting version 2.5 of the rulebook; specifically it comes from a much enhanced chapter called “The World of Yellow Dawn”.  It covers the concept of Magick within the Yellow Dawn universe – its resurgence from the shadows thrown over the Middle Ages by the dawn of Enlightentment (science crushing the pagan gods where the orthodox religions had left off).  It also conveys the sense of risk to users of Magick, a risk that is currently being written into the new version of the YD rulebook.

I hope you enjoy.  If you see anything that makes you wrinkle your face with dislike, let me know. This is still a work in progress and very much in draft.

Schools of Elemental Magick

For thousands of years the knowledge and study of Magick was limited to a handful of people.  This is not stage-show magic, but the true Magick behind the energy that binds and flows through Nature.

This restriction was for good reason, because working with the fabric of the Quantisphere, tapping into the structures that define human reality and shaping the primal energies of the cosmos, can be extraordinarily damaging to mind, body and spirit.  The Magick-user is making themselves a lightening rod. A conductor for god-like forces.  And this can have a profound effect on the complex and often fragile psychology of humans; with their competing sirens of the Ego, Morality, Fear, Anxiety and Lust; even excessive compassion… desires based on the principles of ‘goodness’ can be twisted and distorted.

Malleus maleficarum, Lyon 1669

Image via Wikipedia

This is one reason why people turn to the so-called dark arts of demonology; engaging with the sentient things that inhabit the outermost realms of the Quantisphere – angelic forms and their negative counterparts, demons – and getting them to perform these dangerous magickal operations on their behalf. For a price, of course. Making demonology infinitely more dangerous than taking the time, effort and pain to master the craft of wielding Magick yourself; but at first, demology is seductive because it comes across as comparatively easy.

Then there are the ceremonies of the Mythos.  Terrifying for their genuine simplicity – the highly-compressed, potent power of a few blood-daubed symbols or a string of polyglot sounds – capable of tearing holes in the Quantisphere, drawing through monstrous entities from the Outer Chaos.

Yellow Dawn triggered a renaissance in the field of Magick.  It has led to a new class of individual – the Road Mage.  A person who travels the wilderness – connecting with the forces he or she is learning to master, and bend to their Will.  There are also those who commune with demons or attempt to command the sanity-shredding energies of the Mythos.

Some survivors experienced a subtle shift in their perceptions, as if a new filter had been introduced – or perhaps an old one (industrialisation) removed.  They began suffering vivid, shocking dreams foretelling future events; others began drifting away from their bodies when they tried to sleep, with auto-astral projection; and many had deep intuitive feelings about people, places or situations that proved remarkably accurate.  Most closed down this new awareness through lack of understanding and fear.  Some embraced it and became known as ‘sensitives’.

Dark Dreams

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These people felt compelled by some deep yearning; they formed ‘schools of knowledge’, shared experiences and practices, developed their skills, became masters.  It was as if the elements and natural spirits of Earth whispered to them, guiding them.  How to quicken the repair of damaged flesh.  How to improve the yield and taste of crops.  How to bring water to the surface of a dry river bed or hold water in containment, through the power of thought alone.

And there was another group of sensitives who heard entirely different and darker voices; the cunning mutterings of demonic entities and dangerous elementals, fanning the flames of less positive urges and desires.  These people learned they could kill with a touch.  Create sparks from a hostile thought and savour the fury of a fire running through them; even cause that burning energy to leap from their fingers to cause mayhem and damage.

Between them they inherited the ancestral knowledge of all the shaman, wizards, witches and warlocks that had ever walked the Earth before them.  The knowledge contained ‘Within the Spheres’.  The conjurer’s ability to fold space and time around any object or person to cause them to vanish – and later reappear.   The necromancer’s ability to sift through the echoes of thought in dead flesh, or to breathe new life or undeath into what was once utterly corpulent.  The sorcerer’s charm and guile and knowledge of the demonic entities that exist within the uppermost layers of the spheres; and the danger therein of what those sorcerers may bring into this world, through underestimating the unbridled cravings such entities have to posses flesh.

And those that delved far enough, touched the boundary of the spheres with their astral fingers, felt the thrum of alien energies coursing beyond the bubble of human reality, and sensed the immense yet subtle power of the membrane that protects us from what lies beyond.

The Gate

Image by crowolf via Flickr

The Quantisphere is that boundary, that membrane.  Beyond which exists a place not meant for humankind:

The cosmic horrors of what many writers throughout history have tried to warn us about in their insane scribbling – or fantastic fiction.  A pantheon of trans-dimensional beings and utterly alien concepts so powerful the few humans who have ever guessed at their existence, have instinctively considered them to be Gods.  The Mythos.

Now, a decade after Yellow Dawn these schools have become well-established and spread across the globe – accepting the sensitives who come to them and turning a few in Road Mages.

For people in Living Cities, the tales of energy crackling from peoples’ hands, or causing rain to fall in a desert, or commanding animals are usually treated with scepticism and amusement, a remnant of the city-life mentality sneering at the superstitions of country-folk. However, every Living City now has a collection of strange rooms in crumbling buildings acting as recruitment centres for the Schools based out in the Wilderness.  And in Living Cities or their surrounding Rural Support Zones there is always the young or ‘touched’ who feel a call to leave the safety of the area and explore a new world beyond – a world where Magick exists and is wielded with knowledge and skill, for good, or for bad.

The 6 Global Schools

What is not widely known, except to those within the fraternities, brotherhoods, cabals and lodges, is that amongst the numerous independent Schools there are six which have become global enterprises, with shared ‘Discipline Centres’ springing up across the planet. Discipline Centres are where students live and learn their craft, gaining skills in different magick-operations and increasing their power.

Belonging to one of the main six schools allows a travelling Magi (road mage) to use the resources of their particular Schools’ Discipline Centres when they come across them; this can be for food & accommodation, or for prolonged periods of further learning. Each of the six global Schools has separate ideals, philosophies, practices and insignia, but like all Schools of Elemental Magick, including the small independents, they fall into one of three categories: Right-hand, Left-Hand and Non-Denomination.

Right-Hand Denomination: these Schools practice healing, communing with animals and manifesting the positive aspects of Nature for the good of others. The two global Schools under this denomination are:

(1)   Prism of Eternal Light

(2)   Peradons Staff

Left-Hand Denomination: these Schools practice Demonology, necromancy, manipulating weaker minds and manifesting the negative aspects of Nature for personal – selfish gain. The two global Schools under this denomination are:

(1)   Dues Regina

(2)   Cleft of Shadows

Non-Denomination: these Schools study Magick generally, as a phenomenon, as a science, as something to be understood with no moral framework for how Magick should be used. Some high ranking None Denomination adepts will attempt to study and learn the Mythos. The two global Schools under this denomination are:

(1)   Purple Dawn

(2)   Circle of Solomon

Joining a School

Anybody can join a School of Elemental Magick, simply by walking in and expressing your desire to start learning; but you’ve got to find one first.

Finding a School: Every Living City has at least one ‘recruitment’ centre for each of the main six schools, plus advertisements for numerous independent schools which all exist somewhere in the Wilderness.

There are places where all the Schools can be found in one settlement – such as Glastonbury in the South West of England.

In the deep Wilderness, every settlement has a 1% chance of having a school near it. What kind of School is determined by rolling 1d100.

01-10: Prism of Eternal Light (RH)

11-20: Peradons Staff (RH)

21-40: Independent Right-Hand Denomination

41-50: Dues Regina (LH)

51-60: Cleft of Shadows (LH)

61-80: Independent Left-Hand Denomination

81-85: Purple Dawn (ND)

86-90: Circle of Solomon (ND)

91-00: Independent Non-Denomination

Cost: simple. You hand over all your belongings. All your money, and you swear a blood-oath that you have not tried to hide or conceal your true wealth. The School uses magick to detect if you’re lying. Being caught lying results in you being turned away; all your belongings are returned; you’ll never be able to return to this School again, and if one of the 6 global Schools, your astral identity is black-marked by them, forever, meaning you will never be able to return to that School anywhere in the world. Rule data: the school has a default 80% chance to know if a character is lying               

Training: you start immediately. At the Discipline Centre, the School provides you with simple robes, usually bearing some subtle insignia, provide you with a bed, and basic meals. To actually have any chance of progress, you must dedicate at least 3 months to each block of learning.

Leaving: a student can leave any time they wish; if they have been there at least 3 months then they are given a bag of basic clothes; food rations for 3 days and 216 copper pieces.

Mythos: the schools are all acutely aware of the Mythos and how this cosmic horror presses in against the fragile yet resilient boundaries of human reality.  They keep such knowledge under lock and key and guard it feverishly.  Whether or not a particular school will open up its libraries to a non-adept (character) who comes to them seeking help in fighting a Mythos incursion, is up to the GM.  Likewise, the skill, ability and willingness of teachers to become involved will vary from place to place – and is down to the GM to specify.

Learning is never easy

When a adept locks themselves away in a school to study, it is not a prosaic period of peace and quiet.  The adept is engaging with the challenges of working under incredible strain – wielding energies that are by the very definition, super-natural.  They adept must also cope with the frustration of the failures that precede every increase in knowledge.  Their cool and nerve is tested as they confront fear (making a mistake can result in pain, injury or worse) and the all-consuming desires of the Ego.  When you’re wielding god-like powers it can be difficult not to believe you are god-like.  Moments of failure remind us of the true weakness of our human state, and this can result in uncontrolled rages or the utter collapse of confidence and destruction of the personality.

Insanity, self-harm, physical and psychological abuse, violent assault and even murder are all common risks when attending a school of elemental magick.

This is what the schools attempt to manage: to guide the adept through the turbulent waters of failure during learning; and to constrain the dizzying thrills of success.  There is nothing more dangerous than a sorcerer, road mage or adept who is not in control, particularly one who is insane.

The rule data section below quantifies these risks.

Rule Data

Every 3 months spent at school

Allows an adept to develop existing abilities in Occult operations and find new operations, but there is also the risks associated with learning.  It is likely to leave them significantly depleted of POW.

Picking up New Operations: being in a School gives the adept access to libraries and to the accumulated knowledge of teachers, masters and other adepts. The six global schools are able to share across numerous Discipline Centres, broadening the level of available knowledge far beyond what an independent school can provide.

If an adept wants to pick up new Occult operations (spells), they can select up to any 3 operations for the three month period, depending on availability.

Availability of new occult operations. Every one of the global schools has an 80% chance of being able to make available any Occult operation an adept wants to learn. An independent school only has a 20% chance per Occult operation – this is because they only have small libraries and resources.

Right-Hand & Left-Hand Adepts: spending 3 months within a School provides the following benefits: 3d6+12 experience points to spend on Occult skill & Occult Operations; 3d6 experience points to spend on anything they like. If they can roll over their POW on 1d100, then they also gain +3d3 POW.

Non-Denomination Adepts: spending 3 months within a School provides the following benefits: 3d6 experience points to spend on Occult skill & Occult Operations; 3d6 experience points to spend on anything they like. If they can roll over their POW on 1d100, they gain +1d6 POW.

Risks for all: every 1 week spent at a school regardless of denomination, regardless of it being an independent, will carry risks to the student. These are as follows:

  • Lose 1 POW unless you can roll beneath your current POW on 1d100. This is to fuel the Magic Points required for experimenting with the operations you’re learning.
  • Lose 1 COOL point unless you can succeed in an Anxiety check; this is from the strain and emotional exertion required from each adept.
  • Make a general Occult skill check or suffer a minor physical injury, such as mild burns (from energy blowback), weakness of limbs (from strained nervous system), bruising to throat and thorax (from excessive use of shouting commands, caught up in the ecstasy of power). However, if a ‘00’ is ever rolled then there’s a more serious injury. Roll 1d20 to see what it is:

01-10  Permanent nerve damage caused by uncontrolled surges of power. -1 DEX.

11-19   Energy burns to hands and face, causing minor ‘melting’ of skin and features: -1 APP

20        Muscle seizes and permanent state of spasm, resulting in a limping gait, a curious way of limbs hanging at the wrong angle, and a facial features ‘at rest’ with a grimace like expression. [-1 APP, -1 DEX, -1 STR]

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David J Rodger – DATA

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And the winner is… fan grabs free copy of Dog Eat Dog as his prize in May’s fiction giveaway by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger.

Promtional campaign for May 2011 win novels and get a free short story

In May 2011 I ran a free prize-draw giveaway of my work.  All you had to do was join my Facebook fan page and you were automatically entered into the draw – this was more about rewarding existing fans and “giving you reasons to LIKE my facebook page”.

Anyhow, the name that popped up in my super funky high-tech Excel spreadsheet random-name picker (!!!) was:
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Mr Matt M McElroy

Who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, originally from Chippewa Falls – USA

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Matt had a choice of scifi & dark fantasy novels (God Seed ¦ Dante’s Fool ¦ Iron Man Project ¦ Edge ¦ Dog Eat Dog) or the post-apocalyptic role-playing game Yellow Dawn.

He plumbed for Dog Eat Dog – (good choice!)

And here’s his prize:

Cover of Dog Eat Dog a science fiction and dark fantasy novel set in the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn

Congratulations Matt!  I’ll be requesting LULU pop a copy in the post to you.

Meanwhile, if you’re interested in my work – take a sniff around my official website DavidJRodger.com

And if you don’t want to miss out on further chances to win free stuff, just join my Facebook fan page right now.  Every new fan gets a free short story of their choice sent to them.  What’s not to like?

Best wishes

David

Previous Winners

Join my Facebook Page & get FREE stuff!

Facebook Fan Page button for David J Rodger

Get involved, keep up to date: enjoy early notice of new releases and updates about work-in-progress; grab free review copies of short stories when I put out invites and save a few bucks with special discount links “for fans only”. Guaranteed Spam-Free.

Click here to view Facebook page.

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David J Rodger – DATA

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Morning folks

Facebook Fan Page button for David J RodgerYou just need to join my Facebook page for a chance to win one of my novels.  These are sci-fi & dark fantasy with a ton of great reviews; fast-paced and brutal, they cover a range of flavours from Lovecraft’s Mythos through Demonic possession to corporate espionage and warfare between private armies.

I’m giving away a novel of your choice at the end of May.

Join my Facebook page. That’s all you need to do.  No join, no chance to win.

 

One of these novels could be yours:

Cover of God Seed, new fiction for cyberpunk horror by David J Rodger Cover for Dante's Fool, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger cover for Iron Man Project, new fiction for cyberpunk thriller written by David J Rodger Cover for Edge, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger

cover for Dog Eat Dog, new fiction for SSF written by David J Rodger


David J. Rodger (born 1970 in Newcastle Upon Tyne) is a British science fiction & fantasy author and game designer best known for his novels set in a near-future world of corporate and political intrigue. So far he has published five novels; four that are set in the same world: God Seed; Dante’s Fool; Iron Man Project and Edge, and one, Dog Eat Dog, set within the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn.



Join my Facebook Page for a Chance to Win

Facebook Fan Page button for David J Rodger

Get involved, keep up to date: enjoy early notice of new releases and updates about work-in-progress; grab free review copies of short stories when I put out invites and save a few bucks with special discount links “for fans only”. Guaranteed Spam-Free.

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At the end of May I’ll be picking one lucky winner from the people who have “liked” my Facebook Fan Page.

All you need to do is “like” my Facebook page and you’re automatically in with a chance to win.

Plus!

All fans are sent a short story of their choice – absolutely free.

What’s not to LIKE?

Go on, do it now.  Go to my Facebook Fan Page. Hit that “like” button.  I’ll do the rest. :o)

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One or ALL of these novels could be yours

Cover of God Seed, new fiction for cyberpunk horror by David J Rodger Cover for Dante's Fool, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger cover for Iron Man Project, new fiction for cyberpunk thriller written by David J Rodger Cover for Edge, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger

cover for Dog Eat Dog, new fiction for SSF written by David J Rodger


David J. Rodger (born 1970 in Newcastle Upon Tyne) is a British science fiction & fantasy author and game designer best known for his novels set in a near-future world of corporate and political intrigue. So far he has published five novels; four that are set in the same world: God Seed; Dante’s Fool; Iron Man Project and Edge, and one, Dog Eat Dog, set within the post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn.



Promtional campaign for May 2011 win novels and get a free short story

David J Rodger’s trademark unforgiving rendering of harsh reality, and relentless narrative pace, are here in palm-sweating abundance, delivered in a set of stand-alone novels that opens up a new universe of conflict, shocking truths and monstrous threats to sanity and life.

- Roberta Shock,  Network Zero

Join my Facebook Page & get FREE stuff!

Facebook Fan Page button for David J Rodger

Look what you get: a free short story sent to you  and a chance to win one of my science fiction & dark fantasy novels, or, if I can reach 700 Facebook fans by end of May 2011  then I’ll give away  a COMPLETE collection of my novels (worth £80 or $130). What’s not to like? :o)

Click here to view Facebook page.

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What’s all this about?

I want to increase the number of fans on my Facebook page, so I’m giving away a free short story to everyone who joins.   And everyone who is a fan at the end of May 2011 stands a chance to win one of my sci-fi & dark fantasy novels.  Even better, if I reach my target of 700 fans by the end of May, I’ll give away a COMPLETE collection of novels to one lucky person.  It’s that simple really.  I’m giving stuff away; all you need to do is join my Facebook page.

One or ALL of these novels could be yours

Cover of God Seed, new fiction for cyberpunk horror by David J Rodger Cover for Dante's Fool, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger cover for Iron Man Project, new fiction for cyberpunk thriller written by David J Rodger Cover for Edge, new fiction for cyberpunk horror written by David J Rodger

cover for Dog Eat Dog, new fiction for SSF written by David J Rodger

Terms & Conditions

  • “Complete collection” refers to God Seed, Dante’s FoolIron Man Project, EDGE, and  Dog Eat Dog.
  • As of May 2011 this is currently worth Worth up to £80 GBP (or $130 USD).
  • If there are less than 700 fans listed on my Facebook fan page by 31st May 2011, I’ll only be giving away one novel to one winner.
  • Winner will be selected randomly on 1st June 2011.

Do you want to win one novel or ALL my novels?

Send your friends this link and tell them to join. 700 fans is the magic number.  Everybody gets a little something sent their way. Help me reach my target.

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Choose any one of these short stories – join my Facebook Fan page and I’ll send you one – free!

The Tainted Moor - Hastur infects a small settlement to the west of Jesmond Newcastle Upon Tyne in Yellow DawnArnos Vale - spooky horror story set in cemetery in Bristol UK Devil's Spring short horor story with Cthulhu Mythos and BASE jumpers House of Heavenly Light - short story download for Yellow Dawn exploring Hastur within post-apocalyptic world of Yellow Dawn Corrupt Moon - Yellow Dawn download short story King in Yellow and Yellow Sign encroaching on post-apocalyptic world Masters of Chaos short story download speculative fiction Cthulhu Mythos Dilemma - science fiction short story download 3 humans trapped on a space ship Cypher - cyberpunk horror short story written by sci-fi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger Flinch - cyberpunk horror short story download by scifi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger Killing Candy - cyberpunk horror short story download by scifi & dark fantasy author David J Rodger Merchant of Oropas - science fiction fantasy short story download Sim - cyberpunk horror short story download by science fiction and dark fantasy author David J Rodger Oracle - cyberpunk horror short story download - warning contains disturbing content Pain - a cyberpunk horror short story download written by sci-fi and dark fantasy author David J Rodger Cloudy Head - Cthulhu Mythos for kids

Arnos Vale: 3,900 words, full of dread and menace, set within the centuries old cemetery of Arnos Vale in Bristol, England. Arnos Vale is a portal to a world of mist and shadows, where the foolish can stumble upon terrors that should not be and glimpse Nature’s cruel and despicable secrets.

Cloudy Head: 5,000 words, illustrated (black & white). A fabulous tale of two-worlds co-existing and overlapping in secret, special places; populated with mysteries and dangerous entities that exist to help or hinder new dreamers crossing over normally unseen boundaries. Hauntingly engaging, spooky and intriguing, Cloudy Head will stay with you for days.

Corrupt Moon: (Yellow Dawn) 4,200 words. A survivor becomes obsessed by a church tower on a distant hill leading him to an mind-shattering encounter with the Outer Chaos of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Cypher: History has taught us the secrets of the past. But when an object is about to be unearthed after 4,000 years of silence, the revelations it threatens to unleash bring such risk as to draw the most ominous powers from the shadows to try and stop it. Powers that influence the very forces that govern our mundane lives. Cypher is a fast and brutal journey into a heart of darkness.

Dilemma: 6,700 words. Science fiction. A tense and fast-paced plot that plunges into the heart of our fear of the ‘monsters’ we make to serve us. Biological intolerance clashes with the vain attempt to rationalise cold-blooded murder.

Devil’s Spring: 5,000 words. A group of BASE jumpers travel to a remote rural location to enjoy an illicit exit-point; but the area cossets the corruptive remains of a site of worship, where an abominable entity fell from the Stars millennia ago and infected the earth, air and water.  Ignoring the warnings, a swift and brutal tale of cosmic horror unfolds.

Flinch: 5,800 words. Scifi & dark fantasy. Working as a ‘door skimmer’ for the best and most exclusive night clubs in the city has its perks and everyone, it seems, wants a piece of Raymond. Surgical implants give him an edge in the game of privacy and discretion; but not all new technology, he discovers, is designed to be good for the human soul. Flinch – would you let it inside your head?

House of Heavenly Light (Yellow Dawn): 2,000 words, explores the influence of Hastur on the world of Yellow Dawn through the zombie infection.

Killing Candy: 4,500 words. Cyberpunk horror. It’s not strangers you should worry about. It’s their friends.

Masters of Chaos: 3,800 words, Speculative fiction with Cthulhu Mythos undertone. A man contemplates the world around him, taking seemingly meticulous notes of certain random but repeating events. Can he influence the world through such observations? And to what end? When unseen things are scratching at the doors of perception.

Merchant of Oropas: 4,000 words. Science Fiction & Fantasy. In certain cultures, the possession of an object during magical ceremony can infuse it with qualities that cannot be measured or monitored by scientific means. They are said to become like beacons, within the Astral Planes, guiding or warding other worldly spirits with no restrictions of time, or space.

Oracle: 4,300 words. Cyberpunk Horror. A corporate head hunter plans a lucrative extraction job, assisted by an mysterious neural implant he has no memory of receiving. Meanwhile another kind of hunt is taking place – where a man acts upon a violent and disturbing urge.  Somewhere, within this fusion of damaged synapses and scarred nerve endings, there is a link.  Oracle knows.  Oracle sees. Oracle is the question mark and the key.

Pain: 5,400 words. Sci-fi & dark fantasy. A former military PARC pilot is suffering psychological trauma of flashbacks, relentless physical agony and symptoms associated with PTSD. A pariah since media coverage of an atrocity he was involved within, the man’s only salvation is a mysterious Mr Sovitch who wants to exonerate him and prove he is the victim of experiemental combat drugs. Although he’s aware of another agenda being played out the promise of the pain ending acts like a carrot on a stick.

Sim: 5,100 words. Sci-fi & dark fantasy. Sim-weave is a bioware implant that allows users to record, playback or share their own sim-stims. But what happens if you find one downloaded into your brain that has shocking scenes within it … and what if it’s been made to look like you did these things? Guilt and conscience collide with the horror of what lurks in the shadows of sick mind.

The Tainted Moor (Yellow Dawn):  6,700 words. In the North East of England is a place where something so terrible has occurred, that the locals dare only to speak of it as a warning to survivors thinking of going there.  The Tainted Moor.  Man has tried to penetrate the chaos of the Infection and brought such calamity upon the battered Earth that even the Angels weep in despair.  An indelible stain upon the bruised flesh of Mother Nature.


It’s easy – just join my Facebook Page

Facebook Fan Page button for David J Rodger

Get involved, keep up to date: enjoy early notice of new releases and updates about work-in-progress; grab free review copies of short stories when I put out invites and save a few bucks with special discount links “for fans only”. Guaranteed Spam-Free.

Click here to view Facebook page.

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What’s that? You don’t like Facebook?

If you don’t like Facebook, don’t have an account and have no interest in becoming a fan of such then I think it’s unfair that you miss out on a chance to get a free short story and win my books.  So if you want to take part:

  • just blog or tweet about my work promoting my official website (www.davidjrodger.com)
  • then send me what you’ve done (@davidjrodger on Twitter) or email me: clovenfeet (at) hotmail (dot) com.
  • I’ll send you a free short story of your choice and enter your name into the prize draw for novel(s).

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Previous Winners

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David J Rodger – DATA

Two adrenaline junkies in wing-suits tear past some terrestial-based pals at around 120 mph, with about 3 metres to spare between a cool stunt and lot of shredded muscle, shattered bone and friends pulped into crimson purée.

Related Links:

Devil’s Spring: short story about a group of BASE jumpers travel to a remote rural location to enjoy an illicit exit-point; but the area cossets the corruptive remains of a site of worship, where an abominable entity fell from the Stars millennia ago and infected the earth, air and water.  Ignoring the warnings, a swift and brutal tale of cosmic horror unfolds. More…

EDGE: novel about murder and technological espionage taking place in a snowboarding resort in New Zealand. Also features a new Great Old One for Lovecraft’s pantheon of monstrous entities, the Cthulhu Mythos. More…

Don’t forget you can get a free short story by joining my Facebook Page

Facebook Fan Page button for David J Rodger

Get involved, keep up to date: enjoy early notice of new releases and updates about work-in-progress; grab free review copies of short stories when I put out invites and save a few bucks with special discount links “for fans only”. Guaranteed Spam-Free.

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