Sky Birds Dare! by L. Ron Hubbard (aviator pulp adventure audio)

I am continually impressed at the breadth of material produced by author L. Ron Hubbard during the second half of the 1930s. He wrote everything from Westerns and suspense to adventures of the air, sea, and foreign lands. First published in the September 1936 issue of Five Novels Monthly, Sky Birds Dare!, as its title suggests, centers around aviation.

Breeze Callahan is one of the best glider pilots around. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much in the age of motors. Though Breeze's gliders would keep a plane in the air after its motor failed — and would be able to soar into enemy territory without a sound — the Navy is more interested in the training ships of Breeze's rival, Badger O'Dowell, for the war effort.

Breeze has to prove that his gliders are good enough, and that he is good enough for the hand of Patty Donegan (his designer's daughter) — who has recently taken a shine to sailors — even if he has to crash and burn to do it.

As is fairly common in Hubbard's fiction, narration carries the day over dialogue in Sky Birds Dare!, allowing the author to display the extensive knowledge he seems to have gleaned from his time as president of the George Washington University Glider Club. (The promotional materials from Galaxy Audio often emphasize how much of Hubbard's verisimilitude came from personal experience.)

Regular narrator R.F. Daley once again puts his all into delivering the power of the words. And some of Hubbard's most effective prose is in Sky Birds Dare! — during the soar in chapter 3. Every detail is painted from the POV of the cockpit, first the exhilaration of flying, then when things start to go wrong, the fear and rush of thoughts. I felt like I was in the glider with Breeze, and that's precisely what I want from escapist fiction.

Re-Kindling Interest: The Boar by Joe R. Lansdale (young adult novella)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

Author Joe R. Lansdale's March 2012 novel Edge of Dark Water is his latest venture into the young-adult field. But those readers who can't wait to see what he does with this type of material can check out this one in the meantime.

Inspired by the more adult subject matter covered in the young-adult novels by authors like Gary Paulsen and Robert Cormier, a young Joe R. Lansdale set out to write his own YA entry, using his particular style while telling a simple, straightforward story. The Boar was the result.

Unfortunately, it proved to be impossible to sell until a limited Subterranean Press edition. Night Shade Books released it in an affordable trade hardcover a few years ago, and now it's finally available as an e-book, hopefully allowing even more people to read this terrific little novella.

The story follows the coming of age during the summer of 1933 of 15-year-old Richard Harold Dale ("Ricky" to his friend Abraham, who shares this adventure). When Ricky's father goes off to make money for the family the only way he can — by wrestling at fairs, just like Lansdale's own father — Ricky is left man of the house. Out hunting, he runs across the legendary boar that terrorizes the Sabine River Bottoms: Old Satan, the Devil Boar with a hoofprint the size of a man's hand.

After the boar kills Ricky's dog and attacks his family — including his pregnant mother — he vows to take his family's protection into his own hands and kill Old Satan once and for all — even though local sage Uncle Pharaoh says he's crazy to try. But first, he'll need some training and something larger than a .22....

The American South — as depicted in The Boar, at least — is a place where stubbornness doesn't get you smacked, and where adults respect the ambitions of teenagers. (When Ricky tells his father he wants to be a writer, nothing whatsoever is said about "something to fall back on." But then again, this isn't your typical Lansdale novel; he is best known for portraying the much darker side of humanity in his extreme horror stories (see The Drive-In and High Cotton for examples).

You'll find no such over-the-top evil characters here (unless you count a boar called Old Satan, that is), only a young boy on a quest to call himself a man and kill himself a boar. Lansdale makes the characters individuals and, although the plot definitely rides the line of believability, I never doubted it for a moment.

The Boar also has that unmistakable Lansdale voice coming through the page, that down-home delivery that makes his skill with dialect effortlessly ring true and has made his public readings so popular. This is an ideal choice for readers wanting an exciting nostalgic experience — or wanting to introduce the new generation to the terrific storytelling of Joe R. Lansdale.

This review is an updated and revised version of the one that originally appeared in The Green Man Review in 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Re-Kindling Interest: Dark Side of the Morgue by Raymond Benson (The Rock 'n' Roll Detective's Greatest Hits)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

A blonde wearing sunglasses and a big, floppy hat has been killing members of Chicago's prog-rock scene (known locally as "Chicagoprog"), and Zach Garriott (guitarist and vocalist for the seminal bands North Side and Red Skyez, but gone solo since 1980) wants Spike Berenger's help finding the suspect — he's on the list. The trouble is, the main suspect is Sylvia Favero, and she's been dead since 1970.

Dark Side of the Morgue is author Raymond Benson's second Spike Berenger novel. This Kindle edition (called The Rock 'n' Roll Detective's Greatest Hits) contains it and the other two, A Hard Day's Death and On the Threshold of a Death for less than the price of one of the original paperback editions.

P.I. Spike Berenger used to be in a progressive rock band called The Fixers, but they didn't last long (though they still have some devoted fans). Now Berenger and his partner Rudy Bishop run Rockin' Security, a service for the music industry. Berenger also has his private investigator's license because it sometimes helps with business. Suzanne Prescott, a former Goth devotee now into Transcendental Meditation (T.M.) and martial arts, is his investigation partner.

Berenger, a little bored with his current caseload involving Iggy Pop's dogs and Debbie Harry's landlord, decides to take the case, partly because he's friends and former colleagues with many of the participants. Here, Benson's knowledge of the prog-rock industry serves him well (he wrote The Pocket Guide to Jethro Tull and is himself a composer and songwriter).

After a long exposition introducing character relationships and band histories, Benson's feel for the high points brings authenticity to the story and never feels just like some guy trying to write a rock novel. (A Chicagoprog "family tree" at the front of the book is great for reference, and the table of contents is actually a "track listing" of song titles.)

Dark Side of the Morgue is funny, disturbing, and filled with deep knowledge of the music industry and abnormal psychology, all combined to make a really terrific read that I wanted to pick up whenever I had a free moment. It is assembled from P.I./thriller tropes we've seen many times before, but Benson has put them together in a way that feels fresh and original, and results in the reader responding to them as if they were brand new.

My only real complaint is that protagonist Spike Berenger is the least interesting person in the book. But Berenger's transparency allows the supporting characters to truly shine (for example, in how Prescott's T.M. skills actually figure into the plot instead of being just an interesting character quirk). Benson obviously spent a great deal of time developing his musicians' relationships and histories, and the hard work pays off as Dark Side of the Morgue is an engrossing read that is as much for rock fans as it is for fans of conventional P.I. novels.

Re-Kindling Interest: The Words by Douglas Clegg (novella)

This is one of a series of reviews focusing on out-of-print works that have become available again via a variety of e-book formats.

The new ebook explosion has been great for the novella. Previously only to be found in limited editions in the small press or in anthologies, this former bastard of the literary world has finally found a form in which it can thrive.

This is not only good for the authors but also for readers who may have missed out on hidden gems like this one (originally published in Four Dark Nights).

Douglas Clegg's The Words is a real stunner. In fewer than a hundred pages, Clegg creates a mythology, ages it, and sets its destiny in motion via two teenage boys, Dash and Mark, and their poorly chosen selections of reading materials.

Once Dash initiates the events, only Mark can stop them, but he can't for the life of him remember the words Dash begged him not to forget. Oh, he can remember the names that started it all, but those foreign-sounding words continue to escape him.

Clegg creates real tension, even during the flashback scenes used to explain the history and lead up to the present. Using the novella form to its utmost, The Words could have been told no other way, and I'm glad to see that it may finally find the audience that missed it the first time around.

Bad Juju: a little something for the weekend

• First off, Bad Juju is available from the Amazon Kindle store this weekend, January 21 and 22, for free! If you were hesitant to try it out, now's the time.
  
• Also, Walt Hicks, the publisher of the original paperback edition, reminisces about Bad Juju in his review of Randy Chandler's latest novel, Daemon of the Dark Wood:

  It's hard to believe that almost exactly a decade ago I was searching high and low for that perfect first novel for HellBound Books Publishing. Looking for something original with a fresh voice, but also a real page-turner, I sifted through over a hundred 'first three chapter/synopsis' packages, many quite well-written, most of them starring ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and other auld beasties; the vast majority showcasing hordes of vampires in every conceivable shape, stripe and configuration.
  
  One day, I opened an e-mail, quickly buzzed through the cover note, started the chapters, and ... wait. I think I may have something here. Quickly followed by: How the hell is this NOT published already? I immediately fired off an e-mail request for the complete manuscript. Within a few days' time, I knew I had that elusive first novel for HellBound: Bad Juju by Randy Chandler.

  Read the rest of the review over at Hellbound Times.
  

My Latest Project

For the last several months, I and my colleague at Acid Grave Press, David T. Wilbanks, have been working steadily on getting a new edition of Randy Chandler's novel Bad Juju ready for publication. And now it's out on Amazon. (Other stores will follow.)

More info at the Acid Grave Press blog.