author & editor
Many thanks to A.E. Siraki for her thoughtful review of On the Night Border!
Here are stories of madness, torture, violence, settling scores, pain, and more. There are races against time, swerves to keep the reader on the edge of their seat, and haunting descriptions that remain long after the book has finished.
For sale on Amazon, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Barnes and Noble.
Sam Tomaino has kindly reviewed Clockwork Chaos, edited by Neal Levin and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, over at SFRevu. It’s a nice, thorough, story-by-story review. About my tale, “Cat’s Cry in Pluto’s Kitchen,” he writes:
Morris Garvey, who made a fortune with his business, Steam Sweeps and Machinations Sundry, and Detective Daniel Matheson of the New Alexandria police force are trying to solve the crime of the theft of Brazilian virtuoso Felipe Sandeman’s violin in time for him to play it at the closing of the World Expo. The case gets stranger and stranger and involved the cult of Bast, the feline god of the Egyptians. We are led on a merry chase with lots of twists and turns in another great story in this book.
Sums it up nicely. This anthology is full of great writers so click over to the full review for his thoughts on the other stories. Or pick up a copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ve got one more Machinations Sundry story due for publication this year. I’m planning to write one more, and I suspect there’ll be another one after that. I do believe this Morris Garvey fellow, his home city of New Alexandria, and all his friends and enemies have become my new series.
Self-appointed expert on strange pulp and literature, Timothy L. Mayer has reviewed The Domino Lady: Sex as a Weapon on his blog. After a quick recap of DL’s pulp history, he goes onto say lots of nice things about the book and its authors, including this about my contribution: The best story in the collection is “The Devil, You Know” by James Chambers. Not only does Chambers give us a Chinese-American diamond fence named Lee who dresses and talks like a cowboy, but he has The Domino Lady captured by a band of Satanists. Taken to a yacht off the coast, the Domino Lady is recruited by their sinister leader and forced to watch obscene rituals. It has all the sleaze factor you might expect from the shudder pulps, including a naked Amazon whipping men to death. Off course, The Domino Lady is a little too smart for her captors.
Drop by Z-7 Headquarters to read the full review and check out the rest of Timothy’s blog, which is full of great posts about pulp fiction both classic and new. The Domino Lady: Sex as a Weapon, published by Moonstone Books in 2009, is available on Amazon.
My story, “He Who Burns,” appeared in the anthology, Dragon’s Lure. It was one of a number of stories I’ve written where I’ve managed to surprise myself. A dragon story wasn’t on the horizon for me in any form until I was asked to contribute to this anthology. What I came up with was a definite change of pace for me, one I enjoyed writing, and one that seems to have gone over very well with readers. Most recently Dragon’s Lure garnered some kind words from the You Gotta Read Reviews blog, which said, “…each of these tales were a delight which isn’t often the case in anthologies.” My story features Max Toth, forensic alchemist in New Alexandria, a city with a salamander problem.
“Chambers’s damaged characters cling to hope even as the world comes apart at the seams, making the insanity and despair of their circumstances poignant as well as deliciously creepy.” –Publisher’s Weekly,
It’s short but sweet…
Publisher’s Weekly gave The Engines of Sacrifice a starred review.