Zombie Attack

A little more from my work in progress:

“Brian, look out!” he shouted, but Ezekiel had already grabbed Brian by the hair and had slipped his scythe’s sharp under-blade against Brian’s neck. Susan and Conrad heard the sound of Brian’s gasp and turned to see Ezekiel with one arm pulling back Brian’s head and the other high on the scythe’s handle.

“You took my family,” Ezekiel snarled. “You killed my flock!”

Conrad had both hands on the hilt of his sword and was already in a defensive stance. Susan screamed and Keith bolted to the center of the standoff. “He’s my brother…don’t hurt him.”

More to come, second draft underway...

The Rainbow Book Fair

This past Saturday, I overslept. This was not a good thing, as the rainbow Book Fair I've been telling everyone to come to was better than two hours away and I had two and a half hours to get there. I bolted from bed and ate a hasty breakfast, then hit the highway. I was smart enough to have loaded the books into the car trunk the night before. I still made it to the event in time, including picking up my friend and fellow author David Stein. A friend snapped this picture of the two of us.

Despite the minutes to midnight sort of arrival, we were set up well before patrons began arriving. In another break of luck, the table next to ours was a no-show, so I used it to spread more books out. Thanks to the Square device that turns a smartphone into a cash register, I did a brisk business, mostly on my new book. I was pleased. I got to see some old friends, and Thor stopped in for a visit, bearing bagels.

Now if you are wondering why I am wearing those groovy hippie glasses indoors, it was I forgot to change from driving with my sunglasses to my regular spectacles. Which was a mistake, as I left them on the passenger car seat. Which means that David, unwittingly, sat on them. Oh Snap was exactly what it meant in the literal sense. Driving home was a real trial, as I had to balance the frame on half of my head while adjusting the nose piece about every 5 to 10 miles. But I made it home safely, and my new book is already getting some very positive feedback. (Always good for the insecure author's ego.)

In less than two weeks I'll be headed for Cleveland's CLAW event, where I'll be moderating "Dirty Words: The Erotic Author's Forum." Everyone gets to do a reading, which is always fun, and the audience tends to be very responsive during Q&A time. With the new book to lead the vendor table, I am also hoping to do well sales-wise again.

I'm so pleased to have the new book out that I've started working on another. I've finally started the Amish Zombie novel I've been batting around in my head for a few years now. "Mennonite Of The Living Dead" is the working title (groan all you want to, but now you won't forget it, will you?).

New Book! Finally Available!

It's taken me several years and a lot of prodding, but my newest collection of short stories is now available via Amazon. "Bounty Hunters and Kick Ass Cops" wraps up seven white hot kinky stories from the sexual underground. Everything from Cops behaving very badly to soldiers captured for particularly intense interrogations.

I'll let my friend and fellow author Alex Ironrod do my bragging for me:"Tim Brough is at it again with more than half a dozen stories of fierce man-sex, spiritual adventures and sadistic revenge. His writing is as graphic, as detailed, as elegant as ever. There’s Officer Malloy, the bad-ass in his tight blue uniform and tall Dehner boots tying up and flogging a new virgin victim in his private dungeon, and then mashing it up with Luke and Frank, two tough bounty hunters, playing for revenge and a sack full of money with guns barking and whips biting into naked flesh. “Android Police” offers a futuristic world of renegade PS9400s battling sadistic humans. “Code Name Swuffy” is a totally today tale of US intelligence gathering and depraved torture in the Middle East, while other stories deal with human sexual redemption through violence and deep male submission at the end of a single-tail whip. If you haven’t read anything new from Tim recently, let me tell you he sure as hell hasn’t lost his devilish touch to stir your darker imagination and to stimulate your one-handed reading with Bounty Hunters And Kick Ass Cops. Let’s have some more soon.

Click through the cover for more information. PS: It goes without saying that this is a volume of material for adults only. Not Safe For Work reading.

Writing Block Busted

It's been almost 5 years since my last new book, Skin Tight was released. Frankly, I have been dealing with both a writer's block and a serious lack of enthusiasm. But over the summer, that popped open in a big way. Now I have four finished works for a short story collection, a fifth about 75% complete and a follow-up that THAT story gestating. I'm hoping to have this finished in time for MAL. It's been a long time.

<<< This is the collection I gathered over the summer for Kindle, but it's a collection of about 20 years worth of writing.The working title of the new set is "Bounty Hunters & Kick Ass Cops"

I join the Kindle Age!

I am joining the Kindle age with this new Collection: Brutality! It's a pun on that it's the totality of my work and the correct pronunciation of my last name, Brough,  Gor for it, Kindle readers. It's better than 50 Shades of Grey.

Click on the image for more info.

The 2012 CLAW Author's Forum

CLAW weekend was a total delight, but the highlight for me was being moderator to the Author's Panel. I nick-named it the "Black Leather Bookshelf" in the shameless plug division, at the same time, the panelists were like a who's who. The order was me at the end of the table, with Guy Baldwin, Gloria Brame, Jack Rinella and Race Bannon seated along with me.

Gloria I had never met before, and she promptly became a thrill to be with. She was funny, flirty and very smart, and her antics with Guy were all but show stealers. We all read from our works, and then took questions. The audience eagerly participated, filling almost 90 minutes as we each took turns responding. Guy was his usual irascible self, adding to the entertainment value.

I feel so damn lucky to have been a part of this. Joel took the pics, and there are more through the link.

New York City Book Boys. Never Have a Dull Day

Saturday AM, I hopped bright and early into my car with three boxes of books for the annual Rainbow Book Fair, which Daniel Kitchens has been doing a great job of running these past few years. It's always an enjoyable outing, and - like last year - David Stein and I split costs on a table. As lucj would have it, the vendor next to us failed to show, so we expanded our space.

Perfect Bound Press is David's company, I list mine as Black Leather Bookshelf. There were an awful lot of folks there this year, including this year's "get," Samuel R Delaney, Sci-Fi and kinky writer. (You think I'm kidding? Read "Hogg" someday.) he has a new novel about Rural Gay America out, which I picked up and had autographed.

Another author friend was there, Christopher Trevor.

As per usual, lots of friends arrived to say hello and pick up some books. My buddy Colonel Al propped in to show off his workout improved figure. 

All in all, a good day. I think that David and I sold enough to have made some profits, but I was ready to head for home. I'm psyched to catch the premier of "MadMen" later this week (it's on the DVR waiting for me).

Have a Great week, all.

     

I'm Officially Cracked

I got mentioned on Cracked.com! (Or at least my book does.)

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-hardest-people-to-shop-for-holiday-gift-guide_p2/

Jobs, Steve Jobs

I just heard that Apple founder and frontman Steve Jobs has passed away. I felt a lump in my throat come and go as the news was broadcast, as Apple has been involved with so many of my years in my life. When I first started working in publishing, the main room was a set of Macs, all rigged up with Pagemaker, along with a slightly more powerful Mac for the graphics. Every week, for three years, we turned out a Radio/Broadcast musical tipsheet on that room full of Apple computers.

When I decided to start my own magazines, I bought an Apple PowerPC. I remember not buying the new One Gigabyte version, thinking "who needs a gigabyte?" That computer lasted me from 1996 until just a few years ago. All the Rubber Rebel and Vulcan America magazines were composed on Apples. And the revolution of scanning...wow. No more huge darkrooms with cameras the size of refrigerators. It meant that I could take the pictures for my own magazines, without having to depend totally on studios and models. All the stories I wrote for my first two books (and much of Skin Tight) were written on an Apple.

So much of my creative life has been devised on machines that Steve Jobs helped invent and, more importantly, design. A recent Newsweek article profiled him, describing him alternately as brilliant and driven, but difficult and autocratically demanding. The chatter on TV behind me as I type is how Jobs The Visionary democratized the computing world. All I know is that he made a huge impact on mine.

My Amazon Book Reviews: Michael Marshall "Killer Move"

Games People Play  
4 out of 5 Stars

Michael Marshall's conspiracy theory novel looks at how life could become if a group of wealthy twits decided that the most fun thing they could do with their money would be taking some random associate and planting pitfalls to ruin his life. How far would you go? Who would you need? Who could you trust? Finally, what would you do if it was you who became the rat they decided to force into their maze?

Bill Moore, an ambitious real estate agent in Florida, is that man in the maze. He's an ambitious, if far too calculating, man with a five year plan to become a super-salesman. But he suddenly begins to receive emails that put his reputation into question. His wife confronts him with the discovery of scandalous pictures of a co-worker on his computer. Worst of all, a wealthy client he was courting for a sales deal turns up missing and quite possibly meeting with foul play. What none of them know is that a wild card has been dealt into this game. John Hunter, a man wrongly convicted of a crime connected to a previous "game" has been given an early prison release, and he's had over a decade to plan his revenge. By the time the wealthy manipulators or Bill Moore learn of Hunter's arrival on the board, the manipulations have already progressed too long and have gone too far.

Marshall has a lot of leeway, since anyone could be an actor in this maze. When Bill begins to suspect that he's being set-up, he can't be certain who is making these moves against him, and that leaves Marshall plenty of lines to write between. As a thriller, it gives both author and reader enough area to throw twists, and makes "Killer Move" (which I must add, is a wretchedly bland title for a book that could have easily been titled "Modified," a phrase used repetitively through the novel) a solid read.

 

Tomorrow: Join me In NYC: I'm doing a reading after 3PM.

 

 

David Stein and I will be sharing a book table at the event. Come on out!

 

Join me this Saturday In NYC: I'm doing a reading after 3PM.

 

 David Stein and I will be sharing a book table at the event. Come on out!

 

My Amazon Book Reviews: "Shift" Tim Kring and Dale Peck

Heroes in The Past Tense  
4 Out of 5 Stars

Those of you unfamiliar with Tim Kring's TV series "Heroes" will probably think this is a fresh and interesting book. However, those of us who were enthralled by most of "Heroes" run will find Kring's book with Dale Peck, "Shift," to be familiar territory.

A mere mortal everyman (Chandler Forrester) is bestowed unconventional powers. A dark and malevolent man (Melchoir) wants to claim those powers for himself, and will do anything to get them. And between them is a secret agent trying to track down both of them, unsure of who the bad guy is or what exactly he is trying to find. And while no cheerleader is around to save the world, Forrester has a woman that he is drawn to in an almost supernatural fashion. Sound familiar?

That said, Kring and Peck have still written a compelling and complex work. There's a multitude of colorful characters moving back and forth through "Shift," to where you really need to pay attention to the players. Plus, Kring and Peck have tapped into the Holy Grail of Conspiracy Junkies, The Kennedy Assassination, as their alternative history platform. (Alternative History being a genre that the authors themselves take a cheeky poke at early in the book.) The period and theories are all teased out; there's Cubans, Mafiosi, Nazis, J Edgar Hoover, Timothy Leary, covert ops, etc. If I missed any here, trust me, they eventually make an appearance. It keeps readers of "Shift" on their toes throughout. Given this is the start of a trilogy, I am once again hooked on Kring.

My Amazon Book Reviews: Bryan J Kinnaird and Sean Delaney "Sean Delany's Hellbox"

The strange, sad case of Sean Delaney
3 out of 5 Stars

Sean Delaney was a linchpin in the creation of KISS, and has been slowly, quietly been deleted from the band's history. When Casablanca evaporated and Glickman-Marks allegedly stole his money, Delaney ended up broke and homeless. "Hellbox" was his attempt on beginning to set the legacy straight. Unfortunately, Delaney died in 2003 at the age of 58. His recorded conversations were then transcribed by Bryan Kinnaird.

The result is a mess of a book with some tantalizing details. Delaney pulls no punches, saving some of his harshest allegations for Neil Bogart and Howard Marks. He has a love-hate relationship with his former proteges, in particular, Gene Simmons. But the books is so thin (I read it in roughly two hours) and riddled with factual errors and typos, it becomes difficult to accept Delaney's accusations. For instance, he repeatedly referees to "Dressed to Kill" as KISS's second album, and even gets his own albums by The Skatt Brothers mixed up.

Part of this can be blamed on Kinnaird, who could have edited and corrected the most glaring errors (Janice Joplin for Janis, etc), but that doesn't help ease the strain on Delaney's more incredible stories. On the other hand, Delaney's life story and tales of 60's New York City are wonderful, as are the road trip stories with the newly (and not yet famous) minted KISS. It's nice to hear some of the KISStory from a perspective outside the band, and "Hellbox" adds a much needed chapter to that legacy.