Pulp Speed = 4 Books in a month!

I truly meant to spend some more time here at the blog and try to do weekly posts, and that fell pretty hard.

But on the plus side I have been able to keep writing even though I feel busier than ever despite the Corona. I'm finally starting to feel Pulp Rev speed flowing.


Between March 29th and April 22nd, I released 4 books - count them 4 books.
In my #SAVANT series of weird western/gaslamp fantasy Memento Mori, with Porter Rockwell and Elizabeth Dee (John Dee's descendant and heir to his magical legacy)

I got the rights back to my first novel Heroes of the Fallen so I have rereleased it with a new cover, slight edits and a big old glossary in the back that I always wanted included. Its sequel is coming sooner than later - I'm hoping to have Blood Of Our Fathers out in a couple months.

The eighth book in the Brutal saga WRATH is out and I'm pretty stoked for it.

and trying out a new attempt at the beginning of the series, I went and put a new book at the beginning of the Brutal saga THE USURPER which has already made #1 in the Western Science Fiction category on Amazon.


Now granted these weren't all done in a month, Heroes was completed years ago, but got new edits this month, formatting and a new cover by the phenomenal J Caleb Design (he also did WRATH's cover)

Memento Mori was written this year but despite the shortest of these books at a mere 32K it took me the longest.

Wrath is around 55K and went real quick but I did have some of t written and waiting in the sidelines for awhile now.

The Usurper is 102k and that's where I think I really shine at the pulp speed. A few of the chapters were previously written, but considering its almost all new material and was written in January 2020 and April 2020 (not between those months when I was doing the others) that is some serious speed.

In any case, felt like I needed to keep the neglected blog updated and I will try to do better soon.

IN MY TIME OF DYING

Its been a long time coming, I started work on this one about three years ago, got a good ways in and set it aside because life gets in the way sometimes, but it was always back there asking to be let loose.

So I pushed myself this early summer and finished up and LO, it was a bigger tale than I thought at first, so in addition to writing a novella that was set after the events of the book, I went back and rethought the storyline to #SAVANT and tweaked it a little. I like thinking of it as TRUE GRIT meets THE PRESTIGE.

So IN MY TIME OF DYING was released just a day ago and is already a bestselling New Release, so I'm grateful to everyone who has grabbed a copy and helps spread the word, I had a lot of folks just jump in and share it, so thank you all!

From the back cover, -

A young woman seeking arcane knowledge. A saint of killers riding shotgun. And an immortal who wants to die… all aboard a runaway train.…

Elizabeth Dee never expected a knock at the door would have her taking sides in a power struggle between two feuding wizards, but she discovers that she is the magical key to a cursed mystery centuries old. As she evades the murderous knights and demonic minions of the sinister Count of St. Germain, she learns more of her own true power and legacy…Her father never prepared her for anything like this…

But it’s dangerous to go it alone and she is going to need some protection, enter the infamous and touched, Porter Rockwell. If the legendary long-haired gunfighter can’t keep her safe, no one can…

Oh, and my son Mathias is becoming quite the artist and I am having him do a few illustrations for the print edition (I may add them to the kindle soon too)

I'd appreciate any of you all grabbing a copy and leaving an honest review, more than ever that is a boon to the writer, Thanks all.

MEMENTO MORI and A MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN CARCOSA should be coming along very soon.

Progress Report

Wow! November came and went!
While I did not officially join the NANO club, I did hammer out more than 50K words in November, but sometimes its a little hard to tell.

I'm still tinkering with a project - it is not yet titled, but it is a novelization within a series of a popular game. It is supposed to be out next May - but I don't know more than that really. 


When it comes to my own stuff, I had an 80k (very) rough draft for what was going to be the sequel to BRUTAL titled FIERCE and I decided I didn't like where it was going, it was a fine story but it was not the next step in the progression of the overall saga, so that has been shelved and restarted fresh. 44K so far and i'm hoping to finish by the end of December so I can have a January release. I'm really planning on going big guns for 2018.

2017 has been so successful for me and I want to keep all that moving on the uptick.

I am also behind on at least two Porter projects - Book 3 in the Dark Trails saga - You Only Hang Once and a shorter Lovecraftian standalone Let Sleeping Gods Lie.

Both covers are done - along with a mess of others I'm still writing, but those are priorities along with the Brutal trilogy.

But of course I can never just stick to one thing and finish it, can I? I also did 5k on a piece I'm calling Wine Dark Sea = imagine Hunter S. Thompson going to the vanishing Aral Sea hunting for evidence of vampires in the wake of the collapsed Soviet Union - its just weird wild fun. Unknown when I'll finish it, but so far its been a blast.

Pulp Stories Galore!

October has been pretty good to me so far, not too hot, not too cold and books and books and more books are coming!

So, quite a few short stories of mine came out this month and it was a surprise.

All right, I knew this one was coming, I just wasn't sure when it would drop but Story Hack #1 is here! It's full of great pulpy stories and the man behind it Bryce Beatty, is going all out on the art!

I could n't be more pleased with both the cover and the interior art. I love this rendition of Porter Rockwell he has for it! My tale is UNDER THE GUN a creepy weird western about a possessed gun. Check it out!

The next one was a big surprise as I thought the anthology had just vanished into thin air, but Rogues Blade Entertainment which put together some top notch Sword and Sorcery collections a few odd years ago kinda went into hibernation.

I'm very pleased to see that Jason Waltz has awoken and is putting out material again. This one is the Challenge: Discovery collection. This one was begun in 2010? and features quite a list of S&S and has my tale THE SERPENTS ROOT about a thief who will do anything to save her sister, even facing down the dreaded cockatrice!
This pic of the cover is sans text, and I really wanted to share it because all of our stories were supposed to be inspired by V. Shanes art work. So I added in panthers to a story that hadn't had them before.


And another surprise is the Pulp Rev Sampler this was a collection asking for short pieces in the pulp revolution vein.
All of them are supposed t be under 2,500 words so it is literally a sampler. I turned in one titled Wings in the Night, it does say from the forthcoming Walking Through Walls and that's my bad it should read Gods & Robbers, I screwed up but such is life. It is a never before released story, so that' cool.

Its a glimpse into the escape of a prisoner and ties into some things I had previously written in The Mad Song collection and its all part of a bigger work I have planned, set in the same world as BRUTAL albeit quite far away from that setting.

In any case, hope you'll check them out while you're waiting for more novels.

All the best
David

Grimtoberfest Has Arrived

Grimtoberfest is here and I have joined the dark horde of grimdark fantasy writers in doing an siege on our own pocketbooks with this joint slashing of prices on our respective books.

I've got my own novel BRUTAL cut down to .99 cents for the next few days. Check out the rest of the catalog from these rogues HERE


p.s.

I should also mention I've re-released a collection under the pen name that some of you may already be familiar with - what was Whispers of the Goddess has been rebooted under the James Alderdice banner as The Slayer

I just wanted that to be clear, so nobody grabbed the book twice. I meant to add another Tyr story to the collection but just didn't quite get around to it - this has been a hard month for writing and I'm still way behind.

Til next time

David

Walking Through Walls

A writing experiment I did across 2014-2016 was  Walking Through Walls, an ongoing fantasy noir serial that ran in Utah Geek Magazine. My tale ran for the first 13 issues and came out to just about 30K words. Not too long, not too short.

I was sitting on it for awhile but with the relative success of BRUTAL and my pen name of James Alderdice, I decided I might as well release Walking Through Walls too just to build up a backlist for the fantasy based pen name.

It is set in the same secondary world as BRUTAL but is centrally based in Tolburn, the biggest dirtiest city in that world, whereas BRUTAL is taking place in a dirty backwater far removed from the rest of the goings on. There are no character crossovers or mentions yet, maybe just some very simple geographic references - And I don't even have an official map made up yet.

In my mind it is a prequel of sorts to something I have been working on for ages and brainstorming that I'm calling GODS & ROBBERS.

I looked at the project as a writing exercise since I had to come up with a quick tale of around 2,000 to 2,500 words an issue and hook the reader each time, have a wrap-up but also a cliffhanger for the next chapter. It was fun but perhaps lacks the flow of a novel. Most of it is first person featuring a character named Kenaz, who is no secret prince, no chosen one waiting to be called forth, no great fighter, no man of means or anything special, but he can travel outside his body and gather information. So that's his semi-criminal profession, but then he gets wrapped up in a job for multiple employers that all conflict with one another and that's where he gets smacked with a fistful of trouble.

Toward the end though I really wanted some scenes with a side character so the narrative drifts from first person to third and back again. Probably not the best format and definitely something I won't do for the continuation of the Gods & Robbers saga.

I've been having it available at 2.99 but think I'll do a promotion to .99  for Walking Through Walls by the weekend just to give it a little more traction. So if any of you feel like checking it out, that'd be great. And as always reviews are forever appreciated.

It's Gonna Get BRUTAL

My latest book BRUTAL is out now!

So I decided to try my hand at a pen name - I'm not too worried about the secretiveness of it because either you all are gonna know anyway or you're the type of person that doesn't care who wrote the book.

MY biggest motivation was to see how it might affect my work with the Amazon algorithm. BECAUSE

David J. West is known for writing weird westerns, Lovecraftian horror, viking historical's, action-adventure, weird LDS tales and fantasy. That kinda messes with all the things the algorithm is supposed to do to help me sell more books.

So I thought I'd experiment and see if James Alderdice - my dad's first name and my maternal grandmother's maiden name. (And no one is using it on Amazon and hey its an "A" name - West is always at the end of the list, bottom of the bookshelf)

That also brings me to doing "Pulp Speed" to write this latest book. I wrote about 78K in about 6 weeks. I did follow the plot of RED HARVEST pretty footloose and fancy free and there are loads of other inspirations in the book. A whole lot of Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Dashiell Hammett, Sergio Leone's - Fistful of Dollars and Akira Kurasawa's - Yojimbo in here. I was also pretty inspired by a recent Hawaii trip to Maui too - that's where the whole dark goddess thing came from.

Hammett's book took place in a mining city called Personville/Poisonville by the locals and I found out it was based on Butte, Montana - guess who is pretty darn familiar with Butte - me - my Dad grew up there, I have been there many, many times. I used a lot of real Butte in the book too - albeit fashioning it to fit a medieval fantasy landscape.

Much thanks to editor Jana Brown for keeping the pace flowing on this one and doing a great job with my breakneck writing goal.

Here is the Description etc:

A man of violence. A duchess with dangerous desires. Two warring wizards. Things in Aldreth are going to get Brutal.

A man known only as the Sellsword has come to the border city of Aldreth, where rival wizards struggle for control of a weak-willed duke. Amidst murderous conspiracies and a scandal plagued dynasty, the Sellsword plays all sides to his advantage, bringing about a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men, while wooing the reckless and willful duchess.

Though corrupt paladins, demonic adepts, and a surprisingly formidable assassin stand between the Sellsword and the unwholesome truth, spells and blades might not be what take the Sellsword down. It could be plain old bad luck...

BRUTAL is an powerful sword and sorcery tale with colorful characters and wit straight out of a 80's flick. If you like humor in your pulp, gritty heroes, despicable villains and grimdark fantasy then you'll love this riveting debut by James Alderdice.
Grab a copy now!


This was a lot of fun and I think I need to keep pushing myself and getting out a lot more of these quick reads.

Pulp Revolution with STORYHACK! JACK!

Bryce Beatty contacted me on twitter awhile back and came over to my palatial office and interviewed me back here (I just looked it up for the link - that was June of last year! Wow! Time flies)

Anyhow, when I heard Bryce wanted to put together a pulp themed mag, I was like OH Yeah! I need to be in on that. So I sent him a story and then tweeted the hell out of it - I wanted to be first in line for that massive submission pile!

So I finished off a pulp S&S story that had been sitting on my drive for a little while and viola - Bryce accepted it into Storyhack vol 0.

Guys! This first issue is only a buck for some top notch pulp ridden action tales! don't just grab it for mine you need to read all of these. The Pulp Revolution is live!

I think Bryce found a great cover for the issue - spotlighting Alexandru Constantin's tale.

So proud to be a part of this one! Many more to come I hope Bryce!?

I've got my copy now and am gonna dig in!