Return of the Bug Hunter

For those of you who were fans of the Avenir Eclectia stories involving my bug hunter Dressler, you're in luck. He's back!

Today on Avenir Eclectia, the first installment in a new journey for Dressler begins with my micro-story "Daddy/Daughter Date". This new story picks up some time after the conclusion of Dressler's last harrowing encounter--that one involving an undersea "angel"--and finds Dressler teaching his daughter Edilyn the bug hunting trade.

This story came about quite by pleasant accident. Friends and fellow AE authors Ed Erdelac and Jeff Carter approached me a while back about having Dressler appear in their individual arcs and asked if that was okay with me. I was thrilled and honored by the suggestion and was excited to kick back and read what they came up with.

Reading their stories, though, stoked a little fire in me and I thought it was time to leave my AE retirement to fill in the blanks of their respective tales, revealing what Dressler has been up to since we last saw him and set up how he gets into Ed and Jeff's stories.

"Daddy/Daughter Date" is the first of a new ride for my favorite bug hunter, so be sure to check it out.

For those who maybe don't know, Avenir Eclectia is a shared universe project where many sci-fi/fantasy/horror authors come together to create micro-fiction to run on the series' website. Eventually those stories are collected in a print version. The first such printed volume is already available and includes my entire first Dressler arc. Buy it today in print or ebook!

Also, click here and here to read a couple old retrospectives I wrote, detailing the inspiration behind Dressler's creation!

Be sure to stop over and read "Daddy/Daughter Date" today and keep your eyes peeled for Ed and Jeff's contribution to a Bug Hunter's tale! And Avenir is always looking for more writers to expand its mythology. So if you're a writer interested in playing in a huge sandbox, check it out and make your submission!

Adios and Shalom: Looking Back At The Merkabah Rider Series

Today we're doing things a little different 'round here. 2013 was a big year for me, seeing the completion of The Coming Evil Trilogy--but 2013 also marks the end of the critically acclaimed and brilliant Merkabah Rider series written by my pal Ed Erdelac. In honor of this momentous occasion, I've asked Ed to stop by the blog and share his journey, taking us from the Rider's inception, to the final chapter in his tale. It's a great read and should prompt you to immediately run out and buy all four books!

Take it away, Ed!

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This month saw the release of Merkabah Rider 4: Once Upon A Time In The Weird West, the last installment of my Judeocentric weird western series.

For those unfamiliar with it, it’s about a Hasidic gunslinger tracking the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers to the Great Old Ones of the Lovecraftian Mythos. Along the way, the Rider (so-called because members of his order, The Sons of The Essenes, assume a title to obfuscate their true names from malevolent spirits) encounters half-demon outlaws, a mystic cannon, a brothel full of antediluvian succubi, shoggoths, invisible monsters, Doc Holiday, zombies, an undead gunfighter constructed from the body parts of famous outlaws, and a pissed off animated windmill among other dangers.

Beyond the weirdness and adventure, it’s also a story about the testing of a man’s faith in the face of overwhelming cosmic horror and indifference, and, at its core, I like to think, the beneficial nature of tolerance.

 The stories of the Rider started for me in high school. I had just read Robert E. Howard’s stories The Thunder Rider, Old Garfield’s Heart, and The Horror From The Mound, and I was thinking about writing weird westerns. I tried my hand at a few, two of which show up greatly expanded upon in Tales Of A High Planes Drifter (namely The Dust Devils and Hell’s Hired Gun). In their original incarnation, the hero of those stories was an ex-soldier, an objector to the heinous Sand Creek Massacre who was shot and left for dead by his comrades, and rescued by a Cheyenne medicine man who sewed a mystical hide shirt to his skin that allowed him to shrug off bullets.  I wrote a couple more of these featuring that character “The Ghost Dancer,” but I lost interest after a bit as The Dancer’s mission was solely vengeance bent, and not really very engaging. I wasn’t ready yet to create a compelling central character.

I think my seeing the TV series Kung Fu when it was rerun on TNT in freshman or sophomore year of college planted the seed in my mind for a fish out of water individual traveling through the west, but it wasn’t till nearly ten years later, when I had moved to an orthodox Jewish neighborhood and my wife picked up an angelology book (Angels A To Z) that the Rider finally reared full blown into my mind.

I came across this entry –

Merkabah Rider – An ancient Jewish mystic who fasted and prayed to reach an ecstatic trance. While in this trance state, he sent his soul upward through the heavenly halls in an attempt to reach the Throne of Glory that is supported by the chariot of Merkavah (the fiery vehicle seen by Elijah). The objective of the Merkabah Rider was to join himself with the Universal Soul. During this journey, the Rider was constantly plagued  by demons. The Merkabah Rider used prayer, magical talismans, incantations, and asceticism to enlist the aid of angels, who would protect him throughout his journey and ultimately defeat his antagonists.

           

I also found an illustration by Gustave Dore for John Milton’s Paradise Lost, The Empyrean, which depicted the Heavenly Host turning as a great wheel or flock around the brilliant presence of God in the middle. It’s at once beautiful and harrowing.

Immediately my brain conjured this image of a Hasidic Jew in long black coat and hat, riding a horse made of flame.

I started tackling Jewish folklore and mysticism, reading everything I could. Little details began to fit into place. The Rider’s mystically embossed blue glass spectacles, etched with Solomonic seals that allowed him to look into the spirit world at its unseen denizens. His adorned Volcanic pistol (a favorite design of firearm for me – the protagonist of my straight, no ghoulies western novel Buff Tea carries one), the mystic symbols allowing him to carry it into the astral plane. Much of his asceticism I took from Jewish kashrut or kosher teaching, but some I culled from Kung Fu’s shaolin monks (the Rider’s refusal to ride a horse, for instance).

Only a year earlier I had discovered H.P. Lovecraft, and was thinking a lot about the deities of his indifferent universe. I needed a foe for the Rider to face, but the Jewish view of the Devil is quite different from Christianity’s. Satan is not directly opposed to God. He works for God, testing the souls of man and maintaining Sheol/hell as a crucible for the human spirit. He’s not the blasphemous entity popularized in horror films and books.

So I got to thinking, that in an ordered universe, the ultimate nemesis would be chaos. And in researching Jewish mystic thought, I came across another passage (in the fantastic reference The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth Magic and Mysticism) –

Rahav – A cosmic sea monster first mentioned in the biblical book of Isaiah….God slew him when he refused to help in creating the earth. The oceans conceal the lethal stink of his carcass, which is why the sea smells so strange.

Sounds like Cthulhu, right?

So then reading more, I found references to a forbidden area of mystic study, that which precedes Creation – the Olam ha-Tohu, The World of Chaos.

I had found my heavy for the Merkabah Rider series, and the more I researched and read, the easier things began to fit in with each other. That’s when I know I’m on to something – when I don’t have to force anything. When references just start making themselves known to me.

For a direct physical villain, again, the character just made himself known to me. I was watching a lot of Doctor Who and enjoyed the character of The Master – a diametrically opposed Time Lord and foil for The Doctor. I decided a failed Merkabah Rider who worships chaos might be interesting, so I came up with Adon (whose name means “Master” or “Lord”). When the time came to present a story for Adon, I happened to read the Jewish fable of the sages who entered Paradise.

Four men entered the pardes — Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher [that is, Elisha ben Abuyeh], and Akiba. Ben Azzai looked and died; Ben Zoma looked and went mad; Acher severed the root; Akiba entered in peace and departed in peace.

In some mystic schools of thought, our souls or astral selves are bound to this world by an astral tether which reaches from the corona of our head.

In the world of Merkabah Rider, I had established that this tether anchored the soul to the body and thus the physical world. It was a root, and Elisha ben Abuyah had cut it. He had severed himself from his body, but because he had done so before the Throne of Glory, he had somehow gone on (perhaps due to Merkabah Rider training), a disembodied spirit, able to possess other’s physical forms.

But what had the Sages seen that had caused such drastic reactions?

I decided, the Outer Gods, slumbering in the world of Chaos that bordered the universe as created by God.

What would such knowledge do to the Rider? That became a central point of the series. Could the Rider maintain his faith? Would it change anything for him? Would he go the route of Adon?

In the meantime, I could let my imagination run wild, and I did, borrowing or adapting creatures and people from folklore and literature (Ambrose Bierce’s Damned Thing shows up as a servant of the Old Ones in The Damned Dingus) history, and the Bible, and exploring my love of the Old West at the same time.

It was a wonderful experience, writing Merkabah Rider, and the positive response it’s received from those who have read and enjoyed it are very dear to me – particularly the unsolicited reader reviews on sites like Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, LibraryThing, and Shelfari.

I want to share just a few that I treasure –

“It is, quite simply, one of the coolest things I've ever read. It feels like something tailor made for me, and it feels genuine and sincere.”

“The best book I read last year. You don't need to like westerns to like his work--he is a genius. The Merkabah Rider Series is better than investing in gold. It will make you feel awesome inside---like maybe you finally read a book that meant something---he is that good.”

“This is great--no, stupendous adventure fiction, the kind that I often crave and rarely find.”

There are just a few, and I post them not to inflate my own ego, but because they mean a great deal to me, as all of them do. Even the negative ones. These are people that went out and bought the book on their own and got something from it, and in the age of file sharing and buying and selling reviews, that’s something to me.

Now I just hope nobody retracts their previous good opinions when they’ve read the last one.

In closing, it’s been a wonderful trip writing Merkabah Rider. There are still small stories about the Rider that can be told (one, The Shomer Express, has already appeared in anthology called The Trigger Reflex), and characters from the series might still appear here and there in related works, but for now, I turn my attention to other things.

The Rider and his onager walk off into the sunset.

Next Big Thing--"Dark Hour"

Last week, Weird Western author Ed Erdelac was tagged as part of the "Next Big Thing" Tour, where he was posed 10 questions about his latest book Terovolas (read his post here). As per the rules of the tour, Ed tagged another batch of authors to answer the same questions this week. Ed tagged me, so here I am, talking about my upcoming novel Dark Hour, the epic finale to The Coming Evil Trilogy, slated for an early 2013 release. Read it, yo!

1) What is the working title of your next book?

The Coming Evil, Book Three: Dark Hour

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

Dark Hour is the final installment in The Coming Evil Trilogy, and the entire basis of this mega-story was my childhood desire to take my love for roller coaster monster movies like The Monster Squad and fuse it with my passion for the Bible. I am captivated by the struggles of the people of faith in the Bible, and how God used unremarkable people to accomplish feats of hope and inspiration. So, you know, I wanted to write that—only with tons of slimy, snarling, flesh-eating monsters.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Christian Horror! It’s my goal to pit a group of Christian believers against a chthonic terror outside our perception of reality. It’s very Lovecraftian in the sense that it reveals how tiny we humans are in the cosmos, yet whereas Lovecraft’s characters despaired or fell to madness in the face of such truth, my characters have to stack that against their faith and worth in God. It’s a test of belief. Some will fail the test, some will pass. Therein lies the drama.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Since The Coming Evil Trilogy originally began as a screenplay back in the late 1990s, I’ve thought about this question a lot. Over the years, my answers have changed. For the main character of Dras (drAHz), I think of Shia LaBeouf now, while I used to envision a young Ethan Embry back in 1998. They’re both boyish and squirrely enough to pull it off. For Dras’ best friend/soul mate Rosalyn, I imagine an I Know What You Did Last Summer-era Jennifer Love Hewitt. For the dastardly Strange Man who seeks to tear Dras and Rosalyn apart, I’m torn between Johnny Depp and, surprisingly Tom Hiddleston who recently played Loki in Thor/The Avengers. I need someone who can pull off creepy, but alluring as well. And he’s gotta be able to grin like a sadistic devil.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

As the demonic Strange Man’s master edges closer to Earth, a small band of monster fighters will have to make their final stand for the soul of their town.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The book will be released by Splashdown Darkwater.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

At least a couple years of actual writing, but many more years before that of formulating in the back of my mind. The real kicker is the road to publication. I finished my first draft back in 2009, but then I went to work finding a publisher and getting the first two installments of the saga published!

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Ah, books are tough. I’m a movie guy and, again, this started as a movie. I still think of it as a movie in book form. At its heart, Dark Hour is a war/invasion novel. I think of Battle Los Angeles or either major film adaptation of War of the Worlds in terms of intensity and scale and human drama with an alien invasion for a backdrop. Most recently, it’s a lot like the TV show Falling Skies. Very much about an outside force taking over and a ragtag resistance struggling to overcome their own bickering to do any good. And, of course, there are copious amounts of destruction.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Humanity. That’s a really broad and pretentious answer, but Dark Hour is all about the best and worst of humanity. We can be a sickening, hateful, arrogant bunch, but every once in awhile, one of us does something that is so outstanding and selfless and admirable that it captures the attention of the world. I think most people want to be “good people”, but we so easily lose our way. The road to hell, and all of that. Also, Hebrews 11 in the Bible has a big influence on me and this book. It’s often nicknamed “The Faith Chapter” and it gives a passionate overview of some of the most notables heroes of faith in the Bible—those who shut the mouths of lions and overthrew kingdoms and what not. But, what strikes me most is the latter part of that chapter that lists a plethora of unnamed saints who were brutally murdered in various horrible ways for their faith. They never saw the fruits of their efforts, but they died with their head held high and their sight on Heaven. The Bible said the world was not worthy of such as those. Those are my heroes—the nameless ones who gave everything for what they believed in. I hope that, when push comes to shove, I would have that kind of courage.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?

The first two parts of The Coming Evil Trilogy are available online and in stores everywhere. Look for The Strange Man and Enemies of the Cross and get all caught up before war breaks out when Dark Hour hits early 2013! Plus, readers might be intrigued to read my most recent novel release Rift Jump. It’s a teen-angst romance adventure story through the multiverse with parallel dimensions and the unknowable evil lurking in the dark spaces in between the worlds! Rift Jump is a cosmic take on my uber-mythos and gives some perspective on where all those nasty monsters in The Coming Evil Trilogy hail from. I also recently did an interview (with Ed, ironic enough) about the book. Check it out!

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Now it's my turn to tag more authors! Be sure to check out these blogs next Wednesday (the 28th) for their answers to these questions!

Bob Freeman
Frank Creed

Interview with author Ed Erdelac--Will the real Van Helsing please stand up?

A little “apology” for this interview before we get started:

When my buddy Ed Erdelac started talking about his new book Terovolas (originally entitled "Van Helsing in Texas", which was awesome!), my ears perked right up. Of course, it’s me: I love all things monster hunter. Ed and I talked and I offered, as I usually do, to have him stop by the blog for an interview. He agreed and I immediately purchased a copy of the e-book at JournalStone Publishing’s website. I dove right in and was at once captivated by the tale of Van Helsing’s tragic adventures following the close of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel. This thing is a direct sequel, a really great approach that Ed seemed to get right when so many others had done it wrong. But, the more I read, the more I felt very unsettled by the prose. Much like Stoker’s original, this book is split up into supposed diary entries of the great Monster Hunter himself, as well as newspaper articles and whatnot. They were just so detailed and I marveled at the care Ed had gone to in creating these fictional documents. I’ve always known Ed to be a history buff and he excels at making you feel like you’ve got your very own time-traveling DeLorean, but, in Terovolas, Ed managed to really outdo himself. The things he described in the book, though, were so vivid, that it really stayed with me after I put my Nook down. I wrote him and told him as much and that’s when he let me in on the big secret: He didn’t write it. He, in fact, claims he only compiled it from Van Helsing’s notes—the real Van Helsing.

At first I responded “Rad!” and left it at that, figuring Ed was just being geeky, but the more we talked about it, the more I realized that he was serious. Or, at least, thinks he’s serious. He spelled out the whole account of how he stumbled upon the real Abraham Van Helsing’s papers and began compiling them. I listened intently, at first intrigued, then growing more and more bothered. I hesitantly asked Ed if he intended on telling the reading public what he told me. He said he was considering it, and I told him not to. I still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t just trying to pull off some lame publicity stunt and I thought it was kind of weird.

Then, lo, he posted his entire first-person account on his blog just a few weeks ago.

I wrote him back and told him I didn’t think that was a good idea. I also wasn’t so sure I wanted to interview him anymore to be honest, but Ed’s really been there for me, pulling for me in my career, so as a friend, I decided to treat him the same. So, here’s our interview, for better or worse, pieced together from a number of back-and-forth e-mails. After compiling it, I debated posting it, as it gets pretty intense and, above all, I don’t want you to think ill of Ed Erdelac. I tried to steer the interview towards ambiguous waters, treating the work as fiction, but, well…you’ll see. I guess there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? So here we go:

* * *

Greg Mitchell: Thanks for stopping by, Ed! Your new book Terovolas just came out from JournalStone Publishing! Tell us about it.

Ed Erdelac: Thanks for having me, Greg! Terovolas concerns the period of 1891, directly after the events of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, when Professor Abraham Van Helsing was checked into Dr. John Seward’s Purfleet Asylum suffering from a bout of violent obsessive fantasies stemming from his killing of the count’s three vampire brides. Seward diagnosed Van Helsing with melancholic lycanthropea and treated him for a number of months. Upon his release, and seeking some downtime, Van Helsing volunteered to bear the ashes and personal effects of Quincey P. Morris (the Texan who died fighting Dracula) back to the Morris family ranch in Soreftoot, Texas. He found Quincey’s estranged brother Cole Morris involved in an escalating land war with a neighboring outfit of Norwegian cattle ranchers led by a charismatic man named Sig Skoll. When a few residents and animals started turning up horribly slaughtered, Van Helsing began to suspect a supernatural force was at work, but worried it was the delusions of his previously disordered mind returning.

I’ve got to point out that this is not a work of fiction. It’s a true account culled from some of the same source documents Stoker used in writing Dracula, chief among them, Van Helsing’s personal journal, which Seward translated and compiled along with an array of substantiating documentation from contemporary primary sources including the diaries of Sorefoot Picayune editor and founder Alvin Crooker, and local horse trader Aurelius Firebaugh among others. I’ve hunted down archived copies of some of these accounts, especially the relevant old articles from the Picayune, thanks to the historical society in Bastrop.

I don’t want to take up a lot of space here with how I came into the possession of these documents. Those interested can read my own post about it here.  

GM: I understand your original working title was “Van Helsing in Texas”, which I thought was awesome, if not a little campy (though that probably made it even more awesome). Why the switch?

EE: Believe it or not, the publisher told me the name Van Helsing wasn’t bankable and was played out. It baffles me that they thought an obscure Arcadian Greek surname was more evocative. The funny thing is, I’ve heard similar things a dozen or more times from agents and publishers I shopped the manuscript around to. ‘We love this, but we wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

I jokingly referred to it as ‘The Van Helsing Curse’ to my wife, but taking into consideration it’s taken me fifteen years to get this book published and the fact that Van Helsing was cursed at least a half a dozen times (perhaps most memorably and potently by a Zulu umthakathi yemithi, who, as part of the curse, told Van Helsing that his life would go ‘unremembered by man’ in 1878 or so), I’ve come to believe there’s something to it.

Or maybe it’s something else. I hate to use the word conspiracy because I fully understand the negative connotations. I don’t want to say much about that. I don’t want to come off as a nutcase.

GM: You take a really interesting approach to this book that’s markedly different from your previous works, in that it’s built as a non-fictional document. Did you find that type of formatting difficult?

EE: Well Greg, as I’ve told you, it is real. The ironic part of the whole thing is that this has been the easiest book I’ve ever ‘written’ in terms of format, because Seward had basically assembled the relevant documents into a publishable form and was shopping it around the world in the 30’s. Only his death in the London bombings by the Luftwaffe stopped him from publishing the book himself.

Again, I’d urge your readers to take a look at the account on my blog.

GM: Okay, okay, ha ha, let’s be serious for a second. Don’t you think this whole “It’s real!” thing is going a little far? What if people start taking you seriously?

EE: If people start taking me (and Dr. Van Helsing) seriously, only then have I gone far enough, Greg. And I really wish you’d start taking this seriously.

I don’t know, maybe something of Dr. Seward’s spirit clings to these documents, or maybe it’s Van Helsing’s, but I feel sometimes as if they’re at my shoulder, urging me on, even when I’ve shoved it in the corner of a closet (long before I realized I needed to store the papers more securely) and tried to forget it. Every book I’ve written, every bit of fiction, The Van Helsing Papers always nag at the back of my mind.

I really think I need to get them out there before my own time’s up. Maybe if I don’t, my own ghost will wind up sitting on this old box of papers with the unquiet spirits of Van Helsing and Seward.

GM: But even working by your own logic, you go to great lengths to talk about how producing Dracula ruined the lives of Van Helsing and Seward. Why would you, therefore, do the same thing? People are going to think you’ve got a warped sense of reality.

EE: Van Helsing definitely learned his lesson from the controversy surrounding Dracula. That’s why he asked Seward not to publish his papers until a year after his death. I can’t imagine why Seward didn’t decide to leave the papers to someone else with the same stipulation considering he’s mentioned several times throughout the documents in conjunction with events far more fantastic and difficult for the layman to believe than what was put forth by Bram Stoker. Maybe he had given up on his professional clout. He was never very well respected, and after Purfleet closed and his wife was killed in the Battersea Railway crash, I think he was resolved to see the documents published and the hell with what anybody thought. Seward was very devoted to his wife. It was years before he even thought about courting anyone after what happened to Lucy Westenra, and it took a special woman to draw him out again. I think when she was killed so suddenly, it put his mind in a very careless place.

And don’t worry about my sense of reality. If anything, it’s clearer than it ever was.

GM: Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that you are absolutely right. Ed, you and I have talked about this—if this is real, if creatures like Dracula and the wolf-men in Terovolas are real, you are putting your family in actual danger. That’s my biggest concern. Haven’t you thought about what this will do to them?

EE: Oh, I don’t think there’s much danger to my family to be had from anything in Dracula or Terovolas. I think history has dropped a sufficient pallor of dust on the parties involved to protect them from scrutiny. We’re talking about people and beings who have had what? Over a hundred and twenty years to cover their tracks?

But you do bring up an interesting point. If they ever see the light of day, there are individuals and organizations mentioned elsewhere in The Van Helsing Papers  (and I’ve talked to you privately about some of these, Greg, without naming actual names, I want to add) that may still be around, and may have a definite problem with their activities being brought to light. Let’s just say I’m taking precautions.

GM: It just smacks of cheap sensationalism to me. You could have easily released this book and not told anyone that it was “a true story”, and you’d probably be hailed as the next bestseller, but you instead “revealed” this whole behind-the-scenes story. Are you that starved for attention that you would put your family in harm’s way for a book?

EE: I hardly expect Terovolas will be a bestseller considering the forces allied against it, and the powers that will probably seek to suppress it. I’m really surprised JournalStone has had the gumption to do it, and I applaud Christopher Payne and Norm Rubenstein for taking a chance on it, though I suspect that they, like you, are choosing to overlook my claims as some kind of artsy eccentricity.

I could have put Terovolas out the same way Stoker did Dracula, as fiction, and done the usual blog posts and book signings, tweets and banal Facebook solicitations, same as I’ve done with my Merkabah Rider series and all my other work. But I’d be doing Van Helsing and Seward a disservice if I didn’t reveal the whole truth. I really wish these papers had fallen into the hands of a Stephen Ambrose or I don’t know, Ken Burns or somebody. But unfortunately for Van Helsing, they came to a guy who writes ghoulie stories. I can’t change that.

And believe me, the kind of attention The Van Helsing Papers could potentially generate, I don’t want. You know this, Greg.

GM: I can’t support you in this, Ed. You’re treading a dangerous line for something as tawdry as sales. You really should be ashamed of yourself. You’re either a liar at best or a plagiarist at worst and I expected more from you. I’m here for you, bro, but I can’t stand by you in this. I’ve got my own family to think about. I’m sorry, man.

EE: I totally understand your position, and I want you to know I’m not angry. I guess technically I must be a plagiarist, slapping my name on the diligent work of a better man (and certainly a more learned man) than I am, but if I’m a liar, it can only be because all I know is a lie. And my research has led me to believe that I don’t think it is.

Also, I know the type of person you are, and I suspect that if you were in my place, knowing what I know, you would be doing the same thing. I hope you’ll still consider publishing this interview, and telling your readers about the book. Yes, everything about the book. Don’t worry about me coming off as a whack job or a liar. The only thing that matters is that the book finds its way to the people who will recognize the truth when they read it. If you shake your head at me telling you to do it for Van Helsing, then do it for me.

* * *


There you have it, folks. I suppose all I can do at this point is direct you to Ed's controversial book Terovolas and let you decide for yourself. But, please, read it at your own risk.

"Rift Jump" Commentary (Part Three)

Read Part One
Read Part Two

Welcome to the third installment of my commentary for Rift Jump. Yada yada, beware of spoilers, yada yada.

PART THREE: TIES THAT BIND

This section of the book is really where the new material starts to drastically diverge from the original material I wrote in high school. Originally, this episode took place in a near-identical world to Michael's own, leading him to think that he's actually home. His brothers are the same. All the locations are the same. Even the circumstances surrounding his own "death" are the same. The only difference is that--duh, duh, duuuuhh!!!--this NOT his world and the Michael of this world is bad.  

I changed it for two reasons. One reason is that, for a book that deals with "a multiverse of infinite possibility", all the worlds in the original stories looked pretty much identical to our own except they'd have a super hero in them or an alien in them or whatever. It was like the last few seasons of Sliders (great show in the first season--terrible show from there on out), where every world they went to was just the same street (soundstage) with the same hotel, same bar, even some of the same people--just their alternate selves. I needed to shake it up. I'd been dabbling in the idea of doing more Weird Western stuff like my buddy Ed Erdelac (who is AMAZING and you should check out his Merkabah Rider series), so I decided to relocate this story to a Civil War-type world, with a sci-fi twist. But then that also changes things. Michael can no longer think that these are his brothers. I liked that, however, because it puts him in a position where he's lying to them, pretending to be their dead brother, in order so that HE can feel some semblance of family. It's sad, and totally the right character move for Michael.

A special note: To all the steampunk fans who were really hoping I'd go all geek on the hows and whys of these Civil War spacecraft, I'm sorry. It would have been fun--and were this episode an entire novel length, I would have--but, like I said in the last commentary installment, my focus is always on Michael and Sara's emotional journey.

Sara begins to take a bit of a turn in this story. Again, when I originally wrote these stories in high school, I had a very skewed idea of what a woman "should" be. I sort of knew (or thought) that they wanted to be "wooed" and "won"...but I didn't have a whole lot of idea of what to do with them AFTER I "won" them. Movies and books focus so much on getting a woman, and they don't do a lot of showing how to keep a woman. As I grew up, I realized that--shock, gasp--women are a lot like men. They want to feel needed. Special. Important. They want to be a part of the journey of life. They're not trophies to be gained and sat on a shelf in your den. I mean, there are some girls, yeah, who just want to be mooned over and pursued and treated like sacred cows all the time, but that's unhealthy. Treasure your women, menfolk, but include them in your struggles. Bring them into your heart. Trust them with your lives. They're fighters, too.

So that's what Michael is seeing in this section. Sara loved being pursued by him, but she doesn't want to be stuck in the tower for the rest of her life. She wants to feel needed.

With that out of the way, I direct your attention to a pretty controversial move for me:

I have swearing in my book. Gasp!

I know that 99% of the world's population won't even bat an eye at that, but for some of my readers it's going to be a major stumbling block. I want to be accountable for what I write, so I'm gonna take a second to explain my position on this. You may not agree, and that's okay, but I want to be honest and real with you so at least can understand my thinking.

Cursing is one of the last great taboos of the Christian Fiction market. It always amazes me that, no matter how much violence and evisceration I get away with, I throw one "damn" in there and I've suddenly committed an atrocity on the page. This is a pretty complicated topic and many better-articulated writers (such as Mike Duran) have gone on and on about this. People have endlessly debated it and everyone's pretty firm on their stance. I know that some of Rift Jump's readers will--hopefully--be picking this up because they enjoyed my Coming Evil series. The Strange Man and Enemies of the Cross were both published within the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association) that has REALLY strict rules on what you can and cannot put in their books. For instance, I had to cut one instance of the word "criminy" in The Strange Man because it was a 16th century curse word! 16th Century, folks!! Some CBA publishers won't even let you say "darn" or "shoot" or "frickin'". "Crap" is considered a bad word with some people, as is "butt".

The short answer is this: Rift Jump is not intended to be a "Christian" work--meaning I didn't write it with the Christian Fiction audience in mind. It obviously reflects my own Christian beliefs, but I didn't set out to make this a "Christian" book. What's more, my publisher Splashdown--while a publisher of Christian authors--is NOT in the CBA. The restrictions are much looser because we're not selling to the same types of people who are looking for books at Lifeway. Many people go to buy a CBA book because they know there WON'T be cursing or overt sex or graphic violence. They want their fiction of a cleaner sort, and I have absolutely nothing against that. When it came to taking my 6-year-old daughter to see Brave, you better believe I was scouring the internet, wanting to know what kind of objectionable material she may or may not be exposed to. We need to show discernment. We need to guard ourselves against things that cause us to stumble. I don't believe all fiction needs to have cursing. I don't even believe that all good or "real" or "gritty" fiction needs it. Plenty of wonderful stories don't use it at all. On the other hand, I believe there are plenty of wonderful stories that do use it.

Rift Jump marks my first novel where I've had some cursing. Now, for those of you who haven't read it yet, it's not a whole lot. Certainly not enough to warrant this long explanation. There are no "s" words or "f" words. There were PG rated kids movies in the '80s that had rougher language than this. Nevertheless, I didn't make the decision to have a dash of swear words lightly. Ask Grace, my publisher. I agonized over this, as I knew that it would offend some people or give others the wrong impression about me. I don't condone cursing in real life. Especially, as Christians, I think we ought to be very careful about the words that come out of our mouth, as we're representing Christ. And the Bible says we are called into account for every careless word we say. That's terrifying to me.

But my characters are not representing Christ. The characters in Rift Jump don't start out as Christians. In fact, if we're getting right down to it, they're not even real. They're imaginary figures. But, for the sake of argument, even if they were real, they are lost sinners who have grown up on the streets, or in abusive relationships, or are just plain ignorant of manners. A key moment in "Second Chances" has Michael at the end of his rope. In a moment of complete frustration he complains that he's been "busting his ass" while he doesn't see God doing anything. He's complaining to God. He is completely fed up. Now, I could just have easily have had him say "busting his butt"--though some would think even that was too far. I could have had him say he was "busting his rear" or "hind end". But that shows a level of restraint, doesn't it? This is a teenage boy who has been a child soldier since he was 12. He's coming to God, in all truth, and getting his angry feelings off his chest. For Michael to censor himself would show a deference to God--which is antithesis of this scene. He demands to know why God hasn't answered his prayers. Why God hasn't shown up to make this journey easier. He's not interested in being humble or respectful. He's coming from a place of total anger and selfishness and immaturity. Therefore "ass".

I liken it to cooking. You might have a really bitter spice that is sometimes needed, but too much and it ruins the whole meal. Swearing, I think, CAN be appropriate. Sometimes I think it might even be necessary, to add that little punch of spice. With Rift Jump, I have been very careful to gauge every instance of a swear word I've used. I didn't want to be exploitative about it or flippant about it. It was never my intention to shock you or to "prove myself to the world" that I was a "real" author who liked to cuss. This isn't a declaration that, from now on, you can expect everyone to have a potty mouth in my fiction. You can't (though you can still expect tons of monster mayhem :p). I just felt that, in this particular book, a couple curse words was necessary for the story.


So, for those Readers who might be offended, I'm asking you to show a little grace to my characters. They're a rough group but they are growing. They are maturing. Give them a little patience. They might surprise you in the end. :)

Behind-the-scenes nuggets:

1--There's a typo in this section. It mentions that Civil War Edward and Seth haven't seen their brother for five years in one instance--but it's really only been a year since their Michael left them. Grrr, I hate typos. Five people read these things in the editing process and no one catches it. My wife glances at it after it's published and points it out. Grrr.

2--I believe this might be the book's first mention of Sara's love for Alan Worth: Space Explorer. To read up on the fascinating true story behind Alan Worth, check out my post here.

Click here to the next installment of our commentary for Rift Jump where we talk about superheroes. Buy the book already, will ya?

Moanin' At Midnight: The Crawlin' Chaos Blues

There is nothing wrong with your internet. Do not attempt to adjust your browser, do not hit reload. We are controlling transmission….We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your internet. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind….nah, it’s just me, Ed Erdelac.

Where the heck’s the ever-lovin’ Greg Mitchell though, you might ask, having come to his site...well, he’s over at my blog, talking about what I suspect is his favorite subject. No, not himself…well, partly. Monsters, Halloween, that sorta stuff.

But who am I?

I write the Merkabah Rider series from Damnation Books, among other things. It’s a weird western about a Hasidic gunslinger tracking down the renegade teacher who betrayed his mystic Jewish order of astral travelers across the 1880’s Southwest territories. There are two books in the series, Tales of a High Planes Drifter and The Mensch With No Name. But if you wanna hear about all that and about me, Greg’s got an interview with me right here on his site somewheres. Basically I write spooky stories, and I know Greg from our Star Wars writing.

Anyway, Greg’s given me free reign today to talk about whatever I want on here, so (cracking my knuckles), today children we’re gonna be talking about my short story The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues, but mainly we’re gonna talk about the blues. Because I’ll take any chance I can to talk about the blues, and in particular my favorite blues artist. But I’ll get to that directly.

Blues music got its start in the Mississippi Delta (some will say New Orleans, but that’s inarguably the seat of Jazz, if you ask me) by way of Chicago, but its roots reach back into antiquity, back through the chants of slaves on work gangs across the Middle Passage to the calls of native Africans to their gods.

Blues music evolved into the voice of the downtrodden in the gutter. It’s the primal wail of the oppressed man at the end of his rope, the poor man, the cuckold and the thief and the murderer and the addict, the wild sinner down at the bottom of his luck. It’s not often happy music, but boy do I love it. It’s got a white cousin named Country, and that’s good stuff too. The real country, like Hank Williams or Bill Monroe….not that bubblegum stuff Nashville tends to pump out nowadays.

The soul of the blues is a dark one. There’s a famous and oft-repeated story about one of the kings of the Delta blues, Robert Johnson.



It’s said that he went to a country crossroads at midnight and shed some blood, calling up the Devil himself to come and teach him to pick his guitar and sing. Johnson himself sings about it in the Crossroad Blues, the same song Eric Clapton re-did, and the movie Crossroads with Ralph Macchio revolves around that legend too.

So does my story, The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues. Except in mine, it isn’t the Devil who comes to answer the crossroad sacrifice.

If you’ve ever read any HP Lovecraft, you know the monsters in his tales, the extraplanar entities who frequent his dark universe are worse than evil. At their best, they’re entirely apathetic to humans. At their worst, they’re totally malicious and insane. And the worst of the latter bunch is Nyarlathotep, the Dark Man.

He traipses through horror fiction under a bunch of different names. Stephen King acknowledges that the Walkin Dude Randall Flagg is Nyarlathotep. He appears in the forthcoming third book of my own Merkabah Rider series too.

In my short story The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues, when two would-be blues musicians, King Yeller and Harp Elkins are set upon by a pair of white supremacists in the midnight crossroads and turn the tables on them, it’s the Dark Man who rises out of the road when their blood seeps into the ground.

Now in the story of Robert Johnson, the Devil gets his due. After coming to the cusp of making it big, Johnson was poisoned in a bar and died.

In my story, King Yeller quickly becomes renowned for his playing and singing, drawing in the crowds from all over the south. But the success comes with a price, an awful twist to amuse the Dark Man. King Yeller has quickly accumulated a catalog of popular songs, but the Dark Man has taught him one special song that puts all the rest to shame. The problem is, if he plays it, he is guaranteed to lose all he has gained.

And this gnaws at King Yeller. Every song he plays pales in comparison to the one the Dark Man taught him. The Crawlin’ Chaos Blues.

Then one night, he decides to play it anyway.

And what happens next, that’s the story.

It all stems from my love of the blues and Lovecraft. I like to drop little easter eggs into my work as well, and since this story takes place in the 1960's, I had to write in a cameo early on for my favorite blues musician of all time.


Chester Burnett, AKA Howlin’ Wolf.

Now you know with a name like that he’s gotta be good right? The man is so cool he even appeared as himself in a Marvel comic playing his song Wang Dang Doodle in a band WITH ALIENS. IN SPACE!!



He earned the moniker from his distinctive singing style. He’s got a voice low and throaty like a bullfrog’s, but he lets out these long, wailing notes in some songs, particularly in one of my favorites, Smokestack Lightnin’ about a poor boy watching a train go by in the night and wishing he was on it.

When the man who discovered him, Sam Phillips, heard him sing, he said; “This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.”

I adore the Wolf. What’s most interesting about him to me is his dichotomy. A lot of the blues musicians of his era lived up to the Robert Johnson legend. They lived fast and loose, played it hard and not too smart. But Chester was different. He was a complete wild man on stage, going on all fours and kicking up his heels, licking his chops and rolling his eyes like a man possessed. And at six foot six, black as midnight and three hundred pounds, that was a sight to see.

But as soon as he stepped off stage, he put on his horn rimmed glasses and drove his modest car home to a quiet life with his wife, who managed his finances and to whom he was faithful. He didn’t drink to excess or do drugs, and he took his fellow musicians to task for spending their money stupidly on flashy cars and clothes and worse things.

The tragedy of H Hn’ Wolf is that he left his home in Mississippi at the age of thirteen. In the sixties, at the height of his success, he returned to the south and put out the word in his hometown that he wanted to see his mother.

He waited in a barber shop for an hour or so and finally one of the locals produced her. He rose to his full height to embrace her. He’d brought wads of cash to put in her hands.

“Lookit all the money I made, momma. It’s for you.”

But his mother stiffened and backed away from him. She wouldn’t take a bit of it, and rebuked her son for playing the Devil’s music. She turned, and left him standing in the barber shop.

His bandmates said he wept uncontrollably the entire rainy ride back up to Chicago.

Take some pity on the Wolf. Go to youtube and listen to some music. I’d recommend Killin’ Floor and I Ain’t Superstitious. Perfect Halloween listening.

Also click over here to read an excerpt from The Crawlin' Chaos Blues!

Hey you guys have been great. Thanks for reading. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Greg Mitchell awesomeness.

Interviewing Edward M. Erdelac: The Coolest Man On Earth?

There are many injustices in the publishing world, one of them being that "Edward M. Erdelac" is not a name as widely known as it should be. Today I do my part to rectify this situation by introducing you to him. Ed is a horror writer on the rise, crafting tightly-plotted, character-rich, horror stories.

I first met Ed a few years ago when we were both submitting entries to the "What's the Story" contest over at the official Star Wars website. We, along with many of our fellow Star Wars nerds...erm...enthusiasts, were tasked with creating interesting and original backstories for any number of characters, planets, or starships that Lucasfilm threw our way. I hit paydirt with my Dusty Duck entry, and Ed won the contest a total of three times! Beyond that, he was hired by Lucasfilm on an official basis to write an original short story for their site (I'm still waiting for my chance. Take your time, Lucasfilm. I'll still be here.). The result was Fists of Ion, an awesome tale of a down-on-his-luck shockboxer who makes good and scores a victory for the New Republic. It was the "Rocky" of the Star Wars mythology and I realized then how gifted Ed is at telling a deftly worded tale and pulling you right into his world. As fellow Whatsthestoryists, Ed and I cheered each other on in the competition back in those days, and stayed in touch long after the "What's the Story" feature was discontinued (another injustice!), in large part due to the fact that we were both struggling writers in the horror genre with an eye towards breaking into comics and film. Today, we still cheer each other on, trading war stories from the trenches of the publishing industry.

As fate would have it, the both of us had stories published in the 3rd Edition of Coach's Midnight Diner where his story "The Blood Bay"--the dark "coming of age" tale of a boy and his blood-drinking horse--was selected as one of three Editor's Choices! "The Blood Bay" is a an Old West revenge tale with its roots in Greek mythology, of all things. Ed's story conveys so much thought, character-driven tragedy, and bloodcurdling nastiness with a light, airy prose that's addictive to read. It's this smooth style and his carefully measured but very rich imagery that earns him my respect and only mild bitterness :p Most recently I finished his novella "Red Sails". A pirate story about a vampire pirate captain and his werewolf crew, it is fun, imaginative, and surprisingly "literary" considering the premise sounds like a late night monster movie (not a bad thing). Ed's liberal use of spooky description is perfectly balanced by his knowledge of history--so much so that I wonder if he's got a time machine stored in his garage. Whether he's writing Star Wars or in our world's haunted past, he takes you there. Puts you right in the middle of the environment and makes you think he's been there himself.

Among Ed's stories are "Night of the Jikininki"--a zombie story set in Feudal Japan; "The Crawlin' Chaos Blues"--when a young blues player heads to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil, he's surprised to find something Lovecraftian instead; and his Merkabah Rider series starting with "Tales of a High Planes Drifter"--about a gunslinger mystic on the trail of monsters in the Weird West. Seriously, why are you still reading? You should be rushing to Amazon and buying all of these. Right now!

Well, for those who need more convincing, we're here to sit down with Edward M. Erdelac: The Coolest Man On Earth.



Greg Mitchell: For the poor folks at home who have yet to stumble upon your greatness, who are you and what are you about?

Edward Erdelac: I’m Edward M. Erdelac (only because my father is Edward G. Erdelac and our mail gets mixed up – "Ed" is fine). I was born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, and live in the Los Angeles area with my family. I’ve written stuff for Star Wars (on their website), I’ve produced, written and directed an indie feature film (Meaner Than Hell), and I’ve written about a dozen screenplays, two of which have won awards. Most recently in that arena I did some work on a horror movie that’s being produced called "Underground Lizard People". I’m currently the man behind the Merkabah Rider series from Damnation Books, a weird western about a gunslinging Hasidic mystic tracking his renegade teacher across the southwest of 1880, contending with demons and Lovecraftian entities along the way.

GM: So, why be an author? Dealing with my own struggles on this particular path, I periodically ask myself “Why in the world did I decide on this for my life? Am I a masochist? A glutton for misery?” What set you on the road to being a writer? What keeps you going?

EE: I ask myself the same questions, Greg. It’s a really hard road, especially when everybody around you has solid, respectable careers. At 35 I sometimes feel a bit like a man-child still punching out spooky stories when most of my friends are laying plans for their retirement. It can be quite a discouraging business, especially if you hate the word ‘business’ like I do. But, when you hold a bound copy of your work, and feel the weight of it, when you put it on your shelf, it’s a kind of notch on your gun that even the most rabid bibliophile with a Clue-sized library can’t match. It’s an extra pip on the collar or a gilded chevron on the sleeve that very few people I think have the tenacity to earn. The only thing that tops that is somebody expressing admiration for something you’ve written. That’s a whole ‘nother sensation. Like having somebody praise your kid for his or her upbringing (but secretly, I think, just a little bit better). You throw your heart against the wall a whole lot, but that last bit is worth every toss.

I’ve wanted to do this for a living since I read my first pocket book sans-pictures in about seventh grade (believe it or not, it was the novelization of Friday The 13th Part 6: Jason Lives).

GM: Hey, I've got that book sitting on my shelf, too! And it's still a shame the movie didn't include the epilogue with the return of Jason Voorhees' father :(

EE: I realized how vivid and transporting a book could be. Moreso than a film even (case in point). I’m still not quite there yet, but just three years ago, with nothing at all out there, I was ready to give up for good. Then a UK magazine called Murky Depths published a story I did called "Killer of the Dead" about a Blackfoot boy and his grandfather chasing down a gang of murderous vampires, and about the same time I got the call to do the Star Wars story. Making that first breakthrough took years and came when I was literally about to give up. Funny enough, this is the same way I met my wife, when I had resolved to stop looking for love. And my Star Wars story was published on our anniversary.

GM: I hear ya. The best stuff in life always seems to come around when we're about to throw in the towel. I am always surprised and impressed when I hear of a new story you’ve got coming out. You have the greatest “hooks” and each and every story sounds like a blast to me—which is why they’re all on my ever-expanding “to-read” list. What immediately stands out to me when I think of an “Edward M. Erdelac” story is “genre bending”. I mean, you took a Deep South blues/deal-with-the-devil story and mixed it with Lovecraft, man. That’s awesome! You have these great “mash-up” stories without going the over-mined Classic Literary Book With a Horror Twist route. Your stories are original and interesting. You have very classy “old Hollywood” sensibilities, mixed with B-movie concepts. Do you sit down and say “What two odd things can I put together today?” or is this just reflective of the way your mind works naturally?

EE: Thanks, Greg! I think I read a lot of history, and I read a lot of folklore, and my mind has sort of been conditioned to make these connections. I like reading about culture clashes and am continually amazed by the different ways humans have intermixed with and adapted to each other, from African centurions in the Roman Army to British Wild West Shows in Victorian England.

I love how freely the old pulp writers mixed genres, and I read a lot of that stuff. I watch mainly classic movies as well, so that’s probably where the old Hollywood sensibilities come from. There’s a line in Carol Reed’s The Third Man that always cracks me up where Calloway tells the Holly Martins character, “Paine lent me one of your books...I didn’t know they had snake charmers in Texas.” For better or worse, that’s the kind of writer I am, I think.

GM: As much fun as the monsters are, I’m intrigued by how you pay just as much attention to creating an authentic historical environment. A lot of your stories take place in the past. Are you a natural fan of history? How much research do you put into your stories, capturing the language and “world” of the past?

EE: Yeah I think the most modern story I’ve written is a screenplay set in 1985. I always loved learning new things, but my idea of new things has always been, funny enough, old things. History was my favorite subject. I guess I don’t relate very well to the modern world, where I think much of our lives have been made abstract. The experience of living isn’t really very concrete anymore to most people. It’s all tied up in work and paper and compound interests and 401K. A lot of stuff that at the end of the day just makes a body want to slump down on the couch and veg. People, I think, don’t experience life the same way as they used to. Look at how much time people spend watching television or reading as opposed to going out and doing the kinds of things the characters in their entertainment do.

There’s a dignity to the human experience that’s gradually being eroded by modern disconnectedness. Our virtual lives are generally more interesting than our real lives. I enjoy visiting historical places and just laying hands on old things, imagining the people who first set these things in place. My son took his senior trip to Europe and brought me back a little chip of Hadrian’s wall. I believe there’s a kind of hum to things like that. I don’t know if its psychometry or just wishful thinking. Maybe one requires the other.

I guess I’m always doing research when I’m reading history. I put a crease at the bottom of a page where some little bit of information jumps out at me. Then later (sometimes years later) when I’m writing something that deals with that subject, I can go to the shelf and thumb through my books, finding all these little memory triggers. Sometimes they’re so minute a detail it’s like “I’ll probably never use this.” But I almost always do. I think it’s the details that bring the past to life. First person accounts are the most fun to read in this regard, because you get these little nuances of speech and contemporary references that make the characters more real. Like how people in the Southwest tend to say ‘brang’ or ‘brung’ instead of ‘brought.’

When I’m creating characters in the past I also like to look at timelines of what was going on in the world during their lifetimes and consider their reactions to them. People are the sum total of their experiences after all. The best characters I think, you can imagine having had a life before you picked up their story, and sometimes even after.

GM: From "The Blood Bay", to the Merkabah Rider series, to even your film Meaner Than Hell, I see you returning time and again to the Wild (and sometimes Weird) West, as well as your fictional town of Delirium Tremens. What is it about horses and cowboys that keeps you coming back?

EE: I guess the comparative simplicity of life. As I said, modern concerns give me a headache. I admire the self-inventiveness of old westerners. There are so many stories of real people who tried all these crazy careers, and when they failed (some of them spectacularly – I mean, the kind of financial failure that would induce somebody today to take a pavement dive) in one they just pushed a little further out west and started over doing something else, maybe with a nickname or something. With the frontier you could do that, because your creditors weren’t hearty enough to pursue you to what was then the ends of the earth. Could the Lone Ranger and Tonto, if they were real, ride around doing their thing today? Nah, the Ranger would have lawyers dogging him to pay property taxes on his silver mine and Tonto would probably be getting grief from his tribe for perpetuating a Native American stereotype.

I never really cared for westerns or the old west overly until I visited Deadwood with my family on a cross country vacation in fifth or sixth grade. I had watched The Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid reruns when I was little, but that’s about it. Then in eighth grade I got on a Dirty Harry kick that led me to The Good The Bad And The Ugly and I never quite recovered.

Delirium Tremens, AZ is my Castle Rock. I picked the name from a book on ghost towns somewhere, but it wasn’t located in Arizona. "The Blood Libel" in Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter and "The Blood Bay" both take place there. The town actually started as a detailed map I drew for an RPG game I ran for a scant few months about ten or eleven years ago. Since I abandoned the game, I still had all these little plotted stories, one of which became "The Blood Bay".


GM: Let’s talk about the Rider, while we’re on the subject of the western. What a great creation—a Jewish gunslinger mystic, battling the occult in the Old West. I’m gobsmacked by the originality of that premise and am dying to read these books. First off, where did you come up with this guy?

EE: Well first off, I like the word gobsmacked, and I’m going to strive to use it more.

GM: You should! You really should!

EE: I’m a tremendous fan of Kung Fu, the 70’s show with the Shaolin master traveling across the West. I loved the alienness of that character in such a familiar setting, and watching the reaction of stock western characters to him, and the fascinating stories that came from merging peaceful eastern philosophy with the often violent mores of the old west. I think the Rider has his origins in that, as well as a comedy-western with Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford called The Frisco Kid, about a Polish rabbi trying to deliver a Torah to San Francisco with the help of this bank robber.

He also comes directly from a series of weird westerns I tried to write in my senior year of high school about a wraith-like character called The Ghost Dancer who was this murdered cavalryman brought back to life by a Native American shaman to avenge the Sand Creek Massacre. I wasn’t particularly happy with the way it turned out, so it was shelved for a lot of years. "The Dust Devils" and "Hell’s Hired Gun" are the only two Ghost Dancer stories that became Merkabah Rider installments. I was reading a book on angelology (I think it was Angels A To Z) that my wife had picked up somewhere when I came across the entry for Merkabah Rider. I couldn’t get the term out of my head, and gradually began to imagine a gunslinger character riding a fiery ethereal horse, sort of like the way Ezekial’s chariot was pictured in my old copy of The Picture Bible I had as a kid. Research into Jewish mysticism began in earnest after that, and my admiration for the Hasidic Jews in my neighborhood who walk around in all black with these cool broad brimmed hats no matter what time of the year brought the Rider into being visually as a Hasid.

GM: What’s the plan for the Rider? Three books, right? And that’s it? What about Delirium Tremens? Will we be seeing more from this town past the Rider’s tale?

EE: "Have Glyphs Will Travel", which I hope to have out in the latter half of this year will be the last collection of Rider stories which I’ll be doing in the pulp fiction novella style. Then I plan to wrap up the overall story with a full length novel, sort of like how Robert E. Howard put an amen on the Conan stories (albeit unintentionally) with "The Hour of The Dragon". I’ve written two other stories set in Delirium Tremens that haven’t found homes yet, and have an idea for another called "The Chili-Bean Joss", about a character in Delirium Tremens’ Celestial Quarter.

GM: What’s next for you? You’ve done a few short stories and novellas—are you working your way up to a novel?

EE: I’m pretty much tied up with the Rider right now, but my first full length novel is tentatively due out this March from a press in Texas. It’s called Buff Tea and it’s a straight historical western about a would-be writer from Chicago who joins the great 1870’s buffalo hunt in Texas. This is actually the first novel I ever wrote (almost ten years ago!), so I’m excited that that’s finally seeing print. I’ve written two other novels I’m shopping around. They’re both westerns as well, one weird the other straight up. I sort of abandoned a World War II era horror novel about halfway through (there’s a movie coming out next year which is exasperatingly similar) which I’ll probably get back to once the Rider goes into the sunset. I also had a novel about Billy The Kid going strong for some time which I hope to finish one of these days. Maybe I’ll do something futuristic after that.

GM: Futuristic. Now that would be weird :p Where can people find you, man!

EE: I’m the only Edward M. Erdelac on Amazon, so if you do a search for me there most everything I have out will pop up, except for The Midnight Diner #3, which has "The Blood Bay", and Murky Depths #5, which has my debut story. I ramble on about all sorts of stuff at my blog at http://emerdelac.wordpress.com/

GM: Thanks for taking the time to tolerate my fawning. If you have any powerful parting words, here’s your chance!

EE: Thanks for the invite, Greg and good luck with your own series. As for powerful parting words, write what you know you love. And be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

GM: There you go, folks. The Coolest Man on Earth endorses Ovaltine. Now go buy his stuff, already! You won't be disappointed.

Get ready for "The Arbigast Group"!

I’m happy to announce today that my short story “Flesh and Blood” has been picked up and will be included in the upcoming 3rd Edition of Coach’s Midnight Diner. The Diner has been good to me, seeing my first short story “Flowers for Shelly” published in the last edition, and I’m happy to be a part of the crew this go ‘round as well.

“Flesh and Blood” marks, what I hope to be, the first of many adventures for my new cast of characters—The Arbigast Group, a team of no-nonsense, gunslinger-style monster hunters. These are the guys you hire in dark alleys to take care of that ghoul problem that’s plaguing your town. They ride in, get the job done—usually in bloody fashion—and ride off to find more things to shoot dead.

I first thought of The Arbigast Group back in 1998, when Halloween H20 came out. I remember watching the TV spot for the movie and thought “What if a group of guys with guns, guts, and years of supernatural know-how busted in on Michael Myers while he was skulking about and hosed him?” Well, that thought entertained me for a good long while and, over the years, I often thought of The Arbigast Group. When it came time to write the first drafts of The Coming Evil Trilogy, I had actually written a subplot in Book Three that would have seen the Group headed to Greensboro to face the Strange Man. For many reasons, I excised that particular plot, but the characters had really taken a life of their own in spite of their place on the cutting room floor. So, I lovingly scooped them up, gave them a little more polish, and now we’ve got their first solo adventure “Flesh and Blood” coming up.

The anthology is up for presale now. I encourage everyone to go out and order a copy. I’m really excited to be in this anthology, in particular, because I find myself surrounded by friends, including Kevin Lucia of Hiram Grange and the Chosen One fame, and Ed Erdelac—a fellow Star Wars contributor and horror writer (check out his Merkabah Rider for some Weird West action)!

I hope everyone enjoys the Arbigast Group in action. And, who knows, they might make it to Greensboro yet…