Last February, I released the second Jack Petrov Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter entitled A Dark Mirrored Land which has not sold any copies. It was more the fantasy novel than a straight horror one (which meant I was not under obligation to give Dark Moon Press first right of refusal because it was not similar to Claws of T'birsk in story or content - more of a fantasy other-worlds tale that just happened to have a vampire antagonist). Jack and his legman Elroy Moody are investigating the disappearance of a rich Gotham, NJ shipping magnate's adult daughter. Crossing over to a different world into a land more 18th than 20th Century Earth the two outsiders discover that the region is administrated by a local lord who is a decades-old vampire serving the empire he conquered it for from a hostile power to the south. They must find the heiress there and help a local young woman the vampire lord fancies as she reminds him of a long-dead fiancee who committed suicide to avoid marrying him (the latest physical reincarnation is the young lady the heroes must save from their undead enemy).
By August, I finished putting together the large 600+ page short story/novella collection about my costumed and masked mystery man/hero named Professor Midnight (Psychiatrist Carl Krytchek who lost his older parents while a psychiatric hospital intern to a mobster's bomb in their grocery store). Going from avenging his family to fighting other crime and injustices, Professor Midnight moved from Chicago to become a private practicing Miami Beach psychiatrist who traveled around the globe on various strange adventures, acquiring two teenage sidekicks and later joining two different costumed superhero teams in the 1940's during World War II and the 1960's. Still active sometimes after retirement age, the hero and his longtime love and wife Amphibia would perish helping 1990's superheroes against a giant energy creature. The volume consisted of 14 short stories and 4 novellas (one of those previously published in a Static Movement anthology called Powers back in 2010) and as stated before was the largest volume I had ever published at 656 pages.
In November, I entered the National Novel Writing Month contest for the fifth time as an amateur writer. I had won twice before at this challenge to write a 50,000-word minimum novel in 30 days (those books are still rough drafts) - first in 2010 with Invasion Bubble of the Eternal War and again in 2011 with Saved by a Damsel in distress. I had also lost two different years as an entrant - first in 2016 with the later finished (in February 2017) novel The Anti-Life Huntress and again in 2017 with the still unfinished novel Claws of Purgatory. I also won last November by completing the rough draft for a novel entitled Dawn of a new Vampire Hunter about Jack Petrov's grandson Jack Pike and his adventures as a intern reporter at a Las Vegas tabloid newspaper that covered supernatural, extraterrestrial and occult subjects along with other strange stories. There he would discover his inherited vampire/monster hunting instincts when facing one billionaire business mogul (in fact a 1600-year-old Roman-born vampire) and destroying the bloodsucker and his vast local cult of followers with the aid of some new misfit friends who would work with Pike in later years as monster hunters. I hope to revise this 86,000-word rough draft and release it as another self-published story (set in June 2002 Las Vegas).
For 2019, I am currently working on the second novel in my planned Sepharata Saga Trilogy that began with 2012's Sister Helena of the Sword. The second part is entitled Sister Catherine versus the Volcano People (I am writing the ninth of twenty outlined chapters at this point) and will focus on the adventures of Sister Helena's (Helena Maygard) only daughter Sister Catherine (Shirley Maygard) as the daughter seeks her mother in the jungles of Jafia and becomes the leader of a multi-tribal alliance that seeks to defeat a powerful central Jafian empire similar to Earth's Aztec empire that practices sacrifices conquers neighboring lands and is holding Sister Helena prisoner awaiting a special predicted eclipse of Sepharatas two suns for her sacrifice to their pagan volcano god. I hope to complete and revise this story before publication sometime this year. I also hope to write after that the third Sepharata Saga volume (working title Sister Lara the Redemmer saves the World) and self-publish it before 2019 ends. I also hope to enter the NaNoWriMo contest again in November with a science-fiction story tentatively titled One Unexpected Immortal. Anything else I can get done this year (such as a Jack Petrov story collection titled Strange Years Indeed: The Saga of Jack Petrov Private Investigator/Vampire Hunter) would be great too. So until next time, curious visitors, I shall return here some day soon to keep you abreast of further writing developments (and confine my political rants to either Facebook or Twitter).
Any copies of my self-published novels at CreateSpace (now under the Kindle system at Amazon) or the one novel at Dark Moon Press purchased will be much appreciated, especially after I put so much needed work from 2014-2016 into revising my first four self-published books' contents and all the cover artwork (from the hideous abortions they first were in 2011 and 2012). Goodbye for now.