This is the biggest one yet, ringing in at nearly the same length as Predestination, and the adventure scales with the book. Teaming up with his assistant Rachael and his new squatter Nya Thales, Lantham gets to match wits with alien hunters, Chinese assassins, and FBI agents in his attempt to solve an apparent alien abduction before the only witness is…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the back-of-book copy, to give you a better feel for what’s going on.

The California Academy of Sciences, a bastion of integrity in scientific public relations, has agreed to play host to one of the most valuable travelling exhibits in the world: a Mars rock with microbial alien life. But the attention it’s drawing isn’t just international, it’s interstellar. When a commando team of gray aliens steals the rock and abducts a security guard, in full view of the cameras, the head of the security contractor has only one place to turn: Clarke Lantham Investigations.

When the field gets that crowded, someone’s bound to get hurt. But even that might be okay for Lantham…if he didn’t have to sleep on the couch.

Read the first couple chapters here.

Then, grab the book and dive in. It’s available right now through Read the rest on your Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

I hope you have at least half as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Enjoy!

It was worth it. And the folks at the company that manages the Lerner estate were very helpful. Because of their kind work, I can now proudly present you with the ebook version of Down From Ten, a novel uniquely close to my heart.

In early January, a group of friends gather for an annual retreat: eight artists, scientists, and authors cloistered together in a mansion in California’s high country for ten days of games, conversation, exhibition, and hedonism while isolated from the outside world.

“Down From Ten is a brilliant, sometimes creepy take on a bohemian cozy with surreal underpinnings and an irrepressibly touching ending.” –Gail Carriger, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Parasol Protectorate series

For the first time in text, read the story that View from Valhalla calls “Unique, lavish, and challenging…amazing in its scope and its detail…with THE most surprising ending I’ve EVER experienced.”
Get it now for your Kindle, Nook, or any other reader.

Or, read the first three chapters here.

Enjoy!

Step into Rick’s parlor. Don’t mind the bell on the door or the old fashioned cash register. Buy a manufactured novel, fresh from the computer—a first edition. Sit in the easy chair or lay out on the sofa. Strap on a helmet and a skinsuit and take a swim on Europa. He can be trusted. Really. It says so on the door. In ten foot high letters, right above the shop front, he tells you exactly what they do:

“We Create Worlds”

And they do it on the cheap.

You can find the story at Amazon and Smashwords.

—Story Sample Below the Cut—

We Create Worlds
by J. Daniel Sawyer

Grand re-opening!

This month only, get a free Hawaii upgrade with any family picnic!

Teach your children about planetary science. Show them the only other place in the known universe to have alien life! Free souvenir photobook with our new ‘Europa Excursion’ scenario. SCUBA certification required, training available.

Take your spouse to an exclusive adults-only resort in Luna City and get a free add-on fantasy package of your choice!

Chose from the best in manufactured literature available anywhere. For a limited time, buy one—get one free!

Opening the universe to you every day with state-of-the-art virtual reality.

We Create Worlds.

It was the same copy as our radio ads, but in the layout it popped. I arranged the words around a good solid curve. Busty, but subtle. Catchy. Nobody would know why they couldn’t stop looking at it, but when a human being sees an eddie or a zoomer it gets distracted. When the shape is disguised, hidden, or cryptic, the brain won’t let it go.

I was the best damn flyer we’d ever put out. Nobody’d used flyers for years—messy, environmentally unsound, irritating. Well, let me tell you, my dear voyeur, one generation’s headache is another’s heroin. Flyers may have been useless back when everyone was putting them out, but now they’re paper gold. Something tangible, makes the offer real. People can touch it, feel the little texture cues, the scent of the paper, and they believe that what they’re buying from us is also real.

So, for the shop relaunch, I went bollocks-out. Over the top, loading in all the subliminals, pheremonals, visuals, and NLP tricks. I knew they actually didn’t work for much, but it was a special occasion, and the owners appreciated the extra effort.

The crowning achievement was the new name—it’s the real reason the relaunch worked. Gone were the days of “Adult Realities.” It was “Rick’s Virtual Playground” no longer—false advertising anyway, since I never owned more than 3% of the shop and didn’t really want to. I mean, Christ, board meetings with the old Sicilians every quarter? Count me out. They smell like garlic and look like death on a good day, and they know this market about as well as a high-speed hunk of lead knows how to tap dance.

Now the new name…ah, the finest gift the goddess ever gave me for the price of a tab. It was straightforward. It was snappy. It reeled ‘em in like pike on a bait chain. It was perfect.

I’d done it up in a sign ten feet high across the front of the building, lit up so you could read it for a mile down the street: “We Create Worlds.”

And we do it on the cheap.

Hey, everyone needs to escape, and slipping off into a world where your brain doesn’t know the difference is a hell of a lot better than slipping your brain down into a needle. I’m a paramedic, and I know it. And, like any good paramedic, I give out treatments. I don’t cure.

Temporary, palpable escape into the worlds made in the closet. They’re gagging for it. Who wouldn’t be? They sit in cubicles, or plugged into net terminals, or hassled to death by their kids all day, and the real world just don’t have the shine it did when they were teenagers.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone—who walks through that door needs me. I mean, they could do it on their own. Most VR shops are self-serve. You walk in, order something up on a screen, and do your business. Most kids buy a home rig – they’re not quite as good, but they’re damn cheap. Nothing’s stopping ‘em, nobody’s holding a gun to their head to make them come here. I have to work for my bread. And if the shop doesn’t run well, I don’t eat. If it runs at a loss, I don’t breathe.

Yeah, I know, I know. The suit slobs aren’t good people to owe money too. It’s a high stakes game, but then, where else are you gonna get the money for a place like this? The market conditions are tough—nobody dared to build an arcade after the Xbox, and nowadays, nobody wants to go up against Sony and Disney in VR. Nobody’s that crazy.

Well, nobody that works at a bank, any road.

So, I provide adventure. I provide service. I keep my shop clean and my nose bent and do what I can to keep the customers satisfied. The job is its own reward, and the benefits are brilliant. When they leave here after a couple hours of happy delusion, their nonsensical grins tell me how long it will be until reality gets the better of them and they come back for the next fix.

Most are satisfied with a manufactured novel, though they don’t sell like they used to. Some people like to keep their fantasy at arm’s length, or at least enjoy the illusion that their secret peccadilloes are private. In the old days, they were the hook on a pretty direct route—they’d start out with the books, then move on to a good old fashioned hunter-killer game with a human quarry. A while later that palled and they’d switch sides in the game, and at that point, they’d need a jack for their fix, every time. The route ain’t so direct anymore, and our focus has changed a bit, but we still have something for everyone.

For example, Sunday afternoons are introverted loser day, with men coming in fresh from church for some serious worship with a projection of the pastor’s wife or the dance troupe leader.

You can see it, can’t you? We provide a valuable community service. Our Notorious World Leaders series gives the sadists a way to let off some good steam by officiating a human sacrifice, keeping a healthy harem of captive and unwilling women plundered from neighboring tribes, orchestrating battles, playing Torquemada or Bathory, or having a good old fashioned pedophillic dismemberment orgy with the Borgias or Tiberius. The only serial killers you’ll find operating in this one-horse town are the ones that come in here on Thursday night. People are kept safe, nobody gets hurt, and the owners stay happy.

If Pilate had my shop he’d never have needed a cross. No half-baked desert hippie could have had a chance to raise a ruckus when everyone else got top shelf stress reduction at hand.

Of course, when you keep a shop, each day is pretty much like the next, and that’s all there is to say. But man, oh man. That day started off with a rash of sorority birds lining up to use all the arenas at once. The suits ain’t compatible across genders—form-fitting sensor nets, them—and I ran dry on the fem suits at one point. The things don’t wash themselves, and those girls weren’t having no tea party.

No, for them it was a standard Hunter/Killer program—jungle variety terrorism, nice for working up a good sweat, and let me tell you, those birds are sadistic. Wouldn’t want to be set on them in a dark alley after seeing what they do to their friends over a game. And, holy hell, I had to network all the arenas together at once—when I spec’d the system for this place I didn’t get one designed to handle that much. Hey, I work on a budget, what could I do?

It was a royal bitch getting’ them routed around the fail-safes, but that’s why the the Red Man lost his shirt to the big penguin. There’s always a way. And it was worth it, let me tell you. At a hundred bucks a piece every hour I earned nearly a week’s commission in one day, and that ain’t the half of it. Ain’t gonna forget this’n—average day gets me maybe twenty regs at the outside and a couple itchin’ tenderfeets, but this place was hopping like a cockroach in a frying pan.

With sororities you can always tell the leader, she tugs the others around like a brood of goslings. She was shorter and rounder than the rest of them, but she moved like an empress and her voice was like chocolate.

“What’s the big occasion?”

“Oh, just a birthday party for one of the sisters.”

“You girls in a sorority then?” A blind rabbit could have smelled the Greek solidarity from the mint patch if he still had his nose about him, but it kept her talking.

I swiped her card and glanced down at the monitors. Her sisters were all at different points in the peeling process—did I say those VR suits are like a second skin? I forgot to mention how much they don’t look like real skin. Getting’ them gone was a definite improvement, at least until they finished their shower off and found their street clothes again. Not an ugly one in the bunch.

“Yeah, over at State. We’re having an end-of–the-year party next Wednesday, would you be interested?”

“Interest is my middle name, consider me there! Ah, here we go, your total is three K. If you like I can bill you monthly, or I can put it all in…or rather through…right now.”

“Hell, put it through now. Better than dealing with the bills.”

“Okay,” I punched my transfer auth into the keypad, “Looks like we have a winner. So…” I glanced at her American Express, “Erin, how can I find you this weekend? Saturday nights can be mighty cold up on that old drafty campus.”

She pursed her lips at me and winked, then slipped a card into my hand as I passed the AmEx back. Smooth as a velvet tongue, that girl. “Call me.”

Before I could continue the conversation a gaggle of her cohorts emerged from the dressing rooms. They flocked around her like she was a kool-aid vendor from Guyana—who could blame them? Her voice sounded like it walked out of a sex factory before they’d had a chance to fit it with a good suit of clothes. The other girls might be a pleasant diversion, but Erin…

I waved them out, just in time. Four hours of solid estrogen pollution hangin’ think in the air is enough to make any duffer choke takin’ a breath. Once I recover though…well, let’s just say that Erin’s way of plotting an ambush in the arena gives me the shivers. There was something there with that girl, and I couldn’t wait to find out what it was.

The bell on the door wasn’t my idea, one of the morons who owns a pile of stock certs has a bit of a fetish for things that dingle. His cat, his children, his goddamned cigar cutters, always dingling with those little rancid bells like they crawled out of Santa’s pants for air. Last time I saw him I had to spend the whole night in an arena watching old Beatles concerts until I couldn’t hear the dingle anymore over the constant torture of “Hey Jude” running through my brain. The bell was his revenge—he didn’t like it when the changeover caught him with his pants down in front of the other dons.

At least it’s only Mrs. Alvarez. She’s a regular, comes in here every now and then to fetch a new manufactured novel. She prefers insipid little romances, the ones that feature secret adulteries and long lost lovers cropping up in unlikely places. But I don’t judge, she’s a good customer, brings a lot of class to the place.

She’s plain, always wrapped up in that wool trench, too old to be really interesting. If my commission structure allowed it, I might feel sorry for her, stuck in what must be a loveless—or lifeless—marriage. If she were younger…nah, not worth it, and I don’t get paid for that. She likes her books, and I’m her bartender, not her magic man.

Even so, I programmed a new set of variables into her presets that she should find mildly shocking and very entertaining. I wouldn’t be doing my job if she wasn’t a little shocked, after all.

Way back in the beginning, we were only a manufactured book store. I got the place funded because I wrote the system. Best virtual AI in the world. This one can actually tailor the manufactured novel to the style of a thousand different authors, which set us apart and got us a more literate clientèle.

The literate ones, back when they were still a good demographic, were the ones who could afford the perks we were offering. I kept the easy chairs and couches even since that business dropped off—we haven’t needed the space yet and people do like to sit down and relax while they read, free of charge. Keeping them around usually means they’ll buy more than one.

Problem was that shortly after we opened, the fad died off. Literacy was passe again, and all the real book junkies went back to “sapient” novels, saying that stories written by humans were more “artistic.” That kind of pretentious nonsense was bad for business.

With that kind of boneheaded appeal to “culture,” we could either change our marketing strategy or we could fold. The money men didn’t fancy their investment failing after only a few thousand percent return, so we added manufactured movies and porn, and it did the trick. Business soared. We eventually made enough to install a few VR arenas and a couple of private rooms for those with advanced tastes.

Of course, none of them—especially not Dingle Man—listened to a damn thing I said. They spotted a good thing and ran with it, and they bought all the advertising they could. We were gonna saturate the market, expand, set up franchises. Well, they thought so.

They didn’t reckon with the main problem: VR porn is big on burnout.

At first, we had new customers come in and order full-on orgies, hard-core S&M sessions, and some stuff that still gives me the shudders thinking about it. Caligula had nothing on those morons, let me tell you. The thing is, you drop-shift a guy from vanilla sex with his high school sweetheart who he married in the little chapel down the road into that kind of theater and they’ll just stop showing up after a couple sessions. They knew what they wanted, what they wouldn’t admit to anyone, and they jumped right into it.

You gorge yourself for three days straight on caviar after eating graham crackers your whole life, and you just ain’t hungry anymore. And that’s assuming they lost interest—I spent a good month hiding from one pissed off woman who found her man out when he couldn’t get it up anymore.

So as sure as you get fertilizer out of a politician, when that happened things went downhill fast. That pissed off little missy got the community involved. The Baptists did what Baptists do best, boycotting us, picketing, blackmailing customers, the whole bit. We were gonna have to fold, and if we did it would be my arse in a sling. All that work, straight down the sewer pipes and flushed out to sea, and the money men’s special collection agents rapping on my door. There’s always gotta be someone to blame, and it’s never them.

I had to think fast before they found a better use for my head. I brought the problem to them, suggesting that we change the whole image. We could be wholesale fantasy, cater to everything, family friendly and the whole cartload. We’d change the name of the shop, and restrict the hard-core stuff to regulars who were already so hooked that they had no one at home left to tell.

They bought it, which meant I could stop sleeping with a gun under my pillow.

The re-branding was the last step, and we’ve done pretty well for it all. Saturday is family day—officially, anyway—and we keep the family scenarios fresh. The Hawaii offer from the ad is particularly popular, and it keeps the kids and the adults coming back for more. What starts as a novelty becomes an indispensable family pastime.

I don’t do too badly for it, either.

Damn that dingling door, always bombing the tracks right in front of a good train of thought. “Adds to the homey atmosphere” my eye. Paul—another regular—came in strutting like a peacock with a branch up his arse. About normal. He asked for the Battle of Waterloo. Again. Most people would want some variety, perhaps even a little triumph. Not this master of the financial universe.

“Paul, have you considered trying out one of the battles Napoleon won?”

“No, no.” He dismissed the idea with an aristocratic wave of his hand. “If the first great emperor won the battle already,” he snorted, “Child’s play. I deserve the honor—no, the glory!—of a more difficult battlefield.” His smirk…god…it’s almost as if he likes getting his arse kicked as penance for his success.

“You know, if you want challenge, I could up the danger by having Napoleon captured rather than killed.” Now, to confirm my theory.

“Ah!” sucking the air in like a goddamn elephant, “Give the first great emperor a chance to defeat the enemy from inside their own encampment.” Anticipation grew on his face and he tucked his right hand into his coat front.

“You cut a dashing figure, my lord. Your doom awaits you in arena 2. You’ll find a fresh suit and helmet in the dressing room.” I handed him the code card with the enhancements and he accepted it with an air of indifference, before sticking his puggish nose in the air and striding back to the dressing room. The piglet as an emperor.

Before he did “Waterloo” he played in H/K programs as the prey. The moment he began to outfox the computer, he upgraded to hopeless battles. He’s been doing “Waterloo” for two months, five days a week. The program says the battle lasted the better part of a day and a night, but Paul started out with three hour runs and whittled it down to under one. Every time he and comes out glowing like he’d had the best sex of his life. I think he’s beginning to believe he is Napoleon. Still, he isn’t the most colorful face I see every week.

Falk takes the cake for that. He is our biggest hard-core customer. If what I’ve seen on the monitors is any indication, the man has more imagination and concubines than Solomon. His stamina is almost as impressive as his credit line.

Almost.

The owners love him, he drops more money here every week than any two other people combined. I love him too; he’s usually around all day, so if I ever get bored, the screen for his booth is only a click away. It ain’t just entertainment, he’s so hooked that I can jack up the prices on him and he doesn’t mind. As long as I don’t pump them so high that I lose him, the owners cheer me on rather than sending me a dinner guest.

I love this business.

I love the people. I love the challenge.

I loved staying after hours. I’d turn off the experience recorders and use a private room myself. I had this program that started with a long massage with a golden-skinned Mexican girl, and I could make that one last until my balls were blue as a summer sky and I couldn’t walk straight. Ah, yes…

The stiff kinda ruined it for me—made me cut back and not go in so much. One of my regulars, should have been outta the store long time before closing—he must’ve paid in advance…it was a bloody mess. Slid a scalpel down his own throat…nasty, nasty. Put himself right out. Eighteen months back, now—last straw for the protesters. Apparently his “Secret Tryst” program was up—why does every lazy two bit git name his program like it was a c-movie?–and he couldn’t take reality any more. Made us shut the place down for six weeks to clean the blood out of the carpet and retool our image.

After all that time, I still couldn’t go back into arena two, it gave me the squeamies just thinking about it. So, I was careful. I couldn’t afford to lose touch like that. Better than the real thing, those created worlds, but I had bills to pay.

Paul finished his battle in only twenty minutes, a new record. Came out struttin’ through the shop glowing like a pregnant woman—you coulda lit a good sized orgy with the smile on his face. I reckoned he’d have to upgrade to the siege of Jerusalem next. I resolved to give his captors some personality next time—maybe some nice broom handles and some Vaseline—let him get his full penance in. That’d keep him happy until he was willing to move to a more hardcore scenario.

The sunlight spilled in over the hills between me and the bay, and I thought about the night at head. I didn’t have anything scheduled. I had to be in early tomorrow to supervise the system upgrade. We were adding a holographic arena in the old hock shop next door. All the demos made it look pretty slick. No helmets, just a latex face laminate for touch sensations. The images are projected in real-time and can be seen with the naked eye. No more retina projectors or VR bullshit. For those with the means, this is the next phase. I may have to try it, just for kicks. Mayhap it’ll ship with a trainer program—or I could use old faithful. Maya, the Mexican massage goddess.

When I went back to get Mrs. Alverez I found her layin’ back on the overstuffed velor sofa. She’d flopped her trench loose over the back so the wool prickled out, and her long peasant boots restin’ on the coffee table like it was a footstool, one crossed over the other under the fringe of her schoolmarm skirt and reading the manufacture I’d programmed for her. But it weren’t from one of the normal readers. She’d sprung the extra ten bucks for a hard copy and was making notes in the margins with a pencil.

In a manufactured novel?

I came close up behind her and tried to read over her shoulder, but her head kept getting in the way, so I cleared my throat. She turned around and looked up at me from her seat on the couch.

“I’m closing up, Mrs. Alverez, it’s time to go now.”

She nodded and closed her book, saying “Thank you, Rick. I’ll be along in a moment.” As she said so she put her book in her handbag and handed me her credit card.

As I walked back to my counter, something prompted me to glance back at her. Her hair had fallen from its usual matronly bun and was cascading in delicate black curls around her shoulders as she used a coffee table to stretch her muscles for the walk home. Her button-up trailed open and the edges hung loosely about her hips, showing a black bodice comin’ up outta her brown skirt. She couldn’t really be in her fifties …could she?

She looked up and nearly caught me staring, but I ducked behind my counter and performed the swipe. I punched in the auth codes, and “Transaction approved” flashed on the screen, and the console spat out a receipt for forty dollars US.

I thought about dialing up a massage program, but as I shifted my weight around on my feet I chucked the notion. I wanted to get moving. Needed to find a party to pull, or something to do. All day sittin’ behind the counter, washing suits, watching the experience monitors…I needed to get out and relax. Find something active to do.

I shut down the console and started the arenas on spin-down.

Mrs. Alverez came out from behind the display case and picked up the card and receipt, and I pushed her out of the store as politely as I could. No customers, nothin’ left to do, and I needed the air.

I punched the lock code, turned to walk off. I nodded at her.

“Good night, Rick. I’ll see you soon.” She gave me an ‘alf smile and kept lookin’ at me outta the corner of her eye even while she walked away. Her heels clopped steadily on the concrete as she walked out to the parking lot.

I needed to go find a way to unwind, but the breeze picked up and I caught a little smell of flowered talc on the breeze. Her boots stopped, I looked back after her and saw her taking a moment to look up at the moon, faint and hazy through the dull red sky.

She’d been writing—writing!—in the margins of a manufactured novel. She’d wasted pension money—you can tell a lot about a bird by the card she uses—on a hard copy when I knew damn well she had a serviceable reader.

She wasn’t moving, just standin’ there on the corner. Hell, I didn’t have any plans anyway. It wasn’t more than a minute’s walk to where she was leaning on the telephone pole.

“What were you doing in there?”

She looked at me like I’d spit on her shoe. “Excuse me?”

“Making notes on the manufacture, why were you doing that?”

Mayhap I was intruding. She arched her eyebrow at me and I suddenly felt like a little kid. Out from behind the counter, not working a party, not trying to chat someone up, I suddenly realized I had no clue what I was doing.

“Why the sudden interest, Rick? I’ve heard of stranger things happening in that shop of yours.”

“It just ain’t…normal. I mean, it’s a machine-made book; why…” It wasn’t a text book, wasn’t a croquet manual, wasn’t a bleedin’ astrophysics paper. It was a manufacture—pure entertainment. “It’s weird.”

She sighed into the night. “It’s a long story, Rick. Why don’t you walk me home and I’ll tell you about it?”

I hesitated, the cold city night tickling the back of my throat.

“Come on, I’ll cook you dinner.”

End of sample. ©2007 J. Daniel Sawyer, All Rights Reserved

Read the rest at Amazon and Smashwords.

When last we left Rick, he was having a pleasant–if confusing–day. But will it last?

Find out, in the conclusion to We Create Worlds.

As your fantasy travel agent, allow me to offer you a guided tour of the San Francisco Bay Area like you’ve never seen it before: through the eyes of detective Clarke Lantham, sentenced to the hell of the suburbs in his quest to find a missing teenage girl. For the first time in paperback from AWP Mystery comes And Then She Was Gone, the adventure described by Gail Carriger as “full of snappy one-liners I’m dying to quote” and by Seth Harwood as “a mystery so dark and complex that you could lose a molar biting into it.”

Now available from AWP Mystery in paperback, And Then She Was Gone is a tense, funny, action packed adventure that sticks its fingers just under edge in order to flip it over. The handsome new edition rings in at 214 pages contains the full text of the ebook edition, plus a map detailing the geography that plays such an integral role in the story, along with a sample of the second Clarke Lantham novel, A Ghostly Christmas Present.

Now, it’s true that you can buy the novel at Amazon now, and you’ll be able to find it in bookstores this fall, but for you loyal folk that read my blog, it’s available for a special rate. Until May 15, buy your copy by clicking here and using the coupon code Q38WV4AS, and you’ll receive $1.50 off the $9.99 cover price.

Finally, for those of you who run vending booths at conventions (or who work in bookstores) and would like to carry And Then She Was Gone, shoot me an email from the Contact Form and I will send you the AWP Books wholesale pricing schedule.

I’ll see you between the pages!

This is the story of Rick. He’s a scurrilous, irascible scoundrel, with a heart of gold. Not in the sense of being warm and fuzzy and good underneath, but in the sense of having a heart totally devoted to gold. His favorite goldmine is his shop, an entertainment venue where he vends virtual reality and manufactured novels to his latter-day escapist customers. He runs a tidy shop, he keeps his customers happy, and he always knows the right party to hit to find a pliable college girl with more cocaine than sense. Life is good. But life has a way of doing unexpected things, and the world has a way of changing around the most adaptable people.

So, please step into Rick’s parlor. Don’t mind the bell on the door or the old fashioned cash register. Buy a manufactured novel, fresh from the computer, a first edition. Sit in the easy chair or lay out on the sofa. Strap on a helmet and a skinsuit and take a swim on Europa. He can be trusted, really. It says so on the door. He’s completely upfront with his advertising. In ten foot high letters, right above the shop front, he tells you what they do in his place:
“We Create Worlds.”

And he does it on the cheap.

Mondu, once an AI designer at the top of the Nigerian IT industry, needed to escape from a life that was eating him alive. He found refuge as a shopkeeper in the depths of the Amazon, at a unique resort. It’s a preserve for all forms of Amazon life–reptiles, mammals, and human and material culture. No modern technology allowed.

In a world of dictators and perpetual surveillance, it is one place where a man can disappear–and Mondu isn’t the only one who knows it. When the tourist traffic is driven out by torrential rains, only the businessmen and the scientists remain–until the day when a man walks into Mondu’s shop. He wants to disappear–and the Yakuza are hot on his tail.

The story is now available at Amazon and Smashwords, and is coming soon to other retailers.

Those of you familiar with The Antithesis Progression will recognize the characters and the universe, but this story stands alone. Consider it an appetizer for the main event coming later this month. But until then, I invite you to join me for an excursion into the heart of the Amazon for a tale as close and dangerous as the jungle itself…

The Man In The Rain
An Antithesis Adventure
by J. Daniel Sawyer

Read the rest! Purchase this story for Kindle at Amazon, and for all other readers and in all other formats at Smashwords.

Now, to brighten your e-book reader, I give you one of my favorite bed-time stories, complete with a new afterword that tells the story behind the story.

In 1898, a woman’s body was discovered broken and battered at the bottom of a tall sea bluff in Southern Scotland. and the small town she lived in began locking the doors at night. Only one man saw what happened, but he carried the secret of her death to his death bed. Wounded in the trenches on the Western Front, he gives his last confession…

Get it now, DRM free, from Amazon or Smashwords.

—Story Sample Below the Cut—

Angels Unawares
by J. Daniel Sawyer

This is how it happened. I swear. What you are about to hear is the absolute, unvarnished truth–I don’a give bugger all about whatch’a found in the histories. It wasn’a a suicide, and it wasn’a murder. I was there, and I saw, and no one else did. Their “forensics” don’a mean a bloody thing, because I know. And what I saw is more amazing than what they think happened. But I kept it to myself, just to be sure that no one would ruin it–because I promised her, you see. And I had to keep the promise – no one could have broken it after seeing the look in her eyes.

But first, I suppose you’ll want to know about how it started – what it was like in this town back then. The commotion started back when her body was found beaten against the rocks like so much driftwood. That wasn’a the unusual part – a lot of people fell from that trail on the bluff. That’s why the laird put the fences up when I was a lad. It never stopped anyone from going down there, you understand, just made him feel better when there was a fuss. Great spot for the spring frolic, it was, and of course we were all up there as normal. When they find bodies down in the surf there it’s usually a suicide or an accident – someone gone off their melon on too much whisky. But they’re always normal people. She was unusual, and the lengths they went to trying to explain it made the whole town start locking their doors at night.

They said that she was mutilated–or deformed – that her body wasn’a like a woman’s body, but they weren’a sure if the fall did it or if it was something else. They said that the policemen fought with each other to avoid having to be near her. It was hideous and beaten, and they’d never seen anything so brutally done. In the end it was only her cloak that identified her.

It was always her cloak that announced her.

Dark, it was, and seemed to fall about her like water. She always wore it up there at the frolics. Even when one of the youths would bring a guitar or a penny whistle and she danced for us with those dances that would pull us away from the material world for a moment or three – even then the cloak was her companion. She liked it because it kept her safe in the shadows, blended right in when it was dark, no matter where she was. Glorious, shimmering dull blue, deep but faded, fastened round her neck with a dull golden braid – thinking of it now I realize that she and the cloak seemed to be two expressions of a third, hidden thing. Like she was a tired faerie from an older, forgotten world. But that’s maybe the mists of fond memory speaking.

So they became convinced, eventually, that she had killed herself, though they couldn’a imagine why, and eventually the memory of her faded into the ghost story the young ones all hear from the older ones upon their first visit to the frolics. Everyone was sure that it was suicide, or that she’d been killed by a lover – an older, married man they fancied she’d been seeing. And partly the reason was that no one they questioned had seen her that night after the moon rose.

But I saw her. And I know what happened.

We always called her Aadi. One of the other young men who came to the frolics heard it from his father serving in India – he said it meant “beginning.” She was the first one to clear the grove on the bluff, and as far as anyone could remember she had begun the spring frolics. I suppose the old druids would have called her the May Queen or thought she was a dryad, but we had no use for superstition. The dawning future had enough magic of its own. The twentieth century was coming, nature was being conquered, and, in our little lowland village far away from the noise and dirt of the factories at least, there was nowhere to look but forward and up. Of course, all of us knew her real name – though none of us knew her age – but Aadi suited her better than the name she called herself, and that is always how I’ll remember her. The sound of it was always soothing, and she seemed to me as ageless as the hills she lived in. My father told me, before he passed on, that someone had always been up there – when he was a lad he too had gone to the bluff and met the woman in the trees who lived up in the hills, but that one had been a minstrel. Aadi was no minstrel – when pressed she might have been able to squawk.

It was early may–late enough that the rain had stopped the pretense of snow and had contented itself merely with being wet. Ten or fifteen of us went up to the grove on the bluff as often as we could to catch the scent of the changing seasons, to dance and play, to wrestle with the lassies among the tall grasses, and to watch the moon set on the sea. Someone had brought a book of poetry that night, and we handed it around with the Glenlivt, reading to each other while the wind came up. On that cold night the drink was like hot butter, coating inside with warmth, smooth as a woman’s neck. When mixed with the pine fire and the smell of drizzle, the glow of faces in the firelight, the sound of Shelly being read in the halting voice of a seventeen year old Scots lad, it seemed to thin the veil between the worlds. It was a night that felt more real than any other, perhaps because it was as unreal as any I have yet lived. An evening when, for a moment, time stepped outside of itself and flirted with eternity.

End of sample. ©2003 J. Daniel Sawyer, All Rights Reserved

Read it on your Kindle, Nook, or other reader.

The first volume in the new Clarke Lantham Mysteries is now available at all your favorite online book retailers, in all ebook formats. This is the beginning of a year-long experiment with ebooks and other maverick content delivery techniques, and Lantham (in all his snarky, darkly-comic glory) is the headline star.

Today is the day to rush the markets — for only $3.20, what have you got to lose? Find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

To mark the occasion, there are a few things in store today. First, I’m launching a new website, specifically for the Lantham series, which you can find here. It has a series map and other stuff related to the current and upcoming mysteries. Only a little bit there right now, but it’s still worth the jaunt over. Check it out!

Second, I’ll be doing a live call-in show on Podioracket’s Blogtalk Radio show tonight at 6pm Pacific time. Join me, grill me, hear readings from the book. I’ll be yours for a whole hour, maybe two.

Of course, if you’ve never read e-books before, I’ve written a handy dandy quickie guide to the subject, applicable to all cell phones, e-readers, mobile devices, and computer platforms.

Finally, just in case you don’t know what all this hullabaloo is about, here’s the back cover summary:

A man of infinite social grace he isn’t, but what former disgraced Oakland Police Detective Clarke Lantham lacks in high culture he makes up for with his ability to slip into any role he needs to to get the job done (which is probably why he got fired in the first place).

From the posh shadow of Mount Diablo to the kink clubs of San Francisco to the genetic engineering labs of Stanford, Clarke Lantham chases down pieces of the weirdest puzzle he’s ever seen, all for the sake of a nineteen-year-old girl whose face he can’t stop seeing every time he closes his eyes.

Head on over and pick up your copy now — it’s already getting great reviews!

A man of infinite social grace he isn’t, but what former disgraced Oakland Police Detective Clarke Lantham lacks in high culture he makes up for with his ability to slip into any role he needs to to get the job done (which is probably why he got fired in the first place).

From the posh shadow of Mount Diablo to the kink clubs of San Francisco to the genetic engineering labs of Stanford, Clarke Lantham chases down pieces of the weirdest puzzle he’s ever seen, all for the sake of a nineteen-year-old girl whose face he can’t stop seeing every time he closes his eyes.

And Then She Was Gone is the first of the Clarke Lantham Mysteries, hard-boiled detective fiction with a hard comic edge, the series consists of a planned three self-contained novels and a number of short stories, though I enjoy writing this character so much I would not be surprised if it grew. This is a market experiment–how well can a relative unknown do in the suddenly wide-open ebook marketplace? We shall see. If nothing else, this experiment has yielded one result already: a book which will give you your month’s RDA of adrenaline while making you chuckle maniacally.

I hope you join me on October 29, 2010 for the all-markets rush. More details coming soon!

And now, Episode 14, in which Jeremiah notices, Sarah remembers, and Gerd does some heavy lifting.
Story So far by Cunning Minx of Polyamory Weekly

Episode 15 coming this weekend.

And now, Episode 7, in which the mirrors have minds of their own, the walls have ears, Kevin has more trouble in the bathroom, and some guns are mounted on the wall. Bumper by Gail Carriger. Story So Far by Steve Riekeberg of Geek Cred.

Episode 8 coming this weekend.

And now, Episode 6, in which the plot thickens.

Episode 7 coming this weekend.

And now, Episode 3. Bumper by Mark Smith of Buffy, Between The Lines. Story So Far by Philippa Ballantine.

And now, Episode 2. Bumper by Steve Reikiberg of Geek Cred, Story So Far by Kitty Nic’Iaian.

Well, boys and girls, here it is. No fanfare, I’m saving that for a bit later. For now, just enjoy: episode 1 of Down From Ten.