This is my first pro work as an editor and I have the lead story in it.
Subject: Beware! The Sha'Daa is coming!
The Sha'Daa: Tales of the Apocalypse by Michael Hanson is on its way
and scheduled for official release on May 1, 2009 but you can pre-order
copies now by visiting this page:
http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/altered/shadaa.html The Sha'Daa has its dark, eerie, terrifying roots anchored deep in the
soil of fictional horror and mythic apocrypha. The end of days is a
concept reinvented multiple times by each generation of writers with
every new century, and our own 21st is no exception. We offer up this
humble tribute to those who came before us.
A gruesome shout out is given for Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Bloch, H.P.
Lovecraft, F. Paul Wilson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Bram Stoker,
Charles Dickens, Brian Lumley, Homer, Arthur Conan Doyle, and all the
rest who have given us reason to fear the night.
Be warned. The Sha'Daa is coming.
"Even in a field that prides itself upon being unique,
Sha'Daa: Tales of
the Apocalypse, is a most unusual book...a world visited by hideous
things every ten thousand years...stories ranging from those involving
Greek and Norse mythology, to one about video-gaming warriors...it's a
hell of a book." - Mike Resnick
From The Dive by
Ed McKeown:As I met Johnney's gaze, the tunnel around me faded and I felt as if I
was floating in air. A gray fog enveloped me, then a few seconds later
images appeared below. With a shock, I realized I was floating over an
immense stone city. A ghastly, greenish light emanated from walls of the
buildings, pallid and somehow unclean. A foul odor wafted from it. Foul
even by the standards of sewer workers.
I drifted down and then... I saw them. And I frantically prayed to the
Virgin that they did not see me. Things shuffled and lurched through the
ghost-lit streets, hideous horned-and-tailed things. Some had green,
leathery-looking skin, while others walked upright like men, yet had
heads like alligators.
"They see you not," Johnny whispered in my ears, "because you are not.
Long ago this place ended. Many of your kind died in its walls as a
sacrifice... as food... as entertainment... for these."
I whipped my head around and searched frantically for him, but he was
invisible.
"Dread Falkaya this was," Johnny's theatrical whisper continued. "Once
linked to your world. Those that lived here feasted on your distant
ancestors. Sometimes they did worse, mating with them to produce demonic
half-breeds. Some humans they broke the souls of and made them into the
Shadalka: servants of demons. The Shadalka seek to outdo their masters
in cruelty. Because they are part human, they can cross more easily to
your world."
From The Way of the Warrior by Arthur Sanchez
The General chuckled. "A true warrior is ever vigilant. We've been
watching your kind since before you lived in caves. I know about video
games. Let us begin!" Shinzo gulped hard.
Two-player games are different than playing the computer. There isn't as
much finesse. A player chooses an avatar and tries to use its strengths
while protecting against its weaknesses. Shinzo chose a fighter who was
fast and precise. That came at the cost of strength and endurance.
General Kra'tchaz' chose a fighter with limited mobility but a
devastating punch. I guess, Shinzo thought, people stick to what they
know.
Shinzo wiped the sweat from his hands on his pants and held his
controller pad. General Kra'tchaz' stared at the screen. He looked as
immobile as a house. "Let's do it," Shinzo said.
From Talking Heads by Nancy Jackson
Professor Veronica "Ronny" Johns stared at her grandfather's picture on
the wall of her tidy study at Exeter University. He'd been everything to
her as a child, after her parents died in a car crash. The resemblance
between her tall, elegant grandfather and herself was clear in the
reflection from the portrait's glass. The same long, straight nose,
brown hair and dark brown eyes, the same gangling body that looked
better on him than it did on her.
"But you left me something else, Gramps," she sighed. "You left me a
terrible burden that even now I only half believe in. Perhaps we're both
mad." She turned back to her laptop, where she was working on the
details of the Exeter University expedition to Easter Island. It was a
long way from Devon, UK, to the Pacific.
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