It’s time for our hometown party! Archon is a neighborhood con for many of us here in the Literary Underworld, and always a great time. This year we expect to see Underlords Jim D. Gillentine, Kathy Brown, Sela Carsen/Silke Campion, Cole Lanahan, Diana Morgan, Mary Koppenhofer, Michales Joy, and perhaps some others! (Oh, and Overlord Elizabeth Donald.)
Literary Underworld will have our usual booth just to the left of the dealer’s room entrance. We have planted our flag on that spot and it is ours. This year we are premiering a few new books released over the last few months by our amazing Underlords!
Blackfire Rising by Elizabeth Donald
It was an experiment. A way to create a better soldier. Colder, more efficient. But some things shouldn’t be altered, and some creatures are best left to myth.
Sara Harvey has faced the Cold Ones again and again, losing friends and comrades in a running battle to keep the world safe from the monsters released by an experiment that should never have happened.
Because you shouldn’t have to pray to just stay dead.
Madam, Don’t Forget Your Sword
Do we ever think of them, the little people who make their masters larger than life? The ones tasked with the routine jobs: Picking up the laundry, packing snacks for the quest, renting the secret lair, oiling the death machine, walking the eldritch horror? The people who keep the heroine’s sword sharp and her chainmail polished—does she ever notice? What are their lives like? How did they get their jobs? There would be no story without them, but what are their stories?
Here, we present twenty-eight innovative and remarkable speculative fiction tales that reveal how the companions, sidekicks, and minions make that hero—or villain—super. Authors include Underlord Diana Morgan.
Vegas Run by Rachel Brune
Some debts you can’t outrun.
An unprovoked attack destroys Rick Keller’s refuge and sends him back to civilization. Adrift, alone, his past reaches out to him as the agency he escaped–and the old Soviet spook he almost didn’t–call in their debts. His choice: work with MONIKER one more time, or face the rest of his life on the run.
From the snows of the north to the sand of the Las Vegas strip, Rick finds himself enmeshed in a web of old alliances and new, as his team heads out on the trail of the latest development in the supernatural arms race. While Rick has been hiding in the north country, MONIKER has been building a supernatural army. No matter how fast or far he runs, it won’t be enough. This time when they call him in, they don’t need an agent–they’re eliminating the competition. This time, he’s going to burn them to the ground.
Weird STL, ed. by the St. Louis Writers Guild.
Eighteen short stories, poems, essays, flash fiction, and even a script that were all written by St. Louis Writers Guild members. Among them are Underlords Elizabeth Donald, Kathy Brown and Diana Morgan, each exploring the weirdness of our beloved St. Louis.
Baby Monster by John McFarland
Return with us to Ste. Odile, a cursed town indeed.
A familiar scientist is conducting a study on teeth, using participants from the women’s wing of St. Mathurin’s Home for the Insane.
A resolute woman must perform an unspeakable act to save herself from a life-ending condition.
An abandoned and crumbling orphanage hiding a horrific secret, a woman’s obsession with speaking to the dead, and her husband trying to save their son from potential murder come together in a thunderous storm of shock and terror.
Step into the end of intimate acquaintances and the beginning of tenuous relationships. Mysterious men, undaunted women, warped creatures, maddened minds, human atrocities… all await you in McFarland’s second volume of harrowing short stories, including two novelettes, published here for the first time.
“In Baby Monster, McFarland revisits the cursed town of Ste. Odile, where the darkest angels of our souls, all our souls, reside.” ~ Dacre Stoker, author of Dracul and great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker.
All these and many more are waiting for you at the Literary Underworld booth at Archon this weekend! And if you can’t make it to the show, they are all available on our online store. Just click the book covers to purchase! Remember, when you shop from the Literary Underworld, you’re buying directly from authors and small presses, which pays them more than buying from Big River. Support small presses, support authors, buy Literary Underworld!
See you at Archon!
