David Lee Summers's Blog, page 20

Ordeal or Deal?

This year I completed my thirteenth novel, Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. The book has been typeset and I’m getting set to announce it’s release very soon! That said, if you really can’t wait and want to read the book now, read to the bottom and I’ll give you the scoop about how to do that!

Meanwhile, this year’s Smashwords End-of-Year sale is a great opportunity to get ready for the new novel. I’m offering the two earlier novels of the Scarlet Order vampire series at half off the cover price s...

Short Stories for Long Winter Nights

The annual Smashwords End of Year Sale is underway. Many of Hadrosaur’s titles are on sale and I’ll be highlighting them here at the Web Journal. The coupon codes for these discounts are automatically applied at checkout. One of the things I love about Smashwords is that they provide ebooks in all popular formats and they’re DRM free, so you can download them to your favorite device or gift them to friends without worrying about what e-reader they prefer. If you are shopping for a friend, just c...

Vampires, Book Clubs, and the 90s

At the end of October, I traveled to New Orleans to update a few details which will appear in my forthcoming novel Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. It proved to be an amazing trip. Among the places I visited were Boutique du Vampyre in the French Quarter and Potions Lounge and both sites will appear in the novel. It reminded me of the wonderful on-line book club the shop hosted back in 2020 and 2021 and I recently took the opportunity to read one of the last books I missed from the first run because...

To Everything That Was

A little over two years ago, I started rewatching the TV series Space: 1999 which had first run during my childhood. It brought back nostalgic memories of toys I had, such as my Eagle Transporter from Dinky Toys. I also remembered some other merchandise such as model kits, games and comics. Since I’ve started collecting comics recently, I decided to seek some out. Unfortunately, copies proved to be rare. A few scanned copies existed on Gerry Anderson-related fan sites, though I’ve since discover...

Blood Cross

The week of Halloween, I made time to visit New Orleans to research some of the settings of my action-oriented vampire novel Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. Back in May, I talked about Faith Hunter’s New Orleans vampire novel Skinwalker. I enjoyed it enough that I thought the sequel might make a good read to set the mood for visiting the Crescent City. As it turns out, I enjoyed Faith Hunter’s Blood Cross even more than the first book in the series.

Introduced in the first book, Jane Yellowro...

Godzilla on the Page

Back in 1983, my friend Rod King and I had the amazing opportunity to meet and speak to Ray Bradbury at length. During that time, Bradbury spoke fondly of his friendship with Ray Harryhausen. The two met when they were 18 years old, just a little older than Rod and I were when we met Ray Bradbury. In 1951, Bradbury published a short story called “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” in the Saturday Evening Post. Soon afterwards, Jack Dietz and Hal E. Chester acquired the film rights to the story and f...

Cooperation in Space

I’m old enough to remember watching moon landings on television as they happened. Admittedly, I don’t remember a lot of the details, since the last few happened when I was in Kindergarten and First Grade. I do remember being fascinated by the lunar buggy rolling around on the moon’s surface. However, the first mission I watched with rapt attention was the Apollo-Soyuz link-up mission of July 1975. I would have been eight years old and I remember being utterly fascinated by the Soyuz spacecraft w...

The American Seasons

Daniel Burson was born in the tiny town of Des Moines, New Mexico to Clarence and Tabitha Burson circa 1920. As time passed, he gained a brother, James, and a sister, Shirley Nell. Sadly, their mom died in the early years of the Great Depression and their dad took whatever job he could to make ends meet. This meant that he moved around the country. When Clarence settled down long enough, he would bring his kids with him to such places as Siloam Springs, Arkansas and Olympia, Washington. As soon ...

The Black Vampyre

My recent look at early vampire tales led me to what is perhaps the earliest American example. This is a story called “The Black Vampyre” credited to Uriah Derick D’Arcy. The story was written and published in New York in 1819 and the setting is Haiti, though it’s referred to by the older name of St. Domingo. A free copy with introduction by Ed White of Tulane University and Duncan Faherty of Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center is available at http://jto.common-place.org/wp-content/uploa...

A Galaxy With a View

A friend recently asked how can we see outside our galaxy. As we spoke, I began to realize that she had come to understand that “the galaxy” is everything that is and that all we can see is contained in “the galaxy.” As I thought about it, I could see how one might get that impression, especially from science fiction, since science fiction regularly limits space travel to other stars in “the galaxy.”

There’s actually a good reason for that. Even the nearest stars are so far away, it’s hard to...