FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of The Crimson Pact Volume One. Twenty-six authors wrote stories in this demon-themed eBook anthology and samples of three of them are available for you to read below.

The Failed Crusade
Written by Patrick M. Tracy and Paul Genesse

News of our victory came not in the happy shouts of the freed multitudes, but in the groaning voices of the animate dead. Ours was a victory that none would confuse with triumph. The best half of us lay broken within the Rusted Vale, the rear guard left to puzzle out the events that had been no more than far-off echoes within the smoke and crashing iron. We knew only that we had finally won, that the Crimson Pact was redeemed, that we could all go home. Tired as we were, no man lifted a fist to celebrate. No Blessed Woman smiled. No church Catechist recounted the litany of our good fortunes. The cost had been too high, the wager of battle too awful. In that moment, winning didn’t seem to matter. It would not be long before we found that even the brief illusion of victory would tear away like fog before the wind.

Back in 2008, Tez Miller and I reviewed the first two novels in Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series. We’re now three books later in the series, and it’s still going strong. Here’s what you may have missed:

One of the staples of role playing games and adventure video games is arena combat. What’s not to like? The tradition hails way back to the Romans — or earlier — and watching gladiators in the ring is still entertaining enough to modern viewers that there are reality TV shows based on the theme. It is not something I’ve seen tackled in Urban Fantasy very often, and here, Andrews does it with aplomb. Beast Lord Curran has banned his Pack from getting involved with the games. Derrek, Kate Daniels’s teen werewolf pal, has to get involved in order to save the object of his affections — and in order to keep him out of trouble, Kate gets involved as well.

I am not a horror movie fanatic. I enjoy them and I look forward to seeing a few of them, but my over-sensitized mentality takes quite a bit to shock while my natural sarcastic side urges me to quip, mock, and make other ‘witty’ comments on the movie as it plays. I blame hours of watching B, C, and D movies, including many episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, for this inclination. Thus, I am a movie fan, just not a fanatic. I do enjoy learning what happened behind the scenes on a set, the often turbulent process a movie takes to actually getting filmed and released, and the other details that surround such endeavors.

If you are of a similar mindset, then you would most likely enjoy Diabolique. Diabolique is a bi-monthly publication for the horror connoisseur and seems to cover everything from vintage horror, to recently released films, to works in progress.

For a million millennia the world has cracked and convulsed under the indomitable mob of the orc. Savage, bloodthirsty creatures, they are without number, staining nearly every corner of the globe. The mighty Orc Tzar, newest leader of the mob, marches ever north to find the lost organ of a forgotten god. Only a lone, one-eyed orc with a mysterious gift can find the key to breaking the cycle forever.

This book is so Gore-Geous it’s beyond words. Wait I can’t do that to you can I? The character designs go way beyond cool to a level of pure awesome. Add on top of that the ink and you just made me drop my jaw. The real clincher though is the colors. This book is just vibrant, I honestly got lost in its radiance time and time again. I want to go back to the characters now, mostly because of the amazing amount of detail used.

Ace of Hearts is another of the lighthearted, ‘beer and crisps’ games by James Desborough. I’ll admit, you do have a certain type of humor to enjoy his products. But, if you do have a slightly skewed sense of reality then this will be a worthy role-playing game to take a look at. This particular product is definitely for adults. It has and deals with mature themes.. besides.. what is a kid doing drinking beer and eating pretzels.. err.. crisps anyway while role-playing? They should have school in the morning and be in bed sleeping. If they don’t have something to do, then I am sure the parent can assign some chores to keep them occupied. Chores are good like that, they can keep the child busy and it builds character.. well.. character and resentment. Anyway, back to the review.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to announce a fun comic caption contest for Skullkickers, an action fantasy comic drawn by Jim Zubkavich that debuted with image comics last fall. We will be giving away a signed copy of the first hardcover collected trade dubbed Skullkickers: 1000 Opas and a Dead Body with an introduction by Robin D. Laws. For those of you who follow Jim’s work, you may recall his artistic and writing style from the popular series of Exalted comics, which are availalbe from UDON.

Skullkickers follows the action adventures of two iconic heroes. One of them is an unruly dwarf with red hair named Shorty; the other a warrior with a little more common sense named Baldy. Up until Issue Number 7 that is…

“Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” meets Flash Gordon in GENERAL JACK COSMO AND THE VAMPIRE MEN OF KOTHOS. If Hunter S. Thompson had decided to pursue a career in space-heroics, he would be General Jack Cosmo: Unapologetic ass-kicker, savior of the emerald planet Zur, drug-powered freak and certifiable weirdo. In the tradition of Hunter’s gonzo writing and classic pulp sci-fi like the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, GENERAL JACK COSMO AND THE VAMPIRE MEN OF KOTHOS is a fast-paced sci-fi/horror adventure.”

I’m glad I get to talk about the artwork first, thank you format I came up with, because well it’s purty as hell. You really want to know what this book reminds me of, Voltron. The colors of the characters and environments all I keep coming back to is Voltron.

A little known fact of my life: when I was 5 my parent decided to vacation in Florida for the first time, and they picked the later half of October for this family outing. Of course, when I was 5 the year was 1962, and if you do a quick search on The Google you’ll discover in the last half of October, 1962, Florida was probably the last place in the world you wanted to be, since the odds of experiencing a live reenactment of Alas, Babylon, were pretty high.

Now, I remember none of this, but my parent often told me the story of how, right in the middle of the stuff about to go down, they decided the place to hang was a motel in Clearwater, Florida, which is about a 10 mile jaunt across Old Tampa Bay from MacDill AFB, a huge Strategic Air Command base and, at that moment in time, a target that was going to get whacked out in short order should the Cuban Missile Crisis have decided to go hot.

What would happen if the cult classic “The Warriors” was set in the early 90’s with all the gangs being various super-natural creatures? You would have the role-playing game Nightlife. Nightlife was released in 1990 and 1991, with two editions and several supplements. It is hard to tell why one game fails to catch, and another game spreads like wild fire. It is also hard not to compare Nightlife with White Wolf’s World of Darkness, even though the two have very few similarities.

Both have vampires and werewolves and both games are set in a punk setting with horror elements. They use d10’s as their die of choice and super-natural creatures have strange awe inspiring powers. However, the similarities end there between the two games.

White Wolf invites you to join them in celebrating a milestone in vampire mythology that changed modern vampire pop culture forever.

Since its 1991 debut, the cultural significance of Vampire: The Masquerade can be seen and felt at virtually every turn and in every medium today, not only on the gaming world but also on modern vampire mythos. The Vampire franchise has since grown into an unparalleled worldwide phenomenon that has inspired thousands of trading cards, hundreds of role playing game supplements, dozens of novels, two award-winning video games, and a cult television series.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of The Zombie Feed Volume One. Several authors penned stories in this zombie anthology. Three of the stories you’ll find in this debut anthology from The Zombie Feed are available for you to read below.

Zombie fiction from many sub-genres are represented here: zombie apocalypse, zombie survival, zombies in human society, zombie hunters, and more. And the one thread interlocking these disparate groups-ZOMBIE MAYHEM! This action packed anthology takes a syringe full of contaminated adrenaline-laced undead and slams 1000 CCs directly into your chest cavity.