Apex Publications is pleased to announce that we are now partnering with the fine folks at DriveThruSciFi.com to provide our titles in ebook format.

Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup

Last Dragon by J.M. McDermott

The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey

Apex Publications is a small press dedicated to publishing exemplary works of dark science fiction and horror.

Meet Mel: Business owner. Dedicated mom. Natural-born Amazon.

It’s been ten years since Melanippe Saka left the Amazon tribe in order to create a normal life for her daughter, Harmony. True, running a tattoo parlor in Madison, Wisconsin while living with your Amazon warrior mother and priestess grandmother is not everyone’s idea of normal, but Mel thinks she’s succeeded at blending in as human.

Turns out she’s wrong. Someone knows all about her, someone who’s targeting young Amazon girls, and no way is Mel is going to let Harmony become tangled in this deadly web…

Flames Rising is proud to present the first chapter of Amazon Ink written by Lori Devoti. Lori wanted to express that she’s very excited about the debut of Amazon Ink and wanted to thank her readers for their support. When we asked Lori about what readers can look forward to, she said that you’ll read about “the story of a woman coming to grips with who she is while battling an unknown and deadly adversary. Plus magic and action and some truly tough chicks of all ages.”

We hope you enjoy the first chapter of Amazon Ink!

Twenty souls for his brother’s life is a price that seductively beautiful Samson is willing to pay. Twenty souls drenched in blood, powdered with cocaine and more than one kind of ecstasy. A fair trade for the life of a brother. A fair trade for the life of a priest. And everyone he meets seems so willing to give theirs away. Samuel’s faith often wavers. Diagnosed with HIV and in rapid decline, he hides his disillusionment in the rituals of the priesthood. But when Samson brings him the first blood-signed contract for a young woman’s immortal soul, the steamy world of high fashion male models and the quiet decay of a sickly priest begin to writhe against the realities of life, death, and otherworldly power. Brotherly love is a deadly seduction, beauty a dangerous game. Come worship in the brutal temple of Orgy of Souls. Your faith will never be the same again.

Apex Publications has sent us the first chapter of Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus’ Orgy of Souls novel to preview for free here at Flames Rising. In January Maurice Broaddus wrote a design essay for us called Religion and Horror about working on this book, be sure to check it out once you’ve read the preview.

Play New Games. Meet New People.

Madison Games Day is a chance for gamers in and around the Madison, Wisconsin area to meet new people and play new games. Bring your friends, bring your game group, but while you’re here, sit at a table with folks you barely know—or don’t know at all—and try some games that you haven’t played before but maybe have always wanted to.

We invite everyone in the area (or willing to make the trek) to come and play some games! There will be indie and mainstream roleplaying games, card games, and board games. If you have something you’d like to play, bring it!

It is the dawn of a new age in the Multiverse. The balance of power is shifting and Agents of Artifice brings readers to the heart of a planeswalker struggle.

In Agents of Artifice, Ari Marmell re-imagines Planeswalkers, taking fans deeper than ever into the lives of the Multiverse’s most powerful beings.

In this interview Ari tells us a little about the creative process that went into the writing of Agents of Artifice and what it was like exploring the worlds of Magic: the Gathering. We also ask him about the Ravenloft serial novel Black Crusade and even get a question or two about some upcoming Dungeons & Dragons books in before we wrap things up.

Eddy Webb, Alternative Publishing Developer at White Wolf Publishing, brings us a new design essay today. Eddy tells us how New Wave Requiem was developed, what some of the challenges were and how the project came together.

Finding Horror in the Eighties

New Wave Requiem started as a joke. A bunch of us were clowning around in the Vampire office (where both the developer and art director had their desks) and joked about all the vampire movies in the eighties. The idea stuck in my head long after the conversation ended, and it led to me spending hours doing research, watching movies and constantly rewriting an outline until I really felt that we could do a Vampire product on America in the 1980s and still have it be a horror game.

Flames Rising has been offered the chance to bring you a preview of Alex Bledsoe’s new vampire novel Blood Groove.

When centuries-old vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski was staked in Wales in 1915, the last thing he expected was to reawaken in Memphis, Tennessee, sixty years later. Reborn into a new world of simmering racial tensions, the cunning nosferatu realizes he must adapt quickly if he is to survive.

Forming an uneasy alliance with the young vampires, Zginski begins to teach them the truth about their powers. They must learn quickly, for there’s a new drug on the street—a drug created to specifically target and destroy vampires. As Zginski and his allies track the drug to its source, they may unwittingly be stepping into a fifty-year-old trap that can destroy them all . . .

Adamant Entertainment is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Chaosium Inc. to produce supplements and adventures for the CALL OF CTHULHU roleplaying game.

“Call of Cthulhu has long been a touchstone in my personal gaming history,” said Gareth-Michael Skarka, owner and director of Adamant Entertainment. “It was one of the first games that I played, and I continue to come back to it through the years, so I’m incredibly excited to be able to add Adamant’s voice to the Call.”

Adamant will be releasing two new settings for the game: THIS SCEPTER’D ISLE, which brings the horrors of the Mythos to Elizabethan England; and SHADOWS OF THE RED HAND, a full treatment of 1920s gangland Chicago. Award-winning game designer and mythos author Ken Hite will be developing Adamant’s line of CALL OF CTHULHU products, which should be released in late 2009 and early 2010.

Abstract Nova products are now available at RPGNow.com.

The long-awaited Tales of the Seven Dogs Society fiction book is also available in pdf format for only $3.95.

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society is a collection of three self-contained novellas based on the Aletheia role-playing game. Monica Valentinelli, Jim Johnson and Matt McElroy present three separate mysteries, each featuring a different interpretation of the Society. Together, they paint a picture of a world filled with the unexplained… a world the Seven Dogs Society seeks to comprehend. Buy the book at DriveThruHorror.com or RPGNow.com.

To celebrate the arrival of Alara Reborn for Magic: the Gathering, Wizards of the Coast provided Flames Rising with an exclusive look at a brand new card for this series. According to the official page for Alara Reborn, it “is the third and final set in the Shards of Alara block. It is a 145 card expansion with randomly inserted premium cards. It will be available in booster packs, intro packs, and fat packs.”

The deck is artistically unique to the Magic: the Gathering series, because the entire Alara Reborn set is printed in full color with gold accents. Based on the plane of existence Alara setting, the cards were constructed around a story, the machinations of a single signature character, the evil planeswalker Nicol Bolas. Nicol is a iconic character, an ancient dragon with an epic thirst for power in all shapes and form who has been featured in fiction as well.

Meet new people. Play new games. Madison Games Day, May 30th 2009.

Matt M. McElroy (of Flames Rising and DriveThruComics.com) and Jason L Blair (designer of Little Fears) announce Madison Games Day, a ten-hour event dedicated to introducing Madison-area residents to meet new people and play new games.

Madison Games Day will take place on Saturday, May 30th 2009 at the Pizza Oven on Monona Drive. From 12p until 10p, Madison-area gamers are invited to stop in, meet local players, and try new games. A variety of games are slated for play and attendees are urged to bring their own as well. Have a game you want to try but your regular group isn’t into? Bring it! Have a hankering to dust off an old favorite for one more spin? Bring it! Want to give a game you weren’t sure about another shot? Bring it! There is an official event schedule but pick-up games are encouraged. If you have something you want to run or play, bring it along!

For complete information on Madison Games Day, join the Yahoo! Group or you can register an event, or view the existing event line-up, visit the official website at MadisonGamesDay.wordpress.com.

Author M. Joseph Young has joined our ongoing Horror Design Project here at Flames Rising and tells us a bit about writing horror elements for his Multiverser RPG.

Multiverser Horror

Some people think that horror is easy: dial up the kill rate, and soon every character is terrified.

What, though, if the characters are immortal?

This was the fundamental question we had to face in writing horror scenarios for Multiverser. Player characters are “versers”. Death is the doorway to take you to the next world, and the next world is where the next adventure awaits. Dial up the death rate, and for the verser it becomes a game of choosing how to die, how to end the horror and get somewhere nicer. Thus if we were going to create horror scenarios, we were going to have to figure out how to frighten someone who is completely unafraid of death. That meant understanding fear, and its more fundamental causes. Here are a few of the things we learned. Each has value.

A modern take on the classic “apocalyptic” novel, Hater is similar in tone to the seminal works of H.G. Wells, and also the recent films 28 Days Later and I Am Legend. Hater tells the story of Danny McCoyne, an everyman forced to contend with a world gone mad, as vast numbers of the human population suddenly become irrationally violent, killing all who cross their path.

Flames Rising is pleased to bring you the first chapter of David Moody’s Hater, which is currently available at Amazon.com.

Renowned RPG Publisher Offering Free and Discounted Downloads to Reward Fan Loyalty

In light of recent announcements, some fans have expressed concern over the future of electronic (PDF) format book sales in the RPG industry. White Wolf Publishing today has announced that it currently has no plans to discontinue its existing PDF products.

“Quite the opposite,” says Eddy Webb, the Alternative Publishing Developer for White Wolf. “I believe this is a growing market with potential we haven’t yet had a chance to fully explore, both as publishers and as fans of role-playing games.” Eddy remarked that he has dozens of upcoming PDF-exclusive products on his schedule in addition to continuing to provide PDF versions of upcoming products, and that White Wolf is still actively looking into returning to the print-on-demand arena.

Posted on the front page of DriveThruRPG.com:

Wizards of the Coast has instructed us to suspend all sales and downloads of Wizards of the Coast titles. Unfortunately, this includes offering download access to previously purchased Wizards of the Coast titles. We are in discussions with Wizards about their decision to change their approach to digital sales of their titles and will post more information as we have it. If you would like to let Wizards know your opinion on offering D&D titles for download, we suggest the D&D Message Boards found here.

This…did not go over well with folks who regularly purchase pdf versions of Dungeons & Dragons from these websites.

As a horror and dark fantasy writer and fan of the genre for years, I’ve noticed certain horror tropes that are used time and time again. For example, in supernatural horror you will almost always see the pentagram used as a satanic symbol and the story will typically revolve around the Catholic religion. In slasher flicks, typically there’s always one modelesque female who ends up getting slaughtered viciously in a gory bloodfest. Vampire stories range from the horrific to the romantic, but almost always center around a Master Vampire who is deathly allergic to sunlight. I’m sure you can name several horror tropes that you recognize, but do you know where these tropes began?

From the bright towns and darkened wilderness they come: mighty heroes intent on exploring dungeons, slaying monsters and battling evil.

The Player’s Handbook 2 offers Dungeons & Dragons players new options with new Races, Classes and more. This book introduces the primal power source, which draws on the spirits that preserve and sustain the world. Wizards of the Coast has offered up a handful of previews and excerpts on the Dungeons & Dragons website and a few lucky gamers out there have already received their pre-ordered copies of the book (some have even posted spoiler threads if you have the energy to dig through them).

Flames Rising was lucky enough to get an advance copy of the book for review and we are teaming up with a handful of other websites to explore some of the new options being made available to players of Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically we are going to be taking a look at the Shaman Class today. After our Look at the Shaman you will find a series of links to other sites examining other sections of the book.

If Science Fiction is Your Thing…

…then, come March 10, you will be a very happy camper indeed! That is the day that Atari and CCP Games will be releasing the ultra popular MMORPG EVE Online to the retail world. And why, do you ask, would this be any different than, say, subscribing online? Several very good reasons, one of which is financial and the other is simply geekish.

First, the financial aspect. EVE Online will be retailing for about $34.95, which is a good $15 cheaper than many new games that come out.

Written by Joe Rixman

The Buried Tales anthology of horror and supernatural fiction transports you to the rural town of Pinebox, Texas, where secrets are buried but the dead don’t always stay that way. Join us for a dozen killer stories by David Wellington, Shane Hensley, Jess Hartley, J.D. Wiker, Monica Valentinelli, Charles Rice, and more.

Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX
Published by: 12 to Midnight
Edited by: Matt M McElroy
Retail Price: $11.99
Stock#: TWL6001

Buried Tales of Pinebox will arrive summer 2009! Stay tuned for more previews here at Flames Rising!

Hurts so Good: A Friday the 13th Retrospective Part 1 wrapped up with Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Be sure to check out Retrospective Part 1 before continuing here.

There are so many Friday the 13th movies, even this retrospective gets a sequel. So let’s continue with our bloody stalk down memory lane as we try to answer the question: Despite these movies being so bad, why do I and millions of others love them?

Jason Thorson