A Final Sneak Peek Before The Release...

Want to see some more of Michael Wm. Kaluta's interior art from the forthcoming "The Curse of Poseidon"? You don't have to wait much longer, but here's a sketch to tide you over. Keep watching for news, coming soon...

Actively Inactive

YES, this blog is still active!  And I am still active!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've been busy with Real Life Stuff that's had me drained of a lot of creative drive.  Writing has been slow, but it hasn't been non-existant:

Since the last post here, I've written some non-Challenger Storm stuff: I finished one short story to be published in the (hopefully) near future (more info on it when I can give it), I've completed the rough draft of another short story that (I hope) gets picked up for publication... it's very different from the stuff I've written previously and was a lot of fun.  I've agreed to work on another project that's far enough down the road I really don't have to worry about it yet.  And I've begun work on a dream project that I wouldn't DARE even hint at right now, but trust me: if I can pull this off, it should be a good one.  Just reading my outline notes gets me excited to write it.  And yes, work on Challenger Storm #3 has been continuing, albeit REALLY slowly.

In fact, the branching-out of my writing is making me wonder if I should change this blog from "The Adventures of Challenger Storm" to something more appropriate to all of my writing as a whole.  But what would I change it to?

Anyway...

The web serial will return to this blog soon.  I just wish I could get some feedback on it, since so far I don't know if it's going anywhere good for the readers.  I've considered stopping it, but I don't really want to.

"And what about THE CURSE OF POSEIDON?" you might be asking.  "Shouldn't that be out by now?"  Well, yes it probably should but there have been a few delays that were unavoidable and completely valid.

Those delays are now far behind us.

For the faithful who still have patience and want to see more Challenger Storm, I say this: watch this space, and/or Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr... you will see news soon, I promise, hopefully in a few weeks.

Trust me: Challenger Storm is far from dead, and will not be a One-Shot Wonder.

It's Coming...

It's been a while since I last posted, and this won't be anything of substance apart from this message:

THE ISLE OF BLOOD, to go!

The first Challenger Storm adventure, "The Isle of Blood", is now available on Kindle!  Relive the adventure while "The Curse of Poseidon" prepares to be unleashed!

CHALLENGER STORM: THE VALLEY OF FEAR- Episode 10

NOTE: This serial takes place out of order chronologically with the Challenger Storm novels, which are being written with a definite timeline in mind.  "The Valley of Fear" happens after at least book 5 or 6, but this shouldn't hinder the reading experience.  I'm flying by the seat of my pants here, so I make no guarantees in regards to quality or coherence.)

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Episode 10: "Ramming Speed"

The drone of the cicadas was deafening.  The jungle was alive with the sound, and it pressed into Storm and Fay's ears like an irritating liquid.

"I wish those heat-bugs would shut up," Fay murmured.  It was the first words she had spoken since they had escaped the Pisces Pool.  She and Storm had been walking through the jungle for almost an hour, following the trail along the bottom of the valley.  Their clothes had rapidly dried in the heat, but the temperature and humidity soon brought sweat to their skin, soaking their clothes yet again.

Storm looked at her and smiled a little.  He had been worried about her since they had nearly been killed for the second time that day.  Fay was a headstrong woman, maybe even stubborn in her toughness, but she wasn't used to having her life threatened like this.  The return of her ornery attitude gave him some hope that she was holding her own.

"Look at this one," Storm said to Fay as he held up a silver bicycle horn with a black rubber bulb.  He squeezed it lightly and it gave a soft honk.  Storm grinned.

Fay giggled a little bit.  "What're you, Harpo Marx?"  She smiled back.

They had been going through the contents of Storm's utility harness as they walked.  Ever since Storm had discovered a rock in its pouches instead of one of his concussion grenades he'd been discovering that it didn't just end there: all of his gadgets and weaponry had been removed from the harness and replaced with random items.  He had found several more rocks, along with a salt shaker, a small statue of a deer, golf balls, an ash tray, a heavy spoon, the bicycle horn, and various other odds and ends.  Beside his missing gadgetry, Storm's trusty Mauser was gone as well as the ammunition and his pair of knives.  Everything that Storm could use as a weapon had been taken and replaced with other items of approximate size and weight.

The pair was silent for a while longer as they trudged along the valley floor.  The jungle was thickening, and there was no choice for them other than following the trail.  Storm wished he had a machete to hack away at the growth around them.  Following the path made him nervous: there was no way they could avoid whatever traps Count Zodiac had waiting for them, and they had to make it to the other end of the valley as part of the villain's sick "game".

The path rose up from the jungle, following the left side of the valley.  They had no canopy of leaves over their heads now, and the sunlight blazed down upon them.  The jungle dropped away to their right and they were able to look out over the tops of the trees below.  The drop was at least a hundred feet down to the bottom of the valley.

Fay spoke up finally and broke the silence between them.  "So I guess we're in for more horoscope-themed traps, huh?  It's like something from a bad serial."

"Ha, yeah, I'm afraid so."  Storm thought a moment.  "He started us with Aquarius and that led us to Pisces.  I don't know if that was an isolated case or not, but he might be doing them in order.  If that's the case, Aries is next."

"What's that, a ram?"

Storm nodded.  "That's right.  I'm an Aries, myself, and Zodiac knows it.  I'm hoping he's not planning something extra-special for that one."  Storm lowered his voice in the possible presence of Zodiac's microphones listening in.  "What he doesn't know is that I was born right on the cusp, during the vernal equinox."  He chuckled.  "He's so hung up on astrology that it'd drive him nuts if he knew."

Fay laughed.  "I'm a Virgo," she told him.  "That's 'the virgin', of course... can't wait to see how he works that into a deathtrap."

The two of them laughed again.  Their laughter died at the sound of approaching growl.  The sound grew into the roar of an engine; it was ahead and off to the left, through a gap in the valley wall that was overgrown with vines and branches.  There was a tunnel there, camouflaged by the foliage.

Suddenly a weird vehicle burst out of the tunnel, a heavy truck of some kind with armored sides, thick wheels adorned with spiked hubcaps, and a shuttered pilot's cabin.  Mounted on the front of this monstrous truck was a huge metallic ram's-head.

As soon as the Aries truck hit the trail ahead of them, it charged straight for Storm and Fay.  It was tremendously fast as it bore down on them.

Storm grabbed Fay and flung the two of them to the ground, just as the ram's-head shot forward on a hydraulic piston.  If he had hesitated a microsecond, the ram would have brutally collided with one or both of them.

Springing to his feet as the Aries truck sped by them, Storm yanked Fay Durning to her feet.  The truck was already turning again toward them: on the narrow path along the valley, the vehicle had a remarkably tight turning radius.  The battering-ram was retracting, coiling for another strike.

A noise from the tunnel caught Storm's ear.  Glancing to the side he saw heavy steel doors sliding into position behind what was left of the camouflaging vegetation.  They were down by an exit option, still on Zodiac's playing field.

The menacing vehicle was speeding toward them now.  "When I give the word," Storm told Fay, "you jump right, toward those rocks.  Climb as high as you can up on top of them."

The Aries truck bore down on them, almost within the battering-ram's reach.

"Now!"

Storm leaped to the left, ensuring that the driver would be able to see his jump through the slit opening in the truck's windshield armor.  Fay jumped to the right and scrambled up the rocks against the hillside.  She climbed up the stones as best as she could.

The Aries truck turned right to follow Storm when he jumped, as he knew it would: when given a choice, the driver would have chosen Storm as the prime target.

Inside the vehicle, the driver spun the vehicle and glared out the thin viewport before him.  Storm had disappeared.  He drove the Aries in angry circles, frantically searching for Storm or the actress.  His eyes caught the green of Fay's dress against the rocks of the hillside.  The driver grinned and spun the Aries toward the spot she was perched upon.  The ram wouldn't be able to hit her, but it would make short work of the rocks she was crouching on.  The driver stamped on the accelerator, and the actresses eyes widened in fear.

Suddenly the driver's vision was blotted out.

Storm had climbed onto the Aries truck after leaping out of the way and had scrambled up onto the roof of the vehicle.  As it had begun its charge toward Fay Durning, the vehicle had passed under some low-hanging branches.  Storm had broken two of these branches free and wedged them into the slit-opening the driver used to see out of.  The leaves were thick and full, and they obscured the driver's vision completely.  The driver was blinded, but he didn't turn his vehicle.

"Jump!"  Storm yelled to Fay, and she threw herself off the pile of rocks just before the battering-ram pistoned out and struck them.  The rocks shattered into bits of debris and dust as Storm dropped flat onto the truck's roof and held on with his hands and legs.  The armored truck itself struck the hillside wall right after, and Storm was nearly thrown forward off the roof.  The collision jolted the truck to a stop.

Fay had managed to land in some scrub bushes that had broken her fall a little, and she stood up as the Aries truck's driver threw the vehicle into reverse.  The blonde woman hid herself behind the bushes as the it began to spin wildly, trying to throw Storm off the roof.  Storm clung to the truck as it spun crazily in circles.  The driver's efforts were throwing it in random directions, widening rings.  Dust clouds were rising into the air.

Suddenly Storm saw the vehicle's trajectory was heading right for the lip of the valley.  From there, a drop of at least 200 feet was waiting.  Releasing his hold, Storm rolled off the roof of the truck as it headed in the opposite direction, toward certain doom.

Storm hit the ground and sprang to his feet as the Aries hit the edge of the drop-off.  At the last second, the driver spun the wheel to the right and the left side tires slid out, over the edge.

The truck stopped.  It teetered on the edge of the valley, rocking gently, more and more toward the empty space below it.  Storm and Fay watched and held their breath.

Then, just as the truck began to slowly tip into the fall that would take it down into the valley, the armored passenger door flew open.  The helmeted form of Zodiac's lieutenant, Taurus, jumped from the Aries truck as it fell from the edge of the valley.

Taurus' feet hit the ground, and he brought up his war mace.  Electricity raced along the mace's striking surfaces.  From inside the helmet, Taurus' eyes flashed hatefully at Storm through the narrow slit.  There was a few seconds of silence as the two faced off.

Then, as if it was a signal, the sound of a tremendous crash as the dead Aries truck hit the valley floor and rolled to a stop.

With a battle cry, Taurus brandished his weapon and charged toward Storm...

TO BE CONTINUED...

An excerpt from "Challenger Storm: The Curse of Poseidon"

It was now well past midnight.  Most of the crew of the Independence had settled into bed, leaving the ship’s nighttime skeleton-crew to their posts.  The after-hours radio man, Horton, sat at his post with earphones clamped to his head.  He repeatedly tossed a baseball into the air with his right hand and caught it with the catcher’s mitt on his left, all the while staring at the ceiling.  The night was, as usual, dull and uneventful.  The only sound in his headphones was the soft static of the quiet sea as his advanced radio-set automatically scanned through the frequencies.

Suddenly a noise blasted through the static: a staccato burst of rapidly-tapped Morse code beeps, beginning with the repeated pattern“… --- …”: “S.O.S.”.  Hurriedly, Horton ripped off his catcher’s mitt and left the baseball bouncing forgotten on the floor, and he began to jot down the distress message pouring through the aether…

Sometime later, the massive doors on the Independence rolled open to reveal the ship’s flooded and ready docking-bay.  A floatplane was the first to emerge from inside the huge vessel: the aircraft was a small and fast two-person plane armed with a machine-gun turret.  After taxiing out into open-water, it picked up speed before lifting off from the water and heading into the west.  From the cockpit of the craft, a yellow scarf fluttered in the wind; the helmeted and goggled visage of Diana St. Clair watched the dark waves below as she headed off toward the rough coordinates provided by the frantic distress-call.

The plane was followed soon after by a small and swift boat bearing a boarding party.  From the bow of the craft, Clifton Storm led his party of adventurers out into the black night in search of what could be the latest victims of Poseidon’s curse.  In his mind, the frantic last words of the distress message replayed themselves: “They want the ship… they want us…!”

+++

From the air, the Aegean Sea was a vast and impenetrable table of blackness.  Diana and her gunner scanned the waves as they got closer to the area that the signal had originated from.  Their eyes were only met with darkness until at last the tiny glimmer of lights winked at them feebly from below.  It was a small cargo steamer, an old rust-bucket of a ship. Circling the craft, they peered at it through the night:it seemed to be deserted, and no motion could be seen from the ship.

“We might be too late, Cliff,” she called into the radio’s microphone after she announced their location to Storm and his party.  “This tub looks deserted.”

“Keep circling, Diana, we’re almost there.”  Storm had the boat’s pilot adjust their course accordingly and he performed a last-minute gear-check.  The party was outfitted with thick pea-coats against the strangely chilly night, but it wasn’t the temperature that iced Storm’s senses on this mission.  Worry gnawed at his insides, along with a tingly feeling…  He wasn’t sure if it was the mystery of what they were headed toward or whether it was something else… Rather than dismiss it, he held onto that feeling: sometimes his instincts helped to keep him sharp and had kept him alive on more than one occasion.  His quiet energy increased, like a jungle-cat poised to strike…

When the speedy boat arrived they could see the dim glimmer of lights and could confirm what Diana had reported: nothing moved on the ship’s deck, and it drifted on the dark waves with no direction and no hand to helm it.  The MARDL craft heaved-to on the boat’s port-side and the crew attached boarding-ladders to it.  Storm, Brock, and a team of five other crew-members from the Independence climbed aboard and began to fan out across the deck.  They began a search of the craft, Tommy guns at the ready for the first sign of trouble. Meanwhile, Diana’s plane continued to circle in the dark overhead as the boarding-party scoured the drifting steamer. No identification was evident so far on board- the craft didn’t even have a name, it seemed.  It was a nondescript ghost-ship.

The group split up and moved throughout the ship, checking the cabins, galley, store-rooms… nothing turned up beside more emptiness.  There were very little furnishings too, as though the ship had hardly ever been occupied in the first place.

“It’s all clear up here,” Storm announced finally.  “We’re going below deck.”  With that, they began to file down the stairs to the next level of the small steamship…

+++

Although she wasn't onboard the derelict with Storm, Diana St. Clair was feeling anxious for the boarding-party.  The eeriness of the situation was getting to her, and the long stretch of radio-silence wasn’t helping.  Impatiently, she checked her gauges for what seemed to be the hundredth time… She was interrupted by a tap on her shoulder as her gunner attempted to get her attention. He pointed, and she returned her eyes to the waves below:  something odd was occurring.  A strange fog was beginning to sprout up all around the ship.  In moments, the strange mist thickened enough that she could just barely make out the glow of the crafts’ lights.

Diana clicked on the plane’s searchlight and swiveled it to cast its beam onto the Aegean.  The strange fog blocked the light, however, and she could no longer see the boats below at all.  She grabbed the radio’s mic.  

“Tyner,” she called to the speedboat’s pilot.  “Tyner, what’s going on with all that fog?”

Silence was her only answer.  Diana tried to hail Tyner again; far below and within the fog, her voice crackled unheard from the speakers of the boat’s radio.  Tyner, a hardily-built sailor,slumped unmoving in front of the radio set. With blank and glazing eyes he sat dead, a deep and ragged wound oozing blood from his back…

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Storm and his crew descended the steps and entered the boat’s engine room.  The throbbing boiler and engine gave the men a little comfort: obviously it had been occupied relatively recently, and this knowledge helped alleviate some of the strange feelings of isolation and abandonment that was onboard.  They hoped to find someone here, some remnants of the boat’s crew.  They checked the chamber thoroughly and found yet again no sign of the ship’s inhabitants.

After their repeated non-discoveries, they made their way at last to the final place they hadn’t yet checked: the cargo hold.  The door, they found, was unlocked and they steeled themselves for what they might find inside.  Stepping cautiously into the hold, they found the lights weren’t working in the room, and they had to resort to clicking their flashlights on. 

Yellow beams feebly pierced the dusty blackness of the hold to reveal the space to be nearly empty. At the far end of the hold sat the large humped shapes of a fewcrates.  The group made their way forward, feeling the failure of what they had hoped would be a rescue mission.  They hoped that at least the crates may hold some contents, some clue of what the ship had been hauling, and maybe who the crew may have been…

A sound, faint but insistent, came to Storm’s ears.  He stopped, straining to hear it among the footsteps of his comrades: it was a strange, rhythmic sound: a hiss followed by an expulsion of air, accompanied by a faint gurgling.  It sounded almost like… breathing.  If it was breathing, then it wasn’t human, and it sounded like there was more than one source to this sound.

Suddenly from around the crates hulking black shapes appeared in the struggling beams of the crews’ flashlights.  The dimly-seen forms crouched menacingly and raised their weapons at the crew from the Independence...

Below are Micheal Kaluta's sketches that accompany this scene from the book: from the original concept sketch, through refinement and completion.

"The Curse of Poseidon": A Peek at the Artwork!

Here is a sneak-peek at some of Michael Wm Kaluta's interior illustrations for the second Challenger Storm novel, "The Curse of Poseidon"! Wait until you see what else we have in store for you, folks!

Stay tuned later today for more behind the scenes artwork, plus an excerpt from the novel itself!