Dead Man Books
The Dead Man is Alive!
Amazon re-launched THE DEAD MAN series an hour ago…and with it, their 47North imprint. They are pricing the books at 99 cents for a very limited time. You can read all about the creation & writing of the series today on the Amazon Kindle Post blog and on the product page for Face of Evil. In addition, there are interviews with each of the individual authors on the product pages for Ring of Knives, The Dead Woman, and Blood Mesa.
The Dead Man is Coming
The big relaunch of THE DEAD MAN series, and the kick-off of Amazon's new 47North imprint, is coming on Oct 24 and I can't wait!
In the meantime, you can already pre-order Harry Shannon's November title KILL THEM ALL, James Daniels December book THE BEAST WTIHIN, and the DEAD MAN VOL 1-3 compilation.
Amazon Launches 47North Imprint with THE DEAD MAN
Today, Amazon announced the launch of their new sf/fantasy/horror imprint 47North…and one of the premiere titles is THE DEAD MAN series. Our kick-off is coming in just a couple of weeks…in a very big way…and we can't wait!
UPDATE: Publisher's Weekly also wrote about it. Here's part of what they said..
Amazon has added another genre to its publishing stable, with the launch of 47North, a science fiction/fantasy/horror imprint that will publish original and previously published works from new and established authors as well as out-of-print books. “We are especially happy to have a diverse list at launch, and look forward to publishing across a wide range of subgenres,” said Victoria Griffith, publisher of Amazon Publishing’s west coast group.
47North has signed 15 titles at launch with its first title coming from Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin, the authors of Successful Television Writing and who have written and/or produced scores of highly successful network television series, including Diagnosis Murder, Spenser: For Hire, and Baywatch. Their digital-first novel, Face of Evil, will be published this month; four more installments will also be published in October, with a new adventure following each month thereafter. A print compilation of the first three novels will publish in January 2012.
More Word from The Dead
Ron Hogan at Reader's Entertainment has written a great background piece on THE DEAD MAN series and our new deal with Amazon. Here's an excerpt:
“Ultimately, we are the ones responsible for maintaining the consistency of the franchise and turning in great books to Thomas & Mercer,” Goldberg explains; each book is commissioned on a work-for-hire basis, with the authors receiving an advance and splitting royalties with the series’ creators. Although Thomas & Mercer will be paying a lower royalty rate than the 70 percent Goldberg and Rabkin earned while self-publishing, the deal is still “much better than what we would get from a traditional publishing contract,” he says. “In addition, we are going to move a lot more units than we would thanks to Amazon’s marketing and promotional savvy on their own platform.”
That’s welcome news for Goldberg, who attributes much of the “great” sales for Face of Evil to a guest post he wrote for Amazon’s Kindle blog in which he described how the series was connected to his love of classic “men’s adventure” novels that flourished when the paperback market was in its heyday. “The other books [in the series] were doing fine, but not spectacularly well,” he admits. “Nowhere near what we saw as their potential, based on the amazing critical response and reader reviews we’ve been getting.”
When Amazon’s audiobook division, Brilliance Audio, began negotiating at the beginning of the summer with Goldberg and Rabkin about audio versions of the series, Thomas & Mercer quickly became involved as well. “They instantly understood what we were hoping to accomplish with the series,” Goldberg says. “They saw the potential in it and, like us, were frustrated that it hadn’t been tapped yet.”
Reasoners’ Reasonings
Wag the Fox has a great interview with James Reasoner, author of THE DEAD MAN #5: THE BLOOD MESA and about 10,000 other books, today on their blog. Here's an excerpt:
Gef: You had mentioned that The Blood Mesa marks one of your most brutal works, a purposeful attempt on your part to cut loose. Was this something that you had been looking to do in your writing for a while, or just something you tackled when it came to you?
James: I’ve always included a lot of action in my work, and I’ve never been shy about going over the top when it felt right. It’s never been quite as graphic as in my Dead Man story, though. I think I saw this opportunity when I was reading the previous books in the series, and when I actually started writing, I knew that was the way I wanted to go.Gef: What were your initial thoughts when you were approached to contribute to The Dead Man series? With multiple authors each writing about the Matt Cahill character, did you have concerns of "too many cooks spoil the broth" or saw a unique opportunity to, in a way, become part of a writing team on a series?
James: I’ve written for a number of different multiple-author series, so this was just business as usual for me, with a slight difference. Most of those other series I’ve worked on didn’t have much, if any, book-to-book continuity, so I had to be more concerned with this book fitting into the flow of the rest of the series. Luckily, with Lee Goldberg and Bill Rabkin supervising everything, that wasn’t a problem. […]I’m writing a Western series for Berkley called REDEMPTION, KANSAS, with one book out so far and at least two more to come. I’m also doing a Western e-book series called RANCHO DIABLO with my friends Mel Odom and Bill Crider, with three books out so far under the house-name Colby Jackson, and many more to come, we hope.
THE DEAD MAN #5: THE BLOOD MESA
THE DEAD MAN #5: THE BLOOD MESA by James Reasoner, the laziest writer on the friggin' planet, is out today in ebook and paperback editions…and it's perhaps the bloodiest tale yet in the series. Matt Cahill finds himself trapped atop a blood-red mesa in the desolate American Southwest when an archeological dig goes terribly, dangerously wrong, awakening an ancient evil with an insatiable hunger. Now Matt, armed only with his trusty ax, must somehow escape…rescue a handful of terrified innocents… and prevent a slaughter of epic proportions.
He talks on the Dead Man Blog about his experience writing it. He says:
it has strong elements of horror and the supernatural, and for the most part this is unexplored territory for me in my work. True, I’ve done a few Westerns that had mild supernatural elements (often of the Scooby-Doo variety!), but THE BLOOD MESA is the first real horror novel I’ve written, even though I’ve been a reader and fan of horror for many, many years. But most important of all for me, writing THE BLOOD MESA was fun, just as I thought it would be. I had an absolutely great time with it,
And you're going to have a blast reading the book, which is already getting some great reviews. Like these:
If you like horror with a dash of suspense then you should read the DEAD MAN series. They are not only fun but addictive […] All of the books in the series are great and THE BLOOD MESA is no exception. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 5! – Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine
I dare say Reasoner also offers up the most gruesome iteration in The Dead Man so far, as some of the deaths in this one are nothing less than brutal. - Wag the Fox
This story is the literary equivalent to a drag strip race […] the story keeps accelerating until its brutal climax. That truly is its strength – it's rapid fire pace and its unflinching brutality (which you've got to expect from a series featuring an axe wielding hero). ––Permission to Kill
The story riffs off of some creepy western themes, with a hefty dose of cannibalism, whacko/zombie-movie mania, and did I mention there's a few sticks of dynamite thrown in for good measure? […]It is highly recommended. – Post Modern Pulps
If you like this book, you're going to want to grab the previous books in the DEAD MAN series:
FACE OF EVIL by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin
RING OF KNIVES by James Daniels
HELL IN HEAVEN by Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin
THE DEAD WOMAN by David McAfee
Coming in August… KILL THEM ALL by Harry Shannon.
THE DEAD MAN #4: THE DEAD WOMAN is out today
David McAfee's THE DEAD WOMAN, the fourth book in the DEAD MAN series, is out today as an ebook on the Kindle, the Nook , and on Smashwords, as well as in a trade paperback edition.
The widely acclaimed DEAD MAN series is about Matthew Cahill, an ordinary man leading a simple life…until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld of unspeakable evil and horrific violence that nobody else does…
For Cahill, each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about…a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.
He thought he was alone with his torment, but in a small town in Tennessee, terrorized by a vicious serial killer, Matt meets a woman sees what he does…and together they must confront a horrific and immortal terror that thrives on death.
David McAfee is the author of the Kindle bestseller 33 A.D., a bloody thrill-ride through biblical Jerusalem that pits Jesus Christ against vampire assassins. So naturally I thought he'd be perfect fit for THE DEAD MAN series.
THE DEAD MAN books have been getting some fantastic reviews…here's just a sampling:
The story races by at a brisk rate of knots, each twist and turn, and shift in time providing another revelation […] I was enjoying it so much, I didn't want it to end. –Permission to Kill Blog
THE DEAD MAN FACE of EVIL reminds me of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.[…]a fascinating horror story that leaves you wanting more, more, more! –Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine
Hell in Heaven is a direct spiritual descendant of the sorts of awesome pulp action adventure tales that the greats like Robert E. Howard loved to write. –Post-Modern Pulps
I've not seen a writing tandem like this since the glory days of Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy –Bookgasm
Hell in Heaven is the best so far in an already splendid series and is super rush of a read with plenty of sharp twists and turns and some truly smashing lines. –Paul D. Brazill
This series has kept me rapt from the first page […]these authors are the Jamaican sprint team doing the 4x100m relay, each stage just gets better and better. –Right What You No
Isn't it time you started reading THE DEAD MAN series?
“The Dead Man #3: Hell in Heaven” Is Out
The third book in the DEAD MAN series, HELL IN HEAVEN, is now available on the Kindle, as a trade paperback, and on the Nook. Here's the story…
Matthew Cahill was an ordinary man leading a simple life until a shocking accident changed everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld that nobody else does. Now each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about, a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become…and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.
HELL IN HEAVEN
The sign on the exit reads "Heaven." What better place could there be for a dead man to visit? But when Matt takes the ramp, he finds a banner welcoming him by name to a tiny town seemingly left behind by the 21st century… and waiting for him to rescue it. But when he agrees to save Heaven's citizens from a coming terror, he discovers that evil has more faces than he could ever imagine – and good is far more complicated than he ever dreamed.
BONUS MATERIAL
* the first two chapters of THE DEAD MAN #4: THE DEAD WOMAN by David McAfee
* The first chapter of JUDGMENT, the first book in the JURY SERIES, by Lee Goldberg.
Have you met THE DEAD MAN?
Now's your chance to meet the DEAD MAN…for just 99 cents.
That's right, for a limited time, we're practically giving away THE DEAD MAN: FACE OF EVIL, the first book in the series, so you'll be ready for DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES…and the books that will be coming every month…from writers like Joel Goldman, Harry Shannon, James Reasoner, Mark Ellis (aka James Axler), Bill Crider, and many more!
So don't wait…the price won't be staying this low for very long.