Compagnons de l'Ombre

Like your reading in French? Try a few of these beautiful translations. Available at http://www.riviereblanche.com/compagnons011.htm

Tales of the Shadowmen - La vie en Noir

Tales of the Shadowmen - La vie en Noir now available at Blackcoat Press. http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen09.htm Edith Piaf liked to sing about la vie en rose, "life in pink," in other words, life seen through rose-tinted glasses. This volume of Tales of the Shadowmen is another kind of song altogether, one dedicated to la vie en noir, the darker side of life. And what could be darker than the Black Coats, that sinister brotherhood of criminals and their legendary treasure, a malignant self-aware entity that is the embodiment of greed and avarice?

The Hell of Proof Reading

If you’re anything like me, you find proof reading your own work next to impossible. You know what you mean, but your eye skips, you miss the obvious and, no matter how many times you read that damned manuscript you keep on finding mistakes you missed the last time. Of course one alternative is to hire a professional, but the average poor starving writer probably doesn’t have the means. So, how about one of you brilliant people – not me – who understands the arcane world of computer programming and algorithms (whatever they are), coming up with a way of proof reading a manuscript. I reckon it would need to include “Fowler’s English Usage”, “The Chicago Manual of Style”, “The Mentor Guide to Punctuation” just for starters. Some way of letting the checker know if a comma is in the wrong place - or needed at all – of distinguishing between typos like “the” instead of “them”, helping poor spellers to know the difference between “there” and “their, “weather” and “whether: all the things MS Word’s spell check is incapable of doing. And I won’t go into grammar checking, because Word is miserable at that. In fact, just telling us when we’ve made a glaring mistake we just didn’t see. I know this is probably impossible and there are a million reasons why it can’t be done. But wouldn’t it be nice? You could give it a name like “Nitpick” or “Bugproof”.

Maxim Gunn - New Arrivals

Two new adventures are now available in the Maxim Gunn series at Smashwords. You can find them, try them, or buy them by following this link: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Nicholas This is action adventure at its best.

Review of "The Warlock"

Review by William Holt.

If you like big novels set on Aegean Islands, you could do far worse than to read Nicholas Boving's The Warlock. It will take you right into a monastery and to a strange den of iniquity, both set against each other on a little island with great natural beauty, primitive transport, and such people as may be found everywhere if you know where to look and if you don't mind being both uplifted and appalled. You won't easily forget the experience!

My other most vivid experience of the Grecian milieu, apart from Homer, is Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Though evocative, Durrell, like many authors using first person pov, can be unnecessarily obscure and suffocatingly subjective. Nothing of that sort appears in Nicholas's narrator. He's likable, straightforward, and not troubled with any of Durrell's misty romanticism, which from the first paragraphs of Justine, put me in mind of Lovecraft, though he's differently oriented and certainly superior in talent.

The Game

“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’”

"But no animal can reason," objected Rainsford.

"My dear fellow," said the general, "there is one that can."

In 1924, Richard Connell’s THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, captivated readers with the tale of one man hunting another man for sport. It became an instant classic.

Now, witness the next evolution of hunt, with eleven all new tales of cunning and survival.

THE GAME is on!

Published by Seven Realms Publishing.

THE GAME, an anthology featuring some of the best indie authors around. This volume, inspired by Richard Connell's classic tale THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, features stories by Alan Baxter, Nicholas Boving, Rick Chesler, Sean Ellis, R.J. Fanucchi, J. Kent Holloway, William Meikle, Rick Nichols, David Sakmyster, R.P. Steeves, and David Wood.

Find it and buy it at: http://bit.ly/qVbloS

Tales of the Shadowmen

The international anthology devoted to paying homage to the world's most fantastic heroes and villains returns in this eighth installment. This time, the stories focus on those who provoke or entice evil… Agents Provocateurs who thrive in the shadows and lurk on the periphery of our world…

My story - "The Elfberg Red". Find it at http://www.blackcoatpress.com/talesshadowmen08.htm