For Immediate Release
August 2, 2012
Seventh Star Press Announces New Anthology Project With James R. Tuck
Seventh Star Press proudly announces a new anthology project with James R. Tuck, author of the highly acclaimed Deacon Chalk stories released by Kensington Publishing. An open call for submissions has been issued regarding the new anthology, Thunder on the Battlefield, which will take the reader on many adventures within the realms of Sword and Sorcery.
Writers are encouraged by James to explore the possibilities of the genre. The time of the story could be placed in an ancient world, or even perhaps a futuristic one where a cataclysm has set a modernistic society back into a barbaric age. The setting could be the heart of Africa, the steppes of Russia, the snowbound wastes of Iceland, or the hills of China. Warriors were found throughout the ages, the Celts, the Vikings, the Samurai, the Israelites, the Zulu, the Romans, and many more. The challenge to the writer is to bring their best and make it heroic.
James brought the project to Seventh Star Press for a number of reasons. “I have been extremely impressed with the professionalism I have seen from Seventh Star Press. Their books are quality, they always make a big presentation at conventions, and their authors are happy. Happy authors mean a LOT in this business. Plus, with the stable of incredibly talented authors working with Seventh Star I knew that this anthology would be taken seriously and done right.”
James, whose latest Deacon Chalk adventure, Blood and Silver, is to be released in mass market paperback by Kensington on August 7th, is a former bouncer and a professional tattoo artist who lives in the Atlanta area with his wife, two children, and four dogs. His first Deacon Chalk novel, Blood and Bullets, was released in February of 2012 and received high praise in urban fantasy circles.
What inspired James to do a project like Thunder on the Battlefield? As James explains in his own words:
“Because sword and sorcery rocks my face off!
“On a serious note, I was a young kid when I discovered sword and sorcery for the first time. I have always been an artist, drawing when I should have been studying, and I found this artist, you may have heard of him, named Frank Frazetta. His artwork blew my preteen mind, just took the top of my skull right off and spilled in all this masculine power and feminine beauty and horrible monstrosity right inside my brainpan. I studied that book I had found, furrowed away in the back corner of my junior high library. Reading, I discovered these were the covers to books.
“I loved to read. The next trip to the used bookstore I found a book with a Frazetta cover, it was Robert E.Howard’s Conan The Adventurer. Those words, those damn near poetic, dark, strings of prose ate into my brain like acid. I was hooked from the first paragraph. I became voracious in finding more, more Robert E. Howard, more Conan, more sword and sorcery. I ran through Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, Karl Wagner, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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“All those stories imprinted on my DNA and helped form the kind of stories I write today. I wanted to bring more of them to the forefront and put together a collection of today’s heirs to Robert E. Howard and his colleagues. To put new faces in the hands of the fans of the genre.”
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Thunder on the Battlefield is slated for release in the 2nd quarter of 2013 in both print and eBook editions.
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The guidelines include a 10,000 word maximum, 2,000 word minimum. The full call for submissions is now posted at the Seventh Star Press site at:
https://seventhstarpress.com/submissions/
The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2013.
Seventh Star Press is a small press publisher of speculative fiction located in Lexington Kentucky
Contact: C.C. James
Public Relations, Seventh Star Press
ccjames@seventhstarpress.com
