Flames Rising is pleased to present Black Angels, a story by Michael Jasper, which is part of the Gunning for the Buddha anthology. Gunning for the Buddha is available now at DriveThruHorror.com.

Author Michael Jasper has this to say about Black Angels:

“Black Angels” started with a picture and a memory, of a statue in an Iowa City graveyard. The rest came to me as I was daydreaming on my commute home from work one day. The statue from the story really does exist, in an Iowa City cemetery. Every freshman learns about it while attending the University of Iowa. The Black Angel is spooky. Especially at night…

In the divine struggle between good and evil, humans are hardly noticeable to the mal’akhim, but when an ancient seal is broken on the grounds of a California college campus, beings from dimensions beyond the balance of holy and unholy erupt from the earth. A retired priest and an ailing magickian must trust the mysterious Walker Between the Worlds and his skin-eating demon familiar as they step through Heisenbergian passages of probability and battle forces that are so far beyond demon they cannot be fully seen in earthly dimensions. Amidst the earthquakes and interdimensional intruders, the students and staff of California Hills University step across the boundaries of their knowledge and faith, revealing their true natures as the night erupts in earth and blood.

Flames Rising is pleased to present this excerpt from An Agreement with Hell by Dru Pagliassotti. An Agreement with Hell is available now at DriveThruHorror.com.

First published in March 2010 on DriveThruHorror.com, we’ve expanded our digital offering to include a text-based version for your Amazon Kindle or your Nook from Barnes and Noble. Since this file format is primarily text-based, we went ahead and dropped the price to $2.99 on both the Kindle and the ePub edition. The ePub format, which is available at Barnes and Noble, is also compatible with several other devices including your Sony eReader and your iPhone. Both the Kindle and ePub format are also available through DriveThruHorror.com for your convenience.

Unprecedented flooding in the Australian state brings the worldwide writing and publishing community together in the charity anthology “100 Stories for Queensland.”

Queensland (Australia) is currently experiencing the worst flood event in its history with seventy-five percent of the state declared a disaster zone. Queensland is not a small state, measuring more than 1.72 million square kilometres (twenty-five percent of Australia’s land mass). It is four times the size of Japan, nearly six times the size of the UK and more than twice the size of Texas in the USA. This is not a small flood or localised event. Its effects are being felt by more than 70 communities (including the capital city of Brisbane) and tens of thousands of people, many of them in rural areas. Other areas of the state have been flooded since before Christmas, with a number of communities West of Brisbane evacuated for the second time in two weeks.

The Legends of Anglerre RPG (LoA) by Sarah Newton and Chris Birch takes the Starblazer Adventures iteration of the FATE 3.0 system and adapts it for the fantasy genre. This game strives to cover multiple subgenres in the fantasy milieu, with the focus on the Moorcockian swords and sorcery setting of Anglerre, and the high fantasy Hither Kingdoms. The source material for this game is drawn from a series of British comics that appeared in the Starblazer Adventures comic books. References are made to various characters and events from the comics and can at times leave the reader a bit in the dark.

The physical book itself is an impressive tome at just over 380 pages. The cover is full color and depicts three adventurers posing dramatically in a ruined building. The interior of the book is predominantly black and white with the sidebars offset in parchment colored boxed. The artwork is predominantly drawn from the LoA comics.

They are safe in a night club, doors closed and barred. The undead can’t get them. They are safe, right? Who will protect them from themselves? There may be chaos outside, but inside the “asylum” isn’t all that much better.

Mark Allan Gunnells recent novella, Asylum (The Zombie Feed/Apex Publications), takes Romero-style zombies and situations and populates them with complex (and deeply compelling) characters who, as Gunnells says below, happen to be gay.

“My focus isn’t on the zombies themselves—though there is flesh-eating goodness to be had, don’t get me wrong—but instead on the characters trying to survive,” said Gunnells. “In many ways, Asylum is a character study of this group of survivors.”

The resulting novella is simultaneously rich in tradition and fresh with contemporary relevance. Most importantly, of course, Asylum is a damn good story well told.

Apex Book Company, a small press publisher specializing in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres, announced today that it has made a significant change to their monthly edition of Apex Magazine. Subscribers and single-issue purchasers will now get an exclusive first look at the stories and poems before anyone else.

Prior to January 2011, Apex Magazine was offered to both subscribers and non-subscribers alike. As of January 1st, the magazine, which is edited by Cat Valente, will no longer be offered for free on the publisher’s website until the next issue debuts.

I’ve come to realize, somewhat unwittingly in more recent years, that Maberry scares me for reasons that go beyond the mere horrific. When I made my first serious foray into researching the occult, I didn’t realize until after the fact that my first fact finder’s guide just happened to have been written by the one who wrote this pithy little gem. But then, there’s always something about a writer whose writing not only gives you something you already know, but can serve to inspire other avenues of horror you were certain should have occurred to others by now – only didn’t.

Patient Zero is the first in a series of Joe Ledger novels (not to be confused with the Marvel character), revolving around a former Baltimore detective who is pulled into the shady world of the equally shady Church.

Try a New Game in the New Year!

It’s 2011, and DriveThruRPG has 20 games on sale for only $11! The New Year is a great time to start a new campaign with friends, and DriveThruRPG is offering great deals in our “New Year, New Game” event.

New Year, New Game Sale at DriveThruRPG.com!

Moonstone Entertainment, Inc. announces that the wildly eclectic, genre busting comic ‘ROTTEN’ from writers Mark Rahner and Robert Horton and Artist Dan Dough?erty continues to receive accolades and notice, this time from writers at the Comic Book Bin. Writers for the comic book centered site instituted their own awards this year. Calling them ‘The Binnies’, writers established several comic book oriented categories and then chose the winners for each category. ROTTEN was named as one of the six winners of Best New or Mini Series for 2010.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an inside look at the design process for Scenes of the Embrace, a brand new toolkit released from White Wolf Publishing to be used with its Vampire: the Requiem role-playing game.

This exclusive article is broken up into two parts. First, we give you an overview of the design process for this product, which was inspired by Will Hindmarch’s design from Scenes of Frenzy. After you read Eddy Webb and Monica Valentinelli’s exchange, stick around for an exclusive preview from this new e-book.

Scenes of the Embrace is available now at the Flames Rising RPGNow Shop.

Apex Book Company, a small press publisher specializing in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres, announced today that Dark Faith, a horror anthology edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon, is their best-selling title of 2010.

To celebrate the success of Dark Faith, Apex Book Company is offering the e-book on sale at DriveThruHorror.com for $1.99, which is over fifty percent off the cover price.

Paul Cornell (DC’s Action Comics and Batman and Robin), Scott Snyder (Vertigo’s American Vampire) and Doug Mahnke (artist for DC’s bestselling Green Lantern series) are among the early guests from the world of comics to be announced for Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). They will appear at the new annual pop culture convention as Guests of Honor and will be joined by other comic creators and artists including Tony Moore, Mike Norton, and Jill Thompson. This announcement follows two other recent announcements about leading guests who will be appearing at C2E2. Convention officials note that there will be many more significant guest appearances announced in the coming weeks and months as the show approaches. The next C2E2, which had its debut in Chicago last year, will take place March 18 – 20, 2011 at the McCormick Place Convention Center.

Before you grab your shotgun and blast 2010 away, you might want to check out our hot news today. We’ve got fiery new releases, a few announcements and more hot, hot links to usher in the New Year.

Got something you want to throw on the fire next time? Send your dark and delectable links to via our contact the editors at FlamesRising.com page.

The lightning-paced conclusion to the Stone of Tymora trilogy by best-selling author R.A. Salvatore and his son…

Featuring the sage words and signature swordwork of R.A. Salvatore’s best-selling character Drizzt Do’Urden, this final book of the Stone of Tymora trilogy is packed with action, magic, intrigue, and a heart-stopping twist that Salvatore fans won’t want to miss.

Flames Rising is pleased to offer our readers an excerpt from this book by Bob and Geno Salvatore. Be sure to check out our interview with the Salvatores about the Stone of Tymora series here at Flames Rising. The Sentinels is available now at Amazon.com.

Solaris is delighted to announce the acquisition of a new horror novel, Hell Train, by Christopher Fowler, best-selling author of the Bryant & May mystery novels. Fowler says: “This is an unashamed pedal-to-the-metal supernatural thriller that goes back to my roots, and a multi-layered fun ride to the dark side. I’m thrilled to be working with the hottest new publishing house for genre fiction in the UK.”

Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris, has commented: “I’ve been a fan of Christopher Fowler for a long time and have always loved his horror stories. So it’s very exciting to be working with him on this rip-roaring supernatural yarn. Christopher brings us something of the British horror film industry at its height, while also stamping his own mark on this thrilling tale.”

GABRIELLE FAUST has pursued an eclectic career as an illustrator, technohorror writer, and leading industry entertainment critic. She is also currently the Chair of the Texas Chapter for Horror Writers of America.

In 2005 her poetry collection, Before Icarus, After Achilles, was published. Faust then partnered with Immanion Press in August of 2007 for her cross-genre technohorror trilogy Eternal Vigilance, a post-apocalyptic vampire saga of epic proportions. The first novel of this series, From Deep Within the Earth, was released in April, 2008. The second installment, The Death of Illusions was released in March of 2009 and the third, Bound in Blood was released in September of 2010.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an interview with Gabrielle Faust conducted by author Kenneth Mark Hoover.

It may be freezing outside, but it’s hot here at FlamesRising.com. We’ve donned our firefighting gear and have braved the fiery internet to rescue some hot horror news. From winning free stuff to horror flicks, check out this week’s hot links and a smattering of new releases. This week, we’ve got news about John Kovalic, Clive Barker, Charlaine Harris, Harry Potter, Bruce Campbell, John Cusack, DeadSpace 2 and a whole lot more.

Our author design essay continues with Patrick D’Orazio telling us about his new novel Comes The Dark, which is published by Library of the Living Dead Press.

Six weeks have passed since the virus ravaged the world’s population and in that time most of humanity has passed into shadow, turning into corrupt, rotting flesh eaters that known only pain and hunger as they attempt to destroy the remaining members of the human race.

Comes The Dark, which is my first published novel, is my humble entry into the zombie genre. I wasn’t necessarily interested in recreating or morphing the zombie into something new or different with my book, but wanted to focus on the dynamics between human beings thrust into a horrible situation, being forced to do things they would otherwise be unwilling to do and deciding if surviving is even the right choice when all they have ever known and loved has been annihilated.

Sirenia Digest is a monthly subscription PDF-zine released by author Caitlín R. Kiernan. The stories are solidly weird fiction, with healthy infusions of erotica and Lovecraftian horror. (The adult-only warning on the website stems from both the themes of the works and their illustrations.)

I’ve been a subscriber for two months, now. My first readings were hurried, so I took advantage of the holiday downtime over Thanksgiving break to do a second reading of two recent Sirenia Digest issues (#58 and #59), to give each story my full, undivided attention. This time, I read them alone in a silent, darkened room in the wee hours of the night, with a giant picture window behind me, and silhouettes of writhing tree branches splayed across the floor.