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How Bugsy Siegel Really Died
My horn itched. Definitely psychosomatic, since horns don’t itch. It happens when I get supremely nervous, and being ushered into Moe Sedway’s office by his mob buddies was wracking my nerves—supremely.
Moe hung up the phone after saying, “You got it, boss.” The boss was Meyer Lansky, the Mob’s Accountant. When I first arrived in Las Vegas, Moe told me that Lansky had once been bitten by a rattlesnake. It must’ve been terrible watching it curl up and die.
Jack Damian is the Outsider. He protects the world from supernatural evil. His job makes him a real outsider. He walks alone and unattached to anyone or any organization. Then he meets Amanda Fielding.
Catarina Rinaldi was the wife of the ruler of San Florian, a city-state in 15th Century Italy. He was murdered by a rival faction in San Florian. She could become its new ruler – if she can put down the rebellion. Gian Bracciaforte leads a fifteen-man posta of mercenaries. A man with a past, he and his men are unemployed, and he is seeking employment.
At the end of the universe, there is a mountain. Every thousand years, a bird flies to strop its beak on that mountain. When the mountain is worn to nothing, the universe ends. The mountain is down to a few grains of sand.
Fairy tales served as medieval entertainment. They were cautionary tales, with advice about how to live your life as much as fables. They were not just for children.
Take a typical college-aged man from the Midwest in today’s America. Give him the ambition to slay dragons and become a knight errant. It is unrealistic, but it is his dream. Then let him discover magic really works. He slays a fire-breathing dragon (with his mom’s Volvo), and is invited to join Knight Watch, an organization dedicated to protecting ordinary Americans from intrusions by supernatural enemies
Illarion Glaskov is a miller’s son in a small farming village in the far north of Kolakolvia. It is so remote the Czar’s tax collectors have not visited it for years, and the Empire has forgotten to levy conscripts from it. That suits Glaskov. He would be the one drafted. He would as soon marry his fiancé Hana, raise a family and run the family mill.
J.R.R. Tolkien may be the most beloved twentieth-century author with the most diverse reader base. He appealed to Christian and New Age audiences as well as readers across the political spectrum. Fame and fortune were the last things he really sought. An Oxford professor, he just wanted to tell some stories.
In 2011, “Toward the Gleam” appeared. A fantasy, the book’s premise was that J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium were based on actual events. Author T. M. Doran bases a central character on Tolkien, John Hill, who find a prehistoric manuscript preserved over thousands of years. Set in the twentieth century, “Towards the Gleam” follows forces of good and evil contending for possession of the manuscript.
