Harrison Peel Series Page

On the request of several readers, I've added a new page to my website, dedicated to my Harrison Peel series of Mythos adventures. Basically, Harrison Peel is a former Australian Army officer turned NSA consultant spy in action adventure style stories against the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, with more science fiction elements than fantasy. Think The Bourne Identity meets At The Mountains of Madness.

Special call outs to Brian M. Sammons, John Goodrich, John Sunseri and CJ Henderson, who've all contributed to the ongoing series.

I will also thanks editors and publishers David Kernot, Cody Goodfellow, Jacob Kier, William Jones, John Manning, Glynn Barrass, Lynn Willis, Thomas Branan and Shane Jiraiya Cummings who made sure the Peel tales were the best they could be.

The Eye of Infinity

At a remote radio telescope facility in New Mexico, an astrophysicist commits suicide after contracting a hideous mutative plague caused by something he saw… and he won’t be the last.

Major Harrison Peel has witnessed his share of cosmic mutations before, but now, he faces a threat worse than death, and a powerful enemy that hides behind a human face.

When a top secret NASA program refuses to heed his warnings, Peel is catapulted into a nightmarish government conspiracy that takes him from Ft. Meade’s Puzzle Palace to the launchpads of Cape Canaveral; from the desolate Atacama Desert of Chile, to the very heart of the universe itself, all in a desperate bid to shut…

The Eye Of Infinity.

Perilous Press announces the release of The Eye of Infinity, the first Harrison Peel tale in three years, released as a chapbook this Halloween. The Eye Of Infinity will feature a Mike Dubisch cover and a dozen illustrations by Nick Gucker, and it’ll be available from the Perilous Press store the week of Halloween.

The Eye Of Infinity continues the saga of Harrison Peel, a veteran of covert wars against alien invaders, and fuses Mythos horror, quantum physics and interstellar cloak and dagger action into an instant pulp classic.

Harrison Peel Returns in "The Eye of Infinity"

The first Harrison Peel tale since the release of The Spiraling Worm in 2007 will be published by Perilous Press later this month, The Eye of Infinity.

This novella chapbook will feature a Mike Dubisch cover and ten interior illustrations by Nick Gucker. Edited by Cody Goodfellow, this is a fusion of cosmic horror, quantum physics and espionage action. Following on directly from the last story in The Spiraling Worm, this new adventure sees Peel join the NSA on a new cosmic investigation, taking him to New Mexico, Maryland, Florida, the Atacama Desert and the very heart of the universe itself.

The chapbook will not be expensive, however their numbers will be limited to under 500, and they’ll only be available through Perilous Press' store, and at conventions and signing appearances.

Game Geeks reviews of The Spiraling Worm

I thought I might post a link to an old review from Game Geeks by Kurt Wiegel, who normally reviews Call of Cthulhu gaming material, He gave The Spiraling Worm a great review online on YouTube.com.

"I cannot recommend this enough... I flew through this, it is great!"

The Spiraling Worm Reviewed on Amazon.co.uk

Always nice to get a good review, here is another one for The Spiraling Worm on Amazon.co.uk:

No seriously, this book's ace ... If you like Spooks, which again is one of my favourite TV shows, or even the Professionals... or for that matter any 'spy' type show, or even Torchwood / Dr Who, then this is for you ... Great book, great characters, great stories.

The Reviews Keep Coming

Another positive review of The Spiraling Worm has just appeared on Amazon.com. It's interesting to see in reading this one how different stories appeal to different readers, although "Impossible Object" and "False Containment" remain most reader's favorites. The reviewer, Michael J. Tresca, had this to say about the two stories in question: "Imposslble Object" is "more a science fiction tale, is awesome" and "False Containment" as "one of the few stories in this collection that isn't afraid to drive home the insane horror of the Mythos". I should note for the reviewer's benefit that there was never any intention of writing a Call of Cthulhu role-playing game supplement for Chaosium set in the world of The Spiraling Worm.

John Sunseri, who co-authored the collection with me, said early on that he beleived our book would be a sleeper, and it looks to be that way. I have more fan mail today about this book than I ever did when it was first released, and questions about the sequel. Well, I better keep working on more Harrison Peel (the hero of The Spiraling Worm) stories then.

Interview over at Innmouth Free Press

An interview I did with Innsmouth Free Press went up today. I talk with Silvia Moreno-Garcia on The Spiraling Worm and the Harrison Peel series, my influences and favorite books, the Australian speculative fiction scene, H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Read the interview here.

Another Nice Review of The Spiraling Worm

Noticed today that another really nice review of The Spiraling Worm popped up on Amazon.com today by Stephen Jarjoura: "This was an excellent and fun book to read. If you are well versed in the Mythos, you'll find many references to the classics ... but without all of the "squamous tentacles" and "ichor covered walls" ... instead, the horrors are real, tangible, and described in fascinating detail."

Great to see that after two and a half years the book is still being read and enjoyed, and that our book remains one of the favorites of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu fiction series.

To Collaborate or not to Collaborate

Through my writing career I’ve ended up collaborating with various authours, and while I’ve gained much from the experience, I know many authors out there are reluctant to do so. Not me it seems. I’ve worked with Brian M. Sammons (“Stomach Acid” and “Six-Legged Shadows”), John Goodrich (“The Masked Messenger”), David Witteveen (“Sweat as Decay”), John Sunseri (“The Spiraling Worm”) and John Kenny (an unpublished science fiction piece) and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve got out of each collaboration and the end story we’ve created. I’ve also discussed the possibility with other authors of doing collaborations, including with David Kernot and C.J. Henderson, if we can ever get the time.

What I find works well for me is what I have learnt from the experience. Brian is taught me how to really cut to the heart of story, John Goodrich on how to tell a story without explicitly telling it, David in writing sincint poetical scenes, John Sunseri how to make language and character create a style all of its own, and John Kenny the importance of pace and reflective prose. I’ve learnt much more from each of these authors than just what I’ve listed, here I’m illustrating particular elements of learning that were unexpected for me in the process. The end result is that I feel that I’m a better writer because of these experiences, and it also taught me how to be humble and not so hung up on the in’s and out’s of a particular story. Oh, and to let a story tell itself.

The other reason I like collaborating is because of the creativity it allows.

I’m currently writing another novella with Brian M. Sammons, which is the reason for this post. I’m finding that even before we’ve started ideas are just flowing all over the place and we feed off each other’s perspective, so much so that the tale just seems to write itself. We are both very excited about where it is headed.

Most of my collaborations have been with horror and dark fantasy writers, a genre that seems to bring authors together rather than creating a sometimes overly negative competitive environment that I’m finding in some speculative fiction ‘scenes’. From my experience horror and dark fantasy writers tend to get excited about what each other are writing, and want to share. How nice is that!

Collaboration can potentially create its own problems. For example my most successful series, the Harrison Peel spies versus the Cthulhu Mythos series (The Spiraling Worm) is not a sole-creation of my own, but one that had a genesis with John Sunseri and now with Brian M. Sammons, C.J. Henderson and John Goodrich. We’ve all agreed that our characters are our own (mine is Harrison Peel, John Sunseri’s in Jack Dixon, C.J. Henderson is Joan De Molina and Brian M. Sammons’ is Jordan - amongst others) and that we need to seek permission to use each other’s characters, but we also agree that we can each pretty much do whatever we like in this shared world setting. So what happens if I get a movie or game deal for The Spiraling Worm (not saying it is likely, but it is a possibility), what do we do then? Hopefully we’ll all get financial rewarded, and that’s what I’d like to see.

So leading on from this point, I’ve decided that some series I will collaborate on (such as the Harrison Peel series) and some I won’t which I want to hold complete control over (such as my Earth Central series for example featuring stories including “Black Water”, “Aftermath”, “The Entropy Collapse”, “Terraformer”, “The Octagon” and others). Of course stories that aren’t part of any series (“Sweat as Decay”) don’t really matter, they are stand alones, but fun to write nonetheless.

Fun times ahead, seeing where all this collaboration business goes.

The Spiraling Worm: A Retrospective

It’s been eighteen months since the publication of The Spiraling Worm, which is either a novel or a collection of interconnected stories linked by characters and setting depending on how you look at it, which I wrote with American horror writer John Sunseri. In summary it is a Cthulhu Mythos novel written in the style of a political thriller. When I tell people it is like The Bourne Identity meets H.P. Lovecraft I’m told this is a great way to sum it up.

As an overview The Spiraling Worm is about three spies, Harrison Peel of Australian Army Intelligence, Jack Dixon of the NSA and James Figgs from the British Secret Service. The three agents are embroiled into the world of cosmic horrors, of other dimensional monsters breaking through into our universe, our world hell-bent on destroying it. Peel and Dixon fight the good fight to stop them, and Figgs … well his motives are a little more clouded. Of course there is lots of action, gun play, exotic locations from the Congo to Russia, Antarctica and the Australian Outback, and as my friends like to point out, lots of explosions. I’m also told regularly that it is very visual, very cinematic.

The book was not something that was originally planned. It started out innocently enough with a few short stories featuring Harrison Peel which ended up in a few magazines and anthologies. One story however, got noticed quickly, and that was “False Containment” which involved government conspiracies, nuclear waste, wormholes into the past, FBI agents and a flesh devouring monster, and the saving of the world by the quick thinking of the hero, Harrison Peel. This story appeared in the Elder Signs Press anthology Horrors Beyond, which also featured a story from John Sunseri, and he was the one who noticed it.

When John read “False Containment” he liked it so much he wanted to borrow Peel for his own tale, “Resurgence” about the rise of the shoggoths (If you don’t know what a shoggoth is, I suggest you read H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness and find out, but in a nutshell they are one of the creepiest monsters ever to come out of 20th Century literature – vampires and werewolves have nothing on these guys). I liked his story so much I wrote a sequel, “Weapon Grade”. Suddenly John and I realised we were a couple of stories away from completing a collection, and so we got to work.

When we started submitting the collection to publishers Chaosium Inc. snapped it up quickly, pushing it up their publication schedule. Renowned and respected Cthulhu Mythos writer C.J. Henderson best known for his Teddy London wrote us a wonderful introduction, and before we knew it, the book was in print.

So what happened in eighteen months since its release? To our surprise the collection did remarkably well. It’s been a continuous seller on Amazon.com regularly dipping into the top ten horror anthology best selling list – word of mouth is definitely what keeps it flying out the Amazon warehouse doors. It spawned its own Wikipedia page, got rave reviews from OzHorrorScope, SFReader, GameGeek and Amazon, and three of the stories received honourable mentions in the Years Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. The book also received two honourable mentions in Australia’s most prestigious awards, the Aurealis and the Australian Shadows. I was interviewed by the ABC and OzHorrorScope about the book, and Chaosium decided to publish it as their first, and so far only, hardback fiction edition.

Looking back on The Spiraling Worm I’m still proud of what John and I achieved. It had its faults of course, which are much easier to see in hindsight, and if I did it again I’d approach the whole thing differently. But at the end of the day, it did well and is still doing far better than we ever could have hoped for.

Will there be any more Harrison Peel and Jack Dixon tales? We certainly hope so and there are enough fans out there who keep asking me when it will happen. Unfortunately for various reasons the sequel got delayed, and then finally ground to a halt. John and I have discussed some options on what we could do with a sequel down the track while we work on other projects. In the meantime we’re still writing more short stories in the series, and when they come out in print, I’ll post here. Peel and Dixon are just too much fun to write about to end the series now.