Bruce Blake has released the third novel in his acclaimed Icarus Fell dark urban fantasy series, Secrets of the Hanged Man. To celebrate the launch, he’s giving away a coupon that will allow you to download the e-book from Smashwords for only 99 cents to anyone who signs up for Bruce’s newsletter at http://eepurl.com/pjLej
Secrets of the Hanged Man
Icarus Fell thought the afterlife couldn’t get any worse…until Hell came looking for him.
When you are the orphaned child of a disgraced nun, and you’re saddled with a ridiculous name like Icarus Fell, you don’t expect things can go drastically downhill.
Until death comes along and an archangel recruits you for a job you screw up so badly you nearly lose your son to a demonic priest and a fallen angel.
And then, burdened by the lives lost because of your foul ups, you travel to Hell, a detour that costs you more dearly then you could ever have imagined.
No, things couldn’t get much worse in the afterlife…unless Satan sends his lap dog to bring back the one thing he thinks belongs to him.
You.
Why couldn’t death be easy?
Excerpt from Chapter 3
Being the middle of the day on a Wednesday didn’t help our situation. It meant a shift in full swing and too many people around for us to be inconspicuous. To my surprise, none of them wore yellow protective suits and inhalators like the guys on Breaking Bad, but regular clothes and hair nets instead, as if they worked in a place devoid of the stink of cucumber death.
We gained access by way of a back door propped open with a broken piece of brick, presumably placed there by someone sneaking out for a smoke. I marveled at the size of the place. We hadn’t stumbled into a Heinz factory, just a local operation, but it was huge. Fluorescent lights dangled from the high ceiling, their harsh glow reflecting on the surfaces of gleaming silver vats and pristine machinery; the interior sparkled with a level of clean to make most hospitals jealous.
But neither its cleanliness nor the fact it showed up in my scroll brought it close enough to godliness for me to consider devouring one of the hated little things.
Actually, Victoria, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle, Wash., where more rain is seen than snow. Since snow isn’t really a pressing issue, Bruce spends more time trying to remember to leave the “u” out of words like “colour” and “neighbour” than he does shovelling. The father of two, Bruce is also the trophy husband of a burlesque diva.
Bruce’s first short story, “Another Man’s Shoes,” was published in the Winter 2008 edition of Cemetery Moon; another short, “Yardwork,” was made into a podcast in October 2011 by Pseudopod, and his first Icarus Fell novel, On Unfaithful Wings, in December 2011. The second Icarus Fell novel, All Who Wander Are Lost, was released in July, 2012, and the Khirro’s Journey epic fantasy trilogy followed between October 2012 and January 2013. His next project, another epic fantasy series titled The Small Gods, should begin seeing the light of day by September 2013.
Twitter: @bruceablake
www.bruceblake.wordpress.com
bruceblake@hotmail.ca