Dime Store Riot

Alphas is a Sci-Fi (I won't call it Sy-Fy) Channel series whose first season is now available on DVD and Netflix streaming. Created by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow, the show follows a team of superhumans who work for the government solving crimes, tracking down other Alphas, and opposing a terrorist group called Red Flag. While the show does have promise, the writing breaks little new ground. If you’ve ever read X-Men, the setup and plot elements are familiar — just trade   “Mutant" for "Alpha," then lose the costumes. There’s a team of good Alphas and a team of bad Alphas. Their ideological difference is X-Men versus The Brotherhood of Mutants. Rather than quickly setting their universe apart from Marvel's, Alphas mistakenly wastes a lot of episodes and focus on the team investigating crimes and tracking down the superhuman-of-the-week. Despite some cleverness, this is tedious syndication-fodder. The “crimes” follow the CSI/NCIS plot formula but with superpo

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Shane Stevens’ fans familiar only with Dead City and By Reason of Insanity may not like Way Uptown In Another World. It’s the least “crime” of his eight novels. Fans of plot-driven fiction will certainly hate it. Marcus Garvey Black’s story isn’t divided into three neat acts with a slam-bang ending. A man’s life is never that neat, and it’s never that clear. For me, however, none of those are drawbacks. In my opinion, despite the praise heaped on Dead City by everyone from Stephen King to Dave Zeltserman and By Reason ’s importance in the creation of the serial killer novel, Way Uptown In Another World is clearly Shane Stevens’ masterwork. With his second novel set in Harlem, Stevens finds his street voice. Unlike Go Down Dead with it’s pages of dense and sometimes hard to follow ghetto-speak, Uptown is both simple and starkly poetic, authentic but approachable. In this sometimes messy but always beautiful novel, Stevens explores all those themes that would come to dominate his lat

The stories I still owed to editors are done and off. Now I can focus on Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats . I’ll have lots much more info on the anthology soon, but, in the meantime, here’s one of my favorite rockabilly songs:

Protectors: Stories to Benefit Protect is now available. I’m proud that my story “Go Away” is one of the 41 tales donated to help Protect: The National Associate to Protect Children. For full details on how to order your copy go HERE.