The Books
THE SONGKILLER SAGA
A note about these books: I love folk music and have been collecting it, playing it and hanging with people who play it better than I do for most of my life. My publisher at the time (1991), Bantam, allowed me to write these if I'd agree to do write all of them within 18 months. I did. But by the time the last one was done, they'd taken the middle one out of print. Although there are no reviews here, the books were reviewed in folk music magazines and Joe Hickerson, a librarian at the Library of Congress Folk Music Archives, bound them specially so they could be included in the collection. I have had fan mail for these books from musicians I've admired all my life. So as far as I'm concerned, they're some of the most successful books I've written.
Phantom BanjoI
ISBN-13: 9781452407999SBN-13: 9780759287181 E- Gypsy Shadow Publishing (Originally, Bantam Books 1992)
"Praise for Phantom Banjo from Booklist:
“This book has just about every virtue one can reasonably expect in a contemporary fantasy tale, including a vivid portrait of the contemporary folk scene and a chilling emotional impact that makes many horror novels look pedestrian. Highly recommended.” “Contemporary” in the above review means the world as it was in 1992 when the book was written. The rapid changes in recording and communications technology make it seem like a period piece now, which is entirely appropriate for the subject matter. This is a fantasy series about a bunch of folk musicians, good pickers and flawed but likable human beings, trying to reclaim songs destroyed by the evil forces (or devils, including but by no means limited to the Expediency Devil, the Stupidity and Ignorance Devil, and the Debauchery Devil) that want humanity to lose its humanity. Hauntings abound, as they do in the folk songs. It’s a good yarn to read at Halloween, whether or not this is the music that moves you. And sometimes it’s really funny. There’s a lot of cussing though. Well, the characters are frustrated and scared a lot, and they beg your pardon for their language but you might do the same if faced with similar catastrophies, disasters, travails, frustrations, and circumstances."
Available as e-book . Also, I have about 200 copies of the original editions of each if you want to contact me
Picking the Ballad's Bones
ISBN-13: 9781452474045 Gypsy Shadow Publishing
The ancient ballads of England, Scotland and Ireland are great stories to visit but nobody in their right mind would want to live there. There’s a high body count for every ballad and a happy ending usually involves boy meets girl and they end up sharing a grave. The musicians who go to retrieve the songs, with the help of the magic banjo, Lazarus, know this, but the fact is, the songs also contain a great deal of magic useful in defeating the devils who are out to dehumanize humanity by stealing the music. The Queen of the Fairies, aka the Debauchery Demon, Torchy Burns, makes them a deal they can’t refuse and the reluctant heroes find themselves thrust into the lives and deaths of ballad people they know are going to end badly. It’s enough to make a picker take up accounting!
Available as e-book. Also, I have about 200 copies of the original editions of each book if you want to contact me.
Strum Again?
ISBN-13: 9781452490748 Gypsy Shadow Publishing
What started in the States ends in the States. The song-saving musicians are back home, with heads and hands full of songs they saved with the help of the Phantom Banjo, Lazarus. The soul-destroying devils haven’t given up on killing off the music though, along with everything else that’s maybe a little fun or keeps people human and sane. Even the debauchery devil, AKA Torchy Burns, AKA Lulubelle Baker (of Lulubelle Baker’s Petroleum Puncher’s Palace in west Texas) AKA Lady Luck AKA, believe it or not, the Queen of Faerie, has fallen on hard times. Her fellow devils are willing to see her demoted to the lower levels of hell, where a girl can’t even get a decent mani-pedi. Her only hope is to convince one of the musicians--that would be Willie MacKai--to become her human sacrifice tithe to hell so she can get back her faerie kingdom. Once the magic banjo self-destructs, Willie decides to cooperate with Torchy. But the phone-in ghost of Sam Hawthorne and the music aren’t done with Willie yet, though it takes a ghost train full of cowboy poets and all of his friends to save him.
Available as e-book. Also, I have about 200 copies of the original editions of each book if you want to contact me.