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EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT: read the first part of Gods & Monsters: Mythbreaker by Stephen Blackmoore (NSFW)

Before you continue please head the warning tag – this post is really not safe for work. Also, if you are at work you probably should get back to it before you get yourself fired.

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GODS & MONSTERS: MYTHBREAKER

by Stephen Blackmoore

CHAPTER 1

AFTER YEARS of doing everything from smoking crushed-up Quaaludes in a Skid Row homeless camp to snorting cocaine with Miami “businessmen,” Fitz has come to one inescapable conclusion.
Getting high is a huge pain in the ass.
You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard. Doesn’t matter if it’s pot, opium, ecstasy or Viagra; it all works the same way. You take a thing, and put it in your body. It goes up your nose, or down your mouth, in a vein, up your butt. Simple, right? But no.
People, man. Fucking people. Got to make everything complicated. Pipes, domes, vaporizers, spoons, butane torches, screens, papers, irons, ash catchers, straws, grinders, nails, syringes, chillums, hookahs, clips, masks.
Not that that’s ever stopped him, of course. Whether he’s popping prescription anti-psychotics or doing opium out of a glass pipe, it’s all worth it. To keep the voices out of his head.
“Gimme a hit,” Marty says. He leans into him on the bed, wraps his leg around Fitz’s own. They fucked the sheets off the mattress an hour ago, their clothes scattered across the floor.
Or is it Matty? Marvin? Fitz can’t remember. That’s fine. He’ll be gone by morning, and he’ll never see him again. Dark brown hair, thin to the point of ribs showing, eyes a shade of green that makes Fitz think of the ocean. He’ll remember those eyes, even if he never remembers his name.
Fitz passes him the pipe, runs the lighter underneath until the dab of opium dissolves into a little dark pool. Marvin sucks down the vapor, holding it in for a moment and then blowing it out through his nostrils.
“Oh, I like that,” Matty-Maybe-Marvin says.
Last week there was a girl. Patty? Pamela? He did a lot of coke with her. And the week before was a couple of Mormon missionaries who weren’t quite as devout as their nice white shirts and straight black ties would suggest.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Fitz takes the pipe from him, packs another dot of opium into it and lights up. He sucks in the vapor and his mind goes still.
If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be much point. He’s not in it for the high. He’s in it for the way it shuts his brain up. All the backchatter and noise. Like being in a crowded bar. And the sights. Images that crowd out his own vision, sometimes; make it hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t.
A mix of anti-psychotics and benzos does the trick most of the time, shuts things up enough where he can function. But sometimes it gets too much. Everything’s too loud, too bright, too everything. And that’s when he goes out, gets himself a nice little brown ball of pure joy and a twink like Matty here and spends the weekend in a hotel room getting fucked up and sucked off.
“I’ve never tried it before,” Marty says. Dammit, maybe it’s Michael? “It’s… different. What’s the craziest stuff you’ve ever tried?”
“Toads,” Fitz says, his voice hazy like smoke.
“Toads?”
“Bufo alvarius,” he says. “Colorado river toad. They secrete a toxin on their backs that’s like doing acid. It’ll really fuck you up.”
“So, like, you suck the toad?”
“No. God, no. Eew. They taste nasty,” Fitz says, remembering when he’d heard about the toads and tried exactly that. “You squeeze it. And when it starts to secrete the toxin you slap it against a windshield and smear it all over. You get this gross, goopy gel. And then you let it dry in the sun and scrape it off and smoke it.”
Marty shudders. “That’s disgusting. Seriously?”
Fitz shrugs. “No idea, really. I just smoked the shit.”
“But what about the stuff we just did? You got any more? I want another hit.”
“Pace yourself. This shit ain’t for amateurs. And it costs more than you do.”
“Fuck you,” Matthew says, less admonishment than suggestion. “I’m plenty expensive.”
“My point exactly.”
He trails a long fingernail from Fitz’s neck to his cock, his fingers wrapping lightly around the shaft. “What’ll it take to get another hit?”
“That’s a good start.”
“How about I smoke your toad?”
“Is that what we’re calling it now?”
He kisses his way down Fitz’s chest and stomach until he’s taken him in his mouth. Fitz rides the high of the opium, the feeling of lips around his cock. Drifts away on the sensation.
Then the visions slam into him like a truck through a convenience store window. They punch through the opium haze, sear into his brain.
Panic and howling winds. Angels and demons fucking in mid-air, tearing into each other with swords of fire. A raven-haired woman in green pulls the still-beating heart out of a man’s chest and holds it high, before tearing dripping chunks from it with razor teeth. Bulls and bears battle in a pit of money while high above them the sky fills with clouds of numbers in an unending stream of >US | DRM-free eBook

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Exclusive cover reveal: Gods & Monsters: Mythbreaker by Stephen Blackmoore

Gods & Monsters: Mythbreaker

By Stephen Blackmoore

As a child Louie had conversations with “invisible friends” and could see patterns in the world no one else could see.

In other times he would have been a prophet – someone to make people believe in the gods.

But he grew out of the visions and into a life in the underworld as a drug runner.

Now thirty-five and burnt out, he’s had enough. With access to the mob’s money he plans to go out in a big way. Only he can’t. A broken down car, a missed flight; it’s bad enough being hunted by the mob, but now the gods – kicked out of the Heavens – need someone to tell their stories, and they aren’t letting go.

Caught between two warring factions of gods and the mob Louie hatches a plan to get out, if it doesn’t get him killed first.

Gods & Monsters: Myth Breaker by Stephen Blackmoore
Out December 2014

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Chuck Wendig’s ‘Gods and Monsters’ series for Abaddon to continue with ‘Myth Breaker

Abaddon is very proud to announce the next title in the Gods and Monsters series, created by genre superstar author Chuck Wendig.

Gods and Monsters: Myth Breaker by Stephen Blackmoore will be the second novel in the series and will be published in December 2014.

Wendig imagined a brand new world for Abaddon Books last year, in which gods and goddesses are real and fight one another for mankind’s belief and devotion. But when one god drove all others out of Heaven, it was back to the bad old days of cults and sycophants, and the terrible retribution the gods visit on those who spite them. Gods and Monsters: Myth Breaker continues the story of humanity pitted against both the natural and the supernatural in a world of violence and faith.

Blackmore is the author of the urban fantasy novels City of the Lost and Dead Things and the 1930’s pulp novel Khan of Mars. His short stories have appeared in the magazines Needle, Plots With Guns, Spinetingler, Thrilling Detective and Shots, as well as the anthologies Deadly Treats, Don’t Read This Book and Uncage Me.

Chuck said: “Stephen Blackmoore is the exceedingly worthy heir to the Gods and Monsters throne, and unto him I bequeath my crown, my sword, my whiskey bottle (it’s empty, sorry), my robot butler, my monkey butler, and what’s left of the ragged cheesecloth that is my soul. COURAGE TO HIM.”

The first people the gods stopped talking to, back in the day, were the Chroniclers: people who were touched by the divine. Prophets and storytellers; Moses, Homer, Hesiod. Chroniclers don’t just tell the stories, they make people believe. And when the gods don’t keep up that connection, they go mad.

Growing up an orphan, Louie Fitzsimmons always had conversations with “invisible friends,” could see patterns in the world that no one else could see. He suffered bouts of mania and depression, but with a regimen of drugs and therapy he grew out of it as a teenager. When he was thirteen, he ran away from the orphanage and got in with organized crime as a drug runner, skimming the pharmaceuticals he sold to keep his visions at bay. Now, thirty-five years old and burnt out, Louie’s had enough. With access to the mob’s finances, he plans to go out in a big way.

Only he can’t. Things are conspiring against him: a broken down car, a missed flight. It’s bad enough being hunted by the mob, but the gods – kicked out of the Heavens, stuck on Earth without worshippers – need someone who can tell their stories, get the word out, and they aren’t letting him go. And there are new gods on the scene, gods of finance and technology, who want him too.

Caught between the mob and two sets of rival gods, Louie hatches a plan that will probably get him killed. If his powers can make the gods, there’s no reason he can’t break them…

The critics on Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits:

“The style is gonzo and rapid-fire, with bizarre imagery and flashes of violence and the grotesque.”
– Hellnotes.com

“The tone, the pacing, the characters, all of it, and honestly, this story is just plain fun. Dark, sometimes horribly creepy, but fun.”
– Fantasy Book Critic

“… full of stark realities dragged through gutter-filled dreams …
Even now I cannot seem to shake this novel free.”
– SF Signal