Fiction Friday: STONY MAN DOCTRINE

My first cover-to-cover read of 2020 was this classic. I first read STONY MAN DOCTRINE back in either junior high or high school - I can't recall which - as my schools had a lot of donated fiction and someone must have had a collection of Gold Eagle titles. I remember back then thinking how amazingly badass the GE books were, with tons of technical detail and blistering action scenes.

For those of you totally in the dark here, SMD is the first book in Gold Eagle Books' Three-Series "Stony Man" world (I guess Sons of Barabas is also in this world but I don't really count it here) which encompasses the Mack Bolan Executioner series, the Able Team series, and the Phoenix Force series. Essentially the three men of Able Team and five men of Phoenix Force work for Bolan, and in this book they're all brought together for the first time to take on a multi-national terrorist organization called Hydra (no, not THAT Hydra), which is planning to carry out a series of WMD-style chemical weapon attacks against major US population centers unless the US government withdraws all military forces from foreign countries. The President decides that he cannot abandon America's allies, so he calls in Bolan and Co. to hunt down the terrorists and wipe them out.

Reading this again thirty years later, it is still entertaining action fare. The usual Gold Eagle titles are far slimmer than this book, but the author is able to stitch together what're basically two and a half novels' worth of action in order to deliver the first "Super-Bolan" book. Instead of action-interlude-travel-action-interlude-travel as you have in, say, an Able Team novel, this book can just go from team to team to team and keep the action coming.

One thing I did forget about this book was how early on in the lives of the Able Team and Phoenix Force series this took place. I believe it's right around the same time as Able Team #6, and Phoenix Force #5. It was definitely a cool idea someone had to bring all three series together for a big operation, but it is also evident of why it wouldn't work as a formula for every book - the end battle alone, where all nine combatants are fighting, just doesn't give enough "screen time" to each of the characters, and winds up jumping around a lot in order to show us what everyone's doing.

Overall, pretty darn entertaining, and I'm glad to have been able to re-read it after such a long period of time and not be crushed that it wasn't as awesome as I'd remembered.

Book Review: The Forbidden City - Rogue Angel #5 by Alex Archer

While I was a little disappointed with Book #4, this next title really stepped up its game.  The Forbidden City starts off with Annja helping a young Chinese man try to find the remains of one of his ancestors, who came to America during the gold rush years of the mid 19th century.  But the man's true motives are revealed in a hail of gunfire, and Annja finds herself on the run (once again) with an ancient belt plaque, possibly the key to a lost city of thieves and an immense fortune that has been lost for over a thousand years.

This book features both Garin and Roux in prominent secondary roles, and of course, their interests are diametrically opposed to one another.  It turns out that there is a mysterious artifact of great power hidden in this lost city; Garin wants the artifact for the power it contains, while Roux wants the artifact to keep it out of the hands of people like Garin.  This book goes a long way to deepen the mystery of Roux's past (just how old is he, anyway?), and it reveals to Annja a little more of the mysterious, magical shadow world that she is now involved with since re-forming Joan's sword. 

We also find ourselves meeting a bunch of new secondary characters.  Some of them make it through to the end of the book and some don't, but I would like to see a couple of them re-appear in later books if at all possible.  One of the great things about a series like RA is that secondary characters can come and go from book to book and help enrich the feel of the RA-verse as much more complex and interactive.  Whether that happens or not remains for me to discover, but I have my fingers crossed.

All in all, this was a very solid offering, and it is clear that the Rogue Angel series has come into its maturity.  If you like history, mythology, and a healthy dose of action-adventure, this series is for you.  Fans of adventure games like D&D will especially enjoy this book, I think, because of the "treasure hunt" aspects of the plot and the journey into the subterranean "forbidden city", filled with traps and treasures, will be enjoyably familiar to any veteran dungeon-crawler.  Where's a ten foot pole when you really need one?

Book Review: The Chosen - Rogue Angel #4 by Alex Archer

I hate to admit it, but I was a little disappointed with this book.  There are plenty of interesting characters, especially the mysterious and deadly Father Godin, but I think this book was begun without a really strong grasp of how it was going to end.

Essentially, this book takes place in the American Southwest, but Annja winds up traveling all over the world in the quest for her answers.  She is attacked in Mexico City, in the Philippines...really everywhere she turns, someone's trying to kill her.  While this makes for a lot of cool battle sequences (Annja's body count in this book is insanely high, easily the highest so far), it makes for a very disjointed novel that seems like it is just that - a series of battle sequences.

The overall "monster" of the book is also very weird.  A series of black, ominous creatures with red eyes and a strange screaming cry are popping up all over - are they demonic, extra-terrestrial, or what?  There is an explanation at the end, but it is something of a non-explanation.  I really do think the author wrote himself into a bit of a corner and wasn't sure how to end the book.

As mentioned in the beginning, the saving grace of this novel is Annja's rival / partner in crime, Father Godin.  A real Inquisitor for the Vatican, he hunts down all things demonic, evil, or just plain in need of an old fashioned killing.  He comes off as one of those older, veteran warriors who are so cool if done right in an action novel, and his interplay with Annja makes for a great story.

In summary, if you want to read this book for the sake of completion, it's not awful, it just isn't as good as the others in the series.  If you don't really care about being consistent in which volumes you read, I would skip The Chosen and read the next volume in the series, which I found to be a lot better.

Book Review: The Spider Stone - Rogue Angel #3 by Alex Archer

In this third Rogue Angel book, I think the series finally hits its stride.  Don't get me wrong - the first two books were good and I really enjoyed them.  But this installment of the series feels very solid.  I think Mel Odom (this book's ghost writer) has Annja's personality and how she would react in various situations firmly zeroed in, and the story weaves together a good blend of history, mythology, action, and mystery to give us a very interesting read.

In brief, the bodies of a number of escaped Civil War-era slaves are found in the basement of a long-abandoned warehouse.  Annja Creed, our heroine, is asked to come and investigate the scene from an archaeological perspective along with a local professor and a handful of eager college students.  But what gets the ball rolling on the whole mystery is that one of the slaves was in possession of The Spider Stone, an African artifact of the Hausa people, a tribe favored (supposedly) by Anansi, the Spider God.  The Stone supposedly represents a promise from Anansi to the Hausa people that as long as their tribe is in possession of the stone, they will never die out.

Even more interesting, and what really kicks things off, the Stone is supposedly a map to a fabulous treasure hidden somewhere in the Hausa people's ancient tribal lands.  A number of factions - some good, some definitely not good - begin moving to find the Stone and therefore find the treasure.  An African warlord, a Homeland Security investigator, Annja, her archaeological entourage, and a number of other people get sucked into the mix, eventually traveling to Africa in search for this treasure.  Some of Annja's old acquaintances make an appearance, and some new ones come along - this book definitely has a full and flavorful cast of characters.

Of the three Rogue Angel titles so far, The Spider Stone feels the most like an Indiana Jones movie.  If you blended together elements from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade, you'd get a very good feel for the sort of treasure hunting vibe this book radiates, and it makes it a lot of fun.  Thrown into the mix is a lot of interesting history and folklore, some no doubt manufactured for the novel, some based on actual mythology.  But it is the interweaving of fact and fiction, story and myth, that makes this book work.  This is the sort of thing that The X-Files would get "just right" in its best episodes, and I hope that this trend continues in future Rogue Angel installments.

Book Review: Solomon's Jar - Rogue Angel #2 by Alex Archer

I read this second installment of Gold Eagle's Rogue Angel series literally as soon as I finished the first (go Kindle!).  Written by Victor Milan (who wrote the post-apocalyptic series The Guardians as well as a bunch of FASA's Battletech media tie-in novels and a number of other works), Solomon's Jar has a somewhat different, grittier feel than Destiny. 

For one thing, the body count is substantially higher for Annja Creed.  In the opening couple of chapters - which don't really connect to the overall plot of the book - our heroine kicks some major butt and winds up killing quite a few bad guys with her sword, rather than just using it to knock aside guns so she can punch and kick people a la Xena: Warrior Princess.  While there are times in this novel where she will use her magical blade in a non-lethal manner, Milan definitely upped her kill quotient this time around.  This isn't to say Annja has abandoned guns, either; she still gets in a few gun kills, continuing to show that her character can shoot, punch, kick, stab, and slash with the best of them.

In addition, unlike the first novel, which took place largely in one geographical area, Solomon's Jar jet-sets us around to a number of different exotic locales.  I think this is going to be one of the series' biggest strengths, taking the reader around the world where we can dip our toes into a lot of different cultures, the same way the James Bond books and the classic Gold Eagle books would spotlight one country after another during our hero's adventures.

Another thing I liked about this book is that we can see how Annja uses her semi-celebrity status, and how it can sometimes backfire against her.  I enjoy how her character is being portrayed living this double life of television starlet / wandering hero, and how it seems to pull in a large rogues gallery of secondary characters.  And while Garin doesn't make an appearance in this book, Roux does have a cameo; as I have read the third book, I can say that it appears one or the other character seems to pop in every novel, either to drop off a tidbit of information or to lend a helping hand.

According to the Wikipedia entry for the Rogue Angel series, Odom and Milan trade off for the first eight books, at which time a number of other authors step in.  It's going to be cool to see how each author takes a crack at the series in true Gold Eagle fashion.  The more I read of the Rogue Angel series, the more highly I recommend it as a solid action / adventure line, definitely something new and different compared to yet another "elite cadre of anti-terror specialists".

BookReview: Destiny - Rogue Angel #1 by Alex Archer

I've been interested in this series since I saw it debut in 2005, but as I am mostly buried under paperbacks already, and I was worried about what exactly the series was going for and how well it would last, I let it pass by me.

Fast forward a good six years.  There are now over 30 Rogue Angel titles out, and they're all available as Kindle books for less that five bucks apiece.  So hey, why not give it a shot?

Overall, I found the book rather entertaining.  One part Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Annja Creed, the heroine, even makes an oblique jab at the video game character in this book) and one part Witchblade, with some vibes from Alias thrown in (at least, in my mind), Rogue Angel - Destiny was a pretty solid action novel.

Annja Creed is an investigative archaeologist who works for a cable television "history" series that's about as serious as anything you'd find on the History Channel at 3 o'clock in the morning.  But it gives her the freedom to roam the world and stick her nose into various little-visited areas of the globe.  On one such trip in France she gets mixed up in the hunt for an ancient amulet, the Beast of Gevaudan, and the search for Joan of Arc's sword.

A mysterious old man named Roux who is definitely more than he appears, adds a great deal of mystery to the mix.  As well as the son of a deceased burglar, a maniacal criminal mastermind, and a cabal of unsavory monks hiding a centuries old secret.  Combine all this with a five-hundred year old broadsword that lives in a pocket dimension of its own, and you've got quite the modern fantasy / mystery novel.

Mel Odom (the ghost writer for this book) did yeoman's work in setting the stage for future installments.  I'm already reading the next book, Solomon's Jar, and it doesn't disappoint either.

Most importantly, neither does our heroine.  Annja Creed is smart, she's tough, she's skilled, and while she is lithe and beautiful, these assets are used sparingly, if at all.  In my mind, she's a good combination of Sydney Bristow and Sara Pezini, both tough and capable heroines who use brains, brawn, and beauty in deadly combination.

If you're a history buff, you might squirm a little now and then while things are bent for the purposes of entertainment.  I was a little annoyed reading this story when they kept referring to "knights in armor" in the time period of The Beast, which was the mid 1700s (around the time of the French and Indian War).  While there were certainly knighted individuals going to war and having adventures during that time, any mention of armor just seems silly - if such is used, perhaps a cavalryman's cuirass or a "lobster tail" helm, or a pair of armored gauntlets, it should be specifically labeled as such to keep it from seeming silly, otherwise the idea of an armored knight riding about a decade before the American Revolution puts a fork in the historical crediblity of the story.

But ultimately, this is an action novel, and I'm willing to forgive a bit of mis-handled research.  The book was a fun, fasts read, and I hope to enjoy many more.

Book Review: How to Write Action Adventure Novels by Mike Newton

The Action Adventure genre, or "Men's Adventure" as it is sometimes erroneously labeled, has been the focus of this blog since its inception.  My amateur writing career, such as it is (or - hah! - isn't), has always focused on this genre.  But one thing I have found lacking is advice for writers who cater to the shoot-em-up, punch-em-out variety of fiction.  You can find writing guides for mystery, thrillers, espionage, and other niche genres, but they all tend to try and carry themselves with a little more finesse than your average action yarn, and forget about the generic "advice for aspiring novelists).

Back in the late 80's veteran action writer Mike Newton, who has written a number of Gold Eagle Executioner novels and a pile of other action adventure reads, sat down and wrote a guide for poor schmucks like me who wanted to write about guys running around with Uzis and grenade launchers.  This reference book, How to Write Action Adventure Novels, has no doubt been buried largely unread in the back room piles of used bookstores for decades now.  But Mike is a smart guy and knows that his work can live on once again in an eBook format.  I picked this up for my Kindle late Wednesday night, and finished it Saturday evening.

Overall, this is a very solid book.  Mike covers a lot of the basics that most writers should understand (but its always good to be reminded), like having a strong hook, how to develop good characters, and so forth, but he always looks at things from an action and adventure standpoint.  This is coupled with a lot of excerpts from books and some of them are of what NOT to do, which I always think is a good idea.  He also reminds writers that research is vital for such a niche genre because so many of the readers have military or law enforcement backgrounds, and can sniff out a fake very quickly.  Although very dated now, a large number of reference works are provided for authors who didn't know where to begin in the pre-Google days.

Lastly, there is a whole chapter on breaking into the genre publishing gig.  This is actually the saddest part about this book, because it makes it so obvious how much of a stranglehold traditional publishers have over the authors.  Advice like how you never want to call unsolicited  - which in and of itself is not a bad thing to say - is badly colored when it's followed up with how you never want to annoy anyone, ever, because somehow, some day, they might be in a position to open or close the gates for your career.  Reading this section of the book, is it any wonder Kindle Direct Publishing and other indie pub outlets are being flooded?

For five dollars, I think this book is still a good investment.  I found most "so you want to be a writer" books make me want to throw up, and this one is refreshingly honest, well-written, and possesses just the right amount of cheek and sarcasm.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Phoenix Force #3 Atlantic Scramble

Truth be told, I think Atlantic Scramble would have made a far, far better first book than Argentine Deadline.  There is an excellent introductory chapter, where we see all five men in their "native habitats"; Gary in the Manning in the Canadian wilderness, McCarter gambling and womanizing in Vegas, Encizo in bed with a woman, Ohara meditating, and Katz admiring Starry Night in the MoMA with a female companion of his own (which amuses me, as I was recently at the MoMA and was introduced to that very same painting by a female friend of mine - but I don't wear a beret...).

This chapter is all the introduction we would ever need for the five men of Phoenix Force, and could have easily kicked off the series, with a few mentions of how the team had been recently formed but had yet to go into battle together, yadda yadda yadda.  It would have meant less wasted paper and would have given us more action, while still telling us everything we needed to know about our heroes for the first novel.  Instead, we were subjected to a rather boring "...you were picked by a computer from six thousand candidates..." speech, something which utterly killed any forward momentum Argentine Deadline might have had.  Instead, we see in this book each of the men raring and ready to go into battle, their "civilian" lives a boring cover story for their "real" lives as Mack Bolan's "Foreign Legion", which I think is the best description of Phoenix Force I've ever read.

Did I say action?  Oh yes, there is action - quite a lot of action, in fact.  There are four solid action sequences in the book, each of them has a pretty substantial body count, and each of them takes place with a different scenario.  In fact, there is probably twice as much combat in Atlantic Scramble as there is in the first two books combined, and it is handled quite well; lots of chattering Uzis and Ak-47s, M-16s and CAR-15s blazing away.  Grenades are thrown, demolition charges are set and blon up, and lots (I mean lots) of bad guys are killed, some in pretty nasty ways. 

In fact, if there is one criticism about this book, it is that it can be a tad bit too nasty.  Thomas Ramirez, although I feel he saved the series from a rather boring death, also seems to have taken a few too many pages out of the Joseph Rosenberger school of writing about your enemies.  The Libyan terrorists are spoken of in terms that border on racially derogatory and often come across as just uncomfortable to my bashfully sensitive 21st century sensibilities.  Their swarthy features are repeatedly pointed out ("...brown as a donkey's ass..." gets used at one point) as well as needlessly remarking on one Libyan's "Levantine nose".  Rafael and a couple other Hispanic characters in the book also banter around some "beaner" humor; maybe Ramirez, presumably of some kind of Hispanic descent himself, was going with the old "I can make fun of my own people if I want to" excuse when he wrote these jokes in, and as this book was written almost 30 years ago times have indeed changed, but I do find it a little awkward, especially since although the Gold Eagle titles are merciless on the various hero's enemies, they don't often lean towards racially-oriented slurs unless it is part of a character's dialogue.

That having been said, though, the book is overall much better written, in my mind, than the first two Phoenix Force titles, with some rather amusing turns of phrase thrown in here and there.  Manning's Ferrari takes off down a curving wilderness road "...like a fuck-starved jackrabbit", which I found hilarious, and a Libyan terrorist gets "...sent to Allah-bye Land" by one of the team.  If I didn't know better, I would almost think that "Thomas Ramirez" was a pen name for Joseph Rosenberger himself, as his Death Merchant books are filled with this sort of humor.  Indeed, the "super-weapon" stolen by the Libyans, the Dessler Laser Submachine Gun, is a weapon that shows up in only one other place than I can find; a Death Merchant novel (I have read it, but the number escapes me at the moment).  Whoever Ramirez is or was, I think there is no doubt he was a big fan of the Death Merchant series, which was about a decade old by the time Atlantic Scramble was published.

From Atlantic Scramble onward, the Phoenix Force titles become much more readable, and I hope to keep passing these reviews along for some time to come.

Book Review: Phoenix Force #2 Guerilla Games

This time around, Phoenix Force is sent back into South America again, this time to rescue more kidnapped Americans - but with a twist.  Apparently these Americans had been held hostage ninety-four days before their company had ransomed them...and then captured by another group of Paraguayan terrorists.  Talk about bum luck, eh?  I was never clear while reading the book if the kidnappers and the other set of terrorists were related; this premise, like in Argentine Deadline, is a little wobbly.  Kidnapped along with the American businessmen are the pilot and co-pilot of the plane flying them out, which was forced down by a military aircraft (never explained).

But wait - there's more.  One of the hostages is actually an American intelligence operative whose been working hidden in the corporation for a while now, monitoring its international activities.  Why more of an effort wasn't made to get this operative (who is Phoenix Force's primary mission goal) during the previous ninety-four days of captivity, we aren't exactly sure.  Regardless, in goes Phoenix Force, back to South America.

The good news with Guerilla Games is that the group, by and large, spends the whole book working in teams of some fashion, so there's plenty of inter-character interaction and development.  Manning and McCarter work together along with a French ex-pat arms dealer named Sweetie Pie Sazerac, probably the coolest secondary character name in a Gold Eagle title I've ever come across.  Meanwhile Keio, Katz, and Rafael work together to acquire transportation out of the jungle once the hostages are located.  The banter in this book is much, much smoother, and you really begin to see how the characters relate to one another; Manning thinks McCarter is a bit of a rabid dog, while Keio and Rafael work very hard to not embarass themselves in front of Katz, who the whole team holds in an almost worshipful regard.

The biggest problem with this book is that there is almost nothing action-oriented until the last few pages.  So much time is taken getting through the jungle, finding the hostages, arranging transportation, and interacting with secondary characters that the book as a whole becomes very anti-climactic.  There is a very brief firefight at the end but beyond that, Phoenix Force doesn't fire a single shot.  I can give the writer and Gold Eagle the benefit of the doubt and presume this was done intentionally, to show that Phoenix Force can solve problems without gunfire, but given the rather anemic action quota of the first book, having your second book come off as even more tame seems a weak strategy in my opinion.

Overall I consider this a better-written book than Argentine Deadline, but it is still a weak offering, especially compared to Able Team #2, The Hostaged Island.  Fortunately for Phoenix Force fans, book #3, Atlantic Scramble, makes up for the deficiencies of the first to books - in a BIG way.

Book Review: Phoenix Force #1 Argentine Deadline

I recently got in a bunch of old Phoenix Force and Able Team titles, and I've slowly been chewing through them.  These Gold Eagle books are extremely fast reads; you could probably get through a PF or AT title in a lazy weekend afternoon or a week's worth of lunch hours with little trouble at all.  If you have an interest in these older titles, you can often find them through Amazon via third-party vendors (see the link near the end of the review).

I was never as much a fan of Phoenix Force as I was of Able Team in my youth.  There wasn't any one thing in particular to put my finger on, but that's just the way it was.  I read more Able titles, and maybe the greater exposure helped.  Either way, I wanted to start from the beginning in each series and begin reading them to see how each progressed and developed.  So, I thought I'd start with Phoenix Force.  My review of Able Team #1: Tower of Terror will appear in the inaugural issue of Hatchet Force Journal later this month.

Unlike the members of Able Team, who all came into association with each other through Don Pendleton's Executioner stories, Phoenix Force meets for the very first time in chapter 4 of Argentine Deadline.  Following the usual pattern for Gold Eagle titles, both PF and AT, the crisis develops in the first couple of chapters, and then the main characters become involved.  Although that's usually okay when you know who they are going to be, doing this for the first PF title, when we've never met the characters before as we had with Able Team, seems a little weird to me.

This is coupled with the way the team is introduced.  There's about two dozen pages of "You're all the best, and we want you to do all this secret stuff.  If you don't want to, bye.  Oh, and even though you JUST met, there are people who need saving in just a couple of days or they are all dead, and it's entirely up to you.  No pressure or nothin'".

I know we need to get the story moving along, but having Phoenix Force go from never having met each other before to working together in the field twenty-four hours later just doesn't work for me.  No real-world anti-terrorist organization would throw together a team of five different men from five different countries, two of whom get into a brawl five minutes into their introductions, without weeks if not months of training and acclimation to each other's methods and abilities.

What further drags the book down is that, in order to give each individual some spotlight time, each member of the team immediately splits off once in-country, so we can dedicate a chapter or two to their abilities and point of view.  A noble effort, but it also wastes the entire middle third of the book, and most of the "action" is at most a paragraph or two.  Two of the characters also immediately get their asses kicked, which further complicates the plot, as one needs to be rescued and the other spends a whole chapter dealing with a bad blow to the head.  It's an enormous waste of paper in my opinion, and having them alone and not interacting with each other means less inter-character devlopment, which is so critical to these sorts of "kill team" type books.

To further frustrate matters, I found the plot of this book needlessly complicated, and just kind of boring.  Some Americans get kidnapped while on an "academic retreat" - who takes an academic retreat to Argentina?  Apparently their last retreat was in NYC; maybe they should have gone to Vegas instead.  It's also pointed out that none of them have any money or collatoral to be ransomed with, something the kidnappers screwed up on (they were mistaken for "wealthy American business people").  Apparently this bunch of academic paupers could still find the cash to fly down to another continent to have their meeting.

All in all, this book is a little weak for a "#1".  However, it's worth reading if you are a fan of the Gold Eagle titles, as it's the first in its series and helps lay the ground work and backstory for the other characters.  I still definitely think it could have been handled better.  I'm reading the first Able Team book now, and the quality is considerably higher - it helps tremendously that Pendleton had already fleshed out the characters and established their working dynamics before the series began.

You can probably pick up Argentine Deadline for a few bucks off of an Amazon retailer.  If you're interested in these titles, pass on the next iced mocha, and spend the cabbage on  a couple of these instead.  They make for great back-pocket summer reading.

Buy Argentine Deadline Phoenix Force #1 Through Amazon Here. 

My Reading For Vacation Week Has Arrived

And there's more on the way. At least four other Able Team titles and another Sergeant book. I won't be going through all of them next week, but I'm going to put a damn big dentin the pile, that's for sure.

Hopefully somewhere along the way I'll finish my manuscript and get the first draft of Hatchet Force put together for scrutiny.

And then there's Paintball this weekend, and some vacation sightseeing, and graduate school, and...I'm going to need more vacation days...

I was a little surprised I could find "Get Tough!" so easily, but it's been reprinted many times over the years, and it looks like a fun read.  And by "fun read", I mean it is of course serious research for my World War Two adventure stories...yeah that's it...

My Gold Eagle Books Collection Grows

I've spoken often about the influences Gold Eagle's Able Team and Phoenix Force books had on me as an impressionable youth. Sadly, many of those books I read in junior high were borrowed from other sources and I only owned a meager handful of Gold Eagle titles myself.

For a few years, I was able to purchase a title here or there from used bookstores in the Boston area, but the pickings were fairly slim. In the last few weeks, however, with the idea of releasing HATCHET FORCE JOURNAL and the return to my roots that project provides, I've been making an effort to expand my collection of Gold Eagle titles.

Over the last two weeks, I've received Able Team #'s 2, 3, 7, and 8, and Phoenix Force #1. I hope to get a review of PF #1 up here soon. I've got Able Team #'s 1, 4, 5, and 6 and Phoenix Force #'s 2, 3, 6, and 8 on their way. It's going to be my goal to get at least one Gold Eagle title reviewed and posted every week, and I hope to have a review of AT #1 in the first issue of HFJ.

Oh, and if you're wondering, the knife is a CRKT First Strike. That is one badass piece of cutlery, just sayin'.

Joe Kenney's Letter From Gar Wilson

Over at Glorious Trash, blogger Joe Kenney shares with us a letter he received from "Gar Wilson" (a pen name for Gold Eagle Books' Phoenix Force series) after his 13-year old self mailed in a story idea for a Phoenix Force novel.

Although the idea was rejected (it involved a trip to Mars), someone at Gold Eagle decided to write a very thoughtful and informative letter to the young reader, giving some really great, inspirational advice on how to write, doing research, and what one should do to get published. Whoever this GE staffer or house writer was, they took a good deal of time out of their own schedule to write back to a young fan and give real, usable advice that is as worthwhile today as it was in 1988.

Here's the blog post over at Glorious Trash. You should all give Joe's blog a read-through; there's a lot of great content there!