Thank you for your patience. Sorry for the delay in updates. We hit a few snags with the tariff situation and finding a new printer, but we're good now. We're at the final stage of putting together the graphic novel. The graphic novel is being lettered by Tom Napolitano now. Once that's done we'll take a final look at the book and then send it to the printer. As soon as the book is done, hopefully in two weeks, we'll make the digital editions available.
Jonathan is sending me the signed books and they'll be shipped along with the graphic novel and other rewards.
Here's one of my favorite two-page spreads in the book.
And here's the opening of Jonathan prose short story that will be included with the deluxe edition of the graphic novel.
ON MOONLIT ROADS
A Joe Ledger & Violin Adventure
By Jonathan Maberry
-1-
Clinton County, Pennsylvania
There were four bow hunters at the cabin.
Bear season opened in two days, but they had already taken two of the animals. A pair of black bears, each weighing just shy of five hundred pounds were in a basement cold room that had a concealed access outside. The four-wheel ATVs with tow-carts were stowed in a shed, and all traces of blood and hair had been carefully wiped off the vehicles.
Dennis Riley, the oldest and wealthiest of the four, had a business meeting in Manhattan on the first day of legal hunting, but that had never stopped him from taking what he wanted, when he wanted it.
He was very much like his father, Pops Riley, in that. Pops Riley always told his son that laws and restrictions were for tourists. Real men followed higher laws. There was a quote from Genesis, Book 27, Verse 3 done up in needlepoint framed on the wall.
Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow,
and go out into the field and hunt game for me.
Old Testament, which meant it outranked any rule, law, or policy written by any local, state, or federal government.
Pops had been a fire-and-thunder fundamentalist who loved God and by-god loved to hunt. Dennis remembered the way Pops taught him how to hunt. After training him in the skills of archery, he gave him two arrows and told Dennis not to come home without enough meat for the whole family to eat for a week.
It meant some cold nights huddled together under blankets deep in the woods. Once, Dennis came back empty-handed, starving, frozen to the bone, and desperate. Pops took his bow away, bent him over an upended chair, and beat him with a switch. A sturdy one, because blood was the pathway to righteousness.
Dennis was ten at the time.
Three long days later the boy came staggering back dragging a young doe. Pops stood on the porch, smoking a Pall Mall. He gave Dennis a single nod.
That was the Riley family hunting history. There were a lot of similar chapters to it.
Over time, and as Dennis navigated the polluted waters and tangled jungles of corporate America, he saw the purity of his father’s vision. Faith and redemption at Heaven’s gate was not supposed to be an easy road. And the path was often clouded by lies from the devil’s many agents, and by the subtle corruptions of women who lured men from the truth.
Like the one on the bed now.
Her name was Mary. Everyone in the area called her Mother Mary. It was that nickname that made Dennis focus on her. Mother Mary was the mother of Jesus. This Mary was more like the whore Magdalene. A slut who needed a man to guide her to purity.
There had been others before her, and would be more to come.
