When a full moon fills the night sky, Private Investigator Roman Dalton becomes a werewolf and prowls The City’s neon and blood-soaked streets. Stories by Allan Leverone, K A Laity, Jason Michel, B R Stateham, Graham Wynd, Katherine Tomlinson, Julia Madeleine, John Donald Carlucci, Richard Godwin. Based on characters created by Paul D. Brazill.
Drunk On The Moon is currently FREE at Amazon.co.uk and every other Amazon, except the river.
When a full moon fills the night sky, Private Investigator Roman Dalton becomes a werewolf and prowls The City‘s neon and blood soaked streets. There are six Roman Dalton Yarns written by Paul D. Brazill in this short collection.
You can currently grab it for FREE from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca , Amazon.com.au and the rest!
Well, Supernatural Noir was published a couple of days ago on Halloween and it’s all happening!
Graham Wynd kicks off #Noirvember with a look at Supernatural Noir and says:
‘I didn’t even know how much I missed Roman Dalton, his werewolf detective, until I started reading through the stories again. Netflix ought to swoop in and bag those stories for a new series.’
Meanwhile, over at Unlawful Acts, David Nemeth says:
‘If you like reading Brazill–and who doesn’t–, you should give this short story collection a twirl because it’s Brazill and there are zombies. Oh yeah, get it because it’s going for a little over a buck.’
Dee Arr at Amazon.com says:
‘This is crime noir with a bite (my apologies to all vampire and werewolf fans), and the combination of Mr. Brazill’s talents hooked me. Riveted, I finished the rest of the book in one sitting, never noticing the day arrive while my coffee grew colder.’
And I’m over at Toe Six Press sharing the Supernatural Noir playlist:
‘Supernatural Noir is collection of my short stories that I consider to be both supernatural and, er, noir. And of course, there’s music all over the place!
Drunk On The Moon by Tom Waits
It started with a song. Tom Waits’ Drunk On The Moon, to be precise. A neon soaked torch song with more than a twist of noir. A song of the city at night, sung by a man who sounded like a wolf- and not just Howlin’ Wolf. And once upon a time, there was a magazine named Dark Valentine who were looking for cross genre short stories. So, I wrote a yarn about a werewolf private eye. And I called it Drunk On The Moon.’
Werewolves, vampires and other creatures of the night prowl the neon and blood soaked streets in this sharp short story collection that places the supernatural in a hardboiled noir world.
“If you like noir then you’ll love this. If you like supernatural fiction you’ll love this. If you like great descriptive prose you’ll love this.”
— Darren Sant, author of Tales From The Longcroft Estate
You can grab Supernatural Noir from Amazon.com, Amazon UK and loads of other joints.
Werewolves, vampires and other creatures of the night prowl the neon and blood soaked streets in this sharp short story collection that places the supernatural in a hardboiled noir world.
“If you like noir then you’ll love this. If you like supernatural fiction you’ll love this. If you like great descriptive prose you’ll love this.” – Darren Sant.
Pre- order SUPERNATURAL NOIR now at a SPECIAL REDUCED PRICE.
And it’s also available at Amazon Canada, Australia etc.
CONTENTS
The Liberator, The Stamp Of A Vamp, The Endless Sleep
Spectres, Drunk On The Moon, The Missionary, Black Moon Rising, The Brain Salad Murders, She’s My Witch, The Neon Boneyard.
Over at Amazon.co. uk, Chloë Yates reviews DRUNK ON THE MOON: A ROMAN DALTON ANTHOLOGY and says:
‘Cracking stuff. You won’t be sorry, but you will be throughly entertained.’
And Tom Leins takes a gander at THE NEON BONEYARD: A ROMAN DALTON YARN and says:
‘The Neon Boneyard is a snarling supernatural crime yarn from Brit-grit power player Paul Brazill. The plot is enjoyably chaotic, the wisecracks come thick and fast, and the pop-culture references are chewed up and spat out with admirable gusto. Good fun!’
The legendary Will ‘The Thrill’ Viharo interviews me over at Digital Media Ghost. I talk about genre hybrids, noir and more.
The search was invariably fruitless.
The path was cluttered with the debris of the past.
The parade of childhood humiliations always led him down blind alleys.
Religion and psychoanalysis failed.
Rationalism was but a damp squib.
Travel to foreign lands yielded nothing but more sores to scratch.
Satiation, indulgence, rather than healing his scars, only lacerated him more.
And then a chance encounter in a snow-smothered car park, as the night creaked into morning, brought a flash of anger.
The slash of a knife.
And release.
For a time.
Until the scars slowly returned.
And he killed again.
And again.
***
Another long hot summer had cast dark, elongated shadows that smothered The City’s pitch black secrets. As the sweltering, hazy days stretched out to snapping point, those secrets were jolted into the glare of light.
At times like these, being a private eye, especially a werewolf private eye, could take its toll. Which is why the womb of Duffy’s Bar was always so comforting.
“ The Professor’ss back,” I said to Duffy, who was clearing up the previous night’s debris.
I sipped a shot of Dark Valentine, rubbed my tired, red eyes. I ached for sleep.
I ached from the previous night’s prowl, too. I’d had a scuffle with Brother Cage, the leader of one of the many crackpot religions that were infecting The City. I’d managed to take out a few of his henchmen before ripping him to shreds, but they’d got in a few good shots themselves.
Duffy stopped mopping the beer and bloodstained floor. Leaned the mop against the bar.
“You sure?” he said. He scratched his acne-scarred face.
I grunted.
“Oh, yes. It’s him. Unless there’s a copycat killer. But according to Ivan, six corpses have been found with the brains scooped out. Presumably eaten by the killer,” I said.
Detective Ivan Walker was my former partner. Back in the days before I’d been afflicted by full moon fever.
“All rich old men between the ages of seventy-five and eighty?” said Duffy.
“Yep. They fit The Professor’s MO, alright. The only difference is that these guys had been ripped to shreds first.”
Duffy slammed a heavy fist against the side of the Wurlitzer jukebox. Stepped back behind the bar. Poured himself a shot of Dark Valentine.
Knocked it back. Poured another. A Julie London song about black coffee oozed through the room.
“How long is it since he went AWOL?” said Duffy, as he looked up at the plasma television screen that he’d recently installed in an attempt to bring in new customers.
An attempt that had pretty much failed.
Apart from me, the only other customer was a thick-set old man in a double-breasted pinstripe suit. He’d been nursing a pint of Guinness for over an hour and didn’t seem in any hurry to finish it. A typical Monday afternoon, then.
The flickering TV showed an old black and white Tarzan film that had been colourised. I growled in disapproval.
“The Prof hasn’t been seen for five years. Same time as The Brain Salad Murders stopped,” I said.
The press had given the murders a typically colourful name, as if they weren’t lurid enough. Murders were ten a penny in The City, of course, but these caused a stir like no other.
The fact that the victims were all powerful, rich, old blokes probably had a lot to do with that. Every one was a big shot. Bankers, judges, media moguls. Even Police Commissioner O’ Neil. Every cop in The City had been told to make it a priority. And let every other one of The City’s crime victims help themselves.
Professor Galimova – a nutjob that had been fired from The City University for “an undisclosed matter” – sent a letter to The City Gazette confessing to the crimes and saying that he was on a mission to harvest The City’s corrupt souls. But, shortly afterwards, the murders suddenly stopped and it was assumed that Galimova had been killed. Until now.
I rubbed my eyes again. Yawned.
***
The beast roared and shards and slivers of pain sliced through his flesh.
The slivers became a throb. And the throb faded to silence.
A stillness consumed him.
A calming darkness.
And the sea of sleep enfolded him.
Until the chill night, when bathed in the milk of the moon, he raged.
And he roared.
***
“Duffy, can I have the key to the back room? I’ll be canoodling with Morpheus any minute,” I said.
“Sure.” He handed me the big brass key.
Duffy’s spare room was Spartan, to say the least. A simple single bed. A table. A chair. And a bottle of Dark Valentine. I opened the bottle and took a swig, switched off the light and plonked down onto the bed.
I could hear an Al Green tune playing in the bar and was heading into the void when I heard a voice.
“Perhaps you would like a bedtime story, Detective Dalton.”
I wrenched my eyes open. Let them adjust to the dark.
Sat at the table was the old guy from the bar. He poured a shot of DV into a tumbler and sipped.
“My name is Professor Galimova. I believe that you are aware of my reputation?”
“Yeah, and you look kinda familiar,” I said, sitting up.
I held out my hand and he passed me the bottle of booze.
“Well, that’s nice to know. I’m sure you have infected many since your transformation. I assumed we’d all blurred into one.”
“We …?”
I took a swig of DV.
“Oh,” I said, twigging what the Prof was talking about.
“Yes, ‘oh’,” said The Professor, with a smirk.
“When?”
“Six months ago, of course. I was about to harvest your old friend Ton Ton Philippe, in fact, when I was set upon by a wild beast. You.”
“So that’s why you stopped …”
“Harvesting? Yes.”
“And now you’re back?”
“Indeed. I tried to cleanse myself of your disease, but to no avail. So I accepted that the affliction is, in fact, a gift and decided to return to The City to continue my work. But with an added strength when the moon is full, of course.”
He chuckled.
“So, cheers to you, Detective Dalton,” he said. He finished off his drink.
“Na zdrowia,” I said.
I took another mouthful of DV.
The Professor grinned, stood and walked out the door.
So, the worst serial killer in The City’s history was back. Stronger and more powerful than ever. And I was responsible.
I shuffled my stiff body off the bed and prepared to follow Galimova, but then I thought of the particular demographic of The Professor’s victims.
The crème de la crème here in The City. They’d be sitting ducks for a werewolf serial killer, for sure.
And then I lay back down and went to sleep.
***
The City’s neon-drenched, sin-soaked streets and alleyways called to him.
The silver moon sang a seductive refrain.
And The Professor was again consumed with a hunger.
A hunger for the corrupt.
THE END
(c) Paul D. Brazill
Over at Amazon.com, she says:
This is Paul D Brazill at his best; the humour is just tongue in cheek but the descriptive prose is perfection. It is so atmospheric it appeals to all the senses; I swear that there was one moment when I could even smell the cigarette smoke curling into the air of the bar (that I looked around the room for some evidence of it). This is a Roman Dalton anthology which begins with the Brazill ‘Drunk on the Moon’, a zombie/werewolf collection. If you read any of this book, you must read the first especially if you are a writer, a would-be writer or a ‘wish I was’ a writer – here is the first lesson. Had me totally intrigued just from the exquisite prose, the story is merely incidental. His dedication, however, to women with red lipstick is as cameo as Hitchcock’s appearance in his own films, if you read enough of his books you’ll know what I mean. Excellent! Pat McDonald British Crime Author.
Over at Dana King’s One Bite At A Time blog, I talk about Big City Blues, crime fiction, Roman Dalton, Near To The Knuckle, living in Poland and more!
The first Roman Dalton – Werewolf PI yarn, Drunk On The Moon, has been translated into Polish by Aneta Uszyńska.
Check out NA KSIĘŻYCOWEJ BANI – PAUL D. BRAZILL (PRZEŁ. ANETA USZYŃSKA ) over at POLSKI NOIR.
And you can still get any number of Roman Dalton yarns over at Amazon, in English and even in Slovene.
PDB: What’s going on now?
I’m kind of busy at the moment; some of the time constraints are good, but some bad. I’m writing the second in a new series featuring a female investigator called Tess Grey, and her sidekick, Nicolas “Po” Villere, who is an ex-con, and have to have it ready before the end of next March. My wife is suffering with her back, and has done for months, and is due surgery in a few days time, so a lot of my spare time is being eaten into with hospital trips etc. Other than that, I’ve two new books on the shelves this month, with Blood Tracks out in the UK from Severn House Publishers, and the latest Joe Hunter thriller, The Lawless Kind, finally coming out in the USA from Down and Out Books on 16th November, so I’m busy promoting both.
PDB: How did you research your latest book?
Blood Tracks is set partly in Maine and partly in Louisiana. I haven’t been to either state, so have relied a lot on what I’ve read. Luckily I’m a fan of John Connolly, James Lee Burke and J.A. (Jack) Kerley so have had plenty literary inspiration.
PDB: Which of your publications had been the most successful?
On paper it’s probably my first Joe Hunter novel, Dead Men’s Dust, which was a Sunday Times best seller, a Daily Telegraph thriller of the year 2009, shortlisted for the ITW new thriller award 2009, and a Kindle Top 10 best seller in 2013. But I’d like to think my most successful novel is yet to come so keep working at it.
PDB: What’s your favourite film/ book/ song/ television programme of 2015?
I haven’t been to the cinema this year, but have caught up on a number of movies on DVD etc, and am unsure if I’m being current or not when saying I thoroughly enjoyed “The Conjuring” and “Annabel” as a spooky double bill. I do love a creepy horror movie.
I really enjoyed “No One Gets Out Alive” by Adam Neville. Neville writes the kind of seriously creepy horror that I aspire to.
Music, I recently discovered JD McPherson and loved his song Scratching Circles (though I’m sure it was recorded a few years ago now).
TV, I love The Blacklist, Banshee, and The Walking Dead equally.
PDB: Is location important to your writing?
As long as I’m sitting in front of my computer I’m good, but it’s usually in my living room at home, with the Jeremy Kyle on TV blaring behind me for background ambience, and my two dogs around my feet.
PDB: What’s next?
Blood Tracks 2 (for want of a better title) is the book I’m currently writing, but I’ve got a few projects in mind begging to get started. I’ve also recently finished writing Joe Hunter 11 – No Safe Place – so foresee some work to do on that before it finally hits the shelves. There’s also a stand-alone suspense novel I’m jumping back and forward into during down time, and have ideas for a new horror novel, so plenty to keep me busy.
Bio: Matt Hilton quit his career as a police officer to pursue his love of writing tight, cinematic American-style thrillers. He is the author of the high-octane Joe Hunter thriller series, including his most recent novel ‘The Devil’s Anvil’ – Joe Hunter 10 – published in June 2015 by Hodder and Stoughton. His first book, ‘Dead Men’s Dust’, was shortlisted for the International Thriller Writers’ Debut Book of 2009 Award, and was a Sunday Times bestseller, also being named as a ‘thriller of the year 2009’ by The Daily Telegraph. Dead Men’s Dust was also a top ten Kindle bestseller in 2013. The Joe Hunter series is widely published by Hodder and Stoughton in UK territories, and by William Morrow and Company and Down and Out Books in the USA, and have been translated into German, Italian, Romanian and Bulgarian. He has a new series beginning with Blood Tracks, featuring investigator Tess Grey, to be published by Severn House Publishers in November 2015. As well as the Joe Hunter and Tess Grey series’, Matt has been published in a number of anthologies and collections, and has published novels in the supernatural/horror genre, namely ‘Preternatural’, ‘Dominion’, ‘Darkest Hour’ and ‘The Shadows Call’. He is currently working on the next Tess Grey novel, as well as a stand-alone suspense thriller.
@MHiltonauthor
‘On this episode, Scott Detrow gets his werewolf voice on as he reads “Drunk on the Moon” by Paul D. Brazill.’
Thanks to Scott Detrow and Erik Arneson for this great interpretation of the first Roman Dalton Yarn:
