Summertime, and the living is sleazy.

Every year around this time, I start making excuses here for how my blog output dramatically slows down in the summer. I usually have a steep and worrisome drop-off from my usual breakneck pace of, oh, significantly less than one post per week. This summer is… absolutely no different. I’m going to try very, very hard to create some actual worthwhile content here between now and September (there are hundreds of cheeseball eighties videos and old Jem! episodes just crying out to be analyzed in depth!), but I promise nothing.

Site news! First up: If you’re Johnny-on-the-spot enough to read this post today or tomorrow, you can head over to Amazon and snatch up a few e-books published by my publishing company, Luft Books, for free. Among the offered books is my supernatural thriller DEMON CITY, which the very kind Sharon Hood at the Masquerade Crew reviewed thusly: “This book was gripping. There's no other word for it. ... This is a great supernatural fantasy. I loved it. It's intelligent without the need to check the dictionary for unfamiliar terms, witty without being stupid or low-brow in nature. Altogether a great read.” I am tremendously biased, but I agree with Hood’s expert opinion 100%.

There’s also my YA fantasy, PREPPIES OF THE APOCALYPSE (the book is the inspiration for the name of this site, not the other way around). PREPPIES has seen a sorry, soggy amount of sales, but I’m nonetheless very proud of it. Boys in school uniforms fighting off vicious supernatural creatures in a post-apocalyptic wasteland! Telepathic cockroaches! Glass dragons! What’s not to like about that? Get it for free today.

Finally, Luft is also offering free e-book copies of Evan Allen’s FOUR EMPERORS, a steamy, sexy, gay supernatural thriller. Here’s the publisher’s blurb: When a young waiter at Seattle’s hottest nightclub vanishes, Alex Lin—private eye by day, reckless party boy by night—goes undercover to find him. After Alex clashes with the club’s sinister yet seductive owner, Daniel Bitter, he gets swept into a tangled tale that began two thousand years ago in ancient China, then finds himself caught in the middle of a no-holds-barred grudge match between a quartet of super-powered siblings and their shadowy foe. As Alex starts to fall hard for prime suspect Daniel, his increasingly messy and chaotic personal life threatens to bring his entire investigation crashing down around him. Devan Huff at Nautical Star Books calls FOUR EMPERORS  “…a nice blend of mystery, paranormal, and romance that was incredibly well written and grabbed me from the very beginning of the story ... The writing was wonderful, the plot engaging, and the mystery of who is who really grabbed my attention.”

(It cannot possibly come as a surprise to anyone here to discover that I’m Evan Allen, right?)

I’m working on a huge new project for Luft, though it’ll probably be close to the end of the year, at the earliest, before I have anything to show for it. I’m writing and drawing a graphic novel, GLITTER PRINCES, about a quintet of glamorous, mercurial, self-destructive spies, set in an exotic and ever-changing Nagel-esque 1980s setting. Here’s my concept art. Similarities between Sebastian, Etienne, Marcel, Rob, and Smitty and the members of a certain wildly popular 1980s pop group are most definitely all in your head.

In other news: Huh, that ill-advised Heroes Reborn series really does seem to be a thing, huh? Even though I wrote about, oh, a gajillion words on this site about the original series, I can’t imagine watching the updated version, much less recapping it here. And that’s despite news of the return of some once-beloved characters, played by some of my favorite actors. Sendhil Ramamurthy! Masi Oka! Jack Coleman! Jimmy Jean-Louis! Not even that cluster of handsome and talented fellows can suck me back into the Heroes abyss. Fool me once, Tim Kring. Fool me once.

Just as an aside: Dylan Bruce—Big Dick Paul on Orphan Black, and that hapless and kind of sleazy district attorney on Season Two of Arrow—has also joined the cast of Heroes Reborn. There’s no word yet on what character he’s going to play, but damn, doesn’t he look like he could be a Petrelli?

Arrow’s done for the season. For me, after that thuddingly wretched finale, it’s done forever. I’ve compiled all my illustrated recaps of Season Three into one mammoth, epic PDF, which you’re free to read or download. The link’s at the bottom of the page here.  In the coming days, I might do an Arrow postmortem here in an attempt to analyze where things went so horribly wrong.

Speaking of Arrow, here’s a bizarre yet somehow glorious video of the fabulous John Barrowman serenading Colton Haynes with a heartfelt rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted To You.” In a men’s bathroom. As Willa Holland—Thea—looks on. While Colton stands at a urinal and just tries to quietly pee while wondering how his life ever got so weird. I suspect those Arrow cast members are unfathomably kinky in real life, and bless them for it.

That’s all I’ve got. Be well, everyone, and have an amazing summer.