On May 19th and 20th of 2020, my first Novella and paperback of Tom Darby, "Abducted!" was published by Three Ravens Publishing. This is a rewrite of the original story which was serialized in the last issues of Dragon's Lair and the first issues of Aphelion. Professionally edited by the team at Three Ravens, it is updated and improved over the original online version from 1997. It is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats from Amazon.com.

Included as a bonus in the e-book is a copy of the original online cover art by the late Laura Butler. The audiobook is narrated by Walt Allen.

Clocking in at 85 pages for the e-book and 210 pages for the small-sized paperback, this is the complete novella. Three Ravens has requested more Tom Darby stories, so I am working a series of prequel stories to send to them as soon as I can get Tom up to the point where Abducted begins.

There are also outlines for additional Tom Darby stories which take place after Abducted, as well. Those will come along as soon as the Muse and Time permit, LOL!

On February 4th of 2015, my first collection of Mare Inebrium spaceport bar short stories was orininally published by Dark Oak Press-who have sadly ceased publishing altogether. It has since been re-issued by Three Ravens Publishing on November 23rd of 2023 in a completely re-edited, slightly re-named edition. It is now subtitled "Volume One" with "Volume Two" being written even as this page gets updated. This book is 17 of my own stories, clocking in at roughly 420 pages, and is available in hardback, paperback, and e-book formats from Amazon.com and many other stores as well. Those can be found at Books 2 Read. In addition to the stories, there is an introduction to the series and a time line of all my work that shares the same general background as the spaceport bar stories. In the introduction there's even a small black & white photo of the map I drew of the planet where my stories take place. The cover art for the book was kindly done by the amazing Darrell Osborn. Its editor at Three Ravens was Alyssa Casto.

Do you like adventure stories? Tales of faraway places and unusual people? Ancient history and ultra-modern cities? Locked-room mysteries? Romance? Those "beer and skittles" barroom tall tales narrated by weird and wild aliens? Maybe even a Sherlock Holmes story you've never seen? All this and more can be yours between the covers of this book.

How can I quickly describe my spaceport bar short story series? "Tales From The Mare Inebrium" began as a single sentence I scribbled in a notepad while at work one day in 1979 or so. In 1995 that sentence evolved into a short story. By 1998 that single story had grown into a rapidly expanding shared universe series. Eventually, I had written eight or nine stories in a series that spanned upwards of seventy stories by a dozen or more different writers. Each writer brought something fresh and new to the series. Each writer prompted me to create new stories of my own to expand on the group effort. By the time I found a publisher for my collection, the online series had garnered over two million page hits on my Aphelion Webzine site. My "Tales From The Mare Inebrium" collection features all my own original stories from the series, as well as many more new ones that I wrote expressly for the book. My aim has always been to provide fun tall tales for readers to enjoy. I believe I have succeeded in that goal. So come join us at the bar. Meet Max the head bartender, his girlfriend Trixie and her best friend Blanche who are members of the waitstaff there. Listen to stories told by Kazsh-ak, Hnarcor, Andrew, Jon, and a host of other patrons. Their stories are yours to enjoy, all for the price of a few drinks at your local spaceport bar. So come on in and have a seat, the good times are rolling even as we speak!

In the mid-3100s AD, in the largest city on a planet 65 light years from Earth, there is a bar comfortably close to the spaceport. It hosts hundreds of alien travelers every day, all of whom enjoy their favorite drinks while listening to the occasional tall tale lovingly told by other patrons. Are they true stories? Are they entertaining make-believe? No one knows save the storytellers themselves. So pull up a bar stool, order a drink, and relax while the web of stories is spun in the Mare Inebrium...

The first thing I got paid for was a 1000-word short story in the collection Flash Of Aphelion. That's a Print-On-Demand anthology available from LULU.com. (I've also seen it listed on Amazon.com as well, in very overpriced editions.) Hardbacks, paperbacks, and different e-book versions should be available on Lulu. That book is a wonderful collection of flash fiction stories that were originally  featured as writing contests in the Forums section of Aphelion Webzine. Every writer in the book gets one fair share of the profits from each sale for each story they have in the collection. I have one story, so I get one fair share. Other writers may have two, or three, or more, so they get additional "shares" for each of their stories. There are over 70 stories in the book, each one clocks in at 1000 words, so it is quite a bargain for any reader to buy.

Corner Scribblers Vol. 5
Take Me To Your Reader

The kind folks over at Three Ravens asked me to contribute to one of their quarterly publications, Take Me To Your Reader, Volume 5 of their ongoing quarterly. I was asked to pen the collection's introduction, as well as a short-short story. It was loads of fun, and far too quickly done--I wanted the fun to keep going on! But alas, there was a word limit, so I had to behave.

I am back to work on my steampunk novel. I have, perhaps, a third of it finished in first draft form. There is no timetable for its release, nor has it been submitted to any publisher as of yet. I'll keep you posted when events eventuate. I am also working on a Fantasy novel as well as the Mare Inebrium Volume Two.

Music

Well now, I suppose the question I need to answer is “why should people spend their hard-earned cash on this music?” I mean, really, some old dude dug up a few old recordings of his glory days in a few garage bands from forty years ago. Big deal, right? Well, it's a big deal to me, since I happen to be the old dude in question. And another thing, not all this music is from thirty years ago. Some of the albums are of my present work, composing pieces in computer programs. The Garage Band antiques will be clearly identified in the listings for those CDs. The modern compositions will also be clearly labeled as such.

In fact, my first four album releases are new music composed within the past few years. The most recent three are the garage band recordings.

So why should you invest your hard-earned cash in my amateur music? Well, besides the obvious fact that times are tough on everyone and this is a way for me to earn a few extra dollars. Quite frankly, the music is good. The only complaint I've ever gotten about it is that there aren't any vocals. I find instrumental music to be a good background soundtrack for driving, writing, housework, yard-work, reading, and just about anything else I enjoy doing. Sometimes, you just want to listen to the music, to enjoy the way different instruments blend their sounds together as they create something that is beautiful and pleasing to your senses.

Instrumental music composed entirely within my computer using the MAGIX Music Maker program. This is an exploration of my imagination, using a very versatile music composing program. No two artists would create the same sounds using the same program. This is an example of how I make best use of the program and instrument voices.

This album is a selection of my solo projects from 2011 to the present day. All the songs were composed using MAGIX Music Maker, a computer program that allows me to be musically creative in a whole new way. The program uses loops and clips of recordings of various musical instruments. These can be put together like building blocks to make a complete song. There are thousands of these clips available. I put them together in a series of sequences, somewhat like composing a piece on a loop-based synth. Some pieces are simple, consisting of a mere four or five instrument voices, each with their own sequences. Others are very complex, featuring sixteen or more instrument voices, straight-up synth sequences I created from scratch, sound effects from within the program library, and even special sound effects that I created myself using other audio editing software.

All the music on this album is just me playing with a computer program. No real musicians were harmed in the creation of this album.

I hope you enjoy listening to these songs.

Dan L. Hollifield -- Studio-D

Song List:

1) Atlanta Virtue
2) Nice And Easy Does It
3) Out of The Shadows
4) New World, Old Worlds
5) WTF? Rednecks Can't Groove!
6) Never Bank On A Learning Curve
7) Slow Dance With The Woman I Love
8) Drifting Along With The Clouds Again
9) How Deep, The Universe? Infinite Beauty It Holds...
10) Rush Hour Traffic - Don't Get In My Way!
11) Love Is The Only Key
12) Somewhat Lighter Shade Of Fail
13) Faster Than Light Is The Only Way To Fly
14) Fanfare For The Common Fen

My second album. It has 15 songs, with a total run time of 68 minutes. The album was just released on September 25th of 2013. The digital downloads on my Bandcamp page are already live!

I had a few songs left over from the first album, so I got to work writing enough new ones to fill a second album. In less than a month, I was ready to go. I really burned the midnight oil to get these ready in time. As always, the mixing and editing were the hardest parts of the process. The mix of different styles is even more striking on this album. Some day I'll have to do an album in a single style, just to see if I can.

01) Highly Energetic Particles Boogie
02) Nwarlens Mud
03) Brave New Worlds Around Each Star
04) Vortex Manipulator
05) Tickle Me, Eno!
06) Quittin' Time - Baby Wants Me Home
07) Whatever...
08) Daytona Boardwalk
09) Supermoon 03b
10) Nature Walk
11) Vienna Cowboys
12) Chill, Dude...
13) Set This Place On Fire!
14) You Asked For It, Now Open Up Wide!
15) Hold My Beer And Watch This Stuff!

"The Displaced Detective Suite" is an album of instrumental music inspired by Stephanie Osborn's series of Displaced Detective novels. It is somewhat similar to my steampunk "Airships Suite" in tone, being a mix of orchestral and rock, with electronica and sound effects tossed into the mix. Quite possibly some of the most beautiful music I have composed so far. The album has been under construction since June of 2013. The cover art, done specifically for this album by Darrell Osborn, is quite lovely.

There is also a bonus track included with the Bandcamp full album downloads, and as being the free preview track on the Create Space site. This isn't really part of the album. It's a unique, stand-alone piece that I wanted to do the whole time I was writing the rest of the music. I kept hearing this in my head as I put all the other music together. Finally, Stephanie and I managed to find a way to make it happen.

"Rescue At Reichenbach Falls" is an 18-minute re-edit of the instrumental track "Rescue At The Falls." It includes clips from a public domain radio play from the 1950s based on "The Final Problem" by Arthur Conan Doyle. These clips feature Sir John Gielgud as Holmes, and Orson Welles as Moriarty. And as an extra special treat, Stephanie Osborn making her voice acting debut as her character Skye Chadwick!

Only the voice acting clips are from the radio play. All the other audio SFX were assembled by myself from various online public domain sound effects libraries. Stephanie recorded her part from a script I wrote that adapts dialog from her novels.

Song List:

01) Indistinguishable From Magic
02) Rescue at the Falls
03) Meditations of a Displaced Detective in the Key of A Minor
04) Unlimited Skye
05) Highly Energetic Particles Boogie
06) I Thought It Was A UFO
07) Race Against Time
08) Tesseract
09) Moriarty
10) Two Become One
BONUS TRACK: Rescue At Reichenbach Falls

OK, this is a sort of Coming Soon section of this page. As new albums are released, they'll move up the page to be highlighted. At the moment, I have eleven or more unreleased albums in the works. They are:

Keep the dream alive. Follow your dreams! More updates as they happen,

And as always, my entire catalog of music can be previewed for free on my Bandcamp page.