2/1/19 - It may be cheating to alter the subject of my entry here, but I couldn’t seem to start a new thread on Announcements, so apologies all around if this is poor forum etiquette. Here’s part of my original post:
Hello, all! I’m Amarok59, aka Michael D. Winkle. Not new here, but not seen in a long while. I’ve had, in my spotty career, about 30 short stories and articles published professionally, including “Origins” (Gods with Fur) and “Hoodies and Horses” (Dogs of War). After 20 years of having my book length works rejected (not even rejected really; all the agents and publishers say they have too many writers to handle as it is), I decided to go the Amazon Kindle route.
[b]2/1/19 - I have just published the first two volumes of a trilogy I call The Ultimate Alpha on Amazon Kindle. The first volume, Endangered Species, is supposedly made from several issues of a fantasy fanzine bound together. The narrative is composed of the stories, letters and essays within the 'zines. “Origins” and “Hoodies and Horses” are contained within the “issues”. (The book is dedicated to Fred Patten, who saw fit to publish both.) In Endangered, the editors of the fanzine accept and print stories from people all over the country, and they slowly come to realize that a) the story themes all seem to be related to anthropomorphic animals and werewolves, b) the stories are not fiction, and c) The various strange creatures are being reported closer and closer to their publishing headquarters!
In Volume Two, The Ultimate Alpha, an ancient secret society comes to believe Rex Gardner, an ordinary twenty-something young man, is a messiah of nature they have awaited for thousands of years. With him as their living standard, they intend to come out of hiding and conquer the world. Unfortunately, the “Ultimate Alpha” must live as man and beast, so Rex is transformed into a wolf in a rather painful and spectacular fashion. Rex escapes – but how can he elude – let alone defeat – this Illuminati-like organization while trapped in animal form?
Read more about Endangered Species here: http://www.fantasyworldproject.com/Endangered_Species.html
Read more about The Ultimate Alpha here: http://www.fantasyworldproject.com/wolfbg.html
Now back to our scheduled post:[/b]
My newest effort is almost ready to upload. I’ve always been interested in Griffins, but, growing up, all I ever found, pretty much, was the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle from Alice in Wonderland. There seemed to be little about the lion-eagles even in myth and legend. So I dedicated myself to writing fiction and digging up trivia about them.
Now I’m assembling everything in The Eyrie: A Book of Gryphons. I’ll add more details soon on my web-page, The Fantasy World Project: http://www.fantasyworldproject.com/index.html.
Not to mention my Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Winkle/e/B079R88MNN/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1533097429&sr=8-2
And finally, a quote from the Introduction:
“Gryphons appear in folktales, rumors, and myths that touch upon Greek, Russian, Indian, Mongolian, and Chinese legend without belonging wholly to any culture. Perhaps these are the merest tatters of an ancient tapestry of gryphon-tales. Let us track down some of these half-remembered legends, and along the way we might just discover more modern manifestations of these wondrous bird-beasts.”