C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas, Issue 2

By C. C. Blake

Rick Cave is rolling on the floor of Svetlana's with a gut full of buckshot: An AstroNazi farewell. He's not done yet. The bastards should have killed him if they knew what was good for them. Now, he's hot on their trail. He will venture into the cut shop known as the bondage pits to get the gal out. "The Beauty Snatchers" promises danger, action, and a touch of romance in the classic spirit of the old pulps.

The next step in Finster's journey to smash up der Fuhrer's ownership of the NAStar racing circuit takes him to a special track where anything and everything can happen. Flamethrower robots, teleportation panels, and more obstacles await him on the track. Off of it, the minions of Fuhrer Brett's favored racer, the one and only Space Pimp have more threats and challenges in store for the racer. "Burn Job and the Space Pimp's Wrath" continues Finster's adventures around the space lanes!

In these two stories, C. C. Blake continues his series of pulpy space adventure! Each issue of C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas offers 10,000+ words of features telling tales about far futures from a ground level perspective. No space knights, no untarnished nobles, no interstellar orders battling resistances: These stories are about high tech low lives, the working class Joes and Janes who find themselves cast into sometimes grim and often grimy worlds overflowing with trouble and danger. Join the adventure!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Jul 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463550793

C. C. Blake

C.C. Blake has lived across the United States, starting in the suburbs of Detroit, to Massachusetts’ second largest city (Worcester) to the country’s seventh largest city (San Antonio, Texas, that is). He’s has a variety of jobs, working as a substitute teacher, the graveyard shift dishwasher at a haunted Denny’s, lab research monkey and teaching assistant at a second tier college. Currently, he works as an automation consultant for a chemical company on the Northeast side of SAtown (which isn’t as Hellish as it sounds). Blake’s most popular character, irrepressible adventurer Chuck Cave, has appeared in over two dozen stories, including the 2005 Man’s Story 2 Story of the Year Award winner “Chuck Cave and the Vanishing Vixen.” The character’s supernatural thriller stories (which began with the seminal “Cave and the Vamp”) are all being released as a part of Vampires2.com’s initial foray into e-books. These new versions are presented in expanded and revised versions, all are the author’s preferred texts. Be sure to collect them all! In addition to his pulp stories for the 2-Empire (Man’s Story 2, Vampires 2, Androids 2 and Paranormal Romance 2), Blake’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Unparalleled Journeys II (from Journey Books Publishing) and Fearology: Terrifying Tales of Phobias (from Library of Horror Press).

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C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas

Volume 2

By: C. C. Blake

Blake's Take

We are living in a world devoid of a little bit of color, right now. It might not seem like it, but since my first issue hit the world a huge tragedy befell the reading world. Harlan Ellison is with us no more. I knew him only through convention appearances, can't say much about the man himself. However, his fiction was a well-loved treat. I particularly loved the juvenile delinquent stories in The Deadly Streets or Gentleman Junkie and Other Tales of the Hung Up Generation and the stuff he wrote in his collections like No Doors, No Windows or the two volumes of Honorable Whoredom at a Penny a Word. Less fantastique and more about the gritty grotty day-to-day stuff. The low lives and the gangs . . . It left a mark on my own work.

Of course, his speculative fiction is pretty dynamite, too. A Boy and His Dog is one of those novellas that is impossible to forget, and the source for a challenging yet fun flick. Subterranean Press just released the long awaited Blood's A Rover, which combines the novella as well as additional Vic and Blood material, including the script for a pilot to a seventies post-apocalyptic television series that never came to be. I just finished reading the thing, and it's a hell of a story. What's more, I think Don Johnson (who played the boy Vic in the original movie) is just old and witty enough to be the antagonist in the screenplay, if it were to be made today. He slipped right into the casting in my mind's eye and it would be a hell of a thing to see on Netflix or the big screen.

Ellison's screenplays are little gems, really. Reading them is little different than reading his fiction. The images are solidly realized, the emotions are honest, and the tales themselves are one hell of a lot of fun.

Ladies and gentlemen, a write has left the world. His epitaph is already making the circuit about how he was here for a time and for a time he mattered, but that's so much horsehockey. He continues to matter, living through his own works as well as the works of those he inspired. A giant, despite being the self-described little man. Farewell, Uncle Harlan.

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Before jumping off into the idea of publishing a monthly like Sweaty Space Operas, I had to make sure I had some stories in check. The content for the first six issues are pretty well set at this point. Some minor tweaking and whatnot will come into play, but the stories themselves are done, and the sixth issue is going to be an extra-long issue complete with a novel that brings some of my characters together.

When I was going through the old manuscripts, I found some things that needed to be changed. IN the case of the second Rick Cave story, it was the entire damned story that needed to change. When I was writing these things for the magazines who were demanding them, I played around a bit to keep my edge sharp. In the case of The Beauty Snatchers (apologies to Jack Finney), I told the story from the third person. All the other Rick Cave material as well as most of the other Cave material (Chuck Cave and the World War II stuff) were