C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas, Issue 4

By C. C. Blake

Rick Cave knows a thing or two about transporting stolen goods, but when he gets hired to run a mission to raid an alien tomb in order to swipe and transport ancient artifacts, he soon finds himself in over his head. Trapped inside the tomb with only a limited amount of time before a double crossing partner strands him on planet, Rick must take the one unexpected way out: He dives head first into the carcinogenic slurries still running like sewage under the long abandoned city on a long abandoned world. His air supply is limited, his options are short, and his time is running out . . .

On the road to his next race, "Burn Job" Finster finds himself in a completely different situation: He goes to a casino satellite to try an beat the house enough to get enough boodle to keep his wheels turning and give him an entry stake. The NASTar Driver is once more out of his elements and in deep trouble when he attracts the wrong kind of attention.

Each issue of C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas offers over 10,000 words of action packed science fiction adventure as well as a candid opinion piece "Blake's Take." This issue continues two of the series he began in the long out of print Android's 2 men's adventure magazine. While the issues build toward an overarching storyline each story stands alone. Therefore each issue is a great entry point.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Sep 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463778388

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).

Book preview

C. C. Blake's Sweaty Space Operas

Issue 4

By: C. C. Blake

Blake's Take

So, this smart ass smuggler/spaceship captain and a NAStar rocketcar jock walk into the pages of a modern pulp magazine . . . I know, I know, you've maybe heard this one before. Three issues before (so far) and now here I am back with a fourth installment. Howdy from the heart of Texas.

Of course, the characters I am writing about aren't all the new (archetypally speaking) but I hope they are different thanks to my own unique perspective on this thing called life and this species called human beings.

So far as I can tell, that's all writers can really aim to do. Bring their personalities and their personal perspectives to the works they write and the stories they tell. Whether readers verbally buy into the English teacher idea that there are only a handful of real plots or the Jungian ideal that archetypes are finite, well we still keep on reading like fools. And why do we do that? What surprises can await us when we know the plots and we know the characters?

We don't know the writers, though. The pieces of story are a lot like LEGOS, they come in little finite morsels that can easily be plugged together. Just about everyone thinks they can make something nifty from the parts. A few writers use the pictorial booklets to build the shapes on the box, others try to go their own way. I like reading the folks who go their own way, more often than not. There is something to be said for comfort reading, but folks who turn mean on a dime or nice on a nickel are the ones who keep my attention pretty strongly. The problem with going your own way (with LEGOS or with writing) is that you sometimes end up with a colorful mess. There may be a few nice pieces in there, a few neat and imaginative spots, but the overall construction is confusing to look at and even more confusing to study. With short fiction, we can move on to the next story. Novels are not so forgiving.

I can only hope that the things I build with my story blocks are interesting. I try to keep the obnoxious block monstrosities out of sight, but there is a heavy duty dose of subjectivity to this relationship between writer and reader. With a pair of story offerings, I am trying to give you the chance to get your feet wet and then move on to the next story if one is not to your favor. If they both aren't your cup of tea, I can only shrug my shoulders and say, Sorry. Maybe the next issue or release will be more to your liking. These magazines or mini-collections are cheaper than most movie tickets, and take about as much time to read, so you won't be out much.

So, this month get ready for another pair of adventures featuring a smuggler and a rocketcar jock. They will be taken away from their comfort zones, and they will be exposed to new threats. I hope you have some fun with these stories of mine . . . I certainly did my best to have fun while I was writing them, and I like to believe they have a bit of my personality to them. I am a romantic some days, and a hardboiled son of a bitch others, so hopefully y'all can forgive my fiction being a bit on the schizoid side.

Blake Out.

Rick Cave and the Royal Flush

You'll have to pardon me if I don't get all the details right, but I have this condition.

Some people have a gift for certain lines of work, and perhaps I am fairly good at going dark at sub-light speeds and eluding patrol ships through hot space lanes, but I don't have the stomach, head, or knack for moving illegal objects out of contested planetoid militarized zones. As I crouched in the vault of the ancient Dripthians, clutching my gut and spitting up blood, I got to realizing I never should have tried