The dime novel is making a comeback! Originating in the late 19th-century and seeing its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in genres such as the Western, the format became an important influence on the comic book, the radio drama, and the film and television treatment. Today’s “flash novel” is really a new take on an old idea: stories just shy of novelette length, with numbered chapters rather than asterisks, and which, like the movies, compress a narrative otherwise “novelistic” in scope into a short form suitable for a single reading or download.
THE DESERT DIME NOVEL TRILOGY by M.V. Montgomery (forthcoming in 2014)
BOOK 1
Mark Twain in Outer Space is a comic space western featuring a not-so-innocent abroad. It also offers a serious reflection upon the universality of storytelling, and the dangers of getting carried away with the sound of one’s own words.
BOOK 2
The Double Dare Devil features Skip Eubanks, an old cowboy-turned-stuntman who is paralyzed after a fall from a helicopter. His wife Bonnie now runs the business, but something very sinister is happening to the stuntmen she supplies to the studios.
BOOK 3
Trouble in Paradise Valley tells the story of a big budget Hollywood production that somehow survives star egos, several rewrites, and its own faulty premise. But how long can it last when it intrudes onto a site once sacred to Hohokam skywatchers?
