July 25th, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Port Orchard, WA – Adventure game publisher Deep7 Press is teaming up with Waterhaven Media and author E.J. Blaine to bring the first licensed Airship Daedalus novel to the printed page and e-readers around the world.
The novel, Assassins of the Lost Kingdom, is set in an alternate 1926 and follows the adventures of ace pilot Jack McGraw and scientist Dorothy “Doc” Starr, hot on the trail of evil agents murdering prominent captains of industry—a trail that leads them to face an old enemy they thought vanquished. With the backing of Thomas Edison’s A.E.G.I.S. foundation, Jack and Doc use their light reconnaissance airship Daedalus to travel to the Himalayas, where a deeper mystery unfolds. Together with their crewmates (British radioman Edward “Duke” Willis, Bronx mechanic Carl “Rivets” Holloway and Cherokee sharpshooter Charlie “Deadeye” Dalton), they delve into local customs and ancient lore surrounding the “Eye of the World”, a hidden kingdom in the heart of the mountains known as Shambala, where the only antidote to the world’s deadliest poison still grows wild.
“I’ve always loved old pulp era adventure stories,” says Blaine, explaining the impetus behind the book. “A huge chunk of our popular culture comes out of this period and the pulp magazines in particular. So it was a lot of fun to go back and take on the trappings of that world. Besides, I’ve always had a thing for airships…”
Taking place after the events of the comic strip by Todd Downing and Brian Beardsley, E.J. Blaine’s Assassins of the Lost Kingdom incorporates all the elements of the classic adventure pulps: two-fisted heroics, occult mysticism, lost worlds, retro-futurist super-science, and high-flying aerial adventure.
“I really enjoyed playing in Deep7’s sandbox, taking on an existing world and fitting my story ideas into it,” says Blaine, who has written adventure game material for Deep7 in the past, such as Bloode Island XPG and parts of the Red Dwarf RPG line. “…it presents different creative challenges and you find yourself going places you might not have gone on your own.”
Deep7 Press, known in the tabletop adventure game industry as the publisher of Red Dwarf – The Roleplaying Game, the Arrowflight fantasy RPG and the beer-and-pretzels 1PG line, is no stranger to the literary world, having released the firsthand memoir of 1920s radio pioneers The MacDowell Sisters in 2013. However this partnership with Blaine marks the first Airship Daedalus material not authored by original creator Todd Downing.
“It’s kind of amazing, really,” says Downing, “to get caught up in adventures involving my characters that I didn’t write.” Downing, who started developing the property in the late 1980s, has authored four chapters of the comic strip (drawn by Brian Beardsley), numerous short stories, the roleplaying game (plus two supplements) and a dozen radio drama episodes. He has also written a film serial pitch for a live action adaptation of the property. “Blaine really gets pulp. His work exudes an unabashed love for the genre. And he totally gets these characters. I love where he’s taking them.”
Assassins of the Lost Kingdom is set for a November 2016 release in all major e-reader formats and print, with audiobook to follow. The book will be published by Deep7 Press and cross-promoted in various channels by Deep7 and Waterhaven Media.
# # #
The Airship Daedalus intellectual property is managed by Deep7 Press (www.deep7.com), a division of Despot Media, LLC (www.despotmedia.com) in Port Orchard, Washington. All things Airship Daedalus can be found at www.airshipdaedalus.com.
Author E.J. Blaine (www.ejblaine.com) is managed by Waterhaven Media, LLC (www.waterhavenmedia.com) in Reston, Virginia. His short story, Pirate’s Ransom, is available on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.