Dinosaur Poop Pop!

I love to celebrate with Vikki on Fridays!
This week I'm trying out a new way to celebrate with...

an Author Exchange Program!

To help promote authors outside the regular circle of bloggers, I'm having a guest author here while I go visit there. This way we reach more people!

Today, I'm exchanging with Curiosity Quills author, Michael Panush! Here he is!

Hi, I'm Michael Panush -- the author of Dinosaur Dust. I really hope you guys check out my 1930s Lost World adventure, Dinosaur Dust.  It's got Nazis, it's got dinosaurs, it's got Golden Age Hollywood -- but if you need more convincing, here are seven reasons why you should check out Dinosaur Dust. 

1. The Setting: Dinosaur Dust is the sequel to Dinosaur Jazz and they both take place on Acheron Island -- a prehistoric Lost World discovered by British explorers in the Late Victorian Age. Acheron Island is a place of mystery, with an unknown origin, strange ruins with odd powers and countless prehistoric inhabitants. There are all sorts of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures as well as the native Ape Men -- a pre-human race that has been subjugated by the British Empire. It's a place where I would like to visit, though maybe not stay too long for fear of being eaten by the dinosaurs.
2. The Times: Dinosaur Jazz showed what Acheron Island in the Twenties was like. With Dinosaur Dust, it's the 1930s and the book features everything fascinating about that era. The grips of the Great Depression, with WWII on the way. Characters are desperate for money and eager to dip into crime and corruption. Forces like the Third Reich and Imperial Japan are also arriving on Acheron Island. Finally, the displeasure at the unfair treatment of workers has spawned a communist movement amongst the Ape Men, back by Soviet Russia's Cominterm, and that leads to some tragic consequences. It's all based on history, but shown in a unique and different way that I hope will lead to some cool stories.
3. The Characters: 
• Norris Hall is a tough former marine, a veteran of Haiti and Nicaragua from a family of Oklahoma Panhandle bootleggers who now makes his living as a bank robber and an enforcer for the Kansas City mob. Hall was fascinating to write because he's brutal, crude, and relies on violence to assert control of a situation. And yet, he has the possibility to become something better. 
• Nathan Whipple is a young pulp writer who has a naive belief in the goodness of the world. 
• Wallace Cai, a Chinese immigrant, has arrived in Acheron Island to create his own brand of martial arts from watching the dinosaurs.
• and May Ito, the daughter of the general commanding the Japanese troops at Acheron's Japanese Embassy.
4. Redemption: I mentioned that Hall is a brutal character. He's a firm believer that only the strong survive. When the novel starts, he's busting out of prison with the warden's prized guard raptors on his trail. Hall destroys them and goes back to his former ways. But while the novel opens with Hall killing some dinosaurs, his time on Acheron Island gives him a chance to turn away from violence, to move away from the trauma of his past and to become something better -- while saving the world and dealing with dinosaurs, of course.
5. Dinosaurs: On Acheron Island dinosaurs roam free and that has changed the world. Dinosaur leather is used to make hatbands, dinosaurs run race tracks, dino-themed restaurants pack Los Angeles -- along with an underground dinosaur-fighting ring run by corrupt LAPD cops -- and some dinosaurs have even become pampered pets. But my favorite dinosaur invention is #6.
   
6. Movie Star Dinosaurs: Why is Hall sent to Acheron Island? He's after Rusty the Raptor, a pampered movie star dinosaur from Hollywood who was mysteriously kidnapped. Old Hollywood has its own kind of intrigue, glamour, and corruption and I loved exploring that through the lens of dino actors.
7. Pulp: Dinosaur Dust is a work of modern pulp, stories that came out in magazines printed on rough pulp paper in the 1920s and 30s, featuring stories of action, crime, mystery and Lost Worlds. H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard wrote these pulp stories and they created characters and stories that have been retold countless times. I love these pulp stories -- but I recognize that they have a lot of dated, racist and imperialist ideals. Dinosaur Dust is an attempt to create a pulp story with a modern sensibility, to take some of those pulp ideas and contrast them with the injustices of history. It's part two in a series that will include installments set in WWII, the Nixon Era 1970s, the cocaine-fueled 80s and the modern age -- showing the effect of history on a Lost World. I do hope you stick around and check out this thoroughly modern pulp adventure.

Michael certainly taught me a few interesting facts! Sounds like a great mix of intrigue, history, and adventure! So glad to have him! Definitely a unique series! Now, here's a little about the author...

At twenty-three, Michael Panush has distinguished himself as one of Sacramento’s most promising young writers. Michael has published numerous short stories in a variety of e-zines. He began telling stories when he was only nine years old. Before graduating high school, Michael won several writing awards and wrote his first novel, Clark Reeper Tales.

Here's a blurb about the second book in Michael's incredible, imaginative adventure series, the Jurassic Club, packed with action, gangsters, raptor movie stars, Nazi agents, loyal triceratops pets, and much more! Dinosaur Dust!

Acheron Island is a land lost to time — a Lost World packed with prehistoric creatures, mysterious ruins, and a race of primitive humans called the Ape Men. In Dinasour Dust, the second book of the series, Acheron Island experiences the tumult of the Twentieth Century, as a prehistoric world is dragged into modernity. Times have changed  and the decadence of the Jazz Age has given way to the desperation of the Depression, as war looms over the horizon.

In a chaotic turn of events, on the other side of the globe, Nathan Whipple, a former tourist on Acheron Island turned aspiring pulp novelist and Norris Hall, an ex-Marine, mob enforcer and bank robber, along with the daughter of a Japanese general and a young Chinese immigrant, become the only hope for Acheron – and for the world.

Dinosaur Dust is available on Amazon

And if you have time, you can visit me at Michael's blog talking about seven things that make Pop Travel POP! Happy Friday!