by Randy Nargi
The Land of Enchantment Series
Shadow of the Lizard
Coming Soon:
Dark Matter
The Hidden Legion
For more information, visit
landenchantment.com
Advance Praise for the LAND OF ENCHANTMENT Series
“An intriguing tale of mystery and monsters in the Land of Enchantment… I’m hooked already!”
—Ben Radford, author of SCIENTIFIC PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION and TRACKING THE CHUPACABRA
“A great, fast read! The first installment in what promises to be a very cool thriller/sci-fi series. Nargi’s characters are well drawn, and the setting—a desert mountain wilderness near Albuquerque, New Mexico—forms the perfect backdrop as tension builds and mayhem ensues. What’s lurking in the crags and recesses of the Sandia Peak Wilderness? The mystery deepens with each succeeding page, and I want to know more. Can’t wait for the next installments.”
—Ken Bennett, author of THE GAIA WARS series
SHADOW OF THE LIZARD
Part 1
by Randy Nargi
Edited by Barbara Bigelow
Bogwood Films
bogwood.com
landenchantment.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Bogwood
Copyright 2011 by Bogwood Films, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, translating, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Acknowledgments
I want to express my thanks to all the “beta readers,” as well as to the contemporary authors (folks like Charles Ardai, James Rollins, Matthew Reilly, Douglas Preston, Brad Thor, Bob Mayer, and Paul Malmont) who are keeping the pulp adventure spirit alive.
Thank you for supporting my work.
Randy Nargi
Albuquerque, New Mexico
December 2011
P.S. Although the manuscript for SHADOW OF THE LIZARD was carefully proofread and professionally edited by the talented and eagle-eyed Ms. Barbara Bigelow, some last-minute revisions may have introduced a typo or two. I hope these don’t diminish your enjoyment of the story in any way. If you are the kind of person who enjoys collecting these “bugs,” please feel free to email them to me. Any errors you discover will be corrected in future editions:
www.landenchantment.com/about/contact/
Author’s Note
If you wanted to experience an adventure story in the 1930s or 1940s, you had just a few choices. You could pick up a “pulp” magazine for ten or fifteen cents—published by a company like Street & Smith or Ziff-Davis and featuring a hero like Doc Savage or The Shadow. Or you could pop into your local movie theater and watch a cliffhanger serial like Flash Gordon, Spy Smasher, or Tarzan from a studio like Republic Pictures or Universal. Serials often were adapted for newspaper comics and radio plays as well.
Although both the pulp magazine and the cliffhanger serial movie became extinct several decades before I was born, I was drawn to these genres in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That’s when I came across the Bantam paperback editions of the Doc Savage stories. I also discovered Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, two films that, according to creator George Lucas, were inspired by classic serial adventure films.
As I planned my first novel, I thought about combining the fast pace and thrills of the pulp adventure story with the episodic nature of the old movie serials. The result would be a pulp-inspired adventure story that was told in episodes: a serial novel.
Serialized novels aren’t new; they’ve been around for a long time, going back to the Arabian Nights stories, the tales of Charles Dickens, and the many adventures of Sherlock Holmes. More recent examples of serialized novels include Tom Wolfe’s 1987 bestseller, The Bonfire of the Vanities (which was first published in 27 episodes in Rolling Stone magazine), and Stephen King’s The Green Mile (which sold over 18 million copies of six thin paperback installments in the late 1990s). At that time, King’s publishers struggled with the logistics of issuing a new episode every month. They also struggled with pricing, initially proposing a fee of $7 for each short episode—the same price as a traditional paperback at that time. King and his people were able to convince the publisher to go with the more affordable price of $3 per episode.
Today with e-books, distribution is a snap. And pricing each episode at 99 cents actually makes them more affordable than the old pulps were back in the 1940s. (A fifteen-cent pulp from 1946 would cost $1.81 in today’s dollars.)
So here we are: a modern series of pulp-inspired adventures, told roughly 10,000 words at a time, utilizing several classic storytelling ideas in a new way. It’s called the LAND OF ENCHANTMENT series, and it features a very unconventional protagonist exploring the unknown in what’s arguably the most mysterious place on earth: New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment.
Some beta readers have noticed that SHADOW OF THE LIZARD reads like a fast-paced action adventure movie. This is purely intentional; in fact, the story began its life as a screenplay that I hope to produce as an independent film very soon (or at least as soon as I can obtain financing). The aforementioned short film is a preview of the feature.
for Jessi
1
September 11th. Sandia Mountain Foothills. Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Dusk comes slowly to the high desert foothills of the Sandia Mountains on the edge of Albuquerque. This part of the city is situated at one of the highest elevations in the country—a thousand feet higher than Denver. The mountains loom up another mile beyond that, topping out at over 10,000 feet at the summit.
The Navajo people who originally lived in the area called these dramatic granite cliffs Dzi Naayizi, which means “spinning mountain” or “mountain that moves around.” Later, the Hispanic settlers who came to Albuquerque in the 16th century referred to the mountains as Sierra Sandia or “watermelon mountains”—possibly due to the brilliant pink hue they take on at dusk.
For Rob and Justin—two twenty-something coworkers at Jiffy Lube who ducked out early from work on this particular afternoon—the foothills of the Sandias are a rugged playground with over 100 miles of trails, perfect for mountain biking. Not a lot of hikers at this hour, but plenty of twisting downhill runs through boulder-strewn paths that wind their way through patches of chamisa bushes.
The air is just barely starting to cool as the sun drifts behind some late summer clouds. Rob and Justin skid their bikes down a rocky slope, whooping their heads off. They find themselves at the trickiest part of the trail: a straight shot down a steep hill that ends in a natural dirt ramp jump over an arroyo.
Rob turns to his buddy. “You ready to rock and roll, bro?”
Justin’s not so sure. It looks like a 15-foot-wide chasm they’d have to jump. “Have you ever done this one before?”
Rob shakes his head. “Naw, but remember that jump down by Four Hills? That was bigger, yo. Definitely.”
“I don’t know, man. It’s getting dark.”
“Well, I’m not waiting, dude…” He launches himself. Whooo-hooo! Hurtling down the path, his bike pops up over the ramp—floats in the air for a moment—and then lands in a spray of sand on the other side.
“Yeah!” Rob pumps his fist and shouts. “C’mon! That was freaking awesome!”
Justin takes a deep breath.
Unsure.
“Go!” shouts Rob.
Still, Justin hesitates. He’s about 20 pounds heavier than Rob—and that fact sticks in the back of his mind.
Rob steps up on the pedals of his bike and calls out, “Dude, if you’re not at the truck by the time I get there, you can ride your own sorry ass back to Rio Rancho.”
He cycles up the path, disappearing around a corner obscured by a scrubby pine.
Back on his side of the arroyo, Justin rocks