I was just informed by Elaine Mercer from the Black Hat Magick Detective Agency that their website has gone down. As told, the problem seems to be one that her server crashed. From what I understand, servers are very important to geeks; I imagine she feels like one of her arms has been cut off at the moment.

I know how I feel when my ride is in the shop—or, as Gary calls them, my “chariot.”

Blackhatmagick.com currently works, but you’ll find a landing page informing you that the story is gone at the moment (and why.) I’m told you should try reloading the page a few times and see what happens.

If you didn’t notice, today is the first day of the Black Hat Magick and Mill Avenue Vexations crossover fiction.

You can catch the very first part right now, go ahead, check it out and leave a comment.

Tell us who your favorite character is.

It’s time to announce the first of two stories that involve a particular celebrity who visits Arizona State University time to time and his appearance in Mill Avenue Vexations and Black Hat Magick; although, not precisely in that order. This upcoming Monday the 9th, a short story of three parts will begin appearing on the Black Hat Magick site that makes a narrative of something that happened earlier this year on ASU campus.

I’m tentatively calling this story Hadaly’s Day Out (feat. Brother Jed) and hopefully it will bring some light and amusement to those who already suffer this celebrity’s presence on the campus.

Immediately after that story is published, a Mill Avenue Vexations short-story and extension of that self-same story will publish here. I will not be announcing its name until it’s time for it’s publication. And you don’t need to read one to enjoy the other—although they’re probably both pretty fun.

As we will get to see Elaine, Frog, Hadaly, Vex, and Nathan in their natural habitat—surrounded by high weirdness.

Be ready, visit Black Hag Magick and catch up now.

I just recently published Cranes the Mill Avenue Vexations Construction Tribute over at Smashwords.com for $1.55.

Something strange is happening in the neighborhood of Tempe and Phoenix and occult investigator Vex Harrow is on the case. Shortly after taking on a VIP transport gig from her dad, mostly the boring job of driving a construction consultant around in her taxi, she discovers that people have been dying at construction sites. …and things are not so ordinary.

I will slowly continue to keep publishing more of the tribute stories over to e-book format as time allows. It will give me some sort of extra revenue to pay for the print publications of Vexations moving forward.

Plus, this one is just itching for a sequel. As we all know, the Tombstone Towers finally have gotten buyers and they’re intended for actual use soon—or at least they’re moving towards something they weren’t before. As a result, it’s about time that I completed a tribute novel to them. That’ll be an excellent sequel to this interesting romp through the fatty clogged avenues of Phoenix.

Buy the book, via Smashwords.com

I’ve been running this site for more than five years now and it’s been built atop an ancient version of phpBB. That means it’s beginning to show its age on the backend with a lot of different types of trouble. Meanwhile, I’m sure that there’s odd exploits in that code not making my hosting company happy.

As a result, I am working on getting a new site up and running with WordPress 3.0. Just for the blog. Nothing else is changing.

In the meantime, please excuse the dust; I’ll be trying to make this transition as smooth as possible. Posts on the forums will remain accessible for some time and I’ll be transferring some of the posts here just for the sake of readability and to keep up appearances.

It will take me a little while to get the CSS in working order, get comments working properly, etc.

So don’t freak out.