Vanilla Heart Publishing
The Sun Singer was a finalist in the 2004 “ForeWord Magazine” Book of the Year Awards. A contributing writer for “Living Jackson Magazine” in northeast Georgia, Campbell also works as a grant writer for nonprofit organizations.
Since 2005, Campbell has maintained the “Morning Satirical News” weblog (http://jockstewart.typepad.com/) where his alter ego, Jock Stewart, takes a “cynical, sarcastic and randomly humorous look at real and/or imagined news.” The early posts from this weblog served as the basis for the satire, Worst of Jock Stewart. Junction City, the Star-Gazer newspaper and the primary characters in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire were born at the “Morning Satirical News.” While both Campbell and Stewart learned to handset justified columns of metal type out of a California Job Case and copy fit headlines without using layout software, everything else in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire is more or less fictional.
Campbell was graduated from Florida State University with a B.A. in radio-television writing, with a minor in English, and from Syracuse University with an M. A. in journalism. He also attended the University of Colorado as a journalism student and a weekend climbing participant at the school’s Mountain Recreation Department. He served in the U. S. Navy as a journalist between 1968 and 1970, writing news stories and features for the military and the civilian press while on board the aircraft carrier U. S. S. Ranger (CVA-61) and while stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Station.
Campbell lives in Jefferson, Georgia with his wife Lesa, of 22 years, a former newspaper reporter, systems analyst, and the consulting director of the Crawford W. Long Museum. In December, Campbell finished serving four years, three as chair, on the Jefferson Historic Preservation Commission. Both Campbells have been active in the town’s Main Street Program.
An avid reader and book reviewer, Campbell especially enjoys the novels of Sunetra Gupta, Italo Calvino, Diana Gabaldon, Susanna Clarke, Cormac McCarthy and Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Jock Stewart and the Missing
The Sun Singer by Malcolm R. Campbell
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Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire
by Malcolm R. Campbell
Mainstream humor with a dash of mystery... A throwback to Hollywood’s film noir
While he goes out of his way to mock those in authority by pretending to kowtow to them, he admits he does his best work by “being an asshole.” A mix of Don Rickles and Don Quixote, Stewart is the man for the job when the skirts are up and the chips are down...
Hard-boiled reporter Jock Stewart wakes up on the morning after the Star-Gazer office party with a hangover and an old flame in his bed and he cuddles up with the mayor’s wife in the back seat of a 1953 Desoto. Between these defining moments, he investigates the theft of the mayor’s race horse Sea of Fire and the murder of his publisher’s girl friend, Bambi Hill.
Stewart discovers the truth for his news stories via an interview style based on lies, pretense and audacious behavior...
Chapter One
Jock Stewart woke up this morning with an industrial strength hangover. An empty Scotch bottle lay on the floor next to an empty little black dress that wasn’t his. Last night, a fair amount of Monique Starnes wore it at the newspaper’s office party. Her cleavage, more out than in, was deep enough to kidnap a man’s dreams. Now, there would be hell to pay.
At first glance, he appeared to be alone in the bed. Maybe he stole the dress. Maybe he maxed out a credit card at an all-night Vera Wang shop, then came home and slung it on the door in an ill-conceived pretense of having a life. “The second glance”—as Star-Gazer editor Marcus Cash always told him—“is always the beginning of trouble.”
Just past the far side of the bed, Monique lay face up on the floor in a 40-year-old birthday suit so worn out no Goodwill Store would take it. She looked like a corpse. Things went too far and he hadn’t bothered to conceal the murder weapon.
If more than one crime had been committed here, she was an accessory beginning with an illegal use of a little black dress—though many women contend that dresses don’t seduce people, people seduce people. When it got late enough last night for everyone to pair up with nobody cared whom—or was it “who”?—she dared him to dance with her. In spite of the chronic animosity between them she danced close enough to display her breasts in an arousing light.
The world resolved into a curious mix of limbo and dream after she said, “I like a man with a cocked weapon in his trousers.”
Now, the best approach to his future might be to draw a chalk outline around her before calling the police to report the accident. Chief Kruller would be pissed, not because he had any love for the newspaper’s gossip columnist but because coming by the house to clean up the mess would force him to give up his space at the counter of the Main Street Krispy Kreme.
Though he wasn’t being interrogated yet, Jock had to admit that Monique was a voluptuous, saucy, black-haired she-devil if there ever was one. It was her mouth and her typewriter that bothered him. No ass kicking, hard-boiled reporter he knew (including himself) could tolerate gossip columnists. They dragged the whole damn paper down to their level. While exciting in bed, that level was bad for the newspaper business.
She did have nice breasts—for a probable corpse.
Even so, newspapering didn’t need columns called Hands Under Society’s Dress with comments like: “Democracy demands that we celebrate the election process at one ball after another. Just think, in some countries, the winners aren’t allowed to have any balls.”
Her luscious brown eyes popped open like they were controlled by a zombified spirit who hadn’t “crossed over” properly.
He jumped back in fear or what looked like fear.
“Jock!”
“Monique, what have we done?”
Pre-Release Acclaim for Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire
Readers who enjoy hard-bitten, wisecracking characters will surely fall in love with Jock Stewart, the main character in the new Malcolm Campbell novel, Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. The story of the book revolves around the disappearance of the race horse, Sea of Fire, but it features a wagon load of human “horsing around” by the many colorful characters Campbell created, including Coral Snake Smith, Parker House, a preacher named Cotton Mouth and the Krispy Kreme eating police chief Kruller.
While reading the story and gathering the clues, that frequently came to light as Stewart dialogued with his own intuition, readers may find themselves having great fun picking up the puns, word plays and hilarious cloaked references to cultural and historical items. Jock Stewart is an old time newspaperman, whose “blunt force sarcasm” keeps him in hot water with his bosses, co-workers and the police. But if not for his pressing the issue, the mystery would definitely not have been resolved.
Stewart, Malcolm Campbell’s self-acknowledged alter ego, is
also the author’s vehicle to decry the effects of the digital age on the craft
of writing and the elegance of language. I found the book entertaining, and it
might even become profitable, if I can get permission from the author to use
the sermon outline he provided in chapter 13!
~ Ralph Bryant
When Robert Adams sees the statue of the Sun Singer in a
lonely meadow he hears the song of the sun and receives the gift of prophecy.
He excels as the Soothsayer of West Wood Street until a psychic dream
graphically foretells the death of his best friend’s sister, Julianne.
Robert
blames himself for the tragedy he cannot prevent and shoves his
bright talent into the dark shadows of the future where, he suspects, it will
one day save him… or kill him.
After blindly vowing to finish a task for his ailing grandfather, Robert steps through a hidden doorway into a world at war where magic runs deeper than the mountain rivers. Now he must resurrect his dangerous gift to fulfill his promise, uncover the true secret of Julianne’s death, undo the deeds of his grandfather’s foul betrayer, subdue brutal enemy soldiers in battle, and survive the trip home.
The journey is a physical one: mountain trails, a resistance group fighting a tyrannical king, a vision quest on a mountain peak. The inner journey is the one that matters, bringing back sanity-threatening talents and the kind of magic that will subdue enemy soldiers, heal the sick, and bend time itself. The Robert who returns, transformed into the Sun Singer, is not the Robert who walked into the mountains.
Acclaim for The Sun Singer
“It is high adventure that his grandfather plans for Robert and for all in the family. We are not surprised to learn that Mother disapproves of the journey. Do not mothers always disapprove of the fun grandfathers plan for the boy in the family? It is not just fun, in this case, that Mother opposes; she is against dabbling in magic.” –Living Jackson Magazine
“This magical coming-of-age tale takes the reader through a labyrinth as a teenage boy/man sets off into the cosmic dimensions of the unknown to redeem his grandfather's kingdom and rightfully claim his position in life as a true leader. What I'd give to have Malcolm Campbell's imagination, wisdom, wit, and mastery of the written word.” --Mel Mathews, SamSara (Malcolm Clay Series)
“’The Sun Singer’ is a book that will transport you to other realms, realms that shadow ours. Campbell's story is not only about how one character must complete what his grand-father began, it is about how one must come to terms with loss and death too. Robert undertakes a journey not only to other realities, but to his genetic heritage, a heritage that he must fully accept in order to become free.” --Nora Caron, Journey to the Heart
“I will take more journeys with Robert Adams as he has now taken residence in my imagination. ‘The Sun Singer’ isn't just a book, it's an enlightening. It's a pass to worlds beyond the mundane of closed thought and mediocrity. Perhaps 'home' is in the unopened doors of imagination after all.” --Susan Haley, Rainy Day People
“It is a very structured intelligent novel, each word placed exactly where the author intends and this author intends to stretch the rules, so stay strapped in and bring along your bookmarker-it is not a book to be read quickly.” --Nick Oliva, Only Moments
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