Alone in the Muck: A Tale of the Sewer Blob (Systema Paradoxa)

There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

After what felt like a lifetime in the sewers, Inspector Max Dalton would have thought he'd seen everything. He would have been wrong. When his trainees discover something inexplicable in the muck, life changes radically for all of them, including Max's granddaughter, Gwen.

News of their discovery gets out and bounty hunters invade the tunnels beneath the city, forcing Max's cooperation in their fruitless search.

With life and love and liberty in the balance, Gwen will need help from an unexpected source to evade those looking to capture her new friend.

Anton Kukal is an author, actor, and adventurer. After serving in the United States Army as an armor officer, he graduated from law school and enjoyed a highly successful legal practice, then he decided to embrace his creativity. Anton is now a full-time writer. His fiction appears in the award-winning Defending the Future anthology series. His website is antonkukal.com.

Although Jason Whitley has worn many creative hats, he is at heart a traditional illustrator and painter. With author James Chambers, Jason collaborates and illustrates the sometimes-prose, sometimes graphic novel, The Midnight Hour, which is being collected into one volume by eSpec Books. His and Scott Eckelaert's newspaper comic strip, Sea Urchins, has been collected into four volumes. Along with Box Mountain's Cryptid series, Jason is working on a crime-noir graphic novel. His portrait of Charlotte Hawkins Brown is on display in the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum.