Invasive Species: A Tale of the Lizardman of Scape Ore Swamp (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.

***

Despite a childhood plagued by death, Daniel Smith has built a good life for himself, though no one would believe it if he told them.

Working for the Wranglers--a covert organization tasked with keeping cryptids a secret from the common man--everything he has accomplished threatens to crumble when his charge goes rogue, leaving a trail of death and blood and cryptid sightings in his wake.

When the rogue invades another cryptid's turf, Daniel must confront his past to save his future, but will any of them survive the encounter?

Hildy Silverman writes in multiple genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror and blends thereof. In 2020, she joined the Crazy 8 Press authors collective (https: //www.crazy8press.com/), which publishes novels and anthologies by its membership. In 2013, her short story, The Six Million Dollar Mermaid, which appeared in the anthology Mermaids 13: Tales from the Sea (French, ed.), was a finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award. In 2005, she became the publisher and editor-in-chief of Space and Time Magazine (www.spaceandtimemagazine.com), one of the oldest small press genre magazines still in production, and ran it until 2018. She is a past president of the Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers and a frequent panelist on the science fiction convention circuit. For more information about Hildy, including a complete list of her published work, please visit www.hildysilverman.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.