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Sam Fortune is a pulp-inspired action-adventure series, set in the 1920's, and starring the titular Sam Fortune -- a rough-and-ready character who always seems to be getting himself into some crazy and/or dangerous situation. His adopted daughter Nellie, Nellie's beautiful governess Miss Mansfield, and his sailor friend Griff usually find themselves caught up in his adventures as well.
The first book, Sam Fortune and the Wisdom of the Ancients, was published in 2018; the sequel, Sam Fortune and the Hazards of the Game, is set to be released in early 2024. Both books feature cover art by Tom Martin.
Inspiration for the series came from a variety of places: the Indiana Jones movies (the first three, anyway), the Uncharted games, Robert E. Howard's Sailor Steve Costigan stories, Aloha Wanderwell's adventures, and my own love of the 1920's, which is my favorite decade. This is a very "Blake" kind of series, full of things that interest me personally: boxing, classic cars, ancient history, silent movies, etc.
I'd like to write at least one more Sam Fortune novel, and I have several short stories I'd like to write as well (including one which takes place between Wisdom of the Ancients and Hazards of the Game, and a few more set during Sam's younger years), but those projects are probably a few years away, at least.
Sam Fortune, the character, has led a pretty interesting life. Here's some highlights:
1889. Sam is born in New York City (Brooklyn, specifically).
1895. Sam's parents die of typhoid. Having no other family to take him in, he winds up living on the streets for two years, mostly around Mulberry Bend in Manhattan, and usually in the company of juvenile gangsters.
1897. Sam is caught by the police and eventually shipped out to northern California, as part of the Orphan Train Movement. The farmer who was supposed to have adopted him fails to show up at the train station, however, so he makes his way down to San Francisco, and later stows away on the Black Whale. He spends the next five years on the ship, after her captain, Julius Jaffery, decides to take him in (he becomes a cabin boy). The Black Whale sails all around the Pacific.
1902. Captain Jaffery sends thirteen-year-old Sam to a boarding school in Boston. He runs away two weeks later.
1902-1907. Sam works a variety of odd jobs in California, Nevada, and Utah, including stints as a ranch hand and as a roustabout in the circus. He begins boxing in 1906, at age seventeen (after starting out as a circus boxer), and fights Stanley Ketchel in early 1907 (Ketchel, shortly to become the world middleweight champion, cuts him a break).
1907. A few months after the Ketchel fight, Sam is knocked out by Red McClane. That evening, feeling despondent, he encounters Dr. James Blue, a British archaeologist. James, seeing something in him, decides to hire the eighteen-year-old Sam as a sort of bodyguard.
1907-1917. Sam works with James for ten years; they travel the world together and have dozens of adventures.
1917. Sam is drafted (aged twenty-eight) and fights in World War I, with the (predominantly Irish) 69th Infantry Regiment. James, who had received a deferment of some kind (Sam was never sure about the exact details), decides to volunteer at this point, becoming an artillery officer.
1918. James is killed, age forty-one, at the Battle of St Quentin Canal.
1919. Sam returns to the United States (with James's now-orphaned daughter Eleanor, who is eight years old) and joins his old war buddy Boswell's private investigation business (Boswell's a former Pinkerton). He trains a few boxers as well during this period.
1921. Sam quits the private investigation business for unspecified reasons.
1921-1925. Sam works for Diamond Shipping, once again traveling widely. Diamond specializes in shipping rare antiquities.
1925. Diamond Shipping folds early in the year. Sam, somewhat desperate, takes a job as a trainer for Jenks, a boxing manager, but quits in June after the best boxer in his stable, "Big" Joe Barlowe, blows an important fight. This is where the first novel begins; Sam is thirty-six years old at this point.
1927. The events of the second novel take place.