REIGN OF THE TERROR BIRDS!

BBC illustration for one of the Terror birds of the Americas.

It's been a while since I promoted my first published novel, THE FLOCK. (You know, the one that was quickly optioned for film through Warner Brothers.)

Recently, several people have linked me to a BBC article about the Terror birds of the Americas. And so I decided it was time to push the novel again.

First of all, check out this link to the article. Great stuff, but not much there that I hadn't already researched before I wrote the novel.

The image of the Terror birds is pretty frightening stuff if you stop to imagine what it would be like to come face to face with one (or more). It's the closest thing to a theropod dinosaur that Mother Nature has tossed Earth's way since the Cretaceous saw the dinosaurs off into oblivion. And, of course, it was imagining such an encounter which set me to writing THE FLOCK.

Actually the a South American species Kelenken guillermoi, but which is closest in size to the version of the animal that appears in my novel.

Three species of Terror bird, plus the much earlier Diatryma. The largest, Kelenken, has the largest bird skull ever discovered. These were getting up to a respectable theropod predator size.

Another graphic of what it might have looked like to encounter one of these apex predators in the wild.

THE FLOCK, from Tor-Forge Books.