Drowning are the Dead

 Drowning are the Dead, Brent Towns. Rough Edges Press, 2022. 285 pages.

This is an excellent mystery story wrapped in a very attractive package from Rough Edges Press. The title is catchy; the cover is a knockout. A perk for American readers is that it’s set in Australia, offering a slice of exotica to many of us.

 Mark Hayes is a private detective, an ex-cop as many of them actually are. He’s hired to track down another PI who went missing while in the small town of Friar’s Lake deep in Australia’s Outback. The missing man was investigating a dead girl who may or may not have been the victim of a notorious serial killer named Ten Cent. Only, Ten Cent has been inactive for a long time and is presumed by the authorities to be either dead or incarcerated.

 That’s the set-up and I’m not going to give away any spoilers. As you might expect, Mark gets more than he bargained for as he finds a small town full of big secrets. This is the first adventure for the character Mark Hayes. It shouldn’t be the last. He’s an engaging character with streaks of both stubbornness and compassion in his makeup. His ex-wife is still a cop and they have a complex relationship that provides (for story purposes) a way for Mark to occasionally get information a typical PI wouldn’t have access to.

 As for the writing, this may be the character’s first outing but Brent Towns has written a lot of books and it shows here. The prose is smooth, transitions are handled quickly and professionally, description is enough but not too much. The style has just enough quirks to make it interesting but not enough to make you aware that you’re reading a story.

 I had a good time with this tale, staying up later than normal over several nights to finish it. I’d read a few pages and slip fully into the story, and then the page turns would come fast and furiously. Highly recommended.

 

Spacers Snarled in the hair of Comets

SPACERS SNARLED IN THE HAIR OF COMETS: By Bruce Boston. Mind’s Eye Publications, 2022, 39 pages. (Introduction by Andrew Darlington).

This latest collection from Bruce Boston contains twenty-two poems, all of which—I believe—have been previously published separately in magazines. Who is Bruce Boston, you ask? Well, he’s my favorite living poet, but perhaps that doesn’t mean much to you. He is also a Bram Stoker Award Winner, a multiple-time Rhysling Award Winner (the highest award given for speculative poetry in the US), and a helluva nice guy. But maybe none of those things mean anything to you.

But do you love language? Specifically, the English language? Do you enjoy science fiction?  If you do, then you owe it to yourself to sample Bruce Boston’s work, and this book is a good place to start. Let me give you a little taste:

Burning green to metagreen,

a rush of colors in between.

Mandalic moons, sidereal seas.

A spacer’s life is ice and fire,

graced by iridescent dreams.

Besides the beauty of the language, Boston’s poems also tell stories. In fact, he’s basically a storyteller and has also written many poetic short stories, as well as a wonderfully complex dystopian novel called The Guardener's Tale. It’s both the language and the storytelling aspects that draw me to Boston’s work. As a writer myself, I find inspiration in his language and the germs of many ideas in his stories and imagery. I jotted down half a dozen ideas for tales just from this collection. I recommend him for writers and readers alike.  

You can find out more about the book at Mind’s Eye Publications here: 

Or you can order the book from Amazon here:

Or from Lulu here: 

For more information about Bruce Boston and his work, you can also check out his website. 

Dad 2022

In 1972, my father—J. V. Gramlich—died on this date. Of a heart attack. I was 13. He was 58. He seemed old to me at the time but so much younger now. I had my own heart attack at 59 but survived. For nearly 30 years my thoughts turned automatically to him on this date. In many of those years I wrote a poem for him.

I realized this morning that I’d almost forgotten dad on this day. Only seeing a post on facebook about some celebrity who died on this date sparked my memory. And I realized that, for the last ten years, I have forgotten in many Aprils and have allowed the day to pass unremarked.

For a moment, a flash of pain swept through me. How could I ever forget? But I know how. I have so many more things to think about today. Work, of course. The semester is always busy at this time. But that’s the least of it.

I have my own son to think of. He works too hard and rests too little, and I see myself at his age in that. And I have a daughter-in-law who is a great mother to my two wonderful grandsons, Silas and Sully. And those boys! What wonderful, amazing, beautiful children.

And there’s Lana, who keeps our yard beautiful with flowers, and who is so smart that we can talk about anything in the world, and who makes the best spaghetti and meat sauce I’ve ever eaten, and who is just simply cute in every way.

I don’t forget my father. I still have his photo (with mom) up in my living room. But the day of his death no longer has the same power and same pull on me that it used to. There’s too much life going on around me to think very much of death. 

 

The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub

The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. 646 pages. Viking.

You know how when you’ve been constipated for three days and you finally slay the dragon? How good it feels? And yet, there are still residual cramps that torture you? Well, that’s exactly how I felt when I finally finished reading The Talisman. I worked on it for over two months, occasionally speed reading a section or two while at other times getting caught up in the prose and absorbing it. I started it December 24 of one year and finished March 2 of another. Not since Moby Dick have I labored so hard on a single book.

Here are the positives: 1). The prose is generally delightful. I like Straub’s prose a lot and generally find King’s prose to be perfectly adequate to the story by rather “meh” aesthetically, but King seems to have risen to the challenge of Straub here and the book is finely written. 2). The fantasy setting of the “territories,” which is contiguous with the world we know, was excellent. I particularly liked how everything was experienced so intensely in the territories. 3). The climactic scenes were powerful, both the final battle with the evil and the denouement with the character’s mother.

However, there are a number of things I didn’t care much for and I think they all revolve around one particular issue. The book is way, way too long. I’d say at least 200 pages too long. Every scene is embellished and packed with verbiage. There is nothing here that can be considered lean or stripped down. Instead of a juggernaut, it moves like one of those giant armored buses often depicted in zombie movies. The story rolls slowly along through the horrors and mysteries, powerful but ponderous.  

Because of the length of the book, the middle sags like a mattress supported by broken springs, the characters repeat themselves and repeat themselves in thought and dialogue, points get hammered (the book often uses an apropos metaphor of a nail being pounded) flush to the board and then the board gets hammered into mush. I frequently uttered the words, “Get on with it” as I worked my way through. It also struck me as apropos that the main villain is often called “bloat.”

Please note, this is a fantasy novel, not in any way a horror novel. There are a few horrific images in it but the monsters and characters are fantasy based, including the werewolves and the radiation twisted monsters. I like both fantasy and horror, but they do different things to my moods and mindsets.

Also note, the book makes no secret of being—in part—a fantasy retelling of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Even the main character’s name is Jack Sawyer, although the journey across the US smacks a bit of Huck Finn’s journey down the Mississippi.

I didn’t dislike the book. Some things I quite enjoyed. But the sheer length and padding of it made it a tough row to plow. You might find your experience very different, as I might have if I’d read it when I was much younger.

I also want to make clear, I do not dislike Stephen King or Peter Straub’s work. Ghost Story by Straub is in my top 3 favorite horror novels. Some of his short stories in Houses Without Windows still scald me years after reading them. King’s Misery and The Mist were absolutely riveting page turners, and Pet Semetary made me weep with emotion. These are very fine writers but—to me—The Talisman is far from their best work.

 

Why Authors Use Pseudonyms: Part 4

Here’s part 4, and our last installment of, Why Authors Use Pseudonyms. I hope you enjoy.

4. One of the major reasons why writers write under pseudonyms is because the publisher wants it and they are paying for the writer’s work. For example, publishers of western series books tend to use a “house name” for all books in a particular series, even though the individual volumes may be written by various authors. Using the house name ensures a certain uniformity to the series that makes it easy for fans of the series to find the next volume, perhaps written by a different author. This is the primary reason why I’ve written under pseudonyms. This often aids the author greatly in sales as well. For example, say there’s a house name like “Jake Logan,” which there is. The first three are written by Joe Smith and sell well, and then the fourth is written by Bob Jones. Changing the name in mid series would cause all kinds of havoc in the way the books were shelved or listed, and create confusion for the readers.

Some publishers insist that the individual authors of books within a series do not reveal that “they” wrote any one particular book, although often they ease up on this constraint as time progresses. I know quite a few authors who have written, for example, in various western series such as “The Trailsman,” which is published under the name Jon Sharp, or “Longarm,” which is published as by Tabor Evans. In many cases these authors were not to reveal their particular involvement at the time of writing, though that constraint has since been eased and many of them will now reveal which particular books they wrote. This is great for me because I tend to collect certain writers’ works more than I care about getting every volume of the Longarm (well into the 400s for individual volumes) or Trailsman series (past 300 volumes).  

Most of the pseudonymous books I’ve written have been for Wolfpack Publishing under the house name of A. W. Hart. For example, I wrote book seven of their Avenging Angels series (The Wine of Violence), and book 3 of their Legend of the Black Rose series (Vengeance of the Black Rose.) Although these were published under the name A. W. Hart to represent a certain kind of action-adventure tale, I was credited as author in the “About the Author” section at the end of the book. I certainly appreciate Wolfpack for doing that, and I’m certain these books sold more under the Hart name than they ever would have under my name because other excellent writers coming along before me had already established the quality of the A. W. Hart Brand.

The “House Name” concept is actually very widespread in publishing, much more than most readers realize. Not only is it used on Western series, but often on SF and Fantasy series as well, such as The “Richard Blade” series, the “Casca” series, the “Traveler” series, and many more. In fact, I could easily do a lengthy series of blog posts on such series, but for now I’m done with Pseudonyms. Thank you very much for reading.

Why Authors Use Pseudonyms: Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of our series: Why Authors Use Pseudonyms. Let’s get right to it.

3. Writers who write across different genres may use pseudonyms to avoid potentially alienating certain readers. Quite a few people tend to read in only one genre—say Westerns. And this can be a problem for a writer who works in other fields. Say a reader who likes my western stories recognizes my name on a horror novel and decides to read it, thinking he’s going to get the same kind of tale. He soon finds himself...well, horrified. He doesn’t like the blood and gore. He’s not going to read anymore horror novels under my name and he may well push my westerns away as well.

This has happened to me and is one reason I decided to start writing westerns under the name Tyler Boone. My westerns, although often violent and bloody, have nowhere near the gore that appears in many of my horror stories. Nor are my westerns populated by topes like vampires and werewolves. (I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I ever decide to write in the subgenre called “Horror-Western.” I did one flash fiction like that and it caused some issues with readers who wanted more straightforward western tales.)

With likely even more dramatic results, imagine readers of a particular western author picking up a romance novel by him—under the same name. I bet he’d lose readers. True, he might possibly gain some other readers, but if they are romance readers they’re not going to want his straight action adventure westerns.

This use of a pseudonym does have the potential to backfire. Dean Koontz wrote under pseudonyms in his early days for this kind of reason and he later said he regretted it and it cost him momentum. But, for the most part, Koontz was not writing in as dramatically different genres as romance and horror, and since we can’t rerun the experiment we’ll never know whether it actually hurt his career length sales. I do know that I’ve also had a few readers who liked my work under the Gramlich name not recognize me as a modern western author under a different name. So, it’s not a simple matter.

 Part 4 is up next:

Why Authors Use Pseudonyms Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of why authors might use pseudonyms instead of their real names. Let’s not waste any time:

2. Whether we like it or not. Whether it’s fair or not. Some of our given names are going to work against selling our product, without having anything to do with the quality. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, (and sometimes even today), women who were writing SF used male names to publish under. Andre Norton and James Tiptree, Jr are two examples. I didn’t know Tiptree was a woman until I was in my 30s. Others just used initials so they wouldn’t clearly be identified as women, such as C. L. Moore or—more closely to the modern day—J. K. Rowling.

It wasn’t all one way. Robert Jordan, of Wheel of Time fame, wrote romantic fiction under a female name (Reagan O’Neal) because it seemed that women were less likely to buy romance by a male author, just as male readers of SF often wouldn’t take a chance on a female author. It made good sense for authors trying to sell in those markets to use names that would not bias potential readers against them. Of course, this isn’t fair. But it’s real.

And, just like actors have often changed their names to make them more easily pronounced (Rock Hudson) and to avoid prejudice, some writers with very long or foreign sounding names may use pseudonyms to help sales. This brings us back to Robert Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigney Jr. Would he have been as successful under the Rigney Jr name? We’ll never know, but you have to admit that for most English speakers, Jordan rolls off the tongue easier than Rigney and is likely more memorable.

Name recognition is an incredibly important thing in writing and publishing. The British author known as Lee Child, of “Jack Reacher” fame, is actually James Dover Grant. Grant isn’t hard to pronounce or remember for English speakers, but “Lee Child” has a certain flair that James Grant lacks. The first letter of the last name is even important for how things get shelved. “Jordan” would be shelved before “Rigney” in the SF section of bookstores, “Child” before “Grant” in the thriller section. I’ve seen research that suggests that names beginning with “C” through about “L” seem to get the best positioning in bookstores, close to the eye height of most browsers and either toward the beginning of the display area or right in the center. I don’t personally know that to be true but consider some of our best-selling authors—Mary Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, John Grisham, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Charles Gramlich. Uh, wait, how did that last name get in there? Please ignore that typo! Unless, that is, you really want to read some Gramlich.

Please stay tuned for installment 3 of Why Authors Use Pseudonyms. 

Why Authors Use Pseudonyms: Part 1

I get asked quite often why I’ve had work published under names other than my own. A thought that often accompanies this question is: “don’t you want to see your name in print?”  Well, there are numerous reasons why someone might use a pseudonym in publishing. The topic is complex enough that I’ve decided to do a short series of blog posts about it. Here’s the first one, with more to follow.

First, I’ll address the “name in print” point. When I first aspired to write and publish, I definitely did want to see my name in print. And it was very exciting and ego pleasing and confidence building when it happened. But, I’ve actually had my name in print hundreds of times now and my goals have changed. What I want more than anything today is to see my “work” in print, and to have it read, and to see how people respond to it. And sometimes, the best way to get these three things is to publish under a pseudonym. Here are the reasons why:

1. The material you’re writing may get you into trouble with family, friends, coworkers, or a job. I’m not specifically talking about writing porn, but that’s in there. When I was growing up in rural Arkansas, and even in some places today, writing science fiction or fantasy was frowned upon, dismissed, and even banned. And the people who wrote such material were gossiped about and sometimes even harassed for doing the Devil’s work.

My own mother wouldn’t display the books I gave her when I first started getting published, and I’m pretty sure it was because she didn’t like the content and the covers. None of this was pornographic, mind you. In fact, my fantasy and SF works firmly honored the good over the bad and upheld all the moral thinking I was taught growing up. It’s just that it often did so beneath the trappings of aliens and monsters and strange settings.

If your writing is going to cause fights and problems with your family, or conflicts with jobs and coworkers, and you’re not fully ready to handle the emotional turmoil, write under a pseudonym and don’t tell anyone.

There are plenty more reasons why authors might use pseudonyms. We haven’t even gotten to the reasons why I’ve used them yet. But more is to come in installment 2 of this series. I hope you enjoy.

The Crows Abide

 

January 1, 2022. Beneath a warm wind that rocks the pines, I walk through the aftermath of the war. I watched last night as 2021 fought a desperate last stand battle against the descent of 2022. The defenders failed. As they always do. The New Year arrived and now licks its wounds and plots revenge. Of course, it will fall soon enough itself, though now it feels its vigor and does not doubt it will last forever.

Those of us who have been through many such wars, know better. And the crows abide.

Remembering Du Bois

Yolande Du Bois Irvin has died. She was 89. Almost always when her name was mentioned someone added that she was the granddaughter of W.E.B Du Bois. And that is true. But she was far more than her connection to her historic grandfather.

She was warm, kind, witty, trenchant, thoughtful, practical. She was a supportive and loyal friend, a compassionate yet demanding teacher, a scholar of life. I never knew her in her role as a therapist but I’m sure she was excellent in that role as well because she never did anything with less than 100% commitment.

I knew her as a faculty member at Xavier University of Louisiana, in the Psychology Department. I was chair of the department when she was hired and it was a real coup for us to get her. Despite being Du Bois’s chair for much of her time at Xavier, she was—in fact—my mentor. And I was already 28 when I met her. She taught me many things, which I continue to pass on to my own students to this day, and which I use as guides in my day-to-day life.

She was so very much alive that it’s hard for me to believe now that she is not. She left Xavier after Hurricane Katrina and relocated to Colorado. For the first ten years or so after that, we spoke at least once a year on the phone. That frequency gradually decreased, as is common in such cases.

Even though I had not talked to her for several years, she was always a background presence for me. I thought of her many times throughout the year, most often during the school semesters when I’d be passing on a bit of her wisdom to my brand-new classes of fresh-faced students. I will continue to pass that wisdom on, as long as I’m around to do so.

Du Bois, it is an honor to have known you. And an honor to remember you. Godspeed!

 

Narrative Drive

I’ve been thinking a lot this last week about narrative drive. What it is. How it works. And why it works. Every story I’ve read has been fodder for my thoughts on the topic.

First, what is narrative drive? It’s different from characters and setting. Many people say it means a tale is “plot driven,” but I don’t think so. I believe it means: “that element of a story that keeps you turning pages and wanting to know what happens next.” This is most often tied to plot but is not identical with it and also includes aspects of character and setting.

Narrative drive is about information, specifically, the release of information to the reader. The biggest tool writers have is that they know what’s going to happen in a story ahead of readers. Information is the energy that drives a tale, and the writers own all that information. To begin with, at least.

A story with narrative drive releases that hoarded information to the reader in dribs and drabs, giving only that information to the reader that the he or she wants and must have to understand what is happening. Just that much information. And no more.

Recently, for example, I read The Outsider by Stephen King. It begins with a murder and a suspect who just doesn’t seem capable of doing it. Yet, the evidence is against him. As a reader, I want to know how this situation can be explained, and King does a masterful job of releasing the information I want in little bits at a time. You might say, he ‘milks’ the situation for all he can get, and that kept me turning the pages, looking for the next tidbit. That’s narrative drive.

In contrast, I just finished an SF novella that failed the narrative drive test. This story was written by an author I admire, who is gone now, and who I’ve enjoyed plenty of stuff from in the past. The writing itself was excellent, better than King’s prose, but the problem was that halfway through the author telegraphed the ending and for the rest of the way the tale felt like a paint by numbers piece.

With King’s story, I was too absorbed to look ahead and see how many pages were left. With the SF story, I looked ahead just to see how many pages were left. Meaning, how many pages did I need to read before I could move on to something with greater narrative drive.

 

The Silas Shoes

Who could have thought that one of my favorite memories of all time would involve tennis shoes. Here’s a picture of mine. I love the Velcro straps, a real boon to an old man like me. But that’s not the memory. 

A few months back we were babysitting our beautiful grandson, Silas. I’ve mentioned before how sweet he is. On this day, he wanted to play in the backyard so I slipped on my shoes. But it’s not easy for me to bend all the way over from a standing position to fasten the straps. Silas, on his own, without any prompting, bent down and fastened the straps on both shoes for me. Of course, he’s a lot closer to the ground than I am. But he wasn’t even two years old yet.

 I told Lana this morning that I was never going to be able to get rid of these shoes. Every time I put them on I get a big grin on my face as I remember Silas helping out his grandpa. Below is a picture of the little cutey, taken by his mom, Heidi. Sure am glad I’m still around to see him growing.

Writing the Ranger Series

Have to admit I was a little scared when Paul Bishop of Wolfpack Publishing offered me a chance to write the first book in The Ranger: Concho series, as A. W. Hart. I’d written books for the Avenging Angels and the Black Rose, but to “begin” a series was something else again. However, the character outline he gave me was intriguing, and challenging. There seemed to be lots of interesting possibilities. Within an hour of talking to Paul and asking for a little time to think, I knew I wanted to do it. The ideas were already spinning in my head.

                                                    
Now, I’m three books in (with a 4^th manuscript just turned in), and it’s like learning a language. I’ve started to dream in Ranger. Even after just finishing a book, I keep thinking about what Concho Ten-Wolves is up to and what might happen next. It’s a lot of fun, if a bit all consuming.

                                                    
Outside of the action sequences, which I’ve either based purely on my imagination or on historical events, the character of Concho comes from the real life of either myself or people I know. I’m neither black nor Kickapoo, and Concho is, but I’m human, and one thing I’ve learned in my life is that the hopes and dreams and desires of humans are mostly universal. People are more alike than they are different.

I’m not as good of a person as Concho, but a few of his characteristics and mannerisms come straight out of me: the foods he enjoys, his love of reading, even his inability to arch an eyebrow. The fact that he is a talker. I didn’t want to create another laconic Texas Ranger hero. Concho talks, jokes, laughs. He likes words, as I do.

                                                     
I’m not sure where the Ranger series will go next. I certainly hope to write more books about Concho. An idea is already percolating for a fifth book. And I can probably go on as long as there are readers. I’ve sure been happy that the first two books seem to have attracted quite a few readers, and I’ve loved the great reviews. I don’t know about other writers but it is certainly a thrill for me to hear that someone enjoyed a work that I’ve written, or that it touched them in some way. Maybe that’s a human characteristic too. If you want to check the books out, here's the link:

 Thank YOU for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Power of Coincidence

I was working on book 4 in the Concho: Texas Ranger series this morning when an odd event occurred. Concho is half Kickapoo and there's a fair amount of Native American lore in the series. Since I did not grow up in that culture, I've had to do a lot of research. And it's been both fun and enlightening. I do not want to use what I've learned as a mere "leavening" in the stories. And I haven't. I've tried to incorporate all such information in a respectful manner. 

Concho, for example, is a modern, educated man. He starts the series not having any belief in spiritual forces. But as the books continued I wanted him to have some experiences that force him to rethink. Many of these experiences are connected to a character named Meskwaa, an elder of the Kickapoo who is a friend and something of a mentor to Concho--as well as providing some biting but often humorous dialogue. 

I was writing a Meskwaa scene this morning where Meskwaa encounters what the Kickapoo refer to as the Thunder Beings. I was reading about the Thunder Beings and had just highlighted a piece of text giving the name of a Thunder Being in preparation of copying it into the manuscript--to get the spelling right--when a tremendous cannon shot of thunder boomed directly outside my window.  The house shuddered but the lights didn't even flicker. 

I've heard thunder boomers before, of course. And it was raining here. However, there'd been no previous thunder this morning, and none after  until much later in the day. And that single boom was the loudest one I'd ever heard. I'm not afraid of storms but I jumped at that boom. 

Coincidence? Almost certainly. But such a coincidence! It changed my day. For a while, at least, I felt the power of the numinous. 

Bruce Boston: Gallimaufry

GALLIMAUFRY: By Bruce Boston. Plum White Press, 2021, 134 pages.

Bruce Boston is a Bram Stoker Award winner, but that says little about the breadth and depth of his talent. As others have remarked on his work, you’ll find facets of language and story that resonate with the art of Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, and Oscar Wilde in his offerings.  But all of his work is uniquely “Boston,” and I hope that someday, someone will remark that they see a little of Bruce Boston in my work. It would be a high honor.

This is a collection of Boston’s short stories that span some fifty years of his life. Every single one of these is a small jewel of effort and art, from the profound sadness of “Cold Finale,” written with Marge Simon, to the absolute hilarity of “An Unrecognized Masterwork,” to the peyote-like stream of images in “Surreal Chess (which I desperately wish I’d written.)

Let Boston tell you where luck comes from in “Tales of the Dead Wizard,” or scratch an itch with “The Infernal Itch.” I highly recommend this collection. I loved it.

You can find it here!

Review: The Lost Empire of Sol

 Here is my review of The Lost Empire of Sol anthology, which was a labor of many years and at least 2 incarnations. The initial discussion from Scott Oden regarding this project must have happened on Facebook as far back as early 2012. A facebook group for the concept/anthology was created on May 17, 2012—so, nine years ago today. A number of people were excited about the project, including me. I wrote a story a little later in 2012 for the book called “The Machineries of Mars.” I know that Tom Doolan also wrote a tale for it, because after the initial plans fell through and the stories were released back to us, both Tom and I self-published ours on Amazon. I’m not sure if other writers involved at that time completed their stories or not. If they’re reading this, they can let me know.

In 2015, the anthology stirred to life again. Since I’d self-published my original story, and the new concept was subtly different than the original, I wrote a fresh story in 2016 called “A Sandship of Mars.” Scott brought Fletcher Vredenburgh aboard as editor and cat herder for the authors, and soon most of the stories were actually completed, edited, and ready to go. Things languished for want of a publisher.

Only when Jason M. Waltz joined the group and suggested that he’d like to publish the anthology did things really start moving. However, Covid hit and various other real-world events intervened so that the work finally appeared only in April of 2021. That’s certainly the longest developmental period for any anthology I’ve ever been involved in.

The idea was for ten shared world stories, with a story for each planet (including Pluto), and for the supposed planet that used to exist where the asteroid belt is now. When I wrote “Sandship,” the background concept was that there had once been a planet-spanning human empire ruling within the solar system but that the empire had fallen. The planets were now largely isolated, although some high tech space travel remained in a few places. In other places, the planetary populations had fallen back into a kind of Sword and Planet level technology, meaning lots of sword-fighting and a little bit of advanced tech.

To make matters worse, an alien entity was invading the solar system to pick up the pieces of the old empire. My understanding was that the entity was moving slowly and employing a variety of means to try and “take over” the lost empire of Sol. I wrote a fairly small world, self-contained tale about Mars being invaded by parasites that could turn their victims essentially into zombies under their control. I was pretty happy with it.

The final book contained not only the ten stories, but an introduction, forward, prologue and epilog. Here’s the TOC (Thanks to Joe Bonadonna).

Foreword, by Fletcher Vredenburgh

Sword & Planet is the Genre We Need, by John O'Neill

Prologue, by Scott Oden

To Save Hermesia, by Joe Bonadonna & David C. Smith

The Lost Princess of Themos, by Tom Doolan

What Really Happened at the Center of the World, by Christopher M. Blanchard

A Sand-Ship of Mars, by Charles Allen Gramlich

Whispers of the Serpent, by Howard Andrew Jones

Outcasts of Jov, by Mark Finn

Written in Lightning, by Keith J. Taylor

Survivors of Ulthula, by E.E. Knight

Hunters of Ice and Sky, by David Hardy

A Gate In Darkness, by Paul R. McNamee

Epilogue, by Scott Oden

To Save Hermesia, by Joe Bonadonna & David C. Smith is set on Mercury and did a bang-up job evoking the feel—for me at least—of the early Eric John Stark stories by Leigh Brackett. Stark was born on Mercury.

The Lost Princess of Themos, by Tom Doolan is set on Venus. Although not described in detail, the world brings to mind ERB’s jungle Venus. And the lost princess, Tamarra, follows in a long line of Sword and Planet Princesses, although much younger and less experienced than ERB’s Dejah Thoris. She finds her own hidden strengths, of course.

What Really Happened at the Center of the World, by Christopher M. Blanchard is a Pellucidar inspired piece with a little Journey to the Center of the Earth vibe.

A Sand-Ship of Mars, by Charles Allen Gramlich is my entry. It’s a little bit of a Dune meets the Ice Schooner meets The Puppet Masters. I really enjoyed creating the setting for this and might some day revisit it.

Whispers of the Serpent, by Howard Andrew Jones takes place on the planet that became our modern solar system’s asteroid belt. This is the first of the tales to have more of a Space Opera feel than Sword and Planet. Given the concept of the collection, you’d expect there to be all kinds of tech levels existing in the solar system so it makes sense.

Outcasts of Jov, by Mark Finn is set on Jupiter. Another Space Operish tale. It was good to see the Great Red Spot play a role!

Written in Lightning, by Keith J. Taylor is our Saturn tale. Very much a Sword and Planet work, although our heroes come from Venus rather than Earth.

Survivors of Ulthula, by E.E. Knight brings us to Uranus, or Ulthula in this story. This one also has a Space Opera feel, maybe a kind of E. E. Doc Smith and Edmond Hamilton meets Event Horizon.

Hunters of Ice and Sky, by David Hardy brings us to Neptune. The sky cities of Star Wars and Star Trek become low tech and are melded with the tale of Moby Dick! Great setting for many adventures.

A Gate In Darkness, by Paul R. McNamee is set on lonely, lost Pluto. The airships of Barsoom and Kregen meet slow decay as portions of the planet are lost to darkness and war.

So there you have it, ten imaginative tales that remember the shared history of Sword and Planet and Space Opera but take things in new directions and work in surprising connections from other realms of literature. I highly recommend it, and not just because I have a story contained within.

The Lost Empire of Sol

I cut my teeth on Sword and Planet fiction, first reading the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and then the many tales by those ERB influenced, such as Gardner Fox, Alan Burt Akers (Ken Bulmer), and many others. I consider S & P to be the purest form of adventure fantasy, and I've always wanted to write my own tales in the genre.

The first publishable book I wrote was Sword and Planet. That was Swords of Talera. I wrote four others in that series, and I've also written some S & P short stories. I'd say that, in general, I've never had more fun writing anything than writing this kind of tale.

A few years back, author Scott Oden had an idea for a shared world S & P anthology set in the era of the "Lost Empire of Sol." A number of writers got a chance to choose a world of our solar system to tell a story in this connected universe. I got my choice in early, and I picked Mars! What else would I have chosen?

That book is now available for preorder at this link. This is a kindle version but there are plans for a print edition as well. I'm very excited to be part of this collection with my story, "A Sand Ship of Mars." I'm looking forward soon to reading all the other tales. 

Guns of the West

I'm thrilled to have my very first full-length western novel included in this handsome box set of 8 action packed novels of the west. Mine is "The Scarred One," under the Tyler Boone penname. 

Published through Sundown Press, this collection is available on Kindle for only 99 cents. That's a lot of good reading for the money. 

Here's the link to the books on Amazon. 

And if you'd like to learn more about the other authors involved, check out Sundown Press's blog. 

The Withering, By Ashley Dioses

 

The Withering, by Ashley Dioses: Jackanapes Press, 135 pages. Poetry.

I picked up a signed copy of this book from the author and read it over about a week to savor the poetry inside. There are 55 poems, divided into 4 sections entitled: A Luminous Darkness, Pale Radiance, Night Cries, and A is for Axe Murderer. In an Afterword, the author tells us a little about her genesis as a poet and about the pieces in the collection. She indicates that these are primarily pieces from early in her writing career, dating back even to high school.  (She has actually had a previous collection of poetry published called Diary of a Sorceress, which contains poems from later in her career.)

The collection is impressive for a writer of such youth. I also wrote some poetry at a young age but nothing as erudite as these. They are definitely not juvenilia, but fully realized and articulate pieces. They are rhyming poems, written around horror themes, and often with a formal structure. It’s a difficult style to master but Dioses moves through them with verve and confidence.

My favorites in the collection are “Obliterate,” “Hollow King,” and  “I am the most Beautiful Angel.” Here’s a quatrain from “Obliterate.”

The stones erode away,

And tales evaporate.

All memories decay,

The years obliterate.

There are also many other wonderful lines in other pieces, such as “My heart and soul are sparrow-black” and “Then scents of smoke, of myrrh, of rum,…”

There’s an outstanding cover by Mutartis Boswell, whose work I don’t remember seeing before but which I imagine I’ll see a lot of in the future. Boswell also did numerous interior illustrations for the book, which are set beautifully to really enhance the presentation of the poetry.

All in all, The Withering is a very professional package filled with some lovingly crafted and memorable poems. If you’re into dark poetry, this is an excellent reading choice.

A Dream of Crows

I dreamt of crows last night, millions of them swirling like black blades in an apocalyptic sky full of flames and clouds. I was a teenager walking with two friends along a highway where cars lay wrecked to either side. The cries of the crows were deafening, and occasionally a dead bird smashed like a kamikaze into the asphalt near us. 

We reached a temporary refuge, the penthouse apartment of one of my friends. She was rich. One friend went to a chair where she huddled in confusion and fear. I sat on the couch with the rich girl. Cell phones worked. She got a call. I heard the speaker through the phone. The “signal” was given.

The girl didn’t know I’d overheard. She made an excuse and left the room. I knew she was going downstairs to be picked up by someone, and that she’d be taken with other rich people to escape the coming destruction. I walked over to my second friend, to comfort her.

The rich girl returned. She said she couldn’t leave us, that she wanted us to come with her. We refused, knowing that even if she wanted us along, we’d never be allowed, and that we'd certainly be killed to keep the secret.

Better to chance the dangers of the apocalypse then to be led to certain death.