Western Reviews

Been reading a lot of westerns lately. Here are some capsule reviews.

Outlaw Ranger, by James Reasoner:

G. W. Braddock is a man of principles, a Texas Ranger striving to live up to the legacy of his father and to his own beliefs. He's made his home with the Rangers, but when political enemies go after the troop and force cuts in manpower, Braddock finds himself let go and adrift. He may not wear the Ranger badge legally anymore, but morally he's still a ranger and there's plenty of work to do along the frontier. Very fine story with a lot of action and some contemplative moments. Braddock struggles not only against outlaws and murderers, but against the memory of a father who had a complicated story of his own. I've never been let down yet by a James Reasoner story

 Day of the Dollar, by Ty Johnston:

This is a western screenplay. Very much of a spaghetti western type of setting and plot. It was fast moving, with more description than you typically see in screenplays. I liked that. Fun characters and a fun setting. Made me feel like I was watching a lost Man with No Name western.

One Against a Gun Horde, by Richard Prosch:

This is a collection of short western tales from Richard Prosch. The collection as a whole is very strong. My favorite was the last piece, "Police Escort." These stories are also rather unique in the western field by not being shoot-em-ups. The stories hinge primarily on character, with a healthy dose of humor.

Seven out of Hell (Edge #8), by George G. Gilman:

Another Edge book with a lot of flashbacks to incidents in the Civil War. I tend to like these. Not much of an ending on the main story. More a series of anecdotes and I guess set up for the next in the series. Still, not bad reading.

Last Chance Canyon, by James Reasoner:

What an excellent story. I loved this one. It combined my love of westerns with horror and I found it a compelling read. Highly recommended!

By the Gun, by Richard Matheson:

A collection of six longish short western stories from Richard Matheson. He proves adept at this genre, as he was with other genres. There's a bit of sameness in several of the tales, which keeps it from earning 5 stars from me. I might suggest reading one, then giving yourself a break before reading another. Good stories, though.

Doc Holliday, by Matt Braun

This is the first Matt Braun book I've read but I already ordered two more. I liked it a lot. Of course, I've always been rather interested in the character of Doc Holliday. Although I don't know the specific history, I'm pretty sure Braun took a lot of liberties with Holliday's life. That's OK. I didn't read it as a biography. The character was well drawn and there was quite a few interesting developments. I did think the book was probably a little longer than it needed to be and sections of it were pretty similar to other sections. Yet, it certainly kept me reading. It actually ends before Deadwood and the shoot out at the OK corral. I thought that would mean a sequel but apparently there is none.

King Colt, by Luke Short:

Pretty good. I didn't find it a real page turner but it kept me interested throughout. The basic plot is that a good guy has to turn outlaw temporarily to prove who the real criminal is.

  

Redemption Hunters, by James Reasoner:

This is the second in the "Redemption" series by James Reasoner. We return to the town of Redemption, Kansas, where a former Texas cowboy named Bill Harvey has become Sheriff. This time Harvey faces off against outlaws and a group of Pawnee who have jumped the reservation. The town is caught in the middle. Good solid storytelling.

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What I’ve Been Working On

I haven’t talked much about writing here lately, but I have been doing some. For fiction, I’ve had some problems finishing things. I’ve started close to a dozen stories, a western featuring a hero with a burned face called “The Scarred One,” another story about my heroic fantasy character Krieg, called “Where All the Souls are Hollow,” an urban fantasy piece, a sort of schlock horror piece called “HogZ,” and the list goes on.

I still have a number of pieces in various stages of completion from last year, three western tales featuring a character named Lane Gabriel, a YA fantasy tale featuring fox kits called “Farhaven,” and a prequel of sorts to “Under the Ember Star.” I like all of them but haven’t touched any of them in months now.

The Krieg piece will be finished but it’ll probably be a couple more weeks. I’ve had a very busy time at school with the research committee that I chair. The rest of the pieces? I don’t know. I’ll see how I feel when the Krieg story is done.

However, I did make very good progress this summer on another project, which is completed. Quite a few folks seemed to enjoy my humorous memoir, “Days of Beer,” and I wanted to do a print version of it. However, it just wasn’t long enough so I figured I would add some more memoir stuff about growing up in the south. Once I got started, a whole lot of stuff started coming back to me and I ended up writing another forty + thousand words of material about wacky adventures I’ve had. The vast majority of this had no relationship to beer drinking, although I did add a few items to the original Days of Beer material.

I decided to call the collection “Adventures of an Arkansawyer,” and I’m now going through the proofing process on it. It will include the Days of Beer stuff but add that extra forty thousand words. Initially it will appear in print form only, but I will do an ebook version of it down the line.

The reason for starting out in print is because of what happened with Days of Beer as an ebook only publication. I had hoped the book would attract more attention around my home town of Charleston, Arkansas but it really didn’t. A few people did read and enjoy it and let me know, but for the most part it went nowhere. I know a lot of folks in that area aren’t yet into reading electronic materials so I want to see if the print book does better there. Anyway, I’ll announce further information about this work as it becomes available. 

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Two Poems

I wrote the following poem a few weeks ago now, but lest anyone be concerned, it does not reflect my current feelings. It was me on my commute harking back to a much earlier time in my life. I imagine most people go through phases like this. They just don’t write about them.

THE EMPTY

I see a pinprick of sun,

red on clouds to the east.

All else is gray.

Sky.

Water.

Road.

My empty heart.

I am a wave passing through.

Leaving a moment’s ripple,

that soon dies away.

No trail behind me where I went.

No path ahead where I go.

The world is a hollow place

and I have left no mark.

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Even when I’m feeling good I don’t tend to write upbeat poetry. I guess I’m just a moody SOB. But in an effort to be more positive, I have constructed the following ditty. I do hope you enjoy.

THE LITTLE BIRD

Saw a little bird hop hopping all around

Eating the seed I’d spread on the ground

He hopped to the left and hopped to the right

He hopped all day; it was quite a sight

You could see his hopping was all for fun

As he bopped around in the glorious sun

The day passed sweetly and evening fell

Then came cat, without his bell

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Sleep Paralysis Event

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon typically associated with dream sleep. Normally, one is paralyzed during dream sleep to keep you from acting out your dreams. It's highly adaptive given that responding to dream imagery as if it were real could be fatal. The paralysis is supposed to be perfectly coordinated with the dreams. When one wakes up from a dream, the paralysis should end at the same time.

In sleep paralysis, the paralysis persists after the dream has ended. This usually lasts no more than 30 seconds to a minute, although sometimes it can last considerably longer and be extremely frightening to those who experience it. I've had sleep paralysis attacks but never any that lasted more than ten to fifteen seconds. Until last night.

Sleep paralysis generally takes two forms. In the first, and more common form, the individual awakens completely and the eyes open, but the body remains paralyzed from the neck down. The person has no residual dreaming experiences but is wide awake. In the second form of the phenomenon, the person wakes up and becomes aware of their paralysis, but there remain some dream elements involved with the experience. In such cases the eyes often remain closed.

I had the second kind of experience last night. I woke up from a dream and knew that I was awake. But when I went to move I found I could not. I immediately recognized it as a sleep paralysis event so I didn't panic. At first I just tried to "force" myself to move. Then a new twist entered my experience. I seemed to hurl myself into a completely black space. It felt infinite and totally empty. It was definitely discomforting.

I've learned in the past that straining to move seldom works, so I relaxed my body, which has generally worked for me before. Unfortunately, it didn't this time. And by now this paralysis event had continued well past the longest one I'd ever had before. I resumed straining, trying to force my legs to press outward and my arms to lift. It 'felt' as if I were turning around and around in the black space but I could tell intellectually that I wasn't actually moving. I felt a little snick of fear then because this was going on much longer than ever before, and the totally black space felt very unpleasant. I stopped straining to move again and just started saying over and over to myself: "It'll pass. It'll pass."

A moment later it did and I sat up in bed, breathing rather rapidly. I soon returned to sleep and had no further issues, but it still feels a bit weird to me this morning. A bit unsettling, I should say. But grist for the mill.

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25 Song Personal History

I picked up this meme over at Broken Bullhorn. It's supposed to be a snapshot of your personal history with music, I think. I just did it quick, trying to remember songs at various points in my life that were important to me.

1. Crimson and Clover – Tommy James and the Shondelles

2. Beer Drinkers and Hellraisers – Z. Z. Top

3. Last Child -- Aerosmith

4.  Head East – Never Been Any Reason

5.  Roundabout – Yes

6. White Room – Cream

7. Slow Ride – Foghat

8. Lazy -- Deep Purple

9. Bad Company – Bad Company

10. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zepplin

11. Mississippi Queen -- Mountain

12. Carry on my Wayward Son – Kansas

13. The Black Widow – Alice Cooper

14. Snowblind – Black Sabbath

15. Sympathy for the Devil – Rolling Stones

16. All along the watchtower – Jimi Hendrix

17. Ace of Spades – Motorhead

18. Shout at the Devil – Motley Crue

19. Leper Messiah – Metallica

20. Peace Sells – Megadeth

21. Celtic Frost – Procreation of the Wicked

22. Deaf Forever – Motorhead

23. Bummer – Monster Magnet

24. Down with the Sickness – Disturbed

15. Funeral Bell -- Black Label society

Spawn of Dyscrasia

Spawn of Dyscrasia, by S.E. Lindberg, IGNIS Publishing LLC, Dyscrasia Fiction ™  235 pages. Front cover by Ken Kelly.

Well, I’m impressed. This is an entertaining fantasy novel that—I would argue—rises to the level of art. I judge that in a couple of ways. First, the actual prose here is simply lovely. It has the kind of poetry and descriptiveness to it that I constantly seek for but seldom find. Note: by lovely I don’t mean that it is sweet and bucolic. Quite the reverse. There are plenty of gore-rich scenes, enough to do a horror novel proud. But the language is so vivid and rich that you can just revel in it. At least, I did.

Second, the thing that really raises this book to the level of art is the fact that the author creates an almost entirely alien world, with many surrealistic elements, and yet never lets the imaginative veil of the story slip. There’s never a moment when you see through the strangeness of the created world to catch a glimpse of the mundane world behind it. This is the equivalent of an actor maintaining a character they are playing even outside the world of a particular film. But, a book typically takes a lot longer to write than an actor would spend living inside a character for a movie. Maintaining the illusion in a novel is hard enough even when the story is much more realistic than the fantasy world Lindberg has created here. I can imagine that doing so took a tremendous amount of focus and attention during the actual writing process. That in itself suggests an artist at work.

The world itself is endlessly fascinating and—in my experience—unique. Although there are beings in the world that resemble insects, and reptiles, and birds, none of them is quite what they seem. You can’t simple file one of the creatures under the label “ant,” or “dragon,” for example, and then feel you’ve captured its essence. They may resemble such beings, but they are not such beings. They are something different, although completely consistent within themselves throughout the story.

Although I enjoyed the book immensely, there is a caveat for the reader that I also want to mention. I would suggest that this book is not one that readers can “toss off casually.” In other words, it demands concentration and focus.  Because the author never makes a slip in world building, it means that if you try to read it with half a mind you’ll probably miss something important. I can pick up the typical thriller or western, for example, skip a page here and there, or let it lay for a week and then pick it up again, without any problem. I quickly found that I couldn’t do this with Spawn of Dyscrasia. I needed to immerse myself in the work in order to truly appreciate it.

All in all, I rate this book very highly. I read it in paperback form and am glad I did because I really like this cover as well and will be happy to see it on my shelves. (The cover is by Ken Kelly, who will be no stranger to readers of fantasy.) There is also a Kindle version of the book, though. The paperback is available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and will run you a little less than $14.00 bucks at either site. The Kindle version is $4.99. There is currently no Nook version.

This is actually the second book of Dyscrasia fiction, by the way. The first is called Lords of Dyscrasia. I’ve not read that one and didn’t feel like I needed to in order to understand what was happening here. A third book is planned and it looks like it will be more closely linked to Spawn than Spawn was to Lords. I’ll be starting Lords of Dyscrasia soon, and will be looking forward to the new book.

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Review of Metallica: This Monster Lives

Metallica: This Monster Lives, the inside story of Some Kind of Monster, the documentary movie. Written by Joe Berlinger (the filmmaker) and Greg Milner.

I gave this three and a half stars. This is about the making of the Metallica documentary called Some Kind of Monster. The primary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger, wrote the book, with help from someone named Greg Milner. I’d never heard of either of them but then I never pay much attention to moviemakers. I've seen the movie, though, and thought it was pretty good. This gives a lot more detail and gives information that couldn't be fitted into a movie.  Here's what I liked best, 1) the stuff about Metallica and the extra details that the movie didn't show, 2) the reasons why some material that was filmed didn't make it into the movie, 3) the way in which the material was often presented out of chronological order in order to show the "essence" of the story rather than an absolute straight ahead telling, and 4) the reactions of Metallica to the movie.

Other than the fact that I don’t really buy the “essence” comment, I liked all this material. Showing material out of chronological order is manipulating the material to tell a story in a certain way and to make certain points arrived at by the filmmakers. I understand why it’s done, for dramatic effect. Although Berlinger seems to feel strongly about the “essence” of the story concept, he admits that this is a selection process, and since they filmed thousands of hours and had to cut it down to movie length you can imagine that making such choices was pretty tough.

What I didn't care as much for: a lot of information given by Joe Berlinger about his previous documentaries and how much he grew as a person while making this one. I'm in no way, shape, or form a movie buff, or even interested in the whole field of film. This material might prove much more interesting to someone who is. It was well written and flowed with the other material for the most part. I just didn’t really care. My sole interest was in the band.

The one film-related thing I did find interesting was that Berlinger is the guy who handled the filming of Blair Witch 2, which was critically lambasted but which was actually far superior to the original Blair Witch movie. That movie was a completely faked documentary, or mockumentary. In other words, Blair Witch 1 was one of the silliest moments in film history. Berlinger talked about how he didn’t like the concept of the mockumentary and I absolutely agree with him and this upped my respect for him considerably. He also talked about how the failure of Blair Witch 2 triggered a long period of depression for him and made him think his career was over. I could sympathize with him here for sure.

All in all, I liked the book quite a lot. It was perhaps a little long, and I might have liked more selected pieces of dialogue from the band, but it was worth my time.
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Storm Belgium Review

I'm afraid I didn't care much for this one. As the first in a series of WWII books told from the German point of view, it sounded interesting. The back cover blurb described it as "devastatingly accurate," and began with the phrase, "The invasion of Belgium has begun.”

I don't know about the devastatingly accurate part. It sounded accurate to me but I'm not an expert on this particular history. I've discovered that Gunther Lutz was probably Charles Whiting, who wrote many nonfiction books about WWII. I’ve read a few of those and generally rated them pretty highly. Thus, I can believe the accuracy statement.

However, the fictional story here was just flat out boring. It certainly didn't start with the invasion of Belgium. The book is only 186 pages long but we spent the first 125 pages following the paratroopers (Jagers) through training. There's one exciting scene during the training period, but that was it. There’s also a sex scene, which was OK and probably done to provide some “gritty” realism.

After the attack on Belgium actually began, around page 125, it concluded again after about twenty-five pages. The rest of the book was aftermath. The fighting itself was OK, though nothing to write home about. But by the time I got to it I didn't really care. Most of the characters also did not seem very realistic to me, although I liked the two main characters.

I’m sorry to say that I was very disappointed and won't be reading any more in this series. Whiting also wrote fictional WWII novels under other pseudonyms, including Leo Kessler, but I’m wary of trying any of them. I may continue to read his nonfiction but I doubt I’ll be looking at any of his fiction. At least not right away.

Here’s a quote from the section after the battle in Belgium began, and after the Jager's glider has crashed in the water. Note that it’s all one sentence.

“However, this mood of optimism was balanced by the continuing menace of the haphazard machine gun fire as the Belgian fortress troops continued to rake the mass of wreckage caught in the wing supports and control wires the shattered glider brought with it, besides turning their attention to two bodies that were now floating face down in the centre of the canal, drifting slowly away with the current at the centre of the channel, and pinkly suffusing the water as they did so.”

I’ll leave you with that. Not exactly compelling action.  

The All Consuming

I've known people who have told me that they possess a "stillness" of mind. They say they can sit and just "be," without a constant yammering and clamoring from their own thoughts. I'm not such a person, though I envy those who are.

Thoughts surge constantly through my head. They careen this way and that. They roil in eddies and rush in cataracts over tumbling rocks. Many of them are anxious thoughts, worried thoughts. This is one reason I used to drink. Alcohol would shut at least some of the thoughts down.

Don't get me wrong. I like thinking. I just wish many times that I could keep my thoughts on task, that I could wield them like a hammer instead of having them act more like a spill of thumbtacks.

There are times when my thoughts do flow the way I want them. It happens if I'm reading a really good book, or watching a really good movie. I've noticed in the last few years that it happens when I get involved in playing a video game. My mind starts making dozens of decisions a minute but they are all focused, all flowing in the same direction.

It also happens when I'm writing. At least sometimes. I've come to realize that when I say, at the end of the day, "the writing went well," it's because I achieved that flow. My focus had narrowed, had become sharpened onto one primary topic, the creation of a scene. This state of flow is very pleasant to me. The worries go away. The focus becomes purely on the now, the moment of creation or involvement. I call it, "The All Consuming."

I've also realized lately that this has always been a thing with me. There's a story in my Micro Weird collection actually called "Thought Flow." It almost perfectly illustrates my point. And it was one of the first ten stories I ever wrote.

How about you? Do you possess stillness of mind, or do your thoughts run more like mine? And what do you think of "The All Consuming?" Do you experience it? Do you like it?
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New Friends in the House, and School

Just to note, I start back to school tomorrow. So at least for a while I won't be visiting blogs quite as regularly as I have during the summer. That's not what I want to talk about, though. I want to talk about books. Here goes:

New Friends in the House:

I mentioned the wonderful Mystery Cove Book Shop that we found on our Maine trip. Let me tell you what I picked up there. I would have bought a lot more if we’d not had luggage constraints. But they do have a webpage so I will probably order more through that.

First up, I got The Rat Bastards #4: Meat Grinder-Hill. They didn’t have #1 or I’d have gotten that one. This series was published by Jove Books in the 1980s and there were sixteen total books. They were written under the name John Mackie, whose real name is Len Levinson. Levinson talks about these books on his blog, and the whole series has been rereleased as ebooks. I’d heard about this series for a long time but had never actually seen a print copy. I was glad to pick this one up and look forward to reading it.

Second, I got Renegade #14: Harvest of Death. The blurb on the front reads, “Captain Gringo cuts a hot path of love and fury through a jungle in hell!”  How could I resist? This was a series of western novels written by Lou Cameron under the name Ramsay Thorne. There appear to be 36 volumes in the series. Again, I’d heard of this series for years but never seen a print copy of one. They only had #14 so that’s the one I got. I’ve read quite a lot of Cameron under his own name.

 Third, I picked up Nazi Paratrooper: Storm Belgium. This is the first in a series by Gunther Lutz. I’d never heard of this series before, but apparently there are at least five books in the series, and they tell the story of WWII from the German perspective. I couldn’t find anything on Lutz himself or on this series. The one I have is published by Sphere Books. I’m pretty curious about this but so far nothing informative has turned up. (Note: I've actually started reading this one and it is pretty weak.)

Fourth, I got Phantom Regiments, a collection of ghost war stories. The stories were selected by Robert Adams and there’s a great cover by Ken Kelley. Baen did quite a few of this kind of collection and I’ve generally enjoyed them. I see this one has quite a few negative reviews so I’ll have to see what my take is on it.

I do love talkin' 'bout books!

Quest for Books: Part Two

 After the disappointment at the bookstore that had closed 20 minutes before we got there, we drove into the town of Ellsworth, Maine to look for Lana’s photography stuff. After visiting Radio Shack, we found that the only place we could get what she needed was Wal-Mart. Though not our favorite shopping spot, we seemed to have little choice in the matter. I also felt a surge of hope because I knew that in my part of the world Wal-Mart carried books. Perhaps I could get my fix of fiction there.

Wal-Mart was open. They even had books. They had romance novels, YA novels, and a handful of westerns and thrillers. They had about three SF works. I don’t generally read romance novels, although if it had been all that was available I certainly would have bought some. Most of the YA, westerns, and SF they had were ones I’d already read or ones I had at home to be read. I finally found an Alien tie-in book called Sea of Sorrows by James A. Moore. I quickly plucked that one up, although I don’t typically read a lot of media tie-in books other than Star Trek: TOS.

Between the book on Maine ghosts and the Alien book, I was temporarily fortified. However, I was still a bit worried because I was tearing through the Maine book very quickly. I could soon run out of fiction again. On Saturday, we went to a town called Bar Harbor, which from what I’ve heard was the basis for the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine, from the TV series Dark Shadows. We ostensibly went to Bar Harbor for a whale watching tour. That was mainly for Lana. I wanted to go because I’d been told by a waiter at a restaurant where we’d eaten that Bar Harbor had the biggest bookstore around. I was still asking about bookstores everywhere we went.

However, said waiter was apparently a better waiter than he was a judge of bookstores. We found the store of well repute. It had a few long rows of books and a lot of other stuff I had no interest in. Most of the actual books appeared to be by Stephen King, all of which I had read. The SF section was tiny and mostly consisted of “Game of Thrones.” I found a book called Fun with Kirk and Spock that I bought. I also bought a Jonathan Kellerman novel I hadn’t read. There wasn’t much else, and I finished the short, joke-style Star Trek book within fifteen minutes of getting home.

On Sunday, we went nowhere near anything resembling a bookstore. But on Monday, our last full day in Maine, we saw a sign for a used bookstore as we left Acadia National Park. Four miles down a side road took us to a delightful little place called the Mystery Cove Book Shop, which lies between Bar Harbor and Ellsworth. All my book withdrawal anxiety disappeared and I felt completely at home. I quickly found old friends on the shelves, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jack Vance, David Gemmell, Robert Adams. But I also found new friends as well. I could have bought half the store but limited myself to four paperbacks because that was about all we could add to our luggage without having to buy a new suitcase. They do ship books, though, so I may end up ordering more from their website.

For my next post, I’ll tell you what I got at Mystery Cove. But for now, just know that I made it three days with only two books to read. I know now that I can face anything.

I just hope I don’t have to.

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Quest for Books: Part One

While on our recent “hiatus” from social media, Lana and I went to Maine. We stayed at a house kindly lent to us by some blog friends of Lana’s. We had a great time and I’ll post more about that journey later. Today I want to talk about my addiction—to reading. And about the problems it caused me on this trip.

I used to travel with a suitcase of clothes and a briefcase of books. I’d take ten or twelve different paperbacks so I’d have a choice in reading material. I no longer do this because I have a Kindle loaded with hundreds of volumes. As we headed to the airport Thursday, I took only the Kindle and the one paper book I was reading, Three Blind Mice by Ed McBain. I finished the McBain on the flight so, after arriving at our vacation home that evening, I pulled out my electronic library and turned it on. Nothing happened.

 I had just charged the battery so I didn’t think that was the problem. Still, I dutifully hooked up the charger. Again, nothing happened. Not even the indicator light came on. I tried a reset. That didn’t work. I hopped on the net with my laptop to research solutions. None of them worked. I initiated a chat with Amazon support but they couldn’t help either. My Kindle, which I’ve had since February 27, 2009, was dead. I was without reading material.

I began to shake, and even though I’d been reading only a few hours before I felt immediate withdrawal pangs. Just the thought that I couldn’t read if I wanted to was enough to undermine my equilibrium. Despite this, I somehow managed to sleep.

Lana and I were up early Friday and hit the shore to explore and take pictures. On the way back we passed through the town of Winter Harbor and stopped at a 5 and 10 store. They had some nonfiction stuff, mostly birding books and local geographies. I certainly read a lot of nonfiction but my “addiction” is to fiction, to “stories.” Fiction is my heroin. Nonfiction is more like methadone. I did find a book on the ghosts of Maine, which I bought. I also asked every place we went if there were a local bookstore. The checkout lady at the IGA told us there was. It was only two blocks away and was called Serendipity. Serendipity indeed! 

Within minutes we arrived in the parking lot of Serendipity. I could see a book display in the window as we walked up and my withdrawal pangs began to dissipate. Then we came to the front door, which was locked, and found a sign that read: “Closed Friday through Monday.” We were in town precisely from Friday through Monday.

I did not panic, though. On the way in from the airport on Thursday afternoon we’d seen a used bookstore along US Highway 1. It was a long drive but we needed to go into a bigger town to find Lana some photography stuff anyway. So, we headed out. I parked almost in front of the door of the bookstore and immediately noticed two things. First, the big plate glass windows were chock full of books and I could already see numerous titles that I wanted to read. My fingers and eyes began to itch with the need. But there was a second thing to notice. This door too had a sign. It read: “Closed at Three Today.” Our car clock read 3:20. No fiction for me.

To Be Continued:

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Hiatus

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be taking about a week off the blog and generally off the internet. I’ll be checking email periodically but otherwise won’t be around. Nothing bad has happened. Just got a few things to do. I trust everyone will be well. Maybe when I get back I'll be reenergized a bit. 

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A Sound To War

I was looking through some old files when I found the following poem. I'd largely forgotten about it. It was published way back in 1992 in Midnight Zoo, Volume 2, Issue 5. I used to write quite a few rhyming poems but haven't done one in ages now. Thought I'd just run it here. 

A SOUND TO WAR 

The bull roarers, they are roaring

A frightful thing to hear

And the mothers know too soon

They'll hold the still ones dear

The horns, they are a'wailing

And the spearheads glitter long

But it's nothing like the glory

To be told about in song

The bagpipes, they are skirling

As the widow's brood is borne

Down coomb into the valley

Where last the sheep were shorn

The mortars, they are booming

And the shrapnel's in the grass

Down in the jungle deltas

When will he see his lass

The jets, they are a'screaming

Above the pockmarked waste

And the targets go down easy

You'll never see his face

The silence is astounding

Where warriors were at work

In a place of bone and blood

Where all but ravens shirk

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Review of Under the Ember Star by Rachel V. Olivier

Something good to post about. Rachel Olivier has put up a very fine review of Under the Ember Star over at her blog. Thanks to Rachel for the review, and I'm glad she liked it. I was happy too because this is one of the first posted reviews I've had of the book by a woman reader. It took me a long time to try, as a male writer, to create a female protagonist, rather than just female secondary characters. I've only done it a few times so I was pleased to hear that it worked from someone of the other gender.

In other news, interesting lucid dream last night. As soon as I realized it was lucid I opened the door the cabin I was in and took off flying. That's what I usually do whenever I go lucid. Love to fly. Later I had a dream about a wolf puppy gnawing at my boot.

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Promotion Hell

Promotion of one's creative works is just outright hell. It goes against my nature to act like a salesman, but if you don't let people know about your work then you're certainly doomed to obscurity. But in this world it seems you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

I joined Facebook to connect with both family and with writers and readers who share my particular loves, such as fantasy, pulp fiction, SF, and Westerns. I comment often on other people’s posts. I share teasers from friends about their work and I do post about my own. I don’t very often post a straight sales-pitch, but I do put up teasers or quotes from my own work. I only do this on average about every three or four days so I don’t think it’s excessive. I try to make most of my "promotional" posts funny anyway in hopes that a few people will get a kick out of it.

I did a post like this yesterday. It’s the back cover blurb for Swords of Talera, which I wrote myself, and I included a link to the book on Amazon. When I paged back through my feed the most recent promotional item that shows up was on June 20, so that’s a pretty good while.

However, I got a comment on my post. I quote: “Stop posting sales pitches or I will defriend you.” Someone else then ‘liked’ that comment.

Wow, one post a month with a link to one’s own work is apparently excessive. I’m certainly not going to quit doing what I’m doing. I personally like to hear what other writers are working on. And it’s fine to me if folks who aren’t really my friends “defriend” me. Still, I have to say, it hurt just a little bit to get up and see that kind of comment first thing in the morning. 

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Divide and Conquer

All the Way From:
Republicans versus Democrats
Liberals versus Conservatives
Theists versus Atheists
Rural versus Urban
Rich versus Poor
Pro gun / Anti gun
Pro life / Pro choice
White vs Black vs Brown
Christianity vs Islam vs Judaism
Christian vs Pagan
Islam vs America
Wal-Mart vs Costco
Congress vs Congress
Obama vs Boehner
Gay vs Straight
Men vs Women
Religion vs Secularism

To:
Star Trek or Star Wars
Fiction or Nonfiction

Down To:
Boxers or Briefs

It's all about divide and conquer. It all makes me sick.
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Authentic Howard, with answers

OK, here are the quotes again, with the identification and my comments in parentheses. 

#1. "Before them all came the giant form of Conan.  Arrows had ripped his white khalat, exposing the glittering black mail that clad his lion-thewed torso."  (This is De Camp and Carter, "Black Tears", P. 16 of ­Conan the Wanderer­.  I thought it was pretty good. The use of the word “khalat” is a giveaway. It’s classic De Camp and I don’t think Howard ever used this word.)

#2. "There was blood on the Cimmerian's mail, dried blood on the sword in his right hand; he loomed dim and gigantic in the shadowy light." (This is authentic REH, P. 51 of ­Red Nails­, the Berkley paperback edition.  Really good. The use of the semi-colon to tie two sentences together is a nice stylistic touch.)

   

#3. "Both Conan's knees bent to drop him straight down into a squat below the mighty cut.  He heard the wind-noise of the rushing blade, too close above his head."  (This is andy offutt, P. 42 of ­Conan the Mercenary­.  Workmanlike prose.  Nothing spectacular here.)

#4. "The Cimmerian strode forward through the dull light and dust of the battlefield.  His sword was red, his knuckles white from the harsh grip of his hand on the hilt."  (This is my contribution, from ­“Conan: Let's Rip Their Heads off and Feed Them to the Worms­,” an unpublished manuscript that consists only of the two lines quoted above.

#5. "Conan pivoted on his buttocks, his foot rising to meet a hurtling nomad in the stomach.  With a gagging gasp the man stopped dead, black eyes goggling as he bent double."  (This is Robert Jordan, ­Conan the Unconquered­.  It doesn't get much worse than this.  I mean, gagging, gasp, and goggling in the same sentence.  I've got to start using more "G" words in my own writing.  To be fair, though, this was one of his earlier books. And I read several Conan books by him. The stories were not that bad. I never tried the Wheel of Time series.)

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Authentic Howard

All of the quotes below feature the character of Conan, but only one was actually written by Robert E. Howard. Any guesses as to which? Any idea who the other authors might be? I'll post the answers in a couple of days by just adding them to this post.

1.  "Before them all came the giant form of Conan.  Arrows had ripped his white khalat, exposing the glittering black mail that clad his lion-thewed torso."

2.  "There was blood on the Cimmerian's mail, dried blood on the sword in his right hand; he loomed dim and gigantic in the shadowy light."

3.  "Both Conan's knees bent to drop him straight down into a squat below the mighty cut.  He heard the wind-noise of the rushing blade, too close above his head."

4.  "The Cimmerian strode forward through the dull light and dust of the battlefield.  His sword was red, his knuckles white from the harsh grip of his hand on the hilt.

5.  "Conan pivoted on his buttocks, his foot rising to meet a hurtling nomad in the stomach.  With a gagging gasp the man stopped dead, black eyes goggling as he bent double."

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A True Nightmare

I’ve mentioned before how much I love my nightmares. Well, I had a different kind of nightmare last night, one that I was sad to wake up from and now feel a lingering melancholy that it wasn’t real.  

In the dream I found a used bookstore I’d never seen before. This is, of course, a wonderful start to a dream. As would happen in real life, I was unable to resist going into the store and browsing. The shelves were filled mostly with colorful paperbacks. I saw they had a big western section and moved over to that. Almost immediately I found a dozen Lewis B. Patten westerns that I’d never seen before. Patten is not my favorite western writer but his tales are consistently good and it would certainly be a thrill to find a bunch of his works together like that. In real life I would have bought them all.

Then I saw that across the aisle from the westerns was the science fiction/fantasy section. I moved over there. The place was dimly lit and I noticed a row of thin paperbacks on the very top shelf that looked like Lin Carter books. I have most of Carter’s books and have read most of the ones I have, but I will typically look through stacks of his works to see if I’m missing anything. I reached up and pulled down a handful, only to get a most pleasant surprise.

By their covers, the books were clearly space opera/sword and planet works, but they were written by an author named Joe Comple. I had never heard of the author, nor seen these books before, but they looked exactly like something I would love. I sat the stack down beside me and selected the top one for further study, just as would be my habit in real life.

The cover was mostly bright blue and it looked like something Darrel K. Sweet might have done. The central image showed two space faring galleons coming together in battle. The author’s name, Joe Comple, was in small print near the bottom, and the title stretched large across the top portion. The title was “Hijacking the Ajax.”

I opened the book to page one and started reading. It struck me as quite good, although after waking up I couldn’t remember the exact words. The Ajax turned out to be one of the ships from the cover, and the opening line was something like: “The Ajax came down to the attack on a long parabolic curve.”

There turned out to be three Joe Comple books in the stack I’d taken down, although I remember nothing about the other two, and they immediately went on the pile I was planning on buying. Then the nightmare occurred. I woke up. And realized the books didn’t really exist. I sure wish they did.

I even went to Google and Amazon and searched for Joe Comple. There are a couple of folks named that apparently but none of them appear to be writers. More’s the pity. Although if I ever need a pseudonym for fantasy maybe I’ve just dreamed one up.

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