Horseshoes & Hand Grenades: John Corabi

Written by John Corabi, with Paul Miles. I imagine Miles did the heavy lifting with the prose and based it on Corabi's stories. Not completely sure. I really liked it. One of the better rock biographies I've read. Corabi comes across as a down to earth sort of fellow, a decent sort who is not afraid to tell the stories that make him look like a flawed human.

I'll admit I bought it primarily for the connection with Motley Crue, but I enjoyed the whole thing. Corabi was in Crue for five years and they did their self-titled album with him as the singer. That's a really good album, although not my favorite by the Crue. Corabi has also been in many, many other bands. I had no idea how many until I read this. He's mostly been a singer but also a guitar player.

One thing I particularly liked is there's a real focus on the music and his experiences on the road without dwelling on groupies and drugs. In fact, he says he never did hard drugs, although he apparently drank quite a lot. And he wasn't the kind of person to try to sleep with as many groupies as possible. Overall, a good book.

#1: Donovan’s Devils

#1: Donovan’s Devils: The Assassination is Set for July 4…”, by Lee Parker. 1974. Award Books.

This is the first in a series that only went to three books. Book #2 is Blueprint for Execution, and #3 is The Guns of Mazatlan. The author is Lee Parker for all three books, although “Glorious Trash” suggests that the author is either Larry Powell or Robert H. Turner. It’s a “Dirty Dozen” kind of book in which a group of hardcases and misfits are put together for a mission that no one else wants—to rescue some hostages from a local strongman/rebel in Paraguay.

I actually liked the writing here. The book read smoothly. My main issue was that over three-quarters of the book is just putting the team together. We get to meet James Donovan first, an Army captain getting ready to leave the military, who is recruited by his former commander—Brigadier General Lucas Blaine—to take a very special assignment for the POTUS. Rescue an ambassador, a famous doctor, and the ambassador’s daughter from a Guatemalan strongman called El Tigre. The team he puts together, and with whom he has worked before in Vietnam, contains Oliver Bogan (tough black guy), Nathan Carey (sociopath who learns the meaning of friendship), Arthur "Houdini" Gibbs (good natured conman), Francis Quinn (deadly warrior), Irvin "The Bear" Randolph (muscle and dumb jock), and Joseph Teal (Mechanic and chick magnet).

Gibbs, Bogan, and Quinn get a full introduction of their back story and skill sets. I’m guessing book 2 might do the same for the other three. And by the time we get to Paraguay and the actual rescue, there’s only a little over 30 pages of this 154 page book to describe it. It really got the short shrift, and the death of El Tigre was pretty anticlimactic.

I liked the writing well enough that I might try book #2 if I can find it cheap, but I hope we get a little more story and action in that book and a little less background.

Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers

With a title like Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers (SSGR), you might assume this book is space opera. It’s not. It’s a parody of space opera, which is horse of a different color. Specifically, it seemed to parody most the work of E.E. Doc Smith in his “Lensman” series, which, admittedly, is not the best space opera ever written.

To me, Space Opera and Sword & Planet fiction (like John Carter of Mars) are the purest forms of sheer entertainment out there. They do, however, contain certain tropes that invite some writers to lampoon them. That doesn’t mean the lampooning works.

Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey, 1925-2012), who wrote SSGR, was a talented writer. He’s best known for his “Stainless Steel Rat” stories but I’ve generally preferred other works of his, including “Make Room, Make Room,” which became the basis for the movie Soylent Green, and the Deathworld stories.

However, humor is difficult to write for even the most talented author. In my opinion it’s the most difficult emotion to create in writing. And I, personally, am pretty difficult to please on the humor front. I like humor in my fiction. Just not all humor all the time. I prefer dark humor, and humor when it comes out of the circumstances and the characters. I don’t generally like it when it’s layered on with a spatula and drowns every line.

While I chuckled here and there through SSGR, I didn’t get any belly laughs and I pretty quickly became bored. I mostly sped-read the last 100 pages. Too often, humor turns characters into caricatures. It defuses tension in order to get in a zinger. It becomes predictable because you know the writer is going to choose the most ridiculous option in any situation. It also makes it difficult to maintain any suspension of disbelief in the actual story. And primarily, it is the “story” that I want when I read.  The story in SSGR was weighed down by so many stabs at humor that I just couldn’t get into it.

SSGR is a well written parody. If you like such pieces you’ll probably like this one. I didn’t care much for it and was rather happy when I was done so I could move on to a different book. Of course, please remember that these are my opinions and your own might differ.

Violet Rising

Violet Rising is the first in a new comic book series from the pen of Tony Petry. I’ve known Tony for a while on Facebook and we’ve carried on a voluminous correspondence. He’s been sending me an image here and there of the comic but now I’ve got the whole first issue. And I read it.

Most comics seem to make the “action packed” claim, but this one lives up to that. It’s crammed full of information and some backstory but doesn’t sacrifice the action to accomplish those goals. The story flows naturally and there are revelations about the character on every page. The end packs a wallop and sets up a big mystery for issue #2.

I believe that Jean-Etienne Nnabuchi and Ekes Momodu handle the drawing work here but the story is Tony’s. (He’s been telling me about it for quite a while.) I’m glad to see it come to fruition. If you’d like to pick up a copy, you can email Tony at: petry_tony (at) yahoo (dot) com

I heartily recommend it.

 

Alan E. Nourse

Alan E. Nourse was barely on my radar as a writer until fairly recently. I'd read one book by him, Raiders from the Rings, and liked it quite a lot. It was young adult SF, and so I picked up another YA SF book by him called Trouble on Titan. This one was even better. An exciting story and really well written. There's a fair amount of poetry in Nourse's work. 

After this book, I checked Nourse out. He was a medical doctor in addition to writing. He wrote fiction and nonfiction and had a medical column in Good Housekeeping apparently. He was born in the USA in 1928 and died in 1992. The two books I've read have a space operish feel to them and that's a good thing from my standpoint. Excitement and adventure. They are also YA mainly because his protagonists are on the youngish side, essentially teenagers. But the concepts are big. His science is a little dated--Trouble on Titan was published in 1954--but that scarcely detracts from the fun. 

If I'd known who Nourse was as a teenager he might have become one of my favorite SF writers, right up there with Anderson, Heinlein, Norton, and Silverberg (at that time). Now I'm going to check online for some more of his books. Maybe you should too.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Volume 1, #0. Edited by Oliver Brackenbury, Cover by Gilead.

This is issue 0 of a new sword & sorcery magazine, distributed in eformat and PDF for free, or sold for a little over 3 dollars in print format on Amazon. I picked up the print version. As a magazine rather than an anthology, it contains nonfiction articles as well as short stories. The stories are clustered up front, with the nonfiction more toward the back, and I found myself liking that format.

New Edge Sword & Sorcery is a term still undergoing a “shakedown.” In other words, it’s still finding its ultimate definition. According to Brackenbury, who has an essay on the concept at the end of the magazine, New Edge continues the older traditions of the “outsider protagonist,” “thrilling energy,” and “weirdness” while adding “inclusivity” and a strong support for “new works” in the field. This includes a greater inclusion of women authors and authors of color, as well as those who do not fit neatly into standard gender and lifestyle dichotomies. What I’m most concerned with here, however, are the stories and the information. Did I enjoy them as stories and essays? Below are my thoughts.

First up is a story by Dariel R. A. Quiogue, a Philippines based writer. “The Curse of the Horsetail Banner”  was an excellent choice to start the anthology because this is a very strong tale—both well written and exciting. As the name of the protagonist suggests—Orhan Timur—this tale is set in a pseudo Mongolian/Tibetan milieu. The writing really puts you into the cold, snowy climate as Timur flees from pursuers who want him dead, and finds a potential way to regain his lost position as Khagan, khan of khans. I’ve bought a book by Quiogue featuring this character, which I hope to get to soon.

Story 2 is “The Ember Inside” by Remco van Straten and Angeline B. Adams. Very interesting story in that it features a “storyteller” as the primary hero. There’s a twist as to how the stories get told, however, and I won’t reveal the surprise. The main character, Ymke, is not, to my mind, a completely sympathetic character, although her life has certainly given her some tough choices. She is certainly a complex character. There are elements of Ymke that remind me of Robert E. Howard’s Dark Agnes.

“Old Moon over Irukad” is next and is a real treat. The tale features Edrion and Virissa, sword companions who are hired for a questionable job that pays good gold, but are then betrayed. Not a good idea to betray this pair. The story is by David C. Smith, an old hand at sword & sorcery who became known in the late 1970s and early 1980s for his tales of Oron. I’ve been a fan of his since those days. This is a fun story written by a master.

“The Beast of the Shadow Gum Trees” by T. K. Rex, is definitely the weirdest story here. It’s certainly fantasy but only on the fringes of sword & sorcery. But it’s an enjoyable tale and the prose is extraordinary. I would have enjoyed reading this just for the prose, but the tale itself is quite good. An old being named “Moth,” who is not human but some type of minor nature god it seems, mourns the loss of his love and plans to let himself die. Turns out, he has one more task to perform, in a land far away. There’s a lot of feeling in this one and I was touched by the ending.

“Vapors of Zinai” is by J. M. Clarke. I’m not all that familiar with the “sword & soul” subgenre of S&S but I believe this one might fit there. It features a warrior/sorcerer as the protagonist, a man named Kyembe. Despite the setting in a sort of Alternate Egypt, this is—in many ways—one of the most traditional stories in the magazine. Kyembe is warrior in the Conan, Kane, Imaro tradition. I really enjoyed the character and have picked up another anthology with a Kyembe tale in it. I got a big kick out of the ending to this one. That last line is pure entertainment.

“The Grief-Note of Vultures” is next, by Bryn Hammond. Excellent title, but I have to admit I didn’t quite understand this story. It’s written in a very unusual style, a unique style certainly, and one that might take some familiarity with to become fully comfortable in the tale. (I had the same issue with Glen Cook’s Black Company books at first and came to love those.) I think it was probably the style that kept me from becoming fully immersed in this story.

After “Grief-Note,” there’s a short essay by Howard Andrew Jones on the “Origin of the New Edge.” This was interesting to me since I had very little knowledge of how it came about. (I’ve mostly been writing westerns and modern westerns for the last 3 years.)

Immediately after comes “C. L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry: The First lady of Sword & Sorcery” by Cora Buhlert. I’m a huge fan of Moore’s work, especially the Jirel and Northwest Smith tales, which have all the adventure you could want but also seem to have a little something more written into their characterizations. I’ve also written an essay talking about Moore’s work, so I didn’t learn a lot of new information from this essay, but it was fun to revisit some of this information. I did learn more about Moore’s post-Jirel work and appreciated that. A good essay.

We have an interview with Milton Davis up next, conducted by Brackenbury. I learned a lot of new information here. Davis’s name pops up frequently in recent conversations about new fantasy. He is firmly associated with the sword & soul moniker and was influenced to some extent by the 1970s and 1980s work of Charles Saunders, one of the first African Americans to put his unique stamp on sword & sorcery. I learned some things about Saunders, who I much admire.

Another article, “The Outsider in Sword & Sorcery,” is up next, by Brian Murphy. A short treatise on the role of the outsider in S&S. Interesting and enjoyable.

Nicole Emmelhainz produces the next essay, which is “Gender Performativity in Howard’s ‘Sword Woman.’” This piece examines Howard’s Dark Agnes stories at some length, focusing on gender issues.  Emmelhainz is a professor and this work certainly has an academic feel to it. As an academic myself, I quite appreciated it. This is something we might have run in The Dark Man, which I’ve been occasionally an assistant editor for. I thought the ending here, which talks about how modern authors can still learn some things from writers such as Robert E. Howard, was even handed, open minded, and powerful. It was also appreciated.

Magazines often have reviews and toward the end here we have a review of “The Obanaax and Other Tales of Heroes and Horrors” by Kirk Johnson. The review is written by Robin Marx. Not having read this book, there’s not much I can say. Marx seemed to enjoy it.

Finally, we have Brackenbury’s essay on “What is New Edge Sword & Sorcery,” which I’ve already mentioned earlier. I thought this was a really entertaining first issue for this new magazine. I was happy to see it since I would really love to see a sword & sorcery revival, given that I’ve written quite a bit of the stuff myself. I recommend it. For more information, check out their Facebook page under the same name, and I also understand there’s a Kickstarter launching on February 2, with a surprise on February 1. Here’s the link. First day backers will get an exclusive gift. A lot of effort is going into making the first issues dynamite, and there are some big ideas coming down the pipe. I’ll support the Kickstarter, and  I hope the quality of the work shown in this opening issue continues.

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, Volume 5.

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, Volume 5. Edited by David A. Riley. 328 pages. Published by Parallel Universe Publications. Cover and interior art by Jim Pitts.

This is the fifth volume in the acclaimed Swords & Sorceries series from Parallel Universe Publications. It’s the largest of the series so far and contains eleven stories, several of which are fairly long. The TOC consists of:

Introduction by David A. Riley

THE ROTTED LAND by  Charles Gramlich

SKULLS FOR SILVER by Harry Elliott

FOR THE LIGHT by Gustavo Bondoni

PEOPLE OF THE LAKE by Lorenzo D. Lopez

FREE DIVING FOR LEVIATHAN EGGS by Tais Teng

THE BLACK WELL by Darin Hlavaz

DEGG AND THE UNDEAD by Susan Murrie Macdonald

THE MISTRESS OF THE MARSH by David Dubrow

SILVER AND GOLD by Earl W. Parrish

BRIDGE OF SORROWS by Dev Agarwal

PRISONERS OF DEVIL DOG CITY by Adrian Cole

Here are my thoughts.

The Rotted Land: The first story is mine and is third in a series about a character named Krieg, who combines certain elements of REH’s Kull and Karl Wagner’s Kane. It’s a traditional story doing something along the lines of the “Northern Thing.” Another Krieg story is written and submitted and I’m working on a fifth.

Skulls for Silver is a great title. I don’t believe I’ve read anything by Harry Elliott previously. He’s a British author. This is a fairly long story, also doing the northern thing. Hel and Gul and Mann are the characters. Hel is a female fighter and Gul a big, brawny warrior, while Mann is a swordsman. Interesting. You don’t often see three characters in Sword & Sorcery settings. One or two seems to be the rule.

For the Light is also the first story I’ve read by Gustavo Bondoni, although I’ve been facebook friends with him a long time and he is a very prolific author. Bondoni is from Argentina and is the only SF/Fantasy author I know from that area of the world. This story leaps into action. We have a chariot race to save the world and the main character is Semni. This was an early favorite for me in the collection and has one of those great endings that is surprising, although it seems inevitable in hindsight.

People of the Lake starts in a swamp, sort of like “The Rotted Land.”  Lorenzo D. Lopez was another new writer to me, until I found in the Introduction that it’s a pseudonym for someone I have heard of before. Quite a lot of action in this one and some gory battles.

Free Diving for Leviathan Eggs. This tale has a bit of a high fantasy feel to it, and also reminds me of the work of Clark Ashton Smith. It quickly became another favorite for me, just because it is so beautifully written. I really loved the language and the whole tone of the tale. Great ending, too. Tais Teng is Dutch, which really makes this collection an international one. I’ll be seeking out more of Teng’s work.

The Black Well sounds like a Robert E. Howard title and Darin Hlavaz is certainly familiar with Howard, as well as Lovecraft, Leiber and Moorcock. This tale features a vast cyclopean city buried in a pit in the earth, very Lovecraftian in feel. This is one of the longer stories, very descriptive.

Degg and the Undead. Susan Murrie Macdonald is another facebook friend. She’s a relatively new writer but this tale shows plenty of polish. Degg is a relatively simple fellow who finds a cave and appropriates a fine sword that he discovers there. Unfortunately for Degg, the dead sorcerer who owned the sword does not take kindly to being stolen from. I really liked the ending, which surprised me.

The Mistress of the Marsh. Another marshy, swampy tale. A Roman legion marches into the wetlands to take it from the savage owners, and they get more than the bargained for. The locals, called Thucers, evoke images of Howard’s Picts, and indeed the tale has elements of Howard’s Conan tale of “Beyond the Black River.” David Dubrow is a Florida writer, also new to me.

Silver and Gold is by Earl W. Parrish, which is also a pseudonym. A post Roman tale about a hero named Pierre, a religious warrior who finds himself in love with a witch. How can he reconcile his spiritual duties and his love? Pierre and Jeannette, the witch, are particularly well-done characters.

Bridge of Sorrows is another great title. Dev Agarwal is also a British author, I believe, as well as editor for Focus Magazine. I remember reading a tale of the same characters, Simeon and Irene, from an early volume of this series. There’s a Howardian and Lovecraftian feel to this tale as well, with the enemy being a race known as the “Dagonists.” They’re not human, in case you couldn’t guess. This is a fairly long story as well, with quite a lot of action.

Prisoners of Devil Dog City is by Adrian Cole, who is certainly the best known writer in the collection. He is also British, and I’ve been a fan of his work since his Dream Lords trilogy in the 1970s. Here we have humans caught up in a battle of the gods, which is a theme that Cole frequently revisits. The gods and monsters are beautifully described here and this was definitely a fun story to end the collection with.

All in all, I can recommend this collection to everyone. Enjoyment to be had.

 

 

 

 

Two Poetry collections:

I've been remiss in blogging a few recent reviews I've done of poetry collections. Thought I'd put two of them together here for this blog:  

First up, we have Life-Limbs from Eliana Vanessa. An excellent first poetry collection from this New Orleans area author. It's not easy to categorize this collection. Most of the poems are dark, skirting the edge of horror and sometimes crossing over, but I wouldn't classify them as horror. They are primarily about relationships and longings--universal issues. Here's a couple of small tastes to give you the flavor:

"blood from the neck of a delicate crow sutures tomorrow's wings back together again," (from earth angel), and "to light up my smoke with a black candle skull," (from red hot death).

A nice element in many of the poems is a very delicate internal resonance. I hesitate to say "rhyming" because it's extremely subtle, but it slips wonderfully off the tongue. Many of these pieces should be read aloud.

Although this is the author's first collection, I'm aware that she's been widely published in magazines and anthologies and her poetical skills are well developed. Highly recommended.  

***

Next we have a very neat little item. Published in a limited edition of 300. My copy is #12, signed by both authors, Marge Simon and Bruce Boston, who happen also to be husband and wife. Boston is a widely known poet/author with numerous awards behind his name. Simon is both an excellent poet and editor, and is also an illustrator of note. This collection of their collaborative poetry also contains numerous neat illustrations by Simon. They two are talented poets full of strange and lovely words which they have spilled onto the pages of Night Smoke. I much enjoyed this read. I'm not sure if this collection is easily available commercially but you might be able to get a copy from either Bruce or Marge, who are present on Facebook, which is where I heard of this collection. I recommend it for all.

Milking the Beast Within, By Ben Douglass

 

Milking the Beast Within, Selected Poems By Ben Douglass. Atomic Mountain Press, LLC, Edited by Rowena White. 63 pages, 2021. Cover by Albert Birkle.

Milking the Beast Within contains thirty-seven poems spanning from 1971 to 2012. This is apparently only a small subset of the poems written by Douglass, who is a poet I’ve not previously read. While each poem seems intensely personal, all are also universal in theme, with the author addressing primarily the issues of relationships and love. The poems are free verse and written in everyday language. As a result, they come off as exceedingly honest.

I’m not widely read in poetry and have mostly read speculative poetry, which normally has SF, Fantasy, or horror elements. I did immediately recognize a certain kinship between Douglass’s work and that of Charles Bukowski. The plain language is similar, as are many of the themes. It was no surprise then to find that one poem in the collection is called, “On Reading Bukowski for the First Time.” However, the collection contains a number of poems written before Douglass discovered Bukowski and the same kind of language and content is found there as well. So, it seems less of a direct influence by Bukowski and more of a certain, common viewpoint on life. Still, I believe I found more hopefulness and peacefulness in Douglass’s work than I have previously in Bukowski.

The cover, called “The Acrobat,” was…intriguing. It’s quite an ugly image of a man, almost a caricature, but it does catch the viewer’s attention. I was surprised to find that it had been done in 1921. It certainly seemed contemporary to me on first look.

All in all, this is a very nice package and the poems are insightful and make one think. I enjoyed them and will likely reread them over time, as well as seeking out more of Douglass’s work.  

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.