Bryce Beattie's Blog, page 3
July 3, 2020
Episode 22: The Daughter of Thor (Part 1)
A strange sequence of events leads an American pilot and a Nazi officer to the mythical land of Valhalla.
This is a longer story, running about 2 hours total, so I’m splitting it into a few episodes. Today features Chapters 1 & 2.
Let me know if you like the idea of doing more of these longer pieces, or if you would prefer to keep them short, like I’ve done so far.
The StoryHack Podcast is currently supported by sales of StoryHack magazine as well as Misha Burnett’s new book, Dark Fantasies.
June 26, 2020
Episode 21: The Bulldog Breed
In which Sailor Steve Costigan says goodbye to his beloved Sea Girl then fights the frenchman who kicked his dog. It’s the first Robert E. Howard story I’ve recorded for the podcast. I’ve read that these boxing stories were more popular at the time of their release than Howard’s Weird Tales stories. Today, they are all but forgotten. But they shouldn’t be, because they’re tons of fun.
Support a great writer and great adventure magazine. Misha Burnett’s new short story collection is now available!
June 19, 2020
A Dead Man’s Teeth
This little true crime blurb comes from the April 15th, 1933 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly that I just got in the mail. I thought about tossing it in as a filler in the next issue of StoryHack, but I don’t know if I’m ready to change my shtick just yet.
Workmen excavating the foundations of a building to be erected near Mayence, Germany, came upon the remains of a human body. The skeleton was that of a strongly built man. The skull contained a set of fine, well preserved teeth; it also contained a couple of bullet holes. The police consulted the list of the missing. They finally got the possibilities down to three and made a systematic canvass of all who had known those three missing men. In the course of their inquiries they came upon a barber who said he had often wondered what had become of one of his regular customers whom he had not seen for three years.
He remembered him perfectly by his fine teeth. The man was proud of them and was always ready to demonstrate their strength. Dozens of times he had shown what he could do, with them. One of his tricks was to pick up the barber’s chair, a wooden one, in his teeth, and balance it in the air, and as proof of the performance of this feat, the barber pointed out the deep-sunken teeth marks in the back of the chair.
When these marks were compared with the dead man’s teeth, it was found they fitted perfectly. The police were able then to establish the corpse’s identity, and finally tracked down the murderer.
-R. W. Sneddon.
Episode 20: Escape From Utopia
Life in “Utopia” was beautiful, perfectly regulated to satisfy everyone’s needs and desires—except one.
I chose to record this one because I saw a review that called it, “1984 in 5,000 words or less.” Watch out to the POV switch midway.
In other news: StoryHack has just released Misha Burnett’s new collection, “Dark Fantasies”, which is available in ebook and paperback.
June 15, 2020
“Dark Fantasies” by Misha Burnett is now available!
Everything is up and running. Misha’s new collction is now available!
This short story collection will keep you on the edge of your seat to the last sentence. Misha Burnett has been published in a wide variety of modern fiction magazines, and here we’ve collected some of his best fantasy work.
From the introduction:
“I’m a tourist, not a colonist. I want to take a couple of pictures, hit an antique mall, get a meal, and get back on the highway. And that’s what I write—what you’ll get in this book is the casual visitor’s view of other worlds than ours. I promise to have you back safe in your own home town by nightfall.
“That having been said, I do revisit the same locations several times. These nine stories are trips to four settings, more or less. I like to think that these worlds are interesting enough to warrant the return trips.
The first two stories, “A Hill Of Stars” and “In The Gloaming O My Darling” are set in what I like to call the Eldritch Earth. Early pulp writers were often fascinated by great antiquity, and I share that fascination. So I basically took Robert Howard’s prehistoric Cimmeria and pushed it back in time—waaay back, all the way to Lovecraft’s Precambrian Era of elder gods and alien monstrosities.
“It’s a mashup of time periods, with human beings and dinosaurs and shoggoths all existing on the same Pangaea-style continent. The concept has both obvious absurdities and an odd charm, and I was able to convince a few other authors to take a stab at the setting.
“The next story, “Nox Invictus” is a one-off. The germ of the idea came from a discussion of elves in Fantasy being avatars of chaos, with the lawlessness of Elfland contrasted with the order of Christendom in works such as Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts And Three Lions. I happened to be reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius at the time, so I thought I’d see how a Roman Stoic would fare in the realm of the fair folk—specifically the Svartalfheim of Norse mythology.
“It was fun, writing the clash of three very different cultures, the civilized Empire, the Celtic barbarians, and the decadent Dark Elves. I hope you enjoy the trip.
“The next stop on our itinerary doesn’t have an official name, but the three stories “Candlemass Night”, “Conessa’s Sword”, and “Through Dry Places” are all set in the same world. It’s about the closest that I’ve written to a “typical” Fantasy world—vaguely Central European, vaguely Medieval. Adventurers from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign would feel at home here. The stories do have an Ashkenazi flavor—it’s influenced by my love of Russian Jewish folklore and the places are more Anatevka than Lankhmar.
“Next stop, Dracoheim. The last three stories, “She That Was So Proud And Wild,” “The Hopeful Bodies Of The Young,” and “An Interrupted Scandal” are set in the same Fantasy city. It’s different than most Urban Fantasy, though, in that it isn’t modern Earth with the addition of fantastic elements but instead a Fantasy world that has “grown up” into modern technology. Well, relatively modern, anyway—say mid-20th Century.”
June 12, 2020
Episode 19: Hard Guy
Something about the raw deal that this kid was getting made
Dan Flaherty forget that he was supposed to be a hard guy. . .
Here’s the first boxing story for the podcast.
Just a reminder, StoryHack is publishing Misha Burnett’s new collection, “Dark Fantasies”, and it comes out Monday, June 15, 2020.
June 5, 2020
Episode 18: Clue of Courage
Just a dumb rookie cop, they said. A mugg with brains in his feet and not enough savvy to buck the choppers.
This one hails from a time when apperently it was considered good police work to fill the streets with the dead bodies of criminals.
The story is Clue of Courage, by Norvell Page
May 29, 2020
Episode 17: Donegal Sailor
Here’s the short story of a man who spends his life building ships, and how loves them more than he can say.
So he gets in fights over them.
Once again, I swear I’m not making fun of people with my accents. I’m just practicing and maybe someday I’ll be good at it.
May 23, 2020
Dark Fantasies Pre-Order Now Available
I recently annouced that I’ll be publishing a collection of short stories by the ever-entertaining Misha Burnett. It will release on June 15th. This collection features reprints as well as new work. And now, you can preorder the ebook version on Amazon:
Paperback will also be available, but there won’t be a preorder. For those of you who do buy a paperback, I’ll make available bookplates signed by the author. Details on that to follow.
This short story collection will keep you on the edge of your seat to the last sentence. Misha Burnett has been published in a wide variety of modern fiction magazines, and here we’ve collected some of his best work.
From the introduction:
“I’m a tourist, not a colonist. I want to take a couple of pictures, hit an antique mall, get a meal, and get back on the highway. And that’s what I write—what you’ll get in this book is the casual visitor’s view of other worlds than ours. I promise to have you back safe in your own home town by nightfall.
“That having been said, I do revisit the same locations several times. These nine stories are trips to four settings, more or less. I like to think that these worlds are interesting enough to warrant the return trips.
The first two stories, “A Hill Of Stars” and “In The Gloaming O My Darling” are set in what I like to call the Eldritch Earth. Early pulp writers were often fascinated by great antiquity, and I share that fascination. So I basically took Robert Howard’s prehistoric Cimmeria and pushed it back in time—waaay back, all the way to Lovecraft’s Precambrian Era of elder gods and alien monstrosities.
“It’s a mashup of time periods, with human beings and dinosaurs and shoggoths all existing on the same Pangaea-style continent. The concept has both obvious absurdities and an odd charm, and I was able to convince a few other authors to take a stab at the setting.
“The next story, “Nox Invictus” is a one-off. The germ of the idea came from a discussion of elves in Fantasy being avatars of chaos, with the lawlessness of Elfland contrasted with the order of Christendom in works such as Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts And Three Lions. I happened to be reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius at the time, so I thought I’d see how a Roman Stoic would fare in the realm of the fair folk—specifically the Svartalfheim of Norse mythology.
“It was fun, writing the clash of three very different cultures, the civilized Empire, the Celtic barbarians, and the decadent Dark Elves. I hope you enjoy the trip.
“The next stop on our itinerary doesn’t have an official name, but the three stories “Candlemass Night”, “Conessa’s Sword”, and “Through Dry Places” are all set in the same world. It’s about the closest that I’ve written to a “typical” Fantasy world—vaguely Central European, vaguely Medieval. Adventurers from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign would feel at home here. The stories do have an Ashkenazi flavor—it’s influenced by my love of Russian Jewish folklore and the places are more Anatevka than Lankhmar.
“Next stop, Dracoheim. The last three stories, “She That Was So Proud And Wild,” “The Hopeful Bodies Of The Young,” and “An Interrupted Scandal” are set in the same Fantasy city. It’s different than most Urban Fantasy, though, in that it isn’t modern Earth with the addition of fantastic elements but instead a Fantasy world that has “grown up” into modern technology. Well, relatively modern, anyway—say mid-20th Century.”
May 22, 2020
Episode 16: Blood for the Vampire Dead
This one is by Robert Leslie Bellem, whose Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective stories helped make me a fan of pulp a couple of decades ago. It’s a weird menace tale.
The little teaser blurb reads, “Was this then the horrible price Tim Croft must pay for his disbelief in devil-magic philtres?- forfeiture of his own lovely fiancee’s life-blood to the undead corpse of Haunted Hollow!”
If you gave a writer that blurb and the story art, there is no way they would ever come up with a plot similar to the actual story. But by the end, you’ll have forgotton the picture and blurb anyway.
