Orrin Grey's Blog: Shovel Murders & Monologues, page 46

Hammer Horror Top Ten

Over on the official Hammer Films twitter, they asked what your top ten Hammer horror films would be, inspired by this list. The rules were: only one movie from each of their big franchises (Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy). Hammer horror films are my very favorite subset of any films ever, pretty much, and picking favorites is always nearly impossible for me. This time, though, I forced myself to dash off a response as quickly as possible, without giving myself undue time to become paralyzed by indecision, and I think I managed a pretty representative sample of favorite flicks.

Note: This is not, under any circumstances, to be considered a list of best films, and even then there are some staggering omissions, like any of the Mummy movies, or Seven Golden Vampires. Nevertheless, and in no particular order, here’s my list:

1. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

The 1967 Quatermass and the Pit is generally better regarded, and is an amazing flick, but for me Brian Donlevy + undimensioned space vampire squid = one of the best movies ever.

2. The Witches (1966)

That witch doctor mask.

3. The Abominable Snowman (1957)

Yes, I’m a big Nigel Kneale fan. No one is surprised. Plus, this one has Peter Cushing in it!

4. The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

Speaking of Peter Cushing, my sentimental favorite of the Hammer Frankensteins even though (maybe because?) it’s the one that feels most like a fanfic of the Universal films.

5. Night Creatures (1962)

The first Hammer film I ever saw, and still a favorite, even though it doesn’t actually contain monsters. It does however contain pirates, and secrets, and people dressed as glow-in-the-dark skeletons (complete with skeleton horses), and great physicality from Cushing.

6. Paranoiac (1963)

My favorite of the Hammer suspense thrillers, a genuinely unsettling bit of gaslighting that feels almost like a mesh between a Gothic and some kind of proto-giallo. Plus, Oliver Reed at his best.

7. The Devil Rides Out (1968)

I haven’t seen it in an age, but I remember loving it, especially Christopher Lee in a rare good guy role, and the wonderful protective circle sequence.

8. Plague of the Zombies (1966)

A great bit of colonial guilt cinema, and a missing link between flicks like I Walked with a Zombie and Night of the Living Dead.

9. Brides of Dracula (1960)

Yeah, yeah, my Dracula pick doesn’t contain Christopher Lee, doesn’t, in fact, contain Dracula, and almost forgets to contain brides. But it does feature that amazing bit with the windmill, which would win it a place on this list all by itself.

10. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Another one that’s not quite a horror film, but Cushing’s Holmes is delightful, and it’s a movie I can happily watch just about any time.

[Edit: As is inevitably going to happen with a no hesitation list, I had an absolute top ten entry completely slip my mind. Somehow, Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974) was not on this original list, an omission which cannot be borne. Sub it in place of Hound of the Baskervilles, and put that one with the honorable mentions.]

On Mutagenesis

Mutagenesis is my second collaboration with Skull Island eXpeditions, the fiction publishing arm of Privateer Press, and it is now loose in the world. It’s also the longest finished thing I’ve ever written, clocking in at over 30,000 words. (And hey, as a bonus, it’s got three really fantastic, full-color interior illustrations that I didn’t even get to see until I was looking at my author copy!)

Back when I talked about writing “Under the Shadow,” the first thing I did for Skull Island, I mentioned that one of my favorite things about Privateer Press and the Iron Kingdoms setting was how they handled dragons. IK dragons are beasts of such inhuman age and cunning that they approach the quality of Lovecraftian god-monsters, and of course that goes right into my wheelhouse. Apparently, my editors as Skull Island liked my take on dragons and the relationships that their mortal followers have with them in “Under the Shadow,” because I was allowed to play some more in that particular sandbox with this project.

With Mutagenesis I got to tackle a much more direct relationship between a character and a dragon, as I told the origin story of Thagrosh and, consequently, the Legion of Everblight. For those who don’t play the game, the Legion is one of the core factions, one based entirely around a dragon, and Thagrosh is their flagship warlock. So this was a lot of fun to do.

Mutagenesis was also an interesting experience for me in terms of the writing process itself. Since this was only my second time doing licensed work, I was definitely still learning as I went. Normally, when it comes to writing, I’m not much of a planner. I write stories by feel, sort of like walking through an unfamiliar room in the dark. I’ve never been someone who did a lot of outlines or note cards or that kind of thing. I take notes for stories, but they tend to be more disorganized; snippets, thoughts, sections of story written all out of order, kind of whatever I think of at the time.

With Mutagenesis, I was not only working from a fairly detailed outline, I had a lot of input from editors and writers at Privateer Press about everything from what should happen in the story, to where things were located, what people drank, etc. It was a different experience for me, but a lot of fun, and it let me work some muscles that don’t usually get much exercise in my writing. I also think that, like with “Under the Shadow,” I was able to bring a lot of my pet obsessions to the table as well, and I definitely consider this a part of “my” work, whatever that means, and I think that for fans of my stuff, there’ll be some familiar territory here.

I love the Iron Kingdoms, and I’m happy to be returning. There’s some more projects in the pipeline, and as soon as I can say more about them, you’ll hear it here.

HPLFF, Strange Aeons, and Beyond

Okay, maybe not so much beyond.

Here’s the thing: February has been a little crazy, as far as work goes, which is probably part of why I haven’t updated here since, um, the second day of it. But some stuff has been going on in the mean time that I really ought to mention, so: I’m going to be a guest, once again, at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland on April 11-13. I’m very pleased to be going back, as last year’s event was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a convention, and I love Portland and all the many awesome folks I know who live up in that area. Like last year, they’re doing a Kickstarter to help raise funds to make the fest even more awesome, so you might want to head over and check that out, because there are a lot of awesome pledge rewards up for grabs (even for those who aren’t going) and there’s only three days left to get in on it.

(It’s already more than doubled its initial funding goal, so we are well into “funded” territory at this point, but there are still some fantastic stretch goals, and plenty of eldritch rewards up for grabs.)

There’s another reason to back the HPLFF Kickstarter while you’ve got the opportunity. My story “Remains” will be appearing in the special all-fiction lost 13th issue of Strange Aeons Magazine, alongside a veritable who’s-who of weird fiction luminaries. The 13th issue is available exclusively to Kickstarter backers, and you can add it on to any reward tier for only $10. Seriously, you can check out a full table of contents here, and see how good the company I’m keeping in this one is.

I’ll have more info on what’ll actually be going on at the festival as the date draws closer, but it’s going to be a hell of a good time, so if you’re in the Portland area or can get there, I recommend coming out. And even if you can’t, back the Kickstarter for a few bucks and grab yourself an issue of the special Strange Aeons issue, and it’ll be like being there in spirit (or maybe as a disembodied brain in a cylinder).

Panic Fest

So: Panic Fest.

I made it out yesterday, in spite of my car being covered in a lumpy sheet of impenetrable ice. It was my first time at the fest, and also my first time at the Screenland Armour, which was fantastic. There’s a poster for Fiend without a Face in the men’s room, and the arcade has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so you know that it’s good.

I didn’t actually see many movies at the fest, though I did catch the short film block, including a couple of films made for the “M is for…” contest for ABCs of Death, and a nice one by local filmmaker Patrick Rea. Most of the time, though, I was in the vendor’s room, working the Downright Creepy table, chatting with folks, and buying and trading Funko Horror Classics figures, because I am hopeless. At this point, I have almost the whole set. Last night’s big coup was drawing Billy the Puppet out of a blind box, after striking out twice with duplicates.

I got to meet several folks from the local horror community, and see again several others who I don’t get to spend as much time with as I’d like. I sold a Freddy glove to a little girl, and discovered that someone at one point had the bright idea to make Blair Witch Project trading cards, which I assume are the most boring trading cards in the history of existence. I also figured out how to run the DVD projector system all by myself without breaking anything or catching anything on fire, which, in my opinion, counts as an accomplishment.

I’m already looking forward to going again next year!

Hannibal Season 1

I’m not what I would call a fan of the Hannibal Lecter film series, though I like some of them and have watched all but Hannibal Rising repeatedly. (Once was enough for it, thanks.) I’ve never read any of the books by Thomas Harris, though I probably will one of these days. But there’s something about the whole thing that fascinates me. It’s what’s brought me back to the films time and again, even the ones I don’t care for. Something about watching a modern mythos get constructed, I think. Watching the way approaches change from one film to another. There’s something there for me, anyway.

But when a TV series was announced, I didn’t really think much of it. Then they said Mads Mikkelsen was playing Hannibal himself, and I thought, yeah, that’s a great choice, I’ll probably watch that. But still I wasn’t in any hurry. Then people started talking about how great it was–people whose taste I generally trust, and then I started seeing images from it pop up on my Tumblr dashboard. These striking, mystifying, indelible images. And I thought, yeah, I need to see that. Thanks to the generosity of Sean Demory, I got a crack at the first season on DVD, and proceeded to watch the entire thing in about three days. Which isn’t saying as much as it otherwise might, since that’s kind of how I watch TV shows, and why I don’t watch more of them than I do. I tend to either get addicted and mainline them, or I lose interest quickly and move on to something else. But Hannibal is something special.

I said on Facebook, when I was only two episodes in, that it was some of the best supernatural horror I’d seen in a while. Now that I’ve finished the series, I could easily strike “a while” and replace it with “a long time” or maybe even “ever.” And yet, like the movies, the show ostensibly isn’t supernatural, but it so so is, in every way that matters. Back when I was talking about boogeymen and slashers, I mentioned that Sean had introduced me to the term “murder wizard” to describe Lecter, and yes, it’s the perfect description, here more than anywhere. And not just Lecter, either, but all the serial killers in Hannibal. Their supernatural properties–while never overtly regarded as such–are there, everywhere, and the imagery of their killings is steeped in numinosity, reminding me at times of the very best work of Clive Barker.

Speaking of killings, yeah, Hannibal is gruesome, probably as gruesome as any show I’ve ever seen, but, again, for me at least, there was something otherworldly about the corpses. Not transcendent, not exactly, but, yeah, again, going back to it, numinous. Teratological.

There’s Wendigo imagery galore, of course, deployed expertly, as pretty much everything in the show is deployed. There’s a stark sense of how terrifying it must be to hallucinate, especially if you work in a field where seeing weird and horrible shit is part of your daily life. There’s the fact that the killers can almost always identify each other uncannily, immediately. Like in a World of Darkness game, when two vampires meet and their inner beasts immediately recognize each other and react either by vying for dominance or by cowering in fear.

As if the show felt the need to woo me, in spite of all this, there are even human fungal beds, as early on as the second episode. Don’t worry, show, you already had me by then.

I was going to do this post as a list of things that the show does well, but then I realized it was just going to be one bullet point that said: Everything. The acting is all top notch. Mads Mikkelsen gets deserving note as a Hannibal Lecter who can somehow make me immediately forget that the Hopkins version ever existed. Hugh Dancy’s Will Graham does a wonderful job showing a character who is actually tormented by his gift, actually teetering on the edge of a black abyss. All of the supporting cast is solid, and the guest stars are great. The shots are beautiful, the editing graceful, and the soundscape of the show is fantastic, a substantial contributor to its power.

The show’s biggest drawback–that the audience is well aware of who and what Hannibal is, of where this is all headed and where it must inevitably end–is actually made into one of its greatest strengths, as mundane scenes become freighted with terrible implication while we watch the characters become tangled more and more inextricably in webs that only we can see.

So yeah, I’m a fan. This was a big show for me, and I’m looking forward to the second season, though I can say that my one and only concern is that there’s only so far this train can go. The showrunners claim to have a seven season plan, which seems like a long one from where I’m sitting, but I’ll trust them until they start to falter. As long as they’ve got the sense to stop where the story needs to stop, rather than trying to run it past its expiration date, I’m along for the ride.

“Was it the boogeyman?”

Recently I’ve become sort of addicted to these Funko blind box Horror Classics figures. The first one I got was Sam from Trick ‘r Treat, who I ordered from eBay because I absolutely had to have him, and I wasn’t willing to keep trying blind boxes until I got one. After I got him, I was showing him off to some friends and one of us referred to the line of figures as “slashers,” to which another friend replied, “Is Sam a slasher?”

That stopped us all in our tracks for a minute. The conversation moved on, but the question stuck with me. Because the answer, of course, is no, whatever he is, he’s not a slasher. But at the same time, he’s obviously related to them in some way. If he’s not the same species as the other figures in that set, then he is at least in the same family or genus. Which then, of course, led me to the question, “What family or genus is that, exactly?”

Looking over the figures in the set, you’ve got a wide variety of characters, but it’s obvious that there’s something connecting them all together. (For the purposes of this post, I’m ignoring the presence of Ash, maybe the one time in history that the protagonist in a horror film ever became more popular than the villain. Two if you count Pitch Black.) In trying to figure out what, I ended up going back to the oldest film in the set, Halloween. In that movie, Tommy Doyle sees Michael Myers standing outside and identifies him as “the boogeyman,” and I don’t think he’s wrong.

So yeah, what do all the villains in the Funko series have in common? They’re all the boogeyman. They’re functionally stripped of personhood, having become personas rather than people, rendered down to just a recognizable form (it’s telling that, in the script for Halloween, Michael Myers is simply referred to as “the Shape”) and a pathology. Almost all of them wear a mask of one kind or another, something that effectively erases their identity, that means that they could be anyone, or no one at all, the mask ripped away to reveal only a blankness. They’re impossible to reason with, because they don’t want anything that normal people want. They all have some kind of thematically-relevant “magic powers,” which are explained away in various ways, or sometimes not at all. (The guy from Scream, for example, has the “magic power” that he’s actually always more than one guy, allowing him to do things like be in two places at once.)

Perhaps most telling, though, is that pathology I mentioned. When reading up on the boogeyman before writing this, I came across the following line in the Wikipedia entry for same: “Bogeymen may target a specific mischief—for instance, a bogeyman that punishes children who suck their thumbs—or general misbehaviour, depending on what purpose needs serving.” Which, yeah, pretty much everyone on this list has their “thing.” With the slashers, of course, it’s generally the teenage “sin” trifecta of booze, drugs, and sex, but the others get more specialized. Hannibal Lecter kills people who are rude, Sam kills people who don’t respect the traditions of Halloween, Jigsaw (as represented here by Billy the Puppet) kills people who don’t cherish life enough, etc.

In a recent discussion about Manhunter and the Hannibal Lecter mythos in general over on my Facebook, fellow author Sean Demory introduced me to the term “murder wizard” to describe Lecter, which, yes, is perfect. That’s exactly Lecter’s species, right there. And in that discussion I said how werewolves and vampires in most modern fiction have ceased to be monsters in the usual sense, have become instead a kind of Tolkienesque fantasy race, the contemporary equivalent of elves and orcs, and I said that the modern monster was the magical serial killer, which is also not really a modern monster at all, is it, because that’s pretty much just the boogeyman.

So that’s my argument, then, for the taxonomic nomenclature of these figures. It’d probably take some more deducing to decide whether what we were dealing with was family or genus, but whatever it is, that’s the one: It was the boogeyman.

2013: The Year in Creatures

So here’s my last year-in-review-type-post for 2013, and my attempt at a second annual unofficial Best Movie Monster of the Year post (here’s last year’s). It’ll also be the second year in a row (out of two!) that I gave the award to a whole movie, rather than any one particular monster. So I’m obviously good at this, is what I’m saying.

Normally I’d try to play coy, and save the announcements for the end of the post, but really, nobody who’s been paying attention is going to be surprised about this year’s winner, so I may as well go ahead and say it. The winner by a margin so substantial that all other movies may as well be competing in a different category altogether: Pacific Rim

Yeah, shock, nobody is surprised. First of all, any year with a Guillermo del Toro movie in the running, the competition had better be pretty fierce for anything else to have a chance. And Pacific Rim is maybe del Toro’s monsteriest movie, a lover letter to kaiju films and giant robots that is every bit as inspired and meticulous as the best of his other films, though it comes from a much more bombastic portion of his vast and monster-loving heart.

I’ve already talked about why Pacific Rim was a great movie, and the kaiju themselves are a big piece of that particular puzzle. Wonderfully designed, and beautifully executed, they are some of the most awesome (in every sense of the word) and lovely monsters ever put on film. The fact that del Toro carefully designed them to move with the feel of a man in a suit, while also feeling completely real, just makes them all the better. But the biggest win for me is the gorgeous use of bioluminescence, making for some unexpectedly striking moments in an always striking film.

As has been the case for a few years now, the movie monster landscape in 2013 was dominated by movies that weren’t actually monster movies. These days the vast majority of blockbuster fare contains some manner of (more or less inspired) creature, while horror films tend to trade in more mundane threats. 2013 saw at least one truly phenomenal horror film, in the form of James Wan’s The Conjuring, but it didn’t really have much that could be called a monster, just ghosts and a very creepy doll (naturally).

Monsters made appearances in just about every movie with a sizable budget, many of which I’ve yet to see. From the second installment of the (inexplicable) Hobbit trilogy to the Thor sequel to the execrable Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, there were no shortage of creatures at the multiplexes this year. Surprisingly, some of the better monsters I saw were actually in the raunchy comedy This is the End, which featured demons that, while looking like bosses from Darksiders, still had enough character to rise above the majority of the blockbuster creatures thrown our way.

But Pacific Rim‘s biggest competition in the monster category ultimately came from the corner of a little film called Frankenstein’s Army, which deserves an honorary trophy for the fact that its inspired array of spookhouse creatures were all accomplished using practical effects. And if the movie itself serves mostly as a showcase for Nazi Frankenstein’s monsters complete with propeller heads and saw arms, well, there are certainly worse things to be.

2013 Movies Year in Review

I only saw around 23 movies that came out in 2013. From those, I was asked to compile a top ten list for Downright Creepy, where I occasionally pen reviews. I managed to put one together, along with a pick for worst movie I saw this year, and a list of some of the movies that I’m most looking forward to next year.

You can find the lists here, but I thought that in lieu of just reproducing the lists here on my site to round out the year, I’d instead talk a bit about it. With only 23 movies to choose from, it wasn’t easy to make a top ten, and the genre rubric of Downright Creepy excluded a couple of titles that would otherwise have made the cut (The Croods, The Heat). It also meant I had to make a second choice for worst movie of the year. My real choice for worst movie of the year was the insufferable A Good Day to Die Hard, though looking at some of the other lists, it seems like ABCs of Death, which I had thought came out in 2012, was a contender, in which case maybe it would have had a shot at top honors in the worst category.

I’m also bad at ranking much of anything, so while the top two slots are the definite winners by a substantial margin, the others could be put in just about any order you like and you’d probably still have a pretty accurate representation. As for the movies I’m looking forward to in 2014, those were done pretty well off the top of my head, and the only change I know of is that Fast and Furious 7, or whatever they’re calling it these days, would have made the list had it not been, again, for the genre restrictions I was working in.

There are a lot of movies that I wanted to see in 2013 that I haven’t gotten around to yet, so if you come back to me in six months, this list will probably look a lot different. Of all the movies I wanted to catch but didn’t get the chance to, tops on my list would be Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are, which I am eagerly awaiting!

This is pretty much it for the year-in-review posts for me, except for the (highly anticipated, I’m sure) second annual Year in Creatures post, which I’m planning to drop sometime in the next week or so.

2013 Reading Year in Review

I read around 40 books all the way through in 2013, not counting skimming individual short stories out of collections and anthologies, or re-reading graphic novels that I had just read (I tend to read any Mike Mignola stuff through two or three times in rapid succession shortly after getting them). Here’s a quick top ten, though putting them in any kind of order is a mug’s game.

The Wide Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies, John Langan
Probably my most anticipated book of this year, and one of my favorites. John Langan is one of the best writers working in the strange and dark fiction field right now, and this collection represents his best work to date. Sadly, his story from Fungi isn’t in here, so we’ll just have to wait for the next collection for that.
This Strange Way of Dying, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My co-editor on Fungi is also a hell of a writer in her own right, as is demonstrated by this wonderful collection. It skips around from supernatural to science fictional to magic realism, but it’s always got a beautiful uniformity of voice and tone, and a flavoring of Mexican folklore, with dashes of Lovecraft and other traditions, to create an intoxicating batch of fantastic tales.
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, Laird Barrron
As I said in my review, I don’t think I really need to sell anyone on Laird Barron at this point. The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All is more of what we’ve all come to expect from one of the brightest stars in the horror/weird fiction pantheon.
Rumbullion & Other Liminal Libations, Molly Tanzer
Molly Tanzer is a good friend, but she’s also one of my favorite contemporary writers. Rumbullion provides a great sampling of her talents, like one of those platters that lets you try a little bit of every kind of appetizer at a restaurant. If you like what you taste here, definitely pick up her other collection from last year, A Pretty Mouth, which is, if anything, even better!
Tales of Jack the Ripper, Ross Lockhart (Editor)
This ripping (ahem) good anthology from one of the best editors in the genre does contain my story “Ripperology,” but it would have a home on this list regardless. Lockhart’s deft editorial touch gives it a consistency that few anthologies match, and great stories from some of the best names in the field, including standouts from Laird Barron, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, T.E. Grau, and Ennis Drake, do the rest.
Benighted, J.B. Priestley
Technically I read this one in 2012, because I was writing the introduction for the Valancourt Books edition that was being released in 2013. This is the second book on this list in which I had some direct involvement, but nonetheless, Benighted is such a favorite of mine, and Valancourt did such a fantastic job putting this edition together, that I’d be remiss not to give it a place here.
Uzumaki, Junji Ito
Another reissue. Junji Ito is one of the greatest practitioners the weird tale has ever seen, and Uzumaki is widely considered his masterpiece. This hardcover edition collects all three volumes into one attractive book that’s a must-own for any fan of the genre.
B.P.R.D. Vampire, Mike Mignola & Others
This was a good year for Mignola-related titles, and there were a lot that came out that could have made this list. Among them, B.P.R.D. Vampire was a clear standout. Continuing what has become one of my favorite Mignolaverse storylines from the B.P.R.D. 194- series, and expanding on the fascinating vampire mythos that they’ve been gradually building, this does much more than even that, creating a story that feels at once personal and as epic as anything that’s ever happened in the Mignolaverse titles, no easy feat in a series where current continuity has giant Lovecraftian god monsters destroying most of the world. The art from Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon is fantastic as always.
Baltimore: A Passing Stranger, Mike Mignola & Others
I love the Baltimore comics so far, and this one is easily my favorite of the bunch. Partly that just reflects my preference for small, stand-alone spooky stories, but partly it’s because of the way this installment really begins to show the vast scope of the world that Baltimore inhabits. Ben Stenbeck’s art is fantastic as always, and shows why he remains one of my favorite artists working in comics right now.
Great Showdowns: The Return, Scott C.
Not exactly a book, in the usual sense, this second collection of Scott C.’s fantastic Great Showdowns comics may not be quite as gobsmacking as the first, but he’s still one of the most brilliant artists around, distilling cinematic conflicts into strangely good natured–and amazingly iconic–images.

And now, a couple of books that were technically published at the tail-end of last year, but that I didn’t get around to reading until this year, and that deserve a spot on this list regardless.

Chick Bassist, Ross Lockhart
I already mentioned that Ross Lockhart is one of our best editors, but he’s also a hell of a writer, and his debut novel is a propulsive, compulsive rock and roll novel that was hands-down one of the best things I read this year.
The Folly of the World, Jesse Bullington
Jesse is another friend, and another long-time favorite writer. Folly isn’t my favorite of his novels, that plum goes to The Enterprise of Death, but it may be his most ambitious, and is filled with wonderful characters and untoppable scenes.

One of the books I’m most looking forward to reading in 2014, Daniel Mills’ collection The Lord Came at Twilight, just dropped into my mailbox as an advance copy, so I’m going to dive into that just as soon as I finish the customary act of reading a few M.R. James ghost stories before Christmas.

2013 Writing Year in Review

2012 was an extremely busy publishing year for me. My first collection came out, along with my first book as editor. By comparison, I didn’t do much publishing in 2013, but I certainly kept busy.

I only published two short stories in 2013: “Ripperology” in Ross Lockhart’s Tales of Jack the Ripper and “Night’s Foul Bird” in the special “wings” theme issue of Innsmouth Magazine. I’m pretty proud of both stories, and both publications would make great holiday gifts, wink wink, nudge nudge.

I also wrote the introduction for the reissue of J.B. Priestley’s novel Benighted for Valancourt Books. It’s the book that The Old Dark House was adapted from, and both book and movie are among my favorites, so I was very proud to get to write the introduction. The book looks absolutely great, too, with one of the best covers I’ve ever seen. Another great gift, if you’re in the market.

A lot of the energy that might otherwise have gone toward getting some of my stories written and published in 2013 instead went toward another project. I was approached by Skull Island eXpeditions, the fiction arm of Privateer Press, to do some licensed fiction for their Iron Kingdoms setting. Having been an Iron Kingdoms fan for years, it was a pretty big deal for me, and I approached it with due excitement. My first project was a novelette about General Gerlak Slaughterborn, which appeared in their Called to Battle anthology. I also spent a chunk of 2013 working on a novella for them, which will be coming out sometime in the beginning of the New Year. Entitled Mutagenesis, it tells the origin of Thagrosh Hellborne and the Legion of Everblight. You’ll be hearing more about it soon.

I’m really happy with both of them, and I regard them as a part of my body of writing every bit as much as my own short stories are. So if you like my work in general, I think you’ll like these, too. I’m looking forward to doing more work with them in the coming years.

Getting a chance to work with Privateer Press would be big enough news for any one normal year, but even that wasn’t the biggest thing that happened to me in 2013. Because 2013 was also the year I quit my proverbial day job to start writing full time. That was about three months ago, and so far it’s gone off pretty well. I’ve had flush spells and dry spells, but overall it’s been great, and I’m very happy to see where it takes me in 2014!