Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 16

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for January 2023

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some December books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, historical fantasy, gaslamp fantasy, paranormal mystery, fantasy romance, science fiction romance, science fiction thriller, space opera, military science fiction, near future science fiction, YA science fiction, dystopian fiction, solarpunk, hopepunk, steampunk, Greco-Roman mythology, vampires, dwarves, elves, ghosts, space marines, space pirates, space prisons, blood matches, crime-busting witches, vengeful goddesses and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Nexus of Chaos by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

When humanity joins the cause, the war with the Naxli begins to tilt in the favor of the allied races.

The Naxli have other ideas, though, and they launch a full-out blitz against the upstart humans. If they succeed, humanity’s very existence is at stake.

Gunnery Sergeant Reverent Pelletier and the First Human Expeditionary Brigade not only have to survived the onslaught but figure out a way to end the war, once and for all.

Join Rev, Tomiko, Randigold, and the rest as they fight not only the Naxli, but a growing distrust of the IBHU Marines and other hyperaugments.

Tested by Lindsay Buroker:

Matti would prefer never to see her vindictive dwarven aunt ever again. All she wants is to find her missing parents.

But her aunt is extorting the elven assassin, Sarrlevi. That would be problematic on its own, but he’s become Matti’s biggest ally and the man—the elf—she’s falling in love with.

To save her family, Matti must find a way to help Sarrlevi before he strikes the most devastating blow of all.

 

Horse Lattitudes by Rachel Ford:

Sometimes, silence is just the quiet before the storm.

When the Black Flag crew is assigned to transport a young Union ambassador on his first diplomatic mission, they’re promised a few weeks of quiet downtime. Easy money.

What they find is a diplomatic quagmire. On one side is an untrusting, desperate, and dying world willing to do anything to anyone in order to secure their own survival. On the other is their thriving neighbor: equally desperate, but for entirely different reasons.

And dead in the water, the Black Flag readies to weather the coming storm – weather it, or be swept away in its fury.

The Ashlands by Chris Fox:

A Desert of Living Death

Four centuries ago the Stewards rained ash on the heartland of an empire for a year and a day, murdering the Elentian Empire and orphaning the Hasran Imperium where I was born.

The stories say the ash drains magic and that any who venture into the Ashlands will need to contend with the armies of unliving swimming beneath the ash. Unliving as old as the Mad Imperator Jhordil himself.

My final tomb lays somewhere out in that terrible ocean of soot. Before I can help Li or settle the Hasran civil war I need to find it. I need to understand who and what I am if I am ever to fight my aunt or the demon princes she no doubt controls.

I will sail into those uncharted lands, and I will prevail. I have to. The cycle depends on it.

Tethered by Elayna R. Gallea:

What could be worse than an arranged marriage to a vampire prince?

When Luna is sold into marriage to the Prince of Darkness on her twenty-first birthday, she thinks she knows what to expect. Arranged marriages happen all the time, right? Wrong. No one could have prepared her for the reality of being married to the vampire prince.

Ever since the day he was Made, Sebastian has been living according to Queen Marguerite’s rules. After all, he’s only alive because of her. When she orders him to marry and Bind himself to Luna, a human hailing a neighboring kingdom, he has no choice. He agrees to the marriage but never expects to feel anything for her.

When their Binding Ceremony goes awry, and they are magically Tethered, everything is thrown into upheaval. Unable to leave each other’s presence, they must learn to live with each other. Or die.

Oracle of Life by Katherine D. Graham:

Six fallen lords. Three vengeful goddesses. And one mortal, damned to prophesy for them all.

An Exiled Oracle

Nariah, the Heiress of Ellonai, is dead. An exiled, desert-dwelling Doomsayer is all that remains within the shell of the powerful princess she once was.

A Heretic

She isn’t sure which of her visions her people hate more: the one where the three benevolent goddesses they serve have decided to destroy the world, or the vision of six lords falling from the skies to save them.

The World’s Only Hope

Stumbling across the very lords she’s been seeing in her visions for years, only Nariah’s accursed gift of Sight can aid the lords in their rebellion against the goddesses, and determine the fate of her world before it’s turned to ash.

But does she even want to save those who’ve wronged her?

Storm of Magic by Kyra Halland:

After losing everything else, they found each other.

Now Leshi and Esavas are ready to begin their new life together in Yevoruta, the city of the mages. But the battles of the past raised more questions than they answered, questions that themselves must be answered if Esavas and Leshi are to lay the ghosts of the past to rest and find peace in their new life.

But beneath the mannered, elegant surface of mage society lies treachery, and the search for those answers could cost Leshi and Esavas everything as they face the difficult – and heart-wrenching – challenge of stopping the evil that threatens to consume the life of their beloved Islands.

Storm of Magic is the epic conclusion of Mage of Storm and Sea.

New Ghosts, Old Tricks by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow-Monroe has everything she’s ever wanted. She has a husband she loves, a best friend who is only irritating fifty percent of the time, and a daughter who refuses to be “normal.” So, basically, she has it all.

Then the unthinkable happens. During an afternoon picnic with her husband and daughter, Harper’s yard is flooded with ghosts … right as five bodies float by on the river. Harper’s daughter Poe is finally in the thick of things because she’s the only one who can communicate with the ghostly newcomers.

Worried, Harper calls in her friends Rowan, Maddie, and Ivy. Together, the foursome is going to figure out what’s haunting Poe … one way or another.
There’s not much to be found regarding the victims. They were adventurers, making a name for themselves finding treasure at the bottoms of oceans and lakes. They were hired by a local billionaire, but nobody can figure out why and the man in question is being cagey.

Harper always knew her daughter would turn out gifted. The reality is different from the fantasy, however. Poe’s magic is already strong, and when she gets a little encouragement from her friends, things begin to spiral.

It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation for this battle, and only the strong will survive.

Hierarchy of Blood by Jennifer Haskin:

The winner will be crowned Ambassador’s Bride. The losers will meet certain death.

When you’re living inside a dwarf planet in the cold abyss of space, life is only easy if you’re rich. 17-year-old Marishel Vance works as a seamstress – but when she’s selected to compete in a brutal contest for the Ambassador’s hand in marriage, she’s quickly catapulted into a life-threatening struggle.

Marishel hates the idea of fighting for some stuck-up rich guy – no matter how handsome he is. But after her attempts to escape are thwarted, she becomes desperate to find a way to end the Blood Match and save the lives of the girls she’s training with. The key could lie in Ambassador Quin himself … but as she tries to win his friendship, her growing feelings for him only complicate the matter.

As the Blood Match looms closer, Marishel spirals deeper into a world of intrigue, danger, punishment, and secrets. Trusting the wrong people means game over. If Marishel wants to save herself – and the other fifty-nine girls sentenced to death – she’ll have to break every rule in the book to do it…

Half Empty Half Full by John Hundley:

An interstellar war is brewing. A monster guards the key to power. Can a reluctant hero overcome an ancient evil to forestall a galactic apocalypse?

Clifford Crane hates having been labeled a hero. Centuries of experience has taught the legendary shifter that standing in the limelight only illuminates the target on his back. Desperate to stay safe and under the radar, he is demoralized to find the SS Huey on a mission that puts him in the crosshairs of the powerful corporation whose plans to build an army of cyborgs he just thwarted. THE Corporation wants revenge, and it has the resources and firepower to exact it.

Branded a terrorist, and his ship a pirate vessel, Crane plots a secret route through an armed blockade to the planet Kier, where the discovery of a rare metal could shift the galactic balance of power. With all previous attempts at mining meronium ending in the gruesome deaths of every miner involved, and the locals revealing to him the nature of what guards the mines, Crane confronts the dread realization that he alone must face the monster.

Can Clifford Crane and the SS Huey run the gauntlet of battle cruisers, overcome the ancient evil that guards the mines, and tip the galactic balance of power in their favor? Or will they find themselves caught in the middle of an apocalyptic interstellar war?

A Shadow Melody by Brian Kaufman:

In the early 1900s, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Harry Browning each researched devices to contact the dead through scientific means. Only one of them succeeded.

Harry Browning is a prodigy with an extraordinary understanding of the natural sciences. Orphaned as a child, he becomes a beloved professor, a war hero… and a shell shock victim.

At war’s end, he returns to his college hometown in Ohio and dedicates himself to research. Alone and isolated, he hires Elizabeth Rose, a young housekeeper with secrets. Together, they will seek to answer the one question that all humanity shares—what becomes of us after we pass beyond the veil?

They may not like the answer.

The Last Resort by Michael Kaufman:

It’s March 2034, six months after D.C. police detective Jen Lu and Chandler, her sentient bio-computer and wannabe tough guy implanted in her brain, cracked the mystery of Eden. The climate crisis is hitting harder than ever: a mega-hurricane has devastated the eco-system and waves of refugees pour into Washington, D.C.

Environmental lawyer and media darling Patty Garcia dies in a bizarre accident on a golf course. Of the seven billion people on the planet, only Jen thinks she was murdered. After all, Garcia just won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas, and coal companies. Jen is warned off, but she and Chandler start digging. Signs point to Garcia’s abusive ex, a former oil giant, but soon Jen turns up more suspects who have an even greater motive for committing murder

Soon Jen is in the crosshairs of those who will ensure the truth never comes to light, no matter the cost. She has to move quickly before she becomes next on the killer’s list.

Frostbite by Casey Lea:

Amber Grace has spent countless lives preparing for battle, but her time has finally run out. She’s mortal now and can only hope that her enemy is close. That when the monster comes to devour them all, she’ll still be alive and able to offer herself instead.

All Amber has to do is keep herself safe, but one thing the Universe never guarantees is safety. Forced from hiding and trapped on the Rim with the criminal scum of every interstellar species, Amber finds herself truly living in a way she hasn’t for millennia. Suddenly her choices are more than equations and the potential of billions killed must be balanced against protecting the people close to her.

When the ice takes your friends and then comes for you, what do you do?

Beach Blanket Wendigo by Amanda M. Lee:

Moonstone Bay is in an uproar. The DDA is on the run, but they’re not going down without a fight. While all that’s going on, Hadley Hunter is practicing her magic. She managed to join with her elemental friends for a huge wins—and feels that’s important for the DDA fight—but she needs practice.

Nothing is perfect, however.

When a tourist is found dead on the beach one night after hearing a series of eerie howls, Hadley and her boyfriend Galen Blackwood think they have a new mystery to solve. The problem is, all signs point to a wendigo … which shouldn’t be possible on Moonstone Bay.

Things become even more convoluted when the victim’s movements on the night of her death lead them to a local. He denies killing her, but something is clearly amiss.

There’s a wendigo, a rogue DDA faction, and a plane door that just won’t stay closed.

Hadley has a lot on her plate. Nothing is going to stop her from doing what needs to be done, however. She’s ready to fight … even if that fight might kill her.

Hadley’s friends are determined to help, but as usual, she’s at the center of things. Moonstone Bay is caught in a shift of unbelievable proportions, but only one faction can come out on top.

There’s a battle coming, and when the truth comes out, everybody will be rocked.

Buckle up, because this ride is going to be bumpy.

The Bloodstained Shade by Cass Morris:

In the third book of the Aven Cycle, a trio of sisters and an ambitious senator use charm, wit, and magic to protect their city from ruin.

Latona of the Vitelliae, mage of Spirit and Fire, lies still as death. Her fate rests in the hands of her allies, who must redeem her soul from the churning void where Corinna, leader of a banished Discordian cult, has trapped it.

Protected by a cabal of corrupt priests and politicians, Corinna plans her most daring assault yet: a ritual striking at the ancient heart of Aven, with the power to swallow the city in a maw of chaos and strife. Her success would be Aven’s doom, and the greatest violence would fall upon the most vulnerable.

Before Sempronius Tarren can join Aven’s defense-and his beloved Latona-at home, he must end the war abroad, outwitting the blood-soaked machinations of his Iberian opponents. His own magical talents remain hidden, but dire circumstances tempt him to succumb to ambition and use forbidden tactics to hasten the way to victory.

To defeat Corinna, Aven’s devoted protectors will need to perform extraordinary magic, rally support from unexpected quarters, and face the shadows on their own souls.

Nautilus Rising by Ernesto R. Sanchez:

Far from Earth, PhD candidate Arixa Nez must solve a disturbing conspiracy while the largest spaceship in history is about to embark on its maiden voyage. The Nautilus, the greatest spaceship ever created in human history, is finally complete. Its mission is to travel through a mysterious wormhole found decades earlier. Before long, Arixa becomes the unlikely person able to prevent the greatest terrorist act in the solar system.

Can Arixa stop the conspiracy before time runs out?

Nautilus Rising is the prequel novella to the Far Side Chronicles.

Far From Home by John Walker:

Seth thought he had his life all planned out. After retiring from the Marines, he sought a career in the private sector. Moving up the corporate ladder proved harder than he thought, and when he suddenly loses his job, he wonders if he might be wasting his life.

Until a car accident changes it forever. Finding himself marooned on an alien prison planet, he must team up with a rebel in order to survive. But the environment isn’t the only hazard to overcome with bloodthirsty genetic anomalies and dangerous inmates on the prowl. It seems the only way to survive is to escape the planet, if he can find the necessary allies and equipment to achieve the impossible.

For no one’s escaped Lakon Prison before. But then, they never tried to cage a Marine.

Wolfpack by Rem Wigmore

Orfeus the hunter is searching for redemption in the wake of destruction…

Orfeus has always loved grand gestures. And what could be grander than risking her life to gain entry to the fabled Cloud Forest to find one of humanity’s greatest losses and make a gift of it to her beloved? But the cost proves higher than she could have ever imagined and now she is on the run, navigating a whole new world of danger with few allies and even fewer friends. Arcon, the Cloud Forest’s mechanized guardian, is determined to track her down, even if it means destroying everything in their way. Even if it means convincing Jean, a traumatized young trans man escaping a cult, to host them in order to complete their mission. Can Orfeus figure out a way out of the mess that she’s created and work with the Order of the Vengeful Wild and their allies to fix what she’s broken before their world is pushed once more to the brink?

The Tale of the Border Knight by A.R. Witham:

They say the Noble Seven came from the Waste.

They say the knights arrived from the desert gleaming in silver mail, shimmering bright as the sun, a refraction of every color under God’s sky. They were honor, righteousness, and courage made flesh. Some claim they came from beyond, angels sent to stand against damons. Some say.

If you want to know the truth, I will tell you.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for January 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some December books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, animal mysteries, holiday mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, legal thrillers, spy thrillers, technothrillers, science fiction thrillers, romantic suspense, police officers, FBI agents, lawyers, private investigators, amateur sleuths, bodyguards, spies, cold cases, missing children, murdered twins, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting dogs, murder and mayhem in London, Washington DC, Washington state, Florida, North Carolina and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Murder With Means by Blythe Baker:

Sylvia is still struggling with the terrible secret she has learned about Miles, when she is dealt a fresh blow. During a visit to an art museum, she unknowingly becomes the last person to speak with a murder victim alive.

Forced to set aside her misgivings, Sylvia must trust Miles enough to lean on his help once again. Together, can the pair catch an elusive killer before the trail goes cold?

 

Scavenger Hunt by Chad Boudreaux:

Blake Hudson just wants to serve his country well as a lawyer for the United States Justice Department—but when an unknown threat begins plotting his downfall, he must find who is setting him up before it costs him his life.

Scavenger Hunt is a suspense novel chronicling the plight of Blake Hudson, a Justice Department lawyer assigned to a clandestine counterterrorist group created to bypass onerous legal requirements. After the group mysteriously disbands, Hudson becomes the scapegoat and is transformed from hunter to hunted. As he searches for answers and attempts to piece the puzzle together, people are following him, trying to kill him.

Written for fans of fast-paced thrillers, dry humor, political gamesmanship, and Clue-like twists and turns, Scavenger Hunt carves out a distinct niche best described as a hybrid of the Robert Ludlum classics and works by Brad Meltzer. Blake Hudson’s story addresses issues that have shaped recent elections and continue to frustrate interest groups and government leaders, while featuring the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Justice Building—arguably the most important and misunderstood agency in the federal government. Author Chad Boudreaux’s unique voice and page-turning storytelling packs a plot-driven punch that readers won’t be able to put down.

A Tender Little Murder by Beth Byers:

Vi and Jack are journeying on a second honeymoon. Sand, sea, long, lingering nights along with slow, sleepy mornings seem to be just what life demands.

They set out, driven by whimsy. Soon they join a small boat tour of the islands along with other travelers. At first, they’re surrounded by loving families, but as the journey progresses, they uncover that all is not what it seems. And with that, someone is found down. But why?

 

A Nags Head Murder by Joe C. Ellis:

Private Detective Angie Stallone opens her fledgling agency in the quaint town of Buxton, North Carolina on the Outer Banks. Struggling to establish a credible business, she teams up with local bookstore owner, Mee Mee Roberts, to solve a cold case from the 1960’s. Their investigation leads them to a remote island in the middle of the Currituck Sound. The evidence they dig up opens a door to membership in a strange cult that meets in one of the old beach houses along Nags Head’s Historic Cottage Row. The recent death of a cult member raises new questions. Was it murder? Is the cold case connected to the recent death? If so, who’s next?

New Ghosts, Old Tricks by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow-Monroe has everything she’s ever wanted. She has a husband she loves, a best friend who is only irritating fifty percent of the time, and a daughter who refuses to be “normal.” So, basically, she has it all.

Then the unthinkable happens. During an afternoon picnic with her husband and daughter, Harper’s yard is flooded with ghosts … right as five bodies float by on the river. Harper’s daughter Poe is finally in the thick of things because she’s the only one who can communicate with the ghostly newcomers.

Worried, Harper calls in her friends Rowan, Maddie, and Ivy. Together, the foursome is going to figure out what’s haunting Poe … one way or another.
There’s not much to be found regarding the victims. They were adventurers, making a name for themselves finding treasure at the bottoms of oceans and lakes. They were hired by a local billionaire, but nobody can figure out why and the man in question is being cagey.

Harper always knew her daughter would turn out gifted. The reality is different from the fantasy, however. Poe’s magic is already strong, and when she gets a little encouragement from her friends, things begin to spiral.

It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation for this battle, and only the strong will survive.

Vow of Justice by Robin James:

A small-town sheriff is found murdered in a Dollar Kart parking lot. A relentless prosecutor vows to bring his killer to justice.

Sheriff Bill Clancy humbly served the citizens of Maumee County for three decades. He wanted nothing more than to finish his term and retire to the woods he called home. When he’s found shot to death behind the wheel of his own car, every cop in the county is out for blood.

The weight of justice falls squarely on Prosecutor Mara Brent’s shoulders when an arrest is quickly made. With an election just a few months away, all eyes are on her. There’s no room for error.

The man accused is a nobody. A drifter without a dime to his name. There’s a mountain of physical evidence tying him to the crime, but no obvious motive. Even without one, the case seems open and shut. But when a high-powered defense attorney with ties to Mara’s past comes forward to defend the killer, she suspects a conspiracy.

Is the accused just a patsy? Was Sheriff Clancy’s assassination part of a larger scheme that could ruin Mara’s career? Or was Clancy hiding an even bigger secret that could shake the foundation of the police department he vowed to serve?

And just when Mara thinks victory is in sight, a courtroom bombshell threatens to spiral the town into chaos.

The Last Resort by Michael Kaufman:

It’s March 2034, six months after D.C. police detective Jen Lu and Chandler, her sentient bio-computer and wannabe tough guy implanted in her brain, cracked the mystery of Eden. The climate crisis is hitting harder than ever: a mega-hurricane has devastated the eco-system and waves of refugees pour into Washington, D.C.

Environmental lawyer and media darling Patty Garcia dies in a bizarre accident on a golf course. Of the seven billion people on the planet, only Jen thinks she was murdered. After all, Garcia just won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas, and coal companies. Jen is warned off, but she and Chandler start digging. Signs point to Garcia’s abusive ex, a former oil giant, but soon Jen turns up more suspects who have an even greater motive for committing murder

Soon Jen is in the crosshairs of those who will ensure the truth never comes to light, no matter the cost. She has to move quickly before she becomes next on the killer’s list.

Beach Blanket Wendigo by Amanda M. Lee:

Moonstone Bay is in an uproar. The DDA is on the run, but they’re not going down without a fight. While all that’s going on, Hadley Hunter is practicing her magic. She managed to join with her elemental friends for a huge wins—and feels that’s important for the DDA fight—but she needs practice.

Nothing is perfect, however.

When a tourist is found dead on the beach one night after hearing a series of eerie howls, Hadley and her boyfriend Galen Blackwood think they have a new mystery to solve. The problem is, all signs point to a wendigo … which shouldn’t be possible on Moonstone Bay.

Things become even more convoluted when the victim’s movements on the night of her death lead them to a local. He denies killing her, but something is clearly amiss.

There’s a wendigo, a rogue DDA faction, and a plane door that just won’t stay closed.

Hadley has a lot on her plate. Nothing is going to stop her from doing what needs to be done, however. She’s ready to fight … even if that fight might kill her.

Hadley’s friends are determined to help, but as usual, she’s at the center of things. Moonstone Bay is caught in a shift of unbelievable proportions, but only one faction can come out on top.

There’s a battle coming, and when the truth comes out, everybody will be rocked.

Buckle up, because this ride is going to be bumpy.

Two Shakes of a Hangman’s Noose by Rimmy London:

A silly ghost story? Or did someone get away with murder…

Megan Henny takes a day trip to a lighthouse just off the rugged Washington coast. Along with her trusty Great Dane, Fred, she comes across a haunting legend. Thirty years ago, a woman startlingly similar to herself, disappeared from the charming coastal town of Seacrest. With no clues to follow except a noose hanging from the branches of a nearby tree, did someone get away with murder? Or could something darker be haunting the coastline?

Together with Fred, Megan digs into the past. But what she finds are chilling memories that mix truth with ghost stories. Late one night, she discovers a noose in the forest behind her house and fears she could be next. Will Megan and Fred realize just where the danger is coming from, or will it catch them unaware?

The Girl and the Winter Bones by A.J. Rivers:

In the morning Ellie walked to school. All was seemingly predictable.

Until one day, the unexpected occurred and little Ellie was never seen again…

When an unexpected storm hits, forcing a young couple on a road trip to seek shelter within an abandoned school in the woods. They witness strange phenomena and stumble upon corpses. Soon FBI agent Emma Griffin finds herself in the middle of a case that forces her to investigate the past to sort out the mystery behind the twisted occurrences in the present. With a trail of missing girls, strange oddities, and red herrings.
Emma and all involved find much more than they bargained for.

It’s no longer about surviving a night of haunting and evading a storm.
It’s about escaping the things that should have remained forever frozen in time…

You Better Run by Willow Rose:

When 19-year-old Meg Briggs wakes up after having a crazy party with her friends, she finds a girl in the pool.

Dead.

Who is this girl?

How did she end up in the pool?

Was she even at the party?

Even more strange is when they pull her out of the water, Meg realizes the girl looks very familiar. As a matter of fact, she looks just like her.

Like an identical twin.

But Meg has no twin, at least none that she knows of, and no one at the party knows this girl or can say where she is from.

What is Meg’s mom hiding from her?

FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas is caught in distress at home with her children and between the two men in her life when she is asked to help out on the case.

Who killed Meg’s identical twin and why? And where did she come from?

As Eva Rae Thomas digs deeper into the story, she can barely believe the revealed secrets, secrets so cruel that someone is ready to go to great lengths to keep them hidden.

Murder at Yuletide by Lee Strauss:

Have Yourself a Merry Little Murder

Clive Pippins, Lady Ginger Gold’s beloved, elderly butler is apparently Christmas shopping when a body is found. To the shock of everyone in Ginger’s household, the victim is the spinster cousin Pippins worked for during the years surrounding the Great War.

As Ginger investigates things begin to look grim for her dear butler. What had the man been up to during the war years, and had he been complicit in a crime?

What secret was Pips holding onto?

And worse, would he be the next victim before he had a chance to divulge it?

The only gift Ginger wants for the Christmas of 1927 is for the killer to be found before it’s time to ring in the new year!

Once a Killer by Margaret Watson:

Bree Gordon looks nothing like a bodyguard. But the short, slender woman knows how to keep her principal safe. And one of her most potent weapons is her appearance. People see her and dismiss her. Their mistake.

Jameson Ford is a technical whiz who’s working on a program that’ll be a game changer. The military wants it. So does the CIA, along with some unsavory players. Someone close to him wants it, as well – one of the engineers in his lab.

When he reluctantly hires a bodyguard, he’s shocked when Bree shows up. But it doesn’t take long for him to appreciate her abilities. Will the attraction flaring between them be their salvation? Or will it be their downfall?

Semiprozine Spotlight: Wyngraf Magazine of Cozy Fantasy

The Semiprozine Spotlight project never quite took off the way the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlights and Non-fiction Spotlights did, probably because semiprozine editors are very busy people. Still, I am continuing the project as interviews come in. For more about the Semiprozine Spotlight project, go here.

Today I am pleased to feature Wyngraf Magazine of Cozy Fantasy, who have published three of my flash stories to date with another one upcoming. So I’m happy to welcome Wyngraf editor Nathaniel Webb to my blog today:

A note for Hugo nominators, Wyngraf is not yet eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo, because they’re on their third issue and the Hugo rules require a minimum of four. However, Wyngraf will be Hugo eligible as of 2024.

Tell us about your magazine.

Wyngraf is a magazine of cozy fantasy short fiction—as far as I know, the first of its kind. Cozy fantasy focuses on low-stakes stories, often with themes of home and community. They can be simple slice-of-life tales or feature some conflict, but they’re never about toppling kingdoms or preventing the world from ending and they’re rarely solved with violence. They’re often set at home, though when they go off wandering we call that “backpack fantasy” and still count it. Our stories always give readers worlds they’d love to live in and endings that leave them feeling warm and, well, cozy!

Who are the people behind your magazine?

Right now it’s pretty much me, editor-in-chief Nathaniel Webb, and the incredible authors and artists whose work I’ve bought for each issue. Recently the amazing Angelica Fiori, who had stories in our first two issues, helped me read the massive slush pile for our third submissions round. I would have drowned without her!

Why did you decide to start your magazine?

Because it didn’t exist!

In early 2021 I was recovering from a major surgery—plus there was that whole global pandemic thing—and I found myself hungry for cozy fantasy reads. (I’ve always said my favorite part of Lord of the Rings is the “Concerning Hobbits” section at the beginning.) There were lots of posts seeking fantasy books with a cozy feel on forums like Reddit, but there was no community hub. You couldn’t even find two people who agreed on a definition of the genre.

So I read what I could find, but I kept thinking it ought to be easier to hunt these books down. I kept expecting someone to start a website or something. I kept expecting a dedicated magazine to pop up. But by the start of 2022, nothing had…

Meanwhile, at the end of 2021, I self-published a mystery novel called A Conventional Murder. I had published with small presses before, but this was my first time trying self-pub, and I discovered I really enjoyed the technical aspects of it: ordering the art, doing the layout and cover design, all that stuff. So there was kind of this perfect storm where I felt like there was a need in the market for cozy fantasy, and I suddenly had the skills to do something about it—and in the bargain, help promote fellow authors and publish stories that might not fit at other fantasy magazines.

What format do you use for your magazine (print zine, PDF zine, e-mail zine, online zine, podcast, etc…) and why did you choose this format?

We publish the magazine in two formats, ebook and print-on-demand paperback. I always knew we’d do a physical version. Paper books are how I like to read, and I find it really satisfying to hold something in my hand that I helped create. Those are sold on Amazon, through their PoD service.

But at the same time, a lot of people prefer ereaders these days, so of course we have that option as well. Our ebooks are on Amazon, of course, but also DriveThruFiction, where you get both the ebook and a PDF for the same price. We’re also continuing to experiment with publications outside the core semiannual magazine. Last year we ran flash fiction every week. This year we’re publishing an ebook special with two cozy fantasy romance stories for Valentine’s Day, and we’ve got a couple other secret projects in the works…

Science fiction, fantasy and horror were born in the pulps and short fiction has long been the beating heart of the genre. However, the focus of attention is increasingly moving towards novels and series. So why do you think SFF short fiction is important and worthy of attention?

Short SFF is essential because it allows for experimentation. Cozy fantasy is still in this nebulous state where it hasn’t quite been pinned down yet; the tropes are still being defined and nothing has totally reified. One of the my favorite things about putting out an issue of Wyngraf is that every story is somebody’s favorite, because everyone’s looking for something a little different from us.

Short fiction is where the genre sausage gets made. Sometimes I almost feel like Farnsworth Wright picking stories for Weird Tales, or Moorcock at New Worlds (on a much, much smaller scale, of course!)—in my tiny way, I get to help define what “cozy fantasy” means going forward. I have an essay about this, “Windows and Walls,” coming out in Wyngraf #3. It’s a thrilling place to be, and you don’t get that so much in the novel space, where every book is a huge investment so they have to be conservative (and doubly so for series). This was even more true when we were running flash fiction on our website. I bought a story, “Billable Hours for the Disputed Rights of the Chosen One” by L Chan, six hundred words long, written in the form of an expense report. You can’t write a novel like that—but readers loved it. It was our most popular flash piece, hands down.

I must admit, though, that in between me announcing Wyngraf and the first issue coming out, Travis Baldree released a cozy fantasy novel called Legends & Lattes that became a monster breakout hit and wound up on the New York Times bestseller list. So that certainly didn’t hurt. Thanks, Travis!

One big problem for SFF magazines is monetarization. Readers are happy to consume short fiction, but they’re often unwilling to pay for it. What are your strategies for financing your magazine and paying your writers and staff?

Wyngraf is the story of what a person can achieve when they have no idea how clueless they are… I financed the first issue out of pocket, hoping it would eventually sell enough copies to break even and having no clue how unlikely that might be. Luckily for my pocket, my optimism about how a cozy fantasy magazine would sell was justified and we’ve not only broken even but turned a small profit.

A few things make this possible. One, I’m doing this as a hobby, not a living, so I don’t pay myself and breakeven is a success. Two, I do everything myself except the cover art and the stories. (Okay, I wrote a story for the first issue—sixty-five-hundred words I didn’t have to pay for!)

The third thing that makes the finances work is that right now, we pay our authors nothing near a professional rate. Increasing author pay is my number one goal for the magazine. We paid one cent per word for our first two issues, and increased it to a cent and a half for issue three. Still a pittance, but we’re moving in the right direction… I also strive for total financial transparency. There are a couple blog posts on our website where I lay out all our financials—literally everything—so you can judge for yourself.

But at its heart, the model is dead simple. I buy stories and some cover art, I put the issue together, I put it online, and I hope really hard that enough people buy copies that I can make another issue! So far so good…

The format of fiction magazines has changed a lot in the past twenty years. Print magazines still exist, but are no longer as dominant. Online and PDF zines are now the dominant form of short fiction delivery and fiction podcasts are becoming ever more popular. So where do you think magazines will go next?

I have no idea! I’m poorly equipped to answer this question because, despite being a software developer halfway through a computer science master’s degree, I’m a luddite at heart. I like paper books and magazines. I want everything to be a mass-market paperback.

I tend to believe there will always be a place for print, especially given the ease of self-publishing and print-on-demand nowadays. I certainly couldn’t have created a print magazine ten years ago. I do think print does offer some legitimate advantages as a technology—I’m skeptical, for instance, that purely website- and PDF-based delivery will ever monopolize the market, because enough people hate reading on phone and computer screens. Just look at Kindle Vella’s failure to launch: it’s called Kindle Vella, but you can’t read it on your Kindle, you have to go to the website or use the phone app.

I do think audio will continue to grow. It’s not my thing simply because I find it hard to pay attention to, but lots of people love it. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in the SFF space experiments with really high production values, or a serialized narrative modeled after true crime podcasts, or other ways to hook listeners that aren’t just narrators reading stories. The form guiding the content, as it were. Are people already doing this?

Are there any other great magazines, podcasts, editors, stories, etc… you’d like to recommend?

Yes! Not long after we launched, the editors of Augur announced Tales & Feathers, an online magazine of cozy slice-of-life fantasy. They ran a successful Kickstarter and have been putting out a story every month for over half a year now. The best part: they pay a professional rate!

It’s a fantastic magazine, but it’s interesting—and this ties back into the idea that cozy fantasy hasn’t been pinned down yet—Tales & Feathers has a very different voice from Wyngraf, generally much closer to literary SFF than we are. I’ve actually turned down excellent stories for being too, I don’t know, arty or abstract or something. That’s just not what Wyngraf is about. I kind of feel like T&F‘s kid brother even though we technically launched before them. Though I have to say this: they’ve got some big names, like Premee Mohamed, but I was thrilled when they published a wonderful writer named Ziggy Schutz who sold us a flash story for our website. We ran Ziggy first!

You can read Tales & Feathers for free at www.augurmag.com/tales-and-feathers-magazine. It’s really good!

Where can people find you?

Our website is www.wyngraf.com, where you can learn about the magazine and our side projects, read dozens of flash stories for free, and sign up for our mailing list (which gets you even more free stories). Our ebooks are sold on Amazon and DriveThruFiction, and our paperbacks are on Amazon. And we’re on Twitter at @wyngraf, for however long Twitter lasts…

Thanks so much for inviting me over and letting me ramble!

Thank you, Nat, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Cozy up with a warm blanket and a hot beverage of your choice and check out Wyngraf Magazine of Cozy Fantasy, cause it’s a great magazine.

***

Do you run a semiprozine and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Wun-Dar and His Wonderful Dinosaur”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server. You can check out all the Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Stories here.

But first a bit of backstory: At the dawn of the Internet, reports about a rare brown-haired variant of the original He-Man action figure began to emerge. The figure was sometimes bare-chested, sometimes dressed in a black version of the Zodac armour and came with different red-brown weapons and was never found on a blister card. The origins of the figure were a mystery, though some people remembered getting him from a Mattel mail-in promotion in the early 1980s. For a while, it was thought that this was a tie-in promotion with the US bread company Wonder Bread, though eventually it turned out that the mysterious brown-haired He-Man figure actually originated with a “Buy three and get one free” promotion Mattel ran in the early 1980s. The promotion was quickly discontinued after a mother complained that the figure was underwhelming, which is why he is so rare. That mother would probably be stunned, if she knew what original brown-haired He-Man figures go for these days. There are several videos about the history of this figure by former Mattel employee Scott Neidlich, who solved the mystery of the brown-haired He-Man, here.

Even though the link to a Wonder Bread promotion turned out to be false, the brown-haired He-Man became known as a “Wonder Bread He-Man”. And when a new version of the mystery figure was made in the Masters of the Universe Classics line, the character was named Wun-Dar after the brand of bread. Wun-Dar was recast as a former champion of Grayskull and wielder of the Sword of Power, took on a life of his own and even showed up in Masters of the Universe: Revelation as one of the heroes hanging out in Preternia, which is Eternia’s version of Valhalla. Earlier this year, Mattel also made a Wun-Dar figure in the Masters of the Universe Origins line. It was sold as an online exclusive and sold out in minutes, but I was lucky enough to snag one.

And no, I could not resist posing him with a loaf of bread, because Wun-Dar is now forever associated with bread, even though he originally had nothing whatsoever to do with bread. Eventually, I will also get out the old Fimo and make him some action figure sized bread as an accessory.

“This is most excellent bread. Wun-Dar, foremost bread expert on Eternia, approves.”

Wun-Dar is a great figure, but he was missing something, namely a mount. Now in Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Wun-Dar is shown riding a dinosaur. So of course I had to get him a dinosaur.

The big Schleich dinosaurs work really well Masters of the Universe Origins figures and so I decided to get my Wun-Dar a Schleich Giganotosaurus, because the colours fit his colour scheme really well. The dinosaur arrived just before Christmas, so here is Wun-Dar with his new ride:

So let’s see what happens when we introduce Wun-Dar and his mount to the rest of the gang.

At since Wun-Dar lived approximately a century before Prince Adam, he and his new dinosaur pal return to the land of the living through the same portal that brought Adam, Teela and friends back from Preternia in Masters of the Universe: Revelation.

In Revelation, the Preternian heroes didn’t quite know what to make of Adam, who chose to hang around in the afterlife in his regular skinny body rather than his bulked up He-Man form, so they nicknamed Adam “Fleaman”, because he’s skinny and slight.

***

In the Eternian wilderness:

“Well, Giga, Eternia has sure changed a lot, since we last dwelled in the land of the living. Still, if I’m not mistaken, Eternos should be that way. And that’s where we’ll find our old pal Fleaman and the current king and of course, the most important things, wine and wenches.”

ROAR!

“And of course a good chunk of meat for you, Giga.”

ROAR!

***

Later, in the throne room of Eternos Palace:

“Hello, Your Majesty. Wun-Dar is here and ready to serve.”

ROAR!

“What on Eternia? Who are you and what is that… that thing doing in my throne room? Guards, guards! Intruder alert!”

“Halt, stranger! State your business!”

“Relax. Like I said, I’m Wun-Dar. You know, legendary hero, champion of Grayskull and wielder – well, former wielder of the Sword of Power? And this is Giga, my trusty mount. I came through a portal from Preternia because… well, even paradise gets boring eventually, I guess. And besides, Fleaman – I mean, Adam – said that you guys needed help with someone named Skeleton? Is that right? Stupid name, at any rate.”

“It’s Skeletor, young man. And what exactly do you and this… this thing want here in my throne room?”

“Giga and I want to help fight this Skeletor. Also, I hope to sample some of the local wine and wenches.”

“And what makes you think that I’ll just hire anybody who barges into my throne room, young man? There are proper channels and procedures for this sort of thing.”

“Well, if you don’t need a warrior, I also make really great bread. I used to be a baker boy in Tunderia, before I ventured forth to see Eternia and fight evil in all its forms. And sample wine and wenches, of course.”

“Another alarm. What now? Skeletor, the Horde, the Snake People or… Wun-Dar?! What in Eternia are you doing here?”

“Fleaman – ahem, Adam – is that really you? Cause you sure fill out nicely, when you call down the power.”

“Adam, do you know this person?”

“Uhm, we met in Preternia, while I was dead. It’s a long story.”

“Captain, what should we do?”

“Stand down, Corporal. For now.”

“Wun-Dar, man, what are you doing here? I thought you loved it in Preternia.”

“Well, I did. But you were right. Just going on pretend hunts all the time does get boring after a while. I missed the action, the fighting, the wine and the wenches, if you know what I mean. The only wenches in Preternia were Sharella and Kuduk and neither of them were ever interested.”

“But how did you get here, you and Giga?”

“Same way you did, through that portal in Grayskull Tower. After all, you said we were welcome to follow you at any time.”

“Well yes, I guess I did invite you all to come. Anyway, it’s great to see you back in the land of the living, old friend. And Giga, of course.”

“Good to see you again, too, Fleaman… I mean Adam. I’m as surprised as anybody, but I kind of missed you.”

ROAR!

“Adam, would you mind introducing me to your ‘friend’?”

“Actually, I’d love to know who that is, too, brother. Cause he’s rather handsome.”

“Meanwhile, I’d love to know how that guy got past my guards.”

“Of course. Father, this is Wun-Dar of Tunderia. He’s a former champion of Grayskull and wielder of the Power Sword. We met in Preternia.”

“So I gather.

“Wun-Dar, this is my father, King Randor of Eternia.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sire. Wait a moment, your father is the king? So that means you’re a prince?”

“Uhm, yes…”

“Why did you never say anything, man?”

“I guess it never really came up. And besides, we were dead. It’s not as if titles and all that really mattered.”

“All this time and I never had any idea that you were royalty. Like Grayskull and He-Ro, come to think of it. Damn, was I the only commoner ever to wield the Power Sword? But first things first. Cause I spy wenches, so why don’t you introduce me to those lovely ladies?”

“Wun-Dar, you’ll remember Teela from Preternia.”

“Oh yes, that wench you were moaning over all the bloody time.”

Giggle.

“Ahem, actually…”

“Well, I definitely remember you, Wun-Dar. After all, Adam and I knocked you and your beast out of the hunt.”

“As if I could forget. Still, you certainly clean up nicely, Teela. I almost didn’t recognise you with the different hair and outfit. It’s so much more becoming than that mannish cut you wore in Preternia.”

“Ahem, Wun-Dar, did I mention that Teela is the Captain of the Royal Guard as well as my girlfriend.”

“Oh, so you finally got your cherry popped, your wine uncorked, your toast buttered. Congratulations, Fleaman.”

Giggle.

“I’m sorry. There really is no excuse for him.”

“If you’re not going to punch him, Adam, I will. Champion of Grayskull or not.”

“Former champion.”

“But who is this lovely lady? I’m certain I’ve never met you before, because how could I forget such beauty?”

“I’m She-Ra, He-Man’s twin sister and wielder of the Sword of Protection. It’s always a pleasure to meet friends of my brother.”

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine, beautiful.”

“Ahem, Wun-Dar, did you miss the fact that she’s my sister?”

“Oh come on, Fleaman, it’s not fair hogging all the wenches for yourself.”

ROAR!

“That’s a very interesting beast you have there, Wun-Dar.”

“Thank you, my lady. Her name is Giga, short for Giganotosaurus. She has big teeth, but she only uses them on the enemies of Eternia.”

“Well hello, Giga. It’s lovely to meet you, too.”

ROAR!

“Some of these creatures would make pretty good patrol mounts for my guards. You didn’t bring back any more of those critters by any chance, did you?”

“I’m afraid not, my fair Captain. The fields of Preternia are full of roaming dinosaurs, but the trip is one way only.”

ROAR!

“You’re a good girl, Giga. Maybe I should introduce to my friend Sorrowful, the dragon, since he’s always very lonely.”

ROAR!

“Enough! That… that thing has just pooped onto the floor of my throne room.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Come on, Giga, don’t embarrass me. We’re among royalty here.”

“Get that creature out of my throne room NOW! And someone clean up the mess.”

“Uhm, Wun-Dar, maybe you should take Giga to the royal stables. And please, make sure she remembers that the horses are not for eating.”

“Okay, will do, Fleaman. Your Majesty, fair ladies, I’ll be seeing you around.”

ROAR!

“Corporal Daegar, remove that mess from the throne room floor.”

“With all due respect, Captain, I don’t think that cleaning up dinosaur poo was part of my job description.”

“It is now, Corporal. Understood?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Well, he’s certainly a bit rough around the edges, but I like him.”

“You’re welcome to him, She-Ra. After all, I have nabbed myself the greatest and noblest champion of them all.”

“You certainly have… interesting friends, son.”

“Sorry about that, Dad. When I invited the other heroes of Preternia to follow me, I’d hoped for King Grayskull or maybe He-Ro, not him. Though he is brave and will be a great help in the fight against the Evil Forces of Skeletor and the Horde and the Snake People. And he really does bake great bread.”

“So you’ve truly met King Grayskull, son? What is he like? Just as impressive as the legends say?”

“Grayskull wasn’t at all like I imagine him. I mean, since he’s my ancestor, I always imagined him to look like me – blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes. But he doesn’t look like me at all. Instead, he has dark skin and dark hair. Oh yes, and he’s huge, even when he’s not powered up. And yes, he is as impressive as the legends say.”

***

The bit about King Grayskull is a reference to the fact that some fans were upset that the character of King Grayskull, heroic ancestor of He-Man and She-Ra, was portrayed as white and blonde in the 2002 cartoon and as a black man with dreadlocks in Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Of course, there are several centuries, perhaps even millennia between Prince Adam and King Grayskull, so Adam having a black ancestor is not at all unbelievable.

King Grayskull also appeared briefly in the Netflix CGI He-Man series, where he is a bald white man with a black beard. He’s also evil due to resorting to dark havoc magic to defeat the Snake People and was about to destroy all of Eternia and the entire universe, before the Sorceress stopped him. Oddly enough, that seems to bother absolutely nobody.

And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

First Monday Free Fiction: The Frozen Citadel

Welcome to the January 2023 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

January is – at least in theory – a cold and wintery month, so let’s have a cold and wintery story. This one is called The Frozen Citadel and is part of the Kurval sword and sorcery series.

So follow Kurval and Tsabo, as they brave the icy dangers of…

The Frozen Citadel

“Before he became King of Azakoria in the Year of the Forked Serpent, Kurval spent many a year wandering the lands of the Eastern continent, plying his trade as a sellsword. It was during this period of his life that fought the fearsome serpent Khalikidai and saved Kingdom of Simola from the enemies that live in the frozen where the sun never rises in winter and never sets in summer…”

From the Chronicles of Azakoria by Ragur, Count Falgune

I. Across the Icy Wastes

“Why…” Kurval wondered, as the frozen snow crackled under his boots and an icy wind blew daggers into his face, “…must civilisation always be so bloody cold?”

In the Year of the Twisted Rope, Kurval had left his homeland of Temirzhan behind and journeyed across the sea to seek his fortune in the more civilised lands of the East, half a fugitive and half chasing the glorious destiny that the Dark Gods that dwell on the Plains of Shadow had prophesied him, namely that one day he would be king in a land across the sea.

By now, he’d spent several years in the lands across the sea and still no royal destiny had manifested itself and no crown had landed at his feet and Kurval was beginning to suspect that it never would.

Still, he was here now and could never go home again, so he had to make the best of his life on the Eastern continent. And that meant making money the only way he knew how, by selling his sword and his brawn to whoever was willing to pay for his services.

Right now, King Ansio of Simola was willing to pay twenty pieces of gold to any man willing to take service at the Citadel of Harjula in the frozen north of the kingdom and defend Simola against its enemies from the ice. Of course, nobody seemed to know just what those enemies from the ice were, but twenty gold pieces was a good sum and so Kurval and his friend and fellow sellsword Tsabo had followed the call and embarked on the long and cold journey to Harjula.

They made a strange pair, these two swords for hire. They were both tall, muscular men, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Kurval had born on the steppes of Temirzhan across the great sea. His skin was bronze, his eyes grey like the cold hard steel of his sword. He was clad in a mail hauberk and padded leather trousers, woollen gloves and fur-lined boots, a fur-lined helmet and a thick vest of sheepskin. He wore his long black hair, now frosted with ice, tied back with a leather thong. Behind Kurval trotted his faithful black stallion Shadowmane, neighing in displeasure at the cold.

His companion Tsabo was a son of the Southern Isles with skin dark as ebony and a shaven head smooth like a polished ivory ball. He, too, was clad in leather and mail, topped with a plumed helmet and a cape of leopard fur. On his back, he carried a mighty battle axe.

The two men had met on one of the many battlefields on the Eastern continent, both outcasts, both bearing the mark of the slave whip on their backs and both considered barbarians by the people whose battles they fought. So they’d quickly become fast friends, travelling the land together in search of employment. And now that quest had brought them to the frozen north of Simola.

“I should’ve stayed in the Southern Isles,” Tsabo grumbled, his breath coming in freezing puffs, “At least it was warm there.”

“You couldn’t have stayed in the Southern Isles,” Kurval countered, his own breath forming clouds of white mist that swirled around him and obscured his vision, “After all, they were going to throw you into a pit of lions as punishment for your indiscretion with a virginal priestess of the goddess Tokoloho.”

“Wrong,” Tsabo roared above the whistling wind, “All wrong. It was a pit of leopards and that priestess was not a virgin.” Tsabo grinned, his teeth stark white in his dark face, “And she was worth every danger and banishment.”

“Still, you can’t go back,” Kurval pointed out, “Any more than I can.”

Kurval’s own exile was due to a far less bawdy episode than Tsabo’s adventure with the non-virginal priestess. He had defied the king he’d sworn to serve and refused the order to execute the condemned witch Aelisia. He’d fought the Dark Gods that dwell on the Plains of Shadow and then he’d managed to get the king he served killed at the hands of those selfsame Dark Gods.

In his homeland of Temirzhan, Kurval was a traitor and an outlaw, his very name accursed. Exile was all that was left to him. And like Tsabo, Kurval privately believed that saving Aelisia and ridding Temirzhan of its tyrannical king had been worth it. Even if it meant trudging through the ice and the snow to sell his services to some foreign king for twenty pieces of gold.

“If the map that soldier gave us at Fort Kusela is correct, we should have almost reached Harjula,” Tsabo remarked. He shielded his face against the wind and the snow and looked into the distance. “Do you see anything?”

Kurval also shielded his eyes and peered at the horizon. “No. But with this blasted snow, it’s impossible to see further than a spear’s throw anyway.”

“At Fort Kusela, they said that Harjula is a day’s walk across the ice. But the sun is already low and there’s still no sign of the citadel.”

“We’ll have to reach it soon or we’ll freeze to death out here,” Kurval said darkly, leaning into the icy wind.

“So let’s trudge onwards then,” Tsabo said, “After all, it’s too late to turn back.”

II. The Walls of Harjula

The wan northern sun was steadily sinking, casting the frozen land in a fiery hue and promising a deadly night on the ice, when Kurval’s keen eyes at last did spot something on the horizon.

At first, it looked like a massive wall of ice rising from the frozen wasteland. But as Kurval and Tsabo came closer, they noticed a giant gate flanked by lanterns that glowed an eerie red through the swirling snow. Arrow slits were set into that massive wall, which was topped by crenelations. So this had to be the Citadel of Harjula then.

“Wow, this place is huge,” Tsabo whistled, his normally booming voice barely audible over the icy wind, “I wonder what that wall is supposed to keep out.”

“Or keep in,” Kurval said darkly.

The fortress was built on a natural hill. A series of iced over steps, flanked by rocks jutting randomly out of the ice, led up to the massive gate.

At the bottom of the steps, Kurval and Tsabo halted.

“We’d best hail them,” Kurval said, “Lest we get an arrow in the chest for our troubles.”

Tsabo nodded and cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Ahoy, you there guarding the citadel,” he cried, his booming voice echoing across the icy wasteland, “We’re two mercenaries, come to take service, so open up the gate and let us in.”

They waited, but the gate did not open and the citadel remained silent. Only the lanterns next to the gate flickered red in the gloom like twin drops of blood.

Kurval and Tsabo exchanged a glance. “Mayhaps they have not heard you,” Kurval said.

He raised his voice. “Hola, you there at the citadel. We’re two mercenaries, come to join you in your duty and strengthen your numbers. We’re also really bloody cold, so let us in.”

They waited, but once again the gate did not open, the citadel remained silent.

Kurval and Tsabo exchanged another glance.

“What’s wrong with them?” Kurval grumbled, “Surely, they must have heard or seen us, unless they’re asleep at their posts.”

“Or dead,” Tsabo said darkly, “They may have been overrun by enemies and slaughtered.”

“Then why is there no evidence of any fighting? If they’d been attacked and overrun, surely there would be damage to the walls and bodies and arrows lying around. But there’s nothing. Nothing except those dead silent walls.”

Tsabo had no answer to that. “What exactly are those enemies that the citadel is protecting the kingdom from anyway?” he asked instead, “At Fort Kusela, they only vaguely spoke of creatures that live in the ice. But are those creatures even human?”

It was an interesting question. For come to think of it, the commander of Fort Kusela had been remarkably vague about what awaited them at Harjula. Only that there was always a need for skilled fighters at the citadel to defend the newly expanded borders of the kingdom of Harjula against its enemies that lurked far up in the frozen north, where the sun never sets in summer and never rises in winter. But just what those enemies might be, the commander either didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

“There’s no evidence of an attack by non-human creatures either,” Kurval pointed out, “In fact, there’s no evidence for any kind of battle at all.”

“Maybe a plague wiped them all out,” Tsabo pointed out, “Or black magic.”

“It’s possible,” Kurval replied, “Anything’s possible at this point.”

Tsabo looked up at the citadel with its forbidding walls. “So what do we do now?” he wanted to know.

“Move in closer and see if we can find a way in,” Kurval said.

“And what if there is a plague? Or black magic or something else?”

Kurval shrugged. “Well, it’s not as if we have much of a choice,” he said, “Either we find a way into that citadel or we freeze to death out here.”

III. The Silent Watcher

Cautiously, Kurval and Tsabo ascended the steps that led up to the citadel, half expecting to be cut down by arrows. However, nothing happened. The walls of the citadel stood dead and silent in the fading light.

The sun had sunk beneath the horizon by now. Night was falling fast and the temperatures were falling along with it. Where it had merely been unpleasantly cold before, the frost now became dangerous even to the two hardened mercenaries.

They were closer to the citadel now, close enough that the massive grey walls blocked out the darkening sky, casting the stairs into even deeper shadows. The gloom was relieved only by the two lanterns that flanked the main gate, flickering in a warm red like the pulsing of a beating heart, as if in defiance of the cold white land all around.

“The lights are still on, so someone must be home,” Tsabo said, his normally booming voice dropping to a whisper.

“Those are behemoth oil lamps,” Kurval replied, his own voice dropping to a whisper as well, almost as if he were reluctant to draw attention to himself, “They can burn for days without refuelling.”

“But someone must have lit and refuelled them, so someone must have been home and alive not too long ago,” Tsabo remarked.

They both looked up at the arrow slits set into the massive wall high above their heads, but no light was visible there. They remained black and dead, like the eyeholes of a skull.

At last they were standing in front of the massive arched gate, a gate more than twice as tall as either of them. Tsabo experimentally knocked his fist against the gate. Promptly, a hollow clang echoed across the frozen wasteland.

“Amazing,” Tsabo exclaimed, “The gate seems to be made from solid steel. And what foundry can even cast such a thing?”

“More importantly, how do we get in?” Kurval said, while examining the gate, “Cause if we don’t find shelter soon, we’ll freeze to death out here.”

Tsabo banged his massive fist against the gate again. And this time, it swung open with a mournful wail, revealing a darkened entranceway.

“Now that’s not ominous at all,” Tsabo remarked.

“Still better than freezing,” Kurval grunted.

As one, the two mercenaries drew their weapons and ventured into the citadel.

Beyond the wall, the gate opened onto a snow-covered courtyard. The courtyard was deserted and the snow hadn’t been cleared away in days. Yet the oil lanterns still flickered, so they had been refuelled at some point.

Kurval motioned to Tsabo to cover him and looked up at the massive wall. Staircases led up to a firing ledge that ran along the arrow slits they’d seen from the outside and then further up to the crenelated top of the wall. But neither the arrow slits nor the top of the wall were manned.

“Where is everybody?” Kurval wondered, “A citadel this size should have three hundred men, maybe more. Yet the walls and the gates are not manned. None of this makes any sense.”

“Maybe they really are all dead,” Tsabo remarked.

“But if they’re all dead, overrun by enemies or fallen to some plague, then why are there no bodies?” Kurval pointed out.

“Well, if there are answers, we’ll find them at the keep,” Tsabo said, “That’s probably where they keep the food and the wine, too. Cause I’m damned hungry.”

Tsabo wasn’t the only one who was hungry. Kurval’s faithful stallion Shadowmane neighed in protest, so Kurval left him at a trough full of snow damp hay.

He patted the stallion’s black mane. “Sorry, old friend. I’ll get you something better, once we’ve been inside.”

“Won’t he wander off?” Tsabo asked.

Kurval shook his head. “If he does, he’ll come back. He always does.”

Weapons drawn, the two men ventured onwards, up the steps that led towards the keep, their way lit by the eerily flickering lanterns.

Halfway to the keep, Kurval abruptly spun around, sword raised high above his head.

“What is it?” Tsabo asked, raising his axe.

“Nothing. I just thought I spotted a movement behind us from the corner of my eye. Must’ve been a trick of the light.”

No wonder, too. The flickering lanterns and the swirling snowflakes in combination caused all sorts of strange light effects, much like the magical lanterns of the showmen plying their trade at the markets in more temperate climes.

“Might be,” Tsabo said, “But I have this bristling feeling at the back of my neck that someone or something is watching us.”

“Me, too,” Kurval admitted, “So let’s get to the keep. We’re too exposed out here.”

The gate of the keep was made from solid steel as well, flanked by two massive columns. A statue was standing beside one of those columns, silently keeping watch.

But as Kurval and Tsabo approached, they realised that the statue was no statue at all. It was a man, a soldier armed with a sword and a halberd, wearing a Simolan harness and a plumed helmet. He was completely encased in ice, an expression of nameless horror frozen on his face.

“Is he dead?” Tsabo wanted to know.

Kurval reached out to touch the figure. “I don’t know. But he is frozen solid.”

The two mercenaries exchanged a glance.

“What the hell happened here?”

With a mocking groan, the gate swung open, beckoning them to enter.

IV. The Hall of the Frozen

The inside of the keep was dark. The torches had long gone out, though embers were still glowing red in a few scattered braziers and a lone oil lantern was still flickering, casting grotesque shadows and monstrous silhouettes onto the walls.

Kurval and Tsabo each grabbed a torch and used the failing flame of lantern to light it. The torches flared to life, finally casting some light upon the darkened keep.

They were in a great hall, the ceiling beams lost in gloom. Once, this had been a comfortable place. Furs covered the flagstone floor, while banners and shields decorated the walls and galleries. Braziers were set up at regular intervals and at the far end of the hall, there was a large fireplace carved from solid black granite flecked with silver sparkles.

Tsabo grabbed some firewood from a stack, threw it into a brazier and lit it with his torch. The flames licked on the wood, casting a hellish light upon a terrifying scene.

For many figures stood scattered around the great hall, either alone or in small groups. At first, Kurval hoped they were statues, but upon closer examination they turned out to be humans encased in solid blocks of ice.

Most of the frozen were soldiers of various ranks. Many of them had their weapons drawn, ready for combat. They faced the gate, as if ready to defend it, poised for an attack that nonetheless overcame them before they had the chance to strike.

There were a few women and children, too, clad in the traditional embroidered fur and felt garb of Simola’s frozen north. They huddled in the corners or hid underneath tables, expressions of pure terror frozen on their lifeless faces.

“They did not freeze to death,” Kurval said, his voice echoing through the empty hall, “If they had, they wouldn’t be standing upright.”

“Besides, they have plenty of firewood,” Tsabo remarked, casting some of it into another brazier to provide light and warmth, “But it’s no plague either, cause I’ve never seen a plague that does this.”

Kurval examined a frozen warrior in the harness of a mercenary captain. His sword was raised, as if he was about to strike at someone or something. His mouth was open, emitting a silent scream. Whatever had struck this man, he’d barely had a heartbeat’s time of warning, if that.

“Sorcery,” Kurval grunted, “Black magic. I can’t imagine anything else that could do such a thing.”

“So what do we do now?” Tsabo asked, his dark eyes darting warily through the silent hall, “Cause by the Seven Eyes of Reotlotla, there’s no way that I’m spending the night in here with a regiment of frozen men and hell knows what did this to them. I’d rather take my chances out on the ice.”

Kurval nodded. “I agree. Let’s grab provisions and firewood and some of those furs and build a rough shelter against the outer wall. A good fire should keep us from freezing to death and once the morning dawns, we’ll return to Fort Kusela to bring word of what happened here.”

The two men were about to split up to seek what they needed to survive a night outside the walls, when Tsabo suddenly stiffened.

“Something’s moving in here,” he whispered, his great battle axe raised.

Kurval nodded and raised his sword. “I hear it, too. A hissing, slithering sound.”

With instincts born from dozens of battles, the two mercenaries stood back to back, weapons raised, poised for whatever attack might come.

V. The Fangs of the Serpent

Kurval saw it first. A strange, slithering movement, almost too quick for the eye to follow. Scales, shimmering silver in the flickering light. Abruptly, a nightmarish head came towards him, with a forked tongue, fangs the size of daggers and inhuman eyes blazing like twin sapphires.

The creature hissed at him and its breath was like the icy north wind. Kurval jumped aside and only his quick reflexes saved him from the monstrous fangs.

“Fuck,” he exclaimed and stabbed at the mighty head. But the creature was too swift for him and darted out of range, before his sword could pierce its throat.

Tsabo wheeled around and began hacking at the slithering body. But it was to no avail, for even his battle axe could not pierce those frosty scales. And so he only succeeded in annoying the creature, which promptly whirled around, its fanged jaw shooting towards Tsabo.

Tsabo was fast and so he managed to dodge the serpent’s first strike and the second as well. But then his luck ran out. He tripped over a piece of firewood, stumbled and dropped his axe, which fell blade first into a brazier.

“Here,” Kurval roared to distract the thing from his friend, “Come here, you ugly monster!”

But it was too late. The sapphire eyes of the serpent fixated on its victim. The mighty head darted forwards, the dagger-sharp fangs struck.

Tsabo screamed, but his scream was abruptly cut short, when his body was encased in a block of solid ice at the very spot where he’d fallen.

Kurval let out a cry of pure fury and began stabbing and hacking at the serpent like a berserker. But once more, it was to no avail, for the creature’s scaled hide was too tough to pierce.

The monstrous head darted towards him, but Kurval narrowly avoid its strike, ducking behind an overturned table.

The more rational part of his mind told him to make a run for it and get the hell out of the citadel. Even if death awaited him out on the ice, it couldn’t be worse than this nightmare creature he was facing.

But the part of his mind that was flooded with battle rage was stronger. Whatever this thing was, it had frozen Tsabo and every other living person in this citadel. And for that, Kurval would kill it or die trying.

However, the serpent was fast. The ice was its element, the cold was not affecting it and it did not tire. Kurval, on the other hand, was getting slower, his muscles stiff from the cold. Sooner or later, the blasted thing would get lucky and Kurval would be reduced to yet another block of ice.

From the corner of his eye, he spotted a red glow. The brazier, into which Tsabo’s battle axe had fallen. The heat of the fire had caused the blade to glow red hot.

Fire. That was it. Cold steel could not defeat the ice serpent, but maybe fire could.

Surreptitiously, Kurval moved closer to the brazier, taunting the serpent and manoeuvring it into position. Once he was next to the brazier, he grabbed the axe, burning his hand on the handle in the process. He raised the axe and brought it down onto the serpent, cleaving the monster in two.

The serpent hissed and twitched and Kurval had to jump backward, dropping the axe, to avoid its death throes. But then at last, the creature was dead, its body crumbling harmlessly into snow and melting away.

All around the great hall, moans and cries could be heard. Puddles formed on the floor, as the ice melted and the frozen victims of the serpent came back to life.

Confused soldiers raised their weapons, looking for an enemy to strike. A woman screamed and clutched a child to her chest. The sentry who’d guarded the door came dashing in, crying, “Alarm! We’re under attack,” unaware that his warning came much too late.

None of the soldiers challenged Kurval, as he pushed his way through the milling crowd, until he found Tsabo lying dazed on the floor. Kurval held out his hand and hauled his friend to his feet.

“Thanks, old friend,” Tsabo said, once he got his second wind back, “That thing got me good. If not for you, I’d have spent eternity as an icicle.”

“And if not for your axe, I’d have joined you,” Kurval replied.

The two men embraced.

VI. Harjula Unfrozen

Sometime later, after they’d rested and eaten, Kurval’s burnt hand had been bandaged and faithful Shadowmane had finally been given some fresh hay, Kurval and Tsabo were ushered into the private quarters of Colonel Venamo, Commander of the Citadel of Harjula.

The Colonel was seated behind a desk of plain wood. His skin was pale, like all the people of Simola. His tawny hair was shot with silver, his eyes were a piercing blue.

Venamo set down his stylus and looked up, as the two mercenaries entered.

“I understand that we have the two of you to thank for our release,” he said without much preamble, “And I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m Kurval of Temirzhan.”

“And I’m Tsabo of Moratuva.”

“We’re mercenaries, come to take service at the citadel.”

“Good men are always welcome,” Venamo said, “Even more so, if they did us as a great a service as you two did. But do sit down.” He gestured at two wooden chairs.

Kurval and Tsabo exchanged a glance and sat.

Venamo, meanwhile, pulled a wicker-wrapped glass bottle from a shelf. “This is a rare fine brandy, a gift from my predecessor, when I took this post,” he said, “I’ve never touched it and kept it for a special occasion.”

He uncorked the bottle and distributed its contents between three tin cups.

“But I guess being saved from the icy embrace of the serpent Khalikidai counts as a special occasion.”

Venamo raised his cup.

“Is that the creature’s name?” Kurval asked and took a sip. The brandy was fine and mellow, like a pool of liquid fire that warmed his frozen innards.

Venamo nodded. “Aye. It used to hunt out on the ice, occasionally attacking our patrols, but the walls kept it out.”

“So how did it get into the citadel then?” Tsabo wanted to know.

Venamo’s face darkened. “Sorcery. The serpent Khalikidai is no natural beast. It was conjured up from the ice by the sorcerer Sibelius, who lives even further north, in the perpetual darkness that the rays of the sun never touch. He is old and powerful and no friend of Simola, but so far he’s left us alone…”

Venamo took a gulp of brandy, a harsh gleam in his eyes.

“…until King Ansio, may he sleep well in his soft bed in his warm palace, decided to expand our borders northwards, into the frozen wastes that are the realm of Sibelius and the creatures that serve him. Sibelius did not take this well. And as the northernmost outpost of Simola, we are the ones who bear the brunt of his wrath.”

Venamo drained his cup in a single draft.

“The serpent Khalikidai is one of Sibelius’ creatures and the most fearsome of them all, but as long as it remained outside the walls of Harjula, it could not harm us. But then Sibelius sent another of his creatures, an ice nymph in the form of a beautiful woman, to bewitch our sentries into opening the gates. This is how the serpent got inside and could take us out one by one.”

Venamo fixed his ice-blue eyes on Kurval and Tsabo.

“But tell me, how were you able to kill the fiend? Cause steel cannot harm it. We found that out the hard way.”

Kurval shrugged and downed the brandy in a single gulp.

“Simple. Fire can melt even the toughest ice monster.”

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

A handy guide to all SFF-related posts and works of 2022

I never felt particularly comfortable with eligibility posts, but I posted such an overview for the first time in 2016, when someone added my name to the Hugo Nominations Wiki. Eventually, it paid off, because I was a Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

So if you’re interested in what I write, here is an overview of all SFF related blogposts of 2021, in chronological order, as well as a list of all the SFF and other fiction I published.

Because I did so many Fanzine/Fancast/Non-Fiction Spotlight interviews this year, I separated the Spotlights from the other blogposts. I also separated the Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Toy Photo Stories from the rest of the blogposts.

That said, I have a shiny rocket and there are many highly deserving fan writers who have never even been nominated, let alone won. Therefore, I’d like to ask folks to nominate some of those other great folks next year instead of me. Once nominations open, I’ll post a list of IMO underappreciated fan writers, so let’s spread the shiny rocket love around.

If you want to nominate me or a project I’ve been involved with in a category other than fan writer or if you’d like to nominate me for an award other than the Hugo, I’d be happy to accept a nomination elsewhere.

At this blog:

Star Trek Discovery meets “The Examples”The Book of Boba Fett finds itself a “Stranger in a Strange Land”Star Trek Discovery Experiences “Stormy Weather”Star Trek Discovery Decides “…But To Connect”The Book of Boba Fett meets “The Tribes of Tatooine” and gets lost in interminable flashbacks again.Science Fiction Is Never Evenly DistributedMore on the Squeecore DebateHow To Define a New Subgenre/Trend: The Speculative Epic and an Addendum to the “Squeecore” DebateThe Book of Boba Fett takes to “The Streets of Mos Espa”The Book of Boba Fett faces “The Gathering Storm”Of Squeecore and ConanThe Book of Boba Fett moves over for “The Return of the Mandalorian”The Book of Boba Fett realises that From the Desert Comes a Stranger and gives us yet another episode of The MandalorianStar Trek Discovery Goes “All In”Star Trek Discovery Crosses the “Rubicon”Star Trek Discovery Crosses the “Galactic Barrier”.Star Trek Discovery Finds the “Rosetta” Stone.Star Trek Picard Meets “The Star Gazer”Some Comments on the 2021 Nebula Finalists.Star Trek Discovery finally meets “Species 10-C”Star Trek Picard Does “Penance”An Open Letter to the 2022 Hugo Finalists, Whoever They May BeStar Trek Discovery is “Coming Home”Star Trek Picard Undergoes “Assimilation”Star Trek Picard finally meets the “Watcher”Star Trek Picard Sings “Fly Me to the Moon”Cora is a Three-Time Hugo Finalist!Some Thoughts on the 2022 Hugo FinalistsStar Trek Picard Gets “Two For One”Star Trek Picard Takes a Trip into Jean-Luc’s Mind and Meets “Monsters”Star Trek Picard begs for “Mercy” and takes a detour into X-Files territoryStar Trek Picard Plays “Hide and Seek”Star Trek Picard Bides “Farewell”.Some Thoughts on the 2021 Nebula Award Winners – and Two SFWA UproarsStar Trek Explores “Strange New Worlds” and Returns To Its RootsStar Trek: Strange New Worlds Meets the “Children of the Comet”Down and Out in Tatooine and Alderaan: Some Thoughts on Obi-Wan Kenobi Parts I and IIRoad Trip with Jedi and Princess: Some Thoughts on Part III of Obi-Wan KenobiStar Trek: Strange New Worlds meets the “Ghosts of Illyria” and uncovers some dark secrets of the crewObi-Wan Kenobi Goes On a Rescue Mission in Part IVObi-Wan Kenobi Deals with Sieges and Double-Crosses in Part VThe 2022 July Short Story Challenge – Day by DayThe 2022 Dragon Award Finalists Look Really Good… With One Odd ExceptionObi-Wan Kenobi Heads Into the Grand FinaleShe-Hulk: Attorney at Law Experiences “A Normal Amount of Rage”Some Comments on the 2022 Dragon Award WinnersI Won a Hugo Award!Some Comments on the 2022 Hugo Award Winners and the Hugo Ceremony in GeneralShe-Hulk: Attorney at Law Lays Down the “Superhuman Law”2022: A Hugo OdysseyNew Releases, New Arrivals and Other NewsSpooky Retro Fun: Werewolf by NightSmall Press – Big Stories: Some of Cora’s Favourite Small Press SFF Books of 2022Retro Review: “In a Dead Man’s Shoes” by Harold MarkhamRetro Review: “The Hanging of Alfred Wadham” by E.F. BensonLinks and New ReleasesThe 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional ParentsThe 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Awardas well as twelve regular editions and four holiday editions of Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month and Indie Crime Fiction of the Month

The Complete Fanzine/Fancast/Semiprozine/Non-Fiction Spotlights:

Fancast Spotlight: GeekShockFancast Spotlight: The Dickheads Podcast and Postcards from a Dying WorldFancast Spotlight: OctothorpeIntroducing Non-Fiction SpotlightsNon-Fiction Spotlight: The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War by Camestros FelaptonNon-Fiction Spotlight: Renegades and Rogues: The Life and Legacy of Robert E. Howard by Todd B. VickNon-Fiction Spotlight: True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abe RiesmanNon-Fiction Spotlight: Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, edited by Jason M. WaltzNon-Fiction Spotlight: Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium by Rachel S. CordascoNon-Fiction Spotlight: Lovecraft in the 21st Century Dead, But Still Dreaming, edited by Antonio Alcala Gonzalez and Carl H. SederholmFancast Spotlight: Rogues in the HouseNon-Fiction Spotlight: Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyreFanzine Spotlight: Science Fiction and Other Suspect RuminationsNon-Fiction Spotlight: By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga by Erica FriedmanNon-Fiction Spotlight: More Modern Mythmakers: 25 Interviews with Horror and Science Fiction Writers and Filmmakers by Michael McCartyNon-Fiction Spotlight: Management Lessons from Game of Thrones: Organization Theory and Strategy in Westeros by Fiona MooreNon-Fiction Spotlight: Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-LeeNon-Fiction Spotlight: Cosplay: A History by Andrew LiptakNon-Fiction Spotlight: Story Matrices: Cultural Encoding and Cultural Baggage in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Gillian PolackNon-Fiction Spotlight: Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations On Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In a Pandemic, edited by Oghenechovwe Donald EkpekiNon-Fiction Spotlight: Rising Sun Reruns: Memories of Japanese TV Shows from Today’s Grown-up Kids, edited by Jim BeardNon-Fiction Spotlight: Cents of Wonder: Science Fiction’s First Award Winners, edited by Steve Davidson and Kermit WoodallNon-Fiction Spotlight: Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women Volume 2 (1953 to 1957), edited by Gideon MarcusNon-Fiction Spotlight: The Aliens Are Here – Extraterrestrial Visitors in American Cinema and Television by Fraser A. ShermanFancast Spotlight: Tales from the TrunkNon-Fiction Spotlight: A Haunted History of Invisible Women – True Stories of America’s Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea JanesFancast Spotlight: Fiction Fans PodcastFancast Spotlight: Dennis Frey BooksNon-Fiction Spotlight: Slaying the Dragon – A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs

The Complete Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Toy Photo Stories:

Secrets of Eternia: A Photo Story or Watch Cora Play with Action Figures, Part 1: The Secret Identity of He-ManSecrets of Eternia: A Photo Story or Watch Cora Play with Action Figures, Part 2: The Origin of TeelaA Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Pride Month Special: “Fisto’s Significant Other”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Dinosaurs and Fists of Steel”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Siblings”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “The Rescue”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Consent Is Sexy, Harassment Stinks”Toy Photo Story: “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” – and some mixed linksMasters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Holiday on Orkas Island”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “The Mystery of He-Man’s Long-Lost Twin Sister”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Peeping Mantenna”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Help”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Fake Out”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “New Look”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Pig Invasion”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Family”Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Honeypot”

At Galactic Journey:

The Return of the Cimmerian: Conan the Adventurer by Robert E. HowardThree Facets of Conan: Conan the Warrior by Robert E. Howard“Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman” in A Matter of Life and DeathFlames over Brussels: The À l’Innovation Department Store FireBlood in the Streets of West Berlin: The Shah Visit and the Shooting of Benno Ohnesorg“Chthon by Piers Anthony” and “The Flame of Iridar by Lin Carter” in Highs and Lows (July Galactoscope #2)Boxes, Big Steel Boxes: The Rise of the Shipping Container“The Snake Pit and the Pendulum” in We Are The Martians: Quatermass and the Pit, Bonnie and Clyde, The Day the Fish Came Out and The Snake Pit and the Pendulum“Outlaw of Gor” by John Norman in Long Distance Travel (December 1967 Galactoscope)

Elsewhere:

Cora Buhlert: Self-Published Science Fiction Competition Round 1 at File 770.Cora Buhlert: Notes on Self-Published Science Fiction Competition Semi-finalists at File 770.“Review: The Weird Tales Story – Enhanced and Expanded, Robert Weinberg and et al” in The Dark Man: Journal of Robert E. Howard and Pulp Studies , No. 12.2“Harald Harst: The Forgotten Weimar Era Detective Who Fell Afoul of Nazi Book Burnings” in The Drink Tank 439: Crime Fiction Pre-1950“Memory Lane: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe 2002 review” in “Pixel Scroll 8/16/22 Faraway Pixels With Strange-Sounding Scrolls” at File 770.“Separated at Birth: Cosmic Horror and Sword and Sorcery” in the NecronomiCon Providence 2022 Memento Book“The Worst Business Meeting Proposal Ever” in The Gatekeeper September 2022“C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry: The First Lady of Sword and Sorcery” in New Edge Sword and Sorcery Nagazine No. 0: Fall 2022“Bright Spots in a Gray World” in Rising Sun Reruns: Memories of Japanese TV Shows from Today’s Grown-up Kids, edited by Jim Beard“Dwelling in the Anthropocene” in Journey Planet No. 67: Anthropocene Ruminations “G-Man Jerry Cotton: The All-American Crime Fighter from West Germany” in The Drink Tank 442: Crime Fiction 1950 – 2000I also co-run the Speculative Fiction Showcase , a group blog focussed on indie SFF, and the Indie Crime Scene , a blog focussed on indie mysteries, crime fiction and thrillers.

Podcast appearances:

“Shot With a Happy Ending (The Prize of Peril by Robert Sheckley)” in Take Me To Your Reader.“Interview with Cora Buhlert” in Retro Rockets.“Interview with Cora Buhlert” in So I’m Writing a Novel“Dick Adjacent #16 – The Big Jump – Leigh Brackett” in The DickHeads Podcast“Flash Science Fiction Night: Cora Buhlert, Todd Sullivan, Jana Bianchi” in the Space Cowboy Books YouTube channel“2022 Hugo Nominees for Short Story – Discussion Panel” in Hugos There Podcast“2022 Hugo Nominees for Novelette – Discussion Panel” in Hugos There Podcast“2022 Nominees for Best Novella – Discussion Panel” in Hugos There Podcast“1930s Sci-fi Shambleau by Catherine L Moore w/ guests SF historian Cora Buhlert and author Greg Cox” in Postcards from a Dying World“Audiobook/Readalong: The Brethren by H. Rider Haggard” in SFFAudio Podcast #694“Audiobook/Readalong: Almuric by Robert E. Howard” in SFFAudio Podcast #697“Audiobook/Readalong: Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett” in SFFAudio Podcast #710

Fiction (SFF):

Twelve Nooses* (novelette)The Tear of Chronos* (novelette)“Rescue Unwanted” in Wyngraf Magazine (flash fiction).“A Cry on the Battlefield” in Wyngraf Magazine (flash fiction).“Village of the Unavenged Dead” in Whetstone Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery Issue 5 Spring 2022 (short story)“The City of the Screaming Pillars” in Rogues in the House Presents: A Book of Blades, edited by L.D. Whitney and Matt John (short story)“The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” in The Long List Anthology Volume 7: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List, edited by David Steffen (short story, reprint)“Demon Child” in Wyngraf Magazine (flash fiction)Roadside Horrors (short fiction collection)“Legacy of Steel” in Swords and Sorcery Magazine Issue 130, November 2022 (short story)“The Vault of the Nine Sigils” in Whetstone Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery Issue 6 Winter 2022 (short story)Invasion of the Robot Santas (short story)

*published under the name Richard Blakemore

The 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award

While I have been awarding the Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents for 42 years now, the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award is a new prize that I only introduced in 2020 as a companion piece to the Darth Vader Parenthood Award.

As for why I felt the need to introduce a companion award, depictions of parenthood in popular culture are currently undergoing a paradigm shift with more positive portrayals of supportive and loving parents and fewer utterly terrible parents. Personally, I believe that this shift is a very good thing, because the reason that I started the Darth Vader Parenthood Award in the first place is because I was annoyed by all the terrible parents in pop culture. For while most real world parents may not be perfect, at least they do their best. Maybe, the conditions that gave rise to the Darth Vader Parenthood Award will eventually cease to exist and we can permanently retire the award.

Warning: Spoilers for lots of things behind the cut!

Therefore, let’s give a big hand to all the good parents in pop culture that we have seen this year. As in the last two years, there were plenty of viable candidates, more than for the Darth Vader Parenthood Award, and selecting the winner was a difficult choice.

So let’s have a brief rundown of the candidates who did not quite make it:

Two Marvel characters were the runners-up for the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award, but the Marvel Cinematic and TV Universe also yielded many positive portrayals of parenthood and indeed the claims that all Marvel heroes have daddy issues no longer hold true.

Ms. Marvel was certainly one of the more unusual Marvel offerings out there and strongly focussed on Kamala Khan’s chaotic Pakistani-American family and particularly her parents Yusuf and Muneeba Khan. What makes this positive portrayal of a Muslim family even more amazing, is that most media portrayals of Muslim families still give us all the hoary old clichés of abusive fathers and brothers imprisoning and controlling their daughters and sisters, while the mothers look on and tacitly approve – a whopping 34 years afte Yasemin. Meanwhile, Kamala Khan’s family is an loving, if chaotic family who just happen to be Muslim.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law gave us another messy but loving Marvel family. Morris and Elaine Walters are fully supportive of their daughter Jennifer Walters, even after she turns into a smarter and more controlled Hulk after accidentally coming into contact with the blood of her cousin Bruce Banner. And talking of Bruce, in the very final scene of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, he brought his teenaged son Skaar, conceived on the planet Sakaar, while Hulk was there as the reigning champion of the Gamesmaster, to the Banner-Walters family barbecue.

I have never been able to connect to The Addams Family, because I saw The Munsters first and The Addams Family always felt like a rip-off to me, even though I know it’s the other way around. That said, no one can doubt that Morticia and Gomez Addams are great parents to Wednesday, who currently has her own paranormal teen show.

A character from Star Trek Picard may have won the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award, but that show also gave us Dr. Teresa Ramirez, the loving single mom of Ricardo who runs a clinic for uninsured and undocumented people in a Los Angeles one universe over from ours. Teresa and Ricardo get embroiled in the intrigues surrounding Jean-Luc Picard, when Chris Rios has an accident while time travelling and is taken to her clinic. Chris and Teresa quickly fall for each other and embark on a life together in the 21st century by the end of the season.

The first ever winners of both the Darth Vader Parenthood Award and the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award were Star Wars characters and the various Star Wars series on offer at Disney+ continued to deliver both good and bad parent figures.  Senator Bail Organa has been a part of the Star Wars universe and the Rebellion for decades now, but the Obi-Wan Kenobi series gave us a glimpse into his home life and showed us Bail and his wife Breha as loving and supportive parents to young Leia, who was already a handful at age ten.

Another remarkable Star Wars mother who deserves an honourable mention is Maarva Carassi Andor, adoptive mother of Cassian Andor. As chronicled in Andor, Maarva and her husband Clem encountered a young boy in the ruins of a Republican cruiser, while scavenging on the planet Kerani, and took the child along, because they feared he might fall victim to the reprisal of a second Republican ship approaching the planet. Maarva and Clem named the boy Cassian and raised him as their own. Once the Old Republic gave way to the Empire, Clem was arrested during a protest and executed by the Empire to make an example of him, which embittered both young Cassian and Maarva. Cassian Andor eventually wound up joining the Rebellion and sacrificing his life to the cause, while Maarva never lost her rebellious spirit. Even after she succumbed to an illness, Maarva still incited a riot from beyond the grave, calling for the mourners assembled at her funeral to use her funeral stone to brain the nearest Stormtrooper. Maarva Andor is one amazing woman and might well have been the runner-up, if Andor hadn’t aired very late in the year, when I had already made me decision.

Now let’s head to a completely different universe, to announce our runner-up. And the runner-up for the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award is…

Drumroll

Cringer of the Tiger Tribe

I know what many of you are saying now? Wait a minute, who? And how? Because everybody’s favourite fearful green tiger is not a parent in the regular Masters of the Universe continuity. However, there is such a thing as a Masters of the Universe multiverse by now and in one corner of that multiverse sits the Netflix CGI animated show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which plays fast and loose with established canon. Though clearly aimed at a younger audience, the CGI show is surprisingly good for what it is, which is evidenced by the fact that I actually watched the whole thing, all 26 episodes of it.

One of the many changes the CGI show makes to established Masters of the Universe canon is that it gives the role of the responsible adult and parent figure that normally goes to Duncan to Cringer. In this universe, Cringer (voiced by actor David Kaye) is a member of the Tiger Tribe, a group of tigers and humans living peacefully together in the Eternian jungle. After losing his claws in a run-in with the poacher R’Quazz (we know him better as Beast-Man), hunting and fighting are quite difficult for Cringer, though he does not let that stop him. And this is how he meets a scared six-year-old amnesiac boy who’s wandering through the jungle and cannot remember anything about his life except that his name is Adam.

That first meeting between Cringer and young Adam is very sweet (and almost a reversal of how Adam and Cringer met in the Filmation cartoon, where a teenaged Adam finds a lost tiger cub in the jungle and adopts him), since Cringer is trying to pretend to be a big, bad tiger, but once he realises how lost and scared little Adam is, he suddenly becomes a big pussycat and nuzzles the crying kid to comfort him.

Since no family comes forward to claim little Adam (it’s a long story), Cringer takes him in and raises him as his own. A few years later, Cringer also adopts a young girl named Krass (she’s this universe’s version of Ram-Man… if Ram-Man were a surly teenaged girl), after her parents die in a mining accident. Cringer’s little family grows yet again, when Adam picks up a street-kid/witch/thief named Teela and Duncan, teenaged tech whiz and apprentice to the villain Kronis, who turns against his employer, when Kronis orders him to burn down a village. Like I said, the characters in the CGI show are very different from their classic counterparts in many ways, though the strong focus on (found) family is one thing the CGI show shares with all other incarnations of Masters of the Universe.

The CGI incarnation is Cringer is probably my favourite version of the character, though I also love Stephen Root’s take on Cringer in Revelation, if only because we have never seen an older and wiser Cringer as a mentor character before. This Cringer is also a great parent to Adam and Krass, though both of them are a handful and particularly Krass is quite annoying – well, she is a deeply traumatised version of Ram-Man as a sulky teenaged girl.  Cringer is always supportive of Adam’s hope to find his biological family – unlike Krass, who is terrified of losing him – and actually pushes Adam towards reconnecting with his father King Randor, once Adam learns that he is the crown prince of Eternia.

And talking of King Randor, one thing that has remained remarkably consistent over all the different versions of Masters of the Universe is that Randor is not a very good father and has a strained relationship with his son Adam. In fact, the version of the character shown in Masters of the Universe: Revelation very narrowly missed taking home the Darth Vader Parenthood Award last year. However, the CGI King Randor is still not perfect and his initial reunion with Adam does not go well, but he is willing to do better and genuinely tries to reconnect with his son. There’s even a sweet scene where Randor and Cringer talk about parenting Adam and Randor acknowledges that Cringer did most of the work of raising Adam into the person he is.

That sort of parental dedication deserves an award and therefore I name Cringer of the Tiger Tribe the runner-up for the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award.

Applause

Cringer receives hugs from Adam, Krass, Duncan and Teela and then ascends to the stage. He’s not wearing anything except for his prosthetic claws – he is a tiger, after all. After being presented with Martha Kent’s famous apple pie, Cringer delivers the following acceptance speech:

Thank you. Thank you, very much. This is quite unexpected. After all, I don’t think I did anything special. For eons, it has been the way of my tribe to take in the lost and the outcast who have nowhere else to go.

When I adopted Adam and Krass, I only followed the ways of my tribe. They were lost cubs who had no one, so I took them in and they became my cubs, my family.

In fact, one of the things I do not understand about humans is how they treat cubs who have lost their family. It horrifies me to think that humans just abandon their cubs and lock them up in large cages they call orphanages. A cub is something precious, to be loved and nurtured and protected, not to be discarded.

I have two – well, I guess it’s four now – wonderful cubs and I would trade them for nothing in the world. Because cubs are precious and family is the most precious thing of all.

Thank you very much. Tiger Tribe together!

Mmm, this pie smells very tasty.

Cringer carefully picks up the pie in his mouth and carries it down from the stage, where Adam, Krass, Duncan and Teela proceed to dig in.

I don’t have a CGI Cringer, so my Origins Cringer will have to do. The pie is actually a mince pie.

After this eloquent meditation on the importance of family, let’s proceed to the winner of the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award.

Like last year, this year’s winner or rather winners are characters who should have been acknowledged long ago, but who have been perpetually overlooked.

Therefore, I am pleased to present the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award to…

Drumroll

Owen and Beru Lars

Portrayed by Phil Brown and Shelagh Fraser in A New Hope and by Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and Obi-Wan Kenobi, Owen and Beru were moisture farmers living near Anchorhead on the backwater planet of Tatooine and certainly never expected to find themselves at the centre of a multi-generation intergalactic conflict.

When Owen was a young man, his father Cliegg Lars married Shmi Skywalker, who was the single mother of Anakin Skywalker. Since Anakin had left home years ago to become a Jedi, Owen met his stepbrother only once and very briefly.

However, a few years later, a Jedi master named Obi-Wan Kenobi showed up on the doorstep of Owen and Beru’s homestead and handed them a newborn baby boy and told them that this was the son of Anakin Skywalker and his wife Padmé Armidala, both of whom had sadly died in the civil war that led to the downfall of the Old Republic. This little boy Luke Skywalker desperately needed a home, so Owen and Beru took him in and provided a loving and supportive home to the boy.

It is not sure how much Owen and Beru knew about what had really happened to Anakin Skywalker, but what they did know was that Anakin leaving home to become a Jedi was what had caused the whole trouble to begin with. They also knew that young Luke was in danger, because the Empire was actively hunting down not just Jedi but all Force-sensitives.

So Owen and Beru did all they could to protect their adopted son, including facing down the Imperial Inquisitor Reva, a terrifying lightsabre-wielding Force user. And since Owen and Beru knew that the trouble had started with Anakin following Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi to become a Jedi, they made very sure that the same thing would not happened to Luke and kept him away not just from Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was still hanging around Tatooine, disguised as a hermit named Ben, but also tried to keep Luke from attending the Imperial Academy. In retrospect, this may not have been the best course of action, but Owen and Beru acted only out of the best of motifs, namely love and concern for Luke. And in the end, they died protecting Luke from the Stormtroopers who were looking for R2-D2 and C-3PO.

It always irked me that the Star Wars saga placed so much emphasis on Luke and Leia’s biological parents, particularly the father who barely know either of them, and hardly any on the people who actually raised Luke and Leia. Especially since we know that particularly the male members of the Skywalker family are prone to falling to the Dark Side and Luke is the only male Skywalker who is not a complete and utter disaster. It’s obvious that Owen and Beru (and Bail and Breha Organa) were largely responsible for raising Luke and Leia into the people they are and also that the galaxy owes Owen and Beru a huge debt, because it is largely due to their influence that Luke did not walk the same path to the Dark Side that Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo walked.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series finally gives Owen and Beru Lars their due and shows them actually being Luke’s parents. It also shows them as badarses, who hold off the terrifying Reva long enough to allow Luke to run away.

So I’m thrilled to name Owen and Beru Lars the winners of the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award.

Applause 

Since Owen and Beru Lars were sadly murdered by Stormtroopers about forty-five minutes into A New Hope, their adoptive son Luke Skywalker, clad in full Jedi robes, accepts on their behalf and delivers the following speech:

Thanks you, also on behalf of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru who unfortunately cannot be with us today.

I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me. Because the other award, the one for the bad parents, is named after my father and I have two ugly vases to prove it…

“Cheers, mate! I have four ugly vases, three for my father and one for my sister,” Tyrion Lannister calls out from the second row and he seems to be very drunk indeed, “They make for great target practice.”

I don’t think my father is the worst person to ever win the other award – the man who murdered his daughter and then snapped half the universe out of existence is surely worse – but he is the one the award is named after. And you know what? That hurts. Because while I’m Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master and hero of Yavin, I’m also the son of Darth Vader. And trust me, there are a lot of people who won’t ever let me forget it.

However, I only knew my biological father for a few months. But for as long as I can remember, the people who were always there for me, the people who loved me and fed me, who hugged me, when I was sad, and told me bedtime stories at night, those people were not Anakin Skywalker. They were Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru who were always there for me for nineteen long years.

So thank you, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, for being there for me, for being my parents, if not by blood than of the heart. And thank you to the jury for acknowledging all the great work they did.

So tonight I raise a toast… – well, a slice of pie – in honour of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. May the Force be with them and with you all.

Luke Skywalker leaves the stage, carefully carrying his pie. The 2020 winner Din Djarin, who has been sitting in the front row, walks up to him, carrying Grogu, who is very happy to see Luke again.

“I’m sorry, Jedi,” Din Djarin says and holds out his hand, “I didn’t know you were a foundling, too. But your aunt and uncle sound like they were good and honourable people, even if they weren’t warriors. Because taking in foundlings and raising them, that is the way.”

Cringer also trots over to nuzzle Luke in a gesture of sympathy. While Din Djarin and Luke are talking, Grogu helps himself to the pie and levitates two slices into his mouth, before Din notices what’s going on and says, “No, Grogu.”

Luke smiles wryly. “I guess I should be glad that Grogu at least remembers some of his lessons, even if he only uses the Force to snatch food.”

“Trust me, Jedi, you have no idea.”

“At least your cub left you some of the pie,” Cringer says, “I’m afraid my cubs ate all of mine.”

Meanwhile, Grogu decides to Force-levitate the entire pie across the stage and has eaten two more slices before anybody can stop him. Though Grogu is thrilled when Cringer offers to give him a ride on his back.

Martha Kent, clad in her Sunday best, walks up to Luke and Din, carrying another apple pie.

“Oh, those kids are always so hungry. Just like my Clark. And that’s why I always make sure to bake a spare pie.” She hands the pie to Luke. “Enjoy, gentlemen.”

Luke picks up a slice of pie and takes a bite. “We should probably save a slice for Cringer, but do you say, Mandalorian? Can I interest you in some pie?”

Din Djarin shakes his head. “I’d love to, but I cannot eat in public. This is the way.”

“Oh yes, that whole thing about Mandalorians never showing their faces, though that sure as banta poop never stopped Boba Fett. But just in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve already seen your face and know what you look like.”

“I still can’t. I’m in enough trouble as it is for showing my face once, because this is the way.”

“I could Jedi mind-wipe you later, so you won’t remember that I saw your face.”

“Don’t you dare, Jedi!”

Martha Kent finally defuses the situation and wraps up a slice of pie in a handkerchief and hands it to Din Djarin for later. Meanwhile, Grogu is cheering, as he rides on Cringer, before Teela, Krass and even Duncan and Adam take turns cuddling him.

***

And that’s it for the 2022 Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award. Who’ll win next year? You’ll find out in this space.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just gave them an award and wrote acceptance speeches for them. All characters and properties are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

The 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents

It’s almost the end of the year, so it’s time to announce the winner of the coveted (not) 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Let’s have a bit of background: I have been informally awarding the Darth Vader Parenthood Award since sometime in the 1980s with the earliest awards being retroactive. Over the years, the list of winners migrated from a handwritten page to various computer file formats, updated every year. Eventually, I decided to make the winners public on the Internet, because what’s an award without some publicity and a ceremony? The list of previous winners (in PDF format) up to 2017 may be found here, BTW, and the 2018 winner, the 2019 winner, the 2020 winner and the 2021 winner were announced right here on this blog.

Warning: Spoilers for several things behind the cut!

Before we get to the main event, let’s start with the 2022 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents. I originally created the Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award as an anaologue to the Retro Hugos in 2020 to honour terrible parents who either did their villainous parenting before the award was a thing or who were overlooked in the past for unfathomable reasons.

Our 2022 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award winner is an example of the latter, a character or rather two of them who should absolutely have won back in 1985, only that I missed them when I retroactively assembled the first years of winners in the late 1980s and instead awarded the admittedly terrible soap opera character Hans Beimer. However, let’s rectify this oversight.

Therefore I’m thrilled to announce that the joint winners of the 2022 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents are…

Drumroll

Hordak the Mighty, Viceroy of Etheria and Second-in-Command of the All-Conquering Evil Horde, and Shadow Weaver

As chronicled in He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword back in 1985 (or you can see my take on the story here), Hordak stole Princess Adora from her parents King Randor and Queen Marlena of Eternia, when she was just a baby, because he wanted the child’s fabulous secret powers for himself.

Hordak then raised young Adora as his own and made sure to instil the values of the Evil Horde, values such as subjugation, slavery and slaughter, into the girl. He was aided in this by the sorceress Shadow Weaver, who used her powers to brainwash Adora, keep her under control and prevent her from asking uncomfortable questions. Once Adora came of age, Hordak made her a Force Captain in the Evil Horde and forced her to take part in the atrocities committed by his forces. In the 2012 Masters of the Universe comic series, Hordak even sends Adora, now known as Despara, to her homeworld Eternia to attack, conquer and murder her own parents and brother.

However, coming face to face with her twin brother Prince Adam a.k.a. He-Man and getting hold of the Sword of Protection helped Adora to finally break free from Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s control and become She-Ra, the heroine she was always meant to be.

Ever since then, Hordak and Shadow Weaver have been trying to bring Adora back, by force if necessary. Not to mention that Hordak and his forces also continue to try to conquer the planet of Etheria, crush the Rebellion, enslave the population and suck out their life force to power their headquarters the Fright Zone. Furthermore, Hordak also poisoned the troubled mind of Prince Keldor of Eternia against his family, gave Keldor a vial of acid to murder his own brother and when that plan backfired (in the most literal sense of the word), Hordak used his dark magic to turn Prince Keldor into Skeletor, the Lord of Destruction. Finally, Hordak is also notoriously abusive towards his own subordinates such as Mantenna, Grizzlor, Leech or Catra and frequently drops them through a trap door in front of his throne.

Such villainy deserves an award and therefore Hordak and Shadow Weaver are the winners of the 2022 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Applause

Applause errupts around the auditorium. Only Hans Beimer, the actual 1985 winner, boos.

Hordak and Shadow Weaver both appear in person, Hordak clad in his familiar black uniform with red cape and bat symbol and Shadow Weaver clad in her flowing dark pink robes. They take to the stage, flanked by two Horde Troopers and accompanied by Mantenna, Grizzlor and Mosquitor. In the front row, Hans Beimer continues to boo, until he gets zapped by a Horde Trooper for his trouble.

Hordak and Shadow Weaver accept their award, an ugly vase, and deliver the following acceptance speech:

Thank you. I am so… sniff… touched that my efforts in bringing peace and order to the galaxy in the name of the Great and All-Mighty Horde Empire are finally being recognised and I greatfully accept this… what is this object of power anyway?

It’s just an ugly vase. It’s not as if we can actually afford a trophy.

“…this ugly vase of power. But this is apparently about Adora, so Adora, if you can hear me and I know you can, please, come back. I promise you that you will not be punished, at least not very much. Just please, come back and rejoin the Horde.

I know that we have not always seen eye to eye in the past and that we have had disagreements on matters of Horde policy such slavery, decimating local populations or sucking out the life force of prisoners. But I know that it is perfectly normal for children to disagree with their parents’ politics, especially since children don’t always understand the harsh realities of governing a galaxy-spanning empire.

And yes, I know you’re angry that Shadow Weaver and I never told you about your biological parents. But why can’t you see what we have given you? When I first took you from Etheria, you were just a squishy, soft, ugly, little pink thing that cried and peed all the time. But we raised you, taught you, trained you and made you a Force Captain of the Horde and my Despara, my harbinger of doom and destruction. Surely that has to count for something. I mean, have you ever looked at that brother of yours? He’s a lazy bum and a coward. Is that really the life you want for yourself?

If you’re worried that we’re upset about your relationship with Catra, we’re not. Why should we be upset? Catra was always a most loyal Horde enforcer and she’s certainly better than that treacherous bum Sea Hawk. Though we would appreciate it, if you were to bring Catra back as well, Adora, if only because I’m running out of Force Captains and have even been considering promoting Mantenna, which should show you how desperate I am. But honestly, while we know that humans have strange hang-ups about same sex relationships, we of the Horde do not know such prejudice.

The Evil Horde is fully committed to workplace diversity. I mean, Mantenna, Grizzlor, Mosquitor, Leech and Modulok are not even the same species and Horde Prime alone knows what their sexual preferences are. We are an LGBTQ friendly employer. At least, this book So Your Kid Just Came Out As Gay that Eleanor gave me said I should say that.

In the front row, 2021 winner Eleanor Bishop blows Hordak a kiss and calls out, “See, Hordak, dear, I told you that would work. Don’t forget to call me about business opportunities for marketing the products your slaves produce.”

Hans Beimer briefly comes to and manages to emit one more “boo”, before a Horde Trooper zaps him once more.

Just please come back, Adora. I miss you, my Force Captain, my Despara, my harbinger of doom and destruction. Torturing prisoners has never been as much fun as when you were sitting beside me.

Shadow Weaver then takes the mike and adds:

Catra and Adora, quit this nonsense and come back to the Horde. Just come back and I will make sure that you will soon forget all of those silly rebellious ideas and thoughts and sleep the slumber of the wicked again.

The Evil Horde poses for a group photo with the ugly vase.

Hordak, Shadow Weaver and their entourage leave the stage. “Boss, are you really going to promote me to Force Captain?” Mantenna asks and promptly gets slapped across the auditorium.

Hordak, champion of LGBTQ rights. And I thought I’d heard everything.

***

Anyway, now that the Retro Award is out of the way, let’s get to the main event, namely the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

As I’ve noted in 2020 and 2021, every year there seem to be fewer and fewer Darth Vader Parenthood Award candidates and more and more candidates for the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award, which will be handed out tomorrow.

Another trend I’ve noticed in 2022 is that we increasingly see fictional parents who are neither cartoonishly evil nor saintly good, but who are just people who clearly care for their kids and yet mess up anyway and drive them away. I’m not the only one who has noticed this trend, by the way. Matthew Huff wrote a whole article about the phenomenon for the AV-Club.

Evelyn Wang from Everything Everywhere All at Once is probably the best example of this tend, a woman who clearly loves her daughter and yet disapproves of her lifestyle and the fact that her daughter is gay. Evelyn could theoretically win both the Darth Vader Parenthood Award and the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award and somewhere in the multiverse she probably did.

Viserys Targaryen from House of the Dragon is another example. He clearly loves his oldest daughter and heir Rhaenyra and yet order his pregnant wife Aemma to be sacrificed in order to save the life of her baby, whom he hopes will finally be a male heir to the Iron Throne. After the death of his first wife, Viserys remarries Alicent Hightower and three sons and a daughter with her and still insists that Rhaenyra shall inherit the Iron Throne, setting Rhaenyra against Alicent. Furthermore, Viserys forces Rhaenyra to marry Laenor Velaryon, whom she does not love and who is likely gay. Viserys messy family relationships and treatment of Rhaenyra, Alicent and their respective kids leads to a civil war after his death.

Season 2 of Star Trek Picard decided to delve into Jean-Luc Picard’s unhappy childhood, complete with flashback scenes of Picard’s loving mother Yvette, who permanently seems to be terrified of something, and her abusive husband Maurice. However, it eventually turns out that Jean-Luc’s memories are not exactly reliable and that Yvette was mentally ill and eventually committed suicide and that Maurice, even though he’ll never be father of the year, was actually trying to protect his young son. So I’ll file Maurice and Yvette Picard under ambiguous.

Now let’s move on to parents who are unambiguously terrible, but not quite terrible enough to win the award. First, we have Wendy Spector, mother of Randall and Marc Spector. As chronicled in Moon Knight, when Randall Spector accidentally drowned as a child, Wendy blamed her other son Marc and physically and emotionally abused him, until Marc developed dissociative identity disorder to cope with the abuse. That’s pretty terrible, but not quite terrible enough to win.

The Star Wars series Andor yielded several parents of the good, the bad and the ugly kind. We’ll tackle the good tomorrow, but first let’s look at the bad and the ugly.  Eedy Karn is the ambitious and cold mother of Deputy Inspector Syril Karn who is inordinately concerned with her son’s career in the Empire and willing to pull any nepotism strings, so Syril will ascend the Imperial ladder of success. She’s pretty awful, but just plain awful isn’t enough to succeed in an award named after none other than Darth Vader himself, so it’s No Award for Ms. Karn.

Andor also gives us a look into the family life of rebel leader Mon Mothma on Coruscant and it’s not happy. Now no one can doubt that Mon Mothma was a great leader of the Rebellion and she also was a very active and engaged Senator for her homeworld Chandrila. However, like many very politically active and socially engaged people, Mon Mothma is a pretty shitty mother who neglects her teenaged daughter Leida for her political ambitions, discourages Leida’s interest in the culture of her mother’s homeworld and even sells Leida out in an arranged marriage to cover up the embezzlement of funds for the Rebellion. Leida’s father Perrin Fertha is pretty shitty, too, and basically only cares about the good life on Coruscant and not at all for his wife’s political career. He also hangs out with high-ranking Imperials and supports neither his wife nor his daughter. Now anybody who has met people who are very politically and socially active and busybody do-gooders knows that a lot of them are terrible parents and partners, though it is interesting to see a Star Wars series, even one as compatively realistic as Andor, not just acknowledge this, but protray a popular character like Mon Mothma as a bad mother. But though Mon Mothma may not be a good mother, Darth Vader she’s not.

In the end, the battle for the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award came down to a neck to neck race between two sets of parents. Which brings us to the runner-up for the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents, namely…

Drumroll

Ulysses and Verussa Bloodstone

As portrayed by actors Richard Dixon and Harriet Samson Harris in Werewolf by Night, Ulysses was the head of a monster hunter clan and wielder of the legendary Bloodstone, which weakens monsters and also exposes hidden monsters. Ulysses was a very enthusiastic monster hunter and did not particularly care if the “monsters” actually posed a threat to anybody. If someone met Ulysses’ definition of monster, he would hunt and kill them without mercy.

Ulysses’ first wife and his daughter Elsa did not agree with his profession and became estranged from him. Ulysses eventually remarried and his second wife Verussa enthusiastically partook in the monster-hunting family business.

When Ulysses finally shuffled off this mortal coil, Verussa called together various monster hunters to determine who should inherit the Bloodstone. Elsa reappeared as well to claim her inheritance, much to Verussa’s chagrin. The inheritor of the Bloodstone was to be determined via a monster hunt staged on the ground of the Bloodstone estate and the monster to be hunted was an innocent creature named Ted a.k.a. Man-Thing. When Elsa teamed up with Ted and his friend Jack to free Ted and gain the stone for herself, Verussa threw a fit, locked Elsa in a cage with a werewolf about to transform and repeatedly tried to kill her. She eventually succumbed to an attack by Ted, who may be mild-mannered, but nonetheless has limits.

That sort of villainy deserves recognition and therefore I name Ulysses and Verussa Bloodstone the runners up for the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Applause

Since Ulysses and Verussa Bloodstone are both dead, their daughter/stepdaughter took to the stage, clad in jeans and a blood-red leather jacket.

I’m not sure what I’m even doing here? I mean what’s the point of this? To prove that my father and my stepmother were fucking terrible people? I fucking know that they were fucking terrible people, thank you very much. As for this…

Elsa looks at the ugly vase.

…I don’t want it. I mean, I inherited a whole mansion full of butt-ugly furniture and I’m still in the process of cleaning that shit out. Why would I want an ugly vase?

She throws the ugly vase across the auditorium, narrowly missing Hans Beimer and hitting Mantenna instead, who yelps, as his eyes pop out.

But while I’m here, let me make one thing very clear: The Bloodstone organisation is under new management. And henceforth, we will only hunt cryptids, if they actually pose a threat to humanity. No more monster hunting just for the fun of it. Cause Nosferatu there…

She points at Hordak, who is completely confused by the reference, since 1920s horror movie have not yet found their way to the Horde Empire.

…has it right. It doesn’t matter what someone looks like, whether they’re human, mutant, werewolf, vampire or monster. What matters is what they do. If you live your life peacefully, the Bloodstone organisation is not going to harass you. But if you hurt others, you’ll answer to me.

She storms off, while the entire auditorium looks after her. “Ungrateful whelp,” Shadow Weaver hisses.

Okay, after that fiery speech, let’s finally get to our Grand Prize. The winner of the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents is none other than…

Drumroll

Dr. Adam Soong

Portrayed by actor Brent Spiner in season 2 of Star Trek Picard, Dr. Adam Soong is a geneticist with delusions of grandeur living in the Los Angeles of a 21st century one universe over.

Possessed by seemingly unlimited wealth, Dr. Soong poured considerable funds and effort into highly unethical research and created at least 24 clone daughters, only one of whom, Kore, survived to adulthood, while her sisters succumbed to rare genetic disorder that made both sunlight and dust deadly for them. Soong lied about his experiments to everybody, including Kore, who believed that she was Soong’s biological daughter.

When Soong was called before an ethic committee and lost his funding, he accepted an offer from a mysterious alien being calling himself Q. In exchange for a substance that would cure Kore’s condition, Q demanded that Soong stop a young astronaut named Renee Picard from boarding the first mission to the Jupiter moon Europa. Soong was extremely ruthless in achieving this goal and repeatedly tried to murder Renee, actually did murder the Watcher Tallinn and ran over Admiral Jean-Luc Picard with a car. Furthermore, he also handed a squad of special forces soldiers over to the Borg Queen to be assimilated and personally led them on an assault on the French vineyard Chateau Picard. He also tried to kill Jean-Luc Picard again as well as Seven of Nine, Raffi Musiker and Chris Rios. Oh yes, if all that wasn’t awful enough, Dr. Adam Soong was also involved in a top secret genetics project codenamed “Khan” and we all know where that leads.

At least Q delivered the cure to her condition to Kore Soong, who promptly deleted all of her father’s files and took off. She was last seen in a park in Los Angeles in the company of a Watcher named Wesley Crusher. We hope she has an amazing life up there among the stars.

That sort of villainy deserves an award and therefore I name Dr. Adam Soong the winner of the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Terrible Fictional Parents.

Applause

Dr. Soong ascends the stage clad in the elegant tuxedo, gratefully accepts the ugly vase and delivers the following speech:

Thank you. Thank you so very much. I am… sniff… so honoured that my genius has finally been recognised.

For decades I laboured in obscurity, hemmed in by red tape and stupid ethical rules. Tell me, why should I not create and clone my own daughters?  If I had gone to a fertility clinic, the whole thing would have been entirely legal, but just because I created my clone daughters myself, I’m suddenly a criminal? If anybody is a criminal here, it’s my latest daughter Kore who deleted my research, my life’s work, and emptied out my bank accounts, too. And I demand that Kore is found and made to pay for her actions. Do you hear me, you lazybum police officers? Find her!

But I digress. Esteemed jury, if you feel that Kore and her late lamented sisters were an exceptional feat of genetic engineering, trust me, you will love my next project. Cause project Khan will create humans that are faster, smarter and better than plain old homo sapiens. I promise you, the next step of evolution is here and I, Dr. Adam Soong, have helped to usher it in. My name shall live forever in fame.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

He descends the podium, blowing kisses to the audience and clutching his ugly vase. He sits  down next to 2021 winner Eleanor Bishop and they immediately begin chatting. I guess we’d better keep an eye on those two, since I’m sure they’re plotting something.

Meanwhile, Hans Beimer tries to grab the Retro ugly vase from Hordak and gets zapped for his troubles… again.

***

And that’s it for the 2022 Darth Vader Parenthood Award. The companion prize, the Jonathan and Martha Kent Award for the Fictional Parent of the Year will be handed out tomorrow.

Who will win next year? You’ll find out in this space.

***

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just gave them an award and wrote an acceptance speech for them. All characters and properties are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

Links and New Releases

I’ve got a couple of links and new releases to share. For starters, Smashwords are running their annual end-of-the-year sale. Lots of e-books at drastically reduced prices, including several of mine.

Furthermore, I’ve got a new story out in issue 6 of Whetstone Magazine. It’s called “The Vault of the Nine Sigils” and features a lost city, a greedy rogue, a mysterious sealed vault and monkeys. You can download of issue 6 of Whetstone Magazine here and read mine and twelve other great modern sword and sorcery tales by Howard Andrew Jones, Chase A. Folmar, Turlough Lavery, Matthew X. Gomez, Rev. Joe Kelly, Oliver Brackenbury, Robert O’Leary, Michael Burke, Jimmy Stamp, Owen G. Tabard, Jon Carroll Thomas, B. Harlan Crawford and J. Thomas Howard. Also check out the great cover by Meagan LeMay.

I’m also over at Galactic Journey again, where I review Outlaw of Gor by John Norman as part of the December 1967 Galactoscope and also discuss the 1967 sex education film turned box office hit Helga..

I reviewed the first two Gor books, Tarnsman of Gor and Outlaw of Gor for Galactic Journey and it has certainly been an interesting, if frustrating experience. For while the Gor books are infamous for their BDSM content, the first two books start of with lengthy and extremely dull infodumps, which you have to get through to get to the spicy stuff. Furthermore, the sexual content of Tarnsman was fairly mild, though Outlaw dials up both the BDSM stuff and the misogyny, which is interesting, since the consensus seems to be that the Gor series didn’t go off the rails into full-blown BDSM erotica with a heavy dose of misogyny until the sixth book. However, the misogyny already creeps in in the second book IMO. Also, considering how badly written and infodumpy the first two Gor books are, I honestly wonder why the series ever became as popular as it was. Whether you want Edgar Rice Burroughs style planetary adventures or sex, there were better places to find both even back in 1967.

In general, it seems as if 1967 is the year that the sex content in SFF books goes up and some of it becomes weird and outright icky. Because SFF books published in 1966 that were considered shocking at the time like Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein with their poly relationships are not really shocking to a modern reader. Even the first Gor book is fairly tame by modern standards. In 1967, however, you suddenly get things like the utterly terrible Chthon by Piers Anthony a.k.a. “incest is the only real love” or Outlaw of Gor a.k.a. “all lesbians need is to be enslaved by a real man”.

In other news, I also have an essay in issue 67 of Journey Planet: “Anthropocene Ruminations”, guest-edited by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk of the most excellent Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog. My essay is about renewable energy in the home and that for some reason science fiction barely acknowledges what is already possible right now with technology that we have, let alone what will be possible in twenty or fifty years. Other contributors to this issue include Victoria Paterson, Camestros Felapton, A.L. Yakimchuk, Juan Sanmiguel, Jason Sanford, Paul Weimer, Victoria Carter, Collin Horn, James Bacon, Nicholas Pallaris, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Christopher J. Garcia, Stephen Griffith, Marshall Boyd and Gautam Bhatia. You can read and download the issue here.

Finally, I also have a piece out in issue 442 of The Drink Tank about “Crime Fiction 1950 – 2000”, edited by Christopher J. Garcia and Chuck Serface. My article is about the German pulp detective G-Man Jerry Cotton and appears alongside Christopher J. Garcia writing about the works of Robert McGinnis, the Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters, Gregory McDonald’s Fletch and Roger Rabbit, Chuck Serfaces weighing in on the Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Helena McCallum praising the works of Seishi Yokomizo and Joe Price talking about crime fiction as morality plays. You can read and download the issue here.

That should be plenty of reading material for tonight.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Honeypot”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server. You can check out all the Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Stories here.

I posted this story on Twitter some time ago, but I never posted it on the blog, so let’s rectify that.

This story is called “Honeypot” and the star is not He-Man for once, but another member of the Masters of the Universe (which was originally just the name of the toyline, until the 2002 cartoon made it the name of the heroic warrior team, something most subsequent versions kept), namely Buzz-Off.

Buzz-Off posing with his axe and a Schleich giant ape.

Now Buzz-Off is one of the stranger Masters of the Universe characters, since he’s essentially a giant axe-wielding humanoid bee. As a kid, I always found him silly, because looks very much like Maja the Bee’s Dad. And in fact, I should probably get a Maja the Bee figure to serve as his kid, provided the scale is right.

The 2002 cartoon updated the character design to look less goofy and also gave him more of a backstory, making Buzz-Off second-in-command of the Andreenids, a species of bee people live in the Mystic Mountains and have an longstanding enmity with the Avionians, i.e. the bird people whose leader is Stratos. The Andreenids also produce honey which has healing properties and gives you superstrength, at least if you’re an Andreenid. It doesn’t work with other species, as this episode of the 2002 cartoon shows.

As with any object or substance that supposedly grants you superpowers, Skeletor is of course after the Andreenids’ honey and will stop at nothing to get his hands on it.

Andreenos, deep in the Mystic Mountains:

The honey of Andreenos is portrayed by a jar of honey from the kitchen.

“Come on, my Evil Warriors. All we need to do is steal the magical life-giving honey of Andreenos and then we shall be invincible. Bwahaha.”

“It’s not even guarded either. Like taking candy from a baby. Or honey from a bee.”

BZZZZZZZ…

“Halt, villains! If you want to steal the sacred honey of Andreenos, you will first have to go through me.”

“Oh buzz off, fly boy!”

“That’s Lord Buzz-Off to you, Skeletor.”

“Get him, my Evil Warriors. Squash the bug! Swat the fly!”

“For the last time, I’m not a fly. Or a bug.”

“Feel my spider sting, Buzz-Off.”

“Crap, I could use some help here. He-Man would be great. Or Man-at-Arms. Or Teela. Or anybody really. Even…”

FLUTTER.

“…Stratos!”

“Hello, friend Buzz-Off. Need a hand or a wing?”

“Anytime, Stratos. Just pick one and start smiting. There’s more than enough to go around.”

“So you want to steal our sacred honey, Skeletor. Well, I’ve got news for you. It only works on Andreenids.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure it works on Arachnids, too. Right, Webstor?”

“Right, boss. Just one taste and I shall be invincible.”

“When Buzz-Off said, ‘Pick one’, why did I have to pick Stinkor. Ugh, that smell.”

“Guess what’s for dinner tonight, boys? Right, smoked turkey.”

SLAM!

“So you think you’re tough enough to taste our magical honey?”

“Think? I’ll show you that I’m tough enough. All people of the Mystic Mountains shall bow before the might of Webstor.”

“Well, think again, itsy bitsy spider.”

STING!

“Just you and me, Skeletor. Like in the olden days.”

“Oh please, Stratos. We never fought. I always left you to Beast-Man to play with, while I dealt with Randor and Duncan.”

“Well, Best-Man’s not here, so feel the fury of Avion.”

PUNCH!

“Retreat, my Evil Warriors. Honey is bad for your waistline anyway.”

“Yeah, run away, Skeletor! We’ll send the Royal Guard after you to mop you up.”

“Or the warriors of Andreenos and Avion.”

“Thanks for the help, Stratos.”

“Anytime, Buzz-Off. Besides, my knuckles were itching for a workout.”

“Uhm, you do know that our people are supposed to be mortal enemies.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we have to be.”

***

And that’s it for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story, because there will be more.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.