Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 16

Manic Monday

Whew. Well, as of about 20 minutes ago, the revised version of For the Killing of Kings is with my editor, or at least his in-box. I would liked to have read it straight through a couple of more times, but as I strive to be a man of his word I delivered the manuscript on the first day of the first full week of November. This draft would not have been possible without the editorial aid of a wicked and beautiful enchantress whom I have surely mentioned before.

In celebration, I’m wearing one of my favorite t-shirts, which, alas, is beginning to show its wear.

Today I’m going to spend some time putting the house back together after about a week of neglect, and that will include some last minute pre-winter garden work. Maybe this evening we’ll start watching the second season of Stranger Things.

I need to get back to work on issue 2 of Tales From the Magician’s Skull. And, partly because I’m a madman, but mostly because it took longer than I expected to address all the changes to book 1, by the first week of December I need to turn over the first draft of book 2. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

My old friend Bruce and I took our old friend Brad out for his 50th for lunch and Thor: Ragnarok yesterday. And a good time was had by all. It was such a grand adventure that I didn’t even mind some niggling plot issues. I’ve found a few naysayers online, but there are always some determined to grumble, to define themselves by what they hate rather than what they enjoy. (SPOILER ALERT!!!) I was delighted that the film makers even worked in part of the Viking prayer invented for The 13th Warrior, which is one of my favorite prayers, ever, and a key part to the climactic moment of that movie. And Skurge got his scene! Admittedly it wasn’t as awesome as the scene from the comic, but there wasn’t time to establish as great an arc as there was in the comic, and as this version of Skurge wasn’t half as competent as the comics version, that long, death-defying scene wouldn’t have been credible. (END SPOILER ALERT.)

I’ve been following along with something called Barteuscon, which is one witty fellow playing through one game from his solitaire gaming collection every evening over the course of November. If you’re a gamer yourself, you’ll probably enjoy.

Lastly, Joseph Goodman noticed something and pointed it out to me. Last week was the hundredth anniversary of the first published story of Harold Lamb’s Khlit the Cossack. Serendipitously, just last week my old friend Jan van Heiningen sent me a heretofore unknown-by-me essay Harold Lamb himself had written about how he’d gone about plotting that very same story. That was pretty cool, and I have fingers crossed that more such essays might turn up. I’ve dreamed sometimes that I spoke with Lamb about how he set about structuring his tales, but this is about as close as I’ve ever gotten to understanding the thought processes involved.

The Pledge of the Sword

Today, on the final day of the Kickstarter for Tales From the Magician’s Skull, I poured my heart out to tell you just why I love sword-and-sorcery and why I’m determined to bring the best of it your way.

I hope you enjoy the essay; I hope, also, that you’ll join forces with us and pledge for the magazine, and if you’ve already done THAT then I’ll prevail upon you to help me spread the word one last time!

 

The Grand Finale

Usually when my wife heads off to one of her work conferences I get a lot of work done in the hotel room but I also explore a bit. This time, while she was in Washington, I was only a few minutes walk from a Metro line, but I did hardly any exploring at all. Comes of being under deadline. I saw an awful lot of my hotel room walls and occasional glimpses of the lobby.

I did get my first ever in-person look at various Washington D.C. monuments, but only from a distance as we strolled along the capital mall on our last evening before we left, prior to going out to an awesome Peruvian/Chinese fusion restaurant.

We’re nearing the end of the Kickstarter, so if you’re wanting to see some great new sword-and-sorcery stories I hope you’ve already signed on.

I’m still addressing final changes to book 1 as my wife edits her way through and finds issues, but I’m mostly working on book 2. Once again, as national novel writing month looms upon us I’ll already be hard at work on a book, and for once I’ll actually be drafting instead of revising.

Schedule-wise everything’s overlapped at just about the worst time. Sometimes these things happen. I’m going to try and turn over book 1 by the first full week of November and book 2 the last week of November, although I’ll permit myself the first week of December as my drop-dead date. November 15th, the day I’m supposed to receive all the stories for issue 2 of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, drops right into the middle of that and I’m already busy addressing manuscript changes for some of them.

Just to make things a little more challenging, I received a jury summons letter so I MAY (depending upon what I find out when I call the night before) have to report for jury duty on November 9th. Man, it would be interesting to do my civic duty, but what terrible timing. There’s no way I’ll finish novel 2 if I’m on a jury all day every day for a couple of weeks.

Posts are liable to be short and sweet between now and the end of November…

You Can’t Live Forever

I’m still on assignment, writing today from a lounge in a fabulous haunted mansion. The Beatles once stayed in this very location, and it’s easy to imagine them striding confidently down the main stairs to my left, wisecracking all the way. If I hadn’t accidentally left my time dilator in Albuquerque I’d jot back and watch their entrance and listen in on the Liverpudlian humor.

In case you missed it, John O’Neill at Black Gate held an interview with me and Joseph Goodman and the Magician’s Skull himself.

You might not have seen this, though. Nerdy Jobs invited me over for a chat about my writing, the new magazine, and gaming. If you want to hear me nattering on about all those things and a few more, now’s your chance. (My wife hears me nattering on about that stuff all the time and probably won’t bother.)

It’s not that I haven’t admitted to myself that I’m middle-aged. It’s impossible to miss the changed metabolism, the graying hair, the receded hairline, or the fact that I’m no longer biologically driven to stay up late and sleep in. (These days I seem biologically programmed to wake before 6:00 and begin to flag around 8:00 p.m. I don’t mind the former so much but the latter sucks.) And then there’s the unfortunate habit now of just not sleeping as deeply.

While I acknowledge all that, I hadn’t done anything about one other issue, and that’s that the eyesight is changing. I’ve needed glasses since I was in junior high, but only to see stuff further away. In the last two years when I’m wearing contacts I’m no longer able to read fine print or, more recently, even regular paperback book print. (I’m fine if I take the contacts out.) The other day after the enchantress and I finished an evening meal she just happened to stop at a kiosk selling reading glasses. She then proceeded to try them on. She was curious to see if they’d help her own eyes, I’m sure, but I know it was also a ploy, for she passed them off to me.

So now I have them, and I used them this morning to read stuff on my phone while waiting for breakfast. Hey, so maybe the old body is failing a little, but modern conveniences help even things out. And at least I have improved skills and wisdom, right? Also cool kids. All these things were developed over time…

Also, I have a second degree black belt, and I can crank off at least 60 pushups in a single session, and I sure as Hell couldn’t do that when I was 20. So there are still some compensations.

In other news, You Can’t Live Forever is another great ’50s style mystery. Also a window into how much and how little some societal conventions have changed. Now, I must get to writing.

 

Undisclosed Location

I’m writing from an undisclosed location, in the midst of a secret mission. Most of the assignment involves writing copiously every day, but I must also infiltrate fine dining establishments every evening and order the most excellent of their menu items. I’m occasionally in the company of a beautiful and wicked enchantress, but otherwise I’m ensconced in a haunted mansion, drafting prose.

As I was aware that there would be several transdimensional migrations during my journey here, I packed some old paperbacks to read. I like having short old novels to read during planar shifts. You can pack several little ones into your carry-ons, and if there are interruptions or you’re just plain tired it’s easier to keep track of short and therefore less convoluted plot lines.

First up was the first Brian Garfield western I’ve read, part of an Ace double, and incidentally the first of his six Jeremy Six novels, starring a laconic western marshall. And I have to say, after that first one I’ll be reading the rest. I’d heard he was a good writer and it seems it’s true. This was Mr. Sixgun. As with a lot of these old westerns and mysteries, don’t be deceived by the art or cover advertising. Also, like a lot of writers active in the ’60s and earlier, Garfield wrote under a bunch of pseudonyms, like the one shown here. He’s best known for the Death Wish novel and its sequels that spawned the movies.

Now I’m part of the way into Harold Masur’s third novel of ’50s lawyer Scott Jordan, who as usual ends up in the middle of a cleverly plotted mystery. I wasn’t sure how I’d like the adventures of a lawyer rather than a private eye, but Jordan is ethical and clever and has to do all kinds of smart investigative work. It’s the third I’ve read and the third in the series. They all stand alone, but it’s nice seeing the history develop between the continuing characters. I was remarking to Hocking the other day that Masur is better than you first might assume. I recounted how I’d thought I knew where book two was going until I realized that the author had been playing with me — he took the mystery in a different and perfectly reasonable direction.

I liked the first two so well I’ve found copies of most of the others. So far this one doesn’t disappoint. For more info on Masur, check out this great stockpile of information about him at the Mystery File web site. I have to admit that a lot of author interviews bore me — they’e frequently self indulgent and self-important. But Masur comes off as a really cool guy.

I also brought an Ace double with two Harry Whittington westerns in it. At some point on the site I think I mentioned that a lot of people like Whittington westerns but that I didn’t understand the enthusiasm, and that I’d only found them good, not great. But that was before I discovered just how excellent he could be, especially in his earlier books. Knock your socks off terrific kind of excellent. Every few months I buy another of his old paperbacks — you see, most aren’t reprinted, and while the majority aren’t pricey through used book search services, purchasing more than a handful at a time adds up, especially since you rarely find a cache with any one bookseller so you have to pay shipping for every single novel. Anyway, the Ace double I brought has two by him that are reputedly among his best, The Valley of Savage Men and A Trap for Sam Dodge.

This cover is actually for an earlier Ace double, when they were still “flip books” (meaning that you flip it over and there’s a cover on the back side, so that each short novel fills up half the book, starting from the flip side of the novel). The version I have simply has two novels in it, although it still claims to be an Ace double. The pictured version of the book has an early novel by Ben Elliot, Brother Badman, which is another pseudonym for the incomparable Ben Haas.

If you don’t want to search www.addall.com for used books, you can pick up an inexpensive reprint that collects two great and one very good Whittington novel from Starkhouse via Barnes and Noble and other booksellers. Here’s a good review about ’em.

I also brought two mini-folio games along with me from Decision Games — Merrill’s Marauders and Belisarius’s War. (For more details about both you can, of course, visit BoardGameGeek.) Even as I packed I couldn’t imagine having time to play them, but I thought I could at least look over the rules. And they’re so tiny they were even lighter than packing just one more book…

In case you didn’t know, the Tales from the Magician’s Skull Kickstarter has just a little over a week left. This morning Joseph released a sneak peek of what membership in the skull’s legion entails, so I hope you’ll check that out. I’m working behind the scenes on getting issue 2 together, so I’m going to sign off and get to it, and then back to writing.

Gaming Shelves

Last week Mormegil asked me if I had any shots of all those solitaire games I post about. I decided to take some. They’re not nearly as pretty as the shelves of books because they’re scattered over several closets. But I thought I’d share them anyway. Here’s a peak into the top and only shelf in my office closet:

On the left there you can see two of my Lock ‘n Load titles prior to the recent makeover of the line with larger boxes. I love that game system. Near it are the four Panzer modules. I’ve been playing through the first one and loving it so I’ll probably crack the shrink on the expansions at last. If you’re not a gamer, you may not know that it can pay off to keep things in shrink, because this stuff tends to go out of print, and you can recoup money to buy other games with if you keep things untouched prior to trade.

Incidentally, both LnL and Panzer are designed for two players, but play pretty well solo — and Lock ‘n Load: Tactical now has a solo module that works with all games in any case.

Moving on you see Ogre, which I haven’t yet cracked open but have been hearing about for decades. Right of that is DVG’s Warfighter WWII, which IS a solo game, one I purchased for myself to celebrate getting a new book contract last year. In the back is Mage Knight and its expansion, Lost Legion. My friend Craig Zahler tells me this is a great solo game but I just haven’t had time to try it.

In those cigar boxes are a whole slew of games, many of which I just picked up at GenCon.

A number of these are expressly designed as solitaire, but some, like Belisarius, Caesar’s War, and the three larger games on the bottom, are just solitaire friendly, meaning that they’re two-player games that you can play by yourself, so long as you don’t mind working your best for both sides. I don’t.

Here’s what I have over on one desk shelf above some RPG books:

I don’t solo the Sherlock Holmes stuff, I run that and its companion volume as an RPG for my wife and son. I’ve been reading through the solo rules and oohing and ahing over Heroes in Defiance but, you know, book deadlines. I hope to get in some MAJOR game time to celebrate turning over the final draft of book 1 and the first draft of book 2 at the end of November.

Over on additional shelves in the hall closet are more games:

In the very front there is one of the games that started it all, and that’s because Eric Knight brought it down to introduce it to me one summer about eight years ago. I loved it. I had always been a table-top roleplayer, and had only ever played a couple of wargames, so this set me on fire and spurred me to try and find some solitaire games that were as fun, because, alas, French Foreign Legion does NOT play well solo. That led me to Victory Point Games and Zulus on the Ramparts.

Zulus is one of Victory Point Games’ states of siege games. I have several other iterations on my shelf there, including Mound Builders, cut off in the pic over to the right, and it may be my favorite, although I haven’t yet tried a full game of Cruel Necessity.

Another game that helped start it all is in that black box under the two D-Day games, and that’s Barbarian Prince, the solo game that John O’Neill gave me. If not for him and Eric, this shelf would probably have boxes of mittens and umbrellas on it. In that red box is Astra Titanus, a great VPG space title I reviewed for Black Gate maybe back when it was a print magazine! That box with the eagle is the excellent Agricola: Master of Britain from Hollandspielle, and that blue-gray box under Federation Commander: Romulan Border is the new edition of Nemo’s War from VPG.

I’m not sure how well you can see that top shelf, but it’s got a lot of DVG games — Hornet Leader, Hornet Leader: Cthulhu, Phantom Leader, and the one I helped playtest, B-17 Leader. Great stuff. It also has a cool game Hocking gave me, Gumshoe, based on the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective game engine but set in the ’30s, a strategy game my friend Bruce loaned me years ago, Field Commander: Napoleon, which I wrote about once or twice here on my site or at Black Gate or both, an award winning game I haven’t tried yet, Commancheria, and, well… there are plenty of goodies there.

I own more than I’ve played, and I’ve decided to slow down my acquisition a little. There’s only so much time. But I do strive to dedicate some time every Sunday morning to game and do something different with the old brain cells other than reading, writing, or managing the house and farm, so that these are games I play and not just a museum/shrine.

Right, well, back to keeping it all running. The Kickstarter for Tales From the Magician’s Skull continues to motor along, and there’s more to do for it, so I’d best sign off. If sword-and-sorcery fiction is your thing, I hope you’ll pledge and/or spread the word!

Out and About

I ended up on even more panels than I’d originally signed on for at the GenCon Writer’s Symposium, and I had a great time on them all. Surely the feistiest of exchanges I was involved in was on the Mythology panel moderated by Steve Drew. My fellow panelists were Linda Robertson, Ilana C. Myer, and Anton Stout.

Anton has a cool podcast over at The Once and Future Podcast, and he was recording this panel for his program, so if you’d like, you can hear our passionate exchange about Star Trek. Yeah, I brought up Star Trek as an example of modern mythology and then Anton and I digressed a little into a discussion of what’s wrong with the new movies. Well, it was ME who talked about what was wrong with the new movies, and Anton who defended them. I held myself back, for I didn’t even get into the terrible interpretation of Captain Kirk (not the actor, whom I like, but the writers). Anyway, if you want to hear me with my dander up, you can find that discussion here, and you can likewise find all kinds of cool podcasts throughout the site, including other recorded GenCon panels, and an earlier interview Anton had with me.

Mystery Box

About twenty years ago I was idly searching for Harold Lamb books in an online used book search service. I was well enough acquainted with Lamb’s work by that point to know the titles of all of his books, so I was a little mystified when two appeared that existed in no known database.

When I contacted the seller I learned that these were one-of-a-kind books. Dr. John Drury Clark had removed a handful of pulp stories from Adventure magazine and bound them in two small hardbacks. They were being sold off by his widow.

These were pure gold to me — there was no way to find the stories unless I wanted to drive to some distant library with a rare book collection, or spend years haunting pulp magazine conventions. Remember that Lamb didn’t just have a handful of uncollected stories — there were dozens upon dozens of them.

Even better, his widow told me that he’d saved dozens more, intending to bind them as well, but had never gotten around to it. They were in fairly poor shape, but intact, she said. I offered to buy them and she said she’d sell them. It was kind of pricey for a young couple like us just starting out, but my wife was supportive and understanding.

And lo, but there were treasures within. Some DID have crumbling edges, but most were in fair shape. Within were three tales of Khlit the Cossack that had never been collected, including the outstanding “The Curved Sword,” the two novellas of Nial O’Gordon, about whom I wish Lamb had written much more, loads of short novels, some originally published in three or four parts, and a slew of standalone stories of Cossacks and Crusaders.

These pulp stories formed the bulk of the collection I scanned to assemble the Harold Lamb anthologies for Bison Books/University of Nebraska Press. I purchased a scanner in the first place to preserve the ones that were most fragile, which left me in excellent shape when I went to propose a whole series to their editor.

To scan the tales, I had to remove the stories from the original bindings of Dr. Clark, but I kept that original treasure box. Today it sits in a place of pride on top of my desk shelves, housing my Dark City Games collection.

Corwin

The Kickstarter is just booming along. I’m not sure where the influx of new pledgers came from, but their numbers really leapt forward yesterday. I’m thrilled. That’s not to say I haven’t stopped hoping we will have more readers. I KNOW that there are more fans of sword-and-sorcery out there, so I hope you’re spreading the word about Tales From the Magician’s Skull.

As I’m still out slaying monsters and spinning plates, I thought I’d follow up on a suggestion from Mick and post some pics of the new family member.

Meet Corwin, the newest dog in the household. He’s pictured here gnawing on the trimming from a horse hoof that he liberated from the barn floor. For some reason, a lot of dogs love them.

In the following pictures you can see another shot of him with the horse hoof while our older dog looks on, a shot of him swimming in the Sea of Monsters, and a snapshot of the two of us exploring some nearby Atlantean ruins.

We adopted our older dog, Keena, from a shelter eight years ago and the husky/shepherd mix has been one of our favorite animals ever, so much so that we went looking for another mix of the same breeds. Well, in between when we picked up a mutt from the shelter and now, husky/shepherd has become a designer dog! We had no idea until we tried to find one for a reasonable price. It took some doing, and we had to have the help of a relative from Pennsylvania, but he joined our household about a month ago.

Why do we like the breeds? Loyal, intelligent, calm, gentle, attentive, affectionate. And let’s not leave off attractive as well. Plus, we love medium to large sized dogs around here. Helps keep the swamp creatures off the property.

Updates

Seems like I’m just going to keep spinning those plates. Poor Bill Ward is still waiting on me to write the next comment on our long overdue Corum post. Chris Hocking may still be waiting for me to get back to writing up something for Wade Miller for our Hardboiled Monday posts, but that’s been so long forgotten that he may not remember.

Meanwhile the Kickstarter is going well and I’m busy behind the scenes working to promote it in various places. I’m also trying to revise one novel while trying to finish writing another. Also busy being that part time house/farm husband, including training a new puppy. None are impossible duties in the least, it’s just hard to do everything at once.

Since I have nothing really to report, I thought I’d fill the post today with shots of various parts of my office/library. Some of the books pictured belong to other members of the family.

And no, I haven’t read all of these, but I’ve sure read a lot of them. Some multiple times. Others are part of the TBR pile. It’s a great thing to look around the office and see all the cool stuff I’m looking forward to reading…