Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 19

Absence

Sometimes it’s difficult to believe my father’s been gone 17 years, and then I remember that the terrible hammer blow of his death is no longer the ache that it was, and hasn’t been for a long time. That’s fortunate, because I couldn’t have endured for long with that much daily pain. It faded, as it must, and now sometimes days and even weeks might pass without me thinking about him.

He was a good man. He wasn’t without his flaws, but few of us are. At one point, after I realized he wasn’t perfect, I felt a weird sense of betrayal and tended to downgrade him a little, for which I still feel ashamed. Then, much later than I should have, I realized his part in the world was much more than just “dad” to me and my sisters. And as I’ve aged and had teenagers of my own I’ve come to understand him a little better. Many’s been the time that I’ve wish I could have asked him for advice, although I’ve become so used to not having it now that I don’t think about it much any more.

Today, though, I’m many hours from home, traveling with my wife. I left her at her meeting and drove to a McDonald’s to sit and work prior to the library opening. As I walked for the entryway I recalled sometimes meeting my dad in the early mornings at a McDonald’s for coffee. I don’t think he ever enjoyed McDonald’s coffee itself much, just my company (which I was too young to appreciate) but he was an early riser, just as I’ve now become, and since he was up and I was passing through he wanted to see me. My God, do I grieve for not getting that until my own kids are almost completely out of the house. I’d give a lot to meet him for one of those coffees now, just as I’d give a lot to swing by the old campus cafeteria where he’d often be waiting for me in the mornings when my mom dropped me off before school. My grade school/junior high was only a block from the university where they both taught, and Dad would arrange to be there in the mornings to hang out with me until school started.

I took it for granted then, but I look back now and smile thinking about the games of Hangman and Battleship we’d play on napkins before the start of school.

When I was young I naively assumed that the people I loved would always be there, and that the future was long and I had endless amounts of time. How things change. Sometimes I tried to imagine various changes, in a maudlin way, but I just didn’t understand.

As I entered that McDonald’s today there was a man in late middle-age waiting to order. He had a similar hairline and nearly identically colored white hair to that of my father in his last years. Moreover, he was wearing khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt with slim horizontal stripes. It looked so much like something that my father would wear that as I turned to place my own order, from the corner of my eye he looked like my dad.

I have to confess that I stood there longer than I needed to, looking from the corner of my eye, just imagining that my father really was nearby. I did the same thing after he took his seat with his wife, turning my head just slightly to briefly revisit the illusion.

I still miss him a helluva lot. I wrote earlier about that high bar he set.

Alchemical Storytelling

As my wife and son began re-watching this series today, I thought I’d repost this review here from its original appearance in 2012 over at Black Gate. I should add that since I wrote this article I’ve tried a number of well-recommended anime series and I’ve yet to find one that so fully fulfilled and exceeded its promise. After five years I still think of it quite highly and I think it may well be a masterpiece. Anyway, here’s what I wrote in 2012:

I haven’t watched much anime in my time. Frankly I haven’t gotten a lot out of the shows I’ve seen, many of which seem to consist of posing in the midst of fights and shouting at opponents. But I chanced upon something a few weeks back that began with potential and then delivered on it episode after episode. I found fabulous world building and strong character arcs.  I watched half hour after half hour the way I devour chapter after chapter in a great fantasy novel, poised on the edge of my seat wondering how things would resolve. 

The show that so enthralled me is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The series is set in an alternate world in the 1900s, one very similar to our own, except that alchemy works. Those talented and diligent enough can transform matter from one state to another — fix a broken radio into one that works, or transform a metal bar into a sword. The story’s protagonists are a pair of young brothers of tremendous talent who used their powers to commit the ultimate alchemical taboo: they tried to bring their dead mother back to life. They paid a terrible price when the transmutation went horribly wrong, and spend much of the series trying to put things right.

As the young men search for solutions, they uncover  hidden layers to the way alchemy, their country, and their world, truly work. As the mysteries deepen, so do the characters and the world. I really don’t want to say much more for fear of ruining the many unfolding surprises.

If, like me, you’re unused to anime, there are a few caveats. There are occasional odd tonal shifts. For instance, when characters feel a really strong emotion (like anger or sadness) they’re often briefly transformed into caricatures of themselves, with exaggerated features. Some of the humor doesn’t translate and comes off as a bit goofy, and characters do sometimes speak over dramatically or are too revealing of their motivations when they talk. I wasn’t sure what to make of it after the first one or two shows, but kept watching… and I was glad I did. Most of the time it works, and overall it works brilliantly. Male and female characters are given strong roles, and face difficult choices.

What starts out seeming like a lightly interesting and slightly goofy cartoon show quickly develops into something that explores some very deep themes: honor, responsibility, sacrifice, redemption, duty to one’s country, duty to humanity, the duty of a ruler to his people, loyalty, friendship, love, death. Alphonse and Edward face temptation many times, but after their initial mistake stick always to their principles, no matter how much tougher that makes things for them. And for all that there is cartoony martial arts violence there is also death, and the deaths on the show have real and lasting impact upon the characters.

The story is greatly aided by strong, fluid visuals, including some incredible action sequences and magical displays, and it is brought to life by the American voice actors. All are at least passable (there’s no one wooden), and many of them are good to exceptional, particularly the leads. Vic Mignogna, who voices Edward, is phenomenal, and has been recognized as such by the American Anime Awards, who presented him with an award for Best Actor in a lead role for his work as Edward Elric.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood closely follows a famous — and bestselling — manga (a graphic novel series) written and drawn by Hiromu Arakawa. In 2003, after the first third of Arakawa’s manga was published, an earlier anime was begun, also titled Fullmetal Alchemist(without brotherhood). Lacking a completed story, the earlier show’s writers made up their own conclusion, one that left threads unresolved and wrapped up others in unsatisfying ways. (Honestly, that’s being charitable.) This version should not be confused with Brotherhood. One does not follow the other, although, if you find that you’ve loved Brotherhood, the first ten or twelve episodes of the original deal with parts of the opening story sequence in a little more detail (unfortunately, they don’t fit seamlessly together, as divergent plot threads occur pretty early on — so start with Brotherhood and come back if you want to see just a little bit more of the brothers in action).

Lt. Hawkeye.

I watched the first three seasons courtesy of Netflix, found the fourth season on Hulu, and then, as the fifth season wasn’t yet on Hulu, took the extraordinary (for me) step of ordering the fifth and final season to watch from disc. I just couldn’t wait to see how the plot threads and character arcs all worked out. Believe me, it was worth it, and I can see myself watching the show again with my children when my daughter is just a little older. And that leads to a final, important point: there are some disturbing moments of violence and horror within the story, although they do not seem gratuitous. Those moments have lasting impact upon the characters who witness them. As I said, deaths in this show have repercussions. Children who are used only to seeing American action shows where bullets always miss and everyone is just fine in the end might be rudely shocked, and some of the images might grant nightmares. Younger children and even pre-teens probably wouldn’t be able to follow along with the complex themes and shifting loyalties, either.

If you haven’t already tried it out, I hope you’ll give it a look, and I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts. Be sure not to read series discussions online, as many of those who’ve written about it carelessly reveal plot points and character outcomes. It’s constructed well enough that you should try to experience it the way Ms. Arakawa intended.

Reruns

I found myself scrolling around through some of my previous posts on heroic fiction, pulps, and sword-and-sorcery this last week and decided that rather than draft something new I’d just point readers towards some of my favorite oldies.

First, an overview of some great pulp historicals.

Here was my look under the hood at Robert E. Howard’s writing techniques.

Here I wrote about one of my favorite writers, Leigh Brackett.

Harold Lamb is the unsung and often unrecognized grandfather of sword-and-sorcery. Also, he was a great adventure writer. Here’s proof.

Lastly, how can I discuss pulps without mentioning the one-and-only Ki-Gor?

But wait, there’s more! Here I discuss a unique pulp collection on my shelves. Feast your eyes upon these with envy!

 

 

Previews

Yesterday I got to see some thumbnail sketches of covers for my upcoming novel, and I have to tell you, that was pretty cool. This book is starting to feel real. Also, I’m having fun with the the final editor prompted revisions, which is a really great sign. I can hardly wait to get started working today on them.

I’ve been talking with some of the people over at the PulpRev site about what they’re looking for in good fiction and it reminds me an awful lot of what those of us involved with Flashing Swords were discussing back, jeez, ten years ago or so. I pulled up the old New Edge manifesto from 2008 and took a look at that. I used to sound a lot more angry.

But then maybe it’s harder to be angry and pushing for a place in line when I finally got the book deal I’d been dreaming of for most of my life. I’ve talked less and less about short fiction venues because I haven’t been LOOKING for them — almost all of my fiction time has been taken up writing books, and if I write a new sword-and-sorcery tale these days I can usually find a market for it. Not so long ago that wasn’t the case, at all.

Seems like I had more to say, but the clock is ticking and I have work to do.

 

Book on the Way

My posts may be a little spare in the coming weeks as I put pedal to the metal and start revision of the first novel of my new trilogy from my editor’s notes. We had the second of several scheduled discussions on the book this morning and I’m going to be pretty busy addressing those probably up to the time I head off for GenCon in mid August. The good thing is that these are great comments and will make the book much stronger. The bad thing is that I’ll have to step away from finishing book 2, which will mean a delay in getting it done.

But I love the sound of having the first one complete to my satisfaction and started on the long treadmill that will see it on bookstore shelves.

I think I’ve decided that I DO want to hold a Corum re-read on the site. I just have to decide how soon, because I’m not sure I’ll have time to pen lengthy analysis of the books while my brain is so tightly focused on one kind of writing.

Links and Sundry

The brief interchange here on the site (and the much longer one on Facebook) about the Michael Moorcock Corum books Wednesday has me thinking about a web site re-read of the series. I’m in the midst of too many projects, as usual, but I thought I’d gauge interest about joining me for a Chronicles of Corum read-along. I already know that there’s some interest on FB — what about from my site visitors?

Judging from the lack of comments on my posts about westerns, I’m guessing that most of my regular visitors are about as interested in them as I used to be, which is to say that your eyes glaze and you start thinking about cherry pie. I’d dearly love to convince you that the good westerns are surely worth your time, and I may try to do so more eloquently some day. Or you could take a chance and try a really great one to see for yourself. Here’s a link to a review of a book that collects three strong, short Harry Whittington westerns. The first and third in the collection are just great writing. I read my copy through interlibrary loan and loved it so much I think I’ll want to re-read it, which means I’ll probably pick it up.

Lastly, here’s an interesting essay by Tom Holland, the designer of one of my new favorite board games, Agricola, Master of Britain, on some of the approaches to keep in mind while designing solitaire games. If you’re at all curious about those, you’ll find the essay of interest as well.

Right, well, I have a book to revise and maybe even some cherry pie to eat.

Remembering Corum

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about how I discovered sword-and-sorcery, and how I went to the local library, then the local bookstore, then the local used bookstore, before I found ANYTHING listed in the famed Appendix N at the back of the DM’s Guide. This was the very early 1980s, when I was still in junior high and riding my bicycle all over the city.

I couldn’t latch onto much of anything from that recommended reading list except, in the library, some Zelazny. Every regular visitor knows about my love for a lot of Zelazny work. The used bookstore had Leiber’s Swords Against Death, for which I am eternally grateful. And they ALSO had three beat up paperbacks by Michael Moorcock.

They’re full of wild color and inventive world building and some lovely prose and gripping action, and if the plot line to each is pretty similar, well, so be it, it’s a fun ride. Maybe this trilogy doesn’t hit the absolute highs of the Elric saga, but it never sinks to the low spots of the Elric saga either, which is, let us be fair, a little inconsistent.

I’ve read a lot of Moorcock and while I haven’t read all of his sword-and-sorcery books, I’ve at least sampled all of his heroic fantasy cycles, and these three books remain my very favorite of those series.

I only read the sequel trilogy once, and recall that as a kid I found them too dark and sad. Maybe I’d enjoy them more now that I’m older. What’s your take? Are there any other Corum fans out there?

Adventure!

I wanted to share a treasure unique to my work space. To the left is a frame of three Adventure magazine covers. A few of you may know that I purchased much of my Harold Lamb pulp collection from the widow of Dr. John Drury Clark, some time writer, perhaps best known by some as one of the co-writers of a letter to Robert E. Howard that inspired him to write an overview of Conan’s career.

Like Robert E. Howard, Dr. Clark was a big Harold Lamb fan, and he had carefully preserved a large stack of Harold Lamb stories in a hinged wooden box, each carefully separated from different issues of Adventure magazine. He’d also hand bound a few other tales into small hardback books, and my guess is that he’d planned to bind the rest into additional home built hardcovers but never got around to it. That box was a treasure trove that included perhaps 70 – 80% of all the uncollected Lamb Adventure stories, and without him having preserved those texts, I wouldn’t have been able to scan them and prep them for the Bison Book collections. (Yes, more work was required by myself and other scholars and fans to track down other tales, but THIS was the mother load.)

At the bottom of that box were three separated Adventure covers that were almost as vibrant and striking as the day they were printed. Early in our marriage, my wife thought it would be a nice gift if she took those covers and had them framed for me at a local store. She’s a great lady. Whatever house I’ve lived in since, THIS particular picture frame has been somewhere beside my desk. It’s a pretty awesome reminder of the kind of great fiction that lies behind all of us modern writers of any kind of heroic adventure tales. If you click on the picture to get a larger view, you’ll see a long list of famous contributors to Adventure. What a thrill it must have been to get this particular magazine in the post a couple of times a month…

Site Updates & Assorted Musing

I was thinking it would take just a few minutes to update my site this morning. Boy, was I wrong. Merely getting my GenCon schedule appropriately on the Appearances page took more than an hour! Much cross-indexing was involved, or it would have been faster. Anyway, if you’re planning to go to GenCon you now know where to find me. Mostly. I will probably be at the Paizo booth a little as well, and that’s not on the schedule yet. Of course you’ll also probably find me wandering around the hall of treasures trying not to buy things…

I still need to add Through the Gate in the Sea to the official book slider list at the top of the page. But at least my appearances are up to date. I’ll probably add more later in the year and early next year.

In other news, I’m a little closer to 50 years old now, which is pretty weird. I spent a lot of the last week driving all over Indiana on various errands, but I ate some great food, found some wonderful used books, and generally had a great time with the family (except my daughter, who I didn’t get to spend much time with — she couldn’t travel with us owing to her work schedule). I got less writing accomplished than I usually do over the course of a week, but I managed some anyway in some odd places. Remember, I’m the guy who outlined his last two Pathfinder novels while sitting in The Three Broomsticks restaurant in Harry Potter World or waiting for my daughter to get out of The Tower of Terror.

In other news, my wife, first reader and editor of my work, tells me that the first draft of book 2 of my new trilogy is cleaner and more sure-footed than any of my previous books. I think part of that comes from experience, but I can’t help thinking that also stems in part from me having taken a crash course in all kinds of great hard-boiled and western writing courtesy of these old paperbacks I’ve been blathering about. God knows it’s not that long since she finished reading the first book, and this is a significant jump, so I’m inclined to believe reading all this stuff is a heavier influence. Good readin’ and good for ‘ya as well!

Peaches

When we moved here fourteen years ago, we planted some fruit trees on a small back strip just between our horse fence and an abandoned access road to the neighbor’s property. The first few trees didn’t make it, because we didn’t realize how susceptible they were to cedar apple rust. Actually, we’d never heard of it. Bugs killed the first peach tree, and deer gnawed on some other apple trees, and one of our cherry trees. Eventually I had to build tree cages around the trees to protect them for several years, otherwise the deer would eat them, or rub antlers on them, or just wander buy and break them off.

Years and years those trees have been out there, slowly growing. And then, finally, this year we got edible cherries off of one of the two cherry trees. That was nice. I hope we have even more next year. But here’s the grand thing. Our surviving peach tree has been gnawed upon by deers. It was damaged by a guy we hired to mow our lawn. It has an unhealthy looking lean to it. For the last few years it’s been producing tiny little peaches that were hard as rocks.

This year, though… this year it gave us real peaches, and yesterday I processed a bunch of them. And wow, they’re delicious. Sometimes good things come to those who wait. I’m living the good life now, folks. Productive fruit trees on my own property! It’s a grand feeling.

Incidentally, that’s not the peach tree. That’s the tree we’re fairly sure Carl Sagan was sitting in at Kew Gardens during an episode of Cosmos. The one I took of the tree the other day is blurry. So here’s this. Because every article’s better if it mentions Carl Sagan or the Hulk, right?