Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 2

Turnover

Monday I turned over the text of When the Goddess Wakes to my editor at St. Martin’s. Over the next little while I’ll be waiting for his feedback, and the feedback of a few more important beta readers. Over the years I’ve developed a network of really brilliant friends who are giving of their time and energy and wisdom, and they help my work immeasurably.

While it lifts my spirits to cross this threshold, the race doesn’t feel over, since I know there will be final tweaks and adjustments. I’ll probably take a few days off to relax once the entire copyediting pass is complete (or maybe not — any more I tend to be compulsively working on story construction or outlining even when I’m not writing) but for now I’m turning my eye to other projects.

This week I finished the drafts of two more Hanuvar tales. This weekend and next week — until I have new novel feedback to address —  I’ll be working on outlines for some new book/series proposals, and some Dabir and Asim short stories. Slowly but surely I’m accumulating enough of them to contemplate some story collections, or maybe some fix-up novels.

A few years back I pledged to myself that I ought to get serious if I wanted to create more tales, and this year I finally figured out how to do it, utilizing time I used to fritter away in the morning and evening — when I thought I was too tired to string prose together — to develop outlines. It’s true that my word choices aren’t as finely honed when I’m tired, but by working a little in spare evenings I’ve accumulated a tidy number of outlines so that when I DO have time to draft a short story I can knock one out in 2-3 days. That’s a significant improvement. There was a time, all too recently, where the composition of a short story might take a month or more, which is just unsustainable.

I was making the mistake of starting the work with a rough idea, then having to take the allocated “day time” usually dedicated to writing just to get the tale organized before I painstakingly wrote it.

As with much in life, the more I worked on outlines, the more efficient I got, and the mores I’ve used outlines, the more useful they have become, just as the more short stories I’ve written, the faster I get at producing them.

It might be that you’re here not because I write things, but because I edit them, or talk about sword-and-sorcery. And if that’s the case, you’re in luck, because I moderated four panels just last weekend, as a dedicated sword-and-sorcery wing of Goodman Games’ Bride of Cyclops con.

I got to sit down with authors who’ve published in the Skull to discuss the crafting of sword-and-sorcery. James Enge, Chris Hocking, Nathan Long, Violette Malan, and Clint Werner joined me here.

Jay Carney, Jeff Goad, Brian Murphy, and Bill Ward sat down with me for a look at some of the greatest sword-and-sorcery tales of the 20th century, and even 2.5 hours didn’t allow us to get to all of them. You can find that here.

Industry publishers and editors sat down to discuss the publishing of heroic fiction tales with me. It was a pleasure to get all of us together, even if some of it was virtual, and we took as many questions as we could from the audience about how to get in on modern short fiction publishing. This panel consisted of me and the following luminaries, and can be found here.


Adrian Simmons, Publisher and Editor of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly
Christopher Paul Carey, Director of Publishing at Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
Douglas Draa, Editor of Weirdbook
Milton Davis, Publisher of MVMedia


Finally, Joseph Goodman, Michael Curtis, and Harley Stroh and I kicked back and talked about how to channel sword-and-sorcery into your role-playing game. That MAY sound like it’s of more interest to gamers than writers, but a good deal of adventure construction has to do with the same elements writers use for story construction. Gamers AND writers should find it of interest. I think our enthusiasm for the subject was pretty infectious. You can find that panel here.

If you’re checking in for word on Tales From the Magician’s Skull, then I can tell you that issue 5 is headed to the printer. Issue 6 is already further along than I’d planned, simply because a number of our regulars have turned stories in far earlier than I anticipated, and they brought their A game. You can subscribe here.

Maybe you heard that the Skull will be opening up for submissions next year? Here’s the details on that.

Lastly, maybe you ALSO heard that one of my friends is going to be writing some new stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser FOR the Skull! Details on that little nugget of news are here.

Whew! Well, I’m going to sign off and get to work on some outlining. Hope all of you and yours are well. And I must say, while I’ve always MEANT that, I’ve never given that as much thought as I do these days. Be safe out there.

Moving Forward

As I am sure is the case with many of you, this has been a long and painful few months. In addition to the outside challenges we’ve all faced, there has been some more private difficulties here.

Still, I’ve kept moving forward. I’ve been too busy revising to bother updating the web site, so I thought I should pass on the word that I’m doing a final read aloud of When the Goddess Wakes before I send it off to my beta readers, and then I’ll address their suggestions and ship it off to my editor at St. Martin’s.

I have found it’s generally a good idea to read my prose out loud as I begin to finalize it. That generally exposes awkward sentences as well as repeat words (or word echo, as I often call it). But it also reveals awkward and imprecise phrasing, and lets me know if too many characters sound alike. And, given that so many people take in their fiction as audio books these days, I try to write so that the text *sounds* well. I use a little more attribution than I once did, so that it’s always clear who’s speaking even if that’s not obvious via formatting on the  page.

In other news, the fifth issue of the magazine I edit, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, will be heading to the printer soon, and I’m at work on issue 6. I stole time nearly every morning over the last few months to start work on the outlines of numerous new writing projects, including new series proposals and short stories, and I look forward to finalizing their plans and starting work.

First, though, I need to finish this careful read aloud. If all continues to go as smoothly, it should be in the hands of beta readers (or on their screens, in front of their eyeballs) no later than by the end of next week. This pleases me.

 

When the Goddess Wakes Cover Reveal

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here. The third book of the trilogy is fully drafted and the first act of it (of three total) is just about polished.

And then there’s the cover, another beauty by Lauren Saint-Onge. I’m delighted with it, for obvious reasons.

Any readers of the first two books want to speculate who the three humanoids are? I think one’s pretty obvious, and probably two, but the other… not so much.

I’ve got a new story in an anthology coming out next week, and it’s available for pre-order right now. It stars probably my favorite of all my characters, Hanuvar Cabera, but the anthology is full of other great fiction as well. It’s titled Galactic Stew, and is edited by none other than Joshua Palmetier and David B. Coe. You can find it right here.

Speaking of Hanuvar, I’ve been re-organizing my web site a little and created a dedicated page both for him and for Dabir and Asim. You can check out Hanuvar here, and Dabir and Asim here. My son drew the Hanuvar picture and will soon be finishing one for the Dabir and Asim page.

…and speaking of Dabir and Asim, two new stories featuring them will soon be in print. One’s coming out in Heroic Fiction Quarterly very soon. I’ll post something about it here when it happens.

Book 3 — When the Goddess Wakes

I’ve been taking care of our baby ducks, which is necessity and also a pleasant distraction. Here, enjoy some duckling pictures!

While I’ll decorate this post with some ducks, you’re likely here because you’re a fan of my writing, so here’s some news on that front. Work continues on the third novel. I generally find that my drafting speed really slows down over the middle sections of a book and that I begin to pick up speed near the end of Act II and start of Act III, and that’s holding true for When the Goddess Wakes. As I close on the rough draft of the final sections of Act II, threads are tightening, a few surprises are bringing things into closer focus, and I’m getting more and more excited about the potential of what I’ve written.

At this point it is mostly potential, because vast sections are quite rough, but I’m feeling more and more certain that the main through lines work, and one spur-of-the-moment adjustment to the timeline today has provided the book with a small unanticipated turn. I’m still wondering whether or not I’ll keep it. Right now I think I like it — seems a fine time to break for the day and mull it over while I do some housework.

In other writing news, I still have a couple of new tales of Hanuvar mostly drafted and needing revision. Rather than being a good writer, in the evenings I’ve been playing a lot more of the solo board game Nemo’s War than a good writer probably should. But then I’ve been needing distractions. I should also likely be researching the next book series, but that, too, has been on hiatus

If you want to see more duck pics from the Jones family farm, you can head over to my FB feed, where I’ve been posting at least one a day for the last several weeks.

And if you haven’t seen my previous posts on Nemo’s War, check about two posts back. Here’s a pic from a recent game session. I know the rules well enough now that the play’s down to about 1.5 hours. While the price point of the game is around 70 dollars through most venues, the amount of fun I’ve had from the game has long since made that an excellent purchase versus hours spent, especially given that I can see many more sessions of the game in front of me also delivering an entertaining diversion.

Be well out there. I’m going to sign off and go do domestic things.

Falling Fast

Two of my favorite restaurants aren’t answering the phone.

Two weeks ago we wanted to make sure we threw one of them some business. Iwataya, a sushi restaurant, has been part of the Evansville scene before we moved here some 15 years ago. When I walk in to pick up an order or to sit down for a meal the long-time employees greet me like an old friend. But they didn’t answer that evening, and they haven’t answered any evening since. I can’t know what’s happened. I fear the worst.

I’m almost certain the worst has happened to Bombay Spice. Not only are they not answering the phone, their web site is down. They opened only last year, and their Indian cuisine is excellent. Butter chicken dishes in London restaurants with five star reviews couldn’t touch the delicate blend of flavors in the butter chicken recipe from Bombay Spice here in a city most people never hear about, Evansville, Indiana. But I’m pretty sure, now, that they’re gone, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to their talented staff.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to my sister. She’s a nurse working in Arizona for a hospital that had no masks to give their nurses since the nation finally got serious a few weeks ago, and hasn’t had any other kind of protective gear for them either. Earlier this week she and the rest of the staff were triaging patients on the sidewalk in these conditions. Some patients arrived so weak they couldn’t climb from their cars under their own power, and my unmasked sister and her friends were reaching in to help them out.

Yesterday her hospital told nurses that they don’t have any more scrubs to give them. The nurses have to supply their own, and they have to take the disease-exposed clothing home to wash. And no, the nurses can’t shower at the hospital before they go home, only the doctors are allowed to do that. And no, no one on staff can talk to anyone about any of this to try and get help, because Arizona is a “Right to Work” state. That positive sounding descriptor ACTUALLY means that employees have fewer rights, not more. An employer can fire an employee for no reason, such as, say, complaining about terrible, life-threatening working conditions.

My sister has developed a cough.

Me, I live in flyover country, southern Indiana. And my immediate family is uniquely fortunate. My wife has a job in medicine that has her far from the front lines, so her job’s safer than most financially. Her health is still at risk, but it’s not the excruciating risk faced by some medical personnel. I’m a writer, so ostensibly my daily routine hasn’t changed. I’m a mid-list author, so we don’t have servants and I’m not transported around in a limousine (in case you’re wondering, that lifestyle doesn’t describe most of my bestselling friends, either). I spend a little over half my time taking care of our little farm and washing laundry and sweeping dog fur off floors and washing sinks and the like. Every morning I get up and take care of the horses and feed the ducks and chickens. We have eggs. We have several acres to wander around in, and believe me, as the Earth wakes to spring, it’s glorious here. Everything looks normal. It just doesn’t feel that way.

I remember visiting a friend in New York late last year and thinking how lucky he was to have so much time to devote to screenwriting and other fiction. There was no horse fence mending for him, no acreage to mow, no garden weeds to pull. More time for creative pursuits meant more projects got finished. Not only that, he was surrounded by amazing restaurants, all within walking distance.

Now I find myself worrying about him daily, and wondering about the people who cooked for us and waited on us in those restaurants, and how they’ll survive. I find myself wishing he could be here, with me, right now, looking out my window at my horse pasture. Safe. I used to feel so removed and isolated from the industry I work in, and realize that in this instance I’m in incredibly fortunate circumstances.

And yet, as I contemplate starting the day’s work on my next contracted book, I’m distracted by the thought of the 400 Barnes & Noble bookstores that closed down yesterday, and all the people no longer employed there. A book seller friend was supposed to be in New York calling on Barnes & Noble yesterday to talk about new book titles. Instead, he called his B&N connections to find all but two of them were being laid off. I can keep writing, but the people that sell the books? What’s going to happen to them?

My son’s a recent college graduate with an animation degree. He’s been saving money to move to the west coast, where the animation jobs are, by working at a grocery. I’m actually delighted now he didn’t land an industry job right off, because I can’t imagine how worried we’d be about him on his own in California in the midst of this pandemic. He unloads trucks for the grocery, which is one of the least exposed jobs you can have there. He can usually pick up our food necessities every day at end of shift, meaning only one of us is out and exposed in that particular venue. Again, we’re lucky. But what about all the cashiers and the stockers, all the people risking proximity to this virus to make sure we have food? People who, as my son pointed out the other day, usually aren’t seen as essential in any way. What’s going to happen to them? How many will get sick? If you’ve never thought about pay scales and the way our society values professions before, this pandemic certainly is a fine time to think about making adjustments.

My daughter is in her second year of college. All of her courses have moved online, and so has her study group. I see her pouring over the books for long hours, and hear her conferencing with friends late in the night as they go over notes. The younger generation is adapting. An avid athlete, my daughter used to burn off steam at an indoor climbing gym. The local one, though, is closed because of the novel coronavirus. Ever inventive and determined, my daughter’s taken to climbing the rough stone walls on the outside of our house. Every day she pushes forward, finding a slightly longer route. Eventually she thinks she can climb the entire way across the lower floor of the house without touching ground. I think she’ll make it, and if she falls, she’s not too far up.

I think humanity will make it, too, in the end. But I think we’ve a long way to fall, and a lot of people are going to be hurt. I can only hope that you and yours, and mine, aren’t some of them. I’m afraid they will be. I’m afraid many already are.

Getting By

I hope all of my visitors are well. Here we’re doing alright. I know many of my writer friends are finding themselves with MORE time to write, but if anything my own time is a little more fragmented.

Still, work is progressing on the third book. I’m deep into Act II, which is usually my least favorite part of any book to write. An informal poll among writer friends over the years has revealed a lot of us feel the same way. In the middle is when your doubts like to gang up, when you’re not sure you’ve got your pacing right, when you’re not sure the characters are acting quite right, etc. But of course pacing trouble and wobbly characters are going to turn up in the first draft. As my buddy E.E. Knight likes to say, give yourself permission to let the first draft suck. You’ve just got to get the story down and do the finesse work in the next drafts.

I don’t have as many doubts as I used to, and I’m not feeling mopey about the work, in part because I’ve done this enough times that I know the routine and in part because out there in the real world a whole lot of people have far more serious things to worry about… As I’ve written there have been some surprises and some changes despite my outline, and I sense another change in what I originally planned may be coming down the pike once I start Act III. After that, the third and final act feels like it’s going to stay about the way I planned. I’m hoping I’ll have a fully working draft by the end of next month.

When not writing, I’ve been taking care of some new baby ducks, which are adorable and endearing in a way that baby chicks never are, because the baby ducks actually respond to your presence and interact with you. I took them outside the other day, with a portable fence around them so they wouldn’t wander too far, and wrote outside next to them. One of them has a strange  eye infection that I’m probably going to have to see the vet about.

I’ve been reading stacks of Gold Medal westerns. Fawcett Gold Medal, back in the ’50s and ’60s, was well known as being a dependable place to turn for hardboiled detectives and noir masterpieces. It turns out that it was also a great place to go for fine western storytelling. Lean, smooth prose, lots of wonderful details about the horses and the environment and how to live in it, polished action sequence, no padding. I’m reading the things like potato chips.

For some reason the other day I finally taught myself the guitar riff to that late-early period Beatles song “I Feel Fine.” I’ve loved the song since I was a little kid. The lyrics can’t hold a candle to anything The Beatles were about to do in the immediate months following its composition, but otherwise the song is tasty pop perfection. Anyway, for no particular reason I now know how to play it.

I’ve also played a few sessions of the solitaire boardgame Nemo’s War, from Victory Point Games. I have the most recent reprint of the 2nd edition. I can’t tell if it’s going to be one of my perennial favorites or not. In the game you play Nemo himself, and you’ve got to keep your mighty steampunk submarine afloat while the world’s nations try to sink you. In part they’re after you for your technology, but they’re also after you because you’re blowing up the shipping of the imperial powers and inciting rebellions.

There’s a lot in the box, including multiple variations on the game, depending upon what motives you choose, multiple difficulty levels, a number of different endings, and optional rules galore, especially if, like me, you snagged the three expansions when you joined the kickstarter.

It rewards repeated play and smart play. I’m just not sure yet if it’s for me for the long haul. I tend to think it runs a little long, on the other hand, I read on Boardgame Geek that the more you play the faster it gets, which I’m sure is true. It is definitely a lovely game, and there are hidden tactics and strategy to it, some for every motive. For more information on the game, including some reviews, you can look it up on its dedicated page at Boardgame Geek.

Hardboiled Monday: The Glories of Wade Miller

Writing as a team, usually under their Wade Miller pseudonym, Bob Wade and Bill Miller drafted some engaging thrillers and mysteries for Fawcett Gold Medal and other publishers all through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, before Miller’s untimely early death. Their writing was tight and spare, yet immersive, and they knew how to quickly hook readers into propulsive plots. Their settings sprang vividly to life, and they were capable of subtle and even nuanced character development and dialogue. Ten years ago I’d never heard of them; now I consider them among my very favorite writers.

On my own highlights reel are a number of standalones and the entire Max Thursday series. That’s not to say that each of the hardboiled private eye’s adventures is equally good, but each Max Thursday book is a strong novel and every one of them is different from the others, both in tone and subject matter. They usually fall on the gritty side of things, and are intricately plotted, so don’t go reading online discussions that tend to spoil the whodunnit. Unlike other hardboiled novels from the same era, the Thursday books are best read in order. Thursday starts out the series fighting alcoholism, and his relationships with secondary characters change in succeeding books. In order the Max Thursday novels are: Guilty Bystander, Fatal Step, Uneasy Street, Calamity Fair, Murder Charge, and Shoot to Kill. Here’s a wonderful article over at Thrilling Detective that discusses more details WITHOUT revealing the endings. I can’t guarantee that other discussions will do that.

As for those standalones, right at the top is Devil May Care, about a brutal but oddly likable mercenary, Biggo Venn, heading down to Mexico for some easy cash. He’s simple and honorable in his way, although no one would mistake any of his attitudes for modern political correctness. This is a great ‘50s adventure/thriller with some wonderful character arcs and subtle writing. It’s also a little more purple than the Thursday books, but it sure goes down smooth. I was exchanging a note with Chris Hocking the other day and he relayed that there’s a moment near the end when he realized he was reading something with a “kind of greatness” and I concurred. At a key scene, everything else in the book clicks suddenly into place and you’re hit with a sense of appreciation and wonder that it was building to this point all along. Wade and Miller commanded subtle mastery of their stories.

My other standalone favorites are the thriller Stolen Woman, about a piano player south of the border blackmailed into delivering a dangerous package, Nightmare Cruise, a nautical thriller set in the Sargasso Sea with a coolly capable female yacht captain, and The Girl From Midnight, featuring a veterinarian who gets embroiled in a murder. And then there are Sinner Take All and Devil on Two Sticks, which beat slightly different paths down the trail of badmen tempted to leave their profession – one’s an assassin and the other a highly placed mob figure. Just a little lower on the list there’s Branded Woman, in print from Hard Case Crime, and Dead Fall, another mystery under their Dale Wilmer pseudonym. There’s also South of the Sun, which I actually like better than some of these others at the bottom of the list, although as it isn’t a thriller or adventure tale (or even a mystery) it’s a slightly different animal. Certainly the writing caught me up the same way: it follows the lives of a number of interlocking characters over a few days in Acapulco. Depending on the day you might be able to talk me into including Mad Baxter, their semi-comic adventure novel set in Sardinia after World War II, or The Killer (printed in a single volume with Devil on Two Sticks by Stark House) or one of their police procedurals, A Cry in the Night. Others would name Badge of Evil or The Tiger’s Wife, or Kiss Her Goodbye, but I didn’t get as wrapped up in them. That’s not saying that you wouldn’t, just that Wade and Miller were capable of different kinds of writing, and some of their books might appeal to you more than others.

A final note: one subtle strength of Wade and Miller is too often overlooked. While never a special focus of their fiction, the women of Wade and Miller tend to be more fully realized people than we find in the work of their contemporaries. In few other 1950s thriller/adventure authors have I so consistently seen so many women with complex lives and motivations existing apart from living to assist or please the story’s men. The books are written for their market and time, so people expecting completely “modern” attitudes will be frustrated, but these complex characters stand out, whether it be the capable and determined reporter who recurs in several Max Thursday novels, or a brilliant con woman/thief, or a daring captain/diver, or others, like the woman trapped by circumstance and misunderstood and threatened in Devil May Care. It’s almost as though Wade and Miller looked at women as (gasp) humans who could be just as motivated and driven as men. The only reason I don’t rate Dead Fall higher is that the female lead, near the end of the book, suddenly becomes an emotional stereotype typical of her era rather than remaining a more realistic woman the two authors more regularly feature in their work.

The Max Thursday novels can be found as ludicrously inexpensive e-books here.

For a thorough discussion of their lives and work, as well as a complete bibliography, you can visit the Thrilling Detective web site.

When The Goddess Wakes

The unofficial cover copy has been turned over for book three now, and it looks almost certainly like it’s going to be titled When the Goddess Wakes. I’m sure before the end that cover copy will be tweaked a bit, but it’s a milestone on the road to completion.

At this point the first act of the book is pretty solid and act two is getting there. I know what’s going to happen in act three, for the most part, although I’m still undecided about a few points, which means I’m still eager to see what happens to some of the characters. Maybe it’s just the way I work, but if I’m not a little curious to see how things work out I don’t write as well. I imagine that I’ll have a fully working rough no later than the end of April, and it may even be polished by May. I’m not sure what that bodes for the release day, because there can often be a long delay between completion and printing, but I can guarantee you won’t be waiting TOO long.

For those of you who are readers of the magazine I edit, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, issue 4 is in layout right now, and preliminary work is starting on issue 5. I’m also starting to draft material that will be required to open the magazine for submissions — dos and do nots, primers on what sword-and-sorcery is, that sort of thing.

I’ve been keeping my hand in writing more short stories over the last year, as I had hoped. I didn’t manage nearly as many as I had ambitiously planned, but I DID compose two new Dabir and Asim stories and wrote three new Hanuvar stories. I also plotted out even more Hanuvar tales and now know how I want to fill what I eventually hope will be the first of several collections featuring his wanderings. I have numerous ideas for his adventures in the future. As he’s one of my favorite characters, this pleases me. Hopefully fantasy fans and readers will begin to discover him.

Preliminary research and plotting has begun on the book that will follow the ring-sworn trilogy as well. All-in-all, the writing is advancing nicely!

A New Day Dawns

It’s been a busy few months. The daze of the promotions phase of the business is finally over and I’ve returned to drafting the third and final book of the new trilogy. I assume that if you’ve been following the blog, you know what trilogy that is! Progress should accelerate after the winter holidays, and I’m expecting completion of the rough draft by April of 2020 at the latest. So far it seems to be following the outline pretty closely, which is good news.

I’ve also started preliminary work on the, uh, work that will follow this one, after meeting with the illustrious Bob Mecoy, literary agent, to discuss what ought to be next, and somehow I’ve been drafting a few short stories and essays. I keep thinking I’ll get back here more often to blog, but that may be a little more rare these days. I’d like to keep up the writing pace, which means less time spent blogging. I do think I ought to check in a little more often than once  a month, though! If you’ve stuck with me this long, try checking in every Friday.

Hope you’re heading toward a good holiday season!

Book Trailer Debuts

With the release of Upon the Flight of the Queen just around the corner, it’s high time for the release of the book trailer. Here you go. Darian Jones, my first born child and the recent animation graduate, spent more than two months on it. I hope you like it as much as I do! And if you do, I hope you’ll share it!

It should open here.

Next week I’ll show some behind-the-scenes background sketches.