Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 27

New Story

In 2016 one of my short stories appeared in the Dungeon Crawl Classics 2016 Gen Con Program Guide. Joseph Goodman, sage of Goodman Games, enjoyed The Desert of Souls and contacted me to ask if I would be interested in crafting an Appendix N style tale. My answer was: “you bet!”

For a brief time, the 2016 Gen Con Program Guide — along with a whole bunch of great Dungeon Crawl Classics stuff — is on sale for 40 % off! That means you can go grab a copy, cheap, and in addition to all the cool Dungeon Crawl Classics stuff, enjoy the first-in-a-sequence tale of Hanuvar Cabera, my fantasy take on my favorite historical character, Hannibal of Carthage. It’s the first of two completed stories featuring him and hopefully the first of many more. He’s probably my personal favorite of all the serial characters I’ve created, even above Asim, and I have big plans for him, providing I have the time. I hope you’ll check out the story!

A Short History

I have a big stack of to-read books, some by friends. But because I’m in the midst of heavy revisions, I’m reluctant to read novels that might catch my attention and steal time I don’t have to spare.

So at night I’m reading some non-fiction. Specifically, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. I already knew I liked the book, as I’d read at least a third of it some years ago when I was working on my master’s degree. I got too busy with course work to finish, but I always meant to, and I thought highly enough of it that I loaned it out to friends.

It’s not, of course, a history of EVERYTHING, it’s a history of mankind and science: a layman’s overview of who discovered what when, and a little bit about who those people were and what they did and how they did it, and broad discussions about different fields of science and their important discoveries. Reading just a little every night I’m now about halfway and am enjoying nearly every minute of it, enough that I’m probably going to try some more of Bryson’s non-fiction. Because my to-be-read pile needs to be deeper, naturally.

Bryson has a truly engaging style, stuffed with facts but amiable and amusing at the same time. It’s a joy to read. I love how he combines the history with the story of the people who made it. There are some truly heroic, bizarre, and occasionally dastardly people out there, and some of them were scientists.

Speaking of book reviews, I guess I better get to re-reading some Brackett before the end of the year!

Castles & Crusades

A couple of weeks ago I drafted an essay extolling the virtues of the Castles & Crusades role-playing game over at Black Gate, specifically related to the game’s new expansion, the Adventurer’s Backpack. You see, a Kickstarter has recently launched. The product is a go, but I still have fingers crossed that some of those stretch goals will be met. Honestly, I’m sort of confused that only a little over 300 people have signed on.

C&C bring that old school D&D goodness without all the rules exceptions. It’s streamlined and easy to hack so you can add on whatever you want, and feels pretty much like the old game you used to play, minus annoying bits to keep track of. This new expansion’s going to deliver some new character classes (i.e. archetypes), some streamlined hand-to-hand combat rules, additional spells and magic items, and other stuff besides. If fantasy RPGs are your thing, I hope you’ll at least investigate!

Pounds Hollow

Turkey Run State Park

At some point in junior high our school bussed us over to Turkey Run State Park. I wish I could remember the exact year or the teachers, or much else apart from me learning never to jump to a wet rock in the middle of a creek (feet went right out from under me, as I probably should have learned BEFORE that). My chief takeaway was that the park was quite pretty, particularly trail 3, which winds up a limestone river gorge.

Now, approximately forty years on, I’m better equipped to understand that many of the trails in Turkey Run State Park, near Marshall, IN, are among the prettiest American places you can see that don’t involve mountain vistas or trips west. And probably they’re comparable to even those, in a small scale way. My kids, who are considerably better travelled than I was at their age, name it one of their favorite places on Earth, primarily because of trails 3 and 10.

Trail stairs at Pounds Hollow

But we don’t live very close to Turkey Run anymore — it’s about a three hour one-way drive — so when a friend at karate mentioned that a much closer park, in southern Illinois, was almost as lovely, my wife and I took our daughter and drove over for a look.

It turns out that my friend Jim was right. Pounds Hollow isn’t QUITE as pretty as Turkey Run, but it’s a very close second. There also aren’t nearly as many trails, but then the bonus is that it’s much closer to home and far less crowded. As a matter of fact, you can’t call Pounds Hollow crowded at all, from our experience. The word is out about Turkey Run, which is frequently overrun, but people haven’t yet heard about Pounds Hollow.

A Gorn cave in Pounds Hollow

There are only two main trails at Pounds Hollow, one around the top of the hills, which has some lovely overlooks, but for my money the trail that circles with the small river is even more striking. I’ve tried to give some sense of the beauty in the accompanying photos, but I don’t think they quite convey the sense that you’ve entered a really majestic place, one with such stunning natural beauty it suggests there’s something magical afoot. You really need to click to enlarge to get even a little sense of what I’m talking about.

Bridge at Pounds Hollow

According to what I remember from a sign posted near one of the picnic areas, Pounds Hollow didn’t always look like this. During World War II the Civilian Construction Corps came in and planted trees all over this land after it had been denuded of forest and farmed to hell and gone. That explains why so many of the trees are still so young. Boy, am I grateful for their hard work. It was truly a wonderful afternoon. We even saw a bald eagle sitting in a high branch of one of those youngish trees — unfortunately it was so far away that it doesn’t show up in the photo I took on my cell phone camera.

Small cliff at Pounds Hollow

We intend to go back in the spring, hopefully with my son along the next time. And I’m looking forward to telling Jim just how much we appreciated his tip. If you live anywhere close to Pounds Hollow, it is definitely worth the trip. Caveat — bring your own food. From the direction we came, at least, there didn’t seem to be anywhere to purchase food, fast or otherwise.

Three Cool Things

First, while checking the weather forecast this weekend I clicked through on an interesting headline to discover a pretty cool article. Just how many planets could fit in a star’s habitable zone, anyway?

Second, the spookiest story I’ve heard in a loooong time, courtesy of the folks at Snap Judgement. Definitely worth a listen if you’re in the mood for a good scare!

Third, in case you didn’t know, the election season is almost over. And wow, am I looking forward to seeing it in my rearview mirror. It’s even more annoying than my “n” key being so touchy on this computer that these days I have to click it three or four times before it works. Probably have to take it into the shop for repair. Blech. Which is a word that kind of describes how I feel about this whole election season. At least that should be over in two days, barring a court challenge or someone refusing to concede. My computer will probably be out for repairs for a week.

 

 

Three Book Contract

While in New York last week, amongst doing many other things — including some sight-seeing and some amazing meals — I signed a new three-book contract with St. Martin’s. This pleases me mightily, as you might expect.

The first book is slated to be released about a year from now, is titled For the Killing of Kings, and is far and away the longest book I’ve ever written, sitting at about 150 thousand words. That’s almost twice the length of my first novel, The Desert of Souls, and more in keeping with the size modern fantasy readers seem to like. The rough draft of the second is of approximately the same length and the third is planned to be similar.

Those of you who like the pacing of my prose might fear I’ve finally surrendered to trends and begun to pad, but it’s not so. I saw “big fat fantasy” authors who could keep their pacing going — writers like Scott Lynch and Mark Lawrence and Mike Sullivan — and decided I could try my own hand at it.

Here’s the current “cover copy” and elevator pitch. I expect both will be more finely honed in the coming months, but this should give some idea of what this whole thing’s about:

Their peace was a fragile thing, but it had endured for seven years, mostly because the people of Darassus and the king of the Naor hordes believed his doom was foretold upon the edge of the great sword hung in the hall of champions. Unruly Naor clans might raid across the border, but the king himself would never lead his people to war so long as the blade remained in the hands of his enemies.

But when squire Elenai’s aging mentor uncovers evidence that the sword in their hall is a forgery she’s forced to flee Darassus for her life, her only ally the reckless, disillusioned Kyrkenall the archer. Framed for murder and treason, pursued by the greatest heroes of the realm, they race to recover the real sword, only to stumble into a conspiracy that leads all the way back to the Darassan queen and her secretive advisors. They must find a way to clear their names and set things right, all while dodging friends determined to kill them – and the Naor hordes, invading at last with a new and deadly weapon.

Elevator pitch: A cross between Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber and The Three Musketeers.

Manhattan Adventures

I’m posting today from Manhattan in a mid-town hotel that’s walking distance from all kinds of cool stuff. Naturally I’m spending a lot of my time here simply writing, but every evening the wife and I go out to one of the swell places to eat that my agent’s recommended (he hasn’t steered us wrong yet!).

My wife’s here for a work conference. I tagged along because, well, how often do I get to go to Manhattan? Yesterday I met in person with my agent Bob Mecoy and editor Pete Wolverton for only the second time, a huge pleasure. And I was briefly in the famed Flatiron building before heading out for lunch.

So what’s it like being in the midst of all this? Famed agents and editors, Manhattan, book writing professionally, all of that? I try to remember what it was like ten years ago when this was just a dream. I’d been working towards for most of my life.

Well, it’s pretty danged cool is what it’s like. As you’d probably figure. But then in some ways it’s normal, because you establish working relationships and friendships built on mutual trust and respect to get the best result and the most fulfillment. And that applies to any avocation, doesn’t it? You may be sitting across the table with people who’ve done amazing things, but if you’ve picked the right people to work with then you’re united by shared love of story and writers and genre. I’ve been lucky in that. But then I’ve also worked hard to be here as well.

 

Second Degree

Who has two thumbs and a second degree black belt in Shotokan Karate?

A fair number of people, probably, but now that number includes me as well! Still quite excited about that. Here I am moments after the graduation ceremony.

And what do you do after you get a second degree black belt? In my case, celebrate with a dinner at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants… then start training for the third degree black belt. Only four more years…

Gaming Goodies

It seems like everything’s coming up Kickstarters! No sooner do I announce that one old school role-playing game is getting to release a new edition, that I see another old school role-playing game is releasing an expansion. Yesterday Castles & Crusades announced that they’re going to print a new book with 13 additional classes, some new rules, and a host of new spells, amongst other things. What’s a fellow to do?

And then right around the corner is DVG’s launch of some new solitaire board games, and Lock ‘n Load publishing’s reprinting of Heroes of the Pacific and release of Heroes of North Africa not to mention a new compendium and their solo expansion… I guess I need to sell some more books so I can afford all of this fun stuff!

(Of course then I’d also need to find time to play and read it all….)

Anyway, the Adventurer’s Backpack for Castles & Crusades is available here. I wish there was some detail about what those classes are going to be, but system fan that I am, I’ve already signed up.

Astonishing Swordsmen

I wanted to give a quick shout-out today as one of my favorite old school role-playing games launches its new 2nd edition Kickstarter.

I’ve talked about Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea before — now’s your chance to sign on and see what the fuss has been about.