Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 29

To Sleep…

I know I’ve mentioned before that I sometimes suffer from sleep issues, but boy, have they been kicking my butt for almost half the year. Currently it’s easy for me to GET to sleep at least, so I’ve solved ONE problem, but staying that way is an entirely different issue. Right now I’m waking up three or four times every night for no discernible reason. Thankfully I don’t have much trouble getting back to sleep, but it still means I’m not exactly feeling refreshed every morning. Every time I think I’m on the mend I have another series of lousy nights.

Probably what I need to do is take some over the counter meds that will knock me out and see if that gets me back into the habit of a full night’s sleep. The newest trick, going to bed earlier, has helped, but hasn’t solved the issue.

The result of prolonged sleep deprivation means more struggle with finding the right word when writing, less inspiration, a shorter fuse, and less energy. I fade quickly come evening time, and mornings are dreadful. I’ve had to let down some friends. I’d promised to help them with projects and either delivered late or simply had to bail out because I’ve had no extra energy to give. Regular site visitors might note the lack of blog entries, which is another symptom. When I have so little energy, even a couple of quick notes can feel like a challenge.

The darnedest thing is that I’m otherwise in pretty good health for a man my age. I mean, in two weeks I’m testing for my second degree black belt

Anyway, if you happen to see Morpheus, tell him to go easier on me, will you?

 

Surprise!

File this one under “things you never expect.” I received an alert the other day that my first novel, The Desert of Souls, had been mentioned somewhere out there on the interwebs, and lo and behold my name was invoked in a positive way with Salman Rushdie. My friend Saladin Ahmed was mentioned in the very same sentence — the three of us and a few others were singled out as the “best such works published since 2011” in reference to adult fantasy with Middle-Eastern roots.

So, that was cool, and I’m grateful for the mention by writer Samuel Montgomery-Blinn. I’m delighted to hear that somewhere out there folks are still enjoying The Desert of Souls. I hope some day to write more books about my Arabian heroes (beyond The Bones of the Old Ones, I mean). First, though, I have to finish the books I’m currently writing and revising…

Books and Games

Mornings around here have changed. I’ve continued to suffer from sleep issues, which means I drag, and so I’ve been adopting new patterns to try and help. For instance, rather than sitting down and slowly notwriting while I eat breakfast and surf for way more news than even interests me, as soon as my wife leaves I go clean the horse stalls in the morning, then eat breakfast. It gets the blood moving and wakes me up, but it means I’m not plunked in front of the laptop until 10:15 or 10:30, by which time I don’t feel like I’ve got enough time for any kind of lengthy blog post.

I’m allegedly reading War and Peace in the evenings, but I’ve only managed 40 pages. What with the sleep issues, I’m pretty zonked by 8:00 in the evening or so, and a story from The Savage Sword of Conan omnibus collection I own feels much more like my speed.

Here’s three interesting things, though. First, my old friend Patrick Kanouse just sent me his novel The Clearing and I’m looking forward to reading it this month, and not just because it’s considerably shorter than War and Peace. Kanouse is an intelligent and talented writer. I’ve deliberately kept from reading anything about it so the whole thing will be a surprise.

Second, I used to review Dark City Games products for Black Gate, and noticed the other day that they had some new adventures out. They’re a blast, and I ordered the most recent to round out my collection. Here, go take a look. Hopefully I’ll steal time to talk about them either here or at Black Gate in the near future.

Lastly, we escaped to the movies two weekends ago and saw Kubo and the Two Strings. I ended up liking it much more than I expected, and not just because of the astonishing animation. The story ended up taking me to different places than I expected. Honestly, I believe I enjoyed it more than my wife or daughter. It was a good adventure story with lots of surprises. The fight with the giant skeleton alone might have been worth the price of admission.

 

Later Savage Sword of Conan Volumes

I’m a late comer to The Savage Sword of Conan. You’d probably have figured that, much as I like sword-and-sorcery, I’d have a huge stack of old sword-and-sorcery comics, but I don’t. I missed out on Savage Sword when it was a mag, and I almost missed out on the Dark Horse reprints. There are 22 of the things, which is a heck of an investment. If, like me, you came upon them with little clue but were curious, you’d probably wonder where to start.

I think anyone who’s heard of these has likewise heard that only the first few compilations are good, because those were the ones with Roy Thomas and John Buscema, and only in the first three or four are they adapting actual Robert E. Howard stories. Their work actually continues on into Volume 6, although by that point they’re mostly adapting pastiche tales, and lesser writers are contributing to some comics in the collection. I have to say that sometimes there’s nothing Thomas could do to make the pastiche better, but sometimes he and Buscema really make it more Howardian than the pastichers ever managed, and occasionally they do even better than that.

After that last collection with Thomas (6), it looks like a long desert until he returns at the very end of Volume 18. But there are wonderful stories in between, if you know where to look. Once volume 13 hits, it’s more than an occasional oasis, because Chuck Dixon is on the scene, usually teamed with artist and sometimes collaborator, the talented Gary Kwapisz.

Dixon’s taken some grief because his Hyborian age doesn’t quite sync up with Howard’s geographically, and he adds things to Conan’s speech pattern, including a cool catch phrase, more frequent references to Crom, and other asides. But, by gum, in his hands Conan acts like Conan, the plots get complex and interesting, the secondary characters have personalities, and there’s both occasional poignancy and appropriately Howardian humor. I was regularly pleased, thrilled, and surprised by these stories. They were grand fun.

To my mind Dixon’s consistently at his best in the first three volumes (13-15), when he’s often telling connected epics, but he has fine tales in later volumes (16-18) as well, and Volumes 16 and 17 have additional surprises. In volume 16, writer Gerry Conway steps in and drafts a three part epic of an older Conan adventuring in distant lands, and they feel an awful lot like Thomas penning his best Conan adventures. I wish he’d have written more!

In volume 17 there are a few good Chuck Dixon penned tales, including an excellent one he co-plotted with Kwapisz, and two great Conan adventures written by Doug Moench. The Moench tales are so on the money I wish to God he’d have taken up the mag for a while, and I’m now looking forward to his brief run on King Conan. Maybe he only asked to write for Savage Sword when he had a great idea, because boy did he bring his A game, drafting like Thomas or Dixon at their very best. The conclusion of “The Tomb of Lost Visions” is so damned good it reads like something Robert E. Howard himself would have come up with.

All of these have been collected in Dark Horse reprints at this time. Go forth, sword-and-sorcery lovers, and read them! I’ve recently parted with volumes 7-12, but I’m keeping 1-6 and 13-22 for the long haul, for there are wondrous treasures therein.

Jacobson Wins Chesley!

In July I mentioned that the talented Tyler Jacobs0n was nominated for a Chesley award for the cover he drew for Beyond the Pool of Stars.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that he WON that Chesley award! Congratulations, Tyler!

You can find more of his fantastic art right here.

 

 

Five Bloody Heads

Ah, the plans we mortals make. Last night I planned to wake and after my morning calisthenics take a good half hour to write a proper post about an e-book I quite enjoyed.

The sleep gods beat that plan out of me by cursing me with insomnia. Not the productive kind, but the kind where you keep waking up all night long.

But I’ve been talking about a mysterious book for a long time and I want to say something about it even if I feel like someone just kicked the stuffing out of me. By necessity, I’ll keep it short.

Five Blood Heads is a grimdark tale of sword-and-sorcery shot through with veins of heroism and hope. I don’t like my sword-and-sorcery quite as dark as some modern practitioners, and writer Peter Fugazzoto is just on my side of the line. I’m glad, because he knows how to craft an action scene, and how to pace, and how to get you invested in characters you probably shouldn’t be caring that much about. Sometimes they have even more decency in them than they’re willing to admit in their inner dialogues, for they find themselves acting against their own stated philosophies.

And then of course you have some pretty terrible bad guys who aren’t hindered by their morality whatsoever, although their leader has his own issues.

Five Blood Heads is low-fantasy. There aren’t kings and kingdoms at stake, although the rulership of a lonely outpost may be. Instead, the action rolls when the young survivor of a massacre turns to the only people she thinks can help her to avenge the murders of her family — the bandits who’d robbed that family only a few hours before. She promises to give them five gems if they deliver the heads of the five slayers.

Fugazzoto knows his chops. At first it’s not entirely clear that the bandits are that much different from the murderers, but bit by bit their characters are revealed, and as the action keeps coming so does character revelation. It’s got to be one of the finest self-published books I’ve ever read, marred only by some typographical errors. I’m honestly not sure why Fugazzoto hasn’t been snapped up by a major publishing house yet.

The book is a standalone set in the same world as some of his previous novels, but you don’t have to have read them to enjoy this one. Although my guess is that if you read this one you’ll want to look into his other material. I know I do.

Circles

It was a long (4 hour) drive north to drop my first born off at college yesterday and then a long (4 hour) drive back home. I had neglected to swing by the library to grab some books on tape, and with the kid driving separately that left me with no one to talk with. I called a few friends, of course, and I listened to the radio now and then, and I did a lot of plot thinking about three separate projects. Much as I hate long car rides, that kind of time to just sit and think about plot is a real luxury.

I happened to catch the end of a Fresh Air episode where a writer/actor/producer was being interviewed and she mentioned that she had no interest in Game of Thrones; that she drew the line right there at dragons. Apparently if something had dragons it was immediately off the list, and I recall thinking that was a peculair reason to exclude GoT, because for most of its running time there really aren’t many dragons… I remember smirking. What about even the hint of dragons, I wondered, made you immediately turn up your nose? Is it that you think you’re BETTER than that?

And then I ate some humble pie, because I recalled only a few years ago that I’d never have bothered reading a western, or a private eye novel, and lately I’ve found some of the best books I’ve ever read reside in both genres.

Maybe most of us start out in a narrow circle of familiarity and comfort. I know my own enjoyment and my writing skill has grown since I left that initial starting circle, and I only wish I’d dared to depart it sooner.

Do any of you have circles you’ve left only recently? Is there anything you still instantly turn your nose up to?

Rapiers Ride!

I’d intended to tell you about a nifty new sword-and-sorcery novel I read last week, but I’m away from home and short on time today and won’t be able to give the book the time it deserves. Look for details next week.

Today I wanted to remark upon how enjoyable the pulps can be. I’ve mentioned the wonderful collection I bought off of pulp scholar Alfred Lybeck 15 years ago. There are 14 of these volumes in all, and until recently I’ve just been reading an occasional story. This year I started selecting volumes and reading them, slowly, straight through. They’re more enjoyable that way, because Al knew how to pace a collection. A shame he never got to be a professional anthology editor.

The volume I selected this time has four stories of the Canadian mounties, along with a whole host of other tales. The first two Royal Canadian Mounted Police stories were entertaining, but it was the third story, set in the late 16th century, that really made me sit up and take notice. It was a swashbuckler with dynamic pacing, sudden turns, constant surprise, and great action scenes. And I’d never heard of the author! “J.J. des Ormeaux” certainly sounded like a pseudonym and it turns out it was; the real author was Forrest Rosaire, who seems to have spent most of his writing life crafting crime stories and an occasional western. Like many pulpists, he doesn’t have too many books, and there are no collections of his short work. Alas!

Will any of his other work be as good? Will he constantly use the same plot? I don’t know, but I liked “Rapiers Ride!” well enough that I’ll keep my eye out for his other stuff, and I’ll certainly treasure this story. What a nice little surprise. I liken it to finding a snappy little pop gem from the ’60s that never gets radio play, hidden on some old mix-tape you found in the basement… Sure, maybe some of its turns were a little predictable, and maybe it wasn’t deep… but it was excellent adventure fiction, done right. And that is exceptionally hard to pull off. If you don’t believe me, witness the dozens of dull or tepid adventure stories out there. Even in these “best-of” anthologies this one stands out.

For those of you with the interest or the ability to find Argosy magazines, the story appeared in the June 25th, 1932 issue.

 

Mightier Than the Sword

Speaking of writers who don’t get their due, I’ve been reading one of Bill Ward’s short story collections over the last few days and really enjoying it. My reading of it is long overdue, given that I’m a fan of Bill’s fiction and non-fiction. Honestly, it was his observations that really brought the a-game to our entire Conan re-read sequence. He’s got a great gift for insight and critical analysis.

But I’m not here to praise his non-fiction, no matter that it’s more than worthy of that praise, I’m hear to talk about his short story collections, starting with Mightier Than the Sword. Bill can have a hard time standing out because there are any number of guys out there with the same name. A couple of artists, more than a handful of additional writers, etcetera.

You’ll know Bill, though, because he writes grim and gritty and exciting sword-and-sorcery stories. They’re grand and vivid and crammed with action. And if you find one that isn’t quite to your taste, well, it will be over soon enough and you’ll be on to reading another you think is grand. Get thee to the kindle or nook and get to reading! His complete catalog can be found here.

 

Bretwalda and Other Adventures

For the first time in the last half dozen years I missed GenCon. Between the excellence of the Writer’s Symposium — which is growing at a phenomenal rate — the friends and fans to meet or reconnect with, and the sheer size of the game room stuffed full of wonderful things to see, it has become one of my must stops. Especially since it’s the only large convention that’s only a few hours away.

Alas, a perfect storm of events crowned by a family wedding made it impossible for me to attend this year. I did swing through Indianapolis the weekend of GenCon on the way to that wedding, but didn’t get anywhere close to downtown.

While my daughter practiced her driving and my wife coached her, I was in the back seat. Occasionally I managed some writing, but that proved hard given my daughter’s preferred choice of music and its volume, so I ended up reading instead. I finally started in on Brewalda, a collection of twelve stories about a mystical axe forged to safeguard England. The stories date from the pulp days and have reprinted only last year, for the first time. I picked it up because I’d heard about the tales for years. So far, so good, although the first two haven’t bowled me over yet with inventiveness.

I’m also working my way through another one of those pulp treasures I mentioned earlier in the year. I’ll have more details about that later. Right now I’m especially enjoying a swashbuckler by an author I’ve never heard about before.

A major reorganization is taking place here at Jones central. We’re finally getting around to finishing our walk-out basement, which means yours truly has to sort and organize a bunch of stuff that’s accumulated over the years. Between that and the parade of house guests things have been busy, but I’m still working away on revising my eighth novel, and I’m occasionally performing some final tests on my friend Dean’s B-17 game. I need to step up the pace on both while maintaining the basement reorganization.