Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 3

Conventions and Releases

Reviews for the next novel are starting to trickle in. Publisher’s Weekly released a glowing account of Upon the Flight of the Queen last month, and other reviews are coming in to Goodreads via Netgalley.

My first born has graduated college with a degree in animation, and I’ve hired him to create a book trailer for Upon the Flight of the Queen. Over the next two months I’ll be showing the occasional sneak peek.

Below, find some character design sketches of Kyrkenall.

Oh, and I will be turning up at Archon in St. Louis this year, the first weekend of October. I’ll be on at least four panels and circulating a lot, so I hope to see some of you there!

 

 

 

 

ARCs are Here! The New Book is REAL!

Yes indeed, here’s a shot of the ARCs that arrived for Upon the Flight of the Queen. If you’re a reviewer, I hope you’ll contact me here or drop me a line via e-mail or FB or Twitter, because I’ve got a bevy of copies of the newest book. This is, in fact, book 2 of the Ring-Sworn trilogy, the first of which, For the Killing of Kings, appeared in April. This is slated for November!

If you don’t see me here much that’s because I’m working hard on book 3, on some short stories, and on editing Tales From the Magician’s Skull, the third issue of which is back from the printer and should be headed your way shortly — providing you were wise enough to subscribe!

 

The Mystery of Todd McAulty, Part II

As I mentioned in my last post, I had begun suspecting that Black Gate’s well-reviewed and entirely absent Canadian (absent apart from a photo with a truly phenomenal beard) Todd McAulty was someone else writing under a pseudonym. There were a lot of familiar elements in his prose, so I deduced it had to be some modern author I was reading in other venues. Todd’s writing had the same energy and love of adventure as that talented bunch from Black Gate — but I couldn’t figure out WHY any of them would use a pseudonym.

I reluctantly checked in with John O’Neill but he, being Canadian himself, refused to acknowledge anything odd about the situation at all, and then got off the phone, claiming that he had left the stove on and had a dental appointment.

I had one more slim lead. Black Gate had published several author photos of McAulty, and I noticed that all were credited to the same person: Alice Dechene. I knew Alice – she’d written several fine reviews for us, including one which Neil Gaiman had proudly blurbed on the back of Stardust. She was also married to John.

But when I asked if she’d shed any light on the situation, she abruptly stopped returning my emails. Except for a small file she sent a few days later, containing several unpublished photos of McAulty, looking more hairy than ever. Man, that guy knew how to rock a beard.

My suspicions were fully engaged. Now here’s where I had a stroke of luck. A few years back I did some freelance writing for some folks in the publishing industry on a tight deadline and they gave me an unusual thank you gift — 10-year old control codes to a venerable supercomputer.

“This thing was programmed to analyze writing patterns a decade ago,” they told me. “You didn’t hear it from us, but some writers use it to replicate the style of best-selling authors.”

I didn’t have any interest in making my writing sound like Stephen King. But I wondered if that old machine could be used to compare Todd McAulty’s writing to other folks in the industry. To answer that question, I turned to one of the most knowledgeable industry insiders I knew — John C. Hocking, who’s an ace investigator when he’s not writing ace sword-and-sorcery.

“Piece of cake,” Hocking said. “Five hundred lines of COBOL code. I could do it this weekend, if you want.”

I did want. I shared the control codes with Hocking, and a week later he called, saying that he had some news that might shake me to the core.

It was raining when I met him in front of a dive bar. He had his trench coat collar up and his hat brim down, and his gaze was haunted. He ordered a double and then just stared into the distance.

I asked if there’d been any report.

“There was no report,” he said. “The computer just spat out five words.”

“Five words?” I repeated. “What were they?”

Slowly, ever so slowly, he faced me. His tone was somber. “Todd McAulty is John O’Neill.”

There it was. Once I heard from Hocking all the pieces fell into place.

It had been right in front of me the entire time. That was why Todd’s prose seemed so familiar. His work sounded just like John’s editorials and articles at Black Gate, which I’d been editing for years.

How could I have not spotted it sooner? Especially since I had spent many hours with older, bearded O’Neill, who bears a striking resemblance to the alleged photo of “Todd McAulty.”

In fact, when I started comparing McAulty’s author photos, and the new ones Alice had secretly sent me, to John’s public photos – of him accepting his World Fantasy Award, and his Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin – I wondered how I hadn’t spotted it sooner.

I Skyped John the next day and confronted him. I expected angry denials, and I got them. But I calmly laid it all out, and in the end the evidence was just too overwhelming.

“I suppose death threats are useless against you,” John said.

“They’ve never worked before,” I reminded him.

He covered his face in his hands. “It’s all true,” he admitted.

Now we came to the burning question. “WHY?” I said. “Why all the secrecy?”

“I just…. I just got carried away,” he said. “I started by publishing a few stories in Black Gate. But then Todd started getting fan letters, and became one of the most popular writers we had. Rich Horton used his Locus column to announce ‘Todd McAulty is Black Gate‘s great discovery,’ and pretty soon there was all this demand for new stories. It felt like a cheat to stop then.”

“You could have come out any time you wanted,” I told him.

“Yeah, you’re right. But it was fun to have a secret identity, you know? And once Todd started carrying on an affair with Alice, I was afraid of what would happen if she found out we were the same person. She’d kill me if she knew.”

“Something tells me she’ll be just fine. I’m pretty sure she’s figured it out.”

“How could she?” O’Neill asked. “I’ve been so careful.”

I thought it best not to touch that. “What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“Well, when I hang up, I’m going to go have a conversation with Alice. And next week I’m part of the Writer’s Symposium at Gen Con. I guess that’s as good a time as any to come clean about McAulty, and share the lessons I’ve learned being both an editor and a writer in this industry. Aren’t you going to be there as well?”

“I am,” I said. “And that sounds like a great idea. I’ll be there to support you if you need it.”

We hung up. All in all, the call went better than I’d expected. Gen Con is a warm and welcoming community, and the Writer’s Symposium is a fantastic resource for anyone who cares about the art of fiction and modern writing. It will be a great place for John and Todd to publicly come out as the same person.

As for me…. this was a diverting exercise, but it’s left me exhausted and just the tiniest bit paranoid. I find myself lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking things like, “Wait a minute…. has anyone ever seen Joseph Goodman and John C. Hocking in the same room?”

Don’t start asking questions you don’t want the answer to.

Spread the Word

Joseph Goodman and I owe a collective thank-you to a few friends who helped promote the Kickstarter for Tales From the Magician’s Skull. Now we are returning the favor by bringing their projects to your attention. These are all publishers of fiction much like that which you find in Tales From The Magician’s Skull. (In fact, you may have seen their advertisements in the magazine.) We think you’ll enjoy their work. So without further ado, please check these out when you get a chance:

Cirsova Presents: 35th Anniversary Edition of Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars Books

Cirsova Publishing is teaming up once again with Michael Tierney to publish his all new SFF time-travel adventure set in his Wild Stars universe, Wild Star Rising! You can back their Indiegogo here.  Plus, to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Wild Stars, Cirsova will be releasing all-new premium magazine-style editions of the Wild Stars graphic novel, Book of Circles, and the hybrid comic/novel, Force Majeure. They’ll also be reprinting a new 2019 edition of last year’s Kickstarter-exclusive illustrated novella, Time Warmageddon.

Sword-and-sorcery from DMR

DMR has just released a free e-book, The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories, which you can download simply by signing up for their mailing list. Check out this page for more info!

DMR has also just released a sword-and-sorcery compilation titled Death Dealers & Diabolists. This anthology will take you from fifth-century Constantinople to Dark Age Finland to places beyond imagining. You will encounter a former gladiatrix in the employ of demon summoners, an overly ambitious barbarian chieftain, a doddering pyromancer, and incarnations of holy warriors of India.

Death Dealers & Diabolists contains eight exciting tales of swords and sorcery by an assortment of talented authors, including Buzz Dixon (writer for the Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Thundarr the Barbarian cartoons) and Keith Taylor (author of the Bard series). You can read an interview with author Buzz Dixon here. And you can purchase the book at the DMR site!

 

The Mystery of Todd McAulty, Part 1

Todd McAulty (apparently in Venice, or something)

If you’re a regular to my blog, you’ve probably seen me talking about my early days in the industry, and how John O’Neill invited me aboard the Black Gate staff after my work for Flashing Swords magazine. I quickly grew to know the rest of the staff, and many of the regular writers. Over the years I’ve met an awful lot of the magazine’s mainstays, especially those with whom I maintained regular correspondence — apart from one reclusive, hirsute Canadian: Todd McAulty.

I first noticed his name attached to several popular stories in the early issues of Black Gate, and he was a noted reviewer — his long review of Lords of Swords in Black Gate 8 was the first to draw real attention to that worthy book, the first I was ever anthologized within. Following on that review we struck up a lively email correspondence, which carried on for years.

Yet Todd never appeared in person at any conventions, and when I turned up twice in Canada, he was notably absent. I began to suspect something strange was afoot, especially after I noticed a couple of stylistic details in the writing he’d been submitting to Black Gate. More on that in a minute.

Fast forward a decade. In 2017 Todd asked me to provide a blurb for his debut novel, The Robots of Gotham. The book, about a group of Chicagoans fighting machine subjugation in 2083, was just as much fun as the stories I’d bought from him years ago for Black Gate, and I was happy to contribute a blurb. The book came out last June and was a huge success. Amazon and The Toronto Star selected it as one of the best books of the year, and there were rumors that Warner Bros. and Netflix were interested.

But that nagging feeling that Todd’s prose sounded familiar didn’t go away. I called John in Chicago’s Black Gate office to ask if he’d noticed anything odd about it, but he said he didn’t.

Last month, while James Enge was on a research trip to the copyright archives in the Library of Congress, I asked him to do me a favor: investigate who held the copyright for Todd McAulty’s works.

“I’ve stumbled on something strange,” James reported when he got back.

I asked him what he meant, because I figured the answer would be fairly straightforward.

His voice was a hushed whisper. “McAulty’s literary copyrights are held by a series of Canadian shell companies. I tracked the ownership of each, and as far as I could figure out, they’re all owned by a single trust company in Chicago. The trail ends there.”

Naturally I was surprised that Canada even HAD shell companies. Stymied, I knew it was time to dig even deeper, and call in another favor to learn the truth. I’ll have the result of my further shocking investigations in my next post.

New Interview! Great Reviews!

I’ve been working on the Kickstarter and reading page proofs of Upon the Flight of the Queen, but I’ve returned to spread all the news about me!

First, here’s a new interview over at NFreads. I thought they asked some pretty good questions. Hopefully I gave some answers even the regulars haven’t read.

A little while ago For the Killing of Kings got a splendid review over at Locus. More recently it made the TOR list of best of 2019 fantasy novels–so far, and some lovely things were said. And I also made a list of 12 Action-Packed Fantasy Books.

GenCon is right around the corner, which is hard to believe! I hope I’ll be seeing some of you there!

The Skull Lives!

The Kickstarter for the next phase of our sword-and-sorcery magazine is live and kicking along nicely. If you’re a lover of sword-and-sorcery I hope we can count on you for your support. Now, subscriptions are available, and a t-shirt, and there are still copies of the original two issues if you haven’t grabbed them yet. The fine paper we printed the first two issues on is the new default. Looks great, reads great, and it may even taste great, although I’d hate to destroy the beautiful artwork and prose to find out.

Seriously, if sword-and-sorcery is your thing, I hope you’ll take a look. And I hope you’ll help spread the word! Join in right here!

Locus Review

My new book, For the Killing of Kings, received a glowing review from Locus, courtesy of reviewer Rich Horton. Click here for all the specifics.

I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I blogged here. As is always the case with me, silence here generally means I’m really busy elsewhere. It’s pretty much the same activity that occupied me last month, but now some of it is wrapped up:

1. Copyedit changes are now back to the copyeditor, and the sequel to For the Killing of Kings (now firmly titled Upon the Flight of the Queen) won’t be seen again by me until I look over any proofreader concerns. And it will be published in November. You can even pre-order it! I don’t think the cover copy on the pre-order version is final — it certainly isn’t quite correct, as it mentions 9 realms, and there are only 5. Not sure how that happened…

2. The Kickstarter for Tales From the Magician’s Skull will be starting in the next week or so. All kinds of behind-the-scenes work has been underway, and issue 3 is ready to go. Issue 4 is still being assembled. And moving forward from here subscriptions will be available. We’re also looking into making it available via Amazon because there have been so many requests for that.

3. By my near abandonment of social media, I’ve focused even harder on getting additional work done. I’ve finished the rough drafts of several short stories, including two new Dabir and Asim tales, and have extensively outlined some others. This week I get back to work outlining book 3 of this trilogy, and I hope to be able to keep my hand in drafting some short stories on the side.

I really do need to get back here a little more often and clear out the cobwebs. I’m just getting so much work done elsewhere…

 

 

Checking In

You know, I really love the interface of my new web site. On the outside it must be clear that the LOOK of my web site has changed. Here on the inside let me tell you that this Meanthemes theme is simply a lot easier to work with.

I have a NEW Hanuvar story published over at Heroic Fiction Quarterly! It’s a rework of a very old story with an older character, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. There’s even an audio version read by my friend Karen Bovenmeyer, so you have no reason NOT to check it out.

Here, in brief, is what else is happening here.

I’ve received the copyeditor’s comments on the next book, Upon the Flight of the Queen. I’m pleased to once again be working with Edwin Chapman, who did a fine job on the first book. I’m looking over his suggestions and alterations, reading the novel out loud again, and transferring some additional changes over from my working copy so all the changes are in the same place. The book is still on target for November, so far as I know.
I’ve been slowly working on future issues of Tales From the Magician’s Skull. I need to put that into warp speed, although rest assured that the team and I have issue 3 nearly ready to launch. The other day Joseph shared some excellent ideas with me for the Kickstarter and just as soon as I get my own computer back (it’s in the shop) I’ll get to work on those.
I took a little bit of a breather from writing novels — well, REVISING novels, actually, because that’s what I’ve been doing with the new book for months now — and worked on a whole gaggle of short story outlines. I’ve signed on to deliver some short stories to anthologies later this year, so that was some of the impetus. But I also have this crazy idea that I’ll eventually be able to draft enough short stories that I can put out a collection or two every year of new Dabir and Asim tales or Hanuvar stories or even other characters. If I were coming up on 41 rather than 51 I’d think that those odds were higher, but I AM getting smarter and faster, at least with writing, so maybe it can still happen. Certainly my outlining and idea generation process has improved.
I had the pleasure of editing one new Conan story, from Scott Oden, that will be appearing in print soon, and it’s another fine piece of work. Very Howardian.
A couple of other exciting things are in the works, but until they get more finalized, I’ll hold off saying anything more than that they’re pretty cool and I really hope they go forward.

Victory is Mine!

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so long away from the ‘ol blog. I’ve been away from social media as well. I haven’t even been seeking out the news as much. Usually I like to remain well informed about current events, but I’m honestly a little tired and disheartened by all that and just focusing on the people around me and the places nearest me. Doing the garden, digging the weeds, seeing my son graduate college, watching documentaries in the evening with my wife — and writing, and editing, and more and more of the same. Honestly, it’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve watched documentaries with my beloved, because I was working nearly every night on revisions.

After many months of effort I turned over Upon the Flight of the Queen to the copyeditor and in a brief lull I’m finally taking care of a few things that have piled up around here. The revision took a lot longer than I would have liked, and it was harder going that I had planned, but I had some friends come through for me with vital feedback. The sequel to For the Killing of Kings is slated for a November release, and is going to include a map of the Allied Realms. As well as lots of adventure.

By stepping away from social media I gained a lot of time, and I’m not entirely sure I feel like going back. It turns out that I was spending more time on the Twitterbookgram than I thought, and while I know there are some people whose posts I’m not seeing because of that absence, I may remain apart. I’ve gotten a lot more work done.

I hope to post more frequently here, though, at least once a week again. I still have some correspondence to return. If you’ve written me in the last month or two, or had sent me something to respond to in the weeks leading up to that, you’re unlikely to have heard from me.

The third issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull is just about ready for launching, so stay tuned for details!