Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 34

Spring!

Well, almost. You can tell it’s around the corner because of the way our favorite tree is blooming, or the way I hear chirps all day — you see, we have a half dozen baby chicks. In a few months they’ll be full-grown egg layers and will join the rest of the aging flock, but for now they need to be kept under a warming bulb and monitored closely. They have a tendency to knock over their food bowls, or simply to eat all the food quickly. They need a great deal of food for all that energy they need to grow. You can just about see a difference every day between morning and evening.

The spring projects loom just around the corner as well, including some expensive window replacement and some painting and the inevitable lawn trimming, which I’ve never much cared for. Maybe if I owned a better weed wacker I could muster more enthusiasm for the chore, but ours constantly stops, and then has to be pull started. It gets tiresome.

I’m getting some good writing accomplished; I hope soon to learn what my editor thinks of it. And I’ve continued to read from that one-of-a-kind pulp anthology. A few years back I wrote about the different mindset between characters in pulps, and the experience of their writers, versus today. Specifically I typed: “This character from a minor story takes simple, practical actions that most of us wouldn’t know to do, and the author doesn’t make a big deal about it, or the character’s emotions while it’s under way.”

I’m nearly done with this particular anthology and I’ve continued to be surprised. Georges Surdez’ “Dregs of Defeat” turned out NOT to be a French Foreign Legion story, as I’d expected, but a tale about the Franco-Prussain war, replete with historical information unknown to me. The short story that immediately followed, “Orlick the Eagle,” by Kenneth Malcolm Murray, concerned itself with a Polish fighter pilot after World War I, and the Borzoi hound he fosters. The story was good, if not great, but the writer so clearly had knowledge of both Borzoi and planes from the bi-plane era that it crackled with life and interesting details, none of which came at expense of pacing. You knew, reading this, that the author had spent more than a little time piloting, and it made the story a delight.

I have a single story left in the anthology, and I’m going to be hard pressed to return to more modern reading. There’s just such a thrill of discovery in these anthologies. I have more than ten that are mostly if not completely unread by me and I’m tempted to just keep reading — but I do have some books by friends and acquaintances and colleagues that I really need to get to.

The Borgia Testament

This time last week my wife and I were driving to Pennyslvania for a funeral. It was a trip of about ten hours, so we brought along a few books to share out loud. While she was driving, I tried reading a Solar Pons story, which we both found fairly enjoyable (Solar Pons is a sort of Sherlock Holmes stand-in that I’ve heard about for years but never seriously tried, until I got a recommendation from friend and Pons scholar Bob Byrne). The second Pons story in the collection didn’t grab us, so I pulled out an old book I’d read in college, thinking my wife might enjoy it.

Turns out that she did. That book was The Borgia Testament, by Nigel Balchin, a fictional autobiography of Cesare Borgia, hero of Machiavelli immortalized in The Prince, son of a pope, and would-be uniter of Italy when it was nothing but a fractious collection of city-states. He was ruthless but very clever, and an irresistible magnet for historical fiction writers. In college (which is, jeez, a quarter century ago now) I read a big stack of novels about him. Now it’s possible that there have been some more, and better, novels since, but The Borgia Testament was head and shoulders the most compelling and entertaining of the lot, and I liked it well enough that I tracked down a copy for my permanent library some years ago.

A lot of the ’50s and ’60s historical novels sound good in concept but are much slower paced with less action than would be expected from the blurbs. I know I’ve mentioned this before on site. The Borgia Testament doesn’t drip with action and sword fights until the final third, but it’s so compelling that you’re pulled forward by other factors, waiting to see exactly what happens once Cesare finally has the power he’s been scheming for his entire life — and how it will all go wrong. Highly recommended. I wonder, now, why I haven’t tried reading any more Balchin. I should remedy that.

Nominations

Robert E. Howard

I was delighted to learn that Bill Ward and I have been nominated for the Robert E. Howard Foundation’s Black River award for our Conan re-read series. That’s certainly not anything either of us was expecting, and it’s quite an honor. My friend Bob Byrne and Black Gate itself are among the other nominees, and I’m pleased for us all. It’s just good company to be in.

I’ve been very busy the last few days both with working on a synopsis of the 2nd and 3rd books of my new series, and, in the early morning, play testing my friend Dean’s new board game. It’s a blast, and I mean to talk about it when I’m just a little further along with it. You can click here for some preliminary details.

Friday I’ll have some details on some cool old stories I’ve been reading.

Oranges

I love a good orange.

Usually this space is reserved for talking about writing, or books, or writers, or games. But today I’m kvetching about oranges.

A couple of years ago I posted with delight that we’d finally found a good source for local oranges. They were sweet and flavorful and, darn it, tasted like oranges. Alas, that brand of organic oranges isn’t carried by the local markets anymore, and all other brands are either sour or simply tasteless. Plus they have really tough texture, which is a by-product, I assume, of some breeding program to make them more resilient. Now chewy AND tasteless!

People must be buying these damned awful things or the markets wouldn’t carry them — but who enjoys them?

And what’s up with orange juice? I’ve tried every brand carried by the local markets and they range from bad to terrible. I just don’t understand. We claim to be the greatest country in the world, yet we can’t figure out a way to get decent oranges and orange juice into the web of commerce?

When I was in Paris last year nearly every street side market could get you fresh squeezed orange juice and it was always fantastic. I don’t speak French, so I won’t be moving to France, but I want THAT orange juice, and I want THOSE oranges. Heck, if I had access to those oranges, I’d squeeze them myself!

The weirdest damned thing of all is that when I was a child, those tasty oranges were the ones that Mom brought home from the grocer in Indiana, and that I devoured. If we could get good oranges in the 1970s why can’t we get them now? Grr. Hulk Smash! I’m tired of spending money on a sack of oranges only to find them terrible! I think I’m going to have to swear off of them again for a few years. I might as well be setting money on fire.

Family Matters

I’m back from a long drive back and forth to Pennsylvania to see a good man put to rest.

Any of you frequent visitors know that I don’t talk too much about my family, especially my kids, for privacy reasons. But my daughter put together a video for history class that I thought I’d share. She was determined to get the extra credit points awarded for the best project… and she got them.

Not being up on much modern music, I didn’t know the original song (“Hide Away”). My daughter wrote new lyrics and sang them, then filmed and edited and everything else for the short video. I make a brief cameo as a guy with a sword.

Anyway, here’s the video.

Link Day

First, Broken Eye books has released a new anthology of Cthulhu mythos stories, Tomorrow’s Cthulhu, set in the future. If you don’t know Broken Eye, you should — they put together quality products, and it was my pleasure to have a story in their collection Ghosts in the Cogs earlier this year.

Second, The Science Fiction Writers of America has launched a new speaker’s bureau: “Institutions and event planners can find SFWA members representing a wide range of writers and publishing industry professionals.” Seems like a good idea, and I’ve been thinking about re-joining anyway.

Why it’s Link Man, defender of safe, interesting, and quick loading internet content! And he’s here to stop the menace of The Spinner!

Third, while digging up information on Adventure magazine writer Georges Surdez I found a treasure trove of pulp French Foreign Legion stories. This link will take you to one by Surdez, but if you look around on the site you’ll not only find more by him, you’ll find a host of others. I haven’t had time to read this particular one yet, so I hope it’s a good sample of his work. If not, try another — he usually gets mentioned as one of the best writers Adventure had.

Winter Dregs

I wouldn’t go so far as to call the last few days craptacular, but they’re far from splendid.

A few days ago one of my wife’s uncles passed away. In my own family that would be distant enough I probably wouldn’t know the fellow very well, but in her family I’ve met the man numerous times and stayed at his house. He was, simply, a fine human being and it’s terrible to lose him.

I discovered a different kind of loss a little more recently — my truck won’t turn over. A warning light with a lightning bolt is on, which informs me that the Electronic Throttle Control has a problem. The shop can’t tell me what that might mean, apart from the fact it means I’ve just had to call a tow truck to drag the truck away. I’m not a praying man, but I do have fingers crossed that it’s not going to be an expensive repair, as it’s been a while since I had either a royalty check or an advance.

I’m continuing to read through that one-of-a-kind anthology I mentioned a few weeks ago. I finished a story by Georges Surdez that, strangely, wasn’t a foreign legion story. I’d heard that was what he specialized in and that he wrote them well. It was a war story set in the time of Napoleon the III, during a Prussian invasion of French territories, and I quite liked it. Now I’ve started a Swain story, a Viking tale by Arthur D. Howden Smith, one of more than 20 something Smith wrote about the character.

I’ve enjoyed some and been bored by others, but this is shaping up to be a cracking good yarn (“Swain Fostri”) and I’m looking forward to finishing it this evening. Seeing as how Altus Press has released a complete cycle of Smith’s Gray Maiden stories (no one had ever managed to get all of them into one book, for some reason) it seems like someone ought to make a concerted effort to get these Swain stories packaged up.

Which reminds me — have any of you seen this? It looks like a few issues of Adventure magazine, the place famous for printing Harold Lamb’s best, as well as stories by Talbot Mundy, the aforementioned gentlemen, and numerous other fantastic stories. It’s sort of a strange, scatter shot approach to printing Adventure, and I’m wondering if it just these few issues they’ll handle, or if more are coming? It would be an affordable way to get hands on the fiction, if so!

Readers Wanted

While I was growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, video games were in their infancy, and most television shows were pretty bad.

It could be argued that most television shows are pretty bad today, as well, and while that would be true, there are so MANY more to choose from that it’s much easier to find some that are entertaining. I’ve honestly lost count of how many channels we have, not to mention the number of online venues, and when you contrast that to the 3 and occasionally 4 channels I had while growing up, the difference is obvious.

Video games, while entertaining and engrossing when I was a kid, just couldn’t pull most people into weeks and months of continued gaming like they do today.

My kids have never been big video gamers, but they’ve certainly enjoyed more electronic media than was available when I was their age. And they read less. I blame part of that on the availability of some quality video entertainment, but I have to lay a lot of blame at the feet of the school system. When my son was in high school the program was so rigorous he had no time left for free reading. When he was reading it was always for class — some shattering autobiography of traumatized modern people, or some other “classic” that will be forgotten in a generation.

My daughter has it a little better, but to maintain her high GPA she, too, spends a lot of time studying. And in the last two years her reading for fun quotient has dropped significantly.

My wife and I were big readers growing up; we’ve instilled in them a love of story, and all four of us analyze story and plot structure and character development. I’ve certainly encouraged them to continue reading. Yet it just doesn’t seem to be happening very often. They always find other things to do with their spare time. Both of them play instruments, and my son is usually involved on some art project (he’s an art major, after all) either for class or for his own amusement. My daughter is super busy with sports activities after school in addition to the school work.

I’ve sort of resigned myself, at this point, to the fact neither of them are ever going to read as much as I have, and it saddens me. I’ve thought about applying some rationing to the situation (you can only do THAT if you read this much), but both of them are actually quite balanced with their consumption of alternate entertainment sources. It would be different if they were binge watching movies or shows or constantly playing video games.

Part of the change in the amount they read has to be due to the increase in decent media entertainment. But I am absolutely convinced that the state school system has its head up some place unmentionable in regards to turning kids into readers. I probably would have ended up loving reading anyway, but that natural inclination was definitely fostered by the long lost tradition of English teachers providing long lists of books to choose from to read for class credit, some of which were full of adventure rather than angst and important lessons about togetherness. I discovered that good adventure stories had that stuff in them anyway.

If my kids, coming from a family that loves storytelling and reading, aren’t reading that much, what’s happening in other families? Are we going to see fewer and fewer readers in years to come? I worry. And I worry that I’m trying to master a dying art form.

Identity Thievery

Right before the end of the year in 2014 my wife and I went shopping at a department store and took advantage of an after Christmas sale to get her a necklace. It wasn’t tremendously expensive (I think it was under 50 dollars) but when the clerk asked if we wanted to save fifteen additional percent by opening up a store credit card, we said sure.

And that was our mistake. We weren’t to learn about the mistake for many months, and we’re still paying for it.

An employee at the department store’s call center had a very similar name to my wife’s, which apparently led her to believe she could steal my wife’s identity. With my wife’s information this stranger proceeded to buy two new cars and then went on a credit card rampage, signing up for whatever she could lay hands on. I was a little confused when I started receiving phone calls during the day in early 2015 asking if we had opened credit cards, but they sounded so much like phishing attempts (they usually asked for our personal data) I didn’t think the people I was speaking with were real company representatives.

Very long story short, my wife had to spend a really long time filling out forms and contacting various companies to get her name cleared. And now we’ve twice driven to Cincinnati (four hours away) first to testify in a hearing and then at a grand jury so that the identity thief gets put away.

You see, she didn’t get to enjoy any of her thefts for long because it wasn’t a very good plan. She just thought she had access to free money via this assumed alias, and it very quickly caught up with her. All she did was spend a lot of other people’s money and cause a lot of headache for herself and a bunch of other people. Including my amazing wife. Now she’s headed to jail for years. Bad for her, bad for us, bad for the car companies and credit card people.

On the upside, the detective working the case in Ohio is a really nice fellow, and, as it happens, we’ve had a very pleasant experience dealing with everyone in the Ohio justice system from judge to prosecutors to bailiffs to clerks. Those we’ve met have been good natured, hard working, intelligent, and determined. It’s honestly been a pleasure getting to meet them. And my wife and I have been trying to make the best of the situation — as we’ve had to be in Cincinnati early in the morning twice now, we just drive over the night before, each time eating at a nice restaurant on the way there and on the way home. This last time we had most of a day in Cincinnati, wandering around and visiting shops.

I’d still trade it all away by simply refusing that store credit card completely so we didn’t have this hassle, but we’ve been having some success making lemonade from the lemons. Soon it will all be over. I realized as I shook hands with the detective yesterday that I’d probably never see him again, which was a little sad. It’s nice to meet good people.

Conan RPG

I’m really torn. Have you seen this? It’s already blown through its initial funding AND a couple of stretch goals and it’s just launched.

The trailer looks great. The people involved are top-notch, and some of them are my friends. Given my love for the Hyborian Age, it seems like a no-brainer… but I have SO many game systems already, some of which emulate a sword-and-sorcery vibe quite well, AND while I would love to play in such a game, I’m not sure that any of the people I game with are even half in love with the setting and character as much as I am, particularly my wife. I love her madly, but she has little appreciation for Conan or REH. And that means this game would probably end up as a glorious shelf decoration.

My other worry is that If I do sign on just so I can have this great looking book on my shelf, I’ll feel compelled to buy all the other books as well, and I’m  leery of falling into that particular pit.

Have any of you out there played the system it’s using? I’d be curious to hear your opinions on it.