Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 39

Mirian Raas

Introducing Mirian Raas, the main character from Beyond the Pool of Stars.

Artist Roberto Pitturru perfectly captured the character. What can I say? I love this art.

 

Blog Tour & Book Giveaways

I’m back from a wedding trip into the great north, where for the first time ever I visited Lake Geneva, which, for those of you not in the know, is the birthplace of Dungeons & Dragons.

That’s not why the couple we were visiting got married there, and I might have forgotten to mention it to them, so they’ll probably be mystified about why those mugs I gave them as a wedding gift were full of 20 sided dice.

Kidding — that last part didn’t happen.

Anyway, I’m continuing my blog tour recap. Here’s where I’ve been, including some book giveaways! More to come soon.

1. Fantasy Book Critic

1.5 Fantasy Book Critic book giveaway of Beyond the Pool of Stars

2. Live to Read — also with a book giveaway!

For info on my previous stops, see this post from last week, and this earlier post from last week.

Some of those stops may have chances to win a copy of my new book as well!

Awesome Stuff that Isn’t Conan

Alas, a man-eating ape in a cape absconded with our review this week. Next week we’ll be ready to go with “Rogues in the House,” by Crom.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this grand article I wrote about the awesomeness that is the new Kickstarter for the Savage Worlds Rippers supplement. Victorian horror. Daring deeds. Things man was not meant to know. It looks pretty awesome, and I’ve signed on.

Also, here are three more links to all the places I’ve been on my blog tour.

1. I dropped by On Starships and Dragonwings Monday to answer a few frequent questions about my work.

2. Over at Civilian Reader I talked about some of my inspirations, particularly Leigh Brackett.

3. Bryan Thomas Schmidt invited me over to talk about my writing process.

Link Day

It’s been busy and sad here at Jones central. While mourning the death of an old friend my blog tour has rolled on and on, and a whole slew of folks have been kind enough to host my ramblings about my new book and the writing process. More on that in a moment.

First, I’m very excited to announce the release of a collection of grand pulpy fun featuring the work of my very good friend John Chris Hocking. As you probably know, I think the world of Hocking and his writing and wish we’d see a whole lot more of it. This collection is more than a little on the purple side, but it’s a blast, and Hocking’s tale does a wonderful job of emulating the old thriller pulps without parody.

You can find a copy and read more about it right here.

Speaking of fiction in print, my first Pathfinder novel, Plague of Shadows, is now available as an audio book! Woo-hoo! You can find that here as well as all sorts of other places.

Now, as to those blog posts, here, belatedly, are the first three from last week.

I was over at SFSignal on October 5 talking about my new book and how I tried to find a new approach to writing it.

Stephanie Lorree invited me over to Scribler to Scribe to talk about how I got started in the industry, and you can find that post here.

Over at Little Miss Trainwreck I wrote about sliding horror into my fiction on October 8th.

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “The Pool of the Black One”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “The Pool of the Black One.” We hope you’ll join in!

Bill: “The Pool of the Black One” closes off a trio of lesser Conan short stories written at a time when REH was absolutely in command of the character, but perhaps also a bit willing to sacrifice overall quality for a finished and saleable manuscript.

All three stories pair Conan with an attractive and scantily clad woman, and in two of them she is the object of his rescue. Certain elements repeat to the point where these tales tend to echo each other, and all three betray passages of hasty writing and plot trumping character. In the “Hyborian Genesis” essay at the back of the Del Rey edition of The Coming of Conan, Patrice Louinet explains that these stories were written in short succession, and sold immediately. REH was cracking the Weird Tales formula and, if the result isn’t exactly on par with the best of his work or the best of Conan, he was still producing fun fantasy adventure stories.

Howard: That’s right — they’re still fun. Conan himself’s in top form, even if REH himself is a little rushed. I think Olivia, from “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” is far and away the bravest and most useful of the sexy lawn ornaments Conan picks up to take with him in these stories.

I’ll say this for “The Pool of the Black One:” it never really lets off. It starts with a bang and keeps rolling. Really, from the opening up until Conan looks around the jungle city it’s pretty compelling, even if the scenes with Sancha are kind of gratuitous. Not that I minded them, especially when I was younger, but…

Bill: Agreed, although I’d personally rate “The Pool of the Black One” as the weakest of the three stories despite, as always, there being some great elements to the piece. We have yet another strong beginning — Conan, dripping with sea water, climbing aboard a ship at sea. He interrupts the sunbathing of Sancha, mistress of the pirate captain Zaporavo, and again we are treated to an introduction of the Cimmerian through the eyes of others.

Howard: And let’s not forget that completely badass moment when Conan’s asked how he got here, and he says, simply, “I swam.” And how about how he makes “friends?” That’s actually pretty funny stuff, a point I didn’t realize quite so clearly until I saw it drawn up in comic form.

That said, I think I actually like this one a little more than “Iron Shadows.” It had a better heroine and moments of better writing, but I prefer the pacing of this one, and, honestly, the first half of it has some moments I enjoy more than almost anything in “Iron Shadows.”

Bill: There are definitely things I like better in this story. Like how Conan’s plan to eventually take over the ship from Zaporavo is well telegraphed, and Conan — after first killing a sailor who challenged him with one punch — begins a campaign of winning over the pirates that is fully the most clever thing he does in the story. The reader can’t help but compare it to “Iron Shadows,” where Conan’s attempt to supplant a pirate captain wasn’t exactly met with enthusiasm from the crew. Here we see a cagier and wiser Conan working within the laws of the Freebooters for his own eventual gain.

Howard: Agreed. I love that line about how Zaporavo’s hesitation results in him losing everything. REH skipped ahead in time to tell us exactly what was going to happen and that the character was going to die. These days when I write a line like that people get irritated with me and say that it “ruins the surprise.” Fah. I think it’s a fine old storytelling technique.

Bill: It certainly is, and is more the norm for traditional western drama than some necessity of “surprise.” No one goes to see Hamlet for a twist ending.

Howard: Notice, also, that we don’t get the viewpoint of Conan himself until we’re introduced to him by name, and that Sancha thinks of  him as a Barachan at first rather than a Cimmerian because she doesn’t know better. I liked that REH was keeping the viewpoint to only what she could know.

Bill: Indeed. The “Barachan’s” antagonism to Zaporavo is what leads him to follow the captain into the wilds of an island they stop to investigate. Zaporavo has been spending time with ancient texts, looking for lost treasures, and the mysterious island may be just the place. Conan kills the captain — sensibly in private this time — but when doing so he sees something unexpected, a tall black figure with a white captive. Conan, somewhat unrealistically to my mind, follows the figure out of curiosity, and finds the lost city of the tale.

Howard: And therein the story gets a little lost. The adventure’s fun, but it seems much more clear that it was just an excuse for some mystery, horror, violence, and a hot quivering naked woman. (And why did she have to be naked to swim? Probably just for the benefit of readers.) Why was the pirate captain here? We never know. I’m not sure REH cared. And as to hasty construction, REH didn’t bother to mention that the black man drowning the sailor was wearing a crown until after the fact, something I feel like he normally would have addressed. It’s almost as if he wrote that in as an afterthought and couldn’t be bothered to go back and revise the text.

Bill: My thoughts exactly; I think things sometimes feel a bit vague. The weird elements of the story are a lot of fun, but I don’t think they were necessarily used to best effect. A lost city of green translucent material is great idea — it can’t really be seen as any different than the forest at a distance. The strange non-human race of black-skinned giants is reminiscent of those cursed in “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” and I suspect they are the same people. The weirdness of the pool, the sacrifice that forces the victim to dance with unwholesome abandon before being flung into the liquid and ending up as a tiny statue on the shelves around the pool itself, is great weird stuff. The hinting at the many races thus encountered by the ancient dwellers in the city is a nice touch that helps elevate the scene in the city and give things a nice sense of mystery, before everything turns into a brawl. The climax of the story, with Conan and the rescued pirates racing to their ship ahead of the green ‘lava flow’ of the pool is also a terrific final beat.

But I still think the story feels a bit flimsy in places, a bit forced. The formidable nature of the villains — giants with huge talons — seems a bit undermined by Conan’s ability to take on a horde of them. Conan charging to Sancha’s rescue and coordinating a rescue plan with her also felt like a bit of a reach to me, making Conan feel more like a generic action star than, well, Conan. The city itself seemed only a sketch. There weren’t really any of those grand character moments I look for in these stories, examples of Conan being Conan. And nothing really about civilization and barbarism in conflict, beyond perhaps a description of Conan’s fighting style being based on instinct and perfect physical condition as opposed to Zaporavo’s mastery of technique.

Howard: I didn’t mind the rescue so much, I just wish that we’d seen something more to the city, or learned about the treasure, or what have you. Like you said, the city felt like it was just a stage backdrop against which we saw the scenes being played out. We did get a little bit of a sense of barbarism versus civilization in the description of the terrible giant playing on the strange instrument and making the young sailor perform that terrible dance.

I thought the final moments gave us a slam-bang conclusion. The chase was grand, and it shows us how important having a full crew was to Conan that he makes sure all are up and moving before he himself departs — not because he gives a damn about them so much, but because he needs them to help man the ship. And the final words about enjoying life while he has it, along with the ship and sweet lips, is nicely done.

Robert E. Howard

Bill: In the end I think the lesser Conans feel different than the better yarns because they seem more self-consciously to be telling an adventure story. Stories like”The Tower of the Elephant” and “Black Colossus” (despite its sallets and pauldrons) can suspend a reader’s disbelief into next week, but “Xuthal of the Dusk” and “The Pool of the Black One” feel very much like the artifacts of one person’s productive mind — they feel like stories. Conan at its absolute best transcends all that, at least it does for me and I suspect a great many other fans, and I suppose it always seems a bit unfair to compare the lesser stories to the best ones — REH sets a very high bar for himself and everyone else.

Howard: Fairly said, both about Conan’s transcendence (for I think when REH writes him the character elevates even a more minor work) and about the self-conscious creation of an adventure story versus a tale with sense of myth. The best Robert E. Howard stories rank among the finest adventure stories ever written, and are thick with mythic power. Some of those are Conan stories. Not all of them are great, though, and not all of them could be. Yet Conan himself fascinates even in these weaker tales, and all that we’ve read so far have moments of excellence.

Bill: True enough, even on a bad day Conan stands apart. That said, next week features one of my favorites in the Conan canon, “Rogues in the House.”

(Howard: As an added treat, here’s a link to some great moments from The Savage Sword of Conan. A section near the end illustrates Conan’s welcome among the pirates.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

October Doldrums

This is launch week for my new book, Beyond the Pool of Stars. And it’s only a few days since my new adventure went to press in Pinnacle’s Savage Tales of Horror volume 3. I should be a relentless promotion machine talking about both things.

But I’m having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm.

I went in for a minor medical procedure early this morning and when I returned home I had a message that an old friend of mine had gone in for a minor medical procedure the night before. Ironic. Both things were so minor we hadn’t bothered to tell each other.

The parallel ends with me coming out alive and well. Something went wrong while my friend was under and his brain was deprived of oxygen. He died early in the morning, probably at about the time I was waking to drive in for my own surgery.

I can’t stop thinking about his child, and his sister, and his parents, and his long-time girlfriend, and her little girl, who was like a daughter to him.

And I can’t stop thinking about him and his sly sense of humor, or the way we’d call and crack each other up like a couple of kids at junior high, even though we’re both closing on 50. We’d known each other since grade school, and in some ways we could still revert to that level of familiarity even now. He was masterful at doing accents. Being Indian, he once had me in stitches when he ordered a pizza with a thick accent and asked them to “hold the cow.” He improvised an entire routine that was so hysterical it really should have been put into script form.

He lived on the far side of the country these days, so we didn’t see each other much and sometimes months would pass in between when we would talk. The last time we did so was when he met Sir Paul McCartney. He called to tell me about it in a horrible Liverpudlian accent (the one accent I could always pull off better than him). He was always off doing amazing thing and meeting fascinating people.

He was one of the hardest working people I ever met. He skipped a year in junior high, then skipped another in high school — by that I mean his grades were so good and he was so smart that he got bumped ahead. Twice. He was always working hard, and working long hours. Too long, everyone will tell you. Somehow we kept in touch, though. He was part of my wedding party and I was his best man. We laughed and gamed and talked movies and commiserated about life’s difficulties.

He was a surgeon, and dedicated his life to helping people. He’d been going through a rough patch and was hoping to retire early so he’d have more time to enjoy life.

And now he’s gone. What can I take away from that? Maybe to remember to take less for granted? To try harder to stay in touch with those I love?

But I don’t think there’s a lesson to learn, or some greater plan. I just think it really, really sucks, and I’m terribly sad. And I keep thinking about those who were even closer to him and can’t really wrap my head around how they must be feeling. I mean, if I’m in shock, where are they?

Guest Posts

My first guest post is up over at SFSignal, with more to follow in the coming days. In this one I discuss how I came to write the new book, and a little about the writing process.

In other news, the adventure I wrote for the Solomon Kane role-playing game is now available as a PDF from Pinnacle Entertainment, AKA the Savage Worlds folks.

Seems like I had more to share, but I still have a slew of guest blogs to write, so I’d better get on with that…

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Xuthal of the Dusk”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “Xuthal of the Dusk,” sometimes known under the title “The Slithering Shadow.” We hope you’ll join in!

Howard: By this or its other name, “The Slithering Shadow,” Fritz Leiber once named this story as one of the weakest Conan yarns, describing it as “”repetitious and childish, a self-vitiating brew of pseudo-science, stage illusions, and the ‘genuine’ supernatural.”

But then Leiber also wrote a number of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories that I never really cared for, so maybe it’s clear that I don’t always agree with him. Sure, “Xuthal” isn’t one of the great Conan stories, but I happen to think it’s one of the best of the lesser ones. For instance, I’d rather read this than “Teeth of Gwalhur,” “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” “The Pool of the Black One” or “The Veil of Lost Women.”

Bill: It isn’t really a favorite of mine, but it does have some elements that I’d single out as really good, the description and combat with the Lovecraftian Thog being the prime example. The whole ‘dreaming city’ is a great idea for a setting as well, and I liked the bleakness of the beginning — Conan giving Natala the last drink of water while intending to kill her out of mercy.

Howard: The weakest link in the story is Natala, who grates because she does little more than whine and worry. Her only redeeming qualities appear to be her natural assets, which makes me appreciate last week’s Olivia a little better. She also managed to get captured and whipped, because REH knew that would up his chances of getting the cover, either because of editor Farnsworth Wright’s preference or because of Wright’s belief that it would interest readers.

Bill: I’m not pulp scholar enough to really comprehend the whole need for “whips & tits” on the cover of magazines — but I’ve certainly seen plenty of examples from Weird Tales alone to get that it was part of the zeitgeist. Is it really the undercurrent of sado-masochism that appealed to readers, or is it more like a code image for prurient content of whatever kind? Is it possibly that, in an action story, one that can’t explicitly show sexual activity because of decency laws, having a woman bound and whipped is a way of having an action beat fill in for sex? I have no idea, really, but I’d be willing to bet any of these old stories would strike modern readers as incredibly tame compared to what’s implied in even a PG-13 raunchy comedy of today.

So for me the real detractor isn’t Natala, it’s Thalis. And it’s not so much Thalis’s instant attraction for Conan or rivalry with Natala, it’s the need to whip Natala’s dainty bottom as retaliation for a stab wound (!) while a man-eating god stalks the hidden passages of Xuthal. It just seems pretty stupid in a character that, up until that moment, didn’t seem stupid at all, or even zonked out like the rest of the native population of her adopted city. It feels shoehorned in, even if it does thematically reinforce the idea of decadence and sybaritism in Xuthal. I’d have zero problem with it if it made sense in the story, and I think REH could have come up with something better if he wasn’t chasing the flavor of the moment. Strangely, for me, the whipping feels juvenile, whereas horrible monsters and lost cities and the buckling of swashes never does.

Howard: I’d never thought about Thalis like that, but you raise a good point. You could argue it’s an unnecessary moment, one purely designed to give us a damsel in distress and to show us that Thalis is absolutely no good.

All that said, I think this story is a real blast of adventure right from the wonderfully evocative opening, which is so vivid that I’ve used it to illustrate descriptive prose in some of my writing classes. And Natala isn’t completely worthless — it’s she who gives Conan the waters of healing just before the story conclusion, and she even evokes a measure of unaccustomed feeling from Conan. I suppose she, and perhaps this story in its entirety, are one of the root causes of a whole score of sword-and-sorcery adventures where there’s a mostly naked chick and a grim hero and a deserted city with a weird menace. (Unless you count, you know, Greek myth.) Yet Robert E. Howard delivers even this modest plot far better than his imitators ever managed.

How about that fight with Thog? Man, that’s got to be one of the most brutal battles Conan ever engages in. Thog kicks his ass but Conan still doesn’t give up, or run screaming. I love how the fight shows us his capability when he cuts through a horde of soldiers in the scenes before. Howard did a fantastic job of juxtaposition here.

Bill: The Thog fight was one of the strongest elements, both in the writing and in the imaginative way REH makes Thog very otherworldly and weird. Another highlight for me was, again, how REH hits his civilization vs. barbarism theme throughout the story. Conan, in response to Thalis’ tale, responds that neither his people, or Natala’s, practice the kind of human sacrifice on display in Xuthal. Indeed, try that on a Cimmerian and you’ll get your head bashed in!

Howard: Absolutely. I don’t think I noticed, the first time I read these, how often Howard emphasized this. It’s more and more clear the more often I read them.

Bill: And Xuthal, ancient palace-city living out a long senescence, victim of its own amazing discoveries, its population prostrate before a vile god and wholly given over to dreams and pleasure, is decadent civilization writ large. It is a kind of prison, one peopled by individuals completely enslaved by their own amusements who would never seek to escape. It’s no accident that, in the final scene, it is “soft gold bars” that Conan removes with a “contemptuous wrench” in order to win his way to freedom — Xuthal itself is the same mix of wealth and weakness.

Howard: A nice summation. There’s all sorts of subtle creepy stuff going on throughout, too, although it’s perfectly possible to enjoy this just as a grand action tale. How about those terrible shrieks of Thalis as she’s carried off by Thog? What might they mean? The more you think about them, the more awful they become, feeding in again with what you said about the decadence of the city’s inhabitants. And there’s the aforementioned waters of healing, offered Conan by the woman who cares for him, symbolic of the value of love versus lust. There are a number of other little details as well.

Bill: Natala healing Conan is a nice parallel with Conan giving her their last drink of water in the beginning, and I agree, there’s an implied sexual undercurrent to Thog’s menace which is very fitting for the god of Xuthal.

Howard: Sure, it’s not “The Tower of the Elephant” or even “Black Colossus” but then few sword-and-sorcery stories can stand on that elevated pedestal. I still prefer it to a number of other Conan tales. It’s short, atmospheric, crammed with mystery and action, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s one I enjoy re-reading.

Join us next week for “The Pool of the Black One!”

Beyond the Pool of Stars Sweepstakes and Chapters

TOR.com is running a contest right now to win a copy of my newest book, Beyond the Pool of Stars. All you have to do is sign up in the comments section of this page.

And check this out — you can read a chapter of the book for free right over here!

Once again, here’s the back cover blurb:

Mirian Raas comes from a long line of salvagers, adventurers who use magic to dive for sunken ships off the coast of tropical Sargava. When her father dies, Mirian has to take over his last job: a dangerous expedition into deep jungle pools, helping a tribe of lizardfolk reclaim the lost treasures of their people. Yet this isn’t any ordinary job, as the same colonial government that looks down on Mirian for her half-native heritage has an interest in the treasure, and the survival of the entire nation may depend on the outcome…

Catching Up

I’m gearing up for a big promotional push for my next book, Beyond the Pool of Stars. That means I’ll be spending a lot of spare time writing blog posts that will be appearing in other places, doing my best to convince those unfamiliar with me or my work that it’s interesting and that they need to buy it. I DO need money to buy food and pay the mortgage and college tuition for the first born, etc.

Anyway, I’ll be so busy with that I probably won’t have too many in-depth articles going live on my own site for a while. The last half of this year has been even busier than usual!

Last week I discovered that the Pathfinder Tales Book Club has been reading my first Paizo novel, Plague of Shadows. They’ve now started on my second, Stalking the Beast. If you’re read either, drop by and take a look. If you haven’t, you may not want to read the book club analysis, because they naturally discuss all sorts of surprises and characters that would give the plot away.

Tell you what, if you haven’t read the books but they sound of interest, then you can buy ’em (see the part above where I need money to feed the family and like that) and THEN join the book club…