Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 58

April 30, 2014

Jungle Adventure

fire in the jungleContinued radio silence, as usual, means that I’m deep in draft mode. I go to bed thinking about the characters and scenes I’m wrestling with, I get up, feed children and animals, and then wrestle with the characters and scenes. I’m not really even reading anything right now apart from some research on Savannah, Georgia for an entirely different project.


From time to time I still think about running a sword-and-sorcery campaign for the kids, and I think I’ve decided I’ll do it this summer. Between great new supplements like Fire in the Jungle, Monster Island, Many Gates of the Gann, Curse of the Emerald Cobra,  the jungle hex crawls from Land of Nod (issues 16-18) and old school stuff like The Isle of Dread and Dwellers of the Forbidden City I think I can cobble something together that would be pretty cool with minimal effort.


In September I mentioned a little about what I was thinking in this post. Using those ideas in tandem with the above and supported further by truly excellent world/sandbox campaign style building to be found in Red Tide and An Echo Resounding I think could generate a truly memorable campaign. One to be enjoyed before child 1 heads off to college, and one that, given it would be just the family playing, could be run any night of the week.


I haven’t mentioned every resource I’m likely to be using (perhaps I’ll use a few more Dungeon Crawl Classics like The Slithering Overlord, Malice of the Medusa, or The Sunken Ziggurat, or Frog God Games’ Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti.)


I probably have more than I need, but if you’re a gamer and can cotton on to the vibe I’m going for here, let me know if you have any suggestions for other cool stuff to throw into the mix. For instance, this Sandbox Companion from New Big Dragon Games has rave reviews, is super cheap, and looks like it might be really useful.


Right, well, back to adventuring in the world of Golarion.

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Published on April 30, 2014 08:46

April 25, 2014

Link Man Returns

Copyright Darian Jones

Copyright Darian Jones



I’m still working madly behind the scenes here, so I’ll keep things simple today. Link Man returns with some creepy suggestions today.


First, 10 Famous “Unsolved Mysteries” that are completely explainable. The one about ghosts and the area of the brain was completely new to me — check it out.


Second, and NOT for the faint of heart because this is pretty grisly, 6 Creepy Places.


And this led me to an even creepier rabbit hole.


I try not to fall down rabbit holes on the internet but having read something about the dead zone and Mount Everest in the past and seeing the mention of it in the above link, I ended up spending more time than I should have Wednesday night reading all about it: People who died on Everest. People who might have been saved but weren’t (it’s really difficult to say, because moving around up there is a tremendous challenge). People whose bodies are so high up and impossible to move that they’re landmarks. For instance, the poor fellow who’s frozen to a cave now known by the boots he wears. Or the mummified woman whose body sat for years along the trail, her long blonde hair continually blowing in the never-ending wind. Two men perished trying to recover her body. Anyway, if you want more details, and you may not, click here.

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Published on April 25, 2014 08:30

April 23, 2014

On Resistance and Writing

I spend an awful lot of time talking about Resistance on this site, at least as Steven Pressfield defines it in The War of Art.


Here’s another look at something important Pressfield had to say on the passion artists bring to their work; a little peek into the kind of stuff we may have to deal with.


In other news, I’m deep in draft mode with many irons in fires, so there may not be any lengthy posts for a while. That recent review took a couple of hours to write, hours that need to be spent drafting. Eventually I hope to get some info up the great hard boiled writing of Wade Miller, but that’s going to have to wait until I have a LITTLE bit of time.

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Published on April 23, 2014 07:23

April 17, 2014

Fists of Iron: Round 2

firsts of iron round 2As frequent visitors to my site know, I’m a pretty big fan of Robert E. Howard’s writing. I’m not any kind of a boxing aficionado, but some years back I decided to pick up a copy of The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan, a Zebra paperback with a bevy of Howard’s tales about an American sailor named, wait for it, Dennis Dorgan. We see very little of Dorgan at sea, however, unless he’s just getting off his boat, because all of the tales involve him battling in one kind of boxing ring or another. I never finished the book, so I can’t tell you exactly why I went ahead and invested in the first two books of the complete boxing stories of Robert E. Howard.


Come to think of it, maybe I can.


Robert E. Howard was a consumate storyteller. When I think how much he could pull off by the time of his death at age 30 I ache to know what he could have done if he’d had more years to write. The boxing stories are tall tales, intended for long-vanished pulp magazines dedicated to attract fight fans and they’re thus crammed with details about hand-to-hand combat. A lot of the battles are with boxing gloves and are waged by boxing rules, but some of them are more bare-knuckled bruisers. In the series stories there’s usually not too much going on apart from the obvious, but part of their charm is the main character’s unreliability and inability to see the obvious. Hard as it may be for the uninitiated to believe, Robert E. Howard had a knack for comedy.


dennis dorganFists of Iron: Round 1 was released last year and dealt mostly with serious standalone boxing stories written earlier in Howard’s career. I’ve yet to finish it, although I’ve enjoyed what I’ve tried. But I have read my way through Fists of Iron: Round 2 since my return from vacation, probably because every tale within is centered around sailor Steve Costigan, and they’re more polished than many of the stories in Round 1.


Here’s the funny thing about that old Dennis Dorgan book. ALL the Dennis Dorgan tales were originally Costigan stories, with a name change so that REH could sell them to a different market. Confusing, huh?  REH was a working writer and had to find a way to get stories into as many markets as possible so as to put bread on the table. If that meant changing the titular Steve Costigan to Dennis Dorgan and the name of Steve’s bulldog Mike to Spike, then so be it.


Here’s what you’ll get in Round 2: the first half of the Steve Costigan stories (the second half is to come with the printing of Round 3) and various related fragments that have wisely been left in the appendices rather than mixed in with the complete stories. Series editors Patrice Louinet, Christopher Gruber, and Mark Finn have done an excellent job in the introductions and afterwords to both volumes, placing the stories in historical context, evaluating them, and digging deep into their themes. I typically take some issue with the way editors describe or evaluate stories, but so far these three have been bang on the money with everything, saying just enough in their evaluations to provide insight without actually giving everything away. Once I finished reading a story I always went back to their analysis of it and sometimes proverbial light bulbs lit above me.


These stories are formulaic, a fact Howard himself was trying to overcome, although as he discovered, if he varied from formula too much the magazines didn’t seem to want to publish them. Fists of Iron: Round 2 collects both published AND unpublished Costigan stories, and so you’ll see a trick or a plot angle that was used in an unpublished story used again later, in a story that WAS published if you’re reading the collection straight through. This can, unfortunately, add to the feeling of sameness, but it also provides you with an eye towards how REH worked. By God, if he had a plot idea he liked in a rejected story, he’d plug it into some new story, knowing that the other would never see print. (Likely he could NEVER have foreseen that there’d be a foundation to preserve his works.)


Round1-smallA reader shouldn’t gorge on these, but enjoy a little bit at a time, as a reader would have done if he or she were  subscribing to a magazine where the story would have been but one selection in a table of contents. That way the repetitive nature of the stories doesn’t pound you over the head. Spacing them out a little at a time over the last weeks I found myself looking forward to whatever ridiculous scrape Steve Costigan would get himself into, whether it be fighting for some wild-eyed Texans, battling for his skipper’s ship’s papers, or trying to locate his lost bulldog, Mike, in what is arguably the strongest short story in the entire collection, “The Fighten’ist Pair,” which succeeds best because of an added layer of complexity, humor, and actual concern over what’s been done with Steve’s loyal canine friend.


I don’t happen to think that  everything Howard wrote was gold (EVERYTHING he wrote that was published in his lifetime was written in a short span of years before his death at 30, so some stuff is obviously  going to be rougher than others). I discovered that I was pretty uninterested in a recent collection of his weird menace stories, for instance. Your own REH mileage may vary. I can predict that some of you even with shared taste wouldn’t quite find these to your liking. They certainly aren’t PC, or especially refined, and there are no real female characters to speak of… but then nearly everyone is a stereotype, including Costigan himself, as befits a tall tale.


HeroesOfBearCreekOn the other hand, if you want some great examples of hand-to-hand combat mixed in with some tall-tale humor, Round 2 is a great place to get them. Most of the stories may not be quite top drawer Robert E. Howard, but they’re a lot better than you’d think they’d be, even if you’re not a boxing fan (I suppose that if you ARE, you’ll be super pleased).


I have a large stack of TBR books, some of them quite long, and some of them bound to be impossible to put down. In the midst of too many writing projects I just don’t have the time to read long absorbing works, so it has been a sincere pleasure to sit back with a short Steve Costigan tale every other night or so for the last couple of weeks, enough that I miss having new ones and look forward to the release of Round 3Round 2 left me with a smile on my face. I suppose while I’m waiting for Round 3 I can dig back into my collection of REH’s tall tales about his western hero, Breckenridge Elkins. Another series that’s good for some laughs and that shouldn’t be read back to back.


My final verdict? I am pleased to have purchased the book, and look forward to reading the rest of the series. I commend the Robert E. Howard foundation and the series editors for taking such good care of these neglected works.


 


 

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Published on April 17, 2014 08:43

April 14, 2014

Recent Reads

Click to enlarge. Half of my paperbacks, just east of my desk.

Half of my paperbacks, just east of my desk.



While on the way back and forth to the Virgin Islands I spent several hours on airplanes and even more hours in layover airports. What better time to whittle down my to-be-read stack? Not owning a Nook or a Kindle, I usually don’t take big modern fantasy books, but slim paperbacks, which slide in and out of the carry-on case a lot more simply. And I have to confess that I feel like I’m making more progress if I knock through a series of shorter books. I DO have a large TBR list, after all.


On the way down I read Dan Marlowe’s The Name of the Game is Death,  a riveting noir novel about a guy who’s not quite as much of a sociopath as he seems, set in some semi-tropical places. A haunting and powerful crime drama and character study. Then I tried another Wade Miller, Dead Fall. So far the team of Wade & Miller (two guys under one pseudonym) haven’t let me down. Even their standalones, like this one, are pretty riveting. The mystery was excellent and kept me guessing. Unfortunately, this one had the most “slap you in the face with its ’50s sexism” ending I’ve yet found in their work. Wade & Miller frequently featured strong women, so this was actually a departure for them. I’ll write up a longer article about their work some time soon, because they wrote some overlooked gems.


On the way back I read fellow Pathfinder author Chris Jackson’s Pirate’s Honor and found it a  compelling nautical adventure tale, with strong action scenes and good character arcs. And then, on the final leg (and in the hotel room the next morning — we arrived too late to make the two and a half hour drive  home after a day of plane travel) I read a Ben Haas (writing as Ben Elliot) western titled Brother Badman. It was a little more paint-by-numbers than his later work, but it was still a cracking good action tale with good story beats. I’ve yet to read a bad book by Haas.


voyages season twoAll this reading took place several weeks ago, while I was on vacation. My prose intake has slowed down immensely, as it always does when I’m in work mode.  Huge Star Trek nerd that I am I recently read the fresh release These Are the Voyages, Season Two, a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the second season of the original Star Trek was written, produced, shot, promoted, etc. If you’re not into Star Trek you’d be bored to tears, but if you are, it’s astonishing to learn any number of things, like how hard it was to keep good scripts coming in (most writers just didn’t “get” Trek), how hard it was to get the effects shot in time, and, finally, that Star Trek was actually doing much, much better in the ratings than we’ve been told for years.


Seriously, if you loved the original Star Trek, you should read the book and it’s predecessor about season one. A behind the scenes book about season three will be released later this year.


Apart from that and research on my various writing projects, I’ve been working my way through the second collection of Robert E. Howard boxing stories, which I’ll discuss later this week. I’m not boxing fan, so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was getting myself into. Details soon.


 


 

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Published on April 14, 2014 08:28

April 11, 2014

Site Rules

one more thingI woke this morning to discover that someone had posted a long screed railing against something I rather liked right here on one of my recent updates.


I deleted the screed immediately. Not because I disagreed with it, but because of its venomous tone.


Its author is clearly a newcomer to the site and is unlikely to revisit. In case he returns, or that other axe-grinders start showing up, the rules about interacting here are pretty simple.


Mostly this site is devoted to things that I find of interest, so, in addition to posts to promote my own fiction you’ll find discussion of favorite writers, the technique of writing, wool gathering about my favorite TV shows and genres, and occasionally pieces of music that struck me as interesting, links to the absurd, amusing, or enlightening, and other nonsense. Feel free to comment, civilly, upon ANY of that.


I do not discuss or debate politics on this site.

I do not discuss or debate modern religious issues on this site.

I spend little to no time in discussion of sexual matters, except in defense of women’s rights and same-sex marriage if it comes up in a review of something I’ve read or watched.

I don’t plan to soapbox any of the above topics on this site.


 


cowboybobYou may correctly infer some things by what I enjoy (for instance, from my posts about Cosmos you’d be right to conclude I believe in evolution). You may incorrectly infer other things (I’ve had some readers assume that I, Howard, as am sexist as the sometimes thick-headed Asim, narrator of The Desert of Souls — a man of his time who does overcome his prejudices, albeit slowly). But don’t assume that because of this I must be like that, and don’t come here to seek out an argument with me.


(I see argument, incidentally, as different from disagreeing with me politely on some topic more germane to my site.)


I want NO vitriol on this site. Any opinions must be presented in a gentlemanly or lady-like fashion. When I was a little kid the Indianapolis cartoon show host Cowboy Bob always ended every show with the advice that: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”


I never forgot what seems like a pretty good screed, and while sometimes it IS necessary to say things that aren’t very nice, on MY site, anyone who communicates in an uncivil way gets their post deleted. Repeated uncivil posts will get the poster banned.


Now go out there and have a great weekend.

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Published on April 11, 2014 10:15

April 10, 2014

Dabir and Asim are Audible!

IMG_3615I’m pleased — nay, super excited — to announce that the first two Dabir and Asim  novels, The Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones, are now available as audio books!


I hope you’ll help spread the word. Both are narrated by the talented Peter Ganim, and you can find them here and here at Audible, or through the other familiar places that distribute Audible books. I’ve only listened to brief excerpts, and I really like how he’s handled Captain Asim. Some day I’ll probably listen to more… but, as an actor often hates to watch his or her performance, I’m not sure how well I can listen to my own words being read aloud. Perhaps if I had a bigger head.


In other news, spring has arrived at Jones central.


EllaWe have a little flowering tree in our front yard that is beautiful for perhaps a week, and I snapped a picture this morning with our lab mix Ella running through. Our horse barn is in the distance.


chicksWe picked up a few new baby chicks to replace some poor egg-laying chickens that predators snapped up over the winter. Here are the chicks in the plastic storage bins that currently serve as their homes, with a heat lamp nearby. They have to be kept separate from the regular chickens until they’re large enough to defend themselves. Note that the larger chicks have taken to perching on the rim between the two storage tubs. Baby chicks are really cute, but have to be tended constantly, at least with our  setup. They keep muddying up their water and food because they stand in it. Once you get chickens to adult size, though, you don’t have to do much but set out food and water and collect the eggs. Oh, and deploy dogs who don’t eat chickens (like Ella) to patrol the yard.


KeenaOne of our dogs completely understands that she’s supposed to protect everything on the property, including chickens. The other dog, who’s really smart, just has too high a prey drive so we can’t let her anywhere near the chickens. Here she is looking innocent. This is Keena. We think she’s a husky/shepherd mix, but because she’s a shelter dog, like Ella, we’re not sure. She’s one of the most communicative dogs I’ve ever owned. She’s loving and affectionate, but apparently loves the taste of chickens, or perhaps just the chase itself.


CherylOf course, with a barn, we naturally have some barn cats. One was given to us by my mother when we were talking her out of owning so many. The other is a stray who adopted our barn. She was clearly someone else’s cat at one time, for she’s been spayed. She must have decided she liked it better here, because she’s never really left, and now both dogs know she belongs on the property. The kids took to calling her Cheryl, to which she now responds. She’s one of the sweetest tempered cats I’ve ever met, but she’s also clearly never been a house cat, judging by how she jumps on dining room tables and the like on the rare instances she sneaks indoors.


 

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Published on April 10, 2014 09:01

April 8, 2014

Tropical Adventure

TrunkBay

Trunk Bay, on St. John.



Two weeks ago I set a couple of essays to automatically go live on the web site while I was on a tropical adventure with the family. My wife, son, daughter, and I flew down to the American Virgin Islands and met up with my wife’s side of the family, who’d been several times before. They showed us around St. John and St. Thomas and I tried snorkeling for the first time.


Seeing as how I’m writing two Paizo novels set in tropical lands (and waters) the trip couldn’t have come at a better time. I was taking notes every day (relying on my wife to snap the pictures). I’d actually SHARE some of those pictures except that most of them have the family in them, and as regular visitors know, I keep that stuff private.


One of the highlights was a chartered boat trip on the Take It Easy VI, captained by Dana Paradise and crewed by his First Mate Mary. I couldn’t recommend them more highly. They were pleasant, friendly, knowledgable — and they were great with my kids. If you ever want to head out to some more secluded snorkeling spots you should definitely look them up. The boat was roomy and comfortable. Their site has some great pics of both their boat and the kind of sites we saw on our trip.


vi_mapSnorkeling wasn’t quite as simple as it looked, and it took a couple of days before I got the hang of it — partly because I was always using rented equipment and partly because I was working my legs too hard. Once my wife finally gave me the final tips I needed I really grew to enjoy it.


The islands were stunning. Despite the bright greens in many of the pictures, the islands were somewhat dry — they aren’t as lush as the Hawaiian islands, which I had the pleasure to visit a few years back. I’d like to make a return trip some time now that I know my way around a little more so we can explore a few spots in greater detail. I have to say that I was delighted to have so much fresh fish. My wife’s father and I tried to take in fresh, locally caught fish at as many meals as possible.


Surprisingly, I got a decent amount of writing done most mornings before we started our daily adventures — more than I did in the few days before and after the trip. It always takes more energy than I think to ready the family for a trip, and then to recover from one. On the long plane trip there and back I read a lot of paperbacks, one of which was by my friend and fellow Pathfinder Tales writer, Chris Jackson (author of Pirate’s Honor). I’ll talk more about the books I read in my next post, but I mention Chris because he and his wife Anne pretty much live out of their boat in the Caribbean, and maintain a pretty nifty site with great pictures of their boat and the islands.


 

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Published on April 08, 2014 19:41

April 1, 2014

Crossing the Streams Winners

Normally, it being April first, I’d be pulling some sort of April Fool’s nonsense, but I’m overdue with some announcements so I’m just going to keep this post short and true.


I’d like to announce the winners of my Crossing the Streams contest. The grand prize winner will  be announced soon,  and some lucky individual will be receiving a free copy of a book from EVERY author in the contest.


Here’s how I described what I wanted to see from my contest entries: “In the body of the e-mail, all you have to do is name your favorite sword-and-sorcery/heroic fiction novel/story that has NOT been made into a movie, and explain why it should happen. You don’t have to go into great detail if you want.”


As promised, I chose one winner at random, and another winner who wrote the most interesting explanation. There were a number of entertaining stories, several interesting sounding books suggested to me that I’d never heard of before, and a number of entries that I gave a mental fist pump in agreement.


lockeEntrant Jonathan Hixon was chosen at random, and most wanted to see The Lies of Locke Lamora made into a movie. You and a whole bunch of the rest of us, Jonathan! He’ll be receiving a copy of Stalking the Beast, which I’m putting in the mail today. The work of Scott Lynch and Glenn Cook was mentioned more often than any others as being prime material for screen adaption.


And here’s the entry I personally selected, from Joe Crawford, who requested a copy of The Bones of the Old Ones, which is on its way (and which, ironically enough, is blurbed by Scott Lynch).


He wrote:


Bones-of-the-Old-Ones-contest-win1The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks would make a great film. When my wife and I were coming up with a name for my second child, we were stuck. I remember her mentioning that she liked the name Kyler, and I didn’t care for it at all. We liked Jonah, but the middle name was not forthcoming. I was browsing Amazon to find something to read at the hospital, and I ran across the box set of the Night Angel Trilogy. It was on sale for ten bucks, and had good reviews so I bought it. I was enthralled by the characters, the world building, and the tone of the first novel (all of which would translate well to film). Somehow fate put this book in my hand. Kylar. It was close to the name my wife wanted, so I conceded to the cosmos and my wife, that with a vowel change, Jonah Kylar would be my second born.


Lastly, The Way of Shadows would be cool to show to my son as a teenager, and say, “Hey, that guy has got your name!”


I’d like to thank everyone who entered the contest. I enjoyed corresponding with all of you. I hope I’ll see you around here again!


 

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Published on April 01, 2014 09:37

March 30, 2014

Star Trek Continues with “Lolani”

lolani posterDespite the fact we’ve just returned from a vacation to the Virgin Islands, here at Jones central my children are most excited by the local convention, EvilleCon, which they’ve been attending for the last two days, one dressed as Maes Hughes (from Full Metal Alchemist), and the other as Aloise (from Black Butler). Apart from hanging out with friends and others who love the industry, I think they’ve both been most excited to chat with Vic Mignogna, who they’ve found warm, personable, and passionate about artistic pursuits.


I happen to be a fan of Mignogna’s work myself — he gave voice to Edward Elric, my favorite character in the best anime I’ve yet watched, Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, acquiring the  American Anime Award for Best Actor in 2007 for his performance. But as if that wasn’t enough, he’s one of the guiding forces behind Star Trek Continues.


Regular readers of the blog may recall the last time I blogged about Star Trek Continues and how much I enjoyed seeing what felt very much like a lost episode from the original series of my favorite show. (I likewise blogged about it over at Black Gate.) Well, when my son returned from EvilleCon last night he told me he’d seen part of another Star Trek Continues episode, “Lolani,” which was released in February. Somehow I had missed the release!


lolani kirkI watched it first thing this morning and I was even more impressed with this episode than I was the first. By God, it’s not just that the sets are right — it’s the entire feel. It’s the little touches, from the fadeouts to the film quality to the patented Kirk attack moves… and most of all to the writing and acting. This time out the script deals with some pretty complicated issues. It takes a kind of character who has been objectified over and over in Trek mythos and gives her a voice — and provides the regular cast with a whole host of moral quandaries. I found it, in a word, outstanding. As a matter of fact, I thought it could stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest entries in the original series. Any original Star Trek fans really ought to give it a look as soon as possible.


Later this week, after I’ve had time to give the matter more thought, I’ll try to provide a more nuanced discussion of the episode over at Black Gate. Right now, though, I’m trying to decided whether or not I want to drop by EvilleCon myself. Not to attend a variety of anime-related panels, because beyond Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, I’m pretty ignorant. No, if I go, it would be to seek out Vic Mignogna in person and thank him for helping to bring to life new episodes of the original series, and for portraying the Kirk I remember wanting to be.

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Published on March 30, 2014 07:06

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