Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 6

Speeding Along

As I make final choices for the contents of the third issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull I took a couple of weeks off novel writing and have been working furiously on some short stories. Between books is about the only time I have anymore to draft short fiction. I’d thought I might get three or four, but one of them proved a really tough not to crack, and took me down multiple dead ends and many false starts. But yesterday I finally finished a draft of the third (chronologically) Hanuvar story. I’m nearly done revising a fourth, although there’s a rough of a fifth on my computer as well. Those last two don’t fall into the same chronological sequence.

I’d hoped to finish a new Dabir and Asim story that’s about two thirds complete, but it may have to wait for another break. It’s time to get to work outlining the third novel of my new trilogy, and it’s just about time to start gearing up for the big promotional push on book 1. Ugh. Promotions.

Today, though, I take a rare day off. Seems like every day lately, even weekends, I’ve had lots of work. Not that I mind the work. I just haven’t been able to game. In just a few minutes my friend Dean Brown, all around great guy and talented game designer (B-17 Leader is his) is coming by for a visit. Seems like I’ve known him for years now, but we’ve never met in person. We’re going to take a day and just wargame. Should be a grand time!

Revisiting Some Sword-And-Sorcery

As I work away on various projects, I thought I’d link back to some earlier posts.

First, having just re-read “Queen of the Black Coast,” I recently revisited observations Bill Ward and I had about an earlier re-read. Bill knocked this one out of the park.

Second, Bill and I looked at a great Brackett story, “The Moon That Vanished.” We’d meant to analyze more, but we’ve both gotten pretty busy.

Lastly, here’s a post I penned back in 2013 discussing and contrasting the way Jack Vance and Robert E. Howard depicted women in their fiction. I don’t want to spoil the post, but I have to say that after binge reading a huge amount of Vancian fiction I hold even more strongly to my conclusions, and came away with some rather icky observations about some plot preferences Vance liked to return to again and again. And I don’t think they were employed, like some Robert E. Howard features, because he knew it would get him a cover. (If you’re not in the know, REH figured out that if he wanted a cover illustration for Weird Tales, the editor would be highly inclined to give him one if he put a whipping scene in the story. I can’t say for sure whether that actually meant more sales, or if it’s something that editor really enjoyed.) For all that I love Vance’s amazing world and culture building, he repeatedly has young women, just barely mature, being raped. Sometimes it’s depicted as “lighthearted” and one time it preceded the woman’s death.

Solitaire Gaming

I haven’t discussed solitaire boardgames in a while, mostly because I’ve been far too busy to play them.

But my copy of Corsair Leader, courtesy of a Kickstarter campaign I joined, is finally here. It’s been a blast looking through all the pieces and starting my rules skim. While cleaning various parts of the house I’ve listened to some reviews and half-watched some playthroughs. I hope to be able to try it out soon.

I also stumbled onto some really nice video overviews of solitaire wargames courtesy of The Player’s Aid. Here’s a link to their discussion of simpler solitaire wargames, and here’s a link to more complex ones. They discuss a lot of games I like, own, or have owned, or am interested in owning.

They don’t discuss my three favorites, Ambush!, B-17 Leader, and Lock ‘n Load Tactical. But there are SO many solitaire games available these days that they couldn’t possibly cover them all (and Ambush! is long out of print anyway). We’re really in a boardgame renaissance right now, and that includes solitaire games.

Perilous Momentum

An Iconic Frank Frazetta painting of Conan.

At long last the official web page of the new book imprint I work for has launched, although it’s more of a starter page. There are ambitious plans afoot for what the web site will contain. You can see the beginnings of it here, and if you click around you’ll find a brilliant essay by the brilliant Bill Ward. He’s written a number of essays for the site, and so has the equally brilliant Ryan Harvey, but in its primal form the web site is only showing a few pieces. Nor does it permit comments on the article page, but it will eventually.

You can also see an excerpt from John Chris Hocking’s second Conan novel, Conan and the Living Plague.

While many with the imprint are in Frankfurt this week, I’m editing some more Conan work. And I’m also revisiting some Conan pastiche. I’d never read Conan and the Grim Grey God by Sean Moore all the way through, and you know what, it’s pretty good. I don’t think he quite got some of the feel right, but he comes really, really close. This one of his is definitely going on my best of pastiche list. If the poor fellow hadn’t died so young I’d definitely be pushing to reach out to him for more work.

 

 

Philosophical Conundrums

As I was working in the yard earlier this week, I began to ponder an important philosophical question.

Fortunately, They Might Be Giants had the answer.

 

Magician’s Skull 2

I’m pretty much busy night and day these days. I’m not complaining, because I’m having an absolute blast with all this writing and editing. But I haven’t quite figured out how to fit in time to update the blog regularly. My new theory is that I’ll try to prep stuff on the weekends, so we’ll see how that works. I still have a couple of more interviews with writers from Tales From the Magician’s Skull to take live.

Speaking of the skull, issue 2 hasn’t gotten many reviews. I’m not sure what’s up with that. But here’s a glowing one that just went live over at Black Gate, courtesy of Fletcher Vredenburgh.

Here’s the kickstarter for a new game by the talented (and award-winning) Sarah Newton, kind of a Dying Earth sort of thing that looks waaaay cool. I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of Sarah’s work, which is always loaded with clever plot hooks and fascinating backgrounds.

And my old friend, that brilliant essayist and award-winning short story writer Ryan Harvey, has a kindle short story just right for a cool October evening.

Shhh. Don’t tell anyone, especially the Skull, who doesn’t want to spread the news yet, but I’m working away on issue 3 of Tales From the Magician’s Skull.

Now I must away. I have tales to write and tales to edit…

Heroes of Normandy

At some point late last year I’m sure I mentioned another secret project I was working on. At long last I can unveil it.

Regular visitors are no doubt aware that the Lock ‘n Load Tactical series of games is among my favorites. Well, I was contacted by Lock ‘n Load Director of Operations David Heath early last year about the feasibility of writing some stories utilizing some of the characters from the game.

I had never, ever, contemplated writing stories set in World War II, but David was persistent, and a super nice guy, and the publisher of one of my absolute favorite games, so I decided to try. And I had a blast. Things were made a little simpler for me, research wise, because I’d been on a huge WWII reading kick. The timing couldn’t have been better because scores of facts were still fresh in my mind. Who knew that by reading for pleasure I’d actually been laying a lot of ground work for future fiction?

Once I’d written one short story to my satisfaction (I wanted to make sure I could pull one off before signing on for more) we started pulling in more writers, starting with my friend Martin Page. He ended up contributing two stories to the volume, and introduced me to Tim Chant, who wrote another. Dave brought in writer Scott Parino and editor Hans Korting, who was a tremendous aid in making sure we had all the details right. For instance, in my third story in the volume I had the wrong sort of plane strafing my heroes. Sure, it was from the right era, but it would never have been flying at dusk. Hans knew his stuff.

Here it is, Heroes of Normandy, The Untold Stories. I’m really proud of how well this one turned out. I think we’ve generated some really strong tales. It’s available through the usual channels as a paperback. Or if you play Lock ‘n Load Tactical, you can get it packaged with a map and scenario booklet so you can play out some of the events that happens to the characters in the story! That version is available through the Lock ‘n Load site, here. (Keep in mind that unless you already own the Heroes of Normandy game this expansion won’t enable you to play anything!)

For the Killing of Kings

Look what turned up on my porch the other day!

I now have 20, count them, 20, Advanced Reader Copies of my new book, coming to stores near you in February of 2019!

Advanced Reader Copies are a finite resource I use to seek out blurbs and reviews. If you are a reviewer, or know anyone with powerful review mojo, please drop me a line, because I need to start spreading word about the new book!

For the Killing of Kings Preorder

I’d like to thank Jennifer Donovan at St. Martin’s for clearing up the issue at Amazon with the pre-order button on my upcoming novel, For the Killing of Kings, and Mick and Troy and others for keeping me informed about that button’s disappearance. You can find both the book and its pre-order button here.

By a curious coincidence, this week I am reading final page proofs of the very same book. Next to me is a huge stack of paper, and a pen, and a little notebook. The stack of paper is the near final version of the text. The pen isn’t red, but maybe it should be. And the little notebook is to make notes of items I probably should have been tracking all along. The color of a character’s horse, for instance, or the character’s age — sorts of things I’ll really need to know going forward.

A few years ago I went so far as to purchase a program named Scrivener that is really supposed to help you track these kinds of details, but I was already working on the book in Word and didn’t switch. Probably I should have used Scrivener when I started work on book 2… but I’m pretty used to Word at this point. Maybe I’ll use it for book 3…

Speaking of book 2, I’ve tentatively titled it Upon the Flight of the Queen, and I’ve just sent it off to my agent. It will be heading out to my editor early next week.

I actually have some really neat things to blog about, and some more interviews from authors I’ve conducted. I’m just so busy with writing and editing that I may not update the site here as often as I like. I’ll still try to post updates a few times a week. I won’t leave it to the tumbleweeds…

Karate Form

I’ve realized a curious fact about the way I learn katas taught at my karate school.

If you’re not in the know, katas, or forms, are the somewhat dance-like patterns that martial arts students perform to master various techniques. The longer you’ve been practicing, the more katas you learn. Continued rehearsal of the katas improves not just your ability to perform them, but provides physical benefits. Once you stretch every day and run some katas, you’ve definitely performed a workout. But the benefits are greater than this. After a while you notice the stances and practice of balance intercalate themselves into your daily habits. Your reflexes improve profoundly.

For instance if I’m surprised — say a kid’s running past me at a pool — I do a quick sidestep without thinking about it. After learning an upper-level kata with multiple crane stances, which were extremely challenging at first, my own balance improved overall. If I’m bumped, I immediately ground myself into a more sturdy stance. And don’t be the person who grabs me from behind in jest, for you may find me spinning to face you with hands ready to strike. I alarmed a friend (and myself, a little) when she was just giving me a surprise shoulder squeeze. 

An additional benefit is that once you learn the kata, you have to clear your mind to perform it. You can’t be thinking about food, or a deadline, or an algebra problem. You’re making the movements without thinking about them with a sort of “upper level” of your brain. You have to have absorbed the form at a deeper level so that you have “muscle memory” of what you need to do, because you don’t have time to stop and think. You basically enter into what I believe is kind of a meditative state. Your mind is clear of everything but running the form.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I think that’s wonderful for the ‘ol brain, and just one reason  karate is good for you both physically and mentally.

Here’s the curious thing. Typically we learn our katas facing the east wall of the school. At home I can perform that kata facing any old direction I want. But if I’m at the school, I can only run the kata another direction once I have truly mastered it. I realized if I was at home running the form, in my head I was always facing that west wall, and it’s much easier running the form while facing that wall when you’re not confronted with it at at a different spot in the kata. It’s pattern memory, and one of the ways my brain makes that pattern work is by having me imagine, at some level, that I’m always in the spot where I first learned the kata.

Other students, my wife among them (she’s now studying for her second degree black belt) don’t seem to have this problem! Once they learn the kata they’re able to run it any old direction they want.