Howard Andrew Jones's Blog, page 62

Link Man Returns

Copyright Darian Jones

I’ve got a lot of good news that I can’t quite share yet, and with a deadline looming I should probably keep things short this morning.

First, the illustrious Dave Gross invited me over to chat about writing and our mutual love of the works of the late, great Roger Zelazny. Drop by and see what we had to say, and then I hope you’ll poke around a little and see what some talented writers have said elsewhere on his site.

Second, a nice review of Stalking the Beast popped up on my radar the other day. Always nice to see. The tie-in work doesn’t get reviewed nearly as often.

Third, a lovely review of The Desert of Souls appeared after its UK release.

Fourth and final, I’ve updated my 2014 Appearances page. It’s about time, as I’m flying to Detroit for ConFusion this Friday! I hope I’ll see a few of you there.

More on Noir

Yesterday I mentioned how wonderful I found the Spartacus TV show. Today I’m confessing that I finally got around to reading Raymond Chandler’s first Phillip Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep. Wow. Talk about lovely, evocative writing. Sure, I’m  just as puzzled as everyone else about who really killed the chauffeur, but what fine, fine prose.

My fascination with noir continues and I’m bouncing back and forth between Hammet stories of the Continental Op, Frederick Nebel stories about MacBride and Kennedy, Marlowe novels, and the Quarry books by Max Allan Collins. Collins is impressing me more and more, sort of the way Donald Westlake/Richard Stark did, in that the more I read of his work the more I come to appreciate how finely tuned the engines are in what seem, upon first glance, pretty simple vehicles. They’re not really simple at all, no more than a still life by a master painter is simply a snapshot of a bowl of fruit.

I came upon the Quarry books at just the right time, because I see that a TV series based around the character is now in the works. Should be interesting. I can imagine, though, that like Spartacus and Justified, it probably won’t be something I can watch with the rest of the family.

My friend Kevin Cook was noting some Zelazny feel to my fiction the other day, at least as far as some of the ethics of my heroes. I think I’d pretty much developed my own style at this point, but when I questioned him on it he said something interesting I’ll get to in a moment. You see, some twenty years back all of my prose sounded like a bad Zelazny pastiche. I imagine a lot of writers end up with sophomore efforts that sound like their favorite authors. Anyway, I’ve been reading a whole lot of noir, so when Kevin said that he could see some Zelazny style character stuff in Stalking the Beast I remarked that I’m surprised he didn’t see more noir, as the Lisette character definitely has a bit of a Parker vibe to her. Kevin then pointed out that Zelazny was heavily influenced by noir himself, and suggested the opening of Nine Princes in Amber owes a lot to a Cornell Woolrich story, “The Black Curtain.”

It’s fascinating how connected all of this stuff is. I feel like my own fiction is growing stronger via cross genre pollination, and clearly it worked for some of my favorite writers before me.

 

Watching Spartacus

Finally got around to watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

It’s just as bloody and sexual as I’d been told… but what very few have mentioned to me is how fine the writing is. Great, revealing dialogue. These are very, very fine character arcs. Reversals, double-crosses, surprises, slow burns… it’s just really impressive stuff. The acting is likewise top-notch, sometimes amazing.

I tried watching a little bit of it with my wife at my side and, alas, she couldn’t see past the stylized violence — or all the swearing. There’s a lot of both. But just as I learned to look past some of the conventions of anime that struck me as peculiar, I just tune out some of the other stuff. Your mileage may vary. It’s pretty manly.

Highly recommended, with appropriate caveats.

Parker Graphic Novels

File under “cool things to read.”

While at the library yesterday I chanced upon three graphic novel adaptions of the Richard Stark Parker books, all done by Darwyn Cook in all the stylish ’60s glory that talented artist/storyteller can manage.

What’s interesting to me is how much these adaptions showcase Stark’s work in a different way — highlighting phrases, for instance, that I hadn’t even noticed were pretty awesome until they were pulled out of the text and highlighted. The panel on the left, from Cook’s adaption of The Score, is a perfect example. Starks’ style is so understated I didn’t catch all that those simple lines implied until Cook’s illustration called it out.

Fantastic stuff. Go read it. Heck, here’s a link to a preview. Go read that.

The First Day

And so it begins. Arbitrary designation or not, it’s one noted by human society, and the New Year is a good chance to pause for personal reflection.

I spent the first day of the New Year with my wife and children. As usual, I woke early. I tried to watch the first episode of Spartacus on my computer (that’s where I’ll have to be watching it, owing to the fact it’s too edgy for the wife and kids) but discovered that it will only work on the Blu-Ray player, which will make watching it a little more challenging. I’m not sure how I’ll manage. I watched Justified on the computer with earphones while the rest of the family was watching an anime I didn’t care for, but the only time I’ll have access to the Blu-Ray by myself is during writing time. Maybe I’ll reward myself when I finish the rough draft of the next book.

After Spartacus failed, I shrugged my shoulders and did some writing until people woke, then we lazed about the house together, made some delicious food partly compiled from leftovers but bulked up by the “by one get one free” lobster sale from the eve of New Year’s Eve, took the dogs for a walk, then watched a movie from Studio Ghibli that wasn’t by Hayao Miyazaki. I didn’t expect much of it, but The Cat Returns had us laughing aloud at numerous points along the way. It was just as weird as Miyazaki films usually are, but less trippy, and gentler. Fine for younger kids and older ones as well. Unlike, say, Miyazaki’s own Spirited Away, which my family loves, but I’m afraid might seriously creep out younger children.

In The Cat Returns, school girl Haru saves the life of a cat, and everything gets weird and wonderful afterward. It turns out that the rescued feline is the son of the King of Cats, and felines everywhere begin to shower her with unexpected gifts, which leads to more and more difficulties, until she must journey to the Kingdom of Cats to set things right. I wouldn’t say two thumbs WAY up, but we all enjoyed it — a very good family movie.

We’ve been on more of a movie kick for the last week or so while the kids were off school, and we all enjoy, usually, the cinema of Studio Ghibli. So far some have pleased us less than others, but the only dud has been Tales from Earth Sea, which fell apart in all manner of departments, including character arcs, pacing, and even the crucial “evil villain’s plan must make sense.” It still looked great.

Owing to an approaching storm I’m going to run errands this morning and write in the afternoon. I prefer the reverse, but I’m flexible. Right now I’m working on part 5 of 7 in my new big fantasy book. I’ve come up with a tentative title, but I’m not sure I’m ready to share it.

I missed my goal of getting a rough draft of it done by year’s end, so I’m now shooting for the end of January. With parts 1-3 and 7 either polished, second or first drafted, and key sections of 6 roughed out, I think I should still be able to pull it off.

 

A Brief Look Back

It’s the day of New Year’s Eve, and I’m answering a vague compulsion I have to consider the last 365 days. I had some laughs, and some good times, and overall I’m lucky, but you know, I’m glad I’m putting a lot of it behind me.

I guess the best thing for me this year it is that I’ve learned to be a little more balanced so that I’m not careening from deadline to deadline. I have more time to connect with my wife and kids. I got some nagging health problems squared away so that I’m sleeping pretty well and have fairly normal energy levels again.

My family and I got to visit New York, and Philadelphia, and my wife and daughter and I spent some time in the Florida theme parks. My daughter got a lead role in a play at her school and my son got a lead role in a play at his, and they’re both doing pretty well in school. More importantly, they’re turning into great human beings who will, all-too-soon now, be moving out of the house. And I think that’s what gets me the most. How fast it’s all shooting by. How much I need to savor what is here before me. I’ve been working so hard on trying to turn this crazy writing thing into a career that I’ve sometimes lost track of the fact the kids are getting older every day.

I’m going to log off. A little house cleaning lies before me, then a trip to the post office, then some writing time. Come evening the family and I will probably watch the ball drop on the TV screen, and then hopefully we’ll just laze around relaxing together on the first day of the new year.

Here’s hoping you and yours get a new year off to a good start.

New Treasures

Between the gift exchange with my in-laws and another with some old friends, I ended up with a grab-bag of books I’ve been wanting to read. You can see them pictured to the left.

Along the bottom row are the last four Parker novels in the matched set now available through the University of Chicago Press. There are actually three more novels about the master thief, but they aren’t yet in print through U. of Chicago. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read all these Parker books, but I enjoyed them so much I actually wanted a matched set, something I don’t usually bother with. My older set is getting sent off to some writer friends who I’m sure will find them as inspiring as I have.

Along the top row are the first two books in the Quarry series, which I’ve been told has some similarities to the Parker novels of Richard Stark, and volume 1 of Frederick Nebel’s most acclaimed noir detective series. Those three books are all speculating, so to speak. I don’t know if I’ll like them or not, but I’m going to dig in and see what I think.

The last book there is by my friend John Fultz, and I’m looking forward to reading it very much. Oddly, it’s the only speculative fiction book that made my wish list this holiday season. I’ve been on a real noir kick as of late. If you’ve already read and enjoyed some Fultz, you should know that the third of the three novels in his series just came out in hardback this Christmas.

There is ONE more book I got as a gift. You know that creepy story by Dr. Seuss about the pale green pants with nobody inside them? It used to scare the bejeezus out of me. It was located at the back of a Seuss anthology, one that included The Sneeches and a bunch of other cool stuff that young Howard liked. If I wasn’t careful, though, while reading those stories that I DID like, I’d flip the pages too far and see those creepy green pants. Well, my old friend Brad Kicklighter saw that someone had published a new, glow-in-the-dark version of that story and couldn’t resist picking up a copy for me.

I still hate those creepy green pants. The odd thing is that they never bothered either of my kids, to whom my wife read that story before I could warn her about how scary it was.

We don’t watch a lot of traumatic television around here. My wife has a job that introduces her to enough emotional trauma. As a result, we’ve never tuned in to Breaking Bad, and I only ever watched Justified when I was laid up after my knee surgery. Well, over the weekend I treated myself to the library copy of the third season of Justified, having to watch it all on my lonesome. What fine, fine writing and acting. My brother-in-law and his wife also loaned me their copy of Spartacus, which I’ll probably have to watch solo as well, unfortunately.

 

State of the Blog

With the year winding down, I thought I’d write up a post on the Jones blog itself.

In the last 12 months I’ve gone from 2500 unique visitors a month to well over 7000 unique vistors a month, and the number of visits, hits, and page views has more than quadrupled. I want to thank you for that — although, judging from many of the links, many of those visiting come from Russian sites COMPLETELY unrelated to anything here on this blog. I still don’t quite understand why that’s happening. But, hey, if you’re an English reading Russian and want to visit, you’re welcome.

The most popular posts are a strange grab bag.

This one makes the most sense — it’s a post about my second Dabir and Asim book. If you’re visiting here deliberately looking for info, I could see why you’d want to know more about my novel The Bones of The Old Ones.

I wrote a brief essay speculating that perhaps I hadn’t given the Kai Lung novels of Ernest Bramah a fair shake because I’d been too locked in my own view of what fantasy required. It’s not even a proper review, yet the post constantly gets hits. (There are other places on the web with far more information about both Ernest Bramah and his Kai Lung stories.) My guess — there’s a videogame character named Kai Lung, or people are just looking up the Chinese name for dragons.

A lot of people want to know about Homer’s Invocation to the Muses, or T.E. Lawrence’s translation thereof, but a lot of them seem to like the invocation to the muses I drafted for my own use, because visitors to this page leave comments. I like that. Anyway, here it is.

“Trenches of Valor” is a nifty little two-player World War I game from Victory Point Games that sets up and plays extremely fast. I think it’s really well done, and apparently a lot of people are curious about it — or about something else with the same title, because this post continues to get hits.

This post about a short essay I wrote going up on Mind Meld is consistently highly ranked, and I have no idea why. It’s really just a blurb that amounts to “hey, look over there, that’s where I am!”  Maybe it’s the cool picture of Spock mind melding with Dr. McCoy from the episode “Mirror, Mirror” that draws people in.

I like that one of the most popular posts is this one, about the Dabir and Asim short story collection, The Waters of Eternity. I think people MAY be wanting information about something else, though, because despite the huge number of hits, sales numbers for the short story collection haven’t exactly rocketed to strange new heights. If you want the collection, I hope you’ll swing by Amazon or your favorite e-tailer, because the collection is under three dollars and I need money to feed horses and children and stuff. Anyway, here’s the essay.

Maybe it’s the phrase  Star Trek that keeps drawing people to this post. Or maybe other people are just as curious as I am about which Star Trek Pastiche is worth reading. The odd thing is that this is just a question page — I asked the Internet at large which novels were the best Star Trek pastiche. No one has answered, yet visitors keep coming to the page. If you’re one of them, why not leave an opinion?

Okay, the last one I understand completely. I found a nifty book that describes the street plan to ancient Baghdad. Clearly I’m not the only person curious about the subject.

Who knows what the next year will bring, post wise? Probably more essays about writing. Probably some new book posts. Hopefully lots of announcements about book deals and short stories and all that kind of thing.

 

The Day After

Battle Academy in action. Be warned — it is LOTS of fun.

With the children off for a few days, I plan on spending some time gaming or playing music or watching movies with them, although, old as they are, they’ll probably want some alone time as well — playing Minecraft, or in my son’s case, playing piano or guitar — so I’ll get some writing in.

I’d hoped to be coming to a close on the rough draft of this first Hearthstones book by year end, and while I’m closing in, I’m not that close. December, with all its running people to appointments and gift shopping and minor home disasters, slowed down the process. Still, there’s a good chance that I’ll have five of the seven parts drafted (some of which will be finely polished) by December 31st, which will mean a January completion date.

Speaking of the looming end of year, my Arabian fantasies of Dabir and Asim have made a few “best of lists” I wanted to share.

First, they’re mentioned over on Fantastical Imaginations. Second, while you’ll usually find detailed restaurant and wine reviews at The Passionate Foodie, you’ll also find some thoughtful book posts, and I made the fantasy year’s best list there.

Strong reviews of The Desert of Souls still roll in from time to time, including this one here, which I discovered Christmas morning. A nice surprise.

Here at Jones central the Christmas elves are buying fewer gifts and keeping things a little lower key. What with the kids involved in so many after school activities and one of them driving we finally broke down and got them phones. My daughter has some expanded archery supplies, because it’s a sport she stuck with. My son got some piano sheet music from studio Ghibli (home base of genius animated film maker Hayao Miyazaki) and a replacement copy of The Lake of Skulls. He’s a little old for it now, but the book was a favorite of his and went missing a few years back, so he read it with great relish Christmas morning.

I believe I mentioned the required home repairs in an earlier post, chief among them being a new fireplace insert for the family room, because the old one just wasn’t safe any more. Its replacement was kind of expensive. Thus my wife and I kept things simple for each other. She received a new phone charger and a used copy of Skyrim, said to be one of the greatest video games yet invented. I got an earbud so that I don’t keep face dialing other people while I’m talking on my old Pantech phone (which also tends to muffle my speaking voice). It has been a sturdy but  fairly annoying phone for years now. Just yesterday after I called E.E. Knight to wish him a Merry Christmas it apparently re-dialed him three MORE times from my front pants pocket.

Extended family got me another Parker novel and the first volume of Frederick Nebel’s MacBride and Kennedy noir detective stories. I already know that the Parker novel is excellent — this is a series I’ve read and loved so much that I’m actually going to the trouble of acquiring it as a matched set. I haven’t read much Nebel, but he’s often mentioned in the same breath as Hammet and Chandler as one of the great detective writers. Unlike their work his has been much, much harder to find until recently, and these MacBride and Kennedy stories are supposed to be his greatest. I look forward to finding out.

Of course, my real presents are  Battle Academy (which continues to be too darned much fun to play!) and my plane tickets to ConFusion, but I have paid for most of that by getting rid of some old stuff on Ebay. Which reminds me, I need to post my ConFusion schedule!

 

Music for Rocking

Whew! It’s been a busy week. The snow has melted here near the Sea of Monsters, though, and the weather is about as nice as you can expect for Indiana in the winter.

Unless you’re interested in a blow-by-blow of day-to-day activities, I don’t have much to report this week. What with shopping for presents and picking a high school kid up half way through the day (finals week), writing has been pretty sporadic.

An English composition student burned a CD of music for me back when I was teaching some years ago. He turned me on to a group called The Hush Sound which I always liked, but upon revisiting, have decided that I extra plus like. Even better, it looks like while I wasn’t paying attention they got back together and are preparing to release a new album.

Anyway, if you like guitar power pop — sort of Jellyfish crossed with Fountains of Wayne — you can visit here, or check out this great song. And as always, Captain Pike is ready to answer your questions with sage wisdom.