Ken Lizzi's Blog, page 47

Blink and You’ll Miss It

Carl Jacobi (1908-1997) is one of the forgotten genre writers, penning weird tales, crime fiction, science fiction and fantasy for the pulps, and later in life for their successors. He’s an author I intend to keep an eye out for when browsing for something new to purchase. Why? Well, I happened upon a short-short of his by the title of A Pair of Swords. It’s a weird tale, from 1933, with  just a touch of the swashbuckling fare I enjoy brought to life with the assistance of an unexplained supernatural occurrence. Classic pulp contrivance; museum antiques, weapons, the King’s Musketeers, an out-of-time encounter. Good stuff.

It helped that I’ve had Alexander Dumas on the brain, second hand, courtesy of Steven Brust’s latest Dragaera novel. This one (The Baron of Magiser Valley) riffs on the Count of Monte Cristo. Brust has done this before, successfully and entertainingly (e.g., The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After.) I can’t say this one has been quite the unqualified pleasure of some of his previous efforts, but I’ve generally enjoyed it.

I like the atmosphere created by cloaks and rapiers at least as much as I do that of chainmail and battle axes or plate armor and longswords. Does one embody Sword and Sorcery more than another? I don’t think so. I suppose Conan swinging a “broadsword” might be more evocative than a d’Artagnan-esque figure lunging with a rapier. But recall that Howard was rather promiscuous with time and place in his Hyborian world. So I don’t see any grounds to claim one fantasy temporal analog is more authentically S&S than another.

Of course, that position could be self-serving, considering the setting of the most recent short story I sold. Well, if I can’t look out for Number One on my own web-log, where can I?

Anyway, does anyone have a Carl Jacobi recommendation? Also, please take a look at Blood and Jade: Semi-Autos and Sorcery Book One. If S&S can run the gamut from bronze daggers to rapiers, why not a .45?

What Would Conan Drink?

I’ve been considering Robert E. Howard’s Conan. As one does, you know. I don’t need to tell my discerning and intelligent audience that there is more to the character than a violent savage in a hairy diaper. But I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts.

Note his eating habits. Conan grabs the biggest haunch of meat available and eats as much as possible. Always. Not just when he’s stumbled in from the desert, half-starved. Always, even when the taverns have food aplenty and he has no particular intention of leaving town any time soon. Conan is a barbarian, raised in an environment that would teach him to expect that his next meal was not a certainty, so he eats when he can and as much as he can. (Is that nature or nurture, do you think? Barbarism may be the natural state of man, as a wise man once wrote, but as this is a question of upbringing, would it not be Nurture?) Would he have tempered this habit after he became king, beginning to see it as a sign of weakness and wanting to keep himself in fighting trim? Or would he maintain his habits and instead keep fit by beating the bejeezus out of his troops in the training yard?

The same barbarian upbringing might suggest Conan would drink beer, having grown up used to the relatively weak beer of a near subsistence-level culture and in a climate not conducive to viticulture. But not Conan. He’ll gulp down a flagon of wine. Why? I think it’s due to a couple of reasons. First is the simple matter of alcohol content. Recall that Conan is a man of gigantic mirth as well as melancholy. What quicker road to both than the bottle? The greater the alcohol content of the bottle, the greater (and faster) the result. (Was Conan bi-polar/manic depressive? Maybe. Or just on a spectrum like everyone else. I don’t know. I’m as much of an armchair psychologist as the next writer, but I don’t have an opinion on this question.) The second reason, I think, is that while Conan may deprecate civilization, he dives into it headfirst. Wine, to his thinking, is the drink of a civilized man. And so he’ll indulge in that as well as other temptations, all the while scorning it. (Part of that mirth/melancholy dichotomy? Probably not. Merely an example of the complexities and contradictions of any character that a good writer manages to imbue with a semblance of life.)

Why was I thinking of this? Probably hungry or thirsty. Or both. But I can say that Conan was in the back of my mind — or occasionally at the forefront — while writing Blood and Jade, the first book of my Semi-Autos and Sorcery series, just out from Aethon Books. There is, I hope, a touch of Conan in Karl Thorson, as well as a hint of the Conan stories in Karl’s adventures. Though Karl Thorson is a beer drinker, not an oenophile. Well, he’s fond of Tecate, anyway, which technically counts as beer; Karl Thorson is a fictional character so he doesn’t have to reflect the tastes of his creator. Not that I mind Tecate: it goes well with a lounge chair on a beach in Mexico. (Though, note that Mexico has upped its craft beer game. If you take the time to look, you can find options that you won’t want to add a squeeze of lime to.)

Can I digress, or what?

Announcing Semi-Autos and Sorcery

Pulp Swords-and-Sorcery stories conveyed a certain esthetic. There was a focus and an energy to them that came through even with authors milking every penny from the word count. I like it. Practitioners of the artform have carried that energy from short stories to novellas and full-length novels. What I’ve wondered is if the esthetic can translate from secondary worlds and mythic history to contemporary fantasy. That is, can one remove the Swords from S&S and substitute modern weaponry while retaining both the driving adventure and the fantastical elements? While working through this, I’ve substituted the term “Semi-automatics” for “Swords.” It maintains the alliteration while holding a conceptual through line, I think.

Not content to merely wonder, I’ve given it a shot. Aethon Books is supporting the effort, putting the first three books of the Semi-Autos and Sorcery series on its publishing schedule. The first book, Blood and Jade, goes on sale August 2. I won’t say that the mantra “What would Conan do?” informed every word. But then again, I won’t say it didn’t crop up during the writing process. Perhaps you might sense a touch of Jewels of Gwahlur. You might also note a hint of Indiana Jones, to add in another pulp tradition. I believe you will like it.

Blood and Jade was previously released as Karl Thorson and the Jade Dagger. Now it has a new home, a new title, sequels, and — an important point to many of us — is available in print. Please take a look. And let people know what you think. Reviews — positive reviews, that is — are gold.

It has been a good weekend on the writing front. Not only do I get to announce a new series, I also received a contract for a short story to appear in an upcoming issue of Tales from the Magician’s Skull. It features my character Cesar the Bravo. If you’d like to check out his previous exploits, they appeared here, here, and here.

Happy reading.

More Research

You can, of course, wing it when it comes to descriptive writing. In fantasy and science-fiction that purely imaginative approach is unavoidable. No one has actually seen a dragon, for example, or a slime monster from Alpha Ceti. But if you are attempting to achieve a certain realism, it helps to have some experience with the subject matter you are describing.

Action scenes often involve gunfire. It can be readily apparent from certain scenes in novels when writers have zero experience with firearms. Though, admittedly, readers with the same lack of experience probably notice nothing amiss. This is one area, at least, in which I can avoid some common pitfalls. 

Experience, of course, can dim. So why not brush up from time to time? I went with MBW and some friends to a gun club. MBW was eager to break in a new purchase. I was eager to refresh the scents, the sounds, and the feel of hurling lead down range and hoping it hits somewhere near where I intend. Since I have a major action scene coming up in my work in progress (a sequel to a series which I will discuss in more depth next week) the timing was fortuitous.

After shooting, lunch and libations are crucial. To this, we added axe throwing. Now, how am I going to work that experience in? Perhaps something with the Franks in the Dark Ages. Hmmm.

A Stay in CDA (Coeur d’alene.)

Perhaps Idaho doesn’t spring immediately to mind as a summer vacation destination. But I had been getting a touch of cabin fever, I’d heard good things about Coeur d’alene, and it is only about a six hour drive from home. So I packed up, got MBW and the HA in the car, and we headed northeast for a mini-vacation.

 Verdict? CDA is a gorgeous summer getaway. Kayak rentals on the vast, tree-girdled lake are absurdly cheap. Downtown is nice. Not, say, Port Townsend level scenic. But nice. The local park is great for kids if you tire of the beach. CDA boasts the NW standard complement of quality brewpubs. And half an hour north is Silverwood, half Six-Flags tier theme park, half enormous water park. Of course, as MBW points out, theme parks are as exhausting as they are expensive. Bicycle and kayak rentals are cheaper and, perhaps counter intuitively, less tiring.

I won’t say I’ve recharged my batteries. I’m only missing three days at the office. But it is nice to get away, and CDA isn’t a bad place to do it. Pictures, you ask? Sure, here you go. Oh, and you can buy my books here, among other places.

It seems I am not destined to be the rightful king of CDA.

Swords and Swords-and-Sorcery

When we think of a sword in a swords-and-sorcery yarn, most often we think of a barbarian swinging a broadsword. We know what that means. We can visualize it. No matter that “broadsword” is not a term of art, and that in fact a broadsword, properly speaking, is far from the heavy spatha or arming sword we associate with our barbarian hero. And that’s fine. Secondary world fantasy or fantastic fictionalizations of our world don’t demand technical accuracy.

But sometimes layering in realistic detail helps build verisimilitude. With heroic fiction, focusing some effort on realism in weaponry can yield benefits for the readers. I”ve found books such as Swords and HIlt Weapons to be not only interesting reading, but valuable resources in my own writing. Not to mention reading. I’m sure there was some point at which I had to look up a word such as “tulwar.” And you never know when a writer (probably a Vance or a de Camp) is going to throw in “anlace.”

As a writer, being able to say that a character is not merely wielding a “dagger” but instead a baselard, or rondel dagger, or — better yet — a ballock knife, adds a layer to the world building, and a touch of flavor. Having someone swing around, say, a yataghan adds an exotic spice to the story. I named the eponymous Falchion of the Falchion’s Company series after his favorite weapon, hoping to imbue the character with some of the quirks of the weapon. Something in his makeup would be lacking if I’d equipped him with a garden variety longsword. (Want to see a cool variation on a falchion? Check out the video of Skallagrim unboxing the “Skalchion” designed specifically for him. But watch out for falling down that rabbit hole of videos.)

Do I have any business proffering writing advice? Eh, the jury is still out. But, for what it is worth, I suggest that when writing S&S, pay attention to both “Ss.” Make the magical or supernatural aspect interesting and distinct. At the same time, devote at least some attention to the length of sharpened steel.

Independence Day 2021. Let Freedom Ring.

Sing it like Aretha Franklin or scream it like Ted Nugent: Freedom! 

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans. And a pleasant July 4th to the rest of you. If I may, like everyone else, quote John Adams on this day of celebration, “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

I am an American. There’s no hiding it, even if I were so inclined. MBW (now a naturalized US citizen) told me once during one of our trips (Europe? Mexico? I forget) that I practically had the American flag tattooed on my forehead. I’m not sure precisely what that means. Is it how I dress? Is there something about my demeanor or attitude that proclaims my birthright? I don’t know, but I can’t say it bothers me. I’m happy to be identified as a USAian. Always have been.

This web log isn’t a place for me to pontificate or espouse my own socio-political opinions. So I’m not going to wade into the muck tidal pool that is American politics today. I’ll just state that Independence Day still means something important to me; that I continue to uphold the values of freedom and individual liberty that undergird this great experiment. I remain tickled that the founding documents of a democracy are much concerned with what the State cannot do to its Citizens, with the unspoken corollary that, since the power of the State is derived from the Citizens, there are things we are forbidden to do to ourselves, no matter how many of us would want to vote for it. Brilliant, and — sadly — prescient.

So celebrate our republic, people. It’s ours if we can keep it. Cherish your freedoms. Fire up that grill. Crack open that beer. Light that fuse. Sing Team America lyrics with profane gusto. Celebrate.

And, since there is nothing more quintessentially American than capitalism, now I’m going to try to sell you something. How about one of my books? You can browse, or I’ll try to push Under Strange Suns. Why Under Strange Suns? That one seems rather popular. It has sold well enough that I reached the top tier of the publisher’s royalty schedule. So I make more from selling copies of Under Strange Suns than any of my other novels. Private school is expensive, and I’ve got the upcoming school year’s tuition for my soon-to-be second grader looming. There, I provided reasons. Compelling reasons? Well, a career in sales was never in the cards for me.

Freedom!

Zigs and Zags

No battle plan, or so it is said, survives first contact with the enemy. Life comes at you fast. Shit happens. Etc. The point is, you cannot expect matters to run smoothly and according to a predetermined schedule. Things change, even as you’re walking out the door on the way to whatever is appointed. Don’t be surprised.

You will be, of course. There is that moment of detachment. “Huh.” There might be a flash of something akin to panic, depending on the importance of the suddenly disrupted event. Or, more often, a frozen moment of mental vapor lock as your mind tries to process the fact that whatever goal it was purposefully directing its efforts at achieving — work, pleasure, a trip to the mailbox, whatever — has been abruptly swept from the table. There might follow various degrees of frustration, annoyance, or even anger. You might dwell on what should have been. Or, you might move on to “now what?”

This is life. It is also the stuff of good fiction. Fiction demands drama and conflict. If a narrative spools out in a predictable way, precisely as the main character desires up front, without a single hiccup, it isn’t a story. Good fiction comes from the upsetting of plans, from the unexpected, from inflection points.

If young Conan slips past the guards, scales the Tower of the Elephant, purloins a handful of jewels, and is back drinking in a tavern in the Maul within an hour, where is the story? Something needs to go wrong, something the protagonist is forced to deal with in order to achieve his goal, or perhaps provide him with a new goal.

So, don’t take these bumps in your road of life so hard. Consider them as fodder for stories. Yes, I’m sitting at home today when I hadn’t planned to. No, it’s not a big deal. But I did need to scrap the intended post and devise something else to write about. Want to offer some consolation? Since my next major publishing announcement is still a bit over a month away, how about picking up one of my previous works? This one, for example, is pretty good, I think.

Glory Road: Glory Paving Incomplete

I have thoughts regarding Glory Road. Don’t laugh; the occasional thought stumbles drunkenly through my brain before realizing it’s in the wrong cranium. Not to bury the lede: I liked the book. That out of the way, I’ll share a few of my impressions.

Glory Road makes for a reasonable companion to John Myers Myers Silverlock. They are not conceptually identical, but they share certain family traits. There is the name dropping, the references, the surprise appearances, the poetry. I might even suggest Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions as a sympathetic work. There is a portal fantasy commonality in both, though of course Heinlein goes to great lengths to portray it as science fiction, employing Clarke’s Law. In that respect, L. Sprague de Camp’s and Fletcher Pratt’s Harold Shea stories might be a reference point, with their instance on magic as a rigorous, though disparate, science. Not bad company for Glory Road, if you ask me.

I do have niggling issues with the book that keep me from placing it squarely in the company of the above mentioned works. I was not hoodwinked by the cover: with Heinlein’s name I knew I would not be reading a straightforward fantasy or a sword-and-sorcery yarn. That said, the glory of Glory Road peters out about two-thirds of the way through. After which we get Heinlein being Heinlein, the science fiction writer needing to provide the background details of his premise, playing around with various social concepts, and opining on politics, both large scale and sexual. And, speaking of sexual: Heinlein the libidinous libertine sounds off full-throatedly throughout most of it. Which is fine, but since I found his actual fantastic action set-pieces so enjoyable, and his frequent paeans to heroic adventure, travel, and joyous living so engaging, so…Silverlockian, that I’d like to have read a book with just that.

But then, it wouldn’t be Heinlein, would it? Appreciate the book for what it is (assuming it is good) and not for what you want it to be. Heinlein is going to wax political. And he does it with pithy, quotable dialogue and commentary. His opinion on democracy surviving only so long as it allows room for exceptional men is particularly interesting. If America no longer allows an Elon Musk to burgeon, what would her future be? (I have my own answer to that question, but I’ll keep it to myself. These posts aren’t intended for polemics. Make up your own mind.)

So, Glory Road. I liked it, but did not love it. I’m glad I’ve read it, and at some point I may revisit it. Your appreciation might depend upon your appreciation of RAH. I generally like his stuff. Thus I’m not surprised that I was favorably disposed to this one.

If you are favorably disposed to my work, or would like to find out if you are, check out some options here, or here, or perhaps here, or maybe even here.

I hope to see you out there on the Glory Road.

Giants. As Advertised.

It really shouldn’t come as a pleasant surprise to open a book and find exactly what the title describes. But, such is my life. I picked up Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 5: Giants based on the strength of the names Manly Wade Wellman and Clark Ashton Smith. Seeing David Drake’s name in the credits didn’t hurt. I had a pretty good idea, given the inclusion of Pohl, Asimov, and Knight — among others — that this would not be a purely S&S/Weird Tales affair. But I expected mostly strong stories, be they science fiction, fantasy, or some hybrid thereof.

I wasn’t disappointed. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Isaac Asimov provides a competent, but forgettable introduction: a few pages of commonplace remarks on giants and myths. But knowing that a Kardios story (one I’ve read more than once before, but still) is waiting for me just a couple of stories in, I wasn’t really paying much attention.

The Riddle of Ragnarok. Theodore Sturgeon. Does Sturgeon’s law apply to himself? If the only evidence one has is this story, I’d give a resounding “no.” This is an odd, but endearing story, beginning as a sort of retelling of the highlights of Norse mythology, and then taking a sharp turn into a new, revisionist ‘whodunnit’ myth — with two unlikely detectives. I dug the new spin, though I wonder what a sense of optimism might have done to the whole “Northern Thing.”

Straggler from Atlantis. Manly Wade Wellman. I reviewed this in my post on Swords Against Darkness I. It’s still good.

He Who Shrank. Henry Hesse.

Pinto: OK, so that means that our whole solar system could be like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being. This is nuts! That means that one tiny atom in my fingernail could be…

Professor Jennings: …could be one tiny little universe!

There you go. Mix in Marvel Comics-level scientific rigor. He Who Shrank is Animal House meets Ant-Man. It is absurd and drags on way too long. But it does have a certain novelty value, I suppose.

From the Dark Waters. David Drake. A Vettius story! Ave Vettius and Dama, a happy inclusion in this collection. Drake provides a terrific sea story of monsters from the deep, of witchery and insanity, all told in a brutal, unflinching manner. Hearty fare.

Small Lords. Frederik Pohl. Classic mid-20th Century sci-fi tale, the sort that could be the basis for a Twilight Zone episode. Lightweight and forgettable, but enjoyable.

The Mad Planet. Murray Leinster. Begin with the good; always solid advice, I think. Leinster can paint a gloriously vivid picture. The bad: He paints variations on the same theme over and over, ad nauseum. The theme? Well, this is interesting in a historical sense, I guess, if you’re interested in this sort of thing. Leinster wrote in 1920 about a greenhouse gas-caused apocalypse. 30,000 years later the Earth is the home of gigantic insects and fungi run amok. Man is reduced to a primitive, pre-tool using state. We follow one such man (Burl) who becomes separated from his tribe. And we follow, and we follow, and we follow Burl on his interminable trudge that serves as a nightmarish (but gloriously limned) travelogue. What plot there is involves Burl getting home to his girlfriend and, in the process, awakening the forgotten instances of the hunter/gatherer. I feared it would never end.

Dreamworld. Isaac Asimov.

Two-page setup for a weak pun.

The Thirty and One. David H. Keller. A fable wrapped in a parable tangled inside an enigma. Your appreciation will vary depending on your mood. I was too impatient to fully engage with this story and probably gave it short shrift.

The Law Twister Shorty. Gordon R. Dickson. One of Dickson’s droll, tall-tale accented Dilbian SF stories. The Dilbian tales make a good bookend to Dickson and Poul Anderson’s Hoka stories — tall alien bears on one end, cuddly, short alien bears on the other. This one is fun, lightweight, and perhaps a tad bit long.

In the Lower Passage. Harle Oren Cummins. Here’s one I wish could have been longer, and handled by, say H. Rider Haggard. As it is, there are some good bones to this weird tale of British colonial India and some sort of monster. But there is insufficient meat. Still, I liked what there was of it.

Cabin Boy. Damon Knight. Good old fashioned SF story. I don’t have much else to say about this, other than that I admire the ability to create something so truly alien and yet relatable.

The Colossus of Ylourgne. Clark Ashton Smith. Asimov’s introductory note to CAS is a clunker, as tone deaf as a retired explosive ordnance disposal expert. Happily, we have the story itself. It is one of his Averoigne stories, which setting some might recognize as the inspiration for the Dungeons and Dragons adventure Castle Amber. Colossus is a justly recognized classic, one I’m glad to have had an excuse to re-read. Evocative, eerie, and inventive.

Overall, I’m pleased with this book. Yes, I invested some hours in stories that I may feel I’ve not received a profitable return on, but the rest more than made up for it. And, unlike some other anthologies I might name, this one actually delivered on its promise.

I’m still sitting on announcements of upcoming work, but if you’d like to check out some of my currently available material, how about this novel of adventure on a distant planet?