Kane Gilmour's Blog, page 2

2017 End of Year Wrap-Up and Mighty 2018 Preview

I had hoped to be better at communicating with readers through my blog and newsletter in 2017, but, well, it was a difficult year, as you’ll see. So instead of the last ten or so blog posts and newsletters that I never actually wrote, here’s one, which sums up 2017 for me and gives you a small hint of what’s coming in 2018.

So what happened for me in 2017? A lot. But more of it personal than professional. Keep in mind that all of the following happened against the backdrop of a legal divorce (with bitterly contested child-custody wrangling) lasting far longer than it should have. Almost two years, for a relationship that had died in 2012. I had already moved on to a new home and a new relationship (with the love of my life and my true soul mate, Michelle), but the legal hassles persisted though 2017. And no, infidelity was not the issue here. Just happened that I met my significant other during the marital dissolution shenanigans that haunted me over the last three years.

January of 2017 was the first of three bouts of head lice for my kids, courtesy of the local public schools. Also, Michelle suffered from walking pneumonia, and I needed to help take care of her while dealing with the kids and the divorce-from-my-ex stuff. My first writing of the year was published in the form of the comic book Island 731, Issue #3 (co-written with Jeremy Robinson and based on his novel of the same name). But…the bad news was that the publisher decided to abandon the series half way through. They claimed low sales. I claimed they did ‘jack’ and ‘shit’ to promote the series and screwed it up at every turn. So it was fun while it lasted being a comic book writer. I never got paid. So I went back to novels and short stories.

February brought unexpected fun in the form of a quick trip to LA with Jeremy Robinson, where we first teased readers about our whereabouts, posting random photos from Universal Studios and the LA Zoo that made it look like we were in other countries. The real reason for our trip? Meeting up with Director Chad Stahelski (John Wick series) to talk about possible creative endeavors, and an invite to the world premiere of John Wick: Chapter 2. The film was excellent and the afterparty was fun. (Yes, we saw famous people.) Overall a great trip.

But it happened suddenly and with not much time to plan. I returned to Vermont just in time to take Michelle in for major surgery that led to weeks of recovery time and her losing her job because her employer wasn’t willing to wait for her to recover from a full hysterectomy. Classy.

In March and April, while all this was going on, my mom was having detached retina surgery in Florida, and there were court dates, lawyers, and car troubles. I had back problems, the kids had doctor’s appointments, and the lice resurfaced.

May brought a fun diversion, holding a three-way Skype conference with Dan Delgado and his New York high school classroom, while they asked me and Jeremy Robinson questions about our writing. Michelle and I attempted to join Jeremy in New Hampshire for Free Comic Book Day, but her car broke down, and we had to deal with that instead. Mine required thousands of dollars in repairs, which I was unwilling to pay (especially if my ex was going to get the car in the divorce, which she did), and so it was, in effect, dead. (*And still is, he noted with a smile.*)

A last-minute plan was hatched with my mom, where I would fly down to Florida, and help her buy a second car, and she would then give me hers. We would drive it up from Florida. Epic road journey commenced. Then she stayed a few days here in Vermont before returning down south.

Summer brought more illness, tons of rain, more car problems, and the unexpected and unplanned packing for moving house. Really quick. From the time we knew we were moving, we had two weeks to pack. A perfect opportunity to be in the middle of the town where all four kids (Michelle’s two, and my two) go to school was something we couldn’t pass up. Because we were half-an-hour away and commuting back and forth like maniacs. So even though we were exhausted already, we packed.

And then she broke her toe, and my architect friend Miccal, who was helping us move, also broke his toe, and we moved, broken toes and all. I had not seen the house yet, and it was dysfunctional in every way imaginable. The only thing I like about it (four months later, now) is its proximity to the schools. I was also frantically preparing for ROBINSONFEST 2017, an event where we managed to get thriller bestsellers Jeremy Robinson, Chris Kuzneski, Graham Brown, and yours truly, along with editor and up-and-coming adventure author Ian Harper, up to New Hampshire for a weekend of fun and mayhem with a group of twenty readers and fans.

L to R: Ian Harper, Kane Gilmour, Graham Brown, Chris Kuzneski,
and Jeremy Robinson

Kent Holloway was supposed to join us, but couldn’t at the last minute, and we almost lost Chris as well, because a series of hurricanes slammed Florida. We did lose some of the participants that were going to join us because of the weather and its effects down there, and my mom came unexpectedly up from FL to seek shelter from the storms—right before I had to take off for the Fest. On the plus side, an anthology was finally released with my short story in it, which should have been out in 2015: MECH: Age of Steel.

During my mother’s visit in September, we had to deal with insurance stuff from the car she had given me having its front end ripped apart on the highway when I was driving it and a tire blew. And then I got sick and almost wasn’t going to be well enough in time for Robinsonfest at all. And then Michelle was sick and did miss Robinsonfest because of it. During the event (which was fantastic, although we all missed Michelle), another of my short stories, “Thick Ice,” was published in a horror anthology, Fearful Fathoms V2, from the excellent Scarlet Galleons Publications.

Meanwhile, all our stuff was still in boxes here in the new, ramshackle, falling down, not-a-right-angle-in-the-building house, a month after we’d moved in (three months later, some things are still not unpacked).

So what else could possibly happen? I had Jury Duty upon returning from NH from the Fest. Of course, I did. There were the bodywork repairs on the car to deal with, Halloween and a child birthday, and finally a good bit of news: Viking Tomorrow, my post-apocalyptic adventure novel with Jeremy was published, and the reviews were great. Viking marked the 4th and final bit of my writing that would see the light of day in 2017.

November was insulation being put into the house’s walls, attic, and basement (yep, it previously had none!), a boy with allergic reaction to the insulation fumes, more court dates, legal wrangles, jury duty and jury selection, and lo and behold: the end of my divorce. There was much rejoicing. But there was also the DMV, a throat problem for me, freelance work, Thanksgiving, my son’s birthday, me throwing out my back and nearly being bedridden by it, me breaking my toe, and my mom deciding she probably wanted to come up for Christmas—even though she hadn’t thought of getting airline tickets, which she probably should have done eight months earlier.

December was a mad rush toward Christmas with the last of the jury duty bits, Christmas tree shenanigans, kids sick again, more freelance e-book formatting that went off the rails and right into my Christmas vacation this past week, the new Star Wars film (excellent fun), juggling kids back and forth between exes, actual Christmas Day with no kids (because they were all at their respective other parents’ homes), followed by successive waves of kids arriving and opening presents, Michelle and I sick again, and a cold wave with sub-zero temperatures and cars not starting.

I’m exhausted just typing that.

You must be, just from reading it.

But all is not lost. I squeezed out some great writing in 2017. Despite all that crap, I’m happy and in love. Deliriously so. My kids are happy and well adjusted—better off with the divorce than before it, which is not always the case with kids and divorces. Money is okay, if not great. The house will work, even though I don’t like it. I can get my kids to and from schools on foot, when needed.

And most importantly, 2017 is over. I spent time this week re-orienting my thinking, rejuvenating my spirit, and planning some things out. So now a little preview of the next year.

2018 is looking like ‘all writing, all the time.’

In January I’ll be working on something with a codename of Project Poltergeist. Why the codename? Because it’s a ghostwriting job. I won’t ever be able to tell you what it is because of a contractual Non-Disclosure Agreement. But it’ll be fun, and it’ll pay some bills.

Assuming Poltergeist is done by then, in February I’ll return to an old favorite. The long awaited sequel to Resurrect, which I’m now calling Ice Sheet (instead of Frozen, for obvious reasons). This book was started ages ago—it just hasn’t been finished. With luck, I’ll finish it in Feb, and it’ll be out before the summer. And if I stay on target, you’ll get another Jason Quinn book in 2018 as well! Plus in Feb, another anthology I should be in (with a story I’m scheduled to type up tomorrow, actually) will be launching a Kickstarter. More about that one as I’m allowed to tell it.

In March I’ll turn my hand toward Project Fletch. Also not the real name of the novel, Project Fletch will be a straight-up mystery novel in the vein of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books or Gregory McDonald’s Fletch series (hence the codename). This one I’ll write under a completely new pseudonym, starting from scratch as a ‘new’ author, and pitching it to a ‘Big New York Publisher’. Around 15% of this story is already written.

April should be fun. In April, I might…just might…be traveling to New York to witness part of a movie being made. More about that if it happens. Sadly, not a movie of one of my books. Just a movie. While in New York, I’ll hopefully meet up with a literary agent and one of those aforementioned Big New York Publishers. I’ll be armed with the Fletch manuscript, as well as a screenplay, codenamed Project Velocity. If I get to talk to the movie’s director or producer, no way I won’t be armed with a cool screenplay of my own. Just in case.

By May all my plans will have been completely derailed by life (See: 2017). However, in the odd event that it isn’t, I’ll spend my birthday month working on Project Phantom. Some of you already know that I have a horror-writing pseudonym. I’ll be putting out more short stories for that author name, and in May I’ll finally write the first novel for that author name—a story I’ve been wanting to tell for some time now. Project Phantom will also go first to a Big Publisher, but if they all pass on it, I’ll be self-pubbing it.

And the latter half of 2018? Project Checkmate will see me assisting Jeremy Robinson in the research-end of him finishing up the Chess Team series with a big finale. Project Hammer will be two short novellas in the series of nostalgic horror tales I started with The Crypt of Dracula and never followed up with anything. The first Project Hammer book will be The Monster of Frankenstein, and will hopefully be released for Halloween 2018. The other is secret for now.

There will also be ROBINSONFEST 2018 (Aug 16-19) [mark it on your calendars now]. We should be able to grab some great guest stars for that weekend, just like last time. Hopefully Kent will be able to make it again this year. Speaking of Kent, mixed in earlier in the year, I’ll be getting back to work with him on Interstate 0, which got derailed last summer—mostly because of my life. Kent, to give credit where it all belongs, has been extremely patient with me on that project. Finally, if I somehow miraculously stay on target all year, then by next Christmas, you might have a third Jason Quinn story—either the next full novel after Ice Sheet, or a novella dealing with a throwaway line from Resurrect, where Curtis Johnson mentions a mysterious incident that previously occurred in the Pyrenees Mountains.

I should also mention that if you’re a huge Jason Quinn fan and you’re chomping at the bit for more Quinn, international bestselling authors David Wood and Sean Ellis put out a great novella this year called Arcanum. The story feature’s Sean’s Nick Kismet character meeting up with Dave’s Dane and Bones characters. And a certain alpine engineer by the name of Quinn makes a cameo appearance—entirely Sean’s idea, and I gleefully gave him my blessing.

So that’s it. A horrible shitty year, but the coming year is poised for greatness. It’s negative three degrees outside, but I’m warm and happy, and about to go on a date with my sweetie. To Walmart, of all bloody places. But we’re so in love with each other that it’ll be fun, and we’ll laugh and have a good time. 2017 is nearly dead, thank God. Here’s hoping your 2018 is glorious, filled with love, happiness, and great things to read. I’ll do my part to get you some of those great things. Be good to each other and stay warm.

Kane Gilmour

(From his Arctic Fortress,

Central Vermont)

THE VIKINGS ARE BACK!

It’s been a long time since I could say “I have a new book out.” But at last, I can. Viking Tomorrow has been in the works for a very long time. I’m pretty sure the first draft was finished at the end of July in 2015. So what happened? A lot, but very little that actually influenced the delay, believe it or not.

For this book, unlike past collaborations, Jeremy and I did everything together. In the past, when I’ve worked on his characters (like with the Chess Team books Callsign: Deep Blue, Ragnarok, and Omega—and even on the Endgame non-fic book about Chess Team), those characters had already been created and already had background stories. With Refuge, I was in on the creation of the characters and the ideas for the series, but most of it came from Jeremy, and I had to tie together the loose ends from his part of the story and from Daniel Boucher, Robert Swartwood, and David McAfee as well. But with The Berserker Saga, of which Viking Tomorrow is Book 1, Jeremy and I created everything equally.

 

I brought him an idea of Mad Max meets The History Channel’s Viking’s, with a female protagonist, and then we batted the idea around a lot, ultimately shifting the action from a post-apocalyptic US to a ravaged and mutated post-apoc Europe, and stretching what would have been one book to three. The result was Viking Tomorrow, and hopefully two more sequels: Viking Extinction and Viking Apocalypse. More on those in a bit.

 

So what happened to slow down Viking Tomorrow’s release? The first thing, which was pretty cool and which happened before the book was finished being written, was Jeremy having the idea that we ought to get covers done with a live model. He found a fantastic photographer, Kevin Ouellette, from Amazing DJ Music/Sounds and Photography in Portland, ME, and we looked through his photos of extant models. We needed someone who looked Nordic, and who fit the part of Val. We needn’t have worried.

Photo courtesy of
Amazing DJ Music/Sounds and Photography

 

I saw this image seconds into scrolling through Kevin’s fantastic model shots, and I knew we had found our cover model, who at the time had only just been named in the story. Britney Holtan was fantastic and put in a full day of poses in ridiculous positions for us, while Kevin took hundreds and hundreds of shots, constantly innovating and coming up with great ideas. In the end we had the shots we needed to make great memes and the three book covers we needed. Jeremy then applied his artistic talents to adding the make-up and backgrounds to Britney and transforming her into Val, our fearless berserker protagonist from the book.

 

Other delays to the release of the novel involved illnesses, me dealing with a nasty divorce that stretched almost two years, and mundane things like shifting Jeremy’s release schedule around to put other books that were ready sooner out first. But finally, the book is out. But will the story continue? That’s up to you.

 

Lately we’ve had to re-evaluate our release schedule and our choices regarding which books to write first (at last count I had around 90 idea for novels to write, just on my own). Obviously, money plays a large part in these decisions. Jeremy recently had to shut down or wrap up or even abandon many of his series, as the standalone novels were selling way better than the next novel in the [fill in the blank] series. I’ve looked at my own sales over the years an made choices designed to pay the bills, which is why no one has seen the sequel to Resurrect yet. (I’m now calling it Ice Sheet instead of Frozen, and it should finally see the light of day in 2018, but that’s another story.) So how can you help here? Well, if Viking Tomorrow doesn’t do really well, then we’ll need to adjust the story from a three book saga to just Viking Tomorrow and one sequel. Meaning we’ll need to condense a lot from two books into just one. And if Viking Tomorrow doesn’t make the grade sales-wise, we might even need to cancel any forthcoming sequels and focus on what will help us pay the bills. What we need is for you to share links on social media, and buy the book, and leave a review on Amazon. That simple. Tell people we don’t know about the book, and maybe they will check it out too. Leave a review saying you liked the book (assuming you did), and more people will be convinced to buy the book.

 

Me? I’d like to see this series soar. I’d love it if the books sold crazy good, and we needed to go back to Kevin and get more pictures of Britney to use on a second trilogy of books, and I’d love it if Hollywood came knocking to make the films or a TV series, and Britney could be the star of that series, with Kevin getting pulled aboard as an art consultant, too. I’m spreading the word however I can and hoping to keep writing these great characters. So check out the description of the first book and nab a copy at the link below, and please help spread the word.

 

 

Viking Tomorrow

Book 1 of The Berserker Saga

Jeremy Robinson & Kane Gilmour

 

Description:

The world is barely holding on. A century after a series of apocalyptic events, humanity is struggling to survive. In the frigid north of Scandinavia, people have returned to farming, fishing, and fighting amongst themselves, living as their ancient Viking ancestors once did. But their days in the world are numbered.

The last tattered remnants of humankind have become barren. No new live births have occurred in over a decade. When the remaining population dies, the human race will end.

When a call goes out to the greatest fighters in the North, men capable of surviving a long journey and crushing any obstacle in their path, a young female berserker named Val takes up the challenge. With her eyes hidden behind red-lens goggles, she violently proves her worth, seizes control of a small band of fellow berserkers, and heads south to claim her prize: the first glimmer of hope for a tomorrow.

Traveling deep into the wastes of Europe, surrounded by dangerous landscapes and the mutated creatures that populate them, they find themselves pursued by enemies determined to stop them at all costs. Attacked from without and betrayed from within, Val fights for the future, and if she fails, humanity fails along with her.

Jeremy Robinson and Kane Gilmour imagine a world that has survived multiple apocalyptic events, mixing the savagery of the History Channel’s Vikings with the frenetic chase scenes of Mad Max, resulting in a high-octane battle raging across Europe with the fate of humanity at stake.

 

 

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks – Review

In 2016, the BBC wisely decided to start animating the completely lost serials of Doctor Who with The Power of the Daleks. While other sources can provide depth about what happened to many of the original First and Second Doctor Who stories, suffice it to say, when they needed space on old master video tapes in the late 60s and early 70s, the BBC simply wiped them out and re-recorded over them, when they thought the shelf life for television shows was finite. The policy is now known as ‘junking.’

As of this writing in 2017, twenty-six serialized stories remain affected by missing either some or all of their original episodes. Many episodes have been repatriated from various parts of the world or private collectors. Some episodes have since been replaced with either fan-made or officially hired animated episodes. If animations are not available, then the original source soundtracks are, and industrious fans have created ‘Reconstructions’ of these episodes using the soundtracks, still photographs from the sets, and where necessary, linking text describing actions that would have taken place in the episode. While I’m grateful for these Recons, let’s face it—they are tedious to get through. You’re basically watching a radio play with a few static images.

So where an animated episode is available, I’ll watch and review that. When there’s no choice but to watch the Recon, then I’ll review that. For a pivotal story like The Power of the Daleks, the first tale of a regenerated Doctor, and the first story of a new series, as well as being a Dalek story, I’m dead grateful that the BBC finally decided to fully animate the tale, even though the whole story—all six episodes of it—were lost.

A few animation houses have now tried their hands at animating missing DW episodes. They all have their ups and downs, and one must not expect a proper animation like the cartoons and anime you might have seen for pretty much any other property. These animations are herky-jerky, and barely animated at all in some cases, using static backgrounds where possible, and recycled character motion. In short, the animated episodes reflect the low budgets of their source material. This one is by BBC Studios, and one would assume that meant it was far superior to those produced by other animation houses such as Qurios Entertainment (The Ice Warriors), Planet 55 (The Reign of Terror, The Tenth Planet, and The Moonbase), or Cosgrove Hall (The Invasion). My opinion so far is that there’s little difference in the quality of these animations. But they are still light years better than suffering through a Recon, so we’ll take what we can get.

I hope that the BBC will continue to animate the missing serials until all are complete or until missing episodes surface in their original format. I’ve long wanted to watch my way through all the older episodes, and I occasionally re-watch episodes from the relaunched show (2005 onward). It occurred to me with the release of The Power of the Daleks that since I was going to watch most of these eventually, and ones I’ve seen before again, I might as well start reviewing them, and if I live long enough to get through them all, I’ll have the material for yet another book. Why not?

So why begin with the thirtieth story and the Second Doctor’s first adventure, instead of with the 1963 adventure that started it all, which is typically called An Unearthly Child? A couple of reasons. First, I’ve watched only a handful of episodes of the First Doctor stories, and with their focus being more on educational programming for children and historical adventures rather than on science fiction, I find them harder to swallow. Plus the time period meant most of the female cast and supporting cast were reduced to screaming—constantly. Another reason was simply the release of Power and my desire to start watching more Second Doctor stories. So Second it will be. We’ll see when I finish watching his twenty-one stories whether I’ll move on to another Doctor or head backward to the First. I’m just not sure yet. But along the way I’ll review the modern DW tales as I re-watch them, and keep up with the current, new episodes as they air.

So on to the review.

My first impression with this Season 4 opener by Director Christopher Barry was that the man had a lot episodes to fill with very little story. But by the end of Episode 1, I felt that was unfair. He was trying to set a mood, and this was the first time that the Doctor had regenerated. We need Ben’s outraged indignation and Polly’s confusion about the event. They represent the audience, and the audience themselves would have been a bit perplexed by why their beloved Doctor was suddenly played by another actor.

Was this a completely different man—an imposter—taking the Doctor’s place? He didn’t even act like the old Doctor. So Barry needed to spend some time developing that, and he does it quite well, with Patrick Troughton combining the aloof nature of the first Doctor with a playful, scheming whimsy. At times he seems completely bonkers, as if even he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But by the end of episode 1, when we discover that the group of colonists on Vulcan have found some inert Daleks and one of the mutants has slipped from its tank-like shell to skitter across the floor and under the furniture—surely an inspiration for James Cameron’s med-lab scene in Aliens—we see that this Doctor is going to finally stop twiddling around with his recorder and get down to business.

And yet, the business stalls almost immediately in Episode 2. Because again, not a lot of story but six 20 minute episodes to fill. The newness of the Doctor quickly gives way to murky political unrest on Vulcan and internecine politics, along with mad scientists encumbered by conscience and fully encumbered by the British Empire’s still-extant-at-that-time rampant colonialism. All against a backdrop of the Doctor wandering around impersonating an inspector who should be granted all access and trying without any success to convince all the humans to stop mucking around with the Daleks, who they believe will be the most useful of servants.

Lesterson becomes a pawn for the Daleks, while thinking all the while he’s in control of them. Polly inevitably gets kidnapped and Ben spends a fruitless episode looking for her. The slow build of tension finally boils over when the Daleks have made their move to generate enough power to start duplicating themselves and building an assembly line of their pepperpot-like shells. The internecine jockeying for control makes a few unexpected twists, and the Doctor ends up spending some time in a jail cell, trying to pick the sonic lock by running a wet finger around the top of a crystal water goblet.

As expected, the Doctor wraps it up nicely, in the last episodes, but the middle four episodes drag a bit. Ben and Polly finally believe they are with the Doctor by the end of it all, and the petty schemes of Bragen are defeated, and a new regime is in place, as the TARDIS crew whisk off to the Scottish Highlands for the next serial.

Overall, it’s a nice introduction of the Second Doctor, although we really don’t see him do that much in the story. But the transition has been made, and we’re ready as the audience to fully believe in him for the second story, The Highlanders, which sadly, at this time, exists only in Recons.

Is it worth your time watching? I would say yes, for a serious DW fan. It would be a hard slog for a casual fan of the revamped series. You’d get a lot more action watching one of the Second Doctor documentaries, like The Doctors Revisited, from 2013.

Does The Power of the Daleks work well, taking into account the time period, the stage-acting approach, and the animated recreation of the serial? Yes. In some cases, where I’ve been able to view extant clips of the actual footage, it looks like the animators went a little above and beyond on the special effects scenes and on the number of Daleks, improving the original material with artistic license, and perhaps fulfilling the wishes of Christopher Barry, who had a very limited budget at this disposal in 1966.

Despite some clunkiness and clear filler, Power presents a strong open for the Second Doctor, and I’ll give it 4 TARDISes out of a max of 5, but that’s adjusting for the time period, and my understanding of Barry’s attempt to slowly build tension into a final boil-over when all the humans realize the Doctor was right all along.

ROBINSONFEST 2017

September 28th – October 1st, 2017
Portsmouth, NH

So what is Robinsonfest, exactly? It’s an author event unlike any other. Started in 2015, as a way for international bestselling author Jeremy Robinson to spend some time face-to-face with his fans, three years on now, the event has turned into a Lollapalooza of Authors.

This year, in addition to Jeremy, I will be there along with international bestseller J. Kent Holloway (my co-author on the upcoming Interstate 0 book). Kent and I were also at the last two Robinsonfests, which we’ve held in Portsmouth, NH each year. But this year we’ll also be bringing some heavy hitters. New York Times bestselling authors Chris Kuzneski and Graham Brown will be joining us. I’ve met Graham once before at a convention in Albany, and he’s a swell guy. Chris, I know from countless e-mails and even phone calls, but we’ve never met face to face before, so I’m looking forward to that!

So what goes on at a Robinsonfest? It’s not as fancy as you might think. Snooty author panel discussions? Not us. Long lines for author signatures? Nope. In addition to eating at some of the best restaurants in the Seacoast and White Mountain areas of New Hampshire, we’ll be taking a cruise on the mighty Lake Winnipesaukee, hanging out at Franconia Notch State Park, blasting the crap out of each other at Lazer Tag and leaving Chris and Graham in the dust on the go-kart track at Hilltop Fun Center, we’ll be picking apples at Butternut Farm, and then we’ll have a low key, relaxed, chill afternoon, where fans can ask all the book-related questions they want and get all their swag signed.

 

And if it’s a huge author thing, why is it called Robinsonfest? Because Jeremy started it. His fans demanded it. They wanted to meet him, and he was cool enough to invite me, Kent, Edward G. Talbot, and Rick Jones along for the first year. The focus of the first year was locations appearing in Jeremy’s books. He led us on a walking tour of the neighborhood where he grew up—which features prominently in his Nemesis Saga series of novels. Last year, in addition to me and Kent, comic book artist extraordinaire Matt Frank joined us. We did a comic book store signing, planned a whale watch (that got rained out), toured a local brewery, and made a last minute dash to Massachusetts for roast beef, because that’s how we roll. Each year it’s been a bigger group, and we’ve had a blast each time. Great food, fun events, relaxed atmosphere, and by the end we all felt like family.

Participants come from all around the world—literally. The last two times Dee traveled all the way from Australia (!), and she’s coming again this year, too!

Dee!

So here’s your chance to meet me, Jeremy, Kent, Chris, and Graham, get all your books signed, and have a killer weekend in New England to boot.

All the sign-up details are at Jeremy’s Beware of Monsters Blog, here. Sign up now, before all the spots are taken! You won’t forget it, and you’ll want to come back each year for more.

 

 

Revamping

Here we are, halfway through 2017, and I have yet to have made even a single post this year. But as you’ll see in the coming weeks, there have been reasons. On the plus side, I’ll have a lot of new things to talk about here on KaneGilmour.com in the coming weeks, and as the year wears on, we’ll finally see some new material from me released.

2016 was pretty well shot for productivity, for reasons I’ll go into later in this year in detail. Right now, it should suffice for me to say that I will be discussing the following items in future posts:

The Origins of My Doctor Who Addiction
Interstate 0, Co-Written with J. Kent Holloway
The John Wick: Chapter 2 Premiere in Hollywood
The Death of the Island 731 comic book
The upcoming two-volume Fearful Fathoms anthology
The Long Delayed MECH: Age of Steel anthology
My Dabblings with Craft Beer
My Massively Overdue Divorce (and the results of that)
The Long Delayed Monster Kingdom
My Next Release, Viking Tomorrow, Co-Written with Jeremy Robinson
A Feature on Working With the Cover Model and Photographer Behind the Viking Covers
The Return of Edward Phantom
Ice Sheet (The Novel Formerly Known as FROZEN)
What’s Up With That Frankenstein Book Kane Was Going To Do?
Deadmares: A Novella
What Is “A Slice of Tranquility”?
A Serious Book Called Serious House
Who Is Ed O’Grady?
What Is A Fictionaut?
Robinsonfest: What It Is, Who’s Coming, and Why You Should Be There

 

There are also some other things I have planned to review along the way, like episodes of Doctor Who, the blockbuster films I’ve seen this year, and some great things I’ve read. I imagine there will be some other things I’ll want to say, too. But that’s a preview of what the rest of the year will look like on this blog.

One of the things I will not be doing on this blog, is finishing my ‘Ass In The Chair’ series. First off, I’m in no position to talk now, am I? But second, too many other authors are writing ‘on writing,’ and they are presenting far better info than I have or would. Plus, the subject kind of bores me now. I tend not to write on here when I have nothing to announce or nothing to say on a given topic. Or if the topic feels like too much work. I figured it would be better for me to spend my time writing about what I’m interested in: what’s coming next for me as a writer, film, Doctor Who, Craft Beer, and whatever else tickles my fancy. I know a very small number of folks—Steve Manke, I’m looking at you here—will be bummed that I’m abandoning the ‘Ass in the Chair’ series, but these new thematic shifts should accomplish the main goals of this blog: for me to have actual content on it, and to bring you here to read it.

I’ll also be streamlining and updating the Books section on the site, so people can actually find my work. The future is looking good, and hopefully we’ll be hearing a lot from each other as the year rolls on.

ISLAND 731 Issue #1 is Out Today

First issue hits your local comic book store (LCS) today. Get the to the LCS. Buy All The Copies. Make me proud. You won’t regret it.

Kickass art from Jeff Zornow. Words by Jeremy Robinson and yours truly. Six-issue series. Second one is out in October. You need to order Issue #2 before the 26th of August if you want to be sure your LCS doesn’t run out of copies. You can still get copies online of Issue #1 from the publisher at their Captainco website, here.

 

Comic Books Full Circle: Island 731

This week I’ll knock something off my lifetime bucket list: Professional comic book published with my name on it as writer. Not my first dabbling with comics, of course. There’s the amazing New Pulp series Warbirds of Mars, created by Scott P. ‘Doc’ Vaughn, a webcomic for which I was the writer from 2010. Doc collected the web strips and printed them up in actual print comic book form, and we sold them online and at Comic Cons, like the big one in Phoenix (not as big as San Diego, but getting there). I’ve also been working on a script for Doc for a printed graphic novel of the Warbirds, for which he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign.

 

But this week, Island 731 will be released in comic book stores, having been solicited and shipped through the Previews catalogue from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc., the sole remaining distributor of comic books to stores across the land. I’ll get paid. I should get some comp copies. And I’ll be able to walk into my local comic book store, Wonder Comics and Cards, in Barre, VT, and see my comic book with my name on the cover, sitting on a shelf.

It’s been a long, strange trip to get here. In fact, the release of this comic book is exactly twenty years after my very first published writing, which was comics-related. In August of 1996, I had an interview with comics writer and artist Howard Chaykin published in the 14th issue of the now defunct Overstreet’s FAN Magazine. (I was not responsible for the atrocious pun article title—my apologies, Howie.) The issue is memorable for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it sports a killer Alex Ross Superman painted cover, and the magazine had no text or title on it. Would have been great if they’d also had the presence of mind to put the frickin’ UPC code on the back cover, but we can’t have everything. The magazine is framed on my wall and sits four feet to my right. In back of the magazine, inside the frame, is a single dollar bill. The first I ever made with my writing.

Twenty years, since I made that first professional writing dollar. I think I got paid around 150 bucks for that interview with Chaykin. I also had an interview with actor Billy Zane published in FAN’s 15th issue, and a longer interview with comics legend Joe Kubert in some issue after 15. I think it might have been 16 or 17, but not sure. They never sent me a copy, and I was moving at the time and missed those issues. Then the magazine was dead. But that first gig—secured for me by writer and well-known SF editor Daryl F. Mallett—was a big deal for me at the time. And I thought it would lead to me finally cracking my way into the comics business and becoming a regular comics writer. Not quite the way things worked out.

Instead, I went to college for three degrees, traveled to Sri Lanka and China, became a linguist and a teacher of English as a Second Language, worked overseas as a Language Fellow for the State Department, got married (and now divorced), had two kids, worked a variety of jobs, and settled in Vermont before becoming a novelist and an international bestselling author. Nowhere in there did I write a professional comic book. And around 2010, I even stopped reading comics, as my schedule went off the rails and I rarely found time for comics reading. I think somewhere in there I submitted a story or two to Marvel Comics, but my dreams of writing comic books pretty much went nowhere.

 

And now, this week, Island 731, an adaptation of Jeremy Robinson’s killer novel, the comic book of which I co-wrote with Jeremy, and which has amazing art by Jeff Zornow, is coming out from American Gothic Press, an imprint of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Island 731 is a six-issue, full color series. The description for the novel it’s based on, is below. Issue #1 is this Wednesday, and then Issue #2 won’t be until October 12th (and you need to get your orders in before Aug 26th). But the series should be monthly after that, until the killer sixth issue is out in February. I hope you’ll grab a copy (and buy a few more to bag and board), and let’s hope this is the beginning of my name on a lot more comics.

Island 731 (the novel)

by Jeremy Robinson

Mark Hawkins, former park ranger and expert tracker, is out of his element, working on board the Magellan, a research vessel studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by thirty miles of refuse, the ship and its high tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm.

When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island…and no one knows how they got there. Even worse, the ship has been sabotaged, two crewman are dead and a third is missing. Hawkins spots signs of the missing man on shore and leads a small team to bring him back. But they quickly discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by the Island’s former occupants: Unit 731, Japan’s ruthless World War II human experimentation program. Mass graves and military fortifications dot the island, along with a decades-old laboratory housing the remains of hideous experiments.

As crew members start to disappear, Hawkins realizes that they are not alone. In fact, they were brought to this strange and horrible island. The crew is taken one-by-one, and while Hawkins fights to save his friends, he learns the horrible truth: Island 731 was never decommissioned, and the person taking his crewmates may not be a person at all—not anymore.

Chateau Gilmour & Dark Discoveries

Been a long while since I made any updates here. Believe me, it wasn’t for lack of trying. In addition to the day job, the freelance work, and the writing in 2016, I’ve been going through a bitter and contested divorce and custody battle. Not the sort of divorce where I need anyone’s sympathy, but the kind where congratulations are in order. It’s been a long time coming. Needless to say, it’s been complicated and has eaten up a ton of my time. I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, though.

I’m now firmly entrenched in the brand new Central Vermont Chateau Gilmour, free of the offending former spouse. It’s an eighty-six year old Victorian duplex (I’ve got one side of the building), and the location is surprisingly quiet for being right in a city of close to sixty thousand people. But I’m at the end of a dead-end street, with a steep tree-covered hill at the dead end, and a babbling brook behind my back yard. Walking distance from the public library, but far enough from Main Street that I don’t hear any of the noise from the occasional New England summer festival or the thumping bassline from some wannabe gangbanger with the lowrider pickup truck with undercarriage neon lights and no muffler.

My personal library, which was previously split between the wall of a rented office space and a tiny room in the former abode is now reunited and happily organized (40% of which is shown here). I’ve got the space and quiet and serenity at last, to be able to spend the rest of the year getting back on track.

 

Lots of great things coming this year. Short stories, a professional comic book series from American Gothic Press, more webcomics, some novel announcements, and with a whole lot of luck, the release of the long delayed Frozen—although I’m seriously considering changing the title on that one now. When I planned it sixteen years ago, the title would have been great. Now it’s got some issues, as you might imagine.

For the moment, the shiny thing I’m excited about is issue #35 of Dark Discoveries magazine, seen here with its spiffy cover art featuring my fellow New Englander, Joe Hill. I was surprised and honored when the editors got in touch and asked me for an original short story (“One Hundred Chances for Glory”) for their Military Horror themed “War and Apocalypse” issue. In addition, the issue also has a lengthy interview with me and Jeremy Robinson, talking all things Chess Team and collaboration. Plus, there’s some cool kid named Joe Hill featured inside, with an excerpt from his new novel, The Fireman. You’ll also find fiction from Nick Mamatas, Ann Christy, A. Scott Glancy, Angela Slater, and Gary Raisor, plus lots of other features and interviews, including some wise words from my friend: editor and author Geoff Brown, from Cohesion Press (who put out the excellent SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest, with my short story “Show of Force”). So pick it up at your favorite chain bookstore on their shelves, order it from your favorite independent bookstore, or stay online and order it direct from the publisher, Journalstone, right here. The issue should be available now.

In ten days, issue #1 of the ISLAND 731 comic book adaptation should be hitting your local comic book stores. They’ll be taking orders for Issue #2 (released in October) right now. But I’ll remind everyone when it’s out.

Shoguns, Action Missiles, and Cartoons in Korea

I came to a love of Mechs and Giant Robots in an unusual way. There were two parts to it. The first was in the late 1970s as a child, when I got one of the two-foot tall Shogun Warriors toys. You might know him as Great Mazinger, but in the toy line, this plastic behemoth was simply ‘Mazinga.’ And he was glorious. Spring loaded rockets in his fist (more on this in a bit), a wobbly plastic sword in one hand, spare rockets clipped onto his shoulders, and—because it was the spectacular 70s, and probably also because Disco was murdering our earholes—Mazinga had roller skates built into his feet. That’s right. Roller skates. Simply put, it was the coolest and most alien toy I had ever seen. And this was 1979 in New York, well after the initial onslaught of Star Wars toys. Star Wars was literally alien, but I had at least been familiar with the film (which I saw at a drive-in at the age of six). When it came to Mazinga, Raydeen, and Dragun—the first few Shogun Warriors—I had no context, and no understanding of Japan or the Japanese culture that had spawned them. I did recognize the fourth Shogun Warrior release at that size, though: Godzilla films had been on TV Saturday afternoons my whole life.

Something else was going down in the late 70s, and the story is tragic. Little four-year old Jeffrey Warren put the nose of his Battlestar Galactica Viper toy in his mouth and launched one of its spring loaded missiles into his larynx. He eventually died, and Mattel, keepers of the Battlestar license, scrambled to recall all rocket-firing toys (while being sued by the parents). Although it’s terrible that a child lost his life, I never then saw it—nor do I now—as a fault of the toy manufacturer. Millions of us had the same toys and didn’t shoot them into our brains. However, Age 4 might have been too young for that particular toy. (The box said for Ages 3 and over.) All I knew as a kid was I had seen the rocket-firing Vipers and Cylon Raiders, and I had received the toys that came after the recall instead. These toys had spring-loaded missiles that simply popped out an inch and came to a full stop, locked in their housings. These were the so called Action Missiles, and even as an eight-year old kid, my reaction was “What the…? This is ridiculous!” It meant no more actual firing rockets for kids, and it meant the Boba Fett action figure from Kenner had a fixed rocket (although Kenner will probably tell you they chose not to do it after internal testing that was unrelated to the Warren Incident). The Action Missile lived on in many people’s memories as an injustice of their toy-playing childhoods.

 

A year or two later, I was embarking on an adventure, travelling and living abroad with my mother and stepfather, first living in Pakistan, then Nigeria, and eventually South Korea. It had been years since I had even thought about ol’ Mazinga, or his firing rockets. In 1983, I was discovering music, and still reveling in Star Wars, as Return of the Jedi was coming out. And after two and a half years in the Pakistan and Nigeria of the early 80s, which were entirely devoid of American pop culture, I was dying to watch some cartoons. And in Seoul in 1983, the US Army’s Armed Forces Korean Network was broadcasting a wide variety of US programming. Thanks US Army, for hooking me on General Hospital, you bastards. But also on their network were English language versions of what Americans know as UFO Robot Grendizer (which was simply called Grandizer on AFKN, if I recall). And there was Star Blazers. And I was hooked.

 

Fast forward to 2013, and Ragnarok Publications invited me to contribute a story to an anthology of Kaiju tales, Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. I was thrilled, and I asked editor Nick Sharps the same question he probably got from everyone else involved. “Heck yeah, but are you going to do a companion volume on Giant Robots?” To my delight, he said, “Of course.” I begged to be involved in that as well.

 

Then came the big challenge. What would my story in MECH: Age of Steel be about? What kind of robot would I write about? It came to me in a blast: my robot would be a mashup of my influences. The vehicle would encompass my love of the Shogun Warriors, Grendizer, and Star Blazers. The story would be set against a morass of ennui and never-ending battle, and most importantly, I had to make a statement about the epic stupidity of the Action Missile. I also set myself one other task for the story—its title would have to violate all boundaries of sanity and have not just one, but two exclamation points in it. “Here We Go! Fight!” was the result.

And I was worried about it. Worried that Nick wouldn’t like it. But he got back to me telling me that he loved the story and that he laughed his ass off at the single moment in the tale, where he was meant to. Then Frankie B. Washington, whose enthusiasm never seems to wane, went bananas on an illustration for my story, crafting a genius vision of King Raidizer, the half-super robot, half-flying space battleship, locked in perpetual combat with a threat from another dimension.

 

But what is it about these Giant Robots and Mechs that so capture our imaginations? For me, thinking about Kaiju, for Ragnarok’s immensely successful Kaiju Rising anthology, I realized that people enjoy Kaiju on a deep, subconscious level. It’s because we can all relate to that childhood impulse to build a city out of blocks and then rampage through it at our toddler size. Compared to the wooden block and LEGO cities of our childhoods, we were the Kaiju, the giant mutated monsters nearly oblivious to the world underfoot, as we crashed ahead on our way. But as we aged, just a little, into the pre-teen years, we want to become the hero, and we still have those memories of trampling Tokyo or San Francisco, wooden bridges flying and creaky towers toppling. As we broaden our imaginations as pre-teens, we know that lumbering monster is out there somewhere, and with more abstract thinking, we can envision ourselves as the pilot of a shining mechanical wonder, armed to the gills and powered by nuclear role playing. And we know we can finally set things right. Even if we have to launch our rocket-powered fists or flip deadly spring-powered axes from our forearms. There will be a reckoning.

 

MECH: Age of Steel is available through Ragnarok Publications’ Kickstarter project here. It features short stories from a slew of fantastic authors and amazing art like the piece above for my story, from Frankie B. Washington. Go get some.

“Travailiant” by Kevin J. Anderson & David Boop
“Easy as Pie” by Jody Lynn Nye
Untitled by Peter Clines (Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters tie-in)
“Ordo Talos” by Graham McNeill
“Rogue 57” by Jeremy Robinson
“Toy Soldier” by James Swallow
“Birthright” by Martha Wells
“A Single Feather” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte & Marsheila Rockwell
“Jäegermeister” by Gini Koch (as J.C. Koch)
“All for One” by Mark Teppo
“I Am the Pilot” by Ramez Naam & Jason M. Hough
“All Together Now” by Ramez Naam & Jason M. Hough
“The Bonus Situation” by Jeff Somers
“Fadem” by Anton Strout
“The Tempered Steel of Antiquity Grey” by Shawn Speakman
“Mecha Mishipeshu vs Theseus IV” by C.L. Werner (Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters tie-in)
“After the Victory” by M.L. Brennan
“The Cold and the Dark” by James R. Tuck
“Vulture Patrol” by Jennifer Brozek
“Here We Go! Fight!” by Kane Gilmour
“The Stars Shine Home” by Mallory Reaves
“Battlefield Recovery” by Andrew Liptak
“Integration” by Steve Diamond

The Death of My Plans for 2015

So one of my readers posted a photo I had created, which I posted at the start of the year. It contained 7 book covers and 3 blacked out spots because the cover art was not yet final. It’s pictured here.

So here’s what happened to those plans.

Endgame was released in February.

And…pretty much none of the rest of it will happen in 2015, except for—maybe—Frozen.

 

I did manage to get three short stories written this year; “Show of Force” co-authored with Jeremy Robinson, appeared in SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest, from Cohesion Press and “Here We Go! Fight!” will appear in the upcoming anthology MECH: Age of Steel from Ragnarok Publications. The third is currently wandering the landscape a little shocked and surprised to have been born, and it’s looking for a publisher.

 

In 2015, I also wrote the last book on that picture—the project that was codenamed ‘Blacktop,’ which now has a title of Viking Tomorrow. The first draft of that book, co-authored with Jeremy Robinson and to be released under a pseudonym, is done, but I’m in the process of making some major revisions to it. The book should be released in 2016 now. That project took a bit of my time this year. The project I had codenamed Verne is backburner now, too, because it was for a large publisher, who will now be looking at Viking Tomorrow instead.

 

Kent and I will be working on Interstate 0 in November, but it most definitely won’t see publication until 2016 now.

 

Because I have more demand for Frozen than for the Frankenstein book, and because I’ve now missed the window entirely for Halloween, Frankie is moving to the back burner, as I try to get the Jason Quinn book finished this winter and released as soon as possible. Friction got demoted from a novella to a short story, and I should get that written in the next month. More about that as it gets closer to completion.

 

I’m also in the process of adapting Jeremy Robinson’s novel Island 731 into a comic book (again, co-authoring with him). More news on that one soon.

 

That leaves Monster Kingdom, which I’m in the process of workshopping with some trusted authors, and which I need to heavily re-write. The Edward Phantom short stories are even more back-burner than the rest of it.

 

I spent a good portion of this year with three different colds, and no work got done during those times. So I’m fine-tuning my focus now, getting the comic done, and the edits on the Viking book done. Then full steam on Frozen, followed by the long awaited collaboration with Kent.

 

It should come as no surprise that I won’t be creating a 2016 picture to haunt me in October next year, but all these projects are still coming at some point. So if one or the other has been particularly intriguing you, be patient with me a while longer. It’s all on the way.