Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 24

Good Dies Here

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Everything good dies here. Even the stars.

– Paul Holland

Val Lewton’s horror films have a strange rhythm to them. Where the Universal horror films of that era have a sort of fairy tale quality to them, Lewton’s are more grounded, and the horrors more nebulous. Are they devils of the mind, or the flesh, or both?

Lewton’s 1943 effort, I Walked with a Zombie, exemplifies this approach. His second horror film for RKO, after Cat People, it was directed by Jacques Tourneur, the film blends creative lightning, music and staging to foment a disturbing atmosphere – but rather than one of fear, it is one of misery. The island of Saint Sebastian is a place of beauty that brings only sadness to its inhabitants.

This atmosphere is embodied by the insensate Jessica Holland (played by Christine Gordon), and her family. Holland, the titular zombie – one of only two in the film – is at the heart of a mystery never fully explained.

Is she merely a sufferer of some awful disease, or the victim of a vindictive god? The film provides no answer. Or, rather the answer is tailored to the audience. If you believe in zombies, Jessica can be nothing else. She does not bleed or speak. Like the eerie Carre-Four, who guards the island’s crossroads (pictured above, in one of the film’s seminal shots), Jessica is at once dead and alive. A symbol of the power of the loa, and the punishment which awaits those who transgress against their laws.

But she is also a symbol of stifled hopes and dreams. More than a supernatural horror, she represents the crushing weight of regret. She is the living – or unliving – symbol of the shared culpability of her husband, her lover and her step-mother. A crime that can never be redressed.

She is enslaved to the Holland clan, as the ancestors of the island’s population were. Brought to the island by a neglectful husband, she falls for the charms of his louche half-brother, and suffers for it. Demeaned and abused by both brothers, she makes clear her intentions to leave, when their desperate mother curses her in an attempt to prevent her from doing so. A sad story, made worse by her transitory state.

If Jessica were alive, or dead, life could continue. But like her, the other characters are trapped, unable to move either forwards or backwards. They cannot undo the past, and they cannot move on while Jessica sits, blind and mute, in her darkened room. She is their guilt manifested, and while she persists, they are caught fast in chains of their own making.  And so the characters bend beneath the weight of guilt, both personal and shared.

And finally, in the end, they break.

I’ve told you Miss Connell: this is a sad place.

– Paul Holland

Autumn Thoughts

That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.

That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.

– Ray Bradbury, The October Country

I’ve always considered myself an autumn person. I think a lot of writers do. Bradbury probably knew that.

Smart guy, Ray Bradbury.

Anyway, I find myself coming back to this quote quite often. I’m an autumn person, and most of the characters I write about are autumn people too. All in different ways, but autumn people nonetheless.

I write, and they frenzy forth.

For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars.

They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth….Such are the autumn people.

– Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

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A Heap of Things

I’ve had a blog of some form or another for around seventeen years, give or take. Seventeen years of wrangling with format, purpose and scheduling. By turns, I tried to be professional, colloquial, impersonal and friendly. Sometimes I succeeded, mostly I just flailed from one extreme to the other, utterly missing the mark.

I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that, the other, that thing, another thing, all the things, none of the things. Trying to find the right fit for me, out of all possible permutations of the concept. I like writing. I like sharing what I write. But I keep tripping myself up, aiming for an efficient means of delivering an inefficient product.

In my striving for professionalism, I often wind up reducing my social media interactions to a chore. I do them because I must, not because I desire to do so. I blog because to do otherwise is to risk becoming inconsequential. Or so I’ve been told.

Received wisdom states that a writer must have a blog, a Twitter, an Instagram, et cetera ad nauseum ad infinitum, all updated on a regular schedule so that not one potential customer, one potential fan, goes wanting for content. And so I have them, because like a sorcerer, I must have my tools, my amulets and wands and grimoires.

Power measured via Klout score, follower count, Likes and page clicks. Only it’s not power but a burden. Not armour, but chains, weighing me down. Drowning me in distraction.

A writer must write, but a writer must also update, must hawk and blather. A writer must polish and shine. Cat pictures and discourse. These were the lessons of my forefathers, and I learned them well. Some writers manage to do these things very well. I have come to the conclusion that I am not one of them. Then, maybe I was never as professional as I pretended.

I will still promote, and hawk and blather, but via means more conducive to myself. As to the rest – I’m done with all of that. Out with the old, in with the new. As of now, in this year of pandemic and panic. Finally, and for true.

No more schedules, no more updates, no more regularity save regular irregularity. Just words on whatever subject occurs to me – be it thoughts, feelings, monsters, all of the above – when I want, to excess or moderation, as the mood takes me.

I want to write. So I will write.

Venetian merchants in the fifteenth century had something called a zibaldone. A miscellany of daily notes, sketches and musings. Not strictly a journal, but rather a confused mixture of many things.

Henceforth, this shall be my zibaldone. My hodgepodge, my patchwork. My digital commonplace book. Old favourites and new enthusiasms.

Just a heap of things, all jumbled together.

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September 2020 Update

So, since Aconyte and Ubisoft have made their announcements, I can finally talk about that secret project I was working on – Day Zero: A Watch Dogs Legion Novel. Written in tandem with New York Times bestselling author James Swallow, it serves as a prequel to the forthcoming video game, Watch Dogs: Legion.

Jim summed the book up better than I could in his own post, but I will say, for my part, it was a fun experience. I enjoyed working on the book, and the chance to stretch my writing muscles a bit. Every intellectual property comes with its own challenges, whether it be accounting for the physics of space travel or determining how best to hack a digital lock. Solving those challenges is one of the more entertaining – if occasionally frustrating – things about writing tie-in fiction.

On the subject of tie-in fiction, my Arkham Horror novel, Wrath of N’Kai, came out earlier this month. I did a quick interview about the book over at Track of Words – why not check it out? And if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, or if you’d like to learn more, you can visit the Aconyte Books site for more information.

So far, the reviews have been better than I could have hoped. No one seems to hate it at least, which makes me hopeful that there’ll be future instalments in the adventures of Alessandra Zorzi.

In other news, I’ve sold a few short stories this month, including a new Royal Occultist tale, “They Shall Eat Dust”, which will appear in the forthcoming Weirdbook Zombie Special. It involves disgraced film starlets, stolen museum property and Babylonian curses – good fun all around, in other words.

And speaking of the Royal Occultist, there’ll be two new novelettes – “The Caller in the Dark” and “The House of Bast” – appearing in Hochmuller’s Hound: The Casefiles of the Royal Occultist, Volume Two, which will be out later this year. The cover, once again by the immensely talented Johannes Chazot, is simply fantastic and I can’t wait to share it.

Work this month consisted largely of edits and revisions. I’ve been tearing apart an old fantasy manuscript of mine and reworking it. Mostly this means cutting out characters and subplots, and slimming the whole book down a lean, pacey 85K. I’ve given myself until Christmas to whip it into shape, but there’s a lot of work yet to be done.

I also finished “The Lay of the Black Sow” after a gruelling series of false-starts and rewrites. But upon re-reading it, I realized it was the wrong story, told the wrong way. Nothing about it worked quite the way I needed it to and no amount of fiddling was fixing the underlying issues.

This has happened to me before, though thankfully not often. The only real solution is to scrap the whole thing and start over, painful as that is. So I stripped the concept back to basics, and wrote something new, and, I think, much better.

Now titled “Soothes the Fire”, it still features Sir Marrok battling Lovecraftian horrors, but it’s a more poignant story, about regret and loss and resignation, rather than a gory romp.

At least I think so.

This month’s Curious Fictions story is “The Delphic Bee”, which previously appeared in 2017’s Carnacki: The Lost Cases. As it’s a reprint, it’s free to read for subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

I’ve also posted several new chapters of The Whitechapel Demon, the first Royal Occultist novel. There are now seventeen chapters available for subscribers to read for free. Non-subscribers can read the book – including forthcoming chapters – for the low price of $6.00. You can check out the whole thing at Curious Fictions.

Even if you’re not interested in subscribing, be sure to click the ‘Follow’ button on my profile for all the latest updates. And if you enjoy the free fiction I’m doling out several times a month, why not click the ‘Like’ button on the stories, or even leave a tip? Every little bit helps.

I think I can see Halloween from here.

August 2020 Update

August has been interesting. I completed a big project last month – which I still can’t talk about, sadly – and this month has mostly been about recuperation and reorientation.

I’ve read a number of good books the past few weeks. I finally finished Tom Holland’s Millennium, an entertaining look at what’s popularly (and erroneously) known as the Dark Ages, as well as a re-read of a number of John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport novels.

I also read the first two ‘Spooky Lemon’ mysteries by Mark Bousquet, as well as Derrick Ferguson’s new collection, Will Write for Food, all of which I highly recommend. Check them out, if you get the chance.

After taking a few days off, I dove back into the thick of it with some work for Hi-Rez Studios, as well as a few short stories. I completed “Hearts of Ice”, a new Baron Vordenburg story that finds him hunting cannibal spirits in the wilds of Thunder Bay. The good Baron also features in a new Royal Occultist story I’ve started work on, tentatively titled “Thirty Hounds Questing”.

“Thirty Hounds…” sees Vordenburg and Charles St. Cyprian joining a hunt for the monstrous Questing Beast of Arthurian legend – but are things as simple as they seem? Probably not! At the moment, this one might wind up being more along the lines of a novella. Its got a lot of call backs to previous Royal Occultist stories, and features a handful of reoccurring characters and organisations, like Philip Wendy-Smythe, the Order of the Cosmic Ram and the Voyagers Club.

Speaking of Arthurian legends, I’m also working on a more traditional fantasy story featuring Sir Marrok, a little known knight of the Round Table – and one with a sinister secret. “The Lay of the Black Sow” finds the cursed knight joining forces with a wily hunter named Ruith, and his murderous companion, Attilus, as they hunt for the eponymous monster.

Those names might sound familiar to those of you who’ve picked up a copy of Tales of Cthulhu Invictus: Britannia from Golden Goblin Press (and if you haven’t, why not?). Ruith and Attilus first appeared in my gory gladiatorial tale, “Matched Pairs”. As to how they came to be running around Arthurian Britain…well, you’ll have to read the story to find out.

I’ve also been working on a new Amina Algol story, “The Wedding of Ooth Ullan”. This one is much more of a straight up sword and sorcery story, as all the Algol stories have been. Amina and her ghoulish siblings must bring a reluctant (and very dead) groom to the altar, but to do so, they have to go through an army of mercenaries, sorcerers and magical constructs.

I completed a new Bruno J. Lampini story this month as well. “Bruno J. Lampini and the Song of the Sea” finds the eldritch acquisitionist in Blackpool – but he’s not there to enjoy the seaside. Instead he’s looking to acquire a most rare item indeed – a live mermaid. But, as ever, misfortune ensues and Lampini is forced to make the best of a bad situation. The previous Lampini stories, “Bruno J. Lampini and the Boots of Frankenstein” and “Bruno J. Lampini and the Claw of Satan”, are both available in back issues of The Audient Void, if you’re interested.

And on the subject of acquisitionists, my new Arkham Horror novel, Wrath of N’Kai, is coming out tomorrow. I did a quick interview about the book over at Track of Words – why not check it out? And if it sounds like something you’d be interested in, or if you’d like to learn more, you can visit the Aconyte Books site for more information.

This month’s Curious Fictions story is “How the Professor Taught a Lesson to the Gnoles”, which previously appeared in 2015’s Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty. It’s free to read for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. I’ve also posted several new chapters of The Whitechapel Demon, the first Royal Occultist novel. There are now thirteen chapters available for subscribers to read for free. Non-subscribers can read the book – including forthcoming chapters – for the low price of $6.00. You can check out the whole thing at Curious Fictions.

Even if you’re not interested in subscribing, be sure to click the ‘Follow’ button on my profile for all the latest updates. And if you enjoy the free fiction I’m doling out several times a month, why not click the ‘Like’ button on the stories, or even leave a tip?

July 2020 Update

July was fairly sedate, as far as work goes. I completed a novel-length project – which I still can’t talk about, unfortunately – as well as another short story, titled “Cheyne Walk, 1985”. It’s a Royal Occultist story…of sorts, though perhaps a bit darker than the usual entries in the series.

I also did some lore work for Hi-Rez Studios, and made notes for a project I’ll be working on later this year. And I started work on a new Baron Vordenburg story, tentatively titled “Heart of Ice”, which sends the Baron to the wilds of Thunder Bay in pursuit of a cannibalistic spirit.

Speaking of the Royal Occultist, I released a new story in the series, “Scholar’s Fire”, on Curious Fictions this month. Set in 1666, it finds John Cadmus, servant of Rupert, Duke of Cumberland, hunting a fiery salamander through the streets of London, while the city burns.

Like “A Tiger’s Heart, A Player’s Hide” (2016), it features a past Royal Occultist, and builds on some previously mentioned background for the series. I can’t say whether there’ll be any further John Cadmus stories in the future, but I wouldn’t mind returning to him under the right circumstances. “Scholar’s Fire” is available for free to subscribers, and $2.00 for everyone else.

And last month’s Curious Fictions story, “Elizabeth on the Island”, got a nice review courtesy of Track of Words. Why not go check it out? If it perks your interest, the story is available to read for free, for subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

I’ve also posted several new chapters to The Whitechapel Demon, the first Royal Occultist novel. There are now nine chapters available for subscribers to read for free. Non-subscribers can read the book – including forthcoming chapters – for the low price of $6.00. You can check out the whole thing at Curious Fictions.

And that’s about it for this month.

June 2020 Update

June has been the busiest month of the year so far. Besides completing a few more short stories, I’ve started work on a new novel-length project – one which I can’t say anything about at the moment, sadly.

Black Library released the conclusion to my Fabius Bile trilogy, Manflayer. It’s available in the usual places, including Amazon, AbeBooks, Audible, et al. This one is a bit bittersweet for me, as it’s not only the final book in the trilogy, but also my final book for Black Library. I’ve been writing for Black Library since 2010, and while I’ll miss it, I’m excited to see what new projects the next decade brings.

This month also saw Belanger Books release both volumes of Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives. My story, “The Ironwood Wardrobe”, is included in Volume 2, and finds an elderly Holmes turning to the Royal Occultist for help with a mystery involving a child’s disappearance and the eponymous bit of furniture.

On the subject of the Royal Occultist, I started posting chapters of the first novel, The Whitechapel Demon, to Curious Fictions this month. Four chapters are now available for free to subscribers, with further chapters due every Friday.

Also available on Curious Fictions this month is “Elizabeth on the Island”. This story first appeared in 2011, in the Innsmouth Press anthology Candle in the Attic Window. I think its one of the best stories I’ve ever written, even today. Its available for free, both to subscribers and casual readers alike.

Besides work, I’ve been reading quite a bit – mostly nonfiction. Ioanna Iordanou’s Venice’s Secret Service is an interesting read, as is Tom Holland’s Millennium. I’ve also started digging into Thomas Asbridge’s biography of William Marshal, The Greatest Knight.

On the fiction front, I’ve been on a John Sandford kick, reading (and re-reading) a good many of his Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers novels. Sandford has long been one of my favourite writers, and I consider his books my go-to comfort reads. I’ve also recently started The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, which I’m enjoying so far.

Other than work and reading, I’ve been engaged in some long overdue office cleaning. Primarily, this means stripping my old writing notebooks and removing the ideas I haven’t gotten to yet. For years I’ve shuffled my ideas and story notes from notebook to notebook, weeding out the ones I lost interest in, completed or gave away, but hoarding the rest.

If I were a dragon, I’d be sleeping on a pile of moleskine notebooks.

Anyway, in an effort to shake some of the dust off of these old concepts, I’ve decided to strip out the ideas I feel still have potential and tack them to the cork board above my desk. At the moment, there are over forty story ideas pinned to the board, but I’m hoping there’ll be fewer by this time next year.

Other than that, I’ve been thinning out my research materials. Pulling aside books that I no longer have a use for – or never really did – and boxing them up in preparation for the eventual reopening of the local charity shops. Lots of game manuals and military history books.

All of this is in an effort to streamline a creative process that I fear has become somewhat muddled over the past few years. Only time will tell whether it works.

May 2020 Update

May has been a month for maintenance, as well as writing. Besides completing the first drafts for a handful of short stories, I’ve begun a long-delayed clean-up effort, pruning all but the most essential information from the site in a bid to refocus it to something more professional.

I’ll gradually sift through the ephemera of the past eight years, and some of the pruned material will reappear, though not necessarily on this site. So if you can’t find a favourite post, don’t worry – it’ll probably be back.

Related to this refocusing effort, I’ve decided to dispense with my TinyLetter list. It’s been four months since I set it up, and not a month has gone by without some issue cropping up. So for the foreseeable future, my monthly updates will be hosted right here, starting with this one. I’ve also made all previous updates available on the blog, in a revised form.

Another change relates to my Patreon account. As I recently noted on Twitter and in last month’s update, I’ve become somewhat disenchanted with Patreon’s setup. As such, I won’t be updating my Patreon for the foreseeable future – though I won’t be dispensing with it entirely. If you are currently a patron, you should feel no obligation to maintain your pledge – though you have my most humble thanks for making it in the first place.

However, as I mentioned last month, I’ve set up a Curious Fictions profile, and so far I much prefer it to Patreon. I’ve posted a handful of free reprints already and starting the first week of June, I’ll be serialising the first Royal Occultist novel, The Whitechapel Demon, there every Friday afternoon.

Subscribers will be able to read the entire serial for free, while non-subscribers will be charged a dollar for every chapter after the first three. Once The Whitechapel Demon is completed, I’ll serialise the sequel, The Jade Suit of Death, followed by The Infernal Express.

In addition, I’ll be posting a short story once per month, also starting in June. Sometimes it’ll be a reprint, other times a completely new story, exclusive to Curious Fictions. Reprints will be free to read for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Like the serials, new stories will be free for subscribers, and will cost non-subscribers two dollars apiece.

To sum up, subscribers can enjoy a new serial chapter every Friday, and a short story once a month. To subscribe, or read the free stories I’ve already posted, follow this link to my profile. If you’d like to be notified when I create a new story or post, make sure you follow my profile, and if you enjoy the stories, be sure to hit the ‘Like’ button. Every little bit helps.

April 2020 Update

GENERAL UPDATE:

April has been a busy month, for reasons mostly unrelated to writing. Even so, I managed to find time to complete revisions on my forthcoming Legend of the Five Rings novel, Poison River, as well as the second Casefiles of the Royal Occultist collection, Hochmuller’s Hound. I also started a handful of new stories, nudged some older ones closer to being done, and started working on an exciting new project that I unfortunately can’t talk about right now.

Of late, I’ve begun to rethink my participation in Patreon for various reasons. As such, I’ve set up a Curious Fictions profile, which does much the same thing as Patreon, but with fewer hoops to jump through on my end. I’m still weighing the merits of both, but if you’d like to check out my new profile, feel free – there’s two free stories up (both reprints, natch) for you to enjoy.

I was also interviewed recently about my forthcoming Arkham Horror novel, Wrath of N’kai, as well as my love for the Arkham Horror board game. Why not give it a listen? 

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Poison River edits.

Hochmuller’s Hound edits.

Untitled Fantasy/Crime novel.

American Monsters. Western/Cryptid novella.

“Matched Pairs”. Cthulhu Invictus short story.

“The Tallboy”. Royal Occultist short story.

SMITE! lore chapters.

SMITE! voice-over scripts.

NOW AVAILABLE:

Warriors & Warlords. Includes my story, “Light of a Crystal Sun”.

The Space Wolves Audio Collection. Includes my script, “The Art of Provocation”.

FORTHCOMING:

Cthulhu Invictus: Britannia. Includes my story, “Matched Pairs”.

Manflayer. Warhammer 40,000 novel.

Poison River. Legend of the 5 Rings novel.

Wrath of N’kai. Arkham Horror novel.

Their Coats All Red. Includes my story, “The Disagreeable Bridegroom”.

Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives. Includes my story, “The Ironwood Wardrobe.”

Occult Detective Magazine, issue 0. Includes my story, “The Mere”.

LISTENING:

Dessa, Chime

Grace Joyner, Settle In

The Factual Opinion Podcast

Wait, What? Podcast

The Folklore Podcast

Oh What a Lovely Podcast

READING:

Ed McBain, King’s Ransom

William Meikle, Operation: Congo

Sarah Paretsky, Total Recall

John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna

James Swallow, Shadow

Christopher Buehlman, The Lesser Dead

Various, Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus

Various, Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand

Various, Lobster Johnson: Satan Smells a Rat

Various, Lobster Johnson: Get the Lobster

Various, Lobster Johnson: The Pirate’s Ghost

Various, Lobster Johnson: A Chain Forged in Life

Various, Hellboy & the BPRD: 1954

Various, Hellboy & the BPRD: 1955

WATCHING:

Bones, Season 2 & 3

Librarians, Season 4

SWAT, Season 1

Bosch, Season 6

Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Season 6

March 2020 Update

GENERAL UPDATE:

With Poison River completed, I’ve turned my attentions to other projects. Most notably author’s notes and a new short story to fill out the forthcoming second volume of Royal Occultist stories, Hochmuller’s Hound. I’ve also been working on a pitch for a new novel, and working on getting my Patreon site reorganised. I’d like to start putting up regular content for patrons, but that might mean switching over to a subscription model, rather than my current pay-per-post set-up. I won’t be changing anything anytime soon, whatever I decide.

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Hochmuller’s Hound. Royal Occultist short story collection.

“The Caller in the Dark”. Royal Occultist novelette.

Untitled Fantasy/Crime novel.

SMITE! lore chapter

SMITE! VO script

NOW AVAILABLE:

“A Test of Fortitude”. Baron Vordenburg short story. Free to read on Patreon.

Kal Jerico: Sinner’s Bounty. Necromunda novel. Print, digital and audio-book.

“Red Salvage”. Kal Jerico short story. Digital download for Kindle.

FORTHCOMING:

Wrath of N’kai. Arkham Horror novel.

Poison River. Legend of the 5 Rings novel.

Their Coats All Red. Includes my short story, “The Disagreeable Bridegroom”.

Occult Detective Magazine, issue 0. Includes my short story, “The Mere”.

Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives. Includes my short story, “The Ironwood Wardrobe”.

Cryptid Clash, Round 2. Includes my novella, “A Volley of Monsters”.

LISTENING:

The Man with the Iron Fists OST

Sims, Wildlife

Critical Role, Campaign 2

READING:

Rituals & Declarations, Issue 1

Donald Westlake, The Hot Rock

Ed McBain, The Pusher

Various, Fighters of Fear: Occult Detective Stories

W.H. Pugmire and Jeffrey Thomas, Encounters with Enoch Coffin

WATCHING:

Picard, Season 1

Van Helsing, Season 2

Hunters, Season 1

Lucifer, Season 2

Kingdom, Season 2