Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 36

Brambles and Blades

Another Advent, another new story. Black Library has released my newest Eight Lamentations story, “The Tainted Axe” as part of this year’s Advent Calendar. 

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From the blurb:

Sir Roggen of the Order of the Furrow, a knight dedicated to Alarielle herself, returns to the Realm of Life after a mission for the smith god Grungni that has left him physically and mentally scarred. Tasked with a new mission by a capricious Branchwych, he travels to the heart of the Writhing Weald, a twisted and dangerous place haunted by malign spirits, to retrieve a weapon of Chaos, wielded by a servant of the Plague God and capable of spreading corruption even abandoned and alone. And there he will face a great darkness…

As with much of my work for GW’s Age of Sigmar setting, “The Tainted Axe” ties into a number of other stories. Besides following along from events in Eight Lamentations: Spear of Shadows, it also serves as a loose sequel to “The Outcast”, currently available in Legends of the Age of Sigmar Omnibus. 

It’s also the third part of a sub-plot dealing with the Order of the Fly and the ownership of the cursed duchy of Festerfane. This sub-plot is threaded through “The Outcast”, Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden, and now, “The Tainted Axe”. I’d love to write more about the Order of the Fly in the future, so hopefully this isn’t the last you’ve seen of them.

“The Tainted Axe” is available as a digital download from Black Library, as well as Amazon.com and its subsidiaries.

Carolina Stomp

The final instalment of Cryptid Clash!, “Inzignanin”, is now available from 18thWall Productions. Lee County Lizard Man versus Third-Eye Man, with mercenaries, scientists and Confederate zombies caught in the middle.

From the blurb:

It’s worse than Sevastopol.

Jesse Holmes had been hired to capture the Bishopville Lizard Man. The creature had been the town’s claim to fame, standing alongside such luminaries as 1945 Heisman Trophy winner, Felix ‘Doc’ Blanchard, and the bluesman, Drink Small. There’s only so much danger that can come out of town like that. Even more so, when you consider the Lizard Man’s mostly known for chewing on car bumpers.

But it’s nine feet tall, with nearly impervious scales. It’s from another age, in more ways than one–and ready for war.

That’s to say nothing of cryptozoological scientists, strip-mall lawyers, businessmen with ethereal connections, and a Civil War-era ghost pulling a city’s strings.

It’s far worse than Sevastopol.

Cryptid Clash! pits cryptozoological creatures against each other – and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the middle – in a battle to the death. Edited by James Bojaciuk and Josh Reynolds, the series features horror, urban fantasy, and military sci-fi luminaries such as William Meikle, Gav Thorpe, David Annandale, C.L. Werner, and Nikki Nelson-Hicks.

Grab a copy of “Inzignanin”, or the other entries in the series, from the publisher, or from Amazon, today. And if you enjoy it, be sure to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Stone Ghosts

Today, I’m turning this space over to my pal, William Meikle, so he can talk a bit about ghost stories, Nigel Kneale, and his newest collection, The Ghost Club. And this is just the latest stop on Willie’s ghostly tour, so be sure to to stop by the Ghost Club launch tour/online party on Facebook. But for the moment, settle back and enjoy a tale of stones, ghosts and Christmas…

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Christmas, 1972, and I’m a month shy of my 15th birthday. Mum and dad are out at a dance and my gran is with me. My wee sister has gone to bed, so there’s just the two of us. My gran loves horror movies, and BBC 2 have one on. We know nothing about it except that it’s new, a first showing, and that it was written by the man who created Quatermass. We’ve both already seen Quatermass and the Pit, so we settle down, with the lights dimmed, to watch THE STONE TAPE.

Ninety minutes later, my life has changed forever.

THE STONE TAPE is a strange beast. The sets are wonky, the acting, especially by the male lead, gets very shouty and histrionic, there’s an annoying comedy subplot about washing machines of all things, and nowadays the tech on show, especially the computers, looks antique and clunky.

And yet…

Remember, this was before Stephen King, before Jaws, before The Exorcist movie. The real boom time for scares had yet to come, and I’d been getting my horror kicks from the likes of Dennis Wheatley. His rich folks in their country houses didn’t really resonate with the council estate me at all. But THE STONE TAPE hit me immediately with its modernity, and spoke to the parts of me that wanted to be a scientist, but also wanted something more.

At the end of that first watch of it, I felt like I’d been through one of those faulty washing machines. It’s the first time I remember being absolutely terrified by something I’d seen on television. Sure, there had been scares before, in nightmares brought on by my early voracious reading habits, of goblins and riddles in the dark, the mad monk who sometimes appeared at the foot of my bed, in the early watch of Snow White where the wicked queen really crept me out, and in the transformation scene in, of all things, Jerry Lewis’ The Nutty Professor where I had to leave the cinema. But that Christmas night, I was nearly fifteen, and I thought I’d left all those childhood scares behind. But I was wrong. Very wrong.

THE STONE TAPE remains to this day one of the landmarks of supernatural television. The IMDB entry does little to give away just what makes it tick.

“A research team from an electronics company move into an old Victorian house to start work on finding a new recording medium. When team member Jill Greeley witnesses a ghost, team director Peter Brock decides not only to analyse the apparition, which he believes is a psychic impression trapped in a stone wall (dubbed a “stone tape”), but to exorcise it too – with terrifying results…”

It sounds hokey put like that, but Kneale’s way of layering a good idea with real people, involving not just the scientists but the regulars in the local pub, the vicar, and the telling of stories of the history of the house gives it depth and puts flesh on its bones, building the plot in much the same way as the stones themselves have maintained and built the story of the house.

I mentioned the acting earlier. Yes, the lead male is a shouty sod, and gets annoying on repeated viewings, but Jane Asher’s vulnerability works perfectly for her role, Ian Cuthbertson acts as a solid anchor for sensible types to try to hold on to, and there’s even a young James Cosmo lurking around in the background.

The soundtrack too deserves a special mention, providing screams and screeches, thuds, knocks and whispers that serve to throw even seemingly innocuous scenes slightly off balance, ensuring the viewer never gets time to settle.

It might have been Christmas, but this is no cosy ghost story.

As layers of personal relationships are stripped away at the same time as the house’s memory reveals itself, Kneale skillfully intertwines the modern and the past and the denoument, when it comes, is all the more shocking for it.

The last scene stayed with me all night after the first viewing, and after the holidays when we got back to school, I discovered that all my pals had seen it too, and had been just as affected as I had. We spent many an hour talking about it, and it led a couple of us directly into experimenting for ourselves with sonic mood altering tapes, with ouija boards, and with reading everything we could find about the Stone Tape theory.

It gave me a love of investigating old stones that persists to this day, and led me down pathways I hadn’t previously walked, into mysticism, Tarot, Magick and Astral Projection and many diverse subjects that have since molded not just my modes of thought, but my way of writing stories.

It’s all Nigel Kneale’s fault. It’s all THE STONE TAPE’s fault.

In the end, and the reason it affects me so strongly, is that it’s all about the stories we tell each other to get through life, and how stories from even the most distant past can survive, and resonate, through lifetimes, through the works of humanity, and break through into the present unasked for and unexpected, often at the worst possible moments. It’s a Lovecraftian sensibility that turns up frequently in Kneale’s work, a motif that defines his work for me as both thought provoking, and genuinely scary.

The idea of walls and building holding memories, and perhaps something more than that, perhaps some form of consciousness, has also recurred in my own writing, most recently in the ongoing SIGILS AND TOTEMS mythos I’ve been developing. My new collection THE GHOST CLUB has three more explorations in the idea, and looking back at them all, I can see Nigel Kneale’s legacy down there at the root, the seed from which so much of my life since 1972 has grown.

Terror is a rarely used word these days, but it’s one Nigel Kneale knew plenty about. He knew where it lurks, and how to evoke it.

Much like bringing an old story out of cold stone.

THE GHOST CLUB, available now from Crystal Lake Publishing has a simple premise.

In Victorian London, a select group of writers, led by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Henry James held an informal dining club, the price of entry to which was the telling of a story by each invited guest.

These are their stories, containing tales of revenant loved ones, lost cities, weird science, spectral appearances and mysteries in the fog of the old city, all told by some of the foremost writers of the day. In here you’ll find Verne and Wells, Tolstoy and Checkov, Stevenson and Oliphant, Kipling, Twain, Haggard, Wilde and Blavatsky alongside their hosts.

Come, join us for dinner and a story.

Here’s the TOC, which may have a different running order in the final book.

THE GHOST CLUB MEMBERS AND THEIR STORIES

Robert Louis Stevenson Wee Davie Makes a Friend

Rudyard Kipling The High Bungalow

Leo Tolstoy The Immortal Memory

Bram Stoker The House of the Dead

Mark Twain Once a Jackass

Herbert George Wells Farside

Margaret Oliphant To the Manor Born

Oscar Wilde The Angry Ghost

Henry Rider Haggard The Black Ziggurat

Helena P Blavatsky Born of Ether

Henry James The Scrimshaw Set

Anton Checkov At the Molenzki Junction

Jules Verne To the Moon and Beyond

Arthur Conan Doyle The Curious Affair on the Embankment

BLURBS

‘The Ghost Club is a massively ambitious anthology of stories ‘by’ classic authors as imagined by the extremely talented William Meikle. Massively entertaining, too.’

– Simon Clark, author of the award winning THE NIGHT OF THE TRIFFIDS

‘In the past, we’ve had the Diogenes Club, the ‘Club of the Damned’, and even Peter Straub’s ‘Chowder Society.’ Now we have THE GHOST CLUB by William Meikle. And it is, quite simply, a delight. Not only has the author displayed his knowledge of and love for the writers of yesteryear, but in creating ‘The Ghost Club’ our host has produced his own collection of unknown and previously unpublished short stories ‘by’ Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Leo Tolstoy, Bram Stoker, Mark Twain, H. G.Wells, Margaret Oliphant, Oscar Wilde, H. Rider Haggard, Helena P Blavatsky, Henry James, Anton Chekhov, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle. I say ‘unknown’, when I mean – of course – that all the stories are written by Mr Meikle in the style of the aforementioned authors; and the entire experience of reading this collection is like sitting with him in an old fashioned study, with a roaring fire, guttering shadows and a snifter or two of brandy as he unfolds his ‘Ghost Club’ tales. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.’

– Stephen Laws, author of GHOST TRAIN

‘William Meikle is an audacious writer! In The Ghost Club he takes on the personalities of literary icons Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and the like and creates stories they might have told, mimicking their voices and writing styles. And he makes that work! I have too many favorites to name but as I read from start to finish, the stories just got better and better and I found myself as absorbed as if I were reading spooky tales told by these master storytellers. Kudos to Meikle! Lovers of traditional and quirky ghost stories need The Ghost Club in their library!’

– Nancy Kilpatrick. author of REVENGE OF THE VAMPYR KING

“Masters of literature spin classic spooky tales in this chilling collection.”

– Scott Nicholson, author of THE RED CHURCH

Return of the Clonelord

This Saturday sees the general release of my newest Black Library novel, Fabius Bile: Clonelord. The sequel to last year’s Fabius Bile: Primogenitor,  it follows the continued exploits of one the 41st Millennium’s darkest characters – Fabius Bile. 

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From the blurb:

Once a loyal son of the Emperor’s Children, Fabius Bile now loathes those he once called brother. But when a former comrade requests his aid on a mission he cannot refuse, Bile is drawn once more into the sinister machinations of his former Legion. Now, accompanied by new allies and old enemies alike, Fabius Bile must travel deep into the wilds of the Eastern Fringe, in search of a world unlike any other. A world which might hold the key to his very survival. A world called Solemnace…

With another stunning cover by Lie Setiawan, Fabius Bile: Clonelord will be available to purchase as both a hardback and an ebook, and in audio format from the 9th of December. And if you were one of the lucky few to nab an early copy at either the Black Library Weekender or the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day, I encourage you to drop a review either at Amazon or Goodreads, or wherever, really.

If you want to know a little more about what to expect, why not check out two recent interviews with me:

Civilian Reader: Interview with Josh Reynolds
Rapid Fire: Josh Reynolds Talks Fabius Bile: Clonelord

And you can get more Fabius in short stories such as “A Memory of Tharsis” and “Prodigal”, available as digital downloads from Black Library.

Like A Tiger at His Heels

It’s December, and the last of this year’s batch of stories is now up at my Patreon. “The Second Occupant” is a Royal Occultist tale, which finds St. Cyprian and Gallowglass going up against one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most infamous horrors. I’ve included a brief extract below, if you’re interested. 

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“I thought it was destroyed, you see,” Abercrombie Smith said. “That shrivelled dead thing in its case, with the sale number 249 still stuck upon its front. Bellingham hacked it up the one, I saw him…” He hunched forward in his chair, hands cupped around his cooling mug of tea. “I thought I did, at any rate.”

“Indeed. More tea?” Charles St. Cyprian said, tapping the teapot with a finger.

Smith glared at him. “I have the distinct impression that you’re not taking me seriously, sir.” Smith had a boxer’s build, with hard-cut, alert features. In contrast, St. Cyprian was thin and sharp and dark. Smith was older, by almost a decade, and looked it. Both men were dressed well, as befitted their station, the one as a surgeon of some repute and the other as the current holder of the offices of the Royal Occultist.

Formed during the reign of Elizabeth the First, the office of Royal Occultist was charged with the investigation, organization and occasional suppression of That Which Man Was Not Meant to Know—including vampires, ghosts, werewolves, ogres, fairies, boggarts and the occasional worm of unusual size—by order of the King (or Queen), for the good of the British Empire. Beginning with the diligent amateur Dr. John Dee, the office had passed through a succession of hands, culminating, for the moment, in the year 1921, with one Charles St. Cyprian.

Such was the reason that Smith had called on St. Cyprian at No. 427 Cheyne Walk. That and the fact that they were both Oxford men, and alumni of Old College. Now, however, Smith seemed to be regretting his decision. “I’ll not be made the ass, sir,” he said.

“If I was intending that,” St. Cyprian said, “would I have invited you to ring ‘round to my sanctum sanctorum, and with all due haste?” He gestured airily to their surroundings. Pictures of former bearers of the office lined the walls of the sitting room, jostling for space with fetish masks and lurid artworks by Goya and Blake. Great bookshelves groaned beneath a library of occult works, as well as a century’s worth of accumulated bric-a-brac. Over the large, Restoration era fireplace, grisly statuary glared morosely at Smith.

“Dash it all, I’m not mad,” Smith barked, and set his mug down hard enough to crack it. “I’ve seen it! Leering through the windows, scratching at my door. Just this evening, I saw it loping after me, as I boarded the omnibus. It’s Bellingham’s doing! I know it!”

“Oi! Watch it! That’s part of a matched set,” a young woman snarled, as she entered the sitting room, a linen-wrapped bundle laying across her shoulder.

“Thank you, Ms. Gallowglass, but Dr. Smith is understandably upset. We can overlook a bit of chipped porcelain, I think,” St. Cyprian said. Ebe Gallowglass was feral looking in her rumpled clothes and battered flat cap, resembling nothing so much as a street tramp or Parisian apache.

She set the bundle on the floor beside St. Cyprian’s chair and flopped down into the chaise longue which sat nearby. “That’s not what you said yesterday,” she said, whipping off her cap and running her fingers through her black, razor-edged bob of hair.

“Well, Dr. Smith didn’t hurl his cup at the Victrola, now did he?”

“It scratched my record!” Gallowglass said.

Smith coughed pointedly. “Did you hear what I said…” he began.

St. Cyprian looked at him. “Quite. It followed you. Has been for days now, waiting for the right opportunity. Coming here when you did tonight likely provoked it.” He smiled thinly. “That’s why I invited you, of course. No need to beat about the bally bush, what?”

Smith’s eyes widened. Before he could speak, soot pattered down from the chimney, causing the fire to flare. Gallowglass tensed, her hand sliding beneath her coat towards the revolver holstered under her arm. St. Cyprian held up a hand. “No need for that,” he said, softly. “It can’t get in, not that way…”

Like last month’s offering, “The Maltese Tiger”, “The Second Occupant” is an orphan. Originally meant for a Chaosium anthology that never appeared, I present the story to you now, just to close out the year on a high note.

As with most Royal Occultist stories, it owes more than a bit to other works, by better authors. In this case, it’s “Lot No. 249” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s one of my favourites, and one of the best mummy stories ever written, bar Steve Duffy’s “The Night Comes On”. That said, I shamelessly plundered Conan Doyle’s story to assemble the bones of mine. It’s not the first time, either – I’m quite the literary ghoul, me – because I’ve used “Lot No. 249” as fodder for a Royal Occultist story at least once before, a fact the characters make mention of in this one.

“The Second Occupant” is a patron-only post, but it’s only a dollar to read the entire story. And if you’re short on funds, why not check out “The Riders of St. George” or one of the other free-to-read stories on my Patreon?

Also, remember to check out the new poll I put up for Patreon patrons and potential patrons regarding what sort of stories they’d like to see in the coming year. If you’re a patron, what would you like to see for your money? If you’re not a patron, what would convince you to become one? Head over to my Patreon page and have your say.

Have Your Say…

So, I’ve posted a new poll for Patreon patrons and potential patrons regarding what sort of stories they’d like to see in the coming year. If you’re a patron, what would you like to see for your money? If you’re not a patron, what would convince you to become one? Head over to my Patreon page and have your say.

Warhammer 40,000 Open Day

Just a brief note to say I’ll be signing books from 11 – 3 this Sunday at Warhammer World, during Warhammer 40,000 Open Day. Fabius Bile: Clonelord will be available, as will copies of most of my recent novels. If you’re around, come say hello and maybe buy a book or two.

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Rumble, Young Worm, Rumble

The newest instalment of Cryptid Clash!, “Rumble” by Nikki Nelson-Hicks, is now available from 18thWall Productions. Mongolian Death Worms versus the monstrous Eaters in the Rocks, with a bevy of bureaucrats, environmentalists and mercenaries caught in the middle.

From the blurb:

Something has gone wrong in Mongolia. Morgan Industrial Technologies’ natural gas station has gone dark. No communication in or out, it seems, and the satellite imaging shows the station wrecked. Wrecked as though everything has descended into a warzone.

Which perhaps it has. The station may have been working on more than natural gas. Mongolian Death Worms, the olgoi khorkhoi of lore, have attacked this base–ripping up anything on the sands, and rending the foundations of the structures. At night, the Eaters in the Rocks emerge, ripping people apart and eating everything they can get their many limbs on. To say nothing of the other dangers–a wild man whose flesh is carved with arcane wards, young Mongolian eco-terrorists, and, most dangerous of all, an office bureaucrat.

Cecilia Stonecipher’s mercenaries will descend onto this station. But is modern firepower enough?

Cryptid Clash! pits cryptozoological creatures against each other – and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the middle – in a battle to the death. Edited by James Bojaciuk and Josh Reynolds, the series features horror, urban fantasy, and military sci-fi luminaries such as William Meikle, Gav Thorpe, David Annandale, C.L. Werner, and Nikki Nelson-Hicks.

Grab a copy of “Rumble”, or the other entries in the series, from the publisher, or from Amazon, today. And if you enjoy it, be sure to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

New Interviews

I’ve been remiss about mentioning a few recent Black Library-specific interviews.

First up is a two part interview with Michael Dodd, over at Track of Words.

Josh Reynolds Talks Humour, Horror and the Age of Reynolds

Part One
Part Two

Then there’s a two part audio interview with Kenny Lull of the Combat Phase Podcast. The first part of the interview starts at the 53 minute mark.

Part One
Part Two

And last but not least, an interview with Tyler Mengel, of Mengel Miniatures.

Age of Reynolds: An Interview with Josh Reynolds

And if you’d like to see me in person, I’ll be at the Black Library Weekender this weekend. If you’re around, come say hello. I’ll be signing books on Saturday and Sunday, and on…various panels.

Grand Guignol

A new month, a new story is available for patrons on my Patreon. “The Maltese Tiger” is set in 1920’s Paris, and finds Countess Felluci, adventuress and thief, at odds with a murderous society of criminals over a treasure of incalculable worth. I’ve included a brief extract below, for those interested.[image error]

Paris, 1930. 

“Society is built on compliance,” the man with the gun said, gesturing with a lit cigarette. “If the masses do not comply, society cannot function. You agree, no?”

“No,” Francesca Felluci said, tapping the ash from her own cigarette, her dark eyes never leaving the barrel of the gun. Clad only in a silk dressing gown, she was in stark contrast to her visitor, who was dressed fashionably, if not formally.

“No?” The man cocked his head.

“No.”

“Pity.” The pistol barrel jerked for emphasis. It was a stubby Mas Ordnance revolver. Six shots, if she recalled correctly. “Common philosophy makes for easier negotiation.”

“Are we negotiating then?” Felluci said, letting a ring of smoke drift from her full lips. “Only I find it hard to negotiate when I have a pistol in my face.”

“Most people find it easier.”

“I am not most people.” Felluci looked out over the edge of the balcony, admiring the way the setting sun set the Parisian skyline aflame. Already the City of Lights was waking up, and the sound of cabaret music drifted out of the narrow streets and courts. “I am not even some people. I am only me.”

“Last night, you stole something from my room. I want it back,” the man said softly.

“Did I?” Felluci added two more smoke rings to the first. “Do you?” She reached up and patted her hair, bound up in a twist on top of her head. Her fingertips drifted across the bud of the Chinese hairpin holding the oil-dark mass in place.

The man frowned. “Do not play coy magpie with me, madam.”

“Hardly coy. It’s just that I steal quite a lot of pretty things, you see. Remind me.”

“The stone, woman.” The revolver’s hammer slid back with a menacing click.

“Which stone?”

“Which-?” He gaped at her. “The Maltese Tiger!”

“Was it blue?” Felluci examined her cigarette. “Which room was yours?”

“You do know what I’m speaking of. It was indeed blue. A blue such as has never been seen. A blue to make the gods weep.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “And you will return it or you will die.”

“You would shoot me, m’sieu?” Felluci said innocently. “How ungallant.”

“I grow weary of your games madam. The stone. Now!”

Fireworks popped and crackled in the darkening sky over the Seine. The man spun in surprise. The revolver swung away from Felluci and she seized the opportunity with both hands. Or feet, rather.

Tipping her chair back, she kicked the table up, driving it into her guest. He squawked and fell back, his hands thrown up. The revolver went off, the noise of it lost in the cacophony of the fireworks. Sweeping the table aside, Felluci plucked the hairpin from her hair and launched herself at him, crashing against him before he could recover.

The edge of her palm caught the wrist of his gun-hand and his fingers spasmed, releasing the pistol. A jab of stiffened fingers into the soft spot just beneath his rib-cage caused his breath to whoosh out of him. As he bent double, she sat astride him and jerked his head back. Pressing the sharpened tip of the hairpin to his throat, she leaned forward. “Now then, I have but one simple question – if you knew that I had stolen this rock of yours, why didn’t you call for the gendarmes?”

He made a strangled sound and she twisted the hairpin. “Don’t bother to answer. You didn’t call them because the stone doesn’t actually belong to you, does it?”

“You-you don’t understand,” he gasped out.

“I rather believe I do, actually. You, m’sieu, are a thief.” Felluci leaned back. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”

“The Maltese Tiger” is an orphan. It was written for an anthology that never saw the light of day, which is a more common occurrence than you might think. Written in the tradition of Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin stories, it’s all daring-do and speed-boat chases. I’ve had a sequel half-finished in my projects folder for a year or so now, and if folks enjoy this one, I might very well knuckle down and finish it.

Too, the character of the Countess has, with Moorcockian persistence, appeared in a number of my stories, across a wide array of settings and genres – to date, she’s fought werewolves and vampires in a steampunk alternate Europe, hunted rogue timelines in a sadly short-lived series of science-fiction stories, and locked swords with hired assassins in several fantasy stories. I look forward to seeing where she pops up next.

“The Maltese Tiger” is a patron-only post, but it’s only a dollar to read the entire story. And if you’re short on funds, why not check out “The Riders of St. George” or one of the other free-to-read stories on my Patreon?

Too, while you’re there, why not check out my pal Derrick Ferguson’s Patreon? There are short stories, novellas and novels, including the ongoing serial, Dillon and the Prophecy of Fire. Lots of good stuff there, well worth a dollar a month.