Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 45

WIP Wednesday: It’s Fine. This is Fine.

By the end of 2016, I will have written thirty-one novels, twenty-four of which have been published (and three of which never will be). I have three novels commissioned for 2017, with a possible two others to be added to that schedule.

It’s fine. This is fine. I can do this.

On Monday, I finished the first draft of “Inzignanin”, my novella for CRYPTID CLASH!, after running up right against the 30,000 word limit. It’s a weird one. Not quite the grindhouse pulp-nasty feel I was going for. Instead, there’s supernatural time travel, ghost-lizards, Confederate zombies, a Fritz Leiber reference, murder-hobos, an occult lawyer, and a Lizard Man punching the personification of a city’s evil.

I took a break from Book #5 to finish up the novella, but got back to the novel on Tuesday. As of today, the manuscript stands at roughly 39,000 words. It isn’t quite where I wanted to be, word count-wise but it’ll do. I’ve got another week and some change before the deadline rears its ugly head.

This one is proving to be fun. I haven’t written a proper fight scene for the book yet. There’s one coming, obviously, but so far, the book is mostly political intrigue, clandestine meetings and quiet conversations between smart characters. I like books like that. And hopefully, it’ll lead to that big fight at the end feeling earned.

Besides the novel, I’m working on the pitch for Book #6, which is looking like it’ll be fun. Lots of big set pieces – airships, sky-krakens, giant spiders, city-smashing war machines – and some interesting characters. Or so I’m hoping. Either way, it’s going to be a big, loud book, to contrast with the much quieter one I’m currently writing.

To close this out, just a reminder that it’s almost Halloween, and that it’s the perfect time to download the free Royal Occultist Halloween Special, featuring three free short stories, including “The Creature from the Abysmal Sea”, my homage to The Creature of the Black Lagoon. Go check it out.

Grave Shine

Sam Gafford, editor for SARGASSO: The Journal of William Hope Hodgson Studies, has announced the table of contents for the third (and, sadly, final) issue over at his site. Included in the 150 + pages (!) of essays and fiction is my Hodgson-inspired story, “Corpse-Light”.

“Corpse-Light” features the duo of Harley Warren and Randolph Carter, and finds them investigating an abandoned house, overrun by strange, fungal growths, on an island off the coast of Charleston. Warren and Carter have appeared in my work before, in the short stories “The Savage Dreamer” (Innsmouth Magazine, 2011), “The Bells of Northam” (Lovecraft eZine, 2013), “Dead Man’s Tongue” (The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, 2014) and “The Briggs Hill Path” (The Song of the Satyrs, 2014).

And while you’re checking those out, be sure to grab the first two issues of SARGASSO, both of which are still available to purchase, either in paperback, as well as for the Kindle.

The Hound’s Daughter

It began in 1914, as a four-legged nightmare hunted the bloody wastes of no man’s land. Seven years later, the horror reappeared, stronger, and stranger, than before. Now, it has come for the third time, more monstrous than ever, and seeking new prey…

From the blurb:

Herein find a demonic presence haunting a factory, a malevolent and malign intelligence in the form of a canine, a zombie horde attacking the tour bus of a rock band unfortunate enough to break down near Black Rock Nevada, and a weird western tale of trickery and betrayal. Herein find both a horse and a misguided band named after Lucifer—that personification of all that is evil. And for those who suffer from the unfortunate mental malady of arachnophobia, I recommend that you do NOT read the final tale of this villainous volume.

The Pulpwork Press Halloween Special 2016 is now available for purchase, in paperback and for the Kindle. It includes my homage to the silver scream classics of yesteryear, “The Hound’s Daughter”, a Royal Occultist story featuring lobotomised zombies, a mad scientist, foggy London streets, and, of course, the titular Hound himself. If you’re interested, this makes for the third time the Royal Occultist has faced off against the Hound of Mons, following on from “Hochmuller’s Hound” (2014) and “The Return of the Hound” (2015).

This story, much like the others in this mini-series, finds its inspiration in the old Universal monster movies of the Thirties and Forties. Those films have always had a particular resonance for me. They are prisms of light and shadow, dreamlike and strange in their mannered, almost sedate approach to monstrosity. There’s nothing quite like them, in my opinion. As Halloween approaches, I always set aside a few hours to catch up with old friends – Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula’s daughter, the Invisible man – and I always come away with a new appreciation for them.

In fact, I think I’m going to go watch one right now. While I’m doing that, why not grab your copy of The Pulpwork Press Halloween Special 2016?

Crawling Terror…100 Feet High!

A severely deformed man stumbles through the desert. Falls. Dies. But that is only the beginning, as the tiny Arizona town of Desert Rock is soon besieged by a horror unlike any other…

Tarantula (1955) is one of the better giant-insect films, both in terms of production and acting. It’s also one of my favourites, along with Them! (1954) and The Black Scorpion (1957). The special effects are fairly advanced for the time, and the opening sequence with its stumbling, irradiated victim  in his striped pyjamas, is darkly effective. John Agar does his usual workmanlike job as square-jawed leading man. Jack Arnold, the director, was responsible for a few other favourites of mine, including Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

Unlike the Lovecraftian overtones of Creature… however, Tarantula is, at its core, a fable for the Atomic Age. The eponymous monstrosity is neither fish nor fowl, to mangle an old saying. It is neither an Outsider trying to get in, nor something ancient imposing itself on the modern era, such as The Deadly Mantis (1957) or The Black Scorpion (1957). Instead, the tarantula is an eight-legged (un)natural disaster – the inevitable result of man’s meddling in forces beyond his control.

The tarantula, the ants, even poor, malformed Colossal Man…they are all the children of Frankenstein, in spirit, if not in blood. Their monstrous nature is through no fault of their own. It is man who created the conditions which led to their existence, and man who suffers their ravages. The tarantula is an atomic nemesis, giving us our due in payment for the sin of hubris. And even its destruction brings no true comfort, for the terrible forces which created it still exist, hanging over the heads of the survivors.

Even as they exist today.

And now, for our feature presentation…

WIP Wednesday: Hacktober

October is almost over, and I haven’t watched a single monster movie. I really need to rectify that. Tell you what – come back on Friday, and maybe we’ll watch one together. In other news, I have works in progress to discuss.

I’ve reached the 31,000 (out of 50,000) word mark of Book #5, so it’s about time to start beating all these random scenes into some sort of structure. I tend to write around the plot on projects like this. Lots of scenes written in isolation, now needing to be tied together. Conversations between characters, duels, that sort of thing.

I expect the book to go somewhat over the word limit, if not excessively so. The problem with writing scenes out of joint is that you invariably end up with too much material, and not all of it necessary. Some of it will definitely be cut in the editing phase.

Work on my cryptid novella has also continued apace. I took a break from the book over the weekend, and concentrated on trying to drag the novella over the finish line. I wasn’t able to manage it, but I did get things a lot closer to a suitably insane conclusion, at 22,000 words out of a probable 30,000. The ancient ritual has begun and the Lee County Lizard Man bounds towards his eldritch prey, a much battered mercenary in hot pursuit. It’s a traditional story of monsters, sorcerers, murder-hobos, Confederate mummies, and time travel.

Later on this week, I need to get to work on my pitch for Book #6, which will see me travelling once more to the Mortal Realms, writing about characters in search of a mystical macguffin or eight. I’m really looking forward to this one, for various reasons. Mostly the weirdness of the various protagonists: Short guy who’s on fire, Renaissance gunslinger, clockwork armour lady, and…a vampire. Some of them are weirder than others.

Anyway, it’s almost Halloween. Why not read this free story about a creepy, heart-eating raven monster?

Summer’s Ending

Alternative Realities have released a sneak-peek at the cover for Summer’s End, their forthcoming anthology of empire-busting stories. The art is by Marc Ducrow, and the anthology contains stories by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Sarah Cawkwell, and myself, among others.

My contribution, “The Last Song of Iranon”, is a follow-up to my 2014 story, “Mordiggian’s Due”, which appeared in Pulp Mill Press’ Libram Mysterium. It continues the adventures of Amina Algol and her ghoulish siblings in Earth’s Dreamlands. This time, they’re on the hunt for a murderous ‘ghost-eater’ in the lizard-haunted ruins of Sarnath, as he attempts to employ the talents of a mournful ghost to uncover a hidden treasure.

Black Library Live Schedule

Apparently I’m still invited to Black Library Live. They’re going to regret that, probably. I’m not what you’d call personable, even at the best of times. That’s why I’m a writer and not, y’know anything else.

Anyway, they’ve posted the schedule, if you’d like to download a copy. I wasn’t consulted on it, because if I had been, I’d have scheduled myself lunch. Also, I wouldn’t have signed up to do a reading, because – Ha! – that’s a disaster waiting to happen. But we’re committed now, so, oh well. If you’re interested in seeing me attempt to do anything other than read something I’ve written, be sure to sign up for that one.

And if you’re too lazy to click the embedded links, here’s my schedule:

10:00 – 11:00 BLACK LIBRARY AUDIO w/ Gav Thorpe and Matt Renshaw

11:15 – 12:15 AGE OF SIGMAR w/ Guy Haley and Nick Kyme

12:30 – 1:30 READINGS AND PREVIEWS w/ Mark Clapham

1:45 – 2:45 SIGNING w/ Neil Roberts and Chris Wraight

3:00 – 4:00 STILL SIGNING w/ Neil Roberts and Mark Clapham

After that, you’ll be lucky to find me, because I will likely be looking for food and/or a quiet place to sit, away from the hurly-burly. Apparently there’s some sort of closing ceremony thing? I dunno. Go to that instead of looking for me. It’ll probably be fun.

WIP Wednesday: Whatever

Why was I numbering these again? Anyway, fresh start. No numbers. Mostly because I lost count, and I don’t feel like making the (admittedly minor) effort to check back through the entries to see where I left off.

Over the past few weeks I managed to finish Book #4 and start Book #5. The latter is a shorter novel, only 50,000 words or so. I started last week and I’ve managed to clock around 21,000 words. Which is great, because the midway draft is due on Monday.

It’s a different sort of book for me. Same company, different setting. One I haven’t been given the opportunity to write before. That said, it’s proving less difficult than I expected. Lots of terminology and techno-babble to wrap around the thing I do best – characters saying vaguely snarky things to one another. Also, a Feuillade-esque rooftop chase sequence across not-Constantinople that just, sorta, kinda, came out of left field but I’m going to roll with it.

Besides that, I started and finished a short story for Black Library the week before last. It’s the third – no, fourth – story I’ve written with this particular character, but this time he was fighting a robot, so I guess it’s okay. Only one of those stories is out, at the moment, but it’s a pretty good indication of my intentions for the character in question. It’s also in audio form, so you don’t even have to read it. Handy, right?

Anyway, I’ve also continued to intermittently plug away at my cryptid novella, “Inzignanin”. I’ve managed to edge it up to the 20,500 word mark, at a rate of 500 words a day, for the past week or so. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but combined with work on Book #5 and other, non-writing related, tasks I’ve had to work on these past three weeks, it’s enough. I’ve got roughly a month and a half to finish it up, and I’m in the home stretch, I think.

That said, this one has gotten away from me. It’s gone off in a weird direction, involving magic and time travel and lawyers, and I’m not sure if that’s to its benefit or not. But I’m trying a new thing, called trusting my first instinct. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. But I’m letting it play out like it wants. We’ll see what happens.

And that’s what I’ve been working on.

Occult Detective Quarterly

What is an occult detective, I hear you ask?

Well, Occult detective fiction has been around for a good long while, and like ever sub-sub-genre, it’s had its peaks and valleys of popularity. Combining the tropes of detective fiction with that of supernatural fiction (though often it has more of one than the other), the stories generally (though not always) revolve around a central, reoccurring investigator as well as the occasional side-kick or three. Sometimes it’s monsters or ghosts or ghost-monsters or Old Man Ferguson in his ghost-monster costume, but the implication of a supernatural occurrence always looms large in the investigation.

It should be no surprise to regular readers of this site that occult detectives are a subject near and dear to my heart. I love reading about them. I love writing about them too. Hence this post in support of Occult Detective Quarterly – a forthcoming journal of supernatural sleuths and psychic investigators, featuring fiction, articles and reviews from new and established names.

The magazine is currently running a Kickstarter campaign in order to finance the first few issues, and I encourage you to go check it out and consider pledging and securing one of the many fantastic rewards on offer. I would mention the ginormous reward where you get issue one of the magazine, plus TEN signed copies of selected works by me, for pledging $113 or more, but it looks like somebody has already snatched that one, so you’ll have to settle for something else.

And, even if you can’t pledge anything, be sure to share the Kickstarter link around far and wide! Every little bit helps.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

I’m back.

Houses have been moved, and the necessary details shifted and sorted, to the relative satisfaction of all concerned. There are still things to be done, but nothing that’ll interfere with my schedule. In other words: I live…again.

Besides all the re-painting, re-wiring and re-grouting I’ve been doing to get our place shipshape, I’ve also finished one novel and started another, as well as completed a short story. And I’m still hammering away at a few other projects, but I’ll talk more about those on Wednesday.

Anyway, just a quick drive-by post to say we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Coming up next…the Occult Detective Quarterly Kickstarter! Fabius Bile! Work in progress updates! Halloween! And more!