Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 52

The Furious Contest of Gork

I’ve got a new book coming out this week, which means a stack of author copies on my desk and nowhere to put them. So it’s contest time once again. Specifically, ‘The Furious Contest of Gork (or maybe Mork)’.

From the Black Library site:

Zephacleas and his Astral Templars have been sent into the wildest regions of the Ghurlands to seek out Gorkamorka, the double-headed god of the orruks and one-time ally of Sigmar in the age before Chaos. However, their search is interrupted in the boneyards of the gargants by the Tzeentchian sorceress Sharizad, who quests for a powerful daemon sword. Aided by the black-clad Sons of Mallus, the Astral Templars must brave the Howling Labyrinth to stop the weapon from falling into the wrong hands – and unexpected allies in this mission might lead them closer to their original goal: meeting the fist of Mork and the fist of Gork.

The Realmgate Wars: The Fury of Gork sees the return of Lord-Celestant Zephacleas and the Astral Templars of the Beast-Bane, last seen in my contributions to War Storm and Ghal Maraz as well as Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Skaven Pestilens. It also sees the introduction of Gordrakk, the Fist of Gork in the first of what will likely be many appearances. I’ll talk a bit more about the book later this week, but for now, all you really need to know is that it involves orruks, ghosts, monsters and shapechanging assassins.

Anyway…the contest. I want you to snap me a picture of your best fully painted Stormcast Eternal, Orruk or Tzeentchian Chaos model. The winner is whichever one I like best. So far, so subjective. I’m offering a brand new, spine-uncracked, signed-by-me copy of the aforementioned novel to the winner, popped in the post at my expense.

Send your pictures to argus33 at hotmail dot com with ‘Gork Contest’ in the subject line. Oh and be sure to let me know if you’re okay with me sharing the photo on the site here, as well as on twitter and such. Last time there were some stunning models entered, and I think it’d be neat to show them off.

Judging starts today and runs until next Friday (the 29th), which means you have a week to send me a photo of your best model, give or take a few hours. The winner will be announced here on Saturday.

Simple enough, right? So what are you waiting for? Get to snapping.

WIP Wednesday #16: Ed’s Edits

I used to visit a secondhand bookstore in Columbia called Ed’s Editions. High class joint. Shelves of first edition hardbacks and spinner racks of crumbling paperbacks, lovingly sealed in plastic bags. Old books and new.  Treasure everywhere you looked. I have no idea why I thought of that today. Anyway, week sixteen.

Last week, I finished the first draft of the Novel-With-No-Name. I was nearly 10k over the word limit, but that will likely get pared down during the first round of edits. Or increased. Either is possible. I’m not particularly satisfied with it, for a number of reasons, but it’s done and that’s the important thing. The first draft is always the hardest.

Case in point: The Sea Leopard. 90k and still not done. Not even to the midpoint, really, which tells me a few things. Most notably, that what I thought was one story is actually two. Revisiting the draft in progress after a month of working on other things has been a bit of an eye opener. I’m trying to do too much in this book, I think. Too many plot threads, too many characters. So, this week is all about separating the two books, seeing what I’m left with, and rebuilding from there. After excising the extraneous material, I figure I’ll be left with about 65-70K, which is roughly two thirds of the book.

On the subject of revisions, I’m also working on the edits for the firs Novel-With-No-Name from back in February/March. And when I say revisions, I mean everything I did was wrong and I really shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near this particular intellectual property. So that too is getting the ol’ slash and burn treatment, as I hack away at the draft to find the nugget of acceptable narrative within.

The main problem with the draft is one of tone, which isn’t hard to fix, but has ramifications in regards to intent and pacing. Mechanically easy, but stylistically difficult. A few changes here and there, and the book becomes a very different sort of thing. This hasn’t shown up so much in smaller projects, but with this one the stylistic clash is very evident, and very frustrating, both for the editors and myself.

My takeaway from this is that my particular style is not necessarily a good fit for certain projects. That’s going to have to factor into my decisions about what to work on in the future. I used to think I had a fairly invisible technique, but that’s obviously not the case. Live and learn.

On a happier note, I’ve also started “The Hound’s Daughter”, a new Royal Occultist short story. I’m about 2000 words in, and we’ve got a haunting which isn’t, paw prints in the garden and a mysterious phone call. Astute readers can probably guess what it’s about from the title, but if not, I suggest you track down and read the stories “Hochmuller’s Hound” and “The Return of the Hound” to catch up.

And that’s it for this week.

Eldritch Update

Yesterday brought some good news, of an eldritch bent. Eldritch Inquests, that is. It looks like the long-awaited second volume of the occult detective anthology I co-edited with Miles Boothe is finally on it’s way to the shelves. With stories by Neil Baker, Brian M. Sammons, Meredith Torre and Bob Freeman, among others, it’s sure to be a fine companion piece to the incredible first volume.

We also got a sneak-peek at the cover for the equally long-awaited (at least by me) third book in the Royal Occultist series–Infernal Express!

Following the events of The Jade Suit of Death, St. Cyprian and Gallowglass find themselves on an international assignment. Waving a fond farewell to the shores of Blighty, the duo journey to Paris, Budapest and beyond on a mission to return the skull of one of history’s greatest monsters to his mortal foes, all while dodging Satanic cultists, walking dead men and the occasional thunder-demon…

So, long story short: two books I’ve been looking forward to talking about are arriving in May. I should probably think of a way to promote them…

Zibaldone #11: The Brazen Head of Frankenstein

Today, in lieu of real content, I have a few random assortments from my commonplace book. Automatons, Italian cinema and a grimoire. All the ingredients for an interesting Monday.

Brazen heads. Mechanical or magical automaton. Answers any question put to it, albeit in a ‘yes or no’ sort of way. Connected to alchemy and occultism. Also, ‘the Skull of Balsamo’ is too good not to use in some fashion. Either as a title or a macguffin. Possibly a Royal Occultist or Jim Anthony, Super-Detective, story.

The Monster of Frankenstein. Il Mostro di Frankenstein. 1920s Italian silent horror film. Lost film. Very little is known about it, though I fully expect someone to show up in the comments and say otherwise. This is one of those things that I really, really want to do something with, but for the life of me, can’t figure out what. Is it the germ of a Royal Occultist story? A ghost story? I’ll figure it out eventually.

The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses. Grimoires. I do love grimoires. Especially ones used by Moses to defeat the magicians of Egypt. And ones mentioned in Manly Wade Wellman stories. These things are like multi-tools. Good for any sort of story, really.

Klaxus Will Burn

Klaxus burns. The servants of blood and slaughter caper in the ashes. An army of heroes, reforged and of renewed purpose, run a gauntlet of enemies. And the black rift yawns wide…

From the Black Library site:

In the Tephra Crater lies the city of Uryx, a once-proud bastion now overrun by the Bloodbound. Anhur the Scarlet Lord means to use the city to open a gateway to Khorne’s own realm and drench all of Klaxus in blood. Only Sigmar’s chosen stand in his way – the Warrior Chamber of Orius the Adamantine, one of many fighting a bitter war of liberation in this region. Their quest is a grim one: breach the walls and reach the heart of Uryx to prevent a ritual that will bring about death untold. The hopes of all Klaxus rest on Lord-Celestant Orius – his warriors are many, and heroes all, but to triumph he must defeat not only the forces of Chaos but the demons of his own past…

I talked a bit about this series a few days ago. I don’t have too much more to add, other than to say that I think it reads better collected like this. As I’ve mentioned before, it really isn’t a collection of short stories, so much as a book that was serialized into eight installments.

Looking back on it, I think my favorite part of writing this, besides the insanely bombastic dialogue, was the sheer profusion of characters, all of whom got some sort of exploration, however brief. Some, who, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to write about again, Black Library willing.

Anyway, Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Black Rift is available in hardback and ebook via Black Library.

Ruritanian Romance

So. This is now a thing. How about that? 

From the Meteor House site:

1889. The war of shadows is over, but a new and more deadly conflict has begun in the Central European country of Ruritania. A conflict which threatens to consume the few remaining survivors of the millennia-old struggle between Eridaneans and Capelleans, including Phileas Fogg. Drawn to the city of Streslau by a mysterious letter, Fogg finds himself accused of a crime he didn’t commit and caught between old allies and new enemies in a struggle for survival. On the run and aided only by the unpredictable Count of Hentzau, Fogg must exert every iota of his famed intellect in order to unravel the mystery of the Heart of Osra – or face the utter annihilation of Eridaneans and Capelleans alike!

In 2014, Meteor House published Phileas Fogg and the War of Shadows, my authorized sequel to Philip Jose Farmer’s The Other Log of Phileas Fogg. Needless to say, I was honored when, late last year, they asked me if I’d be interested in writing a sequel to my sequel.

I said yes, obviously. And here we are. It is 1889. The Phantom is presumed dead. Moriarty is on the run. But Phileas Fogg still has enemies aplenty, and at least one of them is abroad in Ruritania. Now, accused of a crime he didn’t commit, will Fogg be able to clear his name…or will his famed intellect finally fail him?

To find out, you’ll need to preorder Phileas Fogg and the Heart of Osra. So why not go do that, hunh?

WIP Wednesday #15:The Book Must Die!

A short update this week, because I’m 53,000 words into a 50,000 word draft, and I’ve got…oh, say, another 4-5,000 words to go?

This sort of overrun happens more frequently than you’d think. At least to me. 50K always seems like such an easy target, but inevitably, I end up passing it by several thousand words. I never manage to budget enough space for that final, climactic battle. You’d think it’d be simple, but then you go adding characters, and when you do that, you need to give them some sort of closure, and then it…just…snowballs.

It’ll get pruned, of course. Editing inevitably shaves off the excess fat–the repetitious dialogue, the unnecessary restatement of theme and plot-points that comes from working on a thing day in and day out to a tight deadline…while stuff like that is practically invisible to me after I’ve gone book-blind, a good editor can spot them instantly.

Anyway, I’ve got work to do. Sing me out, Eartha.

Only the Faithful

Cast into the Realm of Death to seek an audience with the Undying King, Lord-Celestant Tarsus Bull-Heart of the Hallowed Knights and his Stormcast Eternals must brave the the horrors of the kingdoms of the dead, and battle fierce foes as well as faithless allies.  Will they find one of the Nine Gates to the underworld…or is their mission doomed to failure?

I’ve been a bit remiss in the promotional department these past few months, but better late than never, right?

Right.

So, being asked to write the first quartet of Age of Sigmar audios was a bit daunting. The brief was more detailed than usual, with a list of plot beats that needed exploring in each installment. There needed to be an opening monologue, a lot of action sequences, a good chunk of expository dialogue, stuff going on in the background that would be explained in the follow-up audio series, and, lastly, a certain character needed to be reintroduced and, if possible, rehabilitated slightly from where they’d been left, development-wise. And all in 40,000 words.

I like to think I succeeded in accomplishing most, if not all, of that. I’ve written an audio for Black Library before, so I had an idea of what was needed, i.e. lots of talking, between several distinct characters. Even so, I was a bit nervous, given that this series had a lot of ‘firsts’ in it. It’s the first time we see the Realm of Death, it’s the first time we hear what Nagash sounds like, etc. These are things which color how the audience, not to mention other writers, will interpret these elements going forward.

The third audio, “The Lords of Helstone”, in particular was a bit of a struggle, plot-wise, due to certain things needing to be accomplished without making the Stormcasts (and Tarsus in particular) look like grade-A chumps. I had several talks with the editors, and even suggested cutting it from the storyline entirely. In the end, I’m glad we didn’t, if only because it nicely sets up certain scenes in the fourth installment.

The second, “Sands of Blood”, was probably my favorite to work on, as I had a lot more freedom to explore certain elements of the Mortal Realms, i.e. the actual mortals who inhabit them. The good pilgrims of Morrsend were, like the inhabitants of the Crawling City, or the refugees of Cartha, a part of the story that needed telling, if only to give the larger narrative some emotional stakes, beyond the clash of gods and monsters.

Anyway, the four audios are all available as mp3 downloads or cds (which look lovely) from Black Library. They’re listed in listening order below.

“The Prisoner of the Black Sun”-Explore the Realm of Death with the Hallowed Knights as they seek an audience with the Great Necromancer Nagash and gain a most unlikely ally…
“Sands of Blood”-The Hallowed Knights – and their vampire ally, Mannfred von Carstein – continue their quest to find the gates of the underworld and an audience with Nagash.
“The Lords of Helstone”-Mannfred von Carstein leads his Stormcast allies into the deathly city of Helstone… What does he seek, and why does Lord-Celestant Tarsus feel a connection to the forsaken place?
“Bridge of Seven Sorrows”-Finally, the Hallowed Knights reach their goal: the underworlds of Shyish and an audience with Nagash himself. On the Bridge of Seven Sorrows, Lord-Celestant Tarsus will meet his destiny.

And, if you’ve already enjoyed those, why not try the second series, featuring (some of) the characters from the first? Written by David Guymer, they follow the much-battered Bull-Hearts on their journey into the Realm of Beasts, in pursuit of the villainous Mannfred von Carstein…

“The Beasts of Cartha”-After their disastrous search for the Supreme Lord of the Undead, the Hallowed Knights are reforged and tasked with a new mission: to find and capture the vampire that betrayed them, Mannfred von Carstein…

And remember…who shall stand, though the world crumbles? Only the faithful.

Howl of the Grey Dog

Author and lurcher-enthusiast John Linwood Grant has kindly wasted some of his time interviewing me for his site, greydogtales. We talk about horror films, what I like to read, and, of course, the Royal Occultist. Why not go check it out? And after you’ve done that, why not take a look at John’s own take on the occult detective genre, with his tales of The Last Edwardian?

WIP Wednesday #14: Ossuary Nights

One of the reasons I got back into the habit of these weekly work-in-progress posts was to lower my stress levels a bit. I have a tendency to focus on what I should (or could) be doing, rather than what I’ve done. One project doesn’t feel like enough. Which is how you wind up working eighteen hour days and missing Christmas. But posting these little updates forces me to actually stop and think about what I’ve accomplished. Speaking of which…

The Novel-With-No-Name is hovering at the 36K mark. So, roughly seven days of work remaining, at my average writing speed. In reality, it’ll be a few more or less, depending on how the plot pans out. I know what needs to happen, but I’m fuzzy on how many words it’ll take. Big, climactic fight scenes take time to describe, especially when they happen on the icy surface of a frozen sea, and involve millions of animated corpses trying to force their way to the surface. And that’s just for starters.

These sorts of books always pose interesting problems–how do you make something fundamentally inhuman feel, well, human? Relatable. Or if not relatable, then understandable. Myself, I tend to think that when most readers say they want the unknowable, what they actually mean is ‘the knowable, but in different colors’. Perhaps that’s an uncharitable sentiment, but I can only speak to my experience.  Feel free to argue otherwise in the comments.

As mentioned on Monday, I’ve also started a new short story, titled “Cemetery Gun”. Set in the necropolis–arcology known as Ossuary (AKA ‘the empire of the necromancers’), it finds the eponymous ‘cemetery gun’ (a sort of pistol carrying knight errant), Beckford, fulfilling a contract to protect the corpse of a dead aristocrat from ghouls and grave-robbers for the appointed three days. But he soon discovers that carrion-eaters and criminals aren’t the only threat to his client’s mortal remains…

I’m about 1K in at the moment. As with many of my stories of late, I’m aiming for the 3K-5K range. Lean and mean, and hopefully leaving the reader wanting more. Ossuary is proving to be an interesting sort of place, and one I’d like to revisit in future stories.

And that’s what I’ve been working on. How about you?