Joshua Reynolds's Blog, page 76

Bride of WIP at the Weekend

It’s that time again folks–time to waste a few minutes filling you in on what I’m working on at the moment. So if you’re not in the least curious what that might be, feel free not to peek below the cut…

Besides a handful of novel pitches making the rounds, I have about 20 or so short fiction submissions occupying the slush piles of various anthologies at the moment. I’ve made close to fifty submissions this year to date, with about a third of those being reprints. My acceptance Vs. rejection rate has gotten better, but whether that’s due to improvement in the product, or improvement in choosing markets to submit to I can’t say. Probably both. Maybe neither. It may all be luck for all I know.

At any rate, at the moment I’m working on my third annual contribution to the Pulpwork Press Christmas Special. As with the previous two, it’s a Royal Occultist adventure, but unlike them, it’s got vampires in it. Well, vampire. It’s a story full of holiday cheer and blood-drained bodies stuffed in airing cupboards and dumbwaiters.

After that, I’ll be starting on the follow up to The New Adventures of Jim Anthony, Super Detective: Death’s Head Cloud for Pro Se Press. The tentative title is Red Shambhala, and it’ll see the Super Detective dealing with a lost train carrying the wealth of a vanished empire, a murderous aristocrat and trained attack-eagles.

Once that’s done and off to Pro Se’s merry band of editors, I’ll be starting on a project I can’t yet talk about. What I can say about it is that it’s a work-for-hire project, and that it’s one which I was honored to be offered. The subject matter is near and dear to my heart, and, I suspect, a lot of other people’s as well, and I’ll be interested to see how it’s received.

Following the completion of that, it’s back to Jazz Age London to begin work on what will hopefully be the first Royal Occultist collection. Besides editing three previously published stories (“Sign of the Salamander”, “The Jagtooth Lane Horror”, and “The Unwrapping Party”) I’ll be writing two new stories to round out the book.

At some point in the next three months I need to start on the follow up to The Whitechapel Demon, which is tentatively titled Death in Jade, and will find St. Cyprian and Gallowglass matching wits with an immortal sorcerer in a struggle that takes them from Kensington to Limehouse to Hong Kong.  I also need to pitch the last book in the ‘Blood of Nagash’ trilogy to my editors at Black Library.

And that’s the skinny on what I’m up to at the moment. How about you?

New Royal Occultist Audio Track–”The Maida Vale Mummy”

The Adventures of the Royal Occultist: The Case Files now has two entries, for your listening pleasure. “Owd Hob” and “The Maida Vale Mummy”, ably read by Richard Gough Thomas and Ruth Narramore, with an assist by Erik Crossley in the later tale.  The theme music is ‘Limehouse Blues’, a jazz standard.

As ever, these short audio productions are free to listen to and free to download, though you can donate, should you wish, to show your appreciation for the hard work and hours of fiddling with the audio that went into these.

“The Maida Vale Mummy” was first published in 2013 in Bento Box 11, from Artifice Comics. It is available to download for free.

“Owd Hob” was published in 2013 in the February issue Monster Corral. To read the story in its original form, visit: monstercorral.com/2013/02/16/owd-hobb-by-josh-reynolds/

MONOMYTH 54 Now Available

Issue 54 of Monomyth is now available from Atlantean Publishing. Nestled amongst the other stories and poetry is a reprint of “The Artist as Wolf”. If you weren’t lucky enough to grab a copy of Leather, Denim and Silver when it came out, well, now’s your chance to read the second Royal Occultist story ever to be published. 

“The Artist as Wolf” sees Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass confront a lycanthropic artist at a Kensington garden party in the Fall of 1920. It was first published in 2011 by Pill Hill Press in the anthology, Leather, Denim & Silver: Legends of the Monster Hunter, which is available via Amazon.

There’s also an excerpt available to read HERE.

THE WHITECHAPEL DEMON Cover Sneak-Peek

Emby Press has released a look at the cover of The Whitechapel Demon, the first volume in the Adventures of the Royal Occultist series. For a look at the cover in all of its grisly glory,

From the blurb:

In the wake of a seance gone wrong, a monstrous killer is summoned from the depths of nightmare by a deadly murder-cult. The entity hunts its prey with inhuman tenacity even as its worshippers stop at nothing to bring the entity to its full power.

Its up to St. Cyprian and Gallowglass to stop the bloodthirsty horror before another notch is added to its gory tally, but will they become the next victims of a horror disguised as London’s most famous killer?

The Whitechapel Demon is the first in what will be a series of novel-length adventures for St. Cyprian and Gallowglass, and it’ll be out in late November/early December of 2013 from Emby Press.

Ride the Strange Trail

James Palmer, editor of the Strange Trails anthology, was interviewed on the Book Cave this week, and he said some nice things about my contribution to the anthology, “Mr. Brass and the Master of Serpents”. You should really go listen to that, and maybe even grab a copy of the anthology in question. 

From the blurb:

Strange tales from the Weird West A mechanical Pinkerton man…a comely ghost…a lady knight errant in search of adventure…a mummy on the loose aboard a speeding train…these are just a few of the colorful characters you’ll meet in Strange Trails. Come with us now on a ride through a West that never was, where dangerous gunslingers encounter steam-powered robots, and Native Americans do battle with Lovecraftian entities.

I’ve mentioned the anthology before, but I figured I might as well remind you that it’s out, and point out that you can now buy a print version, if you’re lacking in the Kindle department. Go check out the interview, and then, if you like what you heard, maybe go grab a copy of the book.

“Cadre” Now Available

“Cadre” is a little something I wrote for Black Library’s ongoing celebration of all things power-armoured and genetically augmented in the lead up to this year’s Games Day, and it’s now available for download, via the Black Library site. 

From the blurb:

Manse Jah-Hlley of the Mentors Chapter is alone on a hostile world, his battle-brothers spread far and wide across the planet. But he is far from helpless… A cadre of human survivors, fighting for the fate of their world, aid him in his duty as he teaches them the way of the Space Marines and the importance of brotherhood.

The story is only a thousand words or so, but I’m quite proud of it, not least of which because it’s the first time I’ve been allowed to play in the 40K side of the Warhammer sandbox. I was also able to slip in a great Rogue Trader-era joke name, as a nod to some of the bloodier bits of South Cackalackee history.

At any rate, I hope you’ll download it, and I hope you’ll consider downloading the other ‘Angels of Death’ stories as well, by such luminaries of the grimdark pen as Sarah Cawkwell, David Annandale, Guy Haley, Chris Wraight and more!

The Super-Detective

Lester Dent has always been a favorite author of mine. I’ve got his ‘master plot generator’ to hand as I write this, and I used to adhere to it with the same fervor as other writers clung to Elmore Leonard’s oft-bandied about writing rules.  Both are useful, but Dent’s always appealed to me more. There’s a wild spontaneity there that I find appealing (SUSPENSE! MENACE! PLOT TWIST!). And of Dent’s work, it was always the Doc Savage stories that appealed to me the most. I read The Sargasso Ogre when I was twelve, and never looked back. 

They were, and are, the perfect books. At least to me. Brisk, exciting adventures, each one packing a cinematic punch–gorgeous vistas, exotic locals, dastardly villains and a hero who’s on the weird side of interesting.

With that in mind, I have a confession to make: I like writing about  Jim Anthony, Super-Detective, because it’s the closest I’ll get to writing a Doc Savage adventure.

The Super-Detective–’half Irish, half Indian, All American!’–was originally the creation of diverse hands, built to compete with Doc Savage in the dwindling and cutthroat pulp marketplace of the early Forties, and now long since fallen into the public domain. He was a pastiche of Dent’s better known, and more popular character, with the notable difference being that Anthony liked the ladies; the Jim Anthony stories were fairly raunchy for the time, making them the R-rated version of the distinctly PG-13 Doc Savage.  If you want to read them, Altus Press have done a fine job of reprinting the originals in two volumes.

That said, you don’t have to read the original tales to enjoy mine. To date, I’ve written four short stories, a novella (“Death in Yellow”) and two novels about the character and I hope to write more, should the opportunity arise.

And despite the confession above, over the course of writing them, I grew to enjoy the character for what he was. Jim Anthony is the perfect combination of super-hero and detective (Super-Detective!), two concepts I have a great fondness for. In my own stories, I’ve pitted him against bank robbers, yetis, super-villains and secret societies and had a blast doing so.

The works in question are listed below, with links as to where you can purchase them, if you’re interested:

“Death in Yellow”

The Super-Detective races against time to uncover the secrets of the King in Yellow as yetis stalk the rooftops of New York.

2010 Jim Anthony-Super Detective Vol. 2 (Airship 27)

“The Carolingian Stone”

On the eve of World War 2, the Super Detective battles Belphegor, the Phantom of the Louvre, to claim the mysterious Carolingian Stone.

2011 Tales of the Shadowmen Vol. 8 (Black Coat Press)
2013 Les Compagnons de L’Ombre Vol. 2 (Riviere Blanche)

“The Black Bat at Bay!”

The Super-Detective hunts New York’s newest vigilante–the Black Bat. 

2012 Black Bat Mystery Vol. 2 (Black Coat Press)

“Proof of Supremacy”

The Super-Detective and Ace G-Man Dan Fowler hunt a murderous crew of masked bank robbers. 

2013 Dan Fowler, G-Man Vol. 2 (Black Coat Press)

“Nestor Burma Goes West”

Nestor Burma hunts down the retired Super-Detective on behalf of a mysterious woman. 

2012 Tales of the Shadowmen Vol. 9 (Black Coat Press)
2013 Les Compagnons de L’Ombre Vol. 2 (Riviere Blanche)

Jim Anthony, Super-Detective: The Mark of Terror

A full length action packed new pulp thriller by noted writer Joshua Reynolds. Half Irish, half Comanche and All American, Jim Anthony confronts modern descendants of two ancient Greek cults bent on world domination. All too soon he’s caught in the middle of their war while solving the mystery of several mysterious suicides by New York’s leading businessmen. Features nine illustrations by Isaac Nacilla and a stunning cover by painter Jeff Herndon, “The Mark of Terror” is another solid Airship 27 pulp winner not to be missed.

2011 Trade Edition (Cornerstone Books)
2011 E-Book Edition (Airship 27)

The New Adventures of Jim Anthony #1: The Death’s Head Cloud

A smothering fog of doom heralds a terror that leaves a pile of bloody corpses in a busy subway station! The Death’s Head Cloud strikes swiftly, snaring innocents in its foul grip, leaving madness and death in its wake! Will Jim Anthony be able to solve this mystery or will he also succumb to this terrible menace?

2013 Digest Edition (Pro Se Press)
2013 E-Book Edition (Pro Se Press)

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF JIM ANTHONY Now Available

So, this has been a busy week hasn’t it? First, I yelled at a guy. Then some stuff with giant monsters. Then, suddenly, my newest novel, The New Adventures of Jim Anthony, Super-Detective: The Death’s Head Cloud arrived on the scene!

Take a look at that stunning Mike Fyles cover:

 

And here’s what the publisher had to say about it:

In 2012, Pro Se Productions, an independent publisher of Genre Fiction and New Pulp, launched an exciting new imprint in conjunction with Altus Press, the leading publisher in reprinting Classic Pulp Fiction. PULP OBSCURA focused on producing new stories featuring classic characters from Pulp’s Golden Age, often overlooked and forgotten since they were originally published.

The eighth PULP OBSCURA title debuts this week and it is a milestone for the imprint, usually known for its anthologies. This latest release is the line’s first full-length digest novel.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF JIM ANTHONY, SUPER-DETECTIVE: THE DEATH’S HEAD CLOUD by noted Author Joshua Reynolds introduces the latest new tale featuring one of Pulp’s most unique obscure characters!

Originally written by such greats as Robert Leslie Bellem, W. T. Ballard, and Victor Rousseau Emanuel, Anthony was a ‘half Irish, Half Indian, and All-American’ Adventurer who inherited great wealth and has amazing mental and physical abilities. Scholar, businessman, scientist, criminologist, inventor-Jim Anthony is prepared to face any danger, solve any mystery and overcome any challenge in his battle for justice!

In ‘The Death’s Head Cloud,” a smothering fog of doom heralds a terror that leaves a pile of bloody corpses in a busy subway station! The Death’s Head Cloud strikes swiftly, snaring innocents in its foul grip, leaving madness and death in its wake! Will Jim Anthony be able to solve this mystery or will he also succumb to this terrible menace?

“Jim Anthony,” Tommy Hancock, Partner in and Editor-in-Chief of Pro Se Productions says, “is a character that is fairly familiar to hardcore fans of Classic Hero Pulp Fiction, but not so much beyond that. He was in some ways an attempt to clone more successful characters of the period, but in that attempt to garner success without outright copying a character, some extremely quirky, unique characteristics were mixed into both Jim himself and his stories as a whole, really making him stand out as his own character. In his previous tales featuring Jim, Josh captured the great over the top feel of Anthony’s world and when he and I discussed bringing him as a creator into the PULP OBSCURA line, the fact that we had an Anthony volume planned seemed like a perfect fit.”

Joshua Reynolds, known for previous works featuring this classic Pulp Character, breathes new life into Jim Anthony in this PULP OBSCURA release. Reynolds is a professional freelance writer. In addition to his own work, he has written for several tie-in franchises, including Gold Eagle’s Executioner line and Black Library’s Warhammer Fantasy line. Josh has also written several stories previously for Pro Se Productions as well as writing both Anthony tales and other stories for numerous New Pulp and Genre Fiction publishers.

From out of the Past the Super-Detective Returns in a Bold New Adventure As He Fights a Deadly Menace that Lurks in the Very Air We Breathe!

Featuring a stunning cover by Mike Fyles, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF JIM ANTHONY, SUPER-DETECTIVE delivers mystery, action, and Pulp with both fists and barrels! From Pro Se Productions and Pulp Obscura!

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF JIM ANTHONY, SUPER-DETECTIVE: THE DEATH’S HEAD CLOUD is available now in Print for $9.00 via Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/k55wpan and via Pro Se’s own Createspace store at https://www.createspace.com/4428238. The title is also available as an Ebook for $2.99 for your Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/m5k3orj, on the Nook at http://tinyurl.com/lckxb2m, and for most formats at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354430.

If interested in review copies or interviewing the Author or the Publisher, contact Pro Se’s Director of Corporate Operations, Morgan Minor, at MorganMinorProSe@yahoo.com.

For More information on Joshua Reynolds, go to http://joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com/

For Jim Anthony’s original adventures in SUPER-DETECTIVE JIM ANTHONY: THE COMPLETE SERIES VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2, from Altus Press, go to www.altuspress.com

Want to keep up with what Pro Se Productions is doing in New Pulp and Genre Fiction?

Go to http://www.prose-press.com/.

So, yeah. This is a thing what is out. If you pick it up, be sure to let the publisher know if you enjoyed it, and if you’d like to see further adventures featuring the Super-Detective!

The Age of Monsters Begins…

Ragnarok Publications‘ Kickstarter project, Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters has gone live. What is Kaiju Rising, you ask? Well…

Its a book. A book about monsters. Lots of monsters. Monsters in stories written by such fine authorial luminaries such as  Larry Correia, James Lovegrove, Peter Rawlik and well, me.

I know, I know, that last one makes no sense, but there I am anyway, with two of my Black Library compadres, CL Werner and David Annandale to boot!

The Kickstarter has all the usual rewards and such, including a chance to be stepped on in the story of your choice. So why not go pledge a few bucks, and maybe make sure that the Age of Monsters begins with a roar, rather than with a whimper?

When An Opinion is Not an Opinion (or An Opinion on Opinions)

So, yesterday, I happened across this little nugget of hotly contested opinion. I’m not going to argue Mr. Cook’s points because, (a) it’s an opinion piece and (b) I don’t care about what he does or doesn’t consider Science-Fiction. Just like I don’t care about what is or is not New Pulp or Lovecraftian Fiction or Steampunk or whatever other arbitrary genre classification tag you’ve got your teeth in.

That said, what follows is a disorganized mess of thoughts that I felt like sharing, because its my blog and I can delete it later if I feel like it. 

If you want to spend your time defining the entirely arbitrary limits imposed upon your chosen genre by market forces outside of your control, rather than, say, adding to said genre, or enjoying the fruits of said genre, you go on with your bad self. More power to you. Do as thou wilt, said the bald-headed beast.

Here’s the thing though…the reason I link to Cook’s piece above, is that it is a picture-perfect example of what happens when someone says something innocuous, but says it like an asshole. Cook seems to be under the misapprehension that the people who disagree with him hate him because they dislike his opinion. He’s speaking up and sharing an unpopular belief, and they can’t stand him for it.

But that ain’t it. It’s because he came off as a bit of an asshole. See, arbitrary genre discussions ain’t got a lot of–whatchacall–importance. None of that shit matters, and most people know that, and keep it civil. It’s like arguing about sports teams, you know? You keep it civil, have a few beers and compare SEC rankings.

And then somebody says something stupid. Or, in this case, posts a piece about what is and what ain’t Science-Fiction in as dismissively generalizing a manner as possible, and then gets pre-emptively defensive about it in the closing paragraph. Because pre-emptive defensiveness is the sign of a man certain in the rectitude of his opinion.

In some discussions, on some topics, how you say shit is more important than what shit you is saying. Not all discussions, not all topics. Some stuff is too important to be polite about.

But some shit like this? About what books you don’t like, and how they ain’t nothing but girly novels, what with the dresses and the kissing and such, and if you disagree you’re an enemy of free expression? See, you can spit facts as blunt as you want. That up there I linked to? That ain’t a fact, it’s an opinion, which means it behoves the owner not to share it in an insulting and/or condescending manner (as I am now doing), if they expect civil discourse to result.

Because that’s the whole damn point about sharing an opinion on books or television shows or genres of said consumables–you want to talk about ‘em, preferably with other people. Which means you don’t play the asshole card. If you have an opinion, people will disagree with it. That’s life.

And as I said, there are times and subjects where sulphur and thunder should permeate every paragraph, things that are too important to be nice about and ain’t, by any description, fun. Sometimes that shit even has to do with Science-Fiction and the like. When you’re dealing with misogyny and racism and such in the genre and the publishing business, pungency in tone is, from what I’ve witnessed, sadly necessary in order to alert people to the seriousness of that shit.

But talking, in general, about Science-Fiction and Fantasy and Gandalf and stuff? Talking about what defines a book as being of one genre or another? That IS supposed to be fun. If you invite a damn discussion about that kind of thing, don’t wuss out because people point out none of what you said made any goddamn sense, or tell you you’re wrong. You roll with it. You discuss. Maybe you change your mind, maybe you change theirs, maybe nothing happens except you kill an hour having a conversation like a goddamn adult.

And if you act like an asshole, don’t be surprised when you find that nobody wants to agree with you except other assholes.