Scott’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2012)

Scott’s comments from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.

Oh, thanks! I hope you guys enjoy it :)

S.E. wrote: "I believe Funcom owns all of the Conan IP now, but I am not aware who is pulling the strings re: novels."

Steve Saffel at Titan Books. I'm not sure what they plan with Hockings' work, but they are the new publishers of Conan pastiche. Their line will get underway sometime in 2022.

You may not realize just how insulting this is to writers of S&S who struggle to get their work the attention it deserves at the Big 5 publishers. I'm published by St. Martin's, alongside genre stalwart, and all around Good Dude, Howard Andrew Jones. We write S&S. Unabashedly and unashamedly so. And to get the attention of an editor at the Big 5 publisher, a writers work has to be all the things you list even BEFORE you label it as S&S. We're not blithely writing 1920s pulp knockoffs. They're books for modern readers, embracing all the things that make modern fiction salable.

The problem is, the people who want to read modern S&S is too small a pool to justify Big Publishing's interest. What's fine, even lucrative, at the small press level isn't even worth firing up the press for a single print run at a place like St. Martin's. They don't want to sell 1000 copies. They want to sell tens of thousands of copies. And at this point in time, sadly, a book marketed as S&S just will not pull down that sort of sales figures. So, it's marketed as something else, something with potential to reach big numbers: epic fantasy, historical fantasy, etc.. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with the quality of the writing.

I'm a bad member. Not active at all, but I do read all the comments that come across my screen. I appreciate this group for its low-key enthusiasm and utter lack of drama. I need to be more active, really.

But, things are well, albeit harried. On a deadline and fighting with my stoopid brain (situational depression coupled with living in a state with no discernible mental health apparatus *even with* insurance, much less without). But, so long as I can medicate myself with REH and Tolkien, I'm good :)

Thanks for the shout-out, SE! So, yeah, I have a couple of books you might find interesting. As SE mentioned, the Grimnir series (A GATHERING OF RAVENS, TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, and the forthcoming THE DOOM OF ODIN) is about the last Orc left in Midgardr -- but don't let that fool you into thinking it's high fantasy: Grimnir is an Orc as might have been conceived of by REH. He's a snarling, profane knot of hatred. In the first book, he's out for revenge on the Dane who slew his brother; in the second, he tangles with Northern Crusaders and berserkir in a race to discover the barrow of a dragon. In the third, he's dead. Yeah, not kidding. It's a romp through the underworld of his people.

The second book I wanted to mention is THE LION OF CAIRO. This was published in 2010, and it's directly inspired by REH's "The Gates of Empire". In it, an Assassin journeys to Fatimid Cairo to offer his services to the young Caliph, to mend an ancient grudge between the Egyptian Caliphs and the Old Man of the Mountain in distant Alamut. There's lots of swordplay, sorcery, and even an appearance from young Salah-ad-Din . . .

@Clint: Yeah, it was a ridiculously long time in coming. :)

The female protagonist aspect was not planned in advance. It just happened organically.

Back when we were planning out this anthology on FB, probably 9-10 years ago (I can't recall the date, now), we had a plan for an overarching story that would tie the individual tales together. It was meant to call back to the later Thieves World volumes, where the foreign invaders changed the complexion of the city of Sanctuary, making old enemies into allies, etc. This first volume was the Set-Up. The Universe as it is, now. All the stories have some mentions of gates between places. Those are the key. Once humans figure out the sorcery of the gates, the next iteration begins: Solar System War . . . which draws the Emissary deeper into the solar system in search of the Other (a vaguely Cthulhu-esque figure).

Whether we get to those later volumes or not is up to the individual authors and the publisher (and readers).

Coming up on the end of this group read . . . so, any opinions, questions, comments, or gripes? Anything you'd like to see more of from me? Inquiring authors want to know, and all that . . .

*Writes faster*

Let me preface my comment with this: the whole series is based upon the notion of "what if Norse and Anglo-Saxon history, myth, and literature were ALL wrong? Not vastly wrong, just with rather sharp differences between what was known and what was told? And what if Grimnir was the only creature alive who knew the truth?"

History is written by the victors, of course. And Grimnir's folk lost. They became boogeymen; goblins that creep along the baseboards and steal food. As Christianity swelled, they ebbed. This is a theme we see in JRRT, with the diminishment of Elves.

The backstory behind AGoR -- the murder of Grimnir's brother at the hands of Bjarki, who was serving Hroarr at the time -- is a call-out to Beowulf. Hrungnir is nicknamed "Grendel"; Hroarr is the Old Norse name for Hrothgar, and "Bjarki" is the Norse equivalent of "Beowulf". And, as you've seen, I continue the trope in TotG: Grimnir leads a band of Geats, as their de facto king; there is a monster in the wings, waiting. But, I've leavened the Beowulf imagery with elements of Norse Ragnarok -- from descriptions of the unrelenting winter to the trembling of the earth to the conflagration at the end that calls forth the monster. But, like everything else, the Ragnarok references are different, twisted from the way they appear in the Eddas.

The Doom of Odin will mirror the last chapter of Beowulf . . .

So, part of the framework of the whole series is, what we know as Norse myth is VERY different from the "reality" of it. What humans know of Thor and Odin and Asgardr and the whole Northern Thing comes primarily from the work of Snorri Sturluson -- a Christian writing the myths of his people. What Grimnir knows of it comes from personal experience and the first-hand accounts of his uncle, Gifr. These two views, Snorri's and Grimnir's, aren't copacetic. They don't jibe.

In Grimnir's worldview, Odin bears some resemblance to Tolkien's Morgoth -- a figure of fear and oppression to the kaunar. And like Morgoth, Odin has some mighty weapons at his disposal, Malice-Striker among them. Rather than a typical western dragon with flaming breath and flight, I opted to make Malice-Striker more like Fafnir from the Völsunga saga: flightless, poison-breathed, two legs rather than four. He's a wyrm. In Norse myth, Níðhöggr (Malice-Striker's Norse name) has a very specific function. He gnaws the roots of Yggðrasil. In Grimnir's worldview, he is Odin's attack dog.

The tale of Raðbolg (so named because I wanted to work in a Tolkien-sounding Orc name -- this is "Radbug" in Old Norse) and Níðhöggr is meant to be a skewed retelling of Sigurd and Fafnir . . .

Ah, Chapter 11 :) That one was a bear to write . . .

Yep, that would be my "Frost Giant's Daughter" homage. Little known fact: I'm contractually obligated to include at least three REH references per book (my wife wishes to add: "No he's not!").

Actual little known fact: I had a horrible case of writer's block in 2018. The book was supposed to be something else -- similar in tone to Karl Edward Wagner's "Cold Light" -- but it had a fatal flaw: get the villan within arm's length of Grimnir and the book was done. So, I dithered and moped. Finally, I resorted to my old practice of rewriting REH to spur my own creativity. This was the product of that exercise. Some elements were added later, after I'd written the first third, but the visuals and the action . . . that was me boot-strapping my way out of despair.

Good luck, guys! :)

Joseph wrote: "I was incredibly disappointed when the Scorpion King movie pretty much abandoned all of the Egyptian stuff from Mummy Returns to become just a bog-standard generic sword & sorcery film."

Me too! I was hoping for something better.

There's a scene with a touch of alchemy in Twilight of the Gods. Otherwise, I've not really delved too deeply into that one. My magic is generally "of the moment", meaning I don't think about it too far ahead. I generally decide if a scene needs magic on the fly: in The Lion of Cairo, I needed to impart info to the villain, so I chose magic as the means of transmission; in AGoR, I wanted to get Grimnir from point A to point B, and thus the Ash-Road was born. Its chaotic nature was a bit of an afterthought. I might dabble in alchemy for Doom of Odin, which is set in a period of marked magical decline.

I've often wondered why there isn't more ancient Egyptian action/adventure fiction. The 6th century BC is a *great* setting, and one of the more evocative of traditional fantasy worlds. The Persians are encroaching, the Greeks are bracing for war and hiring themselves out as mercenaries, the Egyptians are seeking to reclaim their lost glory. Rome is a series of hill-top villages, the Phoenicians command the seas, and the proverbial richest man in Antiquity (Croesus of Lydia) has started coining money for the first time. There's oracles and magic and gods aplenty . . .

I might have to revisit that setting :)

Excellent choice, Joseph! It's not quite as polished as later books, but some folks count this as a bonus.

I'm just going to lurk in the corner and try not to feel too self-conscious . . . :)