TC Rypel: recent interview on Black Gate

[T.C.]

Oh, wow, Jack---!

First of all, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, my friend. And thank you so much for the very gratifying comments about my GONJI series.

You, know, when the occasional reader mentions me in this thread, my emotions are roiled into a weird, chaotic mix. First of all, I'm flattered, of course, as any author would be. Then I'm a bit embarrassed and ashamed that I don't participate regularly enough in any discussions here on Goodreads---time pressure, flagging energies, obligations and a recent chronic eye-strain/dizziness problem all have curtailed a lot of my former lusty involvement in blog threads.

And then there's the nagging specter of my phantom street cred: What the hell is this "Gonji" series some people keep bringing up? It's been around since the '80s---? So why haven't we HEARD about it? It all makes me want to scream. So I compressed that scream into a discrete series creation/publishing history essay featured in the NEW Gonji book, DARK VENTURES.

I've been pushing it hard and touting it on a lot of promo sites, because this first new Gonji title in decades is the ideal place to enter the series. Two action-packed, fantasy-horror novellas (all the five extant reprinted books are novels); that definitive series explication; and a long teaser for the next novel, the Gonji origin story BORN OF FLAME AND STEEL.

This posting of yours is timely, Jack. Just yesterday BookDaily posted the Kindle version (it's also available in a handsome paper version) of DARK VENTURES as a featured book-of-the-day. It seems to have gotten a lot of hits because BookDaily allows for a generous SAMPLE of the text. In this case, I posted the entire chapter 3 of the anchor novella, "Dark Venture," probably the closest thing to a classic Weird Tales or Unknown Worlds-style pulp fantasy in the Gonji canon.

So I thought I'd post that link here, if the group doesn't mind the shameless self-promo. And if you haven't already begun RED BLADE FROM THE EAST, the book that kicks off the series-opening "Deathwind Trilogy," then I reiterate that DARK VENTURES is definitely the place to begin...

http://www.bookdaily.com/book/6720921...


Domo arigato, from Gonji and me!