Back in the Saddle Again: A New Monthly Column

After nearly two years of retirement from Black Gate, I'm coming back. I'm brushing the cobwebs out of my brain, flexing my writing muscles, and gearing up for a return to the electronic pages of the best fantasy (and horror, and sci-fi, and crime fiction) magazine around. The luminous Mrs. V. has already signed back on to edit my work so it'll be coherent. 

There'll be two significant changes. The first is I'll be posting monthly, not weekly. Each new article will post on the first Friday of the month, starting in December. I figure a lighter schedule is the way to go. Five years of reading and reviewing three books and a half dozen or more short stories every month burned me out.

The other is I'll be reading classic works I haven't read before (or only once a long time ago - I've always got to give myself some sort of wiggle room - which specifically mean Gormenghast). The first book, which I've already started, is Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist. The Last Unicorn, and The Ship of Ishtar, as well as some Gothic romances, including Melmoth the Wanderer and Frankenstein, are some others I think I'll give a go. I can imagine reading things not as old, but I definitely want to focus on some of the books most important to the evolution of fantasy literature. 

I want to dig into fantasy from before genrefication took hold. That's what I call the point when fantasy got locked down. It was as if clear limitations were staked out marking out what is and isn't fantasy. Fantasy was reduced to no more than a commodity and tropes have come to supplant the unique and strange. Much contemporary fantasy seems to be written by authors for whom only other fantasy exists and those are their only influences. It's a copy of a copy, not something inspired and drawn up from the deeper wells of our shared cultures and myths. It often reads like a gaming campaign, complete with detailed magic systems and character classes. There's also the whole grimdark business which seems intent on eliminating the fantastic from fantasy much of the time. 

I think it was the explosion of epic fantasy series in the eighties and nineties and the commercial success of the genre that much of the strangeness went out of it. When Lester Del Rey deliberately set out to find a Xerox copy of the Lord of the Rings and discovered The Sword of Shannara (reviewed here) can be seen as the actual start of all this. For over a decade we were blessed with an endless slew of often hard to differentiate epic series. Now, with grittiness all the rage, everyone is aping George R.R. Martin or Joe Abercrombie. The tropes have changed a bit, but we're still getting lots of not very dissimilar epic series - just "grittier."

I know well-received books like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that don't limit themselves to the tired and true (hey, I haven't read that, so I might add it to the list) still appear from time to time, but they are anomalies. A few writers are still inspired by pulp and older fantasy (James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, and Raphael Ordoñez  among them), but there's little room for the dreamlike imagination of many early fantasies or the magpie mixtures of sci-fi, horror, and anything else that suited the fancies of writers like William Hope Hodgson or Clark Ashton Smith. If you're not new here you know this is one of the hobby horses I ride the hardest. I'll make every effort to not be a bore.

I'm also hoping to get some Western movie reviews up again. It's not like I haven't watched a ton of them since the last time I posted a review (here).

Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood by P.J. Thorndyke

 It's been nearly two years since I wrote anything for Black Gate. Save a few posts here, I've not done much writing at all. Every now and then, John O'Neill, captain of the good ship Black Gate, sent me an inquiry to try to entice me back into the fold. Until last month none of them proved tempting enough. Then I got P.J. Thorndyke's Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood.

The book is absolute gold, albeit on a subject that rarely shines: sword & sorcery movies. They're mostly tripe, but, the story around them and about their creation is fascinating. I recommend Thorndyke's book to anyone with the slightest interest in low-budget movies as well as any S&S reader looking for a great resource on, no matter what the films' quality, an important part of the genre's history.

For the full review go HERE.

I Get Interviewed by Joe Bonadonna at Black Gate + Why I Don't Read Science Fiction (much)

I've been living in a sick house the past few days, so I didn't get to my review of M. John Harrison's Viriconium Nights for Tuesday. Heck, I didn't even finish the book.

But wait, you're not starved of new insights from me this week. Some time ago, Joe Bonadonna, asked if he could interview me. I said yes, and today, in lieu of Viriconium Nights, John O'Neill posted it at Black Gate.

Read or not as you wish. I reread it this morning and it was like hearing a recording of my own voice: irritating. Maybe if it was a live interview instead of one by email where I had a chance to go back over my answers again and again it would sound more like how I think I sound. Maybe if I had gotten Hallie to edit it it wouldn't be filled with mistakes. I think it's pretty clear what she brings to the table: logic and eliminates needless repetition. You know, important things.

Tonal qualities of the interview aside, I'm proud of that picture Hallie took for it. Without any forethought, I sat in a place where you can see books by P.C. Hodgell, Raphael Ordoñez, Teresa Edgerton, Mervyn Peake, Michael Moorcock, and Tim Powers. That wide range of authors says more about my taste in fantasy reading than anything I managed to say in the interview. 

I absolutely love the covers I'm assuming John O'Neill added. As I tweeted to David West this morning, "All I sent Joe was that picture of my ugly mug." Those covers, especially for the Larry Niven books, are stamped on my brain. John picked the exact editions I originally read. Few things say SCIENCE FICTION! to me like Rick Sternbach's covers for Tales of Known Space and Neutron Star.

As I answered the questions, an interesting thing occurred to me when I reached the one about my favorite characters. None of them were from heroic fantasy. The Master and Margarita is literary fantasy, The Last Coin is contemporary fantasy, and Guards! Guards! (the first Vimes book) is a satire of fantasy. I love S&S, but it's clearly not what's effected me the most. The funny thing is, since I've been writing for Black Gate, it's almost all I've read. 

The editions I read originally

Obviously, I love S&S and its associated genres, but I'm just realizing how much reviewing it weekly has pushed out so many other types of books from my life. I don't like that. I own but haven't read the last two books by Tim Powers and the last three by James Blaylock.

My goal of working my way through a stack of 19th century Russian books has long fallen by the wayside, broken under the weight of heroic fantasy. I've got to get back on track reading outside S&S. 

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The biggest change in my reading habits over the past decade is how little science fiction I now read. For a very long time, I read far more sf than fantasy. For years, it formed the bulk of my reading. In grade and high school the number of non-sci fi books I read paled in comparison. And then about ten years ago I just sort abandoned it.

I stopped reading science fiction when it got dull. There were plenty of good books out there. Vernor Vinge, Robert Charles Wilson, Iain Banks, and others were still writing good and powerful stories, but much of what I found bored me. Even those writers lost some of their appeal for me.

Part of it is that sense of wonder I used to get from reading science fiction seemed reduced or even lost. This idea first came up in a conversation over on Keith West's site the other day and I think it's an important insight. I was older and had read a ton of sci fi and had a better understanding of real science. Keith suggests sf is like a drug and you become inured to its high over years of exposure. The books pictured above feature "science" that's so advanced that they're almost fantasy. I think, without ever consciously realizing it, that's why I turned more and more to pure fantasy. I could still approach a story with a "sense of wonder" and didn't need to get distracted by the author's sciencing to rationalize the craziness.

It's easy for my "sense of wonder" to be triggered by fantasy and pure pulp-type sci-fi. Maybe a need to scratch that itch drove me to those genres.

In addition to big idea sci-fi, I read a lot of low-tech stuff with space opera overtones such as Gordon Dickson, Poul Anderson, and CJ Cherryh. After a while, those stories can start to get a little samey-samey. I took a break from them, and the next thing I knew it was ten years later.

It wasn't just a lost sense of wonder, though. If the sci-fi from my younger days (especially by Americans) was more libertarian and conservative, it became increasingly left-wing in the nineties and beyond. Now, that's not necessarily a problem. Fred Pohl, Mack Reynolds, Ursual K. LeGuin all wrote left-wing science fiction and that didn't stop me from reading them. But they were part of a large, diverse sci-fi community of writers whose politics ran all over the place. Some time in the last twenty years, it seemed like the voices of writers not on the left were being marginalized (or only published by Baen).

I'm conservative in all aspects of my life with a healthy distrust of the bureaucratic state and centralized authority. I'm also not a fool, and know better than to put my faith in corporations either. Much of the science fiction I grew up with tended to align with my views. Anderson, Dickson, Niven, and Pournelle explored libertarian themes in their stories at times. It wasn't all they did, though. They made sure to tell stories that were thwacking good adventures and provoked you to think about the future of humanity.

Too many new stories I found seemed to exist only as "correctives" about the previous eras of science fiction. I yearn for more voices and perspectives in sci fi because it offers the potential for new vistas, new ideas, and new types of stories and storytelling. Hell, there's always a place for addressing past assumptions and perceived flaws. If all you're doing is writing in response to what's come before, and not telling those new stories, though, it gets boring. It seemed intent on going on about the problems of the real world to the exclusion of any sense of wonder or exploration. At some point it turned into nothing but lecturing.

Coupled with the lecturing was what seemed to be a blanket dismissal of sci fi's past as sexist, racist, homophobic, and capitalist. I know I'm being too broad and too ready to take offense (though reading the comments from some folks on the left during the Puppy Wars were pretty offensive to anyone not explicitly on their side. You can't convince me of your arguments if you act like a tool), but I don't care. The past of science fiction was a hell of a lot more than it's dismissively portrayed as being. When people, who often haven't even read the books they're condemning, dismiss a lot of what you like, it gets tiresome and you don't want to play anymore. I can't be alone.

It's not that politics haven't worked their way into fantasy, but the field has managed to remain more open to diverse opinions and perspectives than mainstream sci fi. Heroic fantasy in particular tends to be a more libertarian genre to start with, telling the tales of lone warriors and adventurers living outside the rules of society. Maybe it's an unconscious reason I drifted toward it. Again, I'm not sure and haven't thought too much about it until now, but I'd wager that's part of it.

Total book sales in the US have remained steady over the past decade, while those of sci fi and fantasy have dropped drastically. Part of it has to be tied to genre fans getting their fix from other media, but not all of it.

Eventually, I stopped keeping up with the field and reading reviews. It's only the occasional big book like Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem that breaks through to my awareness. I'm tempted to give Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice a go, even if it does sound a little bit like an Iain Banks pastiche. I also hope to get to Vernor Vinge's The Children of the Sky. For the most part, though, I can't tell you what's new in sci fi anymore.

As I'm writing this, my thoughts have gone back to some of the sci fi I loved best and I hear it calling me. It called me so loud the other night that I spent about an hour reading old reviews of CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union books. It sparked a real desire to revisit some of the grittiest, most fast-paced sci fi I've ever read. I'm not sure where I'll start. Maybe I'll pick up the first book in the series chronologically, Heavy Time, or jump to the earlier published Downbelow Station. After one of two of them, I think it'll be time to get back to the Russians.

Oh, and I haven't forgotten my Western reviews. A few projects, including getting my house finished (almost done and only a year late), have derailed it the past week. I'm hoping to watch Ride Lonesome this weekend in between some serious reading and writing and let you all know what I think next week.

Have You Read the Book Bound in Pale Leather? - P.C. Hodgell

One of the original goals of blogging here and at Black Gate was to promote books that have fallen under the larger fantasy readership's radar. Be it due to age, lousy marketing, or simple bad luck, they haven't garnered the attention they deserve.

P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath series is definitely a treasure too many people seemed to have missed. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a fair amount of critical appreciation of the books, and, going by her site (http://tagmeth.livejournal.com/), she's got a pretty hardcore and involved group of fans. But when your read lists of important fantasy books you don't see Hodgell's name.

 In  a day when there's increasing clamor for female action heroes you'd think cat-clawed Jame would be just what folks want. I consider it pretty criminal that these books are not as commercially as successful as many much less worthy books.

God Stalk was the fifth review I did for Black Gate. It's still one of my favorite books and I never saw much about it so I knew I had to tell folks about it. I think I was pretty successful and I hope that continues as I work my way through the rest of the series.

Since then I've reviewed the first two sequels; Dark of the Moon over the summer, and Seeker's Mask just today. In the next few months I hope to get to the rest of the series, none of which I've read before.

I haven't read them because Hodgell writes books dense with plots and characters and she doesn't make it easy to follow along at times. Every time a new book's come out I felt I need to go back to the beginning and get back up to speed. Well, that never happened. Until now.

Chaosium Mythos Update - Real life intruded and I'm a little behind finishing off The Hastur Cycle. I'm hoping to get it done next week. I've got Thongor books to read and a presentation on Stapleton, my Staten Island hometown, to deliver (and I don't love public speaking, so that's got me a little freaked out.) Oh, and Thanksgiving.  So soon, but not this week.

I'm also not sure if I'll write about the Mythos books in order. For some reason #13,The Xothic Legend Cycle by Lin Carter is plaintively crying out to me. Maybe it's my fate this year to rouse a little interest in the late ultimate fan.

So that's all for now. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Brak the Barbarian and Other Things to Come

I've need to start planning a little better beforehand what I'm going to review at Black Gate for some time now. There've been a few weeks where I didn't pick something until the Thursday before. First, it means I avoid longer books, and secondly, whatever the length, I still have to rush through it faster than I'd like.

So, next Tuesday - John Jake's first volume of unabashed REH inspired tales of Brak the Barbarian, called Brak the Barbarian. I've read part of it and it's not that bad. In fact some of it's pretty alright.

After that I'm going to go back to Andre Norton's Witch World series with Sorceress of the Witch World, finishing the trilogy started in Three Against Witch World and continued in Warlock of the Witch World (both reviewed in Black Gate). I'm looking forward to how she ties the trilogy together.

Then it's back to P. C. Hodgell's Kencyrath Cycle and the third volume, Seeker's Mask. Again I reviewed the earlier books,  God Stalk and Dark of the Moon over at Black Gate. I've read this one before and I can tell you it's a great gothic mystery (with ensorcelled chickens and wandering towers).

Finally, I'm going to review the coected Thongor books of too many people's favorite punching bag; Lin Carter. I'll be doing it in two parts: first, Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria, Thongor and the Dragon City, and Thongor Against the Gods, second, Thongor in the City of Magicians, Thongor at the End of Time, and Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus.

John O'Neil's piece on fan fiction last week over at Black Gate inspired me to revisit one of the possible progenitors of stuff, I've written before, as John very kindly mentions, that Lin Carter was essentially a fan fiction writer who managed to get published. Most of his books are pastiches of his favorites. That means lots of ERB, Leigh Brackett, Lester Dent, and of course, REH and HPL imitations.

Four years ago I reviewed Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. It was harsh, and while the book warrants harsh, but a little too flippant. . I've grown a little softer on Carter in the ensuing years. I really dug Young Thongor and Kellory the Warlock's a solid middle-of-the-road book. So I'm going back to it.

I'm also readng a bunch of other stuff, mostly in conjunction with the reading days going on at Howard Andrew Jones' site. That means some hardboiled crime stories for Mondays and Lord Dunsany for Firdays.

So far it's been a lot of fun. I haven't read a lot of crime fiction lately and Jones has put a lot of stuff I have never heard on my radar. I've never read more than a few Dunsany stories at all so this has been a great chance to read them and read some interesting commentary.

So that's what going. Fun reading times ahead!

Back at Black Gate

So my vacation from Black Gate ended this morning with my monthly roundup of short stories. Swords and Sorcery Magazine continues to be a decent site. Not many surprises but not many clunkers either. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly remains my favorite short fiction site. Sean P. Robson's "Tomb Robber's Tale" is a nice and gruesome. I also really liked Liz Colter's "A Breath of Darkness,"enough that I'm curious about her other stories.

I have a lot of reading to do these days. I'm reading Sabatini's Captain Blood books and The Queen's Necklace by Teresa Edgerton, among several others for review.  For myself I'm rereading Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley books. I want to read Laird Barron's The Croning and a book of Joe Lansdale short stories.  I love reading this stuff but it's almost starting to feel like a real job. Oh, well, it could be worse. No one's forcing me to do this and I could be stuck reading contemporary literary fiction.

I haven't been listening to much music lately but I did see a great show this past weekend. The Buzzcocks played Webster Hall and they were electrifying. I've seen great shows by them in the past but there was something extra about this show. Maybe now that Steve Diggle and Pete Shelley are pushing sixty they feel the need to remind people just how good they are.

Taking Breaks and Rejuventation

I started this blog to make myself read more. I started reviewing at Black Gate to make myself read even more and force myself to take more care with my writing. I've been doing the former for several years now and the latter for nearly one.

And now I'm taking a short hiatus. By short I mean about a month. That should be enough to catch my breath a little, read some longer books and some I won't review on BG (I can't figure any way to convince John O'Neil that John Le Carre's books are really S&S).

I also want to take some time to line up some specific books to review over the fall. Too often lately, I've been rushing things and just grabbing things almost at random. Sometimes, it's been great, as when I finally read Carole McDonnell's The Constant Tower or Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road. Other times less so, such as with Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion. My goal is to expose people to good stuff that due to its age or lack of publicity has slipped under the radar of much of the contemporary readership of S&S and related genres. I want to be more thoughtful about what choices I make so I need to step back a think it through.

I've also got some stuff to take care. Yard work, emptying my late aunt's house of decades of acquisitions, having the nephews visit and watching Captain Blood in the backyard (Exposing my seven year old nephew to the joys of Errol Flynn has been one of the highlights of my life).
When I start up at BG again in September I'll probably start off with something easy, like a Short Story Roundup. From there I've got a few books picked out that I hope people will enjoy reading about enough to try out for themselves. After, I'm hoping this break pays off enough to make my BG reviews continue to be worth wasting a few minutes on each Tuesday morning.

As you can see by the "What I'm Listening To" box down on the right of the blog, I'm listening to the Black Crowes. I bought their first album, Shake Your Money Maker, on the strength of the songs "Jealous Again" and "Hard to Handle" and was happy to find the whole album's a blast. Then I forgot about them for a decade.

A review of By Your Side in (I think) the NY Daily News caught my attention. Seems they had loosened up (and smoke a bunch of dope) and turned on to finding a groove and working it. Not as long-winded or indulgent as a jam band can be but less tightly-focused on verse-chorus-verse-chorus songs as they had been on the first album. I bought it at the late J&R Music and have been hooked ever since. I even bought their album of Zeppelin songs with Jimmy Page, Live at the Greek.

If like the Faces, Mick Taylor-era Stones and a comfortable, relaxed vibe to you music, I highly recommend these guys. Good, good music.

Beautiful Covers of a Series I've Never Read

First, I just reviewed short stories published in June over at Black Gate. Some alright stuff, but I really dug Stephen Case's "The Unborn God" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #150. It's got a single moment of really fun inventiveness that made me exclaim out loud. Really, it did. Any author who do that to me is worth paying attention to. 

Next - Derek Kunsken posted an article at Black Gate about his love for the Deryni Chronicles of Katherine Kurtz and TSR's Dragon Magazine. My dad loved those books, or at least read all the ones published before 2001. For some reason I've never even picked them up.

I have most of them. I still keep them on my book shelf in fact (admittedly, stacked in the back). I've always loved the early covers by Bob Pepper and Alan Mardon. Later covers were done by Darrell Sweet. As much as I love him they don't compare. But here, take a look at the various covers for the first trilogy, The Chronicles of the Deryni.

While I'm still listening to Dream Theater on my bike rides, at home and in the truck I'm listening to the Godfathers. I read once that Oasis was the first serious loud guitar band to hit the UK after punk's heyday in the late seventies. There's all sorts of reasons that's a load of bunk, but the very existence of the Godfathers is enough to trash the assertion.

On four aggressively loud albums in the late eighties and early nineties, the first three produced by the great Vic Maile, the Godfathers produced some of the best rock 'n' roll of the time. Then they slipped away for sometime before finally resurfacing again a few years ago. 

I saw them back in 1989 for the More Songs About Love & Hate tour. They were one of the most forceful bands I've ever seen. Naked Raygun, whom I a big fan of, opened for them and were really solid. The Godfathers blew them away. A few folks tried to get a pit going for Raygun but it didn't amount to much. When the Godfathers hit the stage in their suits, things went wild and bodies went flying. I remember singer Peter Coyne sitting on the stage at one point just watching over the chaos unfolding on the floor. An amazing night of what I still want most from rock 'n' roll; chaos, urgency, noise and the hint that things might go terribly wrong.

I'm also listening to another great band from the same time, The Screaming Blue Messiahs. While mostly known for their goofy novelty track "I Wanna Be a Flintstone" from the Vic Maile produced Bikini Red, these guys were way more than that. Singer/guitarist Bill Carter laid down some blistering, psychotic sounds on all three of their albums. I read on wikipedia that he'd play with his fingers and use the thickest strings possible to keep from shredding his fingertips too much. Still, blood would be shed when he played. My buddy saw them open for the Cramps for which I will always be jealous. When they broke up in 1990, Bill Carter seemed to fall off the face of the earth. Which is a shame.

Go Read the Stories!

Eel Witch by Jon Hodgson

My monthly review of the last month's short stories just went up at Black Gate. Not a bad batch of stories and well worth a reader's time. I particularly liked "Mouth of the Jaguar" by Evan Dicken and "The Challenger's Garland" by Schuyler Hernstrom, both in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #20.

The other day, the illustrious Janet Morris asked something I found interesting: "Here's a question for you, s&s fans and writers. Does your hero need a quest, or can he be motivated by long-standing goal, or revenge, or something as simple as his given word?"

My answer was quests are fine, but how many of REH's heroes adventures just happen when they're traveling from Point A to Point B? Like in real life, things just happen. Sometimes an overheard word leads them to a treasure, other times a fight leaves them on the wrong side of the law. The thing is, the heroes can be motivated by any variety of things.

It's one of the reasons I like short stories best when it comes to heroic fiction. Characters aren't locked into participating in some epic, endless plot. They maintain a bit of freewill in choosing what they'll do with their lives. 

I think of S&S characters as the blue collar heroes of fantasy. They want to get through the day, make some money and relax. It's not that they're not ambitious, they just don't have the breaks in life (inherited magic item, secret genetic inheritance making them the Chosen One, etc.) that set them up to be responsible for the world's destiny. I want to see S&S characters facing off against an uncaring and unfair world - and winning - not finding the lost Foofrah, the only thing that can stop the Evil Omni-Lord. A good S&S hero is too sensible to actively look to get caught up in that sort of dangerous nonsense.

S&S and long, questy sort of stories can work. Just look at Charles Saunders' Imaro or Ted Rypel's Gonji for proof. Still, I think those are exceptions. As good as Hour of the Dragon is, I'd rather reread "Beyond the Black River" or "Red Nails." Same with Karl Edward Wagner. The stories in Night Winds and Death Angel's Shadow are much better than the novels Bloodstone or Darkness Weaves. 

Next week I'm going to be reviewing Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road. Even if McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales wasn't that good I really like Chabon's foreword calling for literary fictioneers to return to plot and genre. I've read much of his non-fiction but the only fiction so far is his Sherlock Holmes pastiche, The Final Problem. Not a groundbreaking book but a decent, heartfelt homage to the great detective.

I was inspired to finally crack the cover of Gentlemen because I'm still working my way slowly through Harold Lamb's Swords from the West. I'm hoping the Chabon book will be a nice companion piece to Lamb's. Here's hoping!

Short Story Reviews and Mail Bag

My monthly survey of new short fiction is over at Black Gate as of today. As always, go read the magazines, drive up their traffic and let them know what you think. Got to keep whatever markets for short stories pumping.

Damn, all you bloggers, reviewers, and Amazon recommenders out there! I just keep buying stuff that I have no idea when I'll get around to actually reading. At least some of these are short story collections so I can dip into them for a tale or two before and move on to something else.

This one I bought because of Sue Granquist's article on Black Gate about the 2013 Stoker nominees. I read about each book and thought this sounded good. I've actually read it already and I liked its bloody, pulpy creepiness.

Another horror book. Keith's West review of the new novel in the series intrigued me, so I bought the original novel (with bonus stories attached).

For $2.99 apiece, Subterranean's made a whole bunch of Brian Lumley short fiction available in e-book form. I was only hooked on him when I picked up Singer of Strange Songs, the Lumley-inspired volume in the Chaosium Mythos Fiction series. Later I picked up the his great anthology, The Horror at Oakdeene and Others. I think simply because he's written so many huge books he gets short shrift sometimes from a critical perspective, but I stand by him and especially his short stories as being real solid spook stories.

One of the problems with going on a Brian Lumley binge is you will never run out of books to buy. How many Necroscope books are there actually? I've read a few of these S&S stories and figured, why not?

Finally, in the wake of reading the excellent Echoes of the Goddess and a solid recommendation from John Fultz, I got this one. Still astonished at my lack of significant contact with his work until last year. Got to love that cover just reeking of peyote and psilocybin.

Lin Vrooman Carter

Lin Carter seems to have been in the air with a little more frequency than usual lately. From my review of Kellory the Warlock at Black Gate today, to John C. Wright's piece about James Stoddart on Carter, to 

Raphael Ordoñez's ongoing examination of Imaginary Worlds, Carter's getting a lot of attention these days.

The thing is, except for my review, it's mostly about his editing, not his writing. I get it. I've only dipped a small toe into Carter's writing on a few occasions and most times it's come out all mucky. 

The Xothic Legend Cycle, LC's Lovecraft pastiches can be tough going. Too many read like a Mythos-checklist and lack atmosphere and suspense. The Thongor novels I've read are terrible. But I keep wanting to read more and it's not a case of returning to look at an accident. There's something fun and almost naive about his eagerness to recreate the books he loved reading the most. 

Last year, Charles R. Rutledge recommended Kellory, and I'm grateful for that. It's such a quick read that the flaws don't have enough time to weigh it down. It also isn't a slavish imitation of some other writer. It struck me the same way the recent collection, Young Thongor, did; Carter could write much much better than he did a lot of the time. Maybe if his output was less and he took more time more of his books would have had the quality of these two. But then, maybe Lin Carter wouldn't have had as much fun writing.

Meanwhile, because I've be distracted by reading books for current reviews, I'm still haven't finished Carole McDonnell's wonderfully strange The Constant Tower and Harold Lamb's exciting Swords from the West. The latter makes me wish I had time to play Devil's Horsemen from GMT. 

Not much music this past week, just a little old AC/DC with Bon Scott. I don't dislike Brian Johnson, I just really prefer Scott and the older pre-Mutt Lange sound.

Beginning of the Year - Looking Back, Peering Forward

Since everybody else out there's writing some sort of year-end wrap, I figure I might as well do one too. It's been a pretty exciting year as far as blogging goes and I'd like to take some time and evaluate what's gone on with my writing and promotion of all things heroic fantasy.

   Obviously, the biggest thing to happen was John O'Neil's invitation to join the ranks of Black Gate's bloggers. Last June, after I mentioned my this blog in a comment on BG, he asked if I'd like to do guest blog post. After a few e-mails it to try and narrow down what I'd write about, I debuted with "The Best New Sword & Sorcery of the Last Twelve Months." Despite the slightly misleading title, I was happy with the results and a lot of people read the article.

   This led directly to my present Tuesday slot at Black Gate. If you've been following along (and if you haven't, why not?), you know I've been mostly sticking to reviews. With these it's been a mix of books I've read, loved and need to get other people to read and books I've always meant to read but haven't. With the latter it's been an expectedly mixed bag: The Magic Goes Away was meh, Deepest, Darkest Eden was alright, and Three Against the Witch World and Jhereg were both blasts.

   Most of my other posts have been of the short S&S fiction being published in the 'zines. If I get one new person to read Swords and Sorcery Magazine, HFQ or BCS my time has been well spent. The only way S&S will survive is if fresh blood is pumped into its too-often sclerotic limbs by new writers. Encouraging them with reviews and criticism is a task I'm starting to relish.

   Finally, I've started working on the whole bit about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I started over at BG with "Why I'm Here - Part One" (and got into a debate about Star Trek with Howard Andrew Jones). With future installments I plan to look at the state of modern S&S, particularly compared to the old school stuff, the defensiveness I sometimes feel in the face of attacks on the old school stuff, and why I feel defensive. It's all a little vague and I'm pulling on articles and comments by a lot of different people on these very same things right now but I hope to turn out several posts on those subjects this coming year.

   The best thing to come out of the BG gig is the editing relationship between me and the luminous Mrs. V. I'm sort of lazy and very sloppy when it comes to editing myself. Heck, I advertise that in my profile. She, on the other hand, is meticulous, a mistress of grammar and pretty unfamiliar with the genre. I'm only writing 1,500 word articles but we go through them line by line. Her hyper attention to detail and grammar powers ensure my writing is correct. That third element of hers is the most valuable. Since she doesn't know the universe of references I'm using she confronts the assumptions I make of my audience's knowledge and forces me to make myself clearer. It's gotten a little testy at times, by which I mean I get defensive, but overall it's been dynamite. My BG posts are way better written, more coherent and more fun to read than what I do unaided on this site. I'm very happy with the way my writing's progressing and hope to see it continue on an upward curve. The posts I've delivered to BG, particularly on Night Winds, God Stalk and The Great Captains, are some of the best things I've written. 

   This year I'm looking to keep doing the same types of posts but make them better. I want to widen my purview to include some new books that I've bought in the last year to my usual roster of "vintage treasures." I also want to step up my short story reviews, by which I mean I want to start reading outside the same three (excellent) magazines I've been reading for the past two years. In his latest post, Keith West writes short stories are where "the lifeblood of genre is" and I'm down with that assessment. 

   The other thing I want to do this year is read more. I used to read sixty to seventy books a year but I've slacked off the last few years. Since I've been getting back up to speed I'm hoping to hit those numbers again. I want to catch up with Howard Andrew Jones' and James Enge's books and finish Ted Rypel's Gonji trilogy.  I want to read hardboiled books, especially some of Max Allan Collins' Quarry and Nolan books, some horror, particularly Laird Barron, and more of the neo-pulp being cranked out by folks like Ron Fortier. And I'm getting the Norton Critical Edition of The Pilgrim's Progress. Add to that list all the "literary" books I'd love to get to this year like Barnaby Rudge and it's overwhelming. Still, my hopes are high.

Bloggin' at the Gate

  Providing my writing doesn't turn away readers in droves, I'm going to be blogging Tuesday mornings at Black Gate.  At lot of what I've been doing here I'm planning to transfer there, particularly my reviews of new heroic fantasy short stories.  I'll also being doing my usual promotion of the best of classic S&S.  Some other stuff too, though it's all a little vague still.  Here's hoping it all works.
   I don't plan to stop posting here.  I'm not sure how that'll work as I'm a poor steward of my time and resources.  Still, I hope to keep things in motion.  It could happen.

Guest Blogging at Black Gate

  A few weeks back John O'Neil of Black Gate invited me to guest blog.  So I did and it went up this afternoon.  Have a look.
   Like all of us writing about S&S, I do this for fun.  To be asked to do a post for a site I admire as much as Black Gate is definitely a gas and the highlight in my blogging career.

Black Gate - K E Wagner's "Dark Crusade" Review

  As I work on my own piece about the late Karl Edward Wagner and his character, Kane, what comes along in Black Gate but an article about "Dark Crusade".  It's not simply a review but an examination of the why swords and sorcery has been shunted to the sidelines by the doorstopping series that have come to dominate the fantasy market.
  I think the author, Brian Murphy, keys in on several good reasons for S & S's displacement in the marketplace.  The commenters bring up several good additional points.

 
   The Kane novels are good and "Dark Crusade" is the best.  However, for the best of Kane get the short stories.  They're all together in "Midnight Sun" from Night Shade Books.  If that's expensive for you you can get the best in "Death Angel's Shadow" and "Night Winds" for a lot less.  And with classic, if not quite accurate, Frazetta covers.