New Treasures: The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler

New Treasures: The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler

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The Vampire Archive-smallLast week I wrote a brief piece on Otto Penzler’s marvelous The Big Book of Adventure Stories, and I’ve been having so much fun with it that I decided to look at some of his other door-stopper genre anthologies. So here we are this week with The Vampire Archives, one of the best collections of vampire stories I’ve ever encountered.

What makes it so great? It’s over 1,000 pages of the finest vampire fiction ever written, old and new, in a beautiful and inexpensive package. This is the only volume you need to bring yourself up to speed on vampire lit of the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries — no small claim.

It includes the classics you’d expect, like John Keats’ 1820 poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla,” and “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” by Fritz Leiber — as well as many that you might not, like Ambrose Bierce’s 1891 tale “The Death of Halpin Frayser,” an excerpt from Lord Byron’s poem “The Giaour,” “Ligeia” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Lovely Lady” by D. H. Lawrence, and even a Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

There’s a generous selection of fiction from the pulps, including “Stragella” by Hugh B. Cave, “Revelations in Black” by Carl Jacobi, “When It Was Moonlight” by Manly Wade Wellman, and Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne tale “The End of the Story.”

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The Return of Rick Steele

The Return of Rick Steele

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Yesterday MenRickSteele-LostCityofAzgara-250Last year was my introduction to author Dick Enos and his Rick Steele adventure series. I suspect this year will be the one where both author and character make real headway among fans of New Pulp.

The fourth Rick Steele adventure, The Yesterday Men, was just published. If you’ve read the first three titles in the series, then you know Enos loves to confound reader expectations by delivering widely varying pulp adventures from alien invasion to the preternatural to lost civilization adventures. The Yesterday Men is both more of the same and something completely different. Rick Steele, for those unfamiliar with the character, is a hard-nosed Korean War veteran turned test pilot who somehow can’t avoid dragging himself and his supporting cast into adventures. Rick is a likable, but imperfect hero.

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Where are You When You Turn Out the Lights?

Where are You When You Turn Out the Lights?

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Winter-Castle2-smallLast week I was talking about travelling, and the journey, in Fantasy, and SF. I noted that since most Fantasy uses a pre-industrial setting, journeys are generally undertaken on foot, via horses, or by (sailing) ship. However, there’s another aspect of pre-industrial living I’d like to address.

We recently had a bit of an ice storm in my area which left a lot of people  without power for several days – I say a bit of one because I lived through such a storm about 15 years ago which left quite a few more people without power for several weeks. I learned many things about living without electricity which possibly have no bearing on writing fantasy novels. For example: the Amish likely didn’t notice; it stops being an adventure after the third day; it’s considerably easier to deal with if you live in the country, in a house that predates the use of electricity; people always want to borrow our Lehman’s Non-Electric Catalogue after any prolonged power failure.

And I learned and several things which do.

For one thing, the lack of electricity or other reliable power sources has an impact on where people live, and therefore where you can set your story. You may have noticed that there aren’t a huge number of stories set in the winter, or that even northern barbarians don’t hang around their homelands very much. Bad weather of any kind is generally used as a plot device, but severe conditions take too long to deal with and use up too much story-telling time – unless, as I say, “always winter but never Christmas” is actually a point in the story.

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Goth Chick News Reviews: The Supernaturals: A Ghost Story

Goth Chick News Reviews: The Supernaturals: A Ghost Story

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image002The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is not only an American horror classic, but is one of my favorite scary tales of all time, largely due to the fact Ms. Jackson relies on the psychological scare rather than in-your-face gore.

Flying brain matter and buckets of blood can occasionally be well-constructed story elements — for instance, Charlaine Harris does a fine job with her Southern Vampire Mysteries series, though her stories are on the lighthearted side. However mixing hardcore horror with an over-the-top amount of visceral matter is like pairing fishnet stockings with a leather mini skirt.

One or the other alone is stylish; but put them together and they’ll get your attention for all the wrong, cheesy reasons.

Unfortunately, with CGI taking realism in film to a new, stomach-turning level, the horror genre in all its manifestations has upped the gross-out factor. Which is why I was rather excited when Amazon suggested David L. Golemon’s 2011 Halloween release The Supernaturals to me as a “you-might-also-like,” when I recently purchased a new hard-bound copy of Hill House.

Golemon is best known for his Event Group Thriller series — which admittedly I have shied away from as potentially too X-Files-esque (there’s just no copying some things). But The Supernaturals was a departure from Golemon’s usual fare, and the back story caught my attention.

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Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF

Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF

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Tauren Ninja
…ninja Minotaurs (my idea, apparently)

About ten years ago, I tried to stab this crazy Goth guy and he threw me through a pile of chairs.

Fortunately, we were doing WMA — Western Martial Arts and the daggers were blunt and we were wearing body armor. The chairs however, were real, but the impact fixed my shoulder, which had been painful for the previous month or so. I took this as a good omen and Hugh Hancock and I have been close friends ever since.

hughhancock
Hugh is an independent animator, think Ed Wood does Machinima but actually good.

Hugh is an independent animator, think Ed Wood does Machinima but actually good.

That’s how, years later, I ended up in a warehouse clad in skintight spandex and clutching a plastic sword.

Hugh had had this slightly bonkers idea. He would take the Death Knights from World of Warcraft and use them to make a love story.

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Observations: The Return of the King Movie

Observations: The Return of the King Movie

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The Return of the King poster-smallHey, folks. Today I’m wrapping up my series about The Lord of the Rings movies with the third installment: The Return of the King (following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers).

The third film begins with Gollum’s origin tale, telling how he came to be, well, Gollum. Smeagol and his friend Deagol are fishing when Deagol falls in the river and accidentally discovers the One Ring. Smeagol kills Deagol for it and afterward is exiled, forced to live a miserable existence under the Misty Mountains. The main point of this scene is to show us (again) the Ring’s power to inspire intense desire in anyone who sees it.

We then move to Frodo, gazing at the Ring while Sam sleeps. The desire is obvious in his eyes, a reminder that the Ring is taking control. Gollum wakes them to get moving. In a cute exchange that reveals he’s the only remaining optimist in the group, Sam is rationing their food so they have enough for the journey back home.

Aragorn and company (now with Gandalf, King Theoden, and Eomer) ride to Isengard. Merry and Pippin are there to greet them, being silly with the pipeweed. In previous viewings, I missed that this mini-scene is important because it marks the starting place for the two young hobbits, smoking and feasting and drinking. They will never be this naïve and carefree again.

I also love how Treebeard greets Gandalf as “young master Gandalf,” like he’s a little kid. My grandfather used to greet me the same way (without the ‘Gandalf,’ obviously) and it still makes me smile.

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Vintage Treasures: Shardik by Richard Adams

Vintage Treasures: Shardik by Richard Adams

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Shardik-smallI’m frequently asked what my favorite fantasy novel is. I don’t have a standard answer — some days it’s The Lord of the Rings, some days Bridge of Birds. If I can get away with it, I sometime say Lord of Light, although that’s secretly science fiction (shhh).

But as the years go by, more and frequently I find myself saying Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

Watership Down is a brilliant book — wholly original, uniquely English in both setting and viewpoint, and possessed of the most exciting and satisfying climax I’ve ever read (go Bigwig, you magnificent Owsla, you.) But it’s far from Adam’s only fantasy novel — or even his only worldwide fantasy bestseller. He also wrote The Plague Dogs, the tale of two dogs on the run from a secretive testing facility in Britain; Traveller, a retelling of the American Civil War through the eyes of Robert E. Lee’s favorite horse; the massive Maia, the story of a sex slave in a fantasy empire; and his short story collection Tales from Watership Down.

And in 1974, only two years after Watership Down, he produced perhaps his most ambitious novel, the epic fantasy Shardik, which The Wall Street Journal said “Grips with suspense, haunts with mystery… not to be read once but to be reread as loved books are.”

Shardik struck a chord with readers after it appeared. Fantasy fans expected another animal fantasy, but perhaps weren’t expecting the depth of world-building and political intrigue in Adams’ Beklan Empire, or his powerful antagonist, the giant god-bear Shardik.

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Legendary ConFusion

Legendary ConFusion

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howard confusion 2014
That’s me having a good time at the con. Myke Cole’s in profile directly behind me. Photo by Al Bogdan.

ConFusion is a regional convention in Detroit, well organized by friendly staff who cook up interesting panel topics and are always on hand if you have any issues or concerns. The attendees are friendly and ask great questions of panelists, and there’s a larger author presence than I’ve usually seen at smaller conventions. If you’re actively trying to avoid well-known writers when you head to the bar, or even walk down the hallway, you’re out of luck.

I’ve made it a regular stop every year for the last three, when Saladin Ahmed first invited me up, and I’ve  been looking forward to the return trip all winter.

I arrived in the Detroit area early Friday morning and then spent the day wandering around with my brother-in-arms (well, words), John Chris Hocking, and we had a fantastic visit, then a wonderful meal with his wife Cinda. Afterwards, Chris  took me to three great Ann Arbor bookstores: The Dawn Treader, The Vault of Midnight, and Aunt Agatha’s, an award winning bookstore specializing in mystery. Given my newfound interest in noir (discussed here and here), it was a great place to be, and Hocking, being a noir expert, was a fabulous guide — not to mention a generous one. Not only did he present me with several duplicates from his own collection, he insisted on purchasing  a number of books for me that I HAD to read. I eagerly accepted them. I don’t know that Hocking’s suggestions have ever steered me wrong.

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Art of the Genre: Interview with Jack Crane

Art of the Genre: Interview with Jack Crane

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dragontreeentsYou know, sometimes your boss just refuses to let you enjoy your life… It’s no different here at Black Gate L.A. even though our intrepid editor-in-chief John O’Neill is thousands of miles away in Illinois.

I mean, take this month as a perfect example. On any given day the sun is shining, my office partner Ryan Harvey is talking non-stop about the upcoming release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Kandi, our secretary, is whispering/weeping to her agent about her lack of a callback, but all in all life is pretty good.

Then wouldn’t you know it, I get a text from the aforementioned Mr. O’Neill to gather up my winter gear and before you can utter the words ‘polar vortex’ I’m on a flight to Pennsylvania for an interview.

Now granted, it is an interview of a lifetime, breaking bread and talking shop with legendary Dragon Magazine cover artist Jack Crane, but nonetheless couldn’t Dr. Evil himself have picked early autumn to get this copy?!

Anyway, off I went to brave the cold, first to Philadelphia and then on up the Westchester Pike to the fine and frosty town of elven thousand souls, Broomall, PA. If you’ve never been to Broomall, I wouldn’t suggest going when it is -8 degrees, but still it is a fine little piece of Americana.

With my sightseeing limited, I headed to Phil A Mignon, a nice down home pizza and burger joint to meet with Jack before going to his studio. My order, well a ‘filet cheese steak’ of course, and some highly recommended raspberry peppercorn wings. It was darn fine food, and the filet was incredible compared to the standard greasy Philly steaks.

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At the Intersection of Merritt and Howard

At the Intersection of Merritt and Howard

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merrittI’m a big proponent of taking note of literary anniversaries, particularly of the birthdays of authors of whom I am fond. January is chock full of such birthdays – J.R.R. Tolkien on January 3; Clark Ashton Smith on January 13; Edgar Allan Poe on January 19. Had my weekly blog slot fallen on one of those dates, I almost certainly would have taken the time to commemorate their births, since they’ve all exercised an unshakeable influence over my imagination.

As it happened, though, my slot this week didn’t fall on the birthdays of any writer of my acquaintance. Instead, it fell between the birthdays of two scribes whose memories I hold dear. Yesterday was the birthday of Abraham Merritt and tomorrow is that of Robert E. Howard. Over the years, I’ve written multiple celebrations of these men and their contributions, both to the world of letters and to my own life. I think this only just, given how much enjoyment Merritt and Howard have offered to me, despite being decades in the grave before my own birth (indeed, both died before the births of my parents). And so I shall continue my practice this year.

The difficulty, though, is in finding something new to say about these men that I have not said before. That’s a tall order and, whenever this time of year rolls around, I worry that I’ll simply repeat things I’ve said many times before. Perhaps that’s not an unworthy anxiety, especially since truths does not become less true if they are repeated often.  The truth is that Merritt and Howard have each, in their way, made me the man I am today and it’s difficult to conceive of a version of myself that had not discovered and devoured their works.

Just as true, though, is the fact that I first made their acquaintance thanks to Dungeons & Dragons – and it’s on this foundation that I shall build this year’s commemoration of these two titans of fantasy.

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