Yearly Archives: 2012

August Update and New Review

I was delighted to stumble across a glowing new review of The Desert of Souls earlier this week. You can find it here, over on a great looking site titled Podwits. The Desert of Souls got singled out as the starting entry in a new column about “great escapist literature.” I would pull out a few of the quotes talking about how awesome the book is, but, you know, I’m humble and all.

I’m super pleased that The Desert of Souls is still getting nice write-ups almost a year and a half after its initial printing. Here’s hoping the next one does as well!

In other news, I’m nearly at the two-thirds mark on the rough draft of the third Dabir and Asim novel, The Maiden’s Eye. It feels odd to be so far along with number three when number two is still five months from release, but it also feels pretty good. I don’t think there will be nearly as long a delay between the second and third book as there has been between the first and second.

Each book is a little different. Book three is a little longer and more intricate. I’ve often told writing students that there are many ways up the mountain, and that each project may require a slightly different route to the summit. And so I’m going to try something different this time because my gut tells me I should.

Celebrating the Work of Ben Haas

John C. Hocking introduces me to some of the best fiction I read, although in the case of Ben Haas westerns, it was via sword-and-sorcery scholar Morgan Holmes. I don’t believe anyone is more knowledgeable about sword-and-sorcery than Morgan Holmes. But not just sword-and-sorcery, heroic fiction in general. Hocking’s no slouch himself, though, and some years back when I was hanging out with those two at Pulpcon I had the chance to discover adventure westerns years before I got interested. I remember leaving the convention with Hocking and Holmes and Stephen Haffner (all these h’s in the last name of friends is coincidence, I swear) and dropping by a few great used bookstores. Holmes and Hocking eventually wandered over to the western section. Me, that stuff wasn’t of interest. Westerns?

I suppose I should be generous to myself. With so much sword-and-sorcery fiction still unread by me at that time I know I was trying to stay focused in my interest and research. But I also know that I had some prejudice against reading a western, even though I used to watch and enjoy westerns with my dad. I had about as much interest in reading cowboy stories as I had setting down with a stack of Harlequin romances. Anyway, during that trip I snagged a fine hardback copy of Earth Giant, one of my favorite historical adventure novels, and Hocking pointed me toward some paperbacks by some guy named Richard Meade and another one by Quinn Reade, ’70s sword-and-sorcery novels I’d never heard of. “They’re both by the same guy, Ben Haas,” Hocking informed me. He also explained that many westerns played with the same kind of themes I liked in sword-and-sorcery, although, as with any genre, the good authors are far outnumbered by the mediocre and bad.

It turns out that one of the very best of these western writers was Ben Haas, although good luck finding much written under his real name. The man drafted under a storm of pseudonyms: Ben Elliot, Richard Meade, John Benteen, Thorne Douglas, and maybe a few others. His prose is clean and sharp. He wastes no time on needless exposition, and his pace thunders forward. You never have to wade through the dull stuff, or sigh a little as you skim the sections where the author expounds his pet philosophy. No, Haas got right to the character and the story.

Contest Results Finalizing

Hello all — just a quick note today, as the morning’s waning and I have a lot of words left to write before day’s end.

I’m making a final pass through the best of the “name the Dabir and Asim series” entries this evening, and hope to announce a winner later in the week.

Now, though, I need to return to 8th century Baghdad.

Riding for the Range

I had a fairly pleasant weekend here at our tower on the shore of the Sea of Monsters. I had dinner Saturday with some old friends, and courtesy of an equipment loan from my brother-in-law have been transferring old family videos over to CD-ROM. It’s amusing how many vids we have of child 1. There are a lot fewer of them three years later with child 2, probably because we were already exhausted taking care of child 1. It’s a good exhaustion, mind, but two young children can keep a person busy, and child 1 didn’t sleep well when he was an infant and toddler. With my wife in school or training all through that period, that meant I was the one always getting up in the middle of the night, so it sometimes seems like those years are one long bleary blur.

Writing wise, I am deep in the middle parts of the third Dabir and Asim novel, still called, less and less tentatively, The Maiden’s Eye. At the end of August I’ll be switching gears to get back to  writing a new Paizo Pathfinder novel, a sequel to Plague of Shadows, and as a way of doing research, I’ve switched my reading material. You’d think that with the novel being set in the Pathfinder world that I’d be buried in fantasy texts, or at least Pathfinder gaming material. I’m sure I’ll be doing a little of the latter as I draw closer and closer to my start date, but no, what I’m reading are westerns.

Strep Throat

Blech. No new updates today. My poor wife came down with strep throat and was feeling so bad she called in to work to stay home. With strep, of course, there’s the danger of infecting everyone around you, so she didn’t want to subject anyone else to the illness as well.

Anyway, my morning has been spent driving her to the doc, getting her medicine, and pampering her a bit, so there will be nothing especially clever or insightful on the blog roll today.

Send my wife some good thoughts, although she’s in no real danger, just discomfort. And keep fingers crossed my kids don’t come down with it. Or me. I don’t want to come down with it either!

With that, I’m headed back to ancient Baghdad, although I’ll be on call all day in case my wife needs glasses of water or more pillows or anything.

Pies and Plans and an Update

I finished reviewing galleys for the second Dabir and Asim book yesterday, The Bones of the Old Ones, drove them over to the post office, and sent them away. When next I see these words they’ll be bound in a sort of “preview edition” or advanced reader copy (ARC). But I’m not sure when I will actually READ it again.

After I sent those galleys away I had trouble switching gears from reviewing to rough draft mode, but I still managed, just barely, to draft two thousand words of the third novel of Dabir and Asim. The rest of the week I hope to get at least three thousand words in a day.

A few of you have written in to ask about my birthday. It was very nice, thank you. Apart from some practical matters like some shirts, I received two graphic novels, Conan Volume 11: The Road of Kings, and Fatale Volume 1: Death Chases Me. I enjoyed both of them very much. I haven’t been that big of a fan of the recent Dark Horse Conan comics because most of the time the writers don’t get Conan right (for those of you who aren’t in the know, Conan’s a lot more complex than he might seem in the cinema), but Roy Thomas did it properly, and pleased me mightily. John C. Hocking tells me that the second half of the new Roy Thomas run is even better, and I’m now looking forward to reading it when it’s collected later this year. Fatale is a kind of noir/supernatural/detective/adventure story that’s compelling and captivating and I can hardly wait to read the next story arc.

Medal of Honor

I had planned a series of articles this week about research and the writing process. But if you’re a writer, you must write, and today I found myself applying the Dr. McCoy test to ask whether I was a writer, or a blogger.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that I’m contemplating talking about heroes all this week. I don’t think there are any archives of heroism that could exceed the records of Medal of Honor recipients. If you want to find stories of real heroes, I urge you to visit the Congressional Medal of Honor site any time you think the world is only grim and dark and that everyone is out for themselves.

The text that follows is ALL © Copyright 2012 Congressional Medal of Honor Society. But the heroics belong to Lucian Adams. I picked him at random from the archive page of the web site. You can find equivalent tales about real life figures by clicking on any one of the names on the site. Many of the stories are likely to move you to tears. I urge you to visit. Marvel at their accomplishments and think of them any time someone sneers that there are no heroes. Honor their achievements, their sacrifices, and their memory.

Thinking of Heroes

As I’ve been pondering villainy and heroes over the last few days, I thought it a good time to revisit an old post I’d made on the Black Gate Livejournal page a few years ago. I imagine a lot of you haven’t read it; if you have, I apologize for the repeat.

The Real Caliph

When I decided to set the Dabir and Asim stories in historical Arabia, I likewise decided that while I would emulate the real world, I’d also pay homage to the 1001 Nights. I would emphasize glitter over grit, although the latter wouldn’t be entirely absent. There would naturally be elements of the fantastic, although they would not be everyday experiences.

There are not just fantasy figures in the 1001 Nights, there are also real historical characters, like the caliph Harun al-Rashid and his vizier Jaffar. Dabir and Asim start out working for Jaffar, and rise to such prominence that they begin to interact with the caliph, one of the most powerful men in the world.

I have had more and more reason to be thinking about Harun as I advance into the writing of the third Dabir and Asim book. He makes a few appearances in The Desert of Souls, and is off-stage through The Bones of the Old Ones, but he is a central character in The Maiden’s Eye. I show him as he is in the 1001 Nights, where he comes across as a pretty compelling figure. In real life, though… he was kind of a tractless jerk.

Today’s My Birthday

So you may have heard that today’s my birthday.

What do I want apart from universal peace and brotherhood and some quality time with my family? (And maybe a piece of cherry pie? Cakes are overrated.)

Well, I wouldn’t mind it at all if everyone who liked The Desert of Souls got a copy for a friend. You could say: “Here old chum, it’s Howard’s birthday, enjoy his book.” Preferably with a ridiculous English accent.

Or, if you enjoyed the book, I’d be grateful if you just dropped by and said a few kind words on the Amazon Desert of Souls page. It wouldn’t have to be very many words, either, just a few. I’d liked to see that review number climb to 50 or higher.

If you really liked the book, you could consider buying the short story collection, The Waters of Eternity, or pre-ordering The Bones of the Old Ones — although it’s always better for an author if you can buy a copy of a book from a physical bookstore, which could also take your pre-order. It’s strange but true. It has something to do with a record of physical sales STILL being tracked as more important than online sales. Maybe that will change, eventually, but it hasn’t yet, and so sales numbers from stores help authors more than online sales. (Although if the choice is online sale or nothing, every one of us will choose online!)

Oh, one last thing. If you didn‘t like The Desert of Souls, it being my birthday and all, perhaps you could just keep it a secret.

Right, well, that’s about as clever as I feel like being right now. Keep your fingers crossed on that pie for me.