Yesterday I had a mind meld, today I’m on a Podcast over at SF Signal! I hope you’ll swing by and listen to my musings about writing Pathfinder, Dabir and Asim, and sundry other nonsense with the talented (and Hugo Award winning) Patrick Hester!
Arr, the link be here!
I was invited to join the Mind Meld this week at SF Signal, and along with some fine folks, I discourse at length about how speculative fiction changed my life. You can find it here.
In other news, I am mightily pleased with the new Dabir and Asim short story I’ve written for the Kaiju Anthology, and, in fact, am now pleased with both of the other writing projects I’m drafting away upon. Absent any more emergency home improvement projects, I should be back on track soon…
Hulk still wanting to smash story, so Hulk just post link today.
Hulk hear good thing about Lone Wolf adventure books. Many free now, on the web, and not pirate copies. Hulk SMASH pirates.
Hulk write now.
Late last week an essay I wrote about gaming and writing game novels went live over at the Paizo blog. I talk a little about my gaming philosophy and how it impacted my writing.
And Charles Rutledge of Singular Points sent me a link to a British site. In the past I’ve described the purple pulp glories of Tarzan clone Ki-Gor both at Black Gate and here on the site. Well, feast your eyes upon this. The aforementioned British site has scans of several Ki-Gor novellas, including two of the very best (also including a few dogs, for Ki-Gor quality varies wildly).
Here, then, if you dare, is a link to “The Beast Gods of Atlantis.” If you’ve never read pulp or don’t know about Ki-Gor, you might want to visit the essays that Charles and I wrote on the subject so that you have a better idea of just what you’re in for.
In other news, I spent yesterday afternoon and evening digging yet ANOTHER hole, for more waterpipe burst. Yay. I hope to actually do some more writing today after I spend a little more time on the hole.
I don’t think I’ll ever get more than 48 pages in to Poul Anderson’s Conan the Rebel. Notwithstanding the fact I respect Anderson and have enjoyed a number of his other books, I have no intention of reading further. In those 48 pages of rather small type Conan has only appeared a handful of times, and he’s never actually done anything apart from listening to people talk. There’s been a lot of action, but always with characters to whom the reader has just been introduced. It’s pretty much been a reminder of things NOT to do while trying to tell a dramatic tale. Narratively I’m bored. Because I have a stack of other books, and less time and patience than I used to have, I am sad to say that this one’s being set aside.
Wow, what a busy week. I was working on my truck until 9:00 Wednesday night and spent part of Thursday morning tinkering some more until I finally gave up and had it towed to the service center. Turns out there was a single bad wire, so, apart from the tow fee things weren’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.
While I’m far behind, I have once again been reminded of how I ought to be thankful of all the things that I take for granted. Say, time to work, or a working truck, or my health.
Today I’m turning attention back to my Dabir and Asim story for Kaiju Rising. I’m delighted that the funding level not only reached the stretch goal that activated my story, but that ALL the stretch goals for the anthology have now been met. I find myself in the odd position of having a story I’m not through writing already planned for an antho.
I believe I’ve mentioned before that writing a character who’s a genius is tricky because I’m not a genius. And right now I’ve written poor Dabir and Asim into a corner and am scratching my head trying to get them out. Dabir, of course, will put it all together quickly over the course of the story, but Howard doesn’t have it yet.
Still, though, the day is good. Wonderful weather here. And I had a delightful accidental phone conversation this morning. Allow me to explain. My phone is a constant irritant. The way that the screen touch buttons are arranged means that if I put the phone to my face while talking I can accidentally mute my phone, activate the speaker, block the mic, or even dial random strings of digits. While finishing a chat with my wife while she drove into work I accidentally chin dialed Lou Anders.
I wish I could report that the likely continued silence this week is because I’m closing on a deadline, but, alas, the real world has things that need tending, and my deadlines are slipping. I had to get new tires for the truck, and now it looks like I’m having to replace the truck’s batteries — expensive, and just getting the darned things out is proving a challenge I never anticipated (especially given how many auto batteries I’ve removed over the years).
To top it all off my poor son woke up with a nasty toothache, so I’ve got to get him in for an emergency tooth appointment!
Hope your own week is going better than ours here.
Copyright Darian Jones
With all this talk about the excellence of John Hocking’s Conan and the Emerald Lotus, it pleases me to be able to point all of you to a new short story from his Archivist sequence, over at Black Gate. Cool stuff!
Also, my writer friend Harry James Connolly has a really cool sounding series fans of heroic fantasy ought to go check out. The Kickstarter is here, and it’s already funded… but there’s two weeks left if you want to make sure you get a copy!
And speaking of kickstarters, it looks like there will definitely be a Dabir and Asim story in Kaiju Rising, because my secret author status was unlocked! To all you who signed up to help spread the word I offer you my sincere thanks. For those of you who are just hearing about it, sign up for a copy here, and help back the project! Two tiers yet remain to be unlocked — author Peter Swallow and some more art. I hope you’ll swing by and consider it!
Now I must away. I have to finish a Dabir and Asim story!
While I was wrestling with insomnia and/or lack of sleep over the last months, one of the things I was doing in my down time was leafing through reams of campaign settings and adventures.
If you’re a fantasy reader but not a gamer, you may not know just how much fun can be had paging through a good role-playing setting. The key word there is good. There aren’t THAT many, but there are now many more than there used to be, even keeping in mind that Sturgeon’s Revelation applies equally to gaming stuff. If part of the kick you get from reading fantasy is seeing fantastic and amazing places and the odd people and creatures that dwell within, then you might get a similar kick from a good campaign setting. For instance, I just reviewed an outstanding RuneQuest supplement, Monster Island, over at Black Gate. I don’t play RuneQuest (I don’t even own any of the game’s rulebooks) but the setting got the creative juices flowing. Similarly, I’ve recently picked up Fire in the Jungle, a short but glorious booklet for the generation of jungle adventure scenarios.
The Lamb, REH, and pulp collections on the north wall.
As I was re-organizing the study this weekend I got to thinking about a conversation I’d had with John Hocking a few months back. The years keep speeding along, and we’re both wondering how much longer we’ve got to truly enjoy the books on our shelves. Hocking started a “bucket list” of books he’s been meaning to read. I should say that he’s not only started the list, but that he’s started reading from it.
I’ve done a little of the same. Neither of us is trying to throw ourselves at classics we’re not interested in, but at books that we have on the shelves and for some reason have never gotten around to checking out. I’m 45, after all, and I don’t feel any guilt about not having read War and Peace or Finnegan’s Wake. Not anymore. If I’m reading for amusement and/or edification, I’m not going to slog through something that feels more like work than pleasure.