The other day I mentioned a great solitaire war game I’d tried out from Victory Point Games 
, Empires in America. I ended up blogging about that over at Black Gate, so I thought I’d mention another fine Victory Point Games title, Trenches of Valor , which I picked up with its expansion while my son was studying World War I.
I wanted to point all of my regular readers over to the site of James Enge today. He took an interesting post live about our assumptions on the proper settings for heroic fantasy, and how so many of them are a little bit wrong, jabbing particularly at our assumptions about The Dark Ages.
This week, as with last, I’ve not been around the homestead very much because I’m spending a lot of time at the hospital keeping my mom and sisters company. As my mom continues to improve I’ll have more and more posts coming up, because more reviews and blog posts will be going live about The Bones of the Old Ones.
I finally put hands on one of my favorite CDs, the one I always listen to while driving around plotting tales of ancient Arabia, and I’m looking forward to pointing some of the rest of you to the excellent music recorded on it.
It’s been seven days of unpleasant surprises in the real world, which has meant the writing world has slowed to a crawl. One of my favorite professors passed away last week. I hadn’t seen Jim in person for years, but I spoke to him this spring. He was a wonderful man, talented and generous, and a real mentor to me. Still, I was surprised by the depth of my grief.
And then we discovered that the reason my mom was so weak was that she’d experienced a heart attack. The family and I have been keeping company in the hospital for most of this week. As I write this, I have just learned that she has survived the bypass surgery. There are still many more hurdles and risks.
One of my dearest friends has been slowly dying of cancer for a long time, then battling it back, though still dying. She’s afraid this newest onset may be the last.
With all of this, it has just been difficult to retreat into the fantastic for a while, even though I have a great review in from Sf Signal for The Bones of the Old Ones. And I got a nice callout from Pyr’s Lou Anders as one of the new heirs to the mantle of sword-and-sorcery, which I’ve wanted to be for a long, long while.
That’s all wonderful, and provides some bright spots in a bleak span of days.
My online presence may be a little sporadic for another week or so.
This blog was created to support my writing, which is why I steer clear of political and religious discussions. I figure that people drop by to find out more about my writing, or writing in general, or that Google mis-directed them here when they ran a search for Snookie.
Sure, I have political and religious convictions, and if I see you at a convention some time and you buy me a drink, maybe we’ll talk about them. But I’m kind of a private person and don’t think anyone visiting here is interested in hearing my views about such things anyway. I don’t claim to be a religious or political expert.
Sometimes I hear from people who assume that because of my obvious interest in the ancient Middle-East I must be an expert in the modern Middle-East, and they want to know what I think about this or that. In light of recent events, I’ve heard from people wanting me to justify an opinion they assume I have, or don’t have, about an entire religion and region.
So just this once, I’ll say something.
I’m almost done moving into this new web theme. I’m fairly pleased with the decorating scheme of the new site, and the organization of the various pages. I’m always up for constructive feedback, though. Are there features you’d like to see on the site? Do you want better access to older articles, or the blog roll? Let me know.
Obviously this site is here in part to promote my writing, but I never want to sound like all I do is shrilly promote my work. I’d get pretty bored doing that, and I think that kind of thing is deadly dull to read. As a result, in amongst news about what I’m working on and how it’s going, there will also be posts about ancient Arabia or other history topics, old adventure stories and writers, genre, pulp, sword-and-sorcery, the craft of writing, the publishing industry, and gaming. If my knee fully heals maybe I’ll finally get back to working toward my second degree black belt and start talking about karate.
I just learned today that two industry treasures are involved in alarming medical procedures. Fortunately, another industry treasure is lending a hand.
The talented Scott Lynch is running a fund raiser right now for two industry veterans. Steven Brust is about to undergo surgery to implant a heart difibrilator on August 22nd, and Emma Bull underwent a thyroidectomy on August 8th.
I’d like to perpetuate the myth that all of us writers get a gold plated limo and a pirate chest of gold when we get our book deals, but the truth is that it’s not exactly an industry where most practitioners are rolling in cash. Scott is raising funds through a kickstarter project that features some pretty nifty prizes. I hope you’ll drop by his site and think seriously about lending a hand.
This week I’m going to be experimenting with a new blog look, so some of my sidebars and links may or may not be working for a while. Hopefully I’ll have everything working properly over the course of the week. It’s high time I updated my links and blog roll in any case!
I hope you’ll be patient…
Over at Black Gate today I waxed on about the peculiar glories of the adventures of Ki-Gor in old Jungle Stories magazine. My friend Charles Rutledge was posting about them a few months ago over at his web site, Singular Points. My main article on Ki-Gor and why he’s worth reading can be found at Black Gate. Here, though, is my list of the best of the run, in no particular order. See for yourself just how many lost civilization, priestesses, and beasts make an appearance!
In the Black Gate article I neglected to mention just how much fun even a list of Ki-Gor titles was, but then there’s also the delicious purple of the blurbs that introduce each story. Here are a couple of samples. First, from “The Monkey Men of Loba-Gola:”
Ki-Gor, White Lord of the Jungle, tracked a treachery spoor to the Forest of Treasure, challenging lovely, mad Zoanna and her evil Master. But a devil’s trap was waiting. Ki-Gor faced a battle no man might win… against Nihilla Ati, the Invisible Vampire of Death!
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.
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.