My latest short story, “Ghosts of the Staked Plains”, is now available in Death’s Sting. It’s from Rogue Blades Entertainment and is available in print and electronic formats. The theme of the anthology is immortals. The print version is $13, and the ebook is $4.
G. W. Thomas is hosting a series of posts on his blog this week. I’ve got an essay that went up earlier today. There’s also an interview with Jason M. Waltz and a review of the book by G. W. Thomas.
August Derleth
Today, February 24, marks the birth of August Derleth (1909-1971). He founded Arkham House publisher to keep the work of H. P. Lovecraft in print. For this we all owe him a great debt of gratitude. Derleth was something of a controversial figure in the field for the way he handled the literary estate of H. P. Lovecraft, especially his “posthumous collaborations” in which he completed some stories Lovecraft left unfinished at his death.
My purpose with this post is not to focus on Arkham House, but on an aspect of Derleth’s legacy that is sadly neglected today, and that’s his work as a writer of weird fiction.
It’s been over a decade since there was a collection of Derleth’s work published. I did a quick check online, and the starting price for a collection of his ghost stories was $200. Too rich for my blood.
I was going to review a couple of short pieces I have in anthologies, “Muggeridge’s Aunt” and “The Shuttered House”. Both were fairly standard ghost stories. While not rising to the level of a James or Wakefield, they were still well told and provided a pleasant way to while away a few spare minutes. The problem is the former isn’t readily available in either electronic or print format, and the latter is only in a facsimile of The Avon Fantasy Reader Number 1. For these birthday posts, I’m not going to review stories that aren’t readily available.
I would hope some ambitious publisher would take a chance and produce an inexpensive collection, or better yet a set, of Derleth’s weird fiction.
Today, February 20, marks the anniversary of the births of two great short story writers. One of them, Richard Matheson (1926-2013), will need no introduction. Ardath Mayhar (1930-2012), on the other hand, might not be familiar to you. We’ll start with Matheson because he was born first, but I’m going to focus more on Ardath. Continue reading
The Bone Ships
R. J. Barker
Orbit
Paper $15.99
ebook $9.99
I really liked The Bone Ships. It is a nautical fantasy set about warfare, redemption, loyalty, and honor. It’s also the first book of a trilogy, and I’ll be reading the next two books when they come out.
The Hundred Isles and the Gaunt Islands have been at war for centuries, fighting with ships made from the bones of great sea-going dragons.
The last dragon was killed over a generation ago. The bones are becoming a more and more scarce commodity. But a dragon has been spotted… Continue reading
“The Little Red Owl”
first published in Weird Tales, July 1951
currently available in The Hole in the Moon
Dover Books
Paperback $14.95
Margaret St. Clair was born on this date, February 17, in 1911. She passed away in 1995.
St. Clair wrote primarily short stories, with most published in the 1940s and 1950s. She also published eight novels between 1956 to 1973. In addition to writing under her own name, she published under the name of Idris Seabright. These stories appeared primarily F&SF in the 50s. Continue reading
Or Those Who Fail to Study History…
This is gonna be a rant, just so you know.
So over the weekend, a controversy got started on Twitter. Like when doesn’t a controversy get started on Twitter, right?
Anyway, this one involved someone saying that if you want to be published, you should read at least one book published in the last five years so you would know the trends in publishing. I think the word “beg” may have been used. Continue reading
One of the most influential and arguably the greatest fantasy artist of the last century, Frank Frazetta, was born on this day, February 9, in 1928. I’m gonna shut up and let his art speak for itself.
What follows are some of his art. Enjoy and let me know which are your favorites, and that includes pieces not shown here
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A few nights ago, I decided to check what the traffic had been here on the blog before I went to bed. It was high, highest it had been all month. The number on the bar graph didn’t match the total count for the day; I think it was off by two. Nothing unusual. I’ve seen that before. Just refresh the stats, and they’ll agree.
So I refreshed. The numbers were the same. And several page views higher than they had been before. So I refreshed again. The numbers were climbing. And climbing.
Long story short, I was on the receiving end of some sort of attack by a bot. I went in to the security settings and tightened things down. Before I was done, though, that became the second highest traffic day I’d ever had. (The highest was some years ago when a high-traffic blog linked to a post.)
Traffic seems to be back to normal, although it’s hard to be sure. It’s been a little erratic lately, and today it is down quite a bit. Yesterday seemed to be fine.
If anyone is having issues accessing the site, please let me know. I tightened the security quite a bit. Since I’m still learning about some of the security features, I don’t know if I over did it. I would have asked this question a few days ago, but I’m got an infection hangnail, and typing has been uncomfortable, to say the least.
One of my favorite writers, C. L. Moore (1911-1987) was born on this date, January 24.
Moore needs no introduction to readers of this blog. She was not only one of the best female writers of science fiction and fantasy of the pulp era, she was one of the best of either sex of any era.
Today’s post continues my series of looking at the Northwest Smith stories in order. For those of you who may be new around these here parts, Northwest Smith is widely regarded to be the inspiration for Han Solo. Only ol’ Han never had adventures like these. There will be spoilers. Continue reading
Today, January 22, marks the birth of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). In observance, I’m going to look at “The House of Arabu”. I read it in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. It will be reprinted in Renegade Swords from DMR Books later this year. Look for it. I’ll have an announcement when more details about Renegade Swords are released, details such as the publication date.
I don’t know when “The House of Arabu” was written. It wasn’t published until 1952 in The Avon Fantasy Reader #18 under the title “The Witch From Hell’s Kitchen”. I like Howard’s original title much better. The story has been reprinted several times, but it isn’t as well known as much of Howard’s other sword and sorcery. I did notice that the version reprinted in The Ultimate Triumph had a slightly different closing line than the version in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. Continue reading