Crossbones and Crosses Debuts at Howard Days

10 Replies

Crossbones and Crosses
Jason M Waltz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
trade paper $17.00
ebook $5.00

Jason M. Waltz, publisher of Rogue Blades Entertainment, has just published a new anthology, and it’s one you’re going to want to get.  The hardcopy has been available for a few days now, and the electronic version has just gone live in time for Howard Days.  Crossbones and Crosses harkens back to the days of Raphael Sabatini, Talbot Mundy, Robert E. Howard, and Harold Lamb. These are the adventure stories we’ve needed. When too many anthologies are full of message fiction, RBE has given us something different. Adventure, Excitement, and most importantly, fun.  Make that Fun with a capital “F”. Continue reading →

Remembering Ray and an Update

4 Replies

We lost Ray Bradbury seven years ago today (June 5, 2012).  It’s hard to believe he’s been gone that long.  If you get a chance, read something of his today and raise a glass in his memory.

I’ve been busy and burned out the last couple of months, but things should start picking up around here starting this weekend or early next week.

Howard Days is this weekend.  I’m going down a day or so early for some of the informal stuff that may go on.  Also, just to get the heck outta Dodge for a few days.  Things should settle into a routine next week, meaning I’ll be getting some writing done.

RIP, Dennis Etchison, 1943-2019

4 Replies

Dennis Etchison passed away yesterday, May 28, in his sleep.  He had been battling cancer.

Etchison was a giant in the field of horror.  He wrote screenplays, novels, and edited anthologies.  But his major contribution was as a writer of short fiction.  Some of his collections include The Dark Country, The Death Artist, and Got to Kill Them All.

I’ll honor his memory later this evening by reading some of his fiction.

Manly Wade Wellman’s “The Finger of Halugra”

5 Replies

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and so I was going to do an update.  The I realized it was Manly Wade Wellman’s birthday (b. May 21, 1903) and instead could write about something that would be of interest to people.

“The Finger of Halugra” is vintage Wellman, but it may not be familiar to many of you.  It was originally written in the early 70s for a small press publication that folded before the story could see print.  The story languished in Wellman’s files and wasn’t rediscovered until some years after the author’s death, when Karl Edward Wagner came across it.  The story first saw print in another small press publication, Deathrealm, in the spring 1995 issue.  It was reprinted in The Best New Horror Volume 7 (AKA The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 7).  Sin’s Doorway is the only collection of Wellman’s in which “The Finger of Halugra” has appeared.  And that collection is out of print and never had an electronic edition, although copies can be had on the secondary market. Continue reading →

Jack Williamson’s Eleventy-First Birthday

8 Replies

Jack Williamson

There are a number of birthdays today that I could write about, but I want to focus on three, in no other order than their importance to me.

Legendary science fiction and fantasy author Jack Williamson was born 111 years ago today.  That would be April 29, 1908.  He passed away in 2006.

Williamson got his start in the pulps in the late 1920s with his first story, “The Metal Man”, being published in Amazing Stories.  His final novel, The Stonehenge Gate, was published in 2005.

My project to read and compare the magazine and book versions of Darker Than You Think got sidetracked last year.  I’ll try to get it restarted in the summer.

I’ve written about Williamson’s impact on me several times before, so I’ll keep my comments short.  I came across a stripped copy of The Best of Jack Williamson for a quarter at the flea market in Wichita Falls, Texas, when I was in the seventh grade.  (Stripped means the cover had been stripped off and the book had been reported to the publisher as having been pulped.  It was stolen, IOW, although I didn’t know that then.)  My favorite story in the collection at the time, and still a favorite today, is “With Folded Hands”.  It’s a chilling story about robots who protect us from ourselves, whether we want them to or not.  If you haven’t read it, it’s worth tracking down a copy. Continue reading →

“Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall” by Frank Belknap Long

Leave a reply

Frank Belknap Long was born on this date, April 27, in 1901.  Long was friends with H. P. Lovecraft, and he’s best remembered today as a member of the Lovecraft circle.  Long contributed a number of  stories to the Mythos over the years, my personal favorite being “The Hounds of Tindalos”.

But Long wrote in multiple genres, including Gothics mostly under his wife’s name.  Today I want to look briefly at one of his science fiction stories.  “Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall” was first published in the November 1948 issue of Startling Stories.   Continue reading →

Mundy and Davidson

1 Reply

Just a quick birthday announcement of two great writers of the previous century who were born on this date (April 23).

Talbot Mundy

First, Talbot Mundy (1879-1940).  Mundy wrote adventure stories for the pulps.  Mundy worked in India and Africa after graduating from university, and these experiences informed much of his later fiction.  Some of his work  contains fantastic elements, but much was real world adventure fiction.  He was an influence on a number of science fiction and fantasy writers.

Much of his fiction is available in both print and electronic formats.

Avram Davidson

Second, Avram Davidson (1923-1993).  Davidson wrote his best work at short lengths, although he wrote a number of novels as well.  Davidson had a unique voice, and I once attended a panel where the moderator asked the panelists what writers they thought people would be reading in a hundred years.  Neil Gaimen was on the panel, and if memory serves, named Davidson.

Davidson isn’t light bedtime reading, but his work rewards the effort.   (It doesn’t require a great deal of effort, you slackers.)  His collection of essays, Adventures in Unhistory, is worth seeking out.