Monthly Archives: December 2021

A Look Back at 2020 Won

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2021 wasn’t my favorite year, but it wasn’t the worst I’ve ever experienced. (Those were back in the 90s, and the less said about them, the better.)

Since this blog is a writing, reading, and, to a lesser extent, publishing blog, I’ll confine my comments to things that relate to those topics.

I didn’t get much reading done this past year. I came down with a moderate case of COVID at the beginning of the summer, which took a toll on my stamina over the summer. I didn’t have a lot of energy to do much reading or writing in June or July, and teaching a class the second summer session didn’t help.

Being in academia, the effects of COVID were felt there as well. The spring semester everything was hybrid, and I just have to say, “I HATE ONLINE LABS”. And I’m the one who put them together. Classes were back to full attendance in the fall, but there were other time consuming aspects of the day job, such as two additional committee assignments, a search committee and a building planning committee.

Most of my reading was short fiction, with very few novels. Most of the novels were either older works or independent authors. Among the trad published works, I tended to focus on Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, and Robert Heinlein, leavened with Isaac Asimov. I tried to work in as much Howard, Brackett, and Kuttner as possible, but I didn’t get as much read as last year.

Writing was pretty much a nonstarter, at least until NaNoWriMo. See this post for further details.

I guess like many people, 2020Won was spent trying to hang on to my sanity and a sense of normality. I’m hoping to change some things, but that will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.

 

A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure: A Review by John Bullard

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As stated in the title, this is a guest review by John Bullard.

A Cowboy in Carpathia
Teel James Glenn
paperback $9.99
ebook $2,99

I found out about this book, A Cowboy in Carpathia: A Bob Howard Adventure by Teel James Glenn, from a post on “The Swords of Robert E. Howard” bulletin board, in the thread on books or stories with Howard as a protagonist (Howard as Protagonist | The Swords of Robert E. Howard (proboards.com) . It sounded interesting enough to check out, so I bought a copy and read it. I will breakdown my review into two parts: the story on its merits, and how it handles Robert E. Howard. Continue reading →

“Christmas Eve at the Dancing Leprechaun” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine

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This is the final piece of fiction I’m going to post, at least for a while, and the last collaboration with Gayle Blaine, also at least for a while. Depending on how these stories are received, there may be more. We had a lot of fun collaborating. Of course Gayle assures me that she is going to be writing and publishing some work that is solely her own.

Right, Gayle?

This one is a bit shorter than the previous story, and not as spooky.

As usual, here’s the link to purchase.

This post is no longer available for free.

“A Sprig of Mistletoe” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine, Part 2

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As promised yesterday, here’s the conclusion of “A Sprig of Mistletoe”, a collaboration by me and my friend Gayle Blaine. This won’t be the last  collaboration between us. We had  so much fun that we’ve decided to make this a semi-regular thing.

We have a much shorter ghost story, one very different in tone, that should go live tomorrow.

You can read the first part here. Or you can purchase the complete story here.

The conclusion of this story has been taken down.

“A Sprig of Mistletoe” by Keith West and G. Addison Blaine

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Today’s Christmas ghost story is a little different than the ones I usually focus on.  Let me explain.

Gayle Blaine is a friend and also an aspiring writer who has chosen to write under the name of G. Addison Blaine. What she aspires to write isn’t fantasy, however.  It’s romance, although she isn’t opposed to fantastic elements in her work. She just isn’t at the point where she’s comfortable including those things in what she writes. (I have Gayle’s permission to share this, in case you were wondering.)

So when she approached me to inquire if I would be interested in collaborating, I quickly agreed. We discussed plots and characters, as well as who would write what sections. Then we set to work. I think the result is something neither of us could have produced on our own.

For those who are curious as to who wrote what parts, Gayle focused on the primarily romance parts, meaning the historical portions as well as some of the contemporary sections. I wrote the ghost stuff. Then we each made a pass through the other’s work to make the style more consistent.

The result was a 13,000 word novelette. Because of its length, I’m going to post part of it today and the remainder tomorrow.If you don’t want to wait to read the conclusion, here’s the purchase link.

NOTE: Unlike the other two Christmas ghost stories I posted and the conclusion to this story, I didn’t take the first part of this one down. Call it a sneaky marketing trick. Continue reading →

“The Carolers”

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I’m going to try something a little different for the next week and see what happens. I’ve got some Christmas stories I’m going to post, some by me alone and a couple that are collaborations. This is going to be the first one. I’m going to post a link where you can purchase the story if you wish to read it on a device such as an ereader rather than a web page. I’ll remove the stories from the blog sometime between Christmas and New Year’s. The links to purchase will stay up after the stories are removed.

This s the first one, about a group you don’t want to go caroling with.

Here’s the link to purchase.

This story is no longer available for free.

“A Ghost Story for Christmas”: M. R. James and the BBC, Part 2

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This is part 2 of John Bullard’s guest post.

This is the second part of a look at the ghost stories by M.R. James that the B.B.C. adapted for their series, “A Ghost Story for Christmas”. In part 1, we looked at the stories and films of “The Stalls of Barchester”, “Lost Hearts”, “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas”, “The Ash Tree”, and briefly at “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”. Now, we will examine “A View From a Hill”, “Number 13”, “The Tractate Middoth”, and take a deeper dive into the original 1968 version of “Oh, Whistle …” and its 2010 remake. There will be major spoilers for these last two films, and minor ones for “A View From a Hill”. Continue reading →

“A Ghost Story for Christmas”: M. R. James and the BBC, Part 1

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This is the first of a two-part essay on M. R. James by John Bullard.

Being close to Christmas time, and Keith having established his annual ritual of looking at Victorian Christmas Ghost stories, I thought I’d help him out this year with a look at the second biggest person to uphold the tradition of a good ghost story for Christmas after Dickens, M.R. James, and how the B.B.C. ran several dramatizations of his stories for years for Christmas. We will look at nine of the ten stories that were adapted, starting with the first five. Continue reading →

A Report on NaNoWriMo and a Glimpse of Things to Come

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Thank you to everyone who purchased “Pickman’s Exhibition” or boosted the signal on it. I greatly appreciate it.

I’m going to be releasing more fiction over the next few weeks and into 2022. I participated in NaNoWriMo this year. I was behind most of the month until the last few days. I finished with a final word count of 50,006. Instead of a novel, I decided to try to write as much short fiction from scratch as I could. By that I mean everything had to be started during NaNoWriMo. Nothing I had worked on previously. It all had to be fresh. That was the goal I set for myself. I had hoped to have ten pieces of short fiction completed by the end of November. I finished with nine completed stories and six in various states of completion, ranging from a few pages to Oh-Lord-this-isn’t-short-fiction-it’s-a-longer-work.

I’m calling that a  win. The genre varied somewhat, although not as much as last year. That means I didn’t write any detective or crime fiction. I did write a few Christmas ghost stories, though. I’ll be trying to put them up over the next few weeks. I’m still figuring out what I’m doing with self-publishing, so I’m not making any promises about how many I’ll actually get up.

In the meantime, John Bullard is working on some M. R. James posts. The first will go live tomorrow.

And I haven’t forgotten I still need to do a post for Leigh Brackett.