Guest Post by Ty Johnston

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Fantasy writer Ty Johnston is touring the blogosphere this month, in part to promote his latest e-book novel, Demon Chains, but also because he loves blog touring. His other fantasy novels include City of Rogues, Bayne’s Climb and Ghosts of the Asylum, all of which are available for the Kindle, the Nook and online at Smashwords. To learn more about Ty and his writing, follow him at his blog tyjohnston.blogspot.com.
Some questioning from a fellow fantasy writer got me to thinking recently. Why do I write mostly in the fantasy genre?
It is a question with no easy answer. Literature of the fantastic and speculative was part of my childhood, a big part, so perhaps there is a bit of nostalgia which keeps my interest going.
That being said, after spending some time thinking over this topic, I came to what I feel is a stronger reply, a better answer. I remain tied to the fantasy genre because of the freedom it allows me as a writer and as a reader.
While the general public might hear the word “fantasy” and think of dragons and men waving around big swords, fantasy is so much more than that, not that there’s anything wrong with dragons and men waving around big swords. When I write in other genres, I often find myself feeling limited intellectually and emotionally, possibly even spiritually. I have no sense of such fetters when working within fantasy.
Fantasy writers write in their favored genre for a lot of different reasons, but one of my draws is exploration of the mind and perhaps the soul. I like to delve into the various elements that makes us human. I find the ability to do my exploring through fantasy. When I am withdrawn into fantasy, I feel as if I’m an explorer of old, charting new territory. If not new territory for others, often enough I am discovering new territory for myself, within myself.
Again, I gain little sense of this from the other genres.
I do not mean to belittle other genres of literature, because each has its place, its good and its bad, and I read widely across all genres. However, as a writer, I find the other genres limiting, making me feel forced to refrain from boldly traveling to new worlds, whether those worlds are physical or metaphysical or beyond.
Within fantasy, nearly anything can occur, anything can be thought and weighed. Admittedly some of the sub-genres of my favorite literature offer limitations, but those limitations are often similar to the ones I find in the non-fantastic genres. When I feel the need, I can work within those limitations, but when I wish to expand, it is to the wider possibilities of fantasy I must turn and return.
The simple answer, then, is that I write mostly in the fantasy genre because of the philosophical freedom it allows me as a writer and reader. The other genres I find somewhat stifling, at least part of the time, and often too literal, too strict, too methodical. With fantasy, I can fly, I can soar.
And hopefully readers will explore and travel with me.

The Next Week or So

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I’m getting over a sinus infection at the moment, something that isn’t helped by the dust and the wind here on the South Plains.  Unless something major happens tomorrow, I probably won’t be posting anything new until Sunday night or more probably Monday evening.  I’ll be attending ConDFW this weekend and will give a full report when I get back.  I’m also reading Mark Finn‘s updated biography of Robert E. Howard, Blood and Thunder, and Matt Forbeck‘s Carpathia.  They’re both great reads, and I’ll review them next week.  I had hoped to finish one of them in time to write a review before the con, but being sick has slowed me down some.

In the meantime, this Saturday will see the first guest post here.  Author Ty Johnston is doing a blog tour to promote his new book, Demon Chains, the latest in his Kron Darkbow series.  I’d like to thank Ty in advance for his column.  I’ve read it, and it’s good.  Check it out.  And if you haven’t read any of his books, start with City of Rogues, which I reviewed a few months ago.

Coming up after the report on ConDFW, I’ve got commitments to review (not necessarily in this order) Shadow’s Master by Jon Sprunk,  Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell, The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle, Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig, Trang by Mary Sisson, and Rise and Fall by Joshua P. Simon.  I’ll probably look at some short fiction in the midst of all that, plus the occasional essay.

First Professional Payment

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After years of sporadically collecting rejections, I received my first payment for something I’d written.  Well, for fiction at least.  Review copies of books don’t count in this context.  And while it’s not professional rates by SFWA standards, I got paid for it, so by that loose definition it’s professional.  I just transferred the money from my Paypal account to my bank account.  What a rush.  I can definitely get used to that.  Anyway, the story is supposed to be available in a few weeks, so I’ll post a notice when that happens.

A Visit to the World House

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The World House
Guy Adams
Angry Robot Books
 416pp A-format paperback
£7.99 UK   $tbc Aus
416pp mass-market paperback
$7.99 US    $8.99 CAN
 ISBN 978 0 85766 037 4
ebook  £4.49 / $5.99
 ePub ISBN 978 0 85766 038 1

This one has been out for a while but it’s still worth a read.  As Dean Wesley Smith likes to point out, books aren’t produce; they won’t spoil.  When the book arrived in the mail, I was on my way back to work after meeting my wife for lunch and had stopped by the post office.  I decided to read it on my lunch breaks.  That didn’t happen for two reasons.  One, I keep having to run errands during lunch, and two, I was just too drawn into the story to be able to read only a short number of pages every few days.

The idea of a house where each room contains a world or a passage to a world isn’t new.  James Stoddard used it in The High House and The False House, just to give one example.  And while Stoddard’s books had some creepy moments, The World House does them one better.

This house is not one you want to live in.  In fact, it’s basically a prison.  I’m not giving away anything by saying that; the cover copy mentions a prisoner waiting for a door to be unlocked.  

I’ll mention some, but not all, of the things you find in the house.  There’s a Snakes and Ladders game painted on the floor of the nursery; when you step on it, it becomes three dimensional and the snakes are alive.  There’s a chapel with blood-thirsty cherubs.  The bathroom has an ocean in it.  (No, nothing has backed up.)  Various rooms have taxidermy, which can come to life.  The library has a book about each person’s life, unless of course the book worms eat your volume.  And let’s not forget the cannibals…

For a novel of this length, Adams includes a large number of characters, roughly a dozen or so, depending on how you want to delineate between major and minor characters.  Not all of them make it to the end.  Still, he does a good job of making them individuals, and some are deliciously evil.  They come from the late 1800s to the early 2000s, and all of them entered the house the same way.  They fell through a box.

There’s a small Chinese box.  If you find yourself in a life threatening situation, say about to get the crap beaten out of you by a loan shark, or being chased by your fiance who has taken you somewhere isolated so he can rape you, and you happen to be in contact with the box…well, you just fall in.  Once you do, you’ll find yourself somewhere in the house.  

The characters try survive and figure out how to get home.  The box is known in the real world, and a few have managed to make it back.  And of course, there are people who are searching for the box for reasons of their own.

I’m not going to try to summarize the plot lines involving the characters any more than I have, which I realize isn’t much.  I’ll just say that who the heroes and villains are may surprise you.  And that’s one of the satisfying things about this novel.  Adams doesn’t do the obvious with the characters, and there are hidden relationships between some of the characters which aren’t revealed until the final pages.  

This one was a lot of fun.  Adams has a wonderfully dark and twisted imagination, especially when it comes to populating the rooms of the house.  Half the fun was seeing what he would throw at the reader next.  Even though the story isn’t over, I thought for the most part he did a fine job tying up all loose ends for the first half.  The second part of the tale, Restoration, is sitting on my desk at work.  I’ll be starting it soon. 

John Seery-Lester’s Safari Paintings

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Cover Painting for Legends of the Hunt

Jim Cornelius had a new post this evening over at Frontier Partisans.  It featured a link to the safari art of John Seery-Lester.  These are paintings of classic safaris, many of them based on actual safaris.  Teddy Roosevelt is prominently featured in some of them.  The paintings brought back my boyhood dreams of going on safari.  If this is something that might be of interest to you, check it out.  If you really like his work, there’s a link to order a collection of John’s paintings.

Battlepug to be Collected by Dark Horse

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For just over a year now, Mike Norton has been writing a weekly webcomic, Battlepug.  With Allen Passalaqua and Crank assisting on the artwork, it’s a unique blend of a Conan-like barbarian and giant animals.  I just discovered it today.  I’m still trying to decide if it works for me, but I like the visuals and the framing story.  With weekly installments, it took a while for the story to really get going, but it seems to be picking up steam.  Norton is beginning to flesh out the background and add supporting characters.  Dark Horse recently announced it would collect the first year, to be published in July.  Anyway, I thought I’d mention it in case some of you who aren’t aware of it might be interested.

New Links to Reviews of Small Press and Indie Books

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It seems I’m running perpetually behind these days.  I’ve been intending to put links to all the reviews I’ve done of indie and small press books in the sidebar.  Tonight I finally got around to it.  You’ll find it just above all the other links to posts on various topics.  I’ve included links to some essays (rants?) as well.  The links are grouped by broad category, either fantasy/adventure or science fiction.  One of the reviews I did for a different site.  I thought about creating a separate list for YA books, but for now I’m going to group them in with whichever category they best fit. 

I’ve got a number of indie published books in the queue to review, if I can ever get to them.  That perpetually behind thing again.  Right now I’m reading Mark Finn’s revised biography of Robert E. Howard.  Or at least trying to; daily life things keep getting in the way.  I hope to have the review done by the time I go to ConDFW next weekend.  Anyway, I intend to review a great many more indie published work over the course of the year.  Some of the most exciting work seems to be published by indie writers these days, and I intend to share as much of it as I can with you.

Now, back to trying to get some reading done.

Watchmen Prequels – You’ve Got to be Kidding

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I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the announcement the other day that DC Comics is going to be publishing prequels focusing on the characters in the Watchmen, the legendary and ground breaking series from the 1980s written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons.  I was a huge fan of the series, buying them as they came out.  A sophomore in college who for the first time lived near a direct sales comics outlet, the complexity of storytelling really rocked my world.

I don’t see an need for prequels, especially not if Alan Moore isn’t going to be involved.  And given the history between him and DC, I expected pigs to fly before that happens.

Other than the occasional graphic novel or collections, I haven’t followed comics closely in a number of years, mostly due to time, money, and space concerns, but lately I’ve considered picking the habit back up, at least in electronic format.  I’m only familiar with a few of the people working on the various projects in the Watchmen prequels.  I do respect the ones I’m familiar with, but none of them will be enough to entice me to buy these comics.

There are other issues at play here, though, besides should a self-contained story be added to.  Depending on who you listen to, Alan Moore was cheated out of the rights to his creation.  Or not.  Over at Black Gate, Matthew David Surridge has summarized the situation, using extensive quotes as well as his own opinions.  If you’re a comics fan and haven’t seen it already, it’s worth a read.

Dunsany’s Heir

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The New Death and Others
James Hutchings
0.99, various ebook formats (Kindle)(Smashwords-various formats)

About one hundred years ago or so, give or take a decade, there was a fantasy writer named Lord Dunsany.  Some of you may have heard of him.  He wrote a couple of novels, but most of his reputation was built on short stories, many of them about a chap named Jorkens who had all sorts of fantastical adventures.  Other stories, though, the ones that weren’t about Mr. Jorkens, ah, those were a delight.  They were often brief, what would be referred to today short-shorts.  Dunsany was known for his irony and wit.  And while writers who wrote witty, ironic tales, often about chaps who have fantastical adventures, have continued to this day, none have mastered the short-short the way Dunsany did, certainly none with his bite.

Until now.  James Hutchings has taken up that mantle, and he wears it well.  The New Death and Others contains 44 short stories and 19 poems.  And to quote from the promotional copy, there are no sparkly vampires.

Usually in these reviews, I give a run down of the stories, listing them and perhaps saying a thing or two about them.  I won’t do that here.  Not with 44 stories, some of them only about a page in length.  Instead, I’ll try to give you a feel for the book.  For starters, this is the second book I’ve read in the last couple of weeks that made me laugh out loud.  (The first was Giant Thief.) The humor is wry, ironic, and at times biting.  I loved it.

Oh, and puns.  Did I mention puns?  There are number of them.  One example, in “Sigrun and the Shepherd” unkind shepherds are sent to angora management classes.  There are more where that came from; “The Adventure of the Murdered Philanthropist” is a Sherlock Holmes spoof that contains a whole string of them.  Now, there are those who say the pun is the lowest form of wit.  You need to remember that these people only say that because they aren’t clever enough to think of puns themselves.

Four of the poems are retellings of fantasy stories by famous authors, one each by Lovecraft, Howard, Smith and the aforementioned Dunsany.  And they’re good.  I haven’t read all the originals, but the Howard poem, based on “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune“, captures the spirit of the original exceedingly well.

In fact all of the poems, whether short or long, are worth reading.  These poems have rhyme and meter, and more than once I found their cadences echoing through my mind after I had finished them.

Many of the stories concern the fiction city of Telelee.  (This is a different spelling than the author has on his blog, but I checked the book to make sure.)  These are among the most Dunsany-esque tales in the book.  Telelee is an imaginary city in a world that never was.  Every story (and poem) set there was different, exotic, and fascinating.  I want to visit this world many times.

Don’t think, though, that Hutchings has merely recycled old tropes.  While his love and respect for the source material he draws on is evident, these are stories for the twenty-first century.  Many of the puns and jokes would have been incomprehensible to Dunsany, Howard, or Lovecraft.  Computers and modern technology appear frequently, and a number of the stories are set in present day.  Huthcings has built on what has come before, paid homage to it, and expanded it.  In doing so, he has made this style of writing his own.

One final word regarding the production values of the book.  This is one of the most professional ebooks I’ve seen in a long time.  Certainly more professional than the last ebook I read from a major publisher.  I don’t recall any formatting errors.  There is a fully interactive ToC, which worked every time I used it.  Hutchings has clearly put the time and effort in to produce a superior book in terms of production values.  And the cover fits the book to a “T”.  At ninety-nine cents, it’s a bargain at twice the price.  (No, James, I’m not sending you more money.)

I’ve somehow found myself with a pretty heavy reviewing slate.  Enough to keep me reading for the next six months.  I’ve got half a dozen books I’m committed to review, either to individual authors who have requested reviews or to publishers who have been kind enough to send review copies.  That’s not a bad situation to be in mot of the time, but if I’m not careful, the commitments can take the fun out of reading and make it seem like homework.  The New Death reminded me why I started doing this in the first place.  The humor and exotic settings were a breath of fresh air.  Many of the stories and poems are, like I mentioned, only about a page in length.  This is the perfect book to read when you only have a minute or three.  I recommend the book highly and will be following Hutchings’ blog from now on.