Tag Archives: John C. Hocking

A Look at Neither Beg Nor Yield, Part 1

So Jason M. Waltz has been asking me to reivew Neither Beg Nor Yield for, well, a long time. When he first asked, I wasn’t reviewing current works because I didn’t want to create a conflict of interest for myself by givng a less than positive review to an editor I might want to submit to.

I’ve since modified that policy.

I had dipped into this anthology, but I hadn’t read it straight through. So I decided to read it from the front cover to the back.

Neither Beg Nor Yeild is a hefty anthology devoted to “sowrd and sorcery with attitude”. Given the time contraints I have on my reading, I decided to break up the reivew into four parts. (There are twenty stories here, so four reviews covering five stories is what I’m going to do.) If I waited until I fiinished the book, I would have forgotten half the stories. I’m just going to give a brief description of the stories rather than plot details.

So here is the first of four reviews covering the first five tales in the book. The other reviews will be posted over the next mumblety-mumble months as I work the reading into my shcedule. Continue reading →

Tales From the Magician’s Skull Premieres

Tales From the Magician’s Skull
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Goodman Games
Bedsheet size magazine, $14.99

If you’ve followed this blog, you may remember me mentioning the Kickstarter for this publication.  Well, it’s out now, and the second issue is in production.

I think the editor Howard Andrew Jones and his team have set the bar pretty high with this inaugural issue.  It’s modeled after the old pulp magazines.  I think this approach is a success.  The illustrations, fan club index, and the editorial by Jones all complement the most important aspect of the magazine, the stories. Continue reading →

Weird Menace Volume 1 Now For Sale

Weird Menace 1 aJames Reasoner announced this morning that Weird Menace Volume 1 is now for sale.  Electronic copies are $2.99 and paper copies are $9.99.  Volume 2 will follow soon.  Look for an announcement here when it does.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction along with the table of contents.

The Weird Menace pulps flourished for less than a decade, from the mid-1930s to the early ’40s, but while they were popular, they delivered adventure, excitement, and spine-tingling thrills in quantities rarely seen before or since. Mad scientists, deranged henchmen, damsels in distress, and stalwart heroes raced through their pages in breathless, over-the-top, never-ending action. A good Weird Menace yarn really is just one damned thing after another.

Rough Edges Press asked some of today’s best authors of popular fiction to write Weird Menace stories, and they delivered. Settle back and let us spin a few yarns for you…

But keep an eye out behind you. You never know when something might be sneaking up on you.

Stories in this volume include:
“Bodies for the Brain Butcher” by John C. Hocking
“A Night on Madhouse Mountain” by Bill Crider
“The Curse of the Monster Makers!” by Scott Dennis Parker
“Farmhouse of the Dead” by Keith West
“The Hideous Blood Ray” by Robert E. Vardeman
“Blood Treasure for Satan’s Buccaneers” by James Reasoner

Weird Menace Volume 1 is Coming!

Weird Menace 1 aI am very pleased to announce that Weird Menace Volume 1 will be published sometime in the next few weeks.  (I’ll let you know the exact date when I know.)

You can see from the cover to the right that it will contain stories by James Reasoner, Bill Crider, John C. Hocking, Robert E. Vardeman, Scott Dennis Parker, and…er…ahem…Your Intrepid Blogger.

Here’s the ToC: Continue reading →