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Saturday, November 1, 2025
Thursday, October 16, 2025
As simulcast on Black Gate ....
August 3rd, we highlighted the first three stories of The Chain Story 2 – Sword and Sorcery. All these stand-alone stories are “chained” together with a common element (a common magical artifact represented in the logo), with different contributors showcasing their own characters/worlds. They can be read in any order, for free (at least for several months, many times indefinitely)!
Stories will be released every few weeks, so check the Chain Story website continuously! This post highlights the next five!
- Shard of Song by Rigel Ailur
- Grave's Brood by S.E. Lindberg
- Fragment of a Sorcerous Crown by Joan Marie Verba
- The Village of Morvoss by Thomas Grayfson
- On Memories by Michael Stackpole
Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clark Ashton Smith Conference - January 2026
Simulcast on Black Gate,9/30/2025:
Clark Ashton Smith Conference - A Rendezvous in Smith's hometown, Auburn, California
For many enthusiasts of pulp fiction, there is a rite of passage in which the reader stumbles into H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, or Clark Ashton Smith, and as they track down stories or read adjacent publications, they learn about the others and they were pen pals and shared numerous cross-over characters/ideas. People usually discover Howard or Lovecraft first, and are often floored last by the poetic, cosmic madness of Smith. Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was a poet at heart, also a sculptor and artist, and his approach to weird fiction was to introduce lyricism and literary depth. Indeed, he is a major reason I started interviewing authors on their take on "Beauty in Weird Fiction" in 2014, the series hosted by Black Gate since 2018. Check out the Eldritch Dark website for his fiction, nonfiction, and images of his drawings and sculptures.
He could not tell the duration of the weaving, the term of his enthrallment. Dimly, at last, he beheld the thinning of the luminous threads, the retraction of the trembling arabesques. The globe, a thing of evil beauty, alive and aware in some holocryptic fashion, had risen now from the empty armor of Yanur. Diminishing to its former size, and putting off its colors of blood and opal, it hung for a little while above the chasm...
- From "Weaver in the Vault", a Zothique tale, CAS (1934)
So, it is with great pleasure that we spotlight a conference dedicated to Clark Ashton Smith, duly hosted in the author's hometown (Auburn, CA, to be held Jan 10th, 2026)! Read this to find out all the details, the amazing panelists, and get an inside perspective from the organizer about the origin of the event.
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Dyscrasia Fiction Shirts in the Wild
Appreciate the local folk supporting Dyscrasia Fiction, at work, in the dojo, and in Kroger!
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Aikido Promotions
Saturday August 30th, my son and I passed Aikido testing (now Shodan and Nidan, respectively ... aka 1st and 2nd degree black belts). Thanks for all the support from Mushinkan Dojo (Q, Chris, Daryl Everding and Hanna Everding, and Sensei Dirk Domaschko, and many more). The journey started for us ~2011 give or take, and still continues.
Daryl sports a Dsycrasia Fiction shirt for support
Connor is learning how to fold a hakama
Monday, August 18, 2025
Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Selfies
Table of Contents:
Writer Symposium Author Selfies
John Scalzi – Guest of Honor Writer
Maurice Broaddus – Author and Chair of WS
Olivia Sailor – Lead Organizer Writers Symposium
Byron Leavitt – Diemension Games Writer
CSE Cooney - Author
Gilles Plantin - Monolith Creative Director & Jeszika Le Vye - Artist
Tim Waggoner – Horror & Conan Writer
Chris A Jackson - Author
Aaron Rosenberg - Author
Michael Stackpole – Sci Fi & Conan Writer
Jim Zub – Conan Comics Writer
Sean CW Korsgaard - Battleborn!
Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
Table of Contents:
Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panels Review
Remembering Howard Andrew Jones
Thursday, 11:00 AM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4
Join us as we honor and celebrate the life, work, and memory of Howard Andrew Jones, one of our own.
Featuring: Bryan Young, C. S. E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Chris A. Jackson, Erik Scott de Bie, Erin M. Evans, Gregory A. Wilson, Katherine Monasterio, Matt Forbeck, Sean CW Korsgaard, Seth Lindberg
- We announced the Howard Andrew Jones Memorial Travel Grants (for enabling BIPOC and first-time panelists/authors to attend); thanks to the 2025 Writer's Symposium organizing committee
- Also, some homeage pictures of the Skull's Zigguratt (Goodman Game's Vendor booth) and of the piano outside the Writer's Symposium green room (this haunts me, but I love it. Miss you Howard)See previous Memorial Obiturarys, Memorial Panels:
From Battles to Fisticuffs
Saturday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 1
Bar fights, professional fights, ambushes, duels, full-scale battles - how do we do them justice? How do we craft a physical confrontation in our scenes?
Featuring: J.B. Garner, James A. Hunter, Richard Lee Byers, Seth Lindberg, Stephen Kozeniewski
Community Building
Thursday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Boston
Writers who have a community thrive better in their creative work. Come listen to our panelists talk about the communities they participate in, best practices, and how to get started.
Featuring: DaVaun Sanders, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Rob Cameron, Seth Lindberg
Monster as Protagonist
Friday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 2
Sometimes, it's the monster's turn to be the star of the show. How do you write for when your protagonist is a bloodsucking fiend, an evil genius, or a shambling corpse?
Featuring: Daniel Kraus, Erin Roberts, Khaldoun Khelil, Seth Lindberg, Shveta Thakrar
Sword & Sorcery
Friday, 10:00 AM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4
From Robert E. Howard to Howard Andrew Jones, explore the highs, lows, and two-fisted pulpy action of this fantasy subgenre.
Featuring: Bryan Young, Michael A. Stackpole, Richard Lee Byers, Sean CW Korsgaard, Seth Lindberg
Magic Systems 101
Friday, 5:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 2
Join us as we discuss how to develop a magic system for your game or story and how to ensure you don't break your own rules.
Featuring: Aaron Rosenberg, Daniel Myers, Danni Williams, James A. Hunter, Seth Lindberg
Nilah Magruder Spotlight
Saturday, 1:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4
Join our Writers Symposium featured guest in conversation for a special one-on-one Q&A session
Nilah Magruder and Seth Lindberg
Sunday, August 17, 2025
UK Roadtrip - Literary Inspirations from Tolkien, Shelley, to the Ancients
This Summer, Heidi and I took a Rick Steve's Tour (best 14 Days of England, highly recommended); it started in Bath, and we arrived a day early since we had arranged for a separate private tour from Daniel to see Stonehenge (which was absent from the awesome Rick Steve's itinerary we had signed up for). Had an absolute blast. This captures highlights related to writing:
1) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus - 1818
A plaque in Bath commemorates Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein (she was 18 years old!). Later, when we went through Oxford and went through the amazing Treasures of the Bodleian Library, we saw several of the hand-written scripts of Frankenstein with her edits, and a portrait painted from he deathmask (painted by Reginald Easton, watercolor on ivory, circa 1857)
2) Other Treasures of the Bodleian: Robert Hooke's 1665 Micrographia & Jane Austin, and Lewis Carroll
The Bodleian Library holds a first edition of Robert Hooke's Micrographia. Hooke is a hero amongst mechanical engineers and rheologists (all hail the Spring constant) and microscopists. His drawings showed the world stuff they had never seen before, and the image data was digestible to all who could get their hands on the printed books. This is the second time I saw a 1665 edition - the first being in 2012 when I gave a lecture at the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago.
3) To write, one needed pencils! Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick
The science and engineering behind pencil making is kind of fun. To note one story, Charles Fraser-Smith commissioned special pencils under the Official Secrets Acts of WWII. The RAF pilots got them, and they were fitted with maps and compasses to enable escape from behind enemy lines.
4) Church of England, King James Bible champion also wrote Daemonologie book
The trip fully illuminated the splintering of the Catholic Church (we visited many ransacked and ruined Abbeys and Minsters); soon after the formation of the Church of England, folks got their own readable Bibles (i.e., written in English, not Latin) from King James I (same as King James VI of Scotland). Not only did he initiate/commission the project for the bible, he actually did write a book on Demonology (largely espousing the torture of witches). A statue/relief in Oxford commorates his role in the making of 2 books.
5) Rosetta Stone - British Museum [~200BC]
Excerpt from Wikipedia: "The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts."
This stone enabled the decipherment and translation of hieroglyphs. It is so popular now, no contemporary human canreally see the actual stone up close via the mob of tourists.
6) Legion of the Shadows - York Minster Museum under the Church
Karl Edward Wagner used the legend of the Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana), the infamous legion that went abruptly missing in 108 AD. to write his Robert E Howard pastiche of Bran Mak Morn. The legion was last recorded in York, they had left their signature on bricks viewable in the Roman Fortress Museum under the York Minster Church.
7) The 'Tolkien Door' at Stow on the Wold Doors of Durin, also known as the West-gate of Moria
The north porch of St. Edward's Church in Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire, is home to a wooden door which looks like something from a fairy story. Indeed, rumour has it that the door was the inspiration behind J.R.R. Tolkien's J. R. R. Tolkien's Doors of Durin, the west gate of Moria that appears in a scene in the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.The door is made of dark wood with studded panels, and it has an old oil lamp hanging above it. The door is quite small, and it is said that only a hobbit could fit through it.Tolkien was known to visit the area while he studied at, and later became a professor at, Oxford University (Merton College). Much as we'd love to believe that the door was instrumental in the creation of the Doors or Durin, the claims have never been authenticated.The north porch of the church was built about 300 years ago and young yew saplings were planted to enhance its entrance. Today these trees are now part of the architraves for the door and make this one of the most photographed doors in the Cotswolds!St Edward's Church is just a short walk from the Market Square and the magical yew tree door and stained glass windows are well worth visiting.
8) Harry Potter
My kids were into the novels more than me. Anyway, it was neat to learn how Oxford was designed (40+ independent universities forming a city, Lewis Carroll, C S Lewis, Tolkien, and more sprung from here). The design of the houses in Harry Potter were inspired by this, and filming for the movies occurred in Oxford and York, amongst other places. Picture below captures Oxford, a train station in York, and the Shambles streets of York.
9) Stanway House
The Stanway House is rich with literary history.
"Stanway House in the Cotswolds was a frequent summer retreat for J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. He was known to spend time there during the 1920s, and even up to 1932. While staying there, he wrote parts of Peter Pan and also formed a local cricket team called the Allahakbarries, which included other notable writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, A.A. Milne, and P.G. Wodehouse", according to Country Walkers [and our tour guide].
10) Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain - Welsh Mythology
Lloyd
Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain was the first book series I read. The
image of the Horned King on the cover of The Book of Three, plus the
Cauldron Born deathless warriors, had a huge impact on my psyche. Lloyd Alexander did not have a specific Welsh geography that inspired him, but drew heavily on the Mabinogion. As we toured Wales, we stayed/toured in Conwy and Caernarfon, I re-read the first two in the series.
11) Pre-historic Stones: Stonehenge [300BC], Avebury [2800BC], Castlerigg [3200BC]
At Stonehenge, thanks to the prodding of my buddy Dirk, I took a selfie video of me chanting the Charm of Making, Merlin's chants in the 1981 Excalibur movie. That video will not be shared here! Anyway, touring the ancient stones is a wonderful experience. Stonehenge; being the most monumental in size and height; Avebury, being the largest diameter-enough so to encompass an entire town! and Castlerigg; being the most intimate (in that it is more remote, visitors can approach the stones).
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