Sunday, July 10, 2022

Rogues in the House releases A Book of Blades

I am truly honored and excited to be amongst the rogues in this anthology. "Embracing Ember" is a Dyscrasia Fiction story that fills in Dr. Grave's struggles (as a single father and necromancer) to "raise" his three golem daughters. The chronology of short stories to date is below; a few more contributions are needed to span the epilogue of Spawn of Dyscrasia (in which Dr. Grave finally finds the ingredients to make his own family) to another novel in the works.


About A Book of Blades and Rogues in the House

This January Black Gate teased a second publication from the Rogues in the House Sword & Sorcery podcast while we covered the folks/rogues behind the show and highlighted episodes (Go Rogues! link). Beyond luring in S&S authors like Howard Andrew Jones, Scott Oden, John R. Fultz, and Jason Ray Carney, they’ve covered Morgan King & Phil Gelatt (creators of the movie The Spine of Night), Peter D. Adkison (founder and first CEO of Wizards of the Coast and owner of GenCon, the world’s largest board game convention), and Sara Frazetta (granddaughter of the fantasy master painter, an artist herself, and CEO of Frazetta Girls).

Now the anthology has been released into the wild. A Book of Blades hosts 15 short stories from established and emerging heroic authors! Check out the table of contents below. There are even illustrations from the aforementioned Morgan Galen King & Sara Frazetta, amongst other artists. All proceeds go toward making the show a stronger and more attractive platform for all. 


The anthology is available now in Paperback and Kindle.


Cover Blurb:

Within this tome are buried the blades of warriors, thieves, and wizards. Tales of their deeds, glories, and triumphs shall ring throughout the ages.
Rogues in the House Podcast has gathered the best tales of Sword & Sorcery from across the community.

Here, brave adventurers will find stories lovingly crafted from Heroic Fantasy greats such as Howard Andrew Jones, John R. Fultz, and John C. Hocking. At their side are up-and-coming genre authors Chuck Clark, T.A. Markitan, Cora Buhlert, and many more.

Includes artwork from various artists, including Morgan King, director of Spine of the Night, and Sara Frazetta, granddaughter of the Legend himself!

Short Stories Table of Contents:

  • “By the Sword” John C. Hocking
  • “Ghost Song” Chuck Clark
  • “Last of the Swamp Tribe” L.D. Whitney
  • “Wanna Bet?” T.A. Markitan
  • “The Serpent’s Heart” Howard Andrew Jones
  • “How They Fall” Angeline B. Adams and Remco van Straten
  • “The Breath of Death” Jason M. Waltz
  • “Embracing Ember” S.E. Lindberg  (A Dyscrasia Fiction entry)
  • “The Curse of Wine” J.M. Clarke
  • “The Gift of Gallah” Matthew John
  • “Crawl” Scott Oden
  • “The Spine of Virens Imber” Nathaniel Webb
  • “The City of the Screaming Pillars” Cora Buhlert
  • “Two Silvers for a Song of Blood” Jason Ray Carney
  • “The Blood of Old Shard” John R. Fultz

Illustrations/Art by:
  • Gilead
  • Ursa Doom
  • Sara Frazetta (legendary Frazetta Girl)
  • Lorelei Esther
  • Hardeep Aujla
  • Morgan King (director of The Spine of Night)
  • Jesus Garcia (front cover)

Go Rogue!

Join the critically acclaimed podcast focusing on Sword and Sorcery & Heroic Fantasy.

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog Round-Up: July 10th 2022

 



Skull Minion of the Twelfth Order (recently promoted), Bill Ward, continues to guard the threshold between reality & fantasy (via the Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog, link).

Read on, Mortal Dogs!


JUN 21 Appendix N Archaeology: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series by Michael Curtis

More than a decade before Gary Gygax assembled his list of influential fantasy authors and titles—the famed “Appendix N” which appeared in the Dungeon Masters Guide published in 1979—another author was hard at work compiling a list of fantasy stories to introduce to the reading public. Both catalogs would include some of the same authors on their rolls, and it is safe to say that without the first list, Gary Gygax may never have discovered some of the names that helped influence fantasy role-playing. In the spirit of Goodman Games’ ongoing efforts to return to the roots of the hobby, we now go one step further to explore the fertile landscape from which those roots drew nourishment. This earlier catalog was the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. Edited by Lin Carter, an esteemed author of science fiction and fantasy in his own right, this literary series was comprised of more than sixty titles released between 1969 and 1974 by Ballantine Books.

 

JUN 24 Classic Covers: Ballantine Fantasy

The decade of fantasy publishing kicked off by the runaway success of the The Lord of the Rings produced not only a flurry of reprints of classic fantasy, but also an entire crop of creative, iconic, and visionary cover designs. Ballantine Books launched its iconic Ballantine Adult Fantasy line on the strength of the fantasy boom, featuring cover art as wonderous as the contents of the books themselves.  We’ve gathered together some of our favorite covers below to share with you. Enjoy!

 

JUN 28 A Hero Emerges: Young Thongor by Fletcher Vredenburgh

I have an extreme hate-love-hate relationship with the work of Lin Carter. He was the Chun the Unavoidable of sword-and-sorcery, his efforts still coloring the genre he loved so much, even nearly thirty-five years after his death. His work as an author and probably the greatest promoter of sword-and-sorcery are things most of us can only aspire to, knowing full well we can never achieve his level of fantastic devotion. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, the five volumes of Flashing Swords! and many of the assorted anthologies he edited are still books every fantasy fan should own.  That said, few will ever aspire to his accomplishments as a writer.

 

JUL 1 Charles R. Saunders’ Nyumbani Tales 

In Nyumbani Tales (MV Media 2017), sword-and-sorcery great Charles Saunders collects 13 short stories spanning his early career, work that had previously appeared in a variety of publications, from small press ‘zines like Weirdbook and Black Lite, to mass market anthologies such as Beyond the Fields We Know and Hecate’s Cauldron. Fans of Saunders’ Imaro series will already be somewhat familiar with his short fiction, since the earliest parts of that epic were built upon the classic early Imaro shorts that first won the character his reputation. And, while many of the stories within Nyumbani Tales aren’t strictly speaking sword-and-sorcery, there are not only familiar faces here for Imaro fans, but a great deal of familiar ground as well. That familiar ground, of course, is Nyumbani itself, Saunders’ fantastic African setting.

 

 

JUL 5 Where to Start Your Summer Reading

Whether you’ve got vacation from work or school, prefer to shelter-in-place with some strong air-conditioning, or have just recently defeated an interdimensional incursion of home-besieging swine-things and find yourself with a block of free time—it’s a fine occasion for some summer reading! Tales From the Magician’s Skull’s ongoing Where to Start series of articles are written specifically to introduce readers to new (old!) fiction, with particular care taken to untangle some of the more confusing or overwhelming aspects of convoluted publication histories and multiple editions. They are also written by folks who absolutely love the authors, characters, and series in question, and want to share that love with the world.

 

JUL 8 Congratulations to the 2022 Robert E. Howard Award Winners

Last month’s Robert E. Howard Awards, given by the Robert E. Howard Foundation during the annual celebration of REH’s life and work that is Howard Days, in Cross Plains, Texas, is a chance to honor all of those dedicated scholars, publishers, editors, and artists whose scholarship and passion ensure that REH’s work thrives nearly a century on. Dozens of talented and devoted creators were nominated for awards in various categories, but of course, only a few could win! Readers of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, both print and online, will recognize some of those names, such as frequent contributor Brian Murphy winning in the Emerging Scholar Category, and Jason Ray Carney scoring in the Literary Achievement Category for his helming of Whetstone: The Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery. Outstanding Achievement in Anthology/Collection went to Jason M. Waltz’s Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, with a list of contributors that is a veritable who’s who in the field of Howard Studies but with four very important writers from our own TFTMS: Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones, and bedrock contributors Adrian Cole, John C. Hocking, and C.L. Werner. The full list of winners is below; to them, and to all the nominees for their extraordinary work, Tales From the Magician’s Skull salutes you!

 

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Spotlight on SE - DMR Books' Blog

 Independent Author Spotlight: S.E. Lindberg (link)

DMR Books recently honored me with an invitation to participate in the Terra incognita: Lost Worlds of Fantasy and Adventure anthology. This spotlights an interview with me on the publisher's awesome S&S blog.  
“My goal when writing is to take myself to places that are completely unique and unsettling; if I do not feel the sincere weirdness while composing, then readers won’t feel it either."

I tackle the below questions:


  • Please introduce yourself and tell us about your background as a writer.
  • What are the most prominent influences on your writing? How do you incorporate those influences without being derivative?
  • Many authors say marketing is one of their biggest challenges. What tactics have you found to be most effective for getting your name out there?
  • How much do your audience’s expectations factor in to what you write? Does this ever cause you to hold back from experimenting?
  • Have you had any new stories published recently? Are you currently working on any?
  • Name one newer and one older book you have read and enjoyed recently. (“Newer” meaning from the past year or so, and “older” meaning written before 1980.)



Sunday, June 26, 2022

July-Aug S&S Group Read Topic: NEW EDGE contemporary Sword & Sorcery




Born in 1920, the Sword & Sorcery genre continues to evolve.  Let us hone its "New Edge" (a term coined by Howard Andrew Jones). Discussion thread on Goodreads (click here to join in).

The July August "2-month spotlight/group read" will be New Edge (i.e. contemporary) S&S. Your mission for the next two months:
(1) Explore a new S&S author (and/or magazine).
(2) and, chime in/share
(3) stretch goal.... review the new content to enable new readers to find them!

Let us not get mired in "what is" or "what is not S&S" of the past.
Instead share where you think the genre is going, or can go!

Feel Welcome to keep adding-to or browse the poll/survey used to spur this discussion:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Banner Credits
Magazine on Left / Cover artist
Savage Realms Monthly: May 2022: cover artist unattributed
Tales from the Magician's Skull #7: Sanjulian
Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 4: Jim Pitts
WHETSTONE Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery, Issue Five:Carlos Castilho

Savage Realms Monthly May 2022 by Remy Morgeson Tales from the Magician's Skull #7 by Howard Andrew Jones Swords & Sorceries Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 4 by David A. Riley WHETSTONE Amateur Magazine of Sword and Sorcery, Issue Five by Jason Ray Carney

Books on right / Cover artist
-The Night Eternal: Bruce Pennington
-Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter: Marta Dettlaff 2018
-Twilight of the Gods:James Iacobelli -2018
-Worlds Beyond Worlds: The Short Fiction of John R. Fultz: Brian LeBlanc
- The Night Eternal by Steve Lines Mathias Thulmann Witch Hunter (Warhammer Chronicles) by C.L. Werner Twilight of the Gods (Grimnir #2) by Scott Oden - Worlds Beyond Worlds The Short Fiction of John R. Fultz by John R. Fultz



New Edge S&S has been a hot topic lately... spurred on by Scott Oden and others like Oliver:

Putting a NEW EDGE on an Old Blade 
https://scottoden.wordpress.com/2022/...


New Edge S&S Guest Post: Oliver Brackenbury
https://scottoden.wordpress.com/2022/..


Oooh...from the Whetstone discord, the original posts to Howard Andrew Jones' 
"New Edge" Manifesto were provided by "Riobard#6007" : 
https://bg-editor.livejournal.com/21089.html

And another by HAJ ~2010:
http://www.howardandrewjones.com/sword-and-sorcery/a-new-edge

Saturday, June 25, 2022

GenCon Writers Symposium - Guest of Honor R. A. Salvatore and Special Guests

 

Gen Con Writer's Symposium is back (Aug4-7, Indianapolis IN)

Gen Con just announced that legendary fantasy author R. A. Salvatore is the 2022 Author Guest of Honor! 

Thirty-four years ago, he created the character of Drizzt Do’Urden, the dark elf who has withstood the test of time to stand today as an icon in the fantasy genre. With his work in the Forgotten Realms, the Crimson Shadow, the DemonWars Saga, and other series, Salvatore has sold more than thirty million books worldwide and has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list more than two dozen times. He considers writing to be his personal journey, but still, he’s quite pleased that so many are walking the road beside him!
He will be participating in several Writer's Symposium events (click to browse and register via the GenCon portalduring the convention, including book signings and appearances. 


The Writers Symposium continues to add events, including Book signings for the GenCon Author Guest of Honor, R.A. Salvatore:

Guest of Honor: Salvatore Events (Link to just his events)
Thursday 1 pm Shared Worlds SEM22214061
Thursday 2 pm So you Want to Write SEM22214066
Thursday 3pm Book Signing ZED22219102
Friday 11am Tie in Ficton SEM22214092
Friday Noon Book Signing ZED22219103
Saturday 10am QnA with R.A. Salvatore SEM2221429
Saturday 11am Local Flavor SEM22214128
Saturday Noon Book Signing with R.A. Salvatore ZED22219104
Saturday 5pm Book Signing with R.A. Salvatore ZED22219105

Gen Con

The Gen Con Writer’s Symposium is a semi-independent event hosted by Gen Con and intended for both new and experienced writers of speculative fiction. Although many of us love and play the games Gen Con offers, our program is focused on the craft and business of writing, particularly in the speculative arenas. In the past 27 years, the Symposium has grown from a small set of panels over a day or two of the convention to one of the largest convention-hosted writing tracks in North America. Gen Con itself is the largest tabletop gaming convention in the world. In 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year for the convention) they welcomed over 65,000 unique visitors and offered over 19,000 events. By its nature, Gen Con attracts a large number of reading-oriented attendees who enjoy speculative fiction.

Writer's Symposium

This year, the Writer's Symposium will have ~40 Authors75 panels, 42 workshops, and special events like the Meet-the-Pros (Thursday night) and D&D-with-Authors (Friday night)! In addition to the GenCon event link above, browse the dedicated website for the GenCon Writers Symposium (link) that explains more and has other views of the program.

The Writer's Symposium also features two special guests, Carlos Hernandez and Brandon O-Brien!

Saturday, June 18, 2022

The Elusive, Inspirational Soul – by S.E. Lindberg

This post originally appeared on the Once and Future Podcast website on Sept 3rd 2018.

Reposting here since that website is now sun-setted.

Embedded Images are all under Public Domain or Common License:


The Elusive, Inspirational Soul – by S.E. Lindberg

For most artists, including writers, the act of creating attempts to capture and share some emotion, or conversely, evoke an emotional response from an audience. Often, we draw inspiration from our past experiences, traumatic or enjoyable, to deepen the impact. As a scientist, I find the entire transaction of emotions oddly inspirational and terrifying. Feelings are ubiquitous, but cannot be measured objectively; they do not seem to adhere to any law of conservation like energy or mass obey (is there any limit to sorrow or joy?).

Could we better our craft if we knew how emotions flowed from an object (fine art or prose) to a person (or vice versa)? Let us examine the sources and sinks of emotion: our souls. In playful art, this is quite easy to simulate; heck, consider the soul-currency for crafting in From Software’s Dark Souls videogame series—if only we could see as the undead do! In real life, studying the soul is harder.

Many ‘Renaissance Men’ were inspired to find the soul while the art of anatomy flourished. The prevailing Church did not permit the dissection of innocent believers, so criminals or ‘sinners’ were often studied. Bodies were considered divinely sacred and were thus difficult to obtain; acceptable corpses could not be refrigerated, so one had to work fast. Nor were there cameras or video to capture the observations, so artists and alchemists convened in the dissection theaters to document the microcosms of life.  Leonardo Da Vinci provided detailed notes along with his drawings (from The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Oxford World's Classics, 1998):

"I have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the various members and removing the minutest particles of flesh which surrounded these veins, without causing any effusion of blood other than the imperceptible bleeding of the capillary veins. And as one single body did not suffice for so long a time, it was necessary to proceed in stages with so many bodies as would render my knowledge complete; this I repeated twice in order to discover the differences. And though you should have a love for such things you may perhaps be deterred by natural repugnance, and if this does not prevent you, you may perhaps be deterred by fear of passing the night hours in the company of these corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to behold; and if this does not deter you, then perhaps you may lack the skill in drawing, essential for such representation..." p151

Da Vinci determined that the senses were linked to a ‘common sense’ that led to the brain. But no actual soul was discovered. He yielded the goal of managing the soul to religion.  Below, from his treatise on painting, he spoke how the artist must deal with this and impart the soul into its subjects otherwise:

"A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul; the former is easy, the later hard because he has to represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs.” p178

Anatomical artists had to grapple with documenting macabre scenes of opened bodies while remaining 'artistic'.  For the dignity of the specimens and to satisfy the surgeons' needs, artists often found harmony by posing their subjects. Perhaps most famous are Johannes de Ketham's Fasiculo de Medicina (1491), Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), and Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks (1500). The contemporary Bodies: The Exhibition continues this controversial tradition of displaying the dead artistically.

With the most promising connection to our souls being the senses, it follows that the next great promise of discovery came when optical technology allowed scientists to see new worlds. Pioneering microscopists had to draw their observations. In 1664, Robert Hooke published a large treatise entitled Micrographia or Some Physiological Description of Minute Bodies, containing an encyclopedia of detailed drawings of his microscopic views. In his preface, he explains to the reader that optics have enabled a spiritual quest:

“… by the help of microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible world discovered to the understanding.  By this means the heavens are opened, and a vast number of new stars, and new motions, and new productions appear in them, to which all the ancient astronomers were utterly strangers.”

The soul has never found, however.  Despite ‘the opening of heaven’ with microscopes, the soul still eludes us.

Ernest Haeckel (1834-1919) was another famous artist-scientist fascinated with the aesthetics of nature and the elusiveness of the soul. His 1904 set of lithographs Art Forms in Nature brilliantly exhibit his obsession with the symmetrical beauty of biological microstructures, and his extensions into comparative embryology brought him controversy. He argued this in his support of his own monistic religion that scientific adventures continually uncovered the beautiful designs inherent in nature (monism generally supports that ‘body and soul’ are one connected entity, not separate as many dualistic religions profess):

“The remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it includes, have awakened quite a new aesthetic sense in our generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed abundance of new organic forms... affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical art.”

In 1900, Haeckel published his scientific, spiritual book Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century in which he explains his monistic philosophies.  He shares elegant philosophy on the soul's lack of participation in the "Laws of Substance" (conservation of mass and energy); below, he discusses how many related the nonexistent soul to that which is tangible:

“Thus invisibility comes to be regarded as a most important attribute of the soul.  Some, in fact, compare the soul with ether, and regard it, like ether, as an extremely subtle, light, and highly elastic material, an imponderable agency, that fills the intervals between the ponderable particles in the living organism, other compare the soul with the wind, and so give it a gaseous nature; and it is this simile which first found favor with the primitive peoples, and led in time to the familiar dualistic conception.  When a man died, the body remained as a lifeless corpse, but the immortal soul ‘flew out of it with the last breath.’”

Indeed, the many myths of preserving a dead man’s soul, or gaining its powers, is pervasive. The notion of relics is common across cultures and time. It assumes that the soul is a contagion remaining attached to the body postmortem. Hence, the power of a Saint could be absorbed if one obtained his or her bones; this gave rise to the theft and desecration of many crypts and catacombs. Many crypts remain with the bodily relics on display. The crypt of Saint Munditia of Munich and the Vienna Imperial Crypts are fine examples. Other famous examples include the shrines of Capuchin monks in Rome and Palermo, Sicily (>6,000 bodies) and the Kostnice 'Church of Bones, Kutna Hora, Sedlec Ossuary, Prague (~40,000 remains).

Alas, we cannot study the soul directly yet, but the journey is inspirational. H.P. Lovecraft summarized our human condition best in his opening to “The Call of Cthulhu” (Weird Tales, 1928):

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…”




S.E. Lindberg resides near Cincinnati, Ohio working as a microscopist, employing scientific and artistic skills to understand the manufacturing of products analogous to medieval paints. Two decades of practicing chemistry, combined with a passion for dark fantasy, spurs him to write graphic adventure fictionalizing the alchemical humors (primarily under the banner “Dyscrasia Fiction”). With Perseid Press, he writes weird tales infused with history and alchemy (Heroika: Dragon EatersPirates in Hell). He co-moderates the Sword & Sorcery group on Goodreads.com (please participate), and regularly interviews authors on the topic of Beauty in Weird Fiction.