I told you there would not be long to wait: Number the Brave, the second novelette in the Hope & Glory series is out and about on DriveThroughRPG, where you’ll get the epub, the mobi and the gorgeous pdf version in a single neat bundle.
If Glass Houses, the first Hope & Glory story, was an espionage thriller set in a steampunkish Indian Raj, Number the Brave is a war story set in that same universe, but in Northern Africa1.
It owes a debt both to old Foreign Legion pulp stories, and to Zulu, one of my favorite war movies, but it turns the premise on its head: what if the besieged defenders are African warriors, surrounded by an overwhelming force of ruthless, savage Europeans?
All the stories in the Hope & Glory series are self-contained and stand-alone, and can be read (and, hopefully, enjoyed) in any order. Each volume includes an appendix providing extra information about the Hope & Glory setting, and gaming statistics for the major elements in the book.
Because let’s not forget it, Hope & Glory will be a roleplaying game, powered by Savage Worlds.
And what better way to discover the gaming universe, than read a few stories?
Two are out, more will come.
- the idea being that each Hope & Glory novelette will explore a different sub-genre, to show the full potential of the Hope & Glory gaming setting. ↩
Karavansara 
15 May 2017 at 14:00
Reblogged this on Angelo Benuzzi and commented:
The second novellette in a wonderful setting, Hope & Glory is getting more and more interesting!
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16 May 2017 at 03:59
Well, I have to go off topic again. I just read one of your short stories, not Hope & Glory 2 I’m afraid. Ill get to that one. It’s another one that just got listed on Amazon yesterday, and I have a question.
Is the guy Porter talks about “an Italian I knew in Shanghai in 1937” Felice Sabatini?
In any event, ‘Queen of the Dead Lizards’ was good. Looking forward to more Steve Porter.
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16 May 2017 at 11:08
Ah, that big-mouthed Italian guy who said he got out of the Taklamakan desert on his own legs… yes, the name was something like that.
Sabatini.
Same as the guy who wrote swashbuckler novels.
(I like to put injokes in my stories)
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16 May 2017 at 16:32
Haha! Queen of the Dead Lizards would have fit right in with the old ‘Adventure’ or ‘Oriental Stories’ pulps. I haven’t finished the rest of the Ebook yet, but I certainly like the theme.
BTW, speaking of Pulp magazines, I found a website I think you’ll enjoy. It appears to be the motherload of pulp magazine archives, as well as a lot of old science fiction magazines from the 50’s to the 70’s.
I think you’ll like it.
https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive?&sort=-downloads&page
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16 May 2017 at 16:37
I know it – there’s so much good stuff!
The problem is time. But I’ve been planning a few posts about that collection and some of its wonders.
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16 May 2017 at 22:15
Oh, so you’ve been holding out on us huh? LOL!!
I actually owned, and in some cases still own, a lot of the Science Fiction mags that they have listed. To be specific ‘Worlds Of If’ . I miss the days when Analog and Fantasy and Science Fiction were still being sold.
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16 May 2017 at 22:37
Pulp mags never reached my country, and later, as a teenager, I found it pretty difficult to get SF mags. I got me a few copies of Asimov’s, but they were damn expensive, and arrived in Italy 60 days after they had been published. So I invested my schoolboy savings on paperbacks instead.
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17 May 2017 at 00:23
I used to haunt the Used Book stores for paperbacks and comics. In the early 70’s it was lot easier to find used paperbacks from the 50’s and 60’s. Virtually all the old stores disappeared around the late 80’s or so.
i kind of miss the smell of the old paperbacks, and hunting around looking for musty old adventure, SF and S&S gems. Internet search engines, Amazon, Bookfinder.com make things easier, but they also take the fun out of it. It was nice walking into the stores and having the owners know you as regular. there were two sores in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn that I went into at least once a week from the time I was in my late teens until i was in my early 30’s.
The internet may be more efficient, but completely impersonal.
Ok, I’ve waxed nostalgic enough for one post.
i’ll post a review of ‘Explorer Pulps’ in a day or two and put in a plug for ‘Queen of the Dead Lizards’ to help keep your publisher in a good mood. 🙂
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17 May 2017 at 03:15
Thank you for the review – for us small fishes in the publishing ocean, they are important.
And I did haunt old used bookshops too, when I lived in a big city. Now I live in the depressed countryside, and there ain’t no used books hereabouts but mine.
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