I found this image yesterday (on the PulpFest website) and it felt strange to find so many of my teenage heroes gathered in a single place.
Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, Julius Schwartz,(front row, crouching).
Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Mort Weisinger, Edmond Hamilton, and Otis Adelbert Kline (back row, standing).
Because there was a time when giants walked this land.
In a perfect world, I’d have 36-hours-days to spend writing.
It would be fun, and maybe I might even turn a profit out of it.
And yet, sometimes there are weird silly ideas that pop up and won’t lay down.
As I think I mentioned in the past, I started reading fantasy with the rationalized fantasy stories that Unknown Worlds magazine used to publish.
I still love the Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, by Lyon Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, and I sometimes I feel deep down I’ve got a De Camp-esque approach to fantasy – I need a good laugh, in my stories, because I take the genre seriously, sure, but just not that much. Continue reading
An extra post, because there’s a photo I found yesterday online, and I think it would fit nicely this sword & sorcery-themed week.
Here’s the pic…
It’s from 1975.
Now, from left to right, you get… Continue reading
Nobody appreciates the problems of a sword & sorcery writer.
Right now, I’m putting the finishing touches on the next Aculeo & Amunet book.
Granted, two stories still need to be edited, but I see the finish line, and I’m pretty happy: after two novelettes published as stand-alone ebooks, I’m going for a collection – the next A&A outing will include four stories
Three short stories and a novelette. Continue reading
… except where I screwed up.
I write historical fantasy (among other things).
My Aculeo & Amunet stories are set in the Third Century AD, and the historical details are as accurate as possible.
I try and keep the world historically real.
Then maybe a be-tentacled creepy horror pops out of some dark corner.
Historical.
Fantasy.
Now, thankfully, history has so many dark corners and fuzzy borders, that finding the right place to fit in our invention is usually quite easy, or at least lots of fun (thus compensating the trouble).
The trick is blending history and fantasy as seamlessly as possible. Continue reading
Today I’ll mix nostalgia with hype, if you don’t mind.
When I was a kid, say 15 years old, I discovered Robert E. Howard and Conan the Barbarian through the Italian editions of the Lancer Books collections edited by Lyon Sprague de Camp.
My first was Conan the Adventurer, and I was hooked.
Also, I decided this was the sort of stuff I wanted to read, and possibly to write.
The little hardback book had a wonderful dust jacket (by Dutch artist Karel Thole), and it came with a gorgeous map of the Hyborian world.
Then there was a fun introduction by Italian critic and translator Riccardo Valla, and then the stories.
And each story was introduced by a snippet of text by L. Sprague de Camp, providing some sort of continuity to the series.
Stuff like…
After escaping from Xapur, Conan builds his Kozaki and pirate raiders into such a formidable threat that King Yezdigerd devotes all his forces to their destruction. After a devastating defeat, the kozaki scatter, and Conan retreats southward to take service in the light cavalry of Kobad Shah, King of Iranistan.
It was fun, it gave me a sense of history. Continue reading
Karavansara 