And...We're Done

Okay, there are still a few things to fix over at the new blogs, but I'm going to go ahead and launch.  Everything that needs to be in place is.  All's that's left is cleanup and learning how to tweak details in WordPress, such as changing the background of the posts to something other than white.  (That apparently will involve editing the source code.  I'm going to make sure I know what I'm doing before I try that.)

Anyway, Blogger has been good, but it's time to move on to my own website.  All of the content here has been moved over, although as is the case with WordPress, the formatting didn't always follow.  Instead of running two blogs, I'm running four.

They are:

Adventures Fantastic:  heroic fantasy and historical adventure
Futures Past and Present:  classic and contemporary science fiction
Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams:  noir and detective fiction
Dispatches From the Lone Star Front:  Texas and Southwest history

All four are up and live.  There's a new email address associated with them, keith@adventuresfantastic.com.

See you over there.

Mothballing

Since I'm between summer school and the start of the fall semester (which always starts at least a week earlier for me than the students), I've actually had some time to work on the new website.  It's almost done.  There are a few things I've still got to do.  I'm not going to rush on them, since I don't want to do anything I can't reverse.  I've already made one bad call setting up WordPress that I later discovered WordPress won't let me change.  I don't want any others.

I've transferred the archives over to the new site.  Not everything made the transition.  WordPress dropped some of the formatting.  That includes breaks, meaning that all posts in their entirety are on one page, rather than the first few paragraphs with links to read the rest.  I can put them back in by hand, but that will take a while.  It won't be an immediate priority.  Once the site launches, all the posts will have the proper formatting.

I'm hoping to have everything ready to go by the first part of next week, if not over the weekend.  I'm not done with the details by any means.  In some respects WordPress is more complicated than Blogger, but it allows me more freedom to tweak some things.  There will be changes as I go along and learn things. But the basics will all be there when I launch.

So, unless something cataclysmic happens in the next few days, this is the penultimate post of Adventures Fantastic in its Blogger incarnation.  The next post will be the announcement of the new (and hopefully improved) version, with a full set of links.  I'll still leave this site up, since any links to previous posts will point here.  At least until I change them, which may turn out to be more trouble than its worth. 

World Fantasy Nominations Announced

The nominees for this year's World Fantasy Awards were announced this evening.  The winners will be announced at this year's World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, UK, on October 31 - November 3.  Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all the nominees.

They are as follows:

Life Achievement:

• Susan Cooper
• Tanith Lee

Novel:

• The Killing Moon, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
• The Drowning Girl, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
• Crandolin, Anna Tambour (Chômu)
• Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)

Novella:

• “Hand of Glory”, Laird Barron (The Book of Cthulhu II)
• “Let Maps to Others”, K.J. Parker (Subterranean Summer ’12)
•  The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)
• “The Skull”, Lucius Shepard (The Dragon Griaule)
• “Sky”, Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls)

Short Story:

• “The Telling”, Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 11/29/12)
• “A Natural History of Autumn”, Jeffrey Ford (F&SF 7-8/12)
• “The Castle That Jack Built”, Emily Gilman (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/26/12)
• “Breaking the Frame”, Kat Howard (Lightspeed 8/12)
• “Swift, Brutal Retaliation”, Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12)

Anthology:

• Epic: Legends of Fantasy, John Joseph Adams, ed. (Tachyon)
• Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, eds. (Small Beer)
• Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver, ed. (Solaris)
• Postscripts #28/#29: Exotic Gothic 4, Danel Olson, ed. (PS Publishing)
• Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Random House)

Collection:

• At the Mouth of the River of Bees, Kij Johnson (Small Beer)
• Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
• The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories Volume One: Where on Earth and Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands, Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
• Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine)
• Jagannath, Karin Tidbeck (Cheeky Frawg)

Artist:

• Vincent Chong
• Didier Graffet & Dave Senior
• Kathleen Jennings
• J.K. Potter
• Chris Roberts

Special Award Professional:

• Peter Crowther & Nicky Crowther for PS Publishing
• Lucia Graves for the translation of The Prisoner of Heaven (Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Harper) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Adam Mills, Ann VanderMeer, & Jeff VanderMeer for Weird Fiction Review
• Brett Alexander Savory & Sandra Kasturi for ChiZine Publications
• William K. Schafer for Subterranean Press

Special Award Non-Professional:

• Scott H. Andrews for Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• L. Timmel Duchamp for Aqueduct Press
• S.T. Joshi for Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, Volumes 1 & 2 (PS Publishing)
• Charles A. Tan for Bibliophile Stalker blog
• Jerad Walters for Centipede Press
• Joseph Wrzos for Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration (Centipede Press)

Morlock in Love

Wrath-Bearing Tree
James Enge
Pyr Books
Trade paperback, 320 pp., $18.00
ebook  $11.99 Kindle Nook

Across the Narrow Sea, in the land of Kaen, something is killing the gods.  In order to determine if this is a potential threat to the Wardlands, the Graith of Guardians sends Morlock Ambrosius and Aloe Oaij to investigate.

Morlock is secretly in love with Aloe.  Aloe isn't in love with him.  At least not yet.  In his afterward, Enge describes this book as a love story with sword and sorcery interruptions.  To a point, that's true.  But if you take the sword and sorcery out, the love story is pretty thin.  Magic is so much a part of Morlock that you can't tell much of a story about him if there's no magic involved.

This was a strange novel in some ways.  Not the love story portion.  Enge handles that very well, starting with the misunderstandings between Aloe and Morlock to her growing admiration of, and ultimately love for, Morlock.  I realize that last sentence sounds like this is just Jane Austin with fantasy trappings.  In the hands of other, lesser writers, that's what you would get.  Not so here.

At times Wrath-Bearing Tree is a very weird book.  As Morlock and Aloe visit the cities of Kaen, it's almost like reading some of the "true accounts" of travelers in the early days of the Age of Exploration.  Strange, bizarre, and completely unlike anything you're familiar with.  For instance, and this isn't the weirdest example, there's a mountain on which the inhabitants either herd goats or sheep, but never both.  The reason is the religious significance of what an individual herds.  Once a year the two religions have a major battle (which of course Morlock and Aloe get caught in), but the goats and sheep used in those battles are anything but cute livestock.  And I'm not even sure how to describe the The Purple Patriarchy.

Because of this, much of the book reminded me of Jack Vance with doses of Clark Ashton Smith here and there.  The unusual societies were one of the highlights of the book for me.  Enge has some fun along the way.  During the Purple Patriarchy chapter, Aloe and Morlock have run afoul of the local traditions and need to escape.  They do so with the aid of a group of adventures trying to put together a quest, D&D style.

Eventually Morlock and Aloe encounter Morlock's father Merlin.  Morlock has never met his father, so it's an emotional reunion.  Merlin as Enge depicts him is an interesting character, although not an admirable one.  I would like to have seen more of him.

The main portion of the book, in which Aloe begins to fall in love with Morlock is told entirely from her point of view.  The reader already knows how he feels about her.  It's interesting to watch her misunderstandings about him change as she gets to know him better.  One word of warning.  The sex scenes are extremely graphic, so if you are offended by that sort of thing or it's not your cup of tea, you may want to keep that in mind. 

The subtitle of Wrath-Bearing Tree is A Tournament of Shadows, Book 2.  There are some unresolved issues in the larger story arc, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Enge resolves them.  I'd also like to thank Pyr Books for sending me the review copy. 

Enge's work is unlike anything else out there that I've come across.  To some extent, it may be an acquired taste, because he's not a paint-by-numbers kind of writer.  His work is original, imaginative, and one of a kind.

Return to the Shifted World

Kindred and Wings
Philippa Ballantine
Pyr Books
Paperback 340 pp., $18.00
ebook $11.99  Kindle  B&N

If you read Philippa Ballantine's Hunter and Fox last year (reviewed here), then you will be glad to know that the sequel hits the shelves on August 6, which is tomorrow as I'm writing this.  The good folks at Pyr books were kind enough to send me a review copy, for which I would like to thank them.

I enjoyed the novel, but I liked the sequel even more.  Kindred and Wings takes up where Hunter and Fox left off. Talyn is still seeking the Caisah's death, but she's going to discover there are other things that should be a higher priority.  Finn the Fox, aided by the dragon Wahirangi, continues his quest to find his brother.  Meanwhile, Talyn's brother Byre will discover that dealing with the Kindred is not without cost. And hanging over everything is the growing menace of White Void.

Perils on Planet X Returns

If you aren't familiar with Perils on Planet X, written by Christopher Mills and drawn by Gene Gonzales, then you're missing out.  It's a weekly sword and planet comic.  The writing and illustration are top notch.  Mills and Gonzales have taken a few weeks off for a well-deserved summer break, but now they're back with the first installment of the second chapter.  Now's a good time to get caught up on the story.  All pages are free.  You can check it out by clicking the link above.

Progress

I've spent part of this evening working on the new site.  All four of the new blogs have been created, and I've written the introductory post for three of them.  I don't have any graphics in place yet. Since each blog will have a different focus, I want each one to have it's own logo.  That will take a little time to set up.   Hopefully within a couple of weeks.

On a unrelated topic (not really since time spent on one is time not spent on the other), I've almost finished the last of the novelettes that received Hugo nominations.  I should manage that before I collapse and go to bed.  I won't be able to read the novellas before the deadline to vote.  That's tomorrow, so I probably won't vote in that category.  I'll post some thoughts on the nominees when I get a chance in the next day or so.

Jury Duty

I've got jury duty in the morning.  If I get selected, I may be out of pocket for a while.  I got the new webpage started, but it's very much in a state of construction.  I'm hoping to make some progress in the evenings this week.  The weekend taken up with yard work.  The joys of home ownership.

That's things with me.  What's up with you?

Quick Update

I met with a friend who is a web designer on Monday and will meet with him again tomorrow morning.  Monday's meeting was to discuss the situation with Google and what I'm wanting to do plus lay out a basic plan.  The rest of the time we were playing catch up since we hadn't seen each other in a few months.  Tomorrow we'll get the basics of the new web site set up.  At this point I think I'm going to run with four blogs as part of the new site.  One will continue the fantasy and heroic adventure along with a good deal of pulp and one will focus on science fiction.  I'll have a new one that will be noir and detective fiction, since it really doesn't fit on either of the two current blogs.  I'll also run a fourth that will be Texas and Southwest history.  I had a column at Jason Waltz's Home of Heroics that ran under the title Dispatches From the Lone Star Front.  I've done one or two since that venue folded, but they really don't fit here all that well.  I suspect a blog with a pure historical focus would be successful once it found its audience.  I suspect the overlap of that audience with the audience of Adventures Fantastic would be rather small.  If nothing else, I could reach a new group of readers.

What the new site won't have for a couple of weeks, at least, is a store for original fiction.  I want to get a new computer before I start to produce files that can be read on an ereader.  The machine I'm writing this on  is over a decade old.  My son will start middle school in the fall, and my wife is pushing for a new computer he can use.  It might be a few weeks before that purchase is made.  I want to research what would be the best machine for our needs, and I don't want to rush.  I've got a jury summons for Monday, so if I get selected that will slow everything down.

I'm in the middle of reading all the short fiction nominees for the Hugos.  There's a week left to vote, so I probably won't read all the novels by the deadline, not that I would try anyway.  I've got some other novels I'm needing to get to soon.  I'll post my thoughts on those as I get them done.  I've finished the short stories, so that post will go up by Saturday at the latest.  Then the novellettes.  The novellas are a bit longer, but I think I can get them done.  We'll see.

So that's how things stand at the moment.  I'll let you know when the new site goes live.

A Look at Weird Tales #361

Weird Tales #361
PDF $2.99

Before we get started, I'd like to thank Doug Draa for the review copy.  Doug, who blogs at Uncle Doug's Bunker of Vintage Horror Paperbacks, is a new contributing editor at Weird Tales, and we wish him a successful run in that capacity. 

Weird Tales has adopted the policy of giving each issue a theme.  The previous issue was Cthulhu Returns, and according to the ad in the present issue, the next issue's theme is the Undead.  There are rumors of a sword and sorcery issue in the works as well.  In addition to having stories around a specific theme, each issue will also have unthemed stories.  As you can see from the cover, the present issue has the theme of Fairy Tales.

Fairy Tales as a theme is pretty broad.  That can encompass retellings or deconstructions of established fairy tales, new stories which read like fairy tales in they way they are structured and/or the themes they address, and stories in which (often contemporary) characters interact with the realm of fairy.  All of those and more are included here.

Sale on Hard Case Crime Titles at Amazon

I don't know how much longer this is going to last.  Maybe another day, maybe a few more minutes.  Amazon has 48 Hard Case Crime titles in Kindle editions on sale for $1.99.  This isn't the entire catalog, but it's an impressive portion of it.  Grab one you missed while you can.  As you may know, I'm a big fan of this publisher, so I thought I'd give you a heads-up that they were available (which isn't the same as spam; Google are you listening).  An example of what you get is to the right.

Changes Coming to the Blog

Traffic the last few days has been up quite a bit, so when traffic today was down, I wasn't too worried.  I've noticed that trend before, a drop in hits on the day following higher than usual traffic, even thought the traffic drop today is greater than usual.

Then I noticed something in my inbox.  It was from Google.  It had come in overnight, and at first glance I thought it was spam that had slipped through the filter.  Instead it was accusing this blog of being spam.  The second line read, in part, "As a result of your site having pure spam, Google has applied a manual spam action..."

Excuse me!?!

The Butcher of Khardov

The Butcher of Khardov
Dan Wells
Privateer Press/Skull Island eXpeditions
ebook (mobi, epub, pdf) $4.99

I wrote a few weeks ago in my review of In Thunder Forged that the Iron Kingdoms (TM) is a place I was looking forward to visiting again.  Simon Berman was kind enough to send me a review copy of the latest novella in Privateer Press' Skull Island eXpeditions line.  (Thank you very much, Simon.)  The Warcaster Chronicles consists of two novellas so far, but if the quality of this one is consistent with the rest of the line, there will be more once word gets out about them.

Personally, I prefer the novella length because it allows an author to develop character and world while still maintaining a good pace.  There's no time to get bogged down in unnecessary details in a novella.  Plus, I can read one in one or two sittings without investing a major portion of my life.

The Butcher of Khardov is Orsus Zhoktavir.  He's seven and a half feet tall and more than a match for any man.  He watched his parents butchered by raiders when he was ten.  He's working as a lumberjack and engaged to a girl named Lola.  But you know what they say about the best laid plans...

Happy Birthday, Charles R. Saunders

Charles R. Saunders was born today, July 12 in 1946.  Saunders is the author of the Imaro series, the Dossouye series, and various works of nonfiction.  Saunders is the foremost practitioner of what is known as the Sword and Soul subgenre of Sword and Sorcery, in which the settings and characters are based on African history and mythology rather than European.  I am ashamed to admit that I've not read either the Imaro or the Dossouye series, although I'm familiar with the basic premise of each.  I've got the first two Imaro books on the shelf and plan to get to them by the end of the year.

Happy birthday, Mr. Saunders, and many happy returns.

Weird Tales Update: Issue # 361 ToC Posted

I don't normally do two posts in one day, but I just learned that Weird Tales has posted the table of contents for the next (as yet unpublished) issue, # 361.  The cover has also been posted, as seen at left.

Authors include Peter S. Beagle, Jane Yolen, and Tanith Lee along with a number of lesser known names.  The theme is fairy tales, and the three headliners are among the top authors in this subgenre.  If the other stories are of comparable quality, it will probably be a great issue.  Even if the other stories don't come close to Beagle, Yolen, and Lee, it could still be a better-than-most-stuff-out-there issue.  Those three are some of the best writers working today, and it's really not fair to newer writers to compare them to B, Y, & L.

There's no release date yet, only that individual copies will be available soon.  I truly hope so, but given some of the recent developments at the magazine, I'm not going to hold my breath. I'll refrain from further comment at this time since I said my piece in the previous post on WT.  Look for a review when I get a copy of the issue.

Some Thoughts on the Random Penguin Merger

Although he may not have a household name, Tom Dupree is a publishing insider with a lot of experience.  He doesn't blog often, but when he does, what he has to say is usually worth paying attention to.  He posted today about the merger of Penguin and Random House into Penguin Random House, (AKA Random Penguin on this blog).

I think he's spot on in what he has to say.  Go read his post if you haven't yet.  I'll still be here when you get back, with some thoughts of my own.

David Gemmell Awards Are Back

It dawned on me earlier today that I forgot to mention that the David Gemmell Awards have revamped their website and are now back for another year.  I mentioned them in passing in the previous post, but I forgot make them the subject of a post, something I had intended to do.  Anyway, it may be somewhat misleading to say the Gemmell Awards are back, since they never really went away.  They are merely delayed in order to coincide with this year's World Fantasy Convention, which will be held in Brighton.

The lists of nominees in the various categories are up on the new website, which looks quite impressive and is more visually appealing than the old one.  This is becoming the only award in I care about, at least in the sff field.  But that's a topic for another post.  Check out the nominees, join the site if you  haven't, and make sure you vote.

The Rest of the Summer

Just a quick note to let you know what I've got on my plate leading up to Worldcon. 

Speaking of Worldcon, I'm going to read at least some of the short fiction nominees, as many as time will allow, and give my thoughts.  I don't think I'm going to try to read all the novels.  The publisher of two of them put a security code of the ebooks that went out in the Hugo voters' packet.  I don't appreciate what that implies.  I'm not going to upload the books to a file sharing site.  I'm not a crook, nor do I care to be treated as though I were.  Therefore, I won't be reading (or voting for) Blackout by Mira Grant or 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I do have some comments to make about this year's nominees in general.

The Gemmell Awards are a bit later than usual this year to coincide with the World Fantasy Convention.  My review copy of Winter Be My Shield by Jo Spurrier arrived the other day.  It's on the long ballot for the Morningstar Award.  I'm looking forward to reading it.  I'll post the review on the Gemmell Awards site and a notice here when it goes live.  After the awards are given out, I'll post the review here.

I've got a number of titles from Pyr.  The ones I intend to review in July are The Doctor and the Kid by Mike Resnick, Kindred and Wings by Phillipa Ballentine, and Wrath-Bearing Tree by James Enge.  Then there's The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich and The Doctor and the Rough Rider by Mike Resnick.  Those I probably won't get to until August.

I've had a copy of the conclusion of Joshua P. Simon's Blood and Tears Trilogy, Trial and Glory on my ereader for far too long.  It's going to be reviewed within the next four to six weeks. 

I don't know what order I'm going to read them.  It will depend on my mood and what I feel like reading.  I'm also going to throw in a bit of shorter works, both here and over at Futures Past and Present.  There are also a couple of other novels I'd like to read by the end of the summer.  And somewhere in there, I'll be reading things for my column at Amazing Stories (TM). 

John D. MacDonald's One Fearful Yellow Eye

One Fearful Yellow Eye
John D. MacDonald
trade paper $16.00
Kindle Nook $11.99

It's been a few years since I read any MacDonald, and a few years more since I read one of the Travis McGee novels.  I'd been reading them in order, and this one was the next in sequence.  It was also the only one I was missing.

I'd had an urge to read MacDonald for a while, sort of a mental itch that wouldn't go away, and so I decided to pick up this series where I'd left off.  A quick online check found a good copy in the editions I was collecting for a few bucks plus shipping, so I placed my order.

Much of this one takes place in Chicago in the winter, not your typical setting for a McGee novel.  Travis gets a call from an old girlfriend.  Her rich older husband has died of cancer.  This was expected.  His fortune, which he had said he would divide between her and his two grown children, has vanished.  Over a period of several months before his death, he quietly liquidated most of it.  This was not expected.

Further Thoughts on Marvin Kaye and Weird Tales, Plus Some Suggestions

Last fall I wrote a detailed review about the first issue of the latest version of Weird Tales.  One of the commenters, Chap O'Keefe, said he had sold a pair of stories that were scheduled to come out in subsequent issues.

Since then, there's been little news about when those issues would appear.  At least until last Monday (June 24).  Mr. O'Keefe updated the status of his submissions in a follow-up comment.  I'm reproducing it in its entirety: