Whispers of the Goddess is Coming

I haven't been around, all my regular readers know why, but finally my first project of the year is almost here.

I need to figure out all the nuances and get it put together but WHISPERS OF THE GODDESS my novella from the departed Roar of the Crowd is coming soon.

Here is the back cover blurb I recently put together, (and thanks to Angie Lofthouse for helping polish it)

"Warships of the Fourth Crusade surround Constantinople threatening murder, rapine and worse.
The only option left the impotent Emperor to avoid the sacking of the great city, is to secretly give away a sacred relic.
Enter Tyr a red-handed Swedish mercenary and Wolfram von Eschenbach the Templar poet, together charged with retrieving the holy artifact and escaping the city.
What they don’t know is that arcane forces, old as myth, are marshaled against their mission. The old gods of multiple nations war with the New.
And Ragnarok is coming to Greece."


Here is the cover by the talented Carter Reid - he also did the SPACE ELDRITCH cover.


In other news, the prequel of sorts for Whispers of the Goddess, The Dogs of War, has been accepted into the Thunder on the Battlefield, Sword & Sorcery collection edited by James R. Tuck, so if you like one tale I hope you will like the other and we can get some cross-pollination going.

Roar of the Crowd ~ R.I.P.

After waiting a couple of years for something to come of a tale that I was particularly fond of, I recieved the email that Rogue Blades Entertainment had to concede that Roar of the Crowd is dead. The Editor Jason Waltz has been overwhelmed with a number of issues and could not keep the project on hold continually.

(Ironic I posted this was still forthcoming last week on my birthday.)

So I now have Whispers of the Goddess back.

Looking it over and giving it a reread after sitting for so long, I definetly want to polish it up, not a lot but some. I am proud of what I put together in a white heat weekend to make the deadline for the antho and I was excited to be sharing the TOC with quite a few of people I call friends now among them...

Mbogo Returns ~ Milton Davis

Carcass and Mallet ~ Ty Johnston

Race to Dragonhead Rock ~ Bill Ward

For the Light ~ Gustavo Bondoni

Spirit of the Maya ~ Robert Waters
Winter’s Game ~ Kate Martin
The Last Refuge of Piyamaradu ~ Ryan Harvey
Up the Gladiators! ~ David Bischoff
Panathenaic ~ Bruce Durham
Naumachia Magic ~ Alva Roberts
Hard Crossing at Luhinmov Ford ~ Adrian Simmons
Love and Revolution ~ Jeff Draper
The Turul Spreads its Wings ~ Boglárka Takács
Whispers of the Goddess ~ David J. West
Ulemet’s Wager ~ Lyn Perry
The Dream Horn ~ Howard Andrew Jones
Shini-tai ~ C.L. Werner
Foreword ~ Michael Ehart

I'm thinking now that I'll likely throw my hat into the eRing and release the novella as an ebook. That means polish, polish, edit, edit, edit and a fantastic cover to boot. I'm gonna make a goal of september, just to have plenty of time to get some good help on all facets of this project.

Preparing to Blitz

Beginning of the year and time to map and or lament on my goals. I always end up biting off more than I can chew. Still, the blitz is coming.

There are a half dozen short story anthologies I 'd love to be included in with deadlines looming shortly. Would love to do these but I probably ought to pick my battles with the ones I want the most and forget the rest rather than having the dozen beginnings and no endings I have sitting in the files right now. I always wondered why Robert E. Howard had so many great tales that weren't finished and now I understand that a little better.

I have my sequel to Heroes of the Fallen needing to be polished up- people even call my Mom wanting to know if they can get a rough draft-(not gonna happen) Really need to do that-I never, ever, meant to take so long finishing an already finished book.

I also need to polish and decide what I want to do with my exiled Spartan novel Bless the Child, I should have sent it to a copy editor friend months ago but I wanted to clean it up even more before I passed it on-still haven't done it. Really need to do that.

Recently submitted my second chapter of Midnight Sons to UGEEK Magazine-the story went an interesting direction that I never foresaw-but I am happy with it-I think the stuff I had planned on will be coming up in the next chapter-any E-friends who are interested drop me a line I'll send the pdf for the first issue-since it was a local Utah-centric mag. I moved away from Utah right as it went to print so I don't even have any copies of my pulpness-that and I saw that I missed the local CON where the premier issue debuted-with a few interesting guests like comic veteran Wendy Pini (of Elf Quest fame) In my mind she still looks like Red Sonja from Savage Sword of Conan in '76. 

My hopes and prayers for Jason Waltz at Rogue Blades Entertainment-that things will get sorted out and the magnificent books Roar of the Crowd and Challenge: Discovery  that are waiting in the wings will be released in 2012.

More of my weird western short stories with Porter Rockwell are coming, though I'm not sure on any release dates with those anthologies. Same with the Dagan Books antho of weird sci-fi IN-SITU my tale The Dig is coming some time soon this year.

I meant to get most of my S&S gangster fantasy Gods & Robbers done last year and I didn't-we'll go for this year on that account.

And finally a bit of non-fiction (that reads like very exciting/frightening fiction) is absolutely coming but I can't say more on that just yet. But you could check out my friend Douglas Dietrich's site. Just saying.

My IRONCLAD Guarantee

I know the movies I have been talking about lately are my preaching to the choir & but you faithful readers will dig this one too.

IRONCLAD rocks.

Set in 1215 not too long after King John, Paul Giamatti (is wonderfully wicked) has signed the Magna Carta, he has second thoughts and tries to renege. But the nobles aren't going to stand for it and prepare a tiny force to hold Rochester castle, a strategic strong point.

Enter our Templar knight, Thomas Marshal played by James Purefoy, still channeling Solomon Kane, as a key defender against John.

There are some other fine actors - Brian Cox, Jason Flemying, and Charles Dance but the actor I was especially excited to see in action again is Vladimir Kulich.

Now I would not have recognized his name, but I would have recognized  Buliwyf from The 13th Warrior (a classic in my book). He is the captain of the Danish mercenaries employed by King John to win back England-and I was hankering through the whole movie for the point where he would fight Purefoy's Templar. (The image I found makes him look as how I picture my character Tyr, a Swedish mercenary in the forthcoming Roar of the Crowd anthology (& other antho's I'm working on))

The battles are bloody and visceral and IF you know who you are-you have my guarantee you are gonna like this movie.