FanX 2017!!!

I'm a guest at my pseudo-hometown Comic con = Salt Lake's Comic Con .2 Fan X.

It's always a little smaller, a little more intimate - and thats only in comparison to the September comic con which is huge. FanX is still bigger than most I'd imagine at 50K+ attendee's.

I'll be signing books with some of my writer friends at table Gold 2 -its pretty close to the entrance - which can be both a blessing and a curse. You're the first and last person they see.

I'm going to be doing another improv audience participation game/panel with the other Space Balrog's. I get to be The Undead vs Dragons vs Elementals. I think I'm going to do a suave vampire thing or I might go for broke with an evil Ash persona. Its always a lot of fun.

I watched What We Do in the Shadows again to think about character but now maybe I'll rewatch Army of Darkness again too.

On the home/writing front. I have not quite been able to keep up the pulp speed I would have hoped for, but progress is being made nonetheless. I can talk about these plans within plans more sooner than later. I'm excited for the possibilities.

Oh, I'm stoked! I'm going to see Flash Gordon in theaters tonight with Sam Jones - who is a guest of FanX. It's been one of my favorite pulpy sci-fi movies since I was in the second grade.

I wanted to be Flash when I was a kid, but genetics deemed me Ming.

I'll have more to report soon!

Weird Books I Own

You follow my blog. You subscribe to my newsletter (or at least you should - it will be worth your while soon) so as a matter of course you know I have a library of some seven thousand books. And being a writer of weird speculative fiction I own a lot of strange books - for research purposes. I thought I would share a few here today

I just finished this one the other day and it was fascinating. The author purports that there was a conspiracy between Coronado and De Alverez and that there really was the seven cities of Cibola located approximately in the Phoenix area. The proofs are circumstantial but compelling but going the next scientific step farther we are presented with the catastrophic reason - we don't find ruins in better shape there. The author present his reasoning on why a comet or at least a cometary fragment struck the area in approximately 1680 just a short time before the Spanish returned to the area and mapped the region. I realize this is a big step from what we have been taught but I found the book incredibly logical and well founded. Its well worth looking into, especially for historical fiction writers.

I bought this one years go for the title alone. That cover is atrocious, but inside Andrews details numerous bizarre accounts, even back to the middle ages. He is readable and entertaining and would recommend this book for science fiction aficionado's looking for some more meat.

I had to get this one from Amazon recently just for the bizarre inflammatory title - I'm sure my wife would not be amused. But I do love to collect all the weird American and Mormon historical books I can, and this fit the bill. I have yet to crack it open, but its short and will be a quick read.

You might not think this one is too bizarre or surprising until you realize it was written in 1938! It seems to be a conspiratorial piece aimed at Roosevelt for turning a blind eye to the Japanese and their invasion of China etc. The cover denotes a US made bomb being dropped on China by the Japanese. There is a whole lot more to the story and I am no fan of Roosevelt's manipulating etc.

This is great and is one of several books I own which purport Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid never died in Bolivia but came back to the states. It is circumstantial but as with the others mentioned above, compelling reasoning for its unorthodox posturing. I'm inclined to agree with its premise.

This was just a surprise. I have several of Winston Churchill's books on World War Two and so finding this little hardcover edition printed in 1958 was a pleasant surprise. Man's gotta unwind somehow.

This one is more strange and lost recordings of forgotten peoples who may or may not be accepted by traditional history. This is exactly the kind of book that works when you are trying to come up with your own lost Hyborian age.

This is a local rare book detailing Gale Rhodes foray into looking for lost Utah treasure maps. Its interesting reading for the sake of understanding markers and local legends. I found it at a used book shop and think I paid maybe a buck. Its at least 150.00 on Amazon now. But again I knew what I was seeing in the used shops, most people don't. 

A Dent In the Summer Reading Pile

The Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell

The Saxon series, following Uthred of Bebbanburg is one of my all time favorites. I even got my wife to enjoy watching The Last Kingdom with me. I highly recommend it.

Death of Kings is the sixth book in the series -yes, I'm a little behind for something I enjoy so much but there is an element of savoring it here. Overall I would say the pace is slowed on this one compared to Sword Song and The Burning Lands. It is a big watershed in the sense that King Alfred passes in this one too. The whole Alfred/Christian vs Uthred/Pagan was a big drive for the previous books - and that is going away but nobody is going to fill Alfred's shoes. And that is part of the problem with the politics in this book - the Dames are going to be that much worse for the English.

So Death of Kings is slower book in many ways and I have to say its been the least enjoyable of the series so far - that said - the finale was a great climax and was most excellent, its was just a little more of a wait to get there than Ive been used to in the series.

Dead Pact, by Craig Nybo

Caveat, Craig Nybo is a friend of mine and I truly enjoy his work! He has a wonderful imagination and does some of the most far out concepts of anyone I know!

Now about Dead Pact which is a stand alone kindle selection from Craig's bigger anthology - Terrifying Lies. This tale is a gritty weird western in the grandest tradition.  Nybo throws some great loops and douses the reader in dark shadows before bailing them out again. We're thrown into the action of Galen Waite investigating some demonic possession near the town of Bannack. Think cross between possession and the Walking Dead. This one had me on my toes. And as always I look forward to more from Craig!

Murder at the Kinnen Hotel: A Powder Mage novella, by Brian McClellan

I've heard good things about McClellan's Powder Mage series and I've been meaning to get to it, so when I saw that he posted this novella for free I snagged it.

But I think it was a bad place to start. It is set years beforehand and while I could see that interesting world building was being set up and such, I didn't feel the grasp of what all of it meant nor was I impressed with some of the characters even though I was told they were intimidating. I'm sure I missed things that would be a thrill IF I had read the trilogy already, but as a standalone tale I thought it went a little weak. The climax especially felt limp for something that is a mix of mystery and fantasy and I just would have liked a little more punch.

I still intend to read the trilogy and I'm sure I may have new found appreciation for this prequel tale of sorts afterward, but as a starting point for me it was too shaky.

Pride of the Traveler, by Bryce Beattie

This is another short - I read all three of these at work -shhhhhh.
This low magic fantasy follows Key, a young swordsman who goes to a carnival of sorts and to fortune teller to ask about his destiny. She tells him pride will be his downfall. He also gets a warning about the possible collaboration of dark magic and vampires with the powers that be in the city. So, he goes into town and joins in the dueling matches therein. He isn't humble and promptly defeats all comers until he has to take on the captain of the guard who has some of that dark magic on his side.

It is a predictable enough tale but it is enjoyable and really feels like a prologue to something greater. I would definitely read that follow up of Key's adventures because I like Beattie's storytelling and prose.


The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent by Larry Correia

Larry always has a good dose of humor in his works and with this one he really lets loose, firing off all guns at the usual suspects. Poking fun at all the social justice warriors, Fox execs who cancelled Firefly, and Joe Biden is almost too easy. The R. Lee Ermey type secretary of defense was also welcome touch.
For just sheer entertainment this novella is good, not too long, not too short its in the just right size for this type of tale - any longer might be a bit much. But its nice to see a place where you can still poke fun and throw in the planet destroying aliens side walled by a smooth talking Insurance adjuster.

As yet this is only available as an audio book and Adam Baldwin's reading knocks it out of the park.

Gods in Darkness

I met my goal of releasing 12 projects in 12 months - one exactly every month in 2015.

The final one was my new anthology of new and previously released sci-fi horror materia titled Gods in Darkness - get it HERE

Some of these stories might be familiar - the titular novella was released just over three years ago in Space Eldritch, and several new tales follow that same strange semi-lovecraftian vein. I also wrote some dark poetry that I put in as some spacers between the short stories. Some of it is pretty weird and I sometimes wondered what was running through my head when I wrote those lines and yet, I also felt like letting the Muse take me where she would. So in some respects it makes me feel vulnerable putting that kinda weird out there - so I haven't promoted it all that much by comparison to earlier books like Whispers Out of the Dust, and LO what to my surprise do I find as I'm putting this blog post together but Gods in Darkness is already in the top 100 Anthologies on Amazon!

Makes a writer who does struggle with - nobody cares about what I write feel pretty good.

Thanks to whomever you are out there getting a copy. I do suspect its some of you guys (My handful of blog readers)

As for just a little more of my motivations for this antho: granted at least half of it is previously released and I wanted to meet my goal for the year, but also I love those old pulp collections with a variety of stuff like Wolfshead  and the Cthulhu Mythos. I have several stories kicking around but decided to keep them all on a science fiction kick and am saving my weird western and fantasy type tales for some other project - (one weird western/aliens tale did go into Gods in Darkness- but I decided I no Porter Rockwell tales would make it into this one - so it was rewritten).

So I had this one keep to a theme as it were. Thanks again and Happy New Year!

Carl Sagan Owes Percival Lowell An Apology

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I saw Carl Sagan's Cosmos in the seventh grade thanks to my science teacher. She had VHS copies (bootlegs) that we watched. I really liked them for the most part. The Mars episode really stuck with me in part because Sagan talked about Edgar Rice Burroughs and Barsoom and it was all backed by Holst's Mars: The Bringer of War.
It moved me.
Then he talked about what Percival Lowell thought he saw, the canals on Mars and such, the receding of seasons and movements of a dying race - and what a load it was and how deluded Lowell had been to think he saw such things.

And then last Thursday NASA up and says looking at these pics it seems that maybe Mars has flowing briny water on the surface. They did also say that the water would have to be briny to be flowing in the Martian cold.

With all of that in mind, I think Sagan gave Lowell a bum rap and he ought to be giving him a posthumous apology, at least now that he can do it in spirit.

Still overall it doesn't really look like they found anything after all, they won't go looking closer for fear of contamination but then isn't the Rover's very presence equal contamination. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against checking things out but lets be realistic, we already have alien robots on the planet go take a closer look!

I read some articles saying how this was all grandstanding in a way to help promote the new The Martian movie and I'm just cynical enough to wonder if that isn't the case. Personally I'd rather they just do another John Carter of Mars.

And while I don't personally put any stock in the Martian face, pyramids etc I do heartily think they should be looking closer at a lot of things!