It's been long enough, ladies and gentlemen. Now is the moment you have been waiting for. It's time for more pocket paperbacks!
That's right, I've finally got more newer editions out on the Lulu store. I recently told you all that I was working on a way to get both Someone is Aiming for You & Other Adventures and The Last Fanatics out in pocket paperback format, which I have finally done. I had to work on these for awhile because they were longer books than the others I've published so far without making them unreadable in the format. Well, I've finally solved that conundrum. I did it by splitting the larger books up into smaller volumes.
I did this because it helps contribute to the convenience of the smaller size. This way it makes the books portable without having to compromise on form factor. This also makes the books in question easier to share with loved ones and friends you want to pass the books on to them, or maybe you want to leave them in a used book store or waiting room for others to find. It's all up to you. This is, after all, what makes pocket paperback so unique.
Anyway, let's get on with it.
I have divided The Last Fanatics into three pocket paperback volumes. Volume 1 contains the original foreword and the first two parts, Volume 2 contains Part III: Science Fiction Doesn't Exist, which is the longest part of the entire book on its own, and Volume 3 contains the rest of the material as well as the afterword.
Here is the overall description for The Last Fanatics:
Once upon a time, there was a tradition of storytelling that went back into the Gothic romances all the way through the fairy tales into the classics. It was a world without genre boundaries, checked boxes, and corporate writing workshops. This tradition created all the things you grew up with, the stories and ideas you hold dear, and the beating heart of adventure that has sustained us since the beginning of recorded history.
And then it was destroyed.
Learn how a gaggle of Fanatics poisoned the well of discourse and imagination by turning storytelling into mechanical formulas with rules and boundaries that never existed before. Who gave them this power, and how much of their garbage still taints discourse and the industry today? In The Last Fanatics, all will be laid bare.
It is time for the truth to be shouted out loud!
*Contains the collected and edited series of Fandom essays from Wasteland & Sky*
Considering the entire work was over 500 pages in trade paperback/hardcover, the individual volumes are shorter, just under 200 pages each.
On top of The Last Fanatics, as mentioned above, I have also split my short story collection Someone is Aiming for You & Other Adventures into two volumes. This one was much easier to divide up since they are short stories linked together into one long piece and can be easily jumped between should the reader desire to.
How I worked it out was that Volume One contains the first four stories in the larger collection. That would be: Someone is Aiming for You," "Endless Nights in Villain City," "Under Suspicion in Summerside," and "Knives in the Night," as the main feature.
Volume Two contains "Last Exit to Shadow City," "Lucky Spider's Last Stand," and "When the Sunset Turns Red," as the story contents.
Here is the overall description for Someone is Aiming for You & Other Adventures:
Vigilantes fight from the shadows. In Summerside, Dark Magic poisons the dying city of cultists and gangsters. This is where heroes are made.
A man with a deadly touch, an ex-hitman, a concrete teenager, an invisible myth, and an indestructible knight, are but a few of those who stalk the midnight hour.
In these seven stories you will meet those fighting for the soul of the city, and those hoping to bring it to a brighter future. But is there anything left worth saving in a world of death?
With that, almost all of my books have made the jump to the pocket paperback format. I say almost all, because as you are probably aware, there is still one four book series remaining.
That's right, I still have to transfer the Gemini Man series to pocket paperback. Because they are a bit longer than my usual books, but not long enough to be broken up like the above two, I still have to work on the formatting and send out test versions to tweak, which will take longer. Until then, of course, you can still get them in omnibus format on Amazon, which I recommend, since the entire story is contained in one mega volume there.
Now, that's all I've got for you today. I'm still working on new material and still considering new options to distribute them to readers in unique ways in the future. Those options will be weighed a little longer as I try to figure that out, but my newest book will probably show up sooner than you might think. Keep an eye out--you're definitely not going to want to miss that one!
It's finally February and, as the most recent post has shown, the year is already starting to roll along. 2024 is off to a strong start.
However, today I wanted to talk about scale and ambition a little bit. Let us think Big!
There is something about the Epic in storytelling that attracts us all, isn't there? We all want to be wowed and awed, even if we say we couldn't care less about such a thing. Though it's a feeling the mainstream entertainment industry and art world lost through the paint worship of the 20th century, preferring obsessing over aesthetics, disjointed parts, subversion, vague moralizing, and weird nihilism, we still appreciate the large than life more than ever before. There is something to the scale of even the most simple thing that inspires wonder and joy in all but the most cynical of all of us.
We all want to see the greater things in life reflected in even the smallest objects, but along the way we've lost the ability to not only imagine it--we've also lost the ability to even look up in the first place. Instead we've been trained to look at the mud and think ourselves superior to both our neighbor and the rest of the world that we can't even imagine higher things anymore.
When did this hope for greater things start to fall away? I would say it most likely began around the 1960s and rotted away in the 1970s to be replaced with crass commercialism in the 1980s and bottoming out into irony poisoning before the 1990s ended. By the 2000s, all that remained of wonder was perversion, emptiness, and a hatred for life. In half a century, art became the exact flipside of what it was meant to be.
I think this destructive bottoming out can be summed up in the subgenre created by the fallout of this vapid culture, dubbed "Reddit Carnage" by Mystery Grove Publishing, the former book publisher and now full-time newsletter writer.
It's a relatively new term, but I'm sure you have an idea of what it means. "Reddit" of course refers to the social media site, infamous for its trumpeting of group think, reinforcing of anything popular culture pumps out, and general misery of the sort that could only foster in such an echo chamber. "Carnage" is hyper violence. Put the two together and you get Reddit Carnage. Murder porn made for the terminally online, emptied of humanity.
If you've never heard the term before, here are some uses of it:
The long and short of the term is that is empty hyperviolence meant to desensitize you to the purpose of violence, the sanctity of life, and to demoralize you in general. There is no purpose to any of it accept to condition you to accept meaninglessness and think of other people as little more than meat sacks who explode real good. In essence, it's anti-human.
I should explain this further. It's not an easy idea to get across.
This is a sort of "genre" that did not exist before Millennials, because it couldn't have. Reddit Carnage is a story where everyone is a cartoon character who treats the lives of other people as disposable, especially if they are the generic bad guy (whose motivations themselves are usually vague beyond "the government/good guy/girl boss says so"). And you know it's all silly and meaningless because the title is silly and meaningless, the action sequences are silly and meaningless, the characters are 2D flat stereotypes that are silly and meaningless, and the costuming and accents are silly and meaningless. All that matters is the carnage of seeing Bad People ripped to shreds and the World Order run by the Good Guys preserved. There is something intentionally inhuman about this subgenre, and that is because it is an inversion of a style of film that used to be more prevalent before the 21st century. It's a warped misunderstanding and interpretation of what an action story is.
It is the 1980s action movie stripped of any pathos or sense of justice beyond vague shadows of what once used to be there. It is the anti-wonder approach to action storytelling, replacing the eternal with the temporal.
"Reddit Carnage" is a way to reinforce vapid bugmen consumerist morality through carefully prescribed dopamine releases not-so-secretly aimed by the producers of the film on groups of human beings they do not like and portray as "correct" targets to brutalize and dehumanize. This is different from casting villains as terrorist groups based on real life like action movies used to do, because they are frequently not based on real terrorist groups at all. These films are not even subtle about this, but for whatever reason modern movie-goers (however many of these that still exist at this point) cannot seem to see it beyond grinning at Bad People being diced up.
If you want to know why these projects are "still allowed" to be made by Hollywood when other types of action stories aren't, it is because they aren't true action movies. They are murder porn simulators where audiences can see Hollywood approved bad guys get their heads blown up by walking automatons that vaguely resemble what a person they think should be. It is every old parody of action movies on late night TV, but made real.
Reddit Carnage is the parody version of what people who hate action movies used to say they were, made by people who think those critics were right and aim to rub their noses in it. "Yeah, it's blatant murder porn! Who cares! Listen to that one-liner. It's so bad it's good, am I right?"
But that's not what action movie ever were. That's a fantasy concocted by people who hate you telling you what you should think about something you like, and you've let them infect the way you see not only your entertainment, but the world.
Over the years, Cannon has gone from being a joke to being beloved.
Take Cannon Films, the B-movie masters who were considered the makers of pure shlock back in the 1980s. They were considered bottom of the barrel and were hated by Hollywood despite (but actually probably because of) the fact that they only ever wanted to make movies that entertained, not lecture the audience. Finding an anti-human message in a typical Cannon movie is actually very difficult, despite the fact that they were hated so much by the establishment.
Watch a movie like Death Wish II. Yes, it's sleazy. Yes, it's grimy. Yes, it's violent and dark. Yes, there are horrible happening things in it. However, the film still has a point. Life is difficult, justice is not only real but is necessary for a safe society to function, and evil must be pulled out at the root. It's a heavier version of the original Death Wish meant to show the decay that occurs after nothing changed (and nothing did change) after the events of the first film. This goes even further into apocalyptic insanity with Death Wish 3, but I'm not getting into that one here. Regardless, I think the series deserves more credit than it gets.
The last theatrical movie Charles Bronson made with Cannon (he would retire not long after this) was called Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects which is about human trafficking and the dehumanization aspect of it on everyone involved. The movie isn't one of the strongest Bronson ever made (not even with Cannon) but its ending is still surprisingly powerful, asking what justice would have been in this situation. For a final theatrical release, Bronson still tried his best to create something. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford and Baby Boomer stars of the '80s and '90s have been spending their retirement years destroying everything they built up back then.
But that is a whole other subject. The point is that there were more going on in these simple old movies than you think.
Even Chuck Norris movies, the nexus of lazy punchlines for years, all have moral cores. Yes, even the Cannon ones. Missing in Action is about a man who will do anything to undo a near-fatal mistake and put things right again. Invasion USA is about how even in the face of tremendous odds, good remains stronger and will still prevail against encroaching evil. Even The Hitman is about how good repaid with evil eventually leads to self-destruction, ending with good standing on top again. There is nothing empty about any of that because it's all based on truth.
The best example is probably Sidekicks, not made by Cannon. Sidekicks is the story of a physically sick kid who uses his dreams and fantasies and his hopes to improve his life condition to become a stronger human being. Despite being a silly movie meant for younger audiences, there is a very good moral core at the center of it all. Our hero's plight cements both imagination and effort as two of the most important aspects of personal growth.
There is nothing negative about any of this. In fact, this is all healthy messaging. But it was twisted by those in charge into being considered "wrong" and backwards from reality. This is why they were turned into punchlines by those in charge. The last thing they want you to imagine is any greater purpose to anything in life. Just consume, give them your paycheck, and keep your head down. There is nothing else to life.
Reddit Carnage, therefore, is the opposite of what wonder stories are intended to be. It has no relation to how action stories are meant to be.
So what is a good example of something on the opposite end of the spectrum from Reddit Carnage? What is the sort of story where large ideas and concepts are portrayed as such, where looking up is considered important, and the good is always shown as just that?
The above image should give you a clue. I am talking about Giant Robots. There is a good reason for that--it is action storytelling meant to make you consider Big things through portraying Big things in clear visual language. It is the exact mirror of Reddit Carnage, to the point that the two have never met in the same project. I am not convinced they ever properly can without turning said resulting idea into a mess.
But I digress.
Now, were I to bring up something like Giant Robots in casual conversation, I am liable to get one of two general reactions. The first is of excitement and child-like joy at the very idea of large objects engaged in epic actions, and the other are eyerolls from mature adults who prefer to spend their time golfing on the weekend away from such juvenile things. In other words, your appreciation for the idea of Giant Robots probably aligns with how much you appreciate wonder and the potential for life itself. It's a litmus test: much like how much your appreciation for space opera goes beyond multi-billion dollar brands shows how much you appreciate the general idea of the genre in the first place, or just how much other people are talking about it.
But even in the giant robot space (if one can call it so) there is a bit of misunderstanding as to what they are, what their intent is, or even what makes it a "real" robot story.
The above video highlighted at the very top of this long post delves into the history of the giant robot genre through where it really flourished--Japan. the history goes back far. Particularly important is how it was an invention of post-WWII Japan for a country that wanted to dream big (and did) while finding their footing in a world unlike anything they knew before. In the process they stumbled into something that morphed into a worldwide phenomenon for those lovers of the overblown and the epic. Because it is an idea anyone can understand.
Of course I'm not going to say Japan created them all on their own or are the sole creators of the style, but they ultimately put their own stamp on the idea, just as they did with superheroes with their own tokusatsu. Therefore what influenced them became reflected back out into the world and influenced everyone else. This key aspect of communication and back and forth is what makes art and entertainment so very interesting.
The most fascinating part of the whole thing is that they can't really be subverted. Don't get me wrong--you can try. You can try to inject modern values into the genre, you can try to make the good guys lose, and you can even make it so there are no good guys at all--but it never seems to matter. What remains at the end of it is still the idea of Big, or scale, or romance beyond the mundane. It can never quite be gutted out because by default that is what is.
The Big is embedded in the genre.
And perhaps all of this is why, despite the crumbling of mainstream culture in the West, there still remains plenty of joy and life in those who create and those who want to enjoy the creations of others. Those who still appreciate the Big, the truly weird, and the epic, refuse to be shaken off by the dead trends of those who are supposed to be in charge of them.
You've certainly noticed it yourself, the tide changing. The air is no longer quite what it used to be even a few years ago. We're in the mid-2020s now, and the decade is finally taking shape into what it is meant to be. The shackles of Cultural Ground Zero are breaking apart. As long as we stay the course we can finally break the downwards spiral and aim up once again. All we have to do is keep thinking Big.
There isn't anymore room for Reddit Carnage and its empty promises. It is time for better ways: ways that we are finally rediscovering for ourselves.
Let us keep going back at it and we can then look back on the '20s as the decade where everything finally changed for the better.
Just remember to never stop looking up. There is always something bigger than you can imagine, just waiting to be discovered.
January is almost over, so it's time to highlight the real beginning of the year in regards to new projects. Everyone knows the first month of the year is basically a dead zone in just about every aspect of life, but once you get past it, wheels start rolling. Today I wanted to highlight some of those exact projects now coming to life.
Strap in, because we've got a few to go through. There is something for everyone.
Up first is a new Kickstarter project by Cirsova and Jim Breyfogle, the pair who worked together on the Mongoose & Meerkat series. This time, the project is a standalone novel, and just like the rest of Mr. Breyfogle's material, is reminiscent of the classics.
This time he's got a brand new book that's once again, just a bit different from what you might expect.
The project description:
Edward has caught a bad case of Dead!
While hurrying to his clerking job in London, Edward is attacked by a strange creature in an alleyway. Feeling ill, Edward consults his apothecary neighbor who informs him he's been infected with zumbiism, and is now among the Dead!
There is still hope, however! Sent on his way with a potent elixir that will stave off the effects of Dead, Edward must seek out the aid of a Necromancer in the Narrow World, a hidden realm of forgotten magic beyond the sea. But the next ship leaves in only an hour!
Want to know what happens next? Well, so do I.
Check out more about the project, as well as available formats here!
Now for something a bit different, let us go to the wild lands just outside of accepted normality. Last year I highlighted the first volume of Jacob Calta's ambitious 365 Infantry project, so it only stands to reason that this time we would see the second volume. And here it is.
For those confused about what 365 Infantry is, it would best be described as an ongoing serial focused on one world in multiple parts and subseries. The first volume started these different series' off, and the second continues them with all the work released in 2023, plus some bonus content. The original works are housed in the 365 Infantry Substack, where one can read new releases as they come out.
Here is the description of volume 2:
Back behind the wheel are the 25th century's most daring and courageous hounds! With the looming threat of the mad electric machine A.C.E.S., the scum and villainy of the Wastelands, and a mysterious new faction in the ongoing fight for freedom, the 365th Infantry and their many friends and allies are in it up to their necks. But all is not lost, not when these wolves are on the scene!
Writer Jacob Calta returns with another white-knuckled trip through a metalhead power fantasy future, armed with brisk storytelling, stylish prose, an enveloping world, the dynamic art of Kevin John Jacob, and a breathtaking cover illustration by the talented Temiree. Join the daring soldier Gibson, the sage General Knox, the tormented huntress Valentina, the mad-cap vigilante Lita, the wild-eyed lawman Nic, and the scores of colorful canine characters that populate the world of Haven and the Wastelands in 22 electrifying new stories of action, suspense, crime, romance and more
I've said before that the major advantage with NewPub is the freewheeling spirit of fun and unabashed excitement to do anything, and this project shows you exactly why that is. Also, while we're at it, Mr. Calta also released a new single you can hear here. He just doesn't stop!
You can find the second volume of 365 Infantryhere.
Now for something a bit different, again, Let us turn to the All Eyes on Ashley project, just launched on Kickstarter!
This comic project concerns a hopeless young man who wishes to woo a beautiful woman, but just doesn't know how to do it! Will he figure it out, or is he doomed to being ignored forever? You'll have to read it and find out!
The description:
Everyone in the office drools over Ashley, and Spencer's had his eyes on her ever since she broke up with her successful boyfriend. But would she even pay attention to a guy like him?
Spencer is willing to try anything just to get her attention, but he has to become his own man before he can be worthy of her.
Read this new sweet 20-page romantic comedy comic by romance author Daniella Acera and DC Comics' Injustice artist Mike S. Miller with multiple beautiful covers for you to choose from.
Check out the campaign page for more about formats and extras, including an add-on for a novel!
You can find All Eyes on Ashley on Kickstarter here!
Author Julie Frost is no stranger to wild tales of werewolves, and her new book is definitely no different. I hope you like action and horror, because you'll find plenty of both here. Just launched today, Cry Havoc looks to be as wild as its cover!
The description:
Nate Cassin, the alpha werewolf of Missoula, Montana, finds his little city has a big wolf problem when shredded bodies start showing up all over town. Faced with a hostile press and even more hostile hunters, he tries to protect his innocent pack of eight at the same time they try to track down two elusive killers in an area of 35 square miles with a plethora of hiding places.
He's seen this before. And the hunters always, always go overboard and decide the only good werewolf is a dead one, no matter who's actually responsible. His pack will be collateral damage unless he can find the enemy wolves—and stop their broken alpha—before they turn his hometown into a human buffet.
For something, once again, a bit different, check out this comic crowdfund for Part 1 of the Paper Doll Veronika comic series. It comes with an incredible 230 pages(!) and a unique artstyle for the first part of this project.
The description:
Veronika Bosch has never left her father's estate. But one day, seven jealous animals invade her home and kick her out! What lies ahead is a whimsical journey of magic and adventure.
A cross between collage and puppetry, every page of this comic is made by arranging articulated hand-drawn paper dolls on backgrounds collaged of decorative paper and ephemera.
This first printed book will include Part I - Forest, which is 24 chapters, approximately 450 images.
There is also more about the different page formats, so be sure to check out the campaign for yourself and decide which is more for you.
One of the advantages to the NewPub scene is that you truly can do anything, and I mean anything. Take this new project, The Catgirl in Pink & Other Short Stories by Edmund Miller. Here you get 22 short stories you'd never see anywhere else for pocket change, all as bizarre as the title story might suggest they are.
The description:
A lonely man meets a mysterious catgirl at a bar. A homeless man ingests pills that allow him to see the past and future. A female cyclist goes missing in a forest. A scientist tries to unravel the secrets of astatine. These stories and more can be found in this volume.
Once again, you can find The Catgirl in Pink & Other Short Storieshere!
You know the one, where a boy or a girl wanders into a strange land, unable to find home again. It is a story of darkness that crushes the spirit and of hope in the midst of the darkness.
That fairytale. The one where you are the hero.
People tell us that reading fantasy is escapism. But do you ever feel more alive, more real, than when you are reading? When we are reading a really good story, don’t we feel as if it allows us to burn with the bliss and suffer the sorrow of others? To come out of ourselves and be more than we would have been?
If your heart burns for brighter things, if you are one who yearns to venture Beyond the Fields We Know, this is for you.
Once again, you can find Defending the Wood Perilous for free here!
That's all for today, but I think this sufficiently highlight how packed the start of the year already is for new projects. We've barely begun, and already there is a stack of new creative projects just waiting for audiences to dig in and enjoy them.
And again, 2024 just started! There is much more excitement to come.
So keep your chin up, because you've got an exciting year ahead full of fun surprises, including from yours truly. Just wait and see!
Until then, enjoy the new projects and I will see you next time. There is much more to look forward to, even beyond the year ahead.
Surprise! We are already back with a new Story Sheets! Bet you didn't expect one quite so soon, but it was obvious it was coming, wasn't it?
After our last entry, it only made sense to jump right into the next one this week. As you well know, there are two stories (naturally) included in the collection Two Adventure Across Eternity, and you already know about "Duel On Dalpha" and the story behind that one, but what of the second story? Well, let us get into it.
As you might have guessed from just the title of today's story, this isn't another space opera tale of gun fights and mecha battles like the last one. No, it's very much the opposite. This is a story of swords, sorcery, and cursed lands. So why is it even here, being paired in a collection with a seemingly very different story? Well, I will explain that part a bit later on. For now, let us concentrate on the tale itself. What is "Three Gifts of the White Wolf" and where did it come from?
Believe it or not, it's actually a pretty old story I recently edited myself to completion. Since I was a much improved writer by the time I wanted to publish it, I sharpened this older tale up a good deal, though nothing in the piece itself has changed. That said, since this was never published before or looked at by other eyes, it is the readers who get to dive into this one fresh. Therefore I spent a good deal of time tempering this one up.
Anyway, enough of the technical details. What about where it came from? That is actually a very simple question to answer.
What happened is something that occurs every now and then where I will be writing or editing a story, novel, or even blog post, and I will be struck with an idea and have to put everything aside to write it down on the spot. For example, when I was editing Two Adventures Across Eternity to get it out by the end of 2023, I found myself in this same predicament. There was another piece I just had to write, so I dove into said story and came right back to editing again afterwards. When that story releases, I'll share the culprit that nearly delayed the collection. Either way, it happens more to me than I'd like to admit. I am not an organized writer in the slightest.
The problem with today's entry is mostly that I don't remember quite when exactly I wrote "Three Gifts of the White Wolf" because as soon as I was done I put it aside for later. I don't even think I properly self-edited it at the time. The reason for this is that, much like "Duel On Dalpha" and a few other stories I've written, there isn't much of a market for tales that fall in that novelette groove between novella and short story. Most magazines are desperate for space and the cost of eBooks makes selling them on their own against longer pieces look like a bad value proposition. So I decided to put aside until an opportunity arose where I could finally give it to readers.
And now you've got it!
I'm happy to finally get this one out because it marked a bit of a shift in how I consider writing stories. I believe I wrote it after reading a bunch of Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book because I wanted to write a tale in that vein but, obviously, not quite so short. That ended up being the story we are discussing as today's subject. Since then I tend to have a lot of fairy tale influence in everything I do, whether I intend to or not.
Custom cover similar to the one for "Duel On Dalpha"
As it might be evident from the above art, a classic painting used for the cover (the art is actually used for the back cover for the paperback version!) sets the tone for the story. For those curious, the painting in question is Eugene Boudin's "Coast of Brittany" work from 1870, only a bit darker and more twisted than the original piece was intended to be. This is because the setting for "Three Gifts of the White Wolf" is the same as an earlier story, "Inside the Demon's Eye" which ran in StoryHack Issue Three a while back, and the location is the same as that one.
You might be wondering if this means the stories take place in Brittany--why else would the cover be like this, after all--but that's not quite the case. No, these stories don't even really take place in the past.
I'll have to explain this the best I can.
I have to be careful here, because a lot of what the Black Lands are, the setting of these two stories, is properly revealed in this very piece, because it is the lynchpin to the tale itself. Please be patient if any of the following explanation sounds vague, as I like to avoid spoilers in this entries if I can. I'm assuming not everyone has read the subject of today's post yet and are perhaps deciding on reading them afterwards.
"Three Gifts of the White Wolf" is about a dying warrior named Sagest wandering the lands, searching for a place to die. His time is up, and he only wishes to stop his suffering and move on from this place where only horrors roam. What he meets along the way are challenges he did not expect and revelations he never considered, all before ending his quest in a way the Black Lands never would have allowed. It's a quest of a different sort.
I've not been very subtle in the past as to what I consider the true name of the Nameless Kingdom, (which has been mentioned in stories outside of these two) or where it comes from, but this tale reveals it all, so I will leave that bit of trivia for readers to discover for themselves. Regardless, the titular "gifts" are meant to be permanent, always there, even if not visible to the naked eye, and are obtainable by those who are willing to seek them out. There are always answers and paths we might not have thought of in our lives that can lead us the strangest of places. All we have to do is keep alert and always get up again. There's always another way out.
"Three Gifts of the White Wolf" is part fairy tale and part sword and sorcery story, but I don't consider those things all that separate from each other in the first place. Mainly, this is a story that needed to be told, and I'm glad I was finally able to finish it and deliver it to readers. As mentioned before, I'd been waiting for my chance for a while. The idea for this release thankfully came to me in a way that gave both these stories proper exposure to readers. And in this story's case, you can read it for yourself for the first time ever!
The original painting of the "Coast of Brittany" by Eugene Boudin, 1870
As for why this story was specifically chosen to be in a package with "Duel On Dalpha" instead of anything else, such an explanation is not quite so obvious on the surface. However, I can assure you that the two of them have connections under the surface.
Aside from the endings having much in common with each other, and both dealing with certain epic events of history that happened long before either protagonist were even born, each story is also about the fact that mistakes of the past, some of which said protagonists had no control over, will always roll out to affect the present in unexpected ways. How we deal with those mistakes also carries on into what the future will be like for those who come after us.
I am very proud of both of these adventures, and am more than pleased that I found a way to release them to readers in a unique package. For the longest time, it felt like I would be sitting on them forever. Thankfully, you can now not only get them in eBook form, but also in the unfortunately rare Pocket Paperback edition. Now anyone can finally enjoy two tales taking place across eternity from the other, yet both with the same general ethos and sense of place. All in all, I'm fortunate to have been given the inspiration to write them at all in the first place.
As for the Black Lands themselves, they might very well return in another story in the future, but the stories set in it aren't a proper series like say, the Galactic Enforcer or Night Rhythms stories are. They are, after all, hinted at in other tales I've written. Perhaps even in the first book I ever published. It is just a setting that may potentially be visited again in the future.
For now, however, we shall leave them behind.
Don't let this release or these entries fool you into thinking that I don't have plenty of material on the way. There are a few more pieces on the side, in production, and waiting in the pipeline still to be jotted down. I've got a lot to put out even still.
With the Star Wanderers publication coming in the near future in tandem with a tale in Cirsova issue #20, as well as other projects yet to be revealed, I am looking to having had put out around 25(!) total short stories by the end of 2024. This does not even include the novels still backlogged in the process. Suffice to say, I have many more on the way even after these, but I still have to get back to them and get them ready for you. That said, obviously more Story Sheets entries will be on the way when I do finally put them out. I look forward to sharing more stories with you when the time comes. This series is always a fun time.
That's all for today! Thank you for all your support and for reading these stories in the first place. It is only thanks to you that I can keep it up.
So lets reach even higher. Next time we'll stretch out touch the stars themselves. It'll be quite the journey, just you wait and see!
It's the weekend! Let us talk about something a bit different.
We've talked a lot here about decline over the years, and that is a subject worth addressing, but now it is the time to finally discuss what it takes to reclaim what has been lost. Now that the 2020s are rolling out, we're going to make this the decade where everything finally changes.
While we've discussed the NewPub phenomenon many times before, we haven't quite discussed another medium that, while commercially successful, is in the final stages before its own collapse. That industry, of course, is video games.
Though video games have been decried for many years as frivolous and useless (as every medium has at one point by the people who provably cannot preserve culture at all), there is a very real formula and meticulous design process that comes from them. Despite current trends, there was a lot more to video games that poorly written Z-movies that contain a few button presses to make scripts happen. In fact, when the industry ran on arcade design was when it reached its peak.
Now, if you've played video games since the death of the arcades, you've noticed a decline in creativity since the Sega Dreamcast died and arcade faded from prominence in the '00s. I am not talking about technology or graphic fidelity, I am talking about the gameplay itself. Gameplay loops (such as they are today) barely exist anymore and have been replaced with carrot on a stick drudgery to get from one cutscene to the next--a trend that began with the first 3D console generation but only started to take over once HD consoles came in.
What is missing from today that we used to have isn't that obvious
This was the era when countless middle market publishers and developers closed up shop, parting the medium in two between AAA cinematic experience and low budget indie game. In other words, this killed creativity almost overnight. If you can think of a big name AAA game in the last three console generations with a new gameplay experience (that isn't made by Nintendo) then I would be surprised. Even more so if you can name more than five. It simply doesn't happen anymore.
As a result of this shift, the industry has been in a creative rut, praising pointless downgraded remakes of old perfectly fine games because they have pointless modern bells and whistles. You should not be buying a new $599 US Dollar console and expecting to play remade and dumbed down games from 2004 on it.
So what caused this? I would recommend watching the video above. It is the loss of arcade design that the entire medium was built off of. Just like "pulp" became a dirty word in OldPub in order to denigrate adventure stories, arcade design has been sold as cheap and lesser since at least the mid-90s thanks to water carrying game journos. In other words, you were sold a lie. the entire collapse that video games are about to suffer through (or already are, depending on your perspective) will be caused by this abandonment of what made the medium what it was.
This has happened more than enough times in other mediums for anyone to understand it at this point. The further you stray from your roots, the more you risk losing them, and video games have definitely lost that link and have lost it some time ago.
Though you might be wondering, what about indie? Well, it's not as easy as all that. Check the video yourself and see why simply being 2D and having pixel art isn't quite the same as classic arcade design and why it's not quite enough. There was more to classic game design than "tightening up the graphics on level 4" as the old saying goes.
If you're a developer yourself, definitely take in the above information and think it over. How much have we lost along the way that we don't even consider anymore? How far can we really push forward without solid ground to stand on? Food for thought.
All of our industries are going to have to start asking those questions if they want to have a future. There is little choice left but to look back and carry forward again. The only other option stagnancy has, is death.
That should be the last thing we want for any medium. We've already lost a lot, at some point we're going to have to start gaining again.
Anyway, have yourself a good weekend and I will see you next time!
Finally I'm free from the doldrums of January for a few moments! I don't know what else to say except there is a reason I try to put more uplifting and hopeful posts out this month because it tends to be a very lousy time both weather and morale-wise. So today we are going to talk about something a little different than we have recently.
I just realized in the last week that it's been awhile since I've talked about stories themselves around here. Mostly it's because I've been distracted writing about other things and dealing with current WIP projects, but that doesn't mean I can't spare some time to talk about a tale I've never really gotten around to discussing even though most of you are very familiar with it by now.
It's time to bring back "Story Sheets," my post series focused on the stories I've written. It's more than due.
What better story to restart this series with than the recently re-released "Duel On Dalpha" in the collection Two Adventures Across Eternity that I put out as a bonus at the tail end of 2023? Discussing this one has been a long time coming.
Unfortunately, I'm not so certain I can reveal a whole lot beyond the surface level. It's honestly just a really cool story that I think more people should read.
To be real, I actually don't know why I never wrote a piece like this on "Duel On Dalpha" before. It must have either entirely slipped my mind, or maybe it was the fact I didn't want to spoil it for non-subscribers to the newsletter back then. It could be anything.
But that's enough of that, let us get into the heart of it. Where did this story come from and why exactly does it exist?
For that, we have to go back to 2020!
The original release, cover by ArtAnon
Those who have read any of the short stories I've written know that I tend to set them in obscure places in the corner of nowhere starring regular people. I frequently choose bizarre places one might never come across outside of their imagination, or maybe somewhere they do but never consider for anything other than what it is on the surface. I do this because it's fun to highlight that the incredible, the weird, and the amazing, can truly happen anywhere.
"Duel On Dalpha" is like that, but was a bit more ambitious for me at the time. If I recall correctly, I believe this was the first story I'd written that takes place on another planet. It hasn't been the last, but it definitely set the blueprint for the type of intergalactic tale I enjoy writing.
As a reminder, it was recently re-released in the $0.99 collection Two Adventures Across Eternity, due to the fact that I had no other outlet left to give it out to subscribers. Also, I wanted to get it in print properly.
But, back in 2020 (Wow, it's been almost half a decade), I put "Duel On Dalpha" exclusively out for subscribers. It ended up being very popular among subscribers, but it's also been nearly half a decade. It is time to both give it a proper look back and make it more readily available.
I said this about it in this post at the time it was first released:
"I was inspired to make this via many different sources. Mainly I liked the idea of a western horror in a swamp with aliens and giant robots. There's plenty of action, of course. Don't think that I don't know what my readers enjoy.
"To explain where this came from is a bit tough. Most ideas I have for stories are just ones that come to me when I least expect them. This is one I had a while back but had to put on the back-burner while writing so many other things last year. As I let it simmer I had more and more of an idea what it was to be about."
Even at the time, it was difficult to describe the origins of this story. Usually in "Story Sheets" I go through the entire process of what lead the tale to its final state, but there was no clear process here. The long and short of it is that it just came to me one day in a dream, as the saying goes. To be serious though, I just had the story pop into my brain one say and decided to write it.
The only thing I really remember about where this story came from was that I was listening to a specific track from the PC Engine Ys IV soundtrack and for some reason this setting came to mind. The game itself doesn't contain this location, it's just what arrived in my brain as I was listening to it. Inspiration can be difficult to describe, in this case it's more or less the entire background of the tale.
I saw a backwater planet, swamps, hidden temples, and a tucked away treasure deep inside the bowels of the world that was . . . alive? What the story eventually turned into, however, is still one barnburner of an action piece that still has those more eerie elements I first imagined. It was definitely different for me at the time, but the pieces of my older work are still quite visible.
"Duel On Dalpha" is one of the most straightforward stories in my style that I've ever written. Shootouts, monsters, mecha, and mystical weirdness, all packed together in the tale of one old sheriff who is running low on time to do the job he needs to do. At the same time, the world he knows isn't quite what it seems--and neither is he.
You might be wondering why I didn't submit this to a magazine or anthology. To understand that would have to realize that state of the market in 2020, four years ago. "Duel On Dalpha" is a full-on novelette, and there was just no market for those at the time. Much as I enjoyed writing this story, I didn't know how else to get it out to readers.
Unless your story was either sub 9k works or short novel length (40k words), any story that slides in that giant chasm just had no market to exist in. Even now I'm not quite sure there is one. Stories of novelette and novella length are too long for the short story market and too short for the eBook crowd. So, writers are kind of stuck here.
As I continued in that old post:
"I never submitted it anywhere, but I knew one thing for sure: nobody would buy this story. It is too long for the markets I usually submit to, and there is too much action for any of the other outlets to give a second glance to. This is pure entertainment, and doesn't exist to lecture the audience about anything. There wasn't any way to sell it, despite how much I love this story. That's just a reality of the modern market. Only certain types of stories are profitable, ones that fall in a specific formula, other types are simply out of luck. There is nothing normal about Duel On Dalpha, but I still wanted to get it out there."
You see, while "Duel On Dalpha" is normal for me, it's still not very normal for the market. Not that I am the most unique writer out there, but I do not write industry standard fare. Nothing I've written would be looked at twice by OldPub, and even smaller publishers would not appreciate the fact that I don't really write standard novel series. That's why this story could only really exist and be presented to you thanks to the way NewPub is now. If you want to know why I am more positive about the state of things than a lot of my peers are, it is because I've lived through this change in the market and see it more clearly now.
Believe it or not, selling action stories was a lot harder back then than it is today. I was also still new enough at the short story game that I didn't have that much experience with how it worked at the time. This led to me releasing it as a bonus for newsletter subscribers. Hey, I had to give it to them somehow, and what better way than as a thank you for their support? The only reason I'm doing this is thanks to them, after all.
After finally getting this tale cobbled out, I got Brian Niemeier to edit it for me and ArtAnon to do the cover, selling it as if it was on par with my normal size books, even though it was for free.
And I still think it is on par with my other works. When editing it over one last time for Two Adventures Across Eternity I was amazed at how well it turned out even back then, and it's still a blast to read today. In fact, I might say this would be the story to read if you've never read any of my stories before. And now you can get it with a bonus story packaged in.
"Duel On Dalpha" holds up very well, but I never managed to put it out in print and after moving my newsletter to Substack I also didn't have much reason to keep an older story like that up as a bonus. But I also didn't just want to start charging for something that was free before, therefore I bundled it with a new story (which I will talk about in another post) in order to justify the $0.99 it would cost on Amazon, as well as give me the opportunity to try out the pocket paperback option on Lulu. So now there are more ways to read it than ever before.
All that to get it out again and make it more easily accessible to readers again.
The theme that originally inspired the story
There isn't much to talk about behind the creation to "Duel On Dalpha" because there wasn't any rational path or logic behind its creation. The story is based on a feeling, a notion, an emotion, and glimpse of a world far beyond this one that I want to catch in a passing moment in my mind. I'd like to think I did just that. When you read this one, you are transported to an alien place where things aren't quite where they seem and danger lurks about every corner. It's a glimpse of a world hidden just out of reach, but one we can find traces of if we squint hard enough.
The 2010s was not a very imaginative decade, in fact it was very bleak overall. One of the things I wanted to do with my writing was push through the darkness encroaching on everything and bring readers to those lands of the imagination that make life so very much worth living. A land of light beyond the black lands.
In fact, now that I think about it, this story is probably the one that most resembles where I would like to take my writing in the future, tone-wise. It's a sign of things to come. For now, however, I have other projects to get to. But that doesn't change how much "Duel On Dalpha" means to me as a story. It's why I wanted to put it out for readers again so badly, after all.
The setting is one I will probably return to for other tales in the future, too. The idea of legendary knights at the end of time that were actually giants fighting forces of decaying darkness across the entire galaxy is not one that will go unused, I tell you. There are more knights than Gawain, after all. Though, again, it'll probably be awhile.
Regardless, the world of "Duel On Dalpha" is one of wonder and mystery, danger around every bend. Come visit it and see for yourself.
Welcome to the weekend! Let us talk about adventure, though not the sort one usually talks about these days. We're going way back to the late 20th century today.
I don't think I have to reiterate how big the Disney Afternoon was in the late '80s and early '90s. While the company itself did not do so hot during the 1980s, they still tried whatever they could to try and stand out from the crowd. Some of that stuff holds up better than others. One of its projects was to create a block for syndicated cartoons (airing every day of the week) called the Disney Afternoon which had the goal of producing near theatrical quality animation for an entire two hour block at 65 episodes. They carved out a two hour block on the ABC network (this was before they bought it) and spent the next decade more or less owning the after school timeslot. As a result, it ended up being one of the most impressive projects of its time.
But what was more impressive were the series it produced. You see, a bunch of simple gag cartoon series wouldn't be enough to hold kids' attention every day of the week (a lesson they would unfortunately forget by the end of the block's run), so why not make full-throated adventure series in the style of popular Disney comics from years past? You could also mix and match it with well known Disney characters as well as new creations. That is exactly what they did, and the final result was a smash hit.
Much has been said about some of the more popular entries of the block, though truth be told it was all uniformly great up until the time of Gargoyles, which would end up being its crowning achievement and the peak of the entire project. Believe me, that one is still great today. However, you've heard about most of these many times before: DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, Gummi Bears, Darkwing Duck, Bonkers, the aforementioned Gargoyles, and even the more slapstick-inspired Goof Troop. But little is said about what is probably the hidden gem of the entire block: TaleSpin.
Though the series was based on the movie based on the Kipling stories, it took quite a bit of inspiration from other sources to produce its unique setting and style. It's not quite as comedic as Darkwing Duck, as high energy as Rescue Rangers, or as full of danger as DuckTales, but it has its own groove where it comfortably sits in the middle of them all and can bend in different directions depending on the episode airing that day. This makes it quite an interesting series to revisit because you never quite know what you're going to get.
The interesting part about TaleSpin is that it was probably every kid's least favorite series on the block at the time it aired, but now as adults they would easily consider it one of the best if not the best one. It wasn't even that kids didn't like it at the time--they liked it a lot. It was more that it was surrounded by DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck, for most its run, series that appealed more to their youthful sensibilities. It's really as you grow to appreciate things like pulp adventure serials, screwball romance comedies, and general wonder, that you truly grow to get it in a way you couldn't when younger. It's aged extremely well.
I linked the above video talking about the show's production and how it was received when it aired, and you could tell that critics even at the time disliked adventure stories. The number one criticism of the series (and pretty much the block as a whole) is how it was aping and reheating "Spielberg/Lucas adventure stories" for dumb kids. Such a thing, again, is indicative of the hatred of the pulps the mainstream press has pretty much always had, since they did not even know DuckTales did not originate as a cartoon in the first place. None of these series were reliant on movie formulas--they were reliant on old comic book and serial storytelling that had worked countless times before them. It was an attempt to update an old style for newer audiences. They also proved that it could still work on audiences that had no nostalgia for the format.
Of course, Disney had major success in the '90s thanks to moves like this, but it would eventually go to their heads and by the 2000s would almost implode in on themselves, relying on John Lasseter era Pixar to carry them for a good while. But for my money, the studio itself peaked here with these productions and would never quite hit these highs again. Many people consider A Goofy Movie a swansong to the Disney Afternoon era (since it had so many of the same people working on it) and I'd probably agree since not long after the film the block caved in on itself, dying out with the very decade it helped usher in. Perhaps it was a sign of things to come.
Regardless, if you've not seen these old series in a while, or have young ones or relatives that have not experienced any of them, they really do hold up surprisingly well. Check out the video above for proof of that. I would still call them some of the best things the studio ever put out.
Adventure and wonder never fall out of date.
That's all for this weekend, and I'll see you next week!
January might be the coldest and most boring month of the year, but it doesn't have to be. Typically it's the time to form new habits because there isn't much to distract you yet before the year starts rolling on. At the same time, it is also the time to revisit old forgotten things and learn from them before they get lost in the flood of everyday life.
For the first lounge post of the year I wanted to focus on one of the strangest, yet perfectly understandable at the time, phenomenon of the late 1980s and early 1990s. No, not the Japanimation boom you might or might not remember, but s specific popular creation from it. I wanted to share with you the story behind the very unique and of its times anime OVA, Bubblegum Crisis.
This is the story of four women working as mercenaries wearing specialized mecha/power armor called "hardsuits" to battle evil threats in a cyberpunk future world. There is also a lot of killer music, action, and heartfelt emotions along the way. It only lasted for 8 episodes before production troubles split the team of this once in a lifetime project up, but it has still remained a classic of the genre for anyone who remembers it. The series was also highly influential in ways that are still felt in the industry today.
How do you appeal to guys? Pretty simple. Incredible action directed by some of the best animation of the time, attractive women that still blow away the ones in the mainstream industry today, and some of the most exciting music of the time period (in ways you might not expect), all team up to form a complete package of cool.
Motorbikes, power armor, and beautiful women!
Appealing to the male audience can sometimes lead to things you might not expect. Bubblegum Crisis is one of those seminal works of Japanese anime that will probably never fully disappear. It's simply too unique and too well done to over be forgotten.
Now, saying Bubblegum Crisis is of its time seems redundant. It looks 80s, feels 80s, and oozes 80s from every orifice. That said, its roots go back further than that, and its impact lived on beyond that cultural high decade for Japan.
This is why I am sharing the above video with you detailing its entire wild production history. It's a crazy story, unlike any other, and in it you will see not only the importance of cultural osmosis, but the importance of imagination and wonder to really affect people in ways that truly count. This is why younger guys can watch it today and still find a lot to take from it while being blown away by what it does.
Nonetheless, if you are either a creator yourself, looking into a very specific time in culture like the 1980s, or just generally enjoy wild real life stories, I highly recommend the above history of Bubblegum Crisis. There was nothing quite like it and will never be again.
Of course that doesn't mean there is no anime worth your time today. Last year's Pluto was excellent and one of the best anime releases in recent years, and this year seems to have than a few interesting projects on the way.
It's just not quite the same as this era, and will never quite hit the same way. Not that it can, but that makes this time all the more valuable to remember. The past might be a different country but it should still be the same world. We are meant to carry on from it, and help build in new directions for generations to come.
Regardless, Bubblegum Crisis is still very cool today and you should still watch it. And really, that's all that matters.
