My last post featured a giveaway and I'm going to let that run a little longer, so if you haven't yet entered the drawing for a copy of Strange Worlds, just leave a comment on the post HERE.
In the meantime, though, I thought I'd go ahead and post a couple of things of interest (at least to me) that have come up. First, an article I wrote about Sword and Planet fiction, and which Steve Servello expanded, is up online at ERBzine, volume 3566. If you'd like to know more about that genre, you can find it here.
I've also gotten some very nice reviews on Amazon for Days of Beer. I thought I might copy them here. Thanks very much to Steve, Randy, Travis, and Kent. I much appreciate it.
5.0 out of 5 stars A Frothy Adventure, January 3, 2012
By Travis D. Erwin "Travis Erwin"
A quick, enjoyable read as tasty as a cold one on a hot summer day. Reading this book is like sitting down and with great friends on a Friday night. The stories will make you smile, reminisce, and forget all about the hangovers that went along with them.
4.0 out of 5 stars great fun, January 2, 2012
By Kent Westmoreland
I love this book. It reminds me of my own mis-spent youth, but in North Carolina. Charles is a great wit; he'll keep you in stitches.
5.0 out of 5 stars How well I remember . . . well maybe not, December 31, 2011
By Pleasure Reader "Steve"
Charles has created a wonderful coming of (drinking) age tale set in rural Arkansas. Growing up in Oklahoma, may of the images and events he describes bring back vague memories for obvious reasons. Charles tells his stories with such self-deprecating humor and a wonderful descriptive voice that pulls you into each successive tale even if they do not always turn out successful for him. Great fun.
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny!, December 31, 2011
By George R. Johnson "Randy Johnson"
Charles' humorous look at his "love affair" with beer, from his first taste to his first drunk to various adventures he went through over the years. Some eerily mirrored things that happened to me. Maybe it's a universal male thing.
Had quite a lot of fun reading this. He mentions not liking Budweiser. Same here and I used to love to infuriate "Weiser drinkers by saying I'd rather have a Blue Ribbon.
Recommended.
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Showing posts with label Strange Worlds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strange Worlds. Show all posts
Friday, January 06, 2012
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
New School Year, a Review, and a Giveaway
My son, Josh, is coming up today so I won't be around the net much. And tomorrow I start back to school so I'm going to be less regular (in blogging that is) than I've been over the Christmas break. In the meantime, I leave you with a review.
With his John Carter of Mars series, Edgar Rice Burroughs ignited a publishing juggernaut that lasted well into the 1980s and drew in writers such as Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Gardner F. Fox, Lin Carter, Alan Burt Akers (Ken Bulmer), and many others. The John Carter stories formed the prototype of a genre that came to be called Sword and Planet fiction. By the late 1980s, however, the genre had declined to the point that it was no longer being published by the major presses and only the small presses kept it alive. Now, Jeff Doten has created one of the first new pure Sword and Planet anthologies to appear in many years, and he himself did the lavish interior illustrations for the work. Here are my thoughts and notes on the collection.
Strange Worlds, “Collected and Illustrated by Jeff Doten.”
Space Puppet Press, 2011
Soft cover, fully illustrated, 189 pages.
Contains an introduction, eight illustrated stories, and a full color comic book, as well as an expansive list of suggested reading in the genre of Sword & Planet fiction. Each story is introduced with a full color cover set up to look like the fantastic paperback covers of the 1970s and 80s.
Cover: by Jeff Doten. A John Carter type character is caught in a contemplative mood.
Introduction, by Jeff Doten. A very short commentary on the nature of Sword & Planet fiction.
1st story: “God’s Dream,” by Charles A. Gramlich. As a boy, Zarn’s father is murdered by desert nomads and Zarn himself is taken captive. He grows to adulthood and earns the right to wear the title nomad for himself, but he can never be fully a nomad, and the mystery of his father’s death draws him into the badlands and toward a destiny he has never suspected.
2nd story: “When the World Changed,” by Ken St. Andre. Is it death that awaits anyone who opens the Pits of Vrando’harr? Or something much worse?
3rd story: “Metal Rat & the Brand New Jungle,” by Jennifer Rahn. Ivor and Tyla fight the Zernesq, and no matter how strange the world around them becomes they find a way to fight on. This one definitely had one of the strangest and most unpredictable endings I’ve seen in fantasy.
4th story: “Pearls of Uraton,” by Paul R. McNamee. Drak of Dithor knows how to get things done on Uraton. That’s why two Terrans come to him with a dangerous and illegal request. Great hook at the beginning and action all through this one.
5th story: “The Final Gift,” by Liz Coley. It is time for Tarn to seek his spirit guide, and kill it with the last new blade of his people. But what if the beast he meets is more than a beast?
6th story: “The Beasts of the Abyss,” by Lisa V. Tomecek. “Miranda Station. Edge of the empire. No man’s land. A place of little opportunity and even less mercy. For Caliban, it was perfect.” Lisa Tomecek was channeling her inner Leigh Brackett when she wrote this one. The atmosphere and action are very good.
7th story: “The Specimen,” by Adrian Kleinbergen. You open a small doorway into a parallel universe and you get a small sample of the weirdness to be found there. What happens when you open a “big” doorway?
8th story: “Slavers of Trakor,” by Charles R. Rutledge. Connor Blake had what John Carter had, what Dray Prescot had, but then his princess was killed, her flyer shot down by the insect-like Chithlain’s. And now Connor has only emptiness. Until a young man tries to waylay him and instead ends up offering Connor redemption.
Comic book: “Martian Abductations,” by Jeff Doten. A grocery run on old Mars is not for the faint of heart.
Suggested Reading: A pretty comprehensive list of the best known Sword and Planet fiction available. Authors and titles listed.
Now for the giveaway. I have a copy of this book that I'm going to give away to one of the commenters on this blog. I'm going to leave this post up for a few days so if you want to be entered in the drawing for the book just leave a comment. After I have the drawing, I'll post the winner here and indicate how to get in touch with me to claim your prize.
If you can't wait and simply must have your copy shipped now, you can order these: HERE.
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With his John Carter of Mars series, Edgar Rice Burroughs ignited a publishing juggernaut that lasted well into the 1980s and drew in writers such as Robert E. Howard, Leigh Brackett, Gardner F. Fox, Lin Carter, Alan Burt Akers (Ken Bulmer), and many others. The John Carter stories formed the prototype of a genre that came to be called Sword and Planet fiction. By the late 1980s, however, the genre had declined to the point that it was no longer being published by the major presses and only the small presses kept it alive. Now, Jeff Doten has created one of the first new pure Sword and Planet anthologies to appear in many years, and he himself did the lavish interior illustrations for the work. Here are my thoughts and notes on the collection.
Strange Worlds, “Collected and Illustrated by Jeff Doten.”
Space Puppet Press, 2011
Soft cover, fully illustrated, 189 pages.
Contains an introduction, eight illustrated stories, and a full color comic book, as well as an expansive list of suggested reading in the genre of Sword & Planet fiction. Each story is introduced with a full color cover set up to look like the fantastic paperback covers of the 1970s and 80s.
Cover: by Jeff Doten. A John Carter type character is caught in a contemplative mood.
Introduction, by Jeff Doten. A very short commentary on the nature of Sword & Planet fiction.
1st story: “God’s Dream,” by Charles A. Gramlich. As a boy, Zarn’s father is murdered by desert nomads and Zarn himself is taken captive. He grows to adulthood and earns the right to wear the title nomad for himself, but he can never be fully a nomad, and the mystery of his father’s death draws him into the badlands and toward a destiny he has never suspected.
2nd story: “When the World Changed,” by Ken St. Andre. Is it death that awaits anyone who opens the Pits of Vrando’harr? Or something much worse?
3rd story: “Metal Rat & the Brand New Jungle,” by Jennifer Rahn. Ivor and Tyla fight the Zernesq, and no matter how strange the world around them becomes they find a way to fight on. This one definitely had one of the strangest and most unpredictable endings I’ve seen in fantasy.
4th story: “Pearls of Uraton,” by Paul R. McNamee. Drak of Dithor knows how to get things done on Uraton. That’s why two Terrans come to him with a dangerous and illegal request. Great hook at the beginning and action all through this one.
5th story: “The Final Gift,” by Liz Coley. It is time for Tarn to seek his spirit guide, and kill it with the last new blade of his people. But what if the beast he meets is more than a beast?
6th story: “The Beasts of the Abyss,” by Lisa V. Tomecek. “Miranda Station. Edge of the empire. No man’s land. A place of little opportunity and even less mercy. For Caliban, it was perfect.” Lisa Tomecek was channeling her inner Leigh Brackett when she wrote this one. The atmosphere and action are very good.
7th story: “The Specimen,” by Adrian Kleinbergen. You open a small doorway into a parallel universe and you get a small sample of the weirdness to be found there. What happens when you open a “big” doorway?
8th story: “Slavers of Trakor,” by Charles R. Rutledge. Connor Blake had what John Carter had, what Dray Prescot had, but then his princess was killed, her flyer shot down by the insect-like Chithlain’s. And now Connor has only emptiness. Until a young man tries to waylay him and instead ends up offering Connor redemption.
Comic book: “Martian Abductations,” by Jeff Doten. A grocery run on old Mars is not for the faint of heart.
Suggested Reading: A pretty comprehensive list of the best known Sword and Planet fiction available. Authors and titles listed.
Now for the giveaway. I have a copy of this book that I'm going to give away to one of the commenters on this blog. I'm going to leave this post up for a few days so if you want to be entered in the drawing for the book just leave a comment. After I have the drawing, I'll post the winner here and indicate how to get in touch with me to claim your prize.
If you can't wait and simply must have your copy shipped now, you can order these: HERE.
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Saturday, December 03, 2011
Time Travel and Sword and Planet Action
I’ve been needing to post this information for a while but work has been crazy this whole semester. Seems mostly I’ve been putting up holding pattern blog posts. I have a test to grade today but Monday is the last day of class and then we’ll have final exams. I’ll be incommunicado for a few days then before I get finally to Christmas break. If I’m gonna get this post up it needs to be today.
First up, the collected Simon Rip adventure, A Rip Through Time has been published from Beat To A Pulp. It’s available from Smashwords for .99 cents and that’s quite a lot of reading, over 38,000 words. You can get it there for Kindle, Epub, PDF, or various other formats. Many of you already know that this is a serialized story based on David Cranmer’s ideas and character, and that I did one of the sections. Below is a quote about the work that I took directly from the Smashwords site, and it’ll give you the writers and the titles of the various sections:
“A Rip through Time follows the time-cop's travels in a series of five short stories written by several of today's top pulp writers. Chris F. Holm opens the collection with the fast-paced "The Dame, the Doctor and the Device." Charles A. Gramlich's "Battles, Broadswords, and Bad Girls" and Garnett Elliott's "Chaos in the Stream" breathe new life into the time travel story. Bringing the saga to a gripping conclusion in "Darkling in the Eternal Space" is Chad Eagleton, who then takes it a step further with a mesmerizing coda, "The Final Painting of Hawley Exton." And for all the time-traveling enthusiasts, Ron Scheer provides an insightful essay, "Are We Then Yet," which explores the mechanics of time travel in popular fiction.”
I’ve got my copy and look forward over Christmas break to reading the whole thing together. I was so pleased to be a part of this. I much enjoyed writing my segment, and was lucky to be chosen to be among this crew of fine writers.
*****
Next up, I want to mention a new, and “illustrated” collection of Sword & Planet stories called Strange Worlds. This anthology is edited by Jeff Doten, who also did all the wonderful drawings for the work. I believe this may be the first illustrated collection of S & P stories ever. And I’m very happy to say I have a story in the collection called “God’s Dream.” I had an incredible amount of fun writing it.
You can find out more about the anthology here. There is a review of the book up at Black Gate. I will be posting more about it as I read the rest of the stories in the collection. Here's the front and back covers below:
First up, the collected Simon Rip adventure, A Rip Through Time has been published from Beat To A Pulp. It’s available from Smashwords for .99 cents and that’s quite a lot of reading, over 38,000 words. You can get it there for Kindle, Epub, PDF, or various other formats. Many of you already know that this is a serialized story based on David Cranmer’s ideas and character, and that I did one of the sections. Below is a quote about the work that I took directly from the Smashwords site, and it’ll give you the writers and the titles of the various sections:
I’ve got my copy and look forward over Christmas break to reading the whole thing together. I was so pleased to be a part of this. I much enjoyed writing my segment, and was lucky to be chosen to be among this crew of fine writers.
*****
You can find out more about the anthology here. There is a review of the book up at Black Gate. I will be posting more about it as I read the rest of the stories in the collection. Here's the front and back covers below:
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