Kickin' The Willy Bobo With: MARK BOUSQUET

Derrick Ferguson: Who is Mark Bousquet?

Mark Bousquet: I was raised in a small town in central Massachusetts called Winchendon (the only town so named in the entire country). Back then, the town population was 8,000 people and the entire high school was only 200-something kids. I played baseball and basketball in high school, acted in the yearly play competition, and generally had a great time. I attended Syracuse University on two separate occasionsand earned Bachelor's degrees in Public Communications and then inLiterature, then went to the University of New Hampshire for a Mastersin Lit, and then to Purdue University where I earned a Ph.D inAmerican Studies (a dual degree in 19th century American environmental Lit and History).

DF: Where do you live and what do you do to keep the bill collectors away?

MB: I've been living in Reno, Nevada for almost a year now with my coonhound/beagle Darwin, where I'm the Assistant Director of Core Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.

DF: How long you been writing?

MB: Almost as long as I can remember. When I was in the first or second grade, I can remember getting a creative writing assignment and just absolutely loved it. Since then, I've always been thinking of stories to write when I get some free time.

DF: What writers have influenced you?

MB: My biggest influences were the mid-80s Marvel Comics' writers: Walt Simonson, Roger Stern, Steve Englehart, and Mark Gruenwald. I love the way they told long-form stories using the monthly format to their advantage. Beyond that, as a kid I gravitated towards series of books: the Hardy Boys, Lord of the Rings, the Three Investigators, Narnia, Encyclopedia Brown, and the Old Mother West Wind series. As I grew older, it was writers like Elmore Leonard, William Goldman, Nick Hornby, Robert Parker, and Edward Abbey. And I love the 19th century: Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Stephen Crane.

DF: What's your philosophy of writing?

MB: Simple: If I'm not having fun writing it, then you're not gonna have fun reading it. Beyond that, I'm always trying out new things. In my career as an academic, I've got to write articles that are largely written in the same style and format, no matter the subject, so in my creative writing, I like to try new things, which is why I've gone from a contemporary fantasy, to a kid's book, to a sci-fi actioner, to now aweird western.

DF: Before we get into GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC let's talk a bit about your earlier work.  Tell us about DREAMER'S SYNDROME.

MB: It started with a simple idea: what if everyone got to be as adults what they wanted to be as kids? I came out of the fan-fiction ranks, working at Marvel Volume 1 on just about every single Marvel characterI'd wanted to write. I was in the home stretch of my "original"series, ALL GOD'S CHILDREN, which was an "end of the Marvel Universe" story that jumped all over the timeline. I loved working at MV1 but I was ready to try something new, so I propped DREAMER'S to the Frontier Publishing website and luckily, they accepted it. The narrative focuses on Austin and Kelly, a young couple who get split apart by what I called "the New World." The story starts on the morning of the Reorganization, where the whole world wakes up and finds themselves transformed into their childhood dream. Austin goes from being a lit professor to a pirate, and Kelly is horrified to find herself transformed into a Disney-esque Princess. They get split and the story is about the two of them finding a way to come back together inside a New England that has been transformed into a half-Middle Ages, half-contemporary setting.

DF: HARPSICHORD & THE WORMHOLE WITCHES was a book completely different from DREAMER'S SYNDROME. Tell us about how and why you wrote that book.

MB: One of the complaints I received about DREAMER'S was that there was too much talking and not enough action, so I set out to write a straight-ahead action story where I'd have to fit the characterizationin alongside the action. (I didn't time to make these changes for mykid's book: ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE: THE COMING OF FROST.) 

The wholeproject was designed to be an antithesis of DREAMER'S. Because it was written for Frontier, DREAMER'S was a serialized novel, where each chapter had to tell its own episode, but with HARPSICHORD, the whole story is designed to move fast and hit hard. Harpsichord is a student at a military academy who gets shunted off to the Deep, the far end of space, and forced to fend for herself. I wrote the whole novel in a month while I was waiting for my dissertation adviser to get back tome with some feedback on the latest diss chapter I'd turned in. The whole project popped in my head and out onto the computer screen faster than any project I'd ever written.

DF: Before we get into GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC let me ask you this: why a Weird Western? And what about that genre turns your crank?

MB: Russ Anderson invited me to submit a story for HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD VOLUME 2, and that's how I came up with Hanna and Jill, the stars of GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC. I'd been wanting to write a western for a while and luckily Russ presented me with the opportunity. What I love about the genre is the wide open expanse of the west allows for any and all kinds of stories.

DF: Okay, enough sizzle.  Give us the steak.  What's GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC and why should we read it?

MB: The core question of GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC is how far are you willing to go for the woman you love when you know she'll never love you back? Hanna and Jill grew up together as best friends in a whaling merchant's house in Boston, but on opposite sides: Jill was the merchant's daughter and Hanna was the servant's daughter. Along the way, Hanna fell in love with Jill, while Jill lives too much in each individual moment to probably fall in love with anyone. She had agreed to marry Dotson Winters in order to save her father's dying business but when he disappeared on the morning of their wedding, Jill and Hanna headed after him. They boarded a train in Kansas City and before that ride was over, they'd fought werewolves, vampires, special agents, and confronted Mary Todd Lincoln and Dotson.

Then the train crashed. Jill died.

And GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC: BLOOD OF THE UNIVERSE is the story about how Hanna gets Jill back. Bellingham, a time-traveling British secret service agent who was on the train with them, tells Hanna the real reason he's in 1866: to look for the Universe Cutter, a blade that can bring one person back from the dead.

DF: What does the future hold for Jill and Hanna?

MB: This "Volume 0" edition is designed to be a bridge between the story in HTWWW V2 and the upcoming GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC VOLUME 1: UNDER ZEPPELIN SKIES. I love these two characters and I'm really enjoying writing of their adventures in the weird west.

DF: Bellingham is a character that at times threatens to steal the book away from Jill and Hanna.  Can we expect to see more of him?

MB: Absolutely. He stars in a back-up tale in BLOOD OF THE UNIVERSE entitled, "Appetite for Appeasement," that sends him back to 1939 London. He's kind-of-obviously the answer to the question, "What if James Bond had a TARDIS?" and he's an absolute blast to write.

DF: You're also a movie reviewer.  Tell us about your movie review blog, ATOMIC ANXIETY.

MB: I love movies. Directors are every bit as influential to me as writers and I love to write and talk about movies. I'll write reviews for almost everything I watch, whether it's an all-time classic or a cheesy B-movie.

DF: What other writing projects do you have planned?

MB: Getting UNDER ZEPPELIN SKIES finished is the next project on the agenda, and then after that it's the next ADVENTURES OF THE FIVE story, a Christmas story that I hope to have out for Christmas. But you probably guessed that. Other than that, there's all kinds of other projects spinning in my head, but I like the stay flexible. Over the past year, I contributed stories to not only HTWWW V2 but BLACKTHORN: THUNDER ON MARS, and I'd really like to start writing more short stories for other people's collections.

DF: What's a typical Day In The Life of Mark Bousquet like?

MB: Get up, walk the dog, go to campus, deal with teaching and administrative work, then home to walk the dog again, eat dinner, and then settle down with a movie or catch a ballgame or get some writing done.

Derrick Ferguson: Anything else we need to know about Mark Bousquet?

Mark Bousquet: Just that I'm always trying to get better and love any kind of constructive criticism, whether it's positive or negative. To try and build some momentum for UNDER ZEPPELIN SKIES, I'm offering a PDF version of GUNFIGHTER GOTHIC to anyone who wants one. It's free ofcharge - I wouldn't object to getting some feedback in exchange or apositive comment dropped at the Amazon page, or buying the $7 paperback or 99 cent Kindle version, but it's certainly not a requirement. I think I've given away a good 20 copies or so, so far, and I'm happy to send more out to anyone who wants one. The early feedback has been very positive, which is nice, since this is where I'm spending the next few months of my creative time.

Atomic Anxiety: http://atomicanxiety.wordpress.com/

Mark’s Amazon.com Author’s Page: http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Bousquet/e/B004WWUTNU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1/187-8686434-3030664

The Denbrook Bible

By Mike McGee
Originally written in August 2002

This is the first run-through of the "city planning bible" for Frontier's shared-world imprint. I haven't done any editing. You'll notice a lack of things like: "Monkey City: A place where monkeys RULE!!" I want it to come across as much like a real city as possible. As I see it, there aren't any superheroic/supernatural/science fiction elements in this world until we introduce them in the actual series.

It's about the size of Chicago. Like Chicago, it's unofficially divided into halves - here, it's a matter of the West and East sides. The Union City Bridge - a bridge not unlike the Golden Gate (albeit smaller) - connects them: The West end spills you out into a seedy little neighborhood called with apparent irony Greater Denbrook, and the East leads you to downtown.

Don't ask me why a city called Denbrook has a bridge called Union City. It makes sense if you think about it, but only then…like a lot of things in Denbrook.

Anyway. Before we get into that. The Union City Bridge stretches over Hopkins River…it's a sheer hundred-foot drop into some very cold waters. Hopkins feeds into Lake Erie, accessible from Denbrook's north shore. Cross the lake, you're into Canada, which is useful info if you're the kinda guy who does things like flee from the police. Business types use the lake for fishing, off-shore coal mining, things like that...there are some pretty big boats out on the water, though fewer yachts and the like. Denbrook isn't the kind of city that attracts folks with disposable income, and that water is too frigid and choppy even in summer to be all that much fun. Still, there are sparsely populated beaches here and there - the lake is fine to swim in, though no one trusts the river. That current's a bitch and toxic dumping made it poison for decades. It's clean now, but...

Okay, remember the bridge? Cross it headed east, but instead of going downtown, take a left and head back the way you came…this time headed down a downward-slanted street called Hopkins Drive. This'll lead you into the Barrens. There used to be a lot of industry here in Denbrook, and this is where most of it was located - on the banks of Hopkins River. The burned-out shells of factories, ancient rusting hulks of iron mining machinery…it's all still here, and picturesque in an urban decay sort of way. But this isn't why you're here.

See, you have to drive a mile or two before you come up on the old industrial sites. Between you and them, you have what citizens think of when they think of The Barrens - which is to say, bars, night clubs, strip joints, the whole nine yards. The river runs alongside all of it. People come here to party. During the week, it's kinda nice; Friday through Sunday, The Barrens are flooded with weekend warriors, a lot of them kids from the suburbs. Every now and then, someone gets drunk, hits their head, and falls into the Hopkins. Sometimes they get pushed.

Motor back up Hopkins Drive and you find yourself on Superior, a great big street that takes you straight through downtown Denbrook. I'll point out some stuff along the way…

First, to our left, a street branches off Superior at a right angle to The Barrens, Matheson Avenue.  Matheson is the gateway to the Warehouse District, which is –you guessed it- composed of warehouses.  Most of those have been converted into apartment buildings.  This is a fairly high-income area, but the give breaks to young professionals and the like.  You find a lot of yuppies, a few bohemians and a scattering of senior citizens who are not pleased by the weekend activity in the slightest.

Head up Superior another three blocks and on your right you’ll spot Denbrook Tower.  You can’t miss it.  It’s the city’s second tallest building.  Built in 1902, it was home to several department stories in its heyday.  That heyday was back in the ‘50’s when the subway got put in…see, the Tower was conceived as Denbrook’s hub, and the crisscrossing subway trains that traverse West and East Denbrook are all accessible from a train station in the basement.  But more and more folks tended to (a) drive and (b) stick to the suburbs, so the Tower went to seed.

But in the late '80's, some billionaire industrialist or other bought the place, gutted it, and more or less turned it into a seven-story shopping mall. Thirty stories of offices above that mall are still mostly unoccupied, but the shopping center thrives. The train station and the two floors above it are both underground, which means the stuff on the fourth floor is actually at street-level. Anyway, you'll find a lot of chain retail/restaurants on the lower floors, and swankier stuff the higher up you go.

Drive up Superior another block, and you'll see the main branch of the Denbrook Public Library. I know, you're like, what the hell? But check it out: We're talking one gorgeous, ornate building constructed in 1905, connected to a 1999-era glass-and-steel monster by means of an underground passageway. Kinda really fucking huge for a library, don'tcha think? The '99 leviathan was built out of necessity: Denbrook's collection is among the largest in the country, probably on the planet. If you can't find what you're looking for here…friends, it don't exist. The newer stuff you'll find the new building. The old stuff…some of it quite old indeed…you'll find in a variety of collections scattered throughout the other one. You want a library card.

Six blocks up, we come to Cathedral Street, on our left. The Cathedral of Saint Paul the Apostle, built in 1855, jumps out and says hi. Look past it a block or so, and you'll see a glass-and-street enclosure that looks a bit like a hothouse: This is City Center. Every bit as appropriate as calling a slum Greater Denbrook. Basically, City Center is yet another big shopping mall, built in 1987. But when the Tower re-opened a month later, that was effectively the end of City Center as a profit-making entity. City Center does a brisk lunch trade, but that's about it. Its four stories contain about eight businesses, and all of them struggle. City Center cost about fifty mil to erect. This is what's known as a white elephant.

So who goes there for lunch? Folks who don't wanna walk all the way down to the Tower. .. i.e., folks who work here, in the business district. The side streets from E. 10th to E. 22nd are all banks, office buildings, corporate headquarters, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Scattered in there you'll find a few pizza shops, a bar or two, but for the most part…Corporate America.

From E. 23rd to E. 26th, we're in the Theatre District. Like the Tower, the Theatre District is yet another tale of resurrection: Denbrook's grand old movie palaces were the rage for decades, but fell into disrepair in the '60's and '70's. The last of them - a third-run movie house by then - closed its doors in 1983, as a result of roughly 875 fire­code violations. But in the late '80's, all of the old places were bought up, renovated to a state approaching their original magnificence, and were re-opened as playhouses (and one opera house) in the early '90's.

On E. 28th, you find Howard Phillips University. Huge. A college with a host of controversies, it's really the only game in town for those who'd like to obtain a four-year degree. The campus occupies four blocks and has a student-operated radio station - WHPC, at 88.3 FM. Its student paper is the Vanguard.

Hop on the shoreway and let's buzz through the East Side real quick ...

Coming off E. 55th, you'll notice a ghetto that looks a little more like Beirut.  If we were gonna slow down a minute, you'd notice that no one seems to be on the street. That's because this whole area of town was bought out by corporate interests. Eminent domain, though I can't imagine the residents were really all that sad to go.

You run out of East Denbrook at E. 185th. Out past here, you've got Denbrook Heights, a suburban community that gets richer and more lily-white the farther you get from the city. If you'd left East Denbrook and gone northeast instead, you'd have found yourself in Ruckerville, a pretty dilapidated community that's high-crime, low-income. Neither Ruckerville nor Denbrook Heights are part of the city proper, but a lot of Denbrook's workers commute from these areas.

Cross through downtown Denbrook, back over the Union City Bridge, and now here we are, back in Greater Denbrook. Denbrook's west side is more blue-collar, homier, and (as far as its East Siders are concerned) totally devoid of culture. Greater Denbrook's homes date back, most of them, to the early 1900's, and this whole section of town has the Historical Preservation Society all over it like white on rice. Brave yuppies have moved here for the architecture and because Greater Denbrook is cheaper than the Warehouse District, and the neighborhood is a sometimes uneasy mix of races and incomes, of newcomers and those raised here. The wealthy tend to head to the suburbs when they have kids…but not all of them. This can be a rough place to live, but it's more welcoming.

But let's back up for a minute. If you leave the Union City Bridge headed west and keep driving straight down Superior, you'll take in Greater Denbrook in its entire splendor; but instead, let's turn left and head down W.25th. This is a long block of pawn shops, secondhand stores and mom-and-pop retail. It terminates at the W. 25th Market, a lovely old brown brick building erected in 1911. On the street, there's an open-air fruit and vegetable market. Head inside, and you'll find various meat-market stands. The yuppies get a real kick out of how quaint it all is; the longtime residents have shopped here for generations.

Head past the Market, make another left, and trundle downhill over a few small, rundown bridges with no names. The main street is Violin Road; somehow that became the name of the whole place. This little community - just a few miles around, and still a part of the city - was once populated by folks who made their trades in the factories and mines. Now there's nothing left but the bars ... at least four on every block. The current population is a mix of old-timers who barely get by and young bohemian types who've come in from other communities. Wild dogs roam the overgrown park at night, and homeless people and runaways live under those bridges.

Turn around and head west. The neighborhoods between W. 25th and W. 117th are mostly unremarkable:  Largely poor, all pretty much the same. At W. 117th, we enter Blackwood - not quite another town, not exactly an official part of Denbrook proper. Middle-class, mostly white but increasingly integrated, Blackwood does curiously have its own police force…a police force that is notoriously unfriendly to "outsiders." But in fairness, Blackwood is a safe place to raise families, and quiet; a slightly more urban alternative to a truly suburban community. And it doesn't completely lack for excitement.

Downtown Blackwood is a haven for Blackwood's youth culture scene, mostly an odd combination of kids into hip-hop and the kind of kids who look like the ones who shot up Columbine. Both types congregate at Ground Zero, a large coffee shop. There's also a smallish venue for (mostly local) music: The Arcade. The Arcade's second floor is a concert hall; its ground floor (accessible through a back door) is a goth dance club called the Mausoleum. A ton of smaller clubs and bars dot the landscape, as well as an occult bookstore or two.

Head further west. The paved streets will lead you out of Blackwood, but take a right at Hiassen Road. This isn't a shortcut - this is the scenic route. Hiassen runs downhill into the Valley: Several miles of forest. Officially, the Valley is a public park, but there's no real question about it - you're in the woods. By day, there are hikers and picnickers and bicyclists; by night, you can be arrested if you're seen wandering around outside of a moving vehicle. But even in Blackwood, that's not much of a concern ... you aren't too likely to encounter a cop down here. Your headlights are reflected back at you from animal eyes in the trees: There's a gigantic deer population, despite the seasonal efforts to hunt them down to a more manageable level, and an unusually high number of owls make the Valley their home.

It takes about ten minutes to get from one end of the Valley to the other. The road leads uphill to Bankcreek Lane, and now you're 1n Westfall. Like Blackwood, Westfall is a semi-urban area, but this is definitely a suburb. This part of Westfall is also youth-oriented, and not much different from the place we left previous to our journey through the woods, albeit a bit more ... dirty.

Beyond Westfall, the cushier suburbs - but you don't want to live there. Not really. Not when you've got the city… 

Derrick Ferguson Has THE CUTMAN In His Corner!

Back during the heyday of the Classic Pulp era there were magazines devoted to just about every type of genre you could think of or that publishers thought they could sell to the entertainment hungry public.  Most of us are familiar with the hero pulps, the western pulps, the science fiction pulps, the horror pulps.  But there were far more than that.  You had your spicy pulps which was the safe name for what was pretty much soft core porn.  There were gangster pulps, railroad pulps and sports pulp.  And a sub-genre of the sports pulp was boxing pulp stories.

If you’re at all familiar with the boxing pulp genre it’s probably because of Robert E. Howard and his champion boxer character Sailor Steve Costigan.  Even though Howard is best known as the creator of Conan, King Kull and Solomon Kane he wrote more stories about Sailor Steve Costigan. 

It’s probably inevitable that in the New Pulp Renaissance we’re enjoying right now that the pulp boxing genre should also enjoy a revived popularity and it’s a genre that’s well represented by the the Fight Card series of books in general and THE CUTMAN in particular.  It’s the second book in the series but you don’t have to have read the first one in order to enjoy it.  The books are credited as being written by Jack Tunney but that’s a “house name”.  The first book “Felony Fists” was written by Paul Bishop and THE CUTMAN was written by Mel Odom and it’s a terrific read.

First off, it’s set in Havana, Cuba during a period of history that fascinates me; the period when American organized crime worked hand-in-hand with the Batista regime, turning Cuba into a playground of illegal activity.  It’s here that the cargo ship Wide Bertha docks and it isn’t long until one of its crewmen, the two-fisted Irishman Mickey Flynn runs afoul of the henchmen working for small-time gangster Victor Falcone.  And this in turn leads to Mickey having a beef with Falcone himself who has aspirations of moving into the big time by currying favor with Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

The boxing angle comes into the story due to Falcone’s sponsorship of savagely brutal  backroom boxing matches which is dominated by his fighter, the human buzzsaw “Hammer” Simbari.  Simbari is a bloodthirsty sadist who derives extreme satisfaction from beating men half to death in the ring and the inevitable battle between Mickey and Simbari is written with a great deal of tension and suspense as we’ve seen what Simbari can do and so has Mickey.  And he’s not all that sure he can take Simbari.

Not that he has any choice.  In a series of plot twists I wouldn’t dare reveal here, the fate of Wide Bertha and her crew rests on Mickey’s exceptional boxing skills, skills learned from the legendary Father Tim of St. Vincent’s Asylum For Boys in Chicago.  Mickey’s got no choice but to climb into the ring with this near unstoppable fighting machine. 

THE CUTMAN has got a lot going on besides the boxing.  There’s a whole host of supporting characters that added greatly to the flavor and atmosphere of the story.  Colorful, delightful characters that reminded me of those great supporting actors in those classic black-and-white Warner Brothers crime/gangster movies of the 30’s and 40’s.  In fact, that’s exactly how THE CUTMAN reads, like an old fashioned Warner Brothers movie.  The crime elements are interwoven with the well written fight scenes and there’s even a romantic subplot with Mickey and a lusty gorgeous Cuban barmaid which doesn’t go the way romances in this type of story usually go.

So should you read THE CUTMAN? I certainly would recommend it.  It’s a solid page turner that does exactly what I think a pulp story should do; keep you asking; “what’s going to happen next?”  It’s very well written with snappy, slangy dialog and good descriptions of the fight scenes.  At all times we know exactly what’s happening and why.  I’m most certainly going to be keeping my eye out for future volumes in the Fight Card series which are available as e-books only and you should too.

Format: Kindle Edition

File Size: 299 KB

Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

Publisher: Fight Card Productions (November 11, 2011)

Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

Language: English

ASIN: B0066E93MK

Derrick Ferguson Travels To The City of Bathos THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH

THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH: A TALE FROM THE CITY OF BATHOS

By Joel Jenkins

Pulpwork Press

ISBN-10: 1450505112

ISBN-13: 978-1450505116

I suspect a lot of you reading this that were around in the 70’s got turned onto the sub-genre of heroic fantasy called sword and sorcery the same way I did: The re-discovery of Robert E. Howard thanks to the Lancer Conan paperbacks with the exquisite Frank Frazetta covers. I devoured all the Howard I could get and once I was through gobbling all of his stories I quickly moved onto Charles R. Saunders, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance and Lin Carter. Carter was a little bit too slavish in his homage to Howard with his Thongor series, though. But still, at that age I didn’t care. If it was sword and sorcery, I wanted it.

Never got into J.R.R.Tolkien, though. To me, Tolkien was all about the world building and creating a mythology and he’s certainly done that as “The Lord of The Rings” is still going strong to this day. Not that I have anything against that kind of fantasy. I would just rather read about working class barbarians and warriors who hack and slash their way through the day and spend their nights wenching and partying.

Which is probably why my interest in sword and sorcery dropped severely once the popularity of Tolkien style heroic fantasy seemed to me to have taken over. Nobody really was writing meat and potatoes sword and sorcery and the trend appeared to have swung over to what I call, for lack of a better way to put it; more ‘literate’ high fantasy. None of which appealed to me as I simply can’t slog through 1,000 page books that really have just enough story and plot for 150/200 pages.

Knowing Joel Jenkins as I do I think he misses that kind of straightforward, testosterone laden sword swinging tale. And Joel’s the kind of guy who doesn’t lay back and wish somebody would write the kind of story he wants to read. He goes ahead and writes it himself. And in his two books set in the legendary City of Bathos that’s exactly what he’s done: write about blue collar, working class barbarians and warriors in “Escape From Devil’s Head” and THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH.

Both books, but especially THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH aren’t ‘novel’ novels. Instead, they’re like a sword and sorcery version of that old television series “Naked City” that always started off with the narrator saying that “there are eight million stories in the naked city”. I don’t know how many inhabitants of Bathos there are but they include courtesans, thieves, disgruntled godlings, out-of-work mercenaries, farmers, innkeepers, outlaws, priests, schemers, cowards, cutthroats and they all have their own stories to tell.

And by this method of telling various stories set within this city, with some characters occasionally crossing over from one story to another, Bathos itself becomes a character in its own right. A marvelously decadent city that at once and the same time is wonderfully sleazy as well as gorgeously thrilling.

A large part of adding to the City of Bathos taking on a life of its own and becoming a character is Joel’s lush descriptions and dialog. One thing that turns me off from a lot of modern day fantasy is that the writers will have the most amazing characters populating their stories but those characters talk as if they’ve been watching MTV and CNN for the past 10 years or so. Joel’s characters have a richness to how they speak and how they phrase their sentences that immediately let you know that you’re reading about people who live in a mythical place and time.

And these are people, no doubt about it. Nobody’s going on some impossible quest to save the world from an all-powerful wizard or to save the world from an ancient evil. Bathos isn’t that type of city and the people who inhabit Joel’s story are just trying to get through another day without getting killed. For the most part, a lot of the characters in THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH are minding their own business when they get caught up almost without knowing it into a wild adventure. And they rise to the challenge with an enormous amount of well written fight scenes in which Joel runs riot with the description. I strongly suspect Joel has just as much fun writing those scenes of carnage as I did reading them.

And Joel does go in for world building just as much as Tolkien or Stephen R. Donaldson or Robert Jordan. But he doesn’t give you these honkin’ huge pages and pages of back history or have characters relate what you need to know through info dumps. Joel weaves and integrates the geography, history and political dynamics of Bathos into the story and into the dialog of his characters. It’s an effective technique that I really like to see writers use.  All too often with a lot of fantasy writers the story itself is put on hold while the writer attempts to impress with how much effort he’s put into thinking out this imaginary world. And in fact, I’m of the school of thought that says if you’ve put enough into this imaginary world then the information can’t help but find its way into the mouths of the characters. Which is where it should be in the first place.

So should you read THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH? I don’t see why you shouldn’t. If you like Old School sword and sorcery like Robert E. Howard used to make then I heartily recommend this book as well as “Escape From Devil’s Head”. Joel has a sincere love and respect for this genre and if you’ve read Joel’s other books set in the modern day then here’s an excellent chance for you to experience another aspect of the marvelous talent of Joel Jenkins.

THROUGH THE GROANING EARTH is available from Amazon.com as a paperback or ebook for your Kindle or through Pulpwork Press http://www.freewebs.com/pulpworkpress/

Derrick Ferguson Hires HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE

 

Publication Date: Oct 27 2011

ISBN/EAN13: 1466481900 / 9781466481909

Page Count: 184

Binding Type: US Trade Paper

Trim Size: 6" x 9"

Language: English

Color: Black and White

Related Categories: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Short Stories

The hard-boiled private eye genre is one I dearly love.  The trench-coated shamus with a cigarette dangling from his lip, .45 automatic or .38 revolver in a well-worn shoulder holster, fedora pulled down low over his forehead, the faithful gum-chewing secretary and even more faithful fifth of scotch in the desk drawer…it’s a genre I never get enough of.  And since television and movies have apparently abandoned the P.I. it’s up to writers like Lee Houston, Jr. and books like HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE to give me my fix.

Let me explain; even though Hugh Monn lives and works on the far distant planet of Frontera interacting with many different species and using advanced technology, the tone and feel of the character and the eight stories in the book are pure 1950’s.  Lee drops in a mention here and there of some bit of sci-fi such as a character having green or purple skin or Hugh’s weapon of choice being a Nuke 653 Rechargeable but that’s just throwaways Lee lobs at us once in a while to remind us that we’re not on Earth.  But he doesn’t go into any real detail as to how this future civilization operates or how the technology works.  When the subject of detective stories crossed with science fiction comes up, I usually mention Larry Niven’s stories and novels about Gil The Arm or Roger Zelazny’s “My Name Is Legion” since in those stories, the science fiction is integral to the story.  Take out the science fiction and you wouldn’t have a story.  Not so with Lee’s Hugh Monn stories.  They could easily have been set in 1950’s Los Angeles or New York with a little rewriting.  But I digress…let’s take HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE for what it is, not for what it isn’t.

Hugh Monn is a Human and yes, he freely admits to his clients that his name is a gag.  But one he prefers to use as he’s got some pretty big secrets in his past he’d prefer to keep to himself.  As a detective, Hugh is capable, sharp, principled and dogged in his determination to solve his cases and get to the truth.  Hugh isn’t a pain-in-the-ass who rebels against authority and isn’t a lone wolf who doesn’t play by the rules.  Matter of fact, Hugh conducts himself as a total professional.  He doesn’t shoot when he doesn’t have to, he’s polite to everybody he meets and he co-operates with the authorities.  In particular, Lawbot 714 who he runs into in a couple of stories and who I wouldn’t mind seeing become a regular if Lee gives us more Hugh Monn cases.  He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, he likes kids; he holds open the doors for old ladies.  I think you can tell where I’m going with this.  Hugh’s a fine detective but as a character I found myself wishing that once in a while he’d haul off and slug a suspect for no good reason other than he doesn’t like the fact the guy has eight eyes.  Hugh could stand to be a little rougher and not so polite.

The story “Shortages” is a good example of how Hugh Monn solves a case using his understanding of both humans and aliens and his powers of observation.  It also introduces the character of Big Louie, a Primoid.  Big Louie is the main suspect in a series of thefts being committed at a high security pier.  It’s a pretty good locked room mystery and the relationship between Hugh and Big Louie is the primary attraction in this story, as in “At What Price Gloria?”  Hugh and Big Louie have to rescue Big Louie’s wife Gloria and stop an assassination attempt.  I only wish more of the stories had been as suspenseful as this one.  In some of them, the mystery really isn’t that hard to figure out as there’s a lack of suspects so the solution comes down to either being this one or that one.  And I never got a sense of Hugh being in any real danger in any of these stories.  But Lee should be commended for trying different types of stories such as “For The Benefit of Master Tyke” which hinges more on the healing of a family than the solving of any real crime.  I picked up halfway through “Where Can I Get A Witness?” is intended as a homage to the 1944 film noir “Laura” and I enjoyed it until the very last paragraph where it felt to me as if the writer had stepped in to give his opinion of his own story and didn’t allow his character to do so.

So should you read HUGH MONN, PRIVATE DETECTIVE?  As a first book from a new writer, I’m inclined to give Lee a pat on the back.  There’s a lot to like in his writing style.  He does know how to keep a story moving but he shouldn’t shy away from rolling in the dirt and giving his characters some sharp edges.  I wouldn’t mind seeing Hugh Monn tackle some more cases but I also wouldn’t mind seeing Lee Houston, Jr. strip away the political correctness and explore the real darkness of Frontera.

Derrick Ferguson Listens To The Tales of The GRIOTS

 

·  Paperback: 294 pages

·  Publisher: MVmedia, LLC (August 7, 2011)

·  Language: English

·  ISBN-10: 0980084288

·  ISBN-13: 978-0980084283

Before we get into the meat-n-potatoes of this review, it’s necessary that Sherman set the Wayback Machine for 1970’s so we can indulge in a brief history lesson for context: Charles R. Saunders is a writer who like most of you reading this review fell in love with the work of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, King Kull and Solomon Kane.  REH is credited with being the creator of “sword and sorcery” a sub-genre of epic fantasy.  Sword and sorcery concerns itself with stories driven by action, healthy doses of sex and violence and strong supernatural/magical elements.

So in love with sword and sorcery is he that Mr. Saunders sets about writing his own stories.  And in doing so he determines to expand the genre by creating a black heroic fantasy character and set his adventures in a mythical Africa just as fabulous and dangerous as Howard’s Hyborian Age.  And with his stories of Imaro, Charles Saunders gives birth to what is now known as “sword and soul” which are fantasy stories with an African connection or featuring African characters 

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Saunders and his work ever since I was a high school student back in the 70’s and devouring heroic fiction at an appalling rate.  And as the Wayback Machine brings us back to the present we can begin this review proper with the good news that sword-and-soul is not only thriving here and now, it is giving voice to a new generation of African American fantasy writers eager to explore the genre and continue to nourish it with their talents.

GRIOTS is an anthology of sword and soul stories co-edited by Mr. Saunders and Milton J. Davis who himself has long carved out his own territory in the genre.  The fourteen stories in the book are:

“Captured Beauty” by Milton Davis.  It’s a great action story to lead off the book with.  It’s a simple plot having to do with rescuing a beautiful damsel in distress from the clutches of a vile villain.  But what made this story stand out for me were the characterizations of the protagonist Changa and his employer, the merchant Belay and their relationship.

“Awakening” by Valjeanne Jeffers.  It starts out with a little girl who has no desire to spend her adult days sitting around being ladylike and raising squalling brats while the men have all the fun being warriors. The girl, Nandi, grows up and finds out that there’s a supernatural force in her life who also thinks that yeah, her being a warrior is a pretty good idea.

“Lost Son” by Maurice Broaddus is a story I wanted to like a lot more than I do as I like Mr. Broaddus’ style of writing.  But the story just seemed to end without resolution or even much of a point.

“In The Wake of Mist” by Kirk A. Johnson is another story I didn’t get.  Although I liked the imagery the writer evokes, that’s all the impression the story made on me.  A series of wonderfully described images that really didn’t seem to go anywhere or evoke any sort of feeling in me.

“Skin Magic” by Djeli A. Clark kicks the anthology back into action mode with a story that has a healthy heap of horror.  The main character is a thief on the run who has living tattoos on his skin that are portals to a nightmarish limbo through which Cthulhuian creatures can emerge into our world.  The thief, barely able to control this horrible ability is pursued by the fearsome minions of a consortium of dark magicians who desire this power for their own purposes.  As soon as I finished this story, I wanted to read a sequel right away.

“The Demon In The Wall” by Stafford L. Battle is one of my favorite stories in this anthology.  Equal parts high adventure and comedy, it’s an entertaining near parody of the genre.  The sorceress Makhulu and her grandson, the warrior Zende are characters I’d love to see more of.  The banter between them alone is worth reading the story for.

“The Belly of The Crocodile” by Minister Faust is a tale of sibling rivalry.  And that’s all I’ll say about it because it’s not a long story and its emotional punch is best served by reading it yourself.

“Changeling” by Carole McDonnell is a story that works just the way it is but if it were twice as long I wouldn’t kick.  This is about three sisters destined to marry and become queens of their own kingdoms.  But the real prize is their native kingdom only one of them will inherit when their mother dies.  It’s got that ‘Once Upon A Time” feeling as it unfolds it’s ultimately sorrowful tale.  It’s a story of Shakespearean tragedy that has a lot to say about human nature and the ugly power of jealousy. 

“The General’s Daughter” by Anthony Nana Kwamu is a good choice to follow “Changeling” as they have something in common.  Both of them have more than their share of action but they also dig deeper into the emotional core of their characters to reveal who these people really are and why we should care about what happens to them.  I really liked the emotional resonance I felt in both these stories after I finished them.

“Sekadi’s Koan” by Geoffrey Thorne is another story I immediately wanted a sequel to as soon as I finished reading it.  I got a very strong Roger Zelazny vibe in this tale of a gifted martial artist studying her deadly art at a school located…well, I’m not sure where it’s located but I was so entertained I didn’t care.  And unlike some other stories where I got the impression that the writers themselves weren’t sure of where their stories were happening, I didn’t get that impression from Mr. Thorne.  I got the feeling he knew exactly where and when his story was taking place but is saving that for what I hope will be future stories about Sekadi.

“The Queen, The Demon and The Mercenary” is by Ronald T. Jones and like “The Demon In The Wall” is a story that seems designed for nothing but the reader to have as much fun reading it as I’m sure the writer had writing it.  The swaggering warrior Toulou sets out to rescue a suffering kingdom from the demon-wizard terrorizing the people and does it in style.  Highly recommended.

“Icewitch” by Rebecca McFarland Kyle proves that you don’t necessarily have to set a sword and soul story in an African setting.  This story takes place in a frigid realm where a dark-skinned youth struggles to find acceptance among his mother’s people who are lighter-skinned. 

The only real problem I have with Melvin Carter’s “The Leopard Walks Alone” is the ugliness of the names in the story.  I tried saying them aloud and I swear I bruised my tongue.  I realize it’s a somewhat petty quibble but naming is important in fantasy stories.  Difficult and harsh sounding names should be used sparingly. 

And The Master himself, Charles Saunders finishes up the anthology with a tale of Imaro: “The Three Faced One”  If you’ve never read an Imaro story or anything by Charles Saunders, this is an excellent introduction to both.

GRIOTS also boasts fourteen interior black and white illustrations by fourteen separate artists as well as biographical information about the writers and artists and introductory essays by the editors.  The cover by Natiq Jalil is simply wonderful to look at.

So should you read GRIOTS?  Absolutely.  True, a few of the stories didn’t turn my crank but most of them did.  If you’re a sword and sorcery fan looking for some heroic fantasy that takes place in realms other than the Medieval or ancient settings most sword-and-sorcery stories take place in then you most certainly should check this anthology out.