A short diversion, dear listener. We’ve had a lot of weird books here recently, so we’re lurchering today. We’re going east, in fact, to the North Sea and the long sands of the Holderness coast. And you get longdog photos, as well as some pontificating about folklore in the Wolds. Huzzah! Puppies…
the sand-people
Though it’s not exactly puppies, only Django and Chilli charging around (all pics are clickable for a larger size, by the way). Every summer we let them loose on the shores and in the rolling fields of the Wolds, where we rarely see another dog and they don’t need their muzzles. Nidderdale, where we normally like to go, is sheep country. The longdogs are fine with stationary or ambling sheep, but start to look over-excited if a sheep runs, and we don’t risk things like that. The car-boot isn’t big enough to smuggle large quantities of mutton.
django remembers that he can’t drink seawater
Much of the coastal Wolds is straightforward agricultural land – wheat, barley and potatoes, and there are so many sandy stretches and coves that there’s always somewhere free. We also go there for the hundreds of caves and strange rocky formations. This is partly for the editor-in-chief to take photos, partly because we assume that one day we’ll find a bearded thug dragging a case of old rifles out of a cave. Then we’ll be in the newspapers, with a quote saying that he’d have got away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling dogs.
chilli takes a breather
Chilli has some sort of internal switch – as soon as her paws hit sand, she goes wild and charges around, trying to get Django to run and play immediately. And Django is a doofus. He sniffes bushes, clumps of grass, potters around and only later realises that he could be playing cavalry.
a semi-sea-dog
But he does like the sea, even though he still can’t work out why it tastes funny. He’s a happy splasher, not an Olympic swimmer, running after bits of seaweed, throwing water up in the air with his long muzzle and generally being Djangoid.
hot dog day
Cliffs are the editor-in-chief’s other delight. This is handy, as greydog himself is severely acrophobic and has fits just watching other people teeter on the edge of 300 foot sheer drops. So dogs and old man hide in the long grass whilst Eagle Scout One careens around near edges.
two fine detectives, trying to spot a potato field
“Oooh, look, I can see seals! Is that a seal right under this crumbling cliff edge with huge warning notices on it?”
“Maybe. Yes. I don’t know. Aaargh.” the bold writer replies, cowering on his knees.
As Chilli also likes climbing cliffs, and does so every time we look in another direction, it is clear that only two of the four of us have any real sense. Or, looking at Django upside down in his chair, perhaps one and a half of us.
chilli also remembers things. in this case, that she doesn’t do fetch.
We went to view the Gypsey Race as well, the river which spells doom or great events to come when it rises in full flood. Often a lot of it is underground, but then it rises suddenly and covers its whole run for a while. JLG himself mingled blood with the ‘Woe Water’ when he was a child, impaling his foot on a spike on its bed, and is thus destined to sink down every so often and almost disappear – although this may be something to do with his slipped disc.
“(The Gypsey Race) ran as a flood before the Black Death, before the Civil War, at the execution of Charles the First, in 1861 the year of the bad harvest, the two World Wars and also the bad winters of 1947 and 1962.
“But in 1530 it was lucky for Prior Willy from Bridlington when he was chased by wicked fairy types at Willy Howe because he managed to jump his horse over the stream and escape his pursuers (fairy folk can’t cross over fast-flowing water!) The stream also gave a good fortune to Queen Henrietta Maria when she sheltered in its banks at Beck Hill from cannon balls whilst in Bridlington in 1632.”
Bridlington Free Press
below flamborough lighthouse
The Prior above would presumably have been William Browneflete, who was confirmed in his office in 1521. Willy Howe is a fairly well-known tumulus/barrow mound in the area, though no conclusive remains have ever been found in it, and some suggest that it might have been used as a ceremonial spot or meeting place rather than for a specific burial. There are many tales about it – this one’s from William of Newburgh’s 12th Century History of English Affairs (a good source for all sorts of weird lore)
willy howe c. john phillips
“A certain rustic… going to see his friend, who resided in the neighbouring hamlet, was returning, a little intoxicated, late at night; when, behold, he heard, as it were, the voice of singing and revelling on an adjacent hillock, which I have often seen, and which is distant from the village only a few furlongs. Wondering who could be thus disturbing the silence of midnight with noisy mirth, he was anxious to investigate the matter more closely; and perceiving in the side of the hill an open door, he approached, and, looking in, he beheld a house, spacious and lighted up, filled with men and women, who were seated, as it were, at a solemn banquet.
“One of the attendants, perceiving him standing at the door, offered him a cup: accepting it, he wisely forbore to drink; but, pouring out the contents, and retaining the vessel, he quickly departed. A tumult arose among the company, on account of the stolen cup, and the guests pursued him; but he escaped by the fleetness of his steed, and reached the village with his extraordinary prize. It was a vessel of an unknown material, unusual colour, and strange form: it was offered as a great present to Henry the elder, king of England and then handed over to the queen’s brother, David, king of Scotland, and deposited for many years among the treasures of his kingdom; and, a few years since, as we have learnt from authentic relation, it was given up by William, king of the Scots, to Henry II, on his desiring to see it.”
Sadly the Race was low, and somewhat odiferous around Beck Hill where Henrietta Maria sheltered, so we let it sink again and went off with the longdogs to find more sand, most of which came back in the car.
the author and his research team in retreat
We have urgent reading and writing to do, so must stagger off. See you in a couple of days with curios and curiosities, but no cats…
In which we consider the Holmes pastiche, for better or for worse…
Holmes forced more of the vile Turkish tobacco into his pipe, wincing as he realised that yet again he was smoking the damnable stuff in order to keep up appearances.
“Despite the fact that you are secretly my half-brother, Watson, and that you were never in the Army, I have tolerated our acquaintance. However, your medical certificate (Failed) from Goa Community College is fooling no-one, and your relationship with ‘Mary’ is an embarrassment.”
I nodded, perhaps relieved that all was being exposed at last.
“And as for you, Lestrade,” the great man continued, “It is clear that you are a Nigerian prince only working within the British police force in order to transfer surprising amounts of money from bank accounts in your homeland. The talcum powder and gum arabic disguise is obvious to even the butcher’s boy – who is, by the way, a midget in the employ of some Oriental genius.”
Lestrade looked at me and sighed, wiping a sweaty hand across his face to reveal a swathe of his true colouration.
Holmes smiled.
“I am, however, a man who relies on empathy and wild hunches, as you know, so tedious deductive reasoning has no place here. I welcome you both as comrades, and am eager to continue our investigations into the supernatural. Carnacki and Silence be damned – let us surge forth and grapple with ectoplasm in our own right.”
He threw his pipe out of the window.
“Mrs Hudson – prepare the submersible. We are bound for Arkham and colonial madness!”
Hello there. Today we’re having an introductory look at the world of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and considering what that term actually means. There are two reasons for doing this, apart from idle entertainment. The first is that I write Holmes stories, and often mull over the whys and wherefores of doing such a thing, so why not do it here? The second is that I do like weird stories as well, and Holmes is increasingly being used as a character in weird and supernatural fiction.
Holmes pastiches (artistic works in a style that imitate that of another work, artist, or period) aren’t at all new. For example, J M Barrie of Peter Pan fame wrote a pastiche in 1893, The Late Sherlock Holmes, and in 1913 an anonymous author wrote a Holmes novel, Sherlock Holmes saving Mr. Venizelos, concerning a Greek politician threatened with assassination at a 1912 conference in London.
But we’re here to look at the nature of pastiches , not to repeat lists which others have more ably researched and compiled. Personally, I’m a great enthusiast of accurate, canonical Holmes stories. To some extent those tales fit comfortably with my non-supernatural Edwardian tales of mystery and murder, such as A Loss of Angels.
The canon, the authentic body of work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is important, because it offers an unprecedented single time-line for a major fictional character and his associates (we’re talking novels and short stories here, by the way. The world of comics, TV and film adaptations is too large to dare contemplating today).
I do like reading and writing Holmes stories which could have happened within that time-line, and within the framework of historical circumstances, characteristics and abilities laid out by Conan Doyle. This allows for a number of enjoyable challenges, such as:
Exploring cases mentioned within the canon but never delineated by Conan Doyle;
Inserting cases within those periods of Holmes’ active investigative career where there is nothing currently documented (and Holmes seems to have investigated more than one case at a time on occasion);
Extending the time-line for the detective before and after Baker Street, even into the period during and after the Great War;
Re-interpreting cases and events to consider alternative explanations which are still fully plausible within the canon and historical reality;
Expanding secondary characters such as Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Moran etc. and depicting episodes which relate to their lives but again stay within the framework;
Spending more time on character qualities – flaws, addictions, attitudes, tics and curiosities – without directly challenging Conan Doyle’s basics (this one can drag you out of the canon, so beware).
David Marcum, an experienced writer, editor and scholar in this area, has devoted a lot of time to an extensive chronology of stories which fall within the canon.
He edits the very successful MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories, and expressed some of his own views (and commented on the BBC TV version) in an interview on the website I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere last year:
Of course, if you disapprove of even canonical pastiches, there are still genuine period detectives and investigative mysteries a-plenty. Try The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (ed. Nick Rennison, 2013), or Shadows of Sherlock Holmes (ed. David Stuart Davies, 1998).
But back to our ramble. Where does this leave the deliberately non-canonical writer? How heretical might he or she be? Discounting the irreverent nature of our opening passage, there are a number of approaches which occasionally yield a good yarn. The most important question is whether or not to keep Holmes (and/or Watson), fully within character and within their range of abilities as described by Conan Doyle.
If you’re not going to stay anywhere near the originals, then it begs the question as to why you’re doing it. One obvious answer is The Brand – the name sells. Stick ‘Sherlock Holmes’ on a story and you have a few people automatically interested. But that’s a bit cheap. I’m tempted to say that you should cut loose at that point and write your own, individual period consulting detective with a proper name, background and set of characteristics. Why half-Holmes it when you’ve gone that far? Be original.
And what might you bear in mind if you write tales which are non-canonical but still contain a distinct Holmes? I’ve nothing against complete spoofs, which can be amusing. However, if you want to retain the Holmesian connection with any dignity, then some thought is needed (for those who take Holmes very seriously, please don’t jump on the messenger. This already happens and there’s inevitably more to come, so the stable door is no longer relevant).
Broadly, you end up with a range of options which include:
Sherlock dislocated – keeping the canonical figures in Victorian/Edwardian settings with the same abilities and resources but written as steampunk, explicit horror, Lovecraftian horror or alternative history stories;
Sherlock transported – taking Holmes and other characters completely out of their natural setting and re-employing them in chronological or geographical settings which would be quite unfeasible within the original body of work;
Sherlock evolved – applying Holmes to fringe period scenarios, such as psychic, supernatural, political or technological mysteries which might eventually require Holmes to change some of his views and approaches;
Sherlock reconfigured – altering one major aspect of the character or abilities but retaining the bulk of the canon. A hard one, because it automatically makes serious Holmesians wince, and it takes us back to the question ‘Why not invent your own detective instead?’
If you want to look at different approaches, then you could peruse books like The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (ed. John Joseph Adams, 2009), an anthology where notable authors explore mysterious and sometimes quite fantastical alternatives to the canon.
Combining a recognisable Holmes and the weird or supernatural is one of the most popular routes. An introduction to this area is the anthology Shadows over Baker Street (2003), edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan. It’s a mixed bag of stories from eighteen different authors which nevertheless has some very enjoyable moments. The Gaslight Arcanum (ed. Jeff Campbell and Charles Prepolec, 2011) is another more recent collection of uncanny tales.
By the way, Holmes’ most quoted comment on the supernatural is not quite as definite as some think. In The Hound of the Baskervilles he merely refers to his belief that normal investigative techniques and logical deduction would be of no use in supernatural cases.
“If Dr. Mortimer’s surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.”
Giving in to temptation last year, I ended up with a curious compromise, and wrote a novella, A Study in Grey, which was historically accurate and included a canonical Holmes (nothing changed at all), but also contained a separate plot strand concerning genuine psychic issues. The intent, and possibly the result, was to leave the Great Detective unchallenged but allow the reader to experience that little bit more.
Others too numerous to name have gone further, some of them excellent authors in their own right. William Meikle, a master of the supernatural adventure tale who also contributed to The Gaslight Arcanum, has had the confidence to take a strong, recognisable Holmes and place him in weirder situations than Conan Doyle envisaged (as in Sherlock Holmes: Revenant, 2013), with more to come. Neil Gaiman himself produced one of the best known ‘weird Holmes pastiches’ in his story A Study in Emerald, which is in Shadows over Baker Street, also mentioned above.
Last Minute Addendum: We should also point out that Willie Meikle is ambidextrous in his Holmesian fiction – he has also written several canonical tales, in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ABROAD, THE ASSOCIATES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and the forthcoming SHERLOCK HOLMES’ SCHOOL FOR DETECTION.
I make no value judgements. As writers and readers we can choose pastiches which are canon or non-canon. We can even have both, if we’re wild enough.
If you prefer your Holmes straight, but still like detectives who investigate strange and supernatural mysteries, then the brand new Occult Detective Quarterly is launching this Autumn. See top right for more details.
And we’re done for today. Back in two or three days with something which will be entirely different, and don’t forget that you can sign up for free (top left) to be kept in the greydogtales loop…
With the current and welcome resurgence of weird fiction, sometimes it’s nice to know that your mama and your grandmama had cool stuff to read as well. So we thought that we’d revive interest in five wonderful weird fantasy books which still hold their own. From a book which influenced Stephen King, L Sprague de Camp and Italo Calvino, through C S Lewis and Alan Moore and finally to a novel by an Irish genius which should influence more people, we surge through the years with our fur flying…
None of these are most people’s idea of fantasy nowadays, but they all contain elements of fantasy – and some are particularly weird. Our point, if we have one, is these five books are important pieces of writing in one way or another. We read all these when we were pups, and know that they still lurk there at the back of our collective mind.
And if you have already read them all lots of times, then what do you want? A medal? Honestly, clever people, coming into our house, eating our chicken carcasses – go back to your Ligotti and stop leaving mud on our carpets. See if we care.
Print-wise, we notice that three of these were published in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series edited by Lin Carter, and one had been published by Ballantine before Carter took the reins of the endeavour. Our own copies of the Bramah, the O’Brien and the Chesterton are random early editions, but we do have the Ariosto and Lindsay in the Ballantine versions, with very nice covers.
Their presence here, though, is based on their influential nature and the fact that we love them, each for a different reason. We’ll do this thing in chronological order, for no especial reason…
Orlando Furioso (1532)
Written by Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533)
OK, we’ll be honest. This one is an epic poem, one of the longest in European literature, but it’s also a series of wild adventures with hippogriffs and intertwining themes of love, war and sacrifice.
early cover with architectural border and portrait of author; engraved by Giacomo Franco.
The whole thing is a chivalric romance, being based on the story of Roland (Orlando), the hero from the times of Charlemagne when war between Christian and Saracen warriors surged across Europe. That’s Roland as in “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”, the 1855 poem by Robert Browning, an influence on so many books (including Stephen King’sDark Tower series) that we can’t list them here. And as in the poem The Song of Roland, based on the Battle of Ronceveaux in 778. Now that we write this, we realise that the whole Roland thing deserves a post of its own, really.
Trivia: For pure fantasy buffs, the paladin characters beloved of Role-playing Games and medieval fantasy novels come from the twelve mostly fictitious companions of Roland.
We fell in love with the idea of the female knight Bradamante, possibly because we’d never come across the idea of a female knight before, and her Saracen lover Ruggiero, with the sorcerer Atlantes and many more. Mentioning Atlantes, who had a castle of iron in the Pyrenees, you might know that The Castle of Iron by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the third story in their Harold Shea series, takes place in the same setting as Orlando Furioso.
The character of Bradamante has been used many times since, and she was even in the film Heart and Armour 1983, portrayed by Barbara di Rossi. Unfortunately the film is variable in its quality, and the plot wanders all over the place.
Orlando Furioso is sometimes cited as a major precursor of later fantasy writing. The on-line Encyclopedia of Fantasy considers it what they call a Taproot Text for Adventure Fantasy, where the protagonists wander strange lands generally trying to thrive or survive.
Italo Calvino was a great fan, and took elements of it for his book The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a Tarot-linked book which is well worth reading in its own right (although we suspect that it has something to do with semiotics, which hurts our brain). Jorges Luis Borges was also an enthusiast.
The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
Written by G K Chesterton (1874-1936)
Utterly free of hippogriffs, this marvellous book is difficult to describe without wrecking it for new readers. The adventures of Gabriel Syme take place in an imagined Edwardian London, a period which is much beloved here. Consider police detectives seeking out anarchist plots, undercover officers who aren’t what they seem, anarchists who aren’t anarchists and blend them together in a highly original novel of deception and delusion. We can give away the fact that Syme joins a council of anarchists (or are they?) who are each named after a day of the week, hence the title.
Over (or under) everything lies the question of what we believe and what role we really play in existence – it is part a detective farce and part a philosophical examination of identity. Rebels who are conformists rebel against conformist ideas of rebellion, and true anarchists get rather lost trying to question it all. Or something like that. Chesterton said of his work:
“The book… was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was… It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimists were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fitful fashion”
Orson Welles called it “shamelessly beautiful prose” and made a radio dramatization of it with his Mercury Radio Theater of the Air. You might also have a look at Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), which is a future alternate-reality novel set in 1984 (yes, it may have been the inspiration for Orwell’s date as well).
A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
Written by David Lindsay (1876–1945)
We read this when rather young, and got completely lost in its allegorical passages. If we say that it’s the story of a man who goes to a seance and later gets transported to wander around another planet, then we’re probably not helping. It is just that, but in the process it explores the nature of communication, the role of God and what humans do to each other. It’s Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress on acid, a science fantasy adventure with weird new organs growing on people, and lots more.
It’s a fascinating book, though you need a philosophical bent to pick up everything at which Lindsay was driving. Maskull, the protagonist, travels to Tormance, an imaginary planet orbiting Arcturus’ imaginary binary system. There he meets characters from the various lands of Tormance, often with dire results. Adventure Fantasy again, in some degree.
It’s almost worth reading for the names themselves – Maskull, Joiwind, Crimtyphon, Haunte, Oceaxe and so on – and includes the character Nightspore. Eagle-eared listeners will note that last week we talked about The King of Nightspore’s Crown, a new novel by Raphael Ordonez (seenightspore’s crown). As Raphael mentioned being a great enthusiast of the Ballantine series, we suspect a touch of homage there. Lindsay had in fact originally intended his book to be called Nightspore in Tormance.
Sadly for Lindsay, it didn’t sell well. It does still stand out as a unique vision, and it had considerable influence on C S Lewis’s ‘Space Trilogy’ – Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. Lewis said:
“The real father of my planet books is David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t know it. I had grown up on Wells’s stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal.”
Extra trivia: There is a disputed manuscript published as The Dark Tower, which is supposed to have been written by Lewis around the time of the Space Trilogy.
Alan Moore said of A Voyage to Arcturus:
“A Voyage to Arcturus demands that David Lindsay be considered not as a mere fascinating one-off, as a brilliant maverick, but as one worthy and deserving of that shamanistic mantle; of the British visionary and apocalyptic legacy.”
Because we like oddities, you might be interested that in the seventies, an Ohio student called William J. Holloway made an independent 35mm feature film of the book. Distributed by Brandon Films on 16mm as part of their underground film series, the film is now available again to watch. It’s odd, and quite seventies – possibly best watched if you’ve already read the book.
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928)
Written by Ernest Bramah (1868–1942)
The concept of the Chinese sage wasn’t exactly new when Ernest Bramah (Ernest Brammah Smith) decided to write a series of books containing wise sayings and fantastical tales, all set within a pseudo-China of many years ago. Kai Lung himself is a wandering storyteller, who ends up in both mundane and perilous situations as he travels the land. When facing local conundrums or serious danger, he relies on his wits and collection of stories to survive.
The sage unrolls his mat, preferably under a mulberry tree, and recounts fantastical tales, many of which draw on real or embroidered Chinese mythology – bushes which spring from eyelids; a boy whose soul enters the body of a mighty warrior; a suitor who pares off part of the moon to win his love.
There are half a dozen collections featuring Kai Lung. Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, for example, uses the Arabian Nights trope of telling so many stories that you avoid your own execution.
Such was Bramah’s influence on people’s views of Chinese history that sayings such as “May you live in interesting times” may, rather than being traditional, have been invented by Bramah himself. His romantic view of China might be called a pastiche, in that it is accurate in many ways and yet an exaggerated, English version at the same time.
Critic and writer David Langford puts it perfectly when he says:
“The peculiarly addictive quality of this chinoiserie lies not so much in plot as in the unwaveringly artificial prose style. Formal politeness and elaborate diction are maintained in the most extreme circumstances, to hilarious effect. Bramah had impressive resources of vocabulary, circumlocution and euphemism, and could always find another and more ludicrous way of putting a commonplace sentiment: parodists have pulled their own heads off rather than sustain his remorseless flow for more than a few paragraphs.”
Million Magazine (1991)
You can find the whole excellent Bramah piece by David Langford on-line here:
One of the writers influenced by Bramah was Barry Hughart, whose three-book series The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox follows in much the same witty vein – but in a slightly less outrageous way in terms of style.
Bramah was a creative dude, as we don’t say in Yorkshire, and will also be known to some listeners as the creator of Max Carrados, the blind detective. He also wrote supernatural stories, but we haven’t read them so we’ll keep our mouths shut.
The Third Policeman (1967)
Written by Flann O’Brien (1911–1966)
Two notes on the above – the first is that Flann O’Brien was one of the pseudonyms of Irish writer Brian O’Nolan; the other is that although The Third Policeman wasn’t published until 1967, it was written in 1939-40.
This is possibly our favourite of the five books, and the most difficult to describe not just because of plot spoilers, but because of the sheer inventiveness and language of the work. The story is narrated by a man who is never named, one who follows the work of the weird scientist and inventor de Selby, an eminent “physicist, ballistician, philosopher and psychologist”.
De Selby may be a philosophical genius or an esoteric idiot – one of de Selby’s biographers is quoted as saying “The beauty of reading a page of de Selby is that it leads one inescapably to the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the greatest.”
What else can we say? A number of the characters are dead, or probably dead, and it it is a fantastical tale in an Ireland rooted in the real, the pagan and the mythic land, which may also be some sort of allegory. It has policemen who are obsessed with bicycles, and questions as to what is and is not fiction. Marvellously, it includes a kind of physical and spiritual osmosis, where constant contact means the policemen may be becoming more bicyclish, and the bicycles more policemanish. As with A Voyage to Arcturus, you had to be there.
De Selby, by the way, also turns up in The Dalkey Archive, with more ideas which are quite mad. Or are they?
More trivia: The Third Policeman is referenced in the TV series Lost, presumably as a way of confusing people even more.
There’s a lot more to be said about the above by better folk than us, but it’s time to go. See you soon, we hope, and if you want to be kept up to date on new features and changes at greydogtales.com, please just pop your e-mail in top left and we’ll oblige you, absolutely free. No spam, no selling-on, and no dogs will call…
What is it that lurches from the cold North Sea with narrowed eyes and gnarled limbs, trailing kelp and confusion wherever it goes? Why, it’s the old greydog, come to re-embrace the weird with more new publications by interesting folk. How lovely. Today, a fabulous illustrated version of supernatural detective stories which includes art by our friend Sebastian Cabrol, the return of fantasy author Raphael Ordonez and an introduction to the YA paranormal fiction of Miracle Austin.
“I need water, water – but not bloody sea-water.”
Yes, where other websites say that they cater to a wide range of tastes, we go one better by catering to tastes you didn’t even know you had. Or wanted. When in doubt we shout the word ‘eclectic’ and run away in the hope that it means ‘all sorts of oddities which we fell over when we went to fill the kettle’.
As for the North Sea, we have been back to the coast and the Wold Newton Triangle en masse, exploring cliffs, caves and curiosities. More lurcher articles and photos of their exploits soon, but let’s get some weird books out there…
Hounds
Not the lurchers this time. Our first mention is of artist Sebastian Cabrol, who has a section in a forthcoming Argentinian graphic novel/anthology called HOUNDS. This is intended to be the first volume in a series from Pictus of Buenos Aires. It’s in Spanish, but the artwork looks so good that we want it anyway. Sebastian’s work is always fantastic, and here he’s joined by some other great artists. HOUNDS contains six paranormal mysteries starring the greatest detectives of the supernatural.
Rodolfo Santullo scripts tales based on the original literary works, with six major artists interpreting these strange adventures:
Sebastian Cabrol depicts John Silence, Algernon Blackwood’s character.
Lisandro Estherren illustrates the adventures of Dr. Martin Hesselius, a creation of Sheridan Le Fanu.
Jules de Grandin, Seabury Quinn’s character, is recorded graphically by Horacio Lalia.
Steve Harrison, the famous southern detective immortalized by Robert Howard, takes shape in the lights and shadows of Oscar Capristo.
Matthias Bergara gives life to Thomas Carnacki, the character of William Hope Hodgson.
Facundo Price was asked to imagine the niece of the famous vampire hunter Van Helsing created by Bram Stoker.
Pictus plans to publish the series in annual installments, and you can see a flick-through video of the artwork here:
We’re currently trying to find out more about availability and if there will ever be an English translation.
The King of Nightspore’s Crown
Last year we were delighted to have US author, artist and mathematician Raphael Ordonez on greydogtales as part of our weird art theme. As well as his striking illustrations, fractals and natural history we discussed his first fantasy novel Dragonfly (see Raphael’s view on genre below). The sequel to Dragonfly is now out, and as we subjected him to trial by interview back then, we thought that we’d let him speak freely this time. So here he is…
“I’m pleased to announce the release of my latest novel, The King of Nightspore’s Crown. It’s the second volume in the Antellus tetralogy; the first volume, Dragonfly, was released last year. Both are available at Amazon, the latter in a print edition and as an e-book, the former in a print edition, with an e-book soon to follow.
art also by ordonez
“The series takes inspiration the very eclectic Ballantine Adult Fantasy series published in the sixties and seventies and edited by Lin Carter. After discovering Tolkien many years ago, I began looking for other fantasy authors. For a while I searched forward through time, but never found quite what I was looking for. So I began looking backward instead, discovering authors like E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, and William Hope Hodgson, authors who never quite fit in, authors whom no one knew what to do with until they could be retrofitted as precursors of the fantasy genre. I seemed to encounter the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series whenever I went questing search of their works. And that in turn introduced me to the American pulp fantasy of the thirties, and in particular to Clark Ashton Smith, whose work was hardly available elsewhere until recently.
“I like to describe my own stories as sword-and-planet tales, but I think (because people tell me so) that they don’t fit neatly into that or any other category. So, making a virtue of necessity, I appeal to the old eccentrics of the pre-genre days as a defense for whatever is singular or odd about my fiction. I like to imagine that it might fit in with the BAF canon.
Ballantine (1971)
“Most entries in the Ballantine series featured psychedelic wrap-around cover paintings: colorful to the point of exuberance, slightly crude or even amateurish, delightfully bizarre, and downright fantastic. I consider them uniquely beautiful. So, the better to situate my novels in that line, I paint their wrap-around covers myself. An attempt at homeopathic magic on my part.
“My novels take place in the counter-earth at the cosmic antipodes, chronicling the adventures of Keftu, the Last Phylarch of Arras, as he journeys from primordial jungles to ocean-girding cities, from ancient ruins to orbiting palaces, battling beasts of fen and forest while picking a perilous way past the spent weapons and prostrate members of forces that fought before man was a dream. Dragonfly, which appeared last year, was conceived of as the first volume in the Antellus tetralogy; The King of Nightspore’s Crown, which came out last week, is the second, and continues Keftu’s adventures in the rust-stained city of stone, mankind’s omega. The end of all change is at hand, hastened by the machinations of the veiled warlock Zilla. On a hopeless quest to halt to the slow slide into tepid chaos, Keftu journeys from the crumbling tenements of Enoch to the black jungles of Ir, forming alliances the like of which he would never have dreamed, to the peril of both body and soul.
“Beneath Ceaseless Skies, an online magazine devoted to literary adventure fantasy,has featured a number of my stories set in the same world of paleozoic darkness and daemonic sway. My latest, “Salt and Sorcery,” just came out on August 4 ( ‘salt & sorcery’ in beneath ceaseless skies ). It’s inspired by a few of my favorite sword-and-sorcery stories, Herman Melville’s meditations on whiteness, the 2015 Yuggoth Pluto flyby, and, of course, salt.
king of nightspore’s crown, art by ordonez
“My stories are aimed at readers looking for something substantial, fresh, strange, and different. Anyone interested can find links to my short fiction (available for free online) and purchase information for my novels at my blog, Cosmic Antipodes.”
Here are the links for Dragonfly and The King of Nightspore’s Crown:
There’s a UK link for King on the right, though no ebook at the moment (Dragonfly is now available as an ebook as well as hard copy). Raphael’s blog (which used to be called Alone with Alone) is a fascinating read, with regular entries on a wide range of topics, and is well worth a visit in its own right.
Miracle Austin is a writer we met during a shared blog hop, and is from Texas. She writes a wide range of short fiction, with horror/suspense being her favorite genre. She often includes societal themes and how they affect her characters, drawing on her social work background. Doll is her debut YA/Paranormal novel, and won the Purple Dragonfly Award, 2nd place, in the Young Adult category in 2016. It’s also garnering a lot of good reviews on Amazon in the US.
As Doll, a tale of high school, voodoo and supernatural revenge, is now widely available, we have a few words from Miracle as well, including the tale of her introduction to publishing:
“My journey to publish traditionally began with my collection Boundless. I researched so many presses/agents all across the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada, and Africa. I found over 300. Out of those 300 plus presses I found, I received 315 rejections. My rejection emails or letters read: ‘Thank you for submitting, but we feel that your manuscript would not be a good fit with our company. We wish you luck in your future endeavours.’
“I figured that no one wanted to publish my work, and I should give up. I started to believe that no one would ever want to take a chance with my work because I was a nobody in the publishing world. Unexpectedly in the next few weeks (this was over a year ago), I received four promising emails, but only one worked out, at least that was my initial hope; I decided to pursue and signed my first contract.
“However, after several months of no action for Boundless, I became more frustrated and decided to start working on a short story, Doll, which later transformed into my first self-published YA/Paranormal novel.
“Boundless remained in a large binder unpublished. My publisher contacted me several months later to share that rights would be returned back to me, due to personal reasons in her life. Frustration and terror defined my preliminary emotions, until I realized this would work in my favor later.
“Doll was only meant to be a short story and serve as a personal distractor for me—waiting for Boundless to become published first. While I waited, Doll continued to grow. The idea for Doll was adult focused, until a potential publisher shared an observation about my writing.
“They thought that my writing was more suited for the YA/NA audience, which I had never thought about. I decided to transform the Doll story and make it more YA friendly, which meant setting, characters, and plot changes. My new characters emerged and took over. The story started out as 1,000 words and grew – 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and finally over 50,000 words.
“With the novel version, I wanted to share a familiar story about the have-nots and the haves with unfamiliar turns. I enjoyed the deep character development and defining personal struggles because this was my longest work to date. I reflected back on my experiences and observations I stored about all the cliques in junior high and high school, to assist me in completing my first stand-alone.
“So now Doll can be found on Amazon and my website. It’s available in both eBook and paperback formats, and there’s an audio version currently being completed.”
Boundless itself, mentioned above, a collection of short stories which Miracle describes as ‘a gumbo of diverse themes’ will hopefully be published in the Autumn of 2016. More info about her work can be found on her website:
We have some seriously weird, dark and thoughtful fiction to cover in the future, some new longdog pieces and some stunning art, but we can only pack so much in, so we’ll have to stop. Back in two or three days, dear listener…
