In which we provide a quick review of a short horror story collection, and updates on some current and forthcoming Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns. Because we’re slamming things in as fast as we can, without any plan whatsoever. Yes, you’re listening to greydogtales…

So, I’m not a pure horror afficionado, but I decided to have a look at Andrew Freudenberg’s first collection, My Dead and Blackened Heart (Sinister Horror, 2019), which I’ve had for a few months. I already know Mr F as a fine chap, and entered into this with some trepidation – I can be a harsh judge, after doing too much editing for magazines and anthologies over the last few years…

It’s a good, quick read, to start with (great cover as well). Freudenberg is a very competent writer, and that’s a genuine compliment. For a debut collection, it has none of the ‘Oh dear’ sighs that some elicit. Where reviewing it overall becomes more difficult is that these are mostly short short stories, and some of them are basically glimpses into people or scenarios. Vignettes, and the click of a shutter. Yet, as it happens, this enhances a number of the tales included. Rather than laborious over-explanation, the author just does it.

This is, as noted above, defintely a collection of horror stories, and a very fleshy one. There’s some nasty stuff in here. Meat is Master. It’s either ideal for vegetarians who want to say ‘Told you,’ or a way of putting carnivores off their ‘beef’ teppanyaki. Blackened Heart also has a few inter-related stories, and it’s interesting to see the World War Two elements creeping in to add a sense of history – this works well.

Not all of the stories fully chimed with me. Freudenberg has a tendency to close with the ‘I think I’ll just go and put my head in the oven’ type ending, which can be sort of a downer. But when he hits his pace with this, he achieves something for which many more veteran writers strive. A number of the stories have clever twists, and two particular tales are really striking – pretty much worth buying the collection for in their own right.

In ‘Charlie’s Turn’ he provides a marvellous piece of observational, everyday horror about two children which really sticks with you. The sheer simplicity of it makes it chilling, not unlike some of Saki’s work. To say more would be a disaster, but you should read it. And in ‘The Last Patrol’ we have one of the best ‘circus’ stories I have ever read, in a way you would not expect. Bleak, powerful and humane. It’s the closest he gets to weird fiction rather than trad horror, and it’s absolutely excellent.

A diverting book which you can devour in a sitting, unlikely to disappoint.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WHTKT2K/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_Zz1iFb62QEAHM

NIGHTSCAPES

And on to campaigns, because there’s a lot going on. First of all, the earnest and worthy folk at Nightscape Press are rightfully drumming up support for their projects, not the least because being a small press is hard, bloody thankless work a lot of the time. Nightscape are an ethical weird fiction outfit, always worth checking out, and have done some great stuff already. The KS is fully funded, but the more you pledge for some of their ace rewards, the more the press can achieve. Do check the campaign out here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robertswilson/secret-gateways-and-nox-pareidolia/description

Doungjai Gam Bepko with her charitable chapbook

Our piece on their excellent anthology Nox Pareidolia (2019) can be found here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/disquiet-considered-as-a-helix-of-semi-precious-stories/

NICTITATIONS

Then there’s Nictitating Books, a new venture from Sean M Thompson, already known to many through his short stories. Sean also has a new collection, Screaming Creatures, out now. The Indiegogo campaign is to help establish Nictitating Books and let them move toward some new exciting projects.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nictitating-books#/

You can also read a neat interview with the shy, reclusive Sean here:

https://gingernutsofhorror.com/interviews/interview-sean-m-thompson-is-a-screaming-creature

FOLK HORRORS

There’s just over two days to go for A Walk In A Darker Wood, a brand new folk horror anthology of short stories and poetry that features many well-known authors within the Weird Fiction Genre. They invite you into their weird world of Pagan worship and strange Old Gods that come from the most mysterious parts of nature.

This is a sort of cooperative venture to create something cool – and illustrated – and again, it’s fully funded, but if you pledge for a copy, you’ll be helping the thing happen and happen well. Includes a wide range of UK and US authors, and a new story by old greydog about the mythology of the North Sea coast.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1186832632/a-walk-in-a-darker-wood/description

Finally for today, another Kickstarter goes live on the 1^st August, for Golden Goblin’s double book project – An Eldritch Legacy and Between Twilight and Dawn.

An Eldritch Legacy: We rejoin the cousins of the Morgan Clan 10 years later. Now in their early 20’s our six cousins from Dunwich, Arkham, Kingsport and Innsmouth as they make their way in the world. Each continues to face challenges as the malevolent forces of the Cthulhu Mythos surround them, and in some cases, reside within them as well. We are proud to offer this sequel to Children of Lovecraft Country. Six novelettes.

Between Twilight and Dawn: Cosmic horror tales, each set – surprise – between a single twilight and dawn. Thirteen stories from veterans of the cosmic horror field, and for some reason, John Linwood Grant, who asks what will Mamma Lucy, the 1920’s conjure woman, do, when trouble comes unbidden to her door…

The preview link is here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/golden-goblin-press/1637292204?ref=c1nurm&token=93f2faae&fbclid=IwAR0bE8YRG3nBi5yz_mi9IDq22lFKYCqcxRBFdY7rgt8z8_tKeyylhloOlx8

I don’t write that many ‘personal’ reviews, and yet, in trying to consider Shout Kill Revel Repeat, Scott R Jones’s debut collection, I see no other way to do it. In fact, everything I want to say about the collection feels like it should have some sort of prefatory remark like that. An odd sensation.

I do not believe that I am of Jones’s ilk, for starters. He is a complex, Canadian esoteric, with touches of the cyber-visionary thrown in; I am a slow Yorkshire pragmatist, as visionary as most house bricks. Most things which start with cyber- give me a slight headache. And our paths only really converge when the stars are distinctly wobbly, maybe after a few too many bourbons on my part. Where they do converge – possibly – is in our interest in what lies under the Lovecraftian skin, and a dislike of literary pomposity (I’m guessing that last one).

Which leads straight into my suspicion that Jones isn’t a Lovecraftian or a Mythosian writer, in the common manner. His style varies between ecstatic and bleak; his themes are alchemical, focused on transcendence, and on transhumanism at its most insane or theological (both may apply at once) levels. Even theosophical levels, sans Blavatsky. That HPL may have seeded the word-planet with some of Jones’s jumping-off points does not make Jones a Lovecraftian, nor does his use of bits of lumber that HPL left behind. That latter aspect may make him a Mythosian writer, but even then I’m not always sure. The first work I read of his, When The Stars Are Right: Towards An Authentic R’lyehian Spirituality, always seemed more about Jones’s search for gnostic revelation than about Lovecraft’s stuff.

He does utilise the lumber, though, and uses it better in Shout Kill Revel Repeat (Journalstone, 2019) than most. He has the ability to transcend the trap of Lovecraftian tropes, and finds his own way, whether you like it or not. Take two of the more striking stories in the collection – ‘The Amnesiac’s Lament’ and ‘Shout Kill Revel Repeat itself’. You’ll find few stories in the field which are both more Lovecraftian and less Lovecraftian at the same time. Rich in Voorish Domes, hexentechs, Resonators and Hoffman-Price* technology, Jones travels forward into his own unique creation and also back to Arthur Machen (touches of voor=before, the past times):

“Then beyond the woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo.” (‘The White People’, Machen, 1904)

These two tales have enough Mythos in them to sink a cthulhu, yet they couldn’t have been written by old Providence. The prose is more fluent, more alive; the life within the prose takes them in a deeper, vaster direction, shredding and reforming any source material. Jones’s indifferent cosmos is more cosmic at an emotional level than most writers achieve, and with a certain wry quality. I might call them dark parodies, almost.

Pondering on the other stories herein, outside of these powerful ‘Mythosian anchors’, I peeked at the comments and reviews of others, out of curiosity, and was interested to see that I disagree with many on what are the strongest pieces. Let me say that there isn’t a weak tale in the entire book, but even though Jones is good at reality, better than many writers, it seems at times to constrain him. Using him to write ‘traditional’ horror tales feels like using a massive Pacific locomotive to pull a bizarre, but fascinating, pram.

Thus stories like ‘Chrysanthemum’, ‘Worse than Demons’, ‘Cougar Annie’s’ and ‘The Transition of Toby Twitch’ are fine speculative/horror tales, well written – you will enjoy them, and they should be here – but they don’t necessarily let the engine get up full steam. Where he shines most brightly (or darkly) again is when he cuts loose into innovative strangeness, as with ‘Turbulence’, and with the outstanding ‘I Cannot Begin to Tell You’ (a story which maybe owes more to The Twilight Zone, in the best possible sense, than it does to HPL). Interestingly, it is in this latter tale that Jones also catches small touches of normal life at the same time, and leaves us with the powerful symbology of ‘the empty stroller’.

Also included are enjoyable homages to Ramsey Campbell’s Mythosian body (in a literary sense, I hope), Gla’aki and a disturbing Elon Musk – sorry, Aldo Tusk – who is on his own quest to do some transcending to others, regardless of what they think.

I spoke of ilk at the beginning, and one thing I take away from this collection is that, unlike me, Jones prefers transcendence to humanity (that should get me in trouble)  or his faith in humanity has waned to a dire level. Ultimately, his humans – and his transhumans – have no time for people dreaming of being people. In such a way, he cleaves to core elements of cosmic horror as a field in itself. His characters have dreams, ambitions and experiences which tear open what Jones sees as lies, limitations and camouflage – but what is left after the tearing is no longer human in any sense we could understand. He offers transformation, on a purely personal or a globe-shattering scale, but few small redemptions (‘Wonder and Glory Remembered’ may come closest to that).

And so whilst I greatly admire his work and rejoice in reading it, I suspect that we are philosophically very different fish. I have written and published Mythosian tales, some of which may have worked, but I tend to lack Jones’s transcendental fire. Cosmic horror for me most days is a Turkish child trapped in earthquake rubble and quite forgotten, on a planet circling an insensate fusion reactor which hangs in the untravelled void…

Unless it’s all lies, of course. Most writing is. If I’d written this review at any other time, it too might be a very different fish as well, but hey, that’s the way out I am tonight.

IN SHORT: Jones is a terrific writer. And Shout Kill Revel Repeat is highly recommended. If you are a Lovecraftian/Mythosian enthusiast, you have to have a copy. If you are not, then Jones gives you a terrific weird/horror fiction collection to enjoy for what it is. Also of more interest to conspiracy fans than Fox News.

Shout Kill Revel Repeat is available directly from Journalstone

https://journalstone.com/bookstore/shout-kill-revel-repeat/

Or from Amazon:

We interviewed Scott R Jones four years ago (FOUR!) here, though the excellent Martian Migraine Press has now gone on indefinite publishing hiatus: http://greydogtales.com/blog/cthulhu-on-mars-an-interview-with-scott-r-jones/

*I’ve no doubt that Hoffman Price technology is named after E. Hoffmann Price, the Weird Tales writer who collaborated with HPL. Personally, I’d go for E T A Hoffman, the German romantic fantasist, and Robert M Price, the Lovecraftian author and theological scholar who has some odd ideas about people. Just to be annoying and set the mi-go among the pigeons.

There was once a classic Weird Tales writer called Nictzin Dyalhis – except that probably wasn’t his real name – and a story called ‘When the Green Star Wanes’, which was described as “a seminal work in the history of pulp [science fiction]” (Everett Bleiler) – except that it’s also sort of old-style nonsense. Bleiler also called it “(d)istasteful and negligible as fiction”. And as you know, dear listener, we love such complicated nonsensicals, so today our regular reviewer Dave Brzeski covers a fun collection of Dyalhis’s work, The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis (DMR Books).

Before you dive in, however, do remember our opening sentence. Who was Nictzin Dyalhis? The whole subject of the man’s birth, marriages, and name(s) has been covered well by others, especially on the Bear Alley site, which is linked in the review below. In short, he may have been a man called Fred Wilstone Dallas, or he may have been someone else entirely. His reported age varies, as do the details of his parents. His forename may have been a complete invention; that Dyalhis surname was supposedly Welsh, or Scottish, or Roman, and so on. He could also have been born in Arizona or Massachusetts – it only gets better the more you dig…

Old Nictzin did, however, apparently invent the ‘blastor’!

A CAMPAIGN YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN BACKING– NOW FULLY FUNDED BUT STILL RUNNING. A BRAND NEW FOLK HORROR ANTHOLOGY, WITH GREAT ART AS WELL, COMING LATER THIS YEAR. WHY NOT TAKE A LOOK?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1186832632/a-walk-in-a-darker-wood/description

The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis

Author: Nictzin Dyalhis

Introduction: D.M. Ritzlin

Publisher: DMR Books

Format: Paperback, ebook

Reviewer: Dave Brzeski

Nictzin Dyalhis has always been something of an enigma. Researches into his life have always turned up little, and what there is comes with contradictions. The best overview is probably the one by Steve Holland on his Bear Alley Books Blog.

I probably first encountered the work of Nictzin Dyalhis way back in the early seventies. I suspect it was in a used paperback copy of Worlds of Weird (1965), edited by Leo Margulies. A few years back I suggested to David Sutton of Shadow Publishing in the UK, that I’d dearly love to put together a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection. David gave me the go-ahead to do so. The problem, I immediately realised, was actually sourcing the stories. There aren’t all that many, but not all are easy to find – to say the least. The project was shelved.

Dave Ritzlin evidently had the same idea not long after I did, but he got a bit further than me. The resulting book is still not a complete collection of all of Nictzin Dyalhis’s work, but it does include all of the weird fiction/fantasy stuff. Ritzlin confirmed that this was mainly down to those four missing stories being very, very hard to find, at least in their original appearance. Of the remaining four tales, two are westerns and two are crime stories.

This collection opens with ‘When the Green Star Waned’, which was originally published in Weird Tales (April 1925). It’s one of those classic old school science fiction tales, where every planet of the Solar System is inhabited – sort of an alternate universe, where Aerth had history somewhat similar to that of Earth, but it would be difficult to make our history, since this was written, quite fit within this version of the Solar System. All the planets – Markhuri, Vehez, Aerth, and its Moun, Mharz, Jopitar… you get the idea, have very similar spaceships, called Aethir-Torps, but they tend to keep out of each other’s business. Thus it takes quite some time before anyone notices that things have changed on Aerth.

They’ve been invaded and subjugated by creatures from the dark side of the Moun. Creatures that originally came from much further afield. There’s an almost Lovecraftian feel to it all.

It’s interesting to note that this story has the first recorded use of the term, blaster, albeit spelled blastor here, for a ray gun, or energy weapon.

As one would expect, the prose, let alone the science is a little archaic and dated, but it’s a fun read.

Readers who are experiencing the work of Nictzin Dyalhis for the first time in this volume, may be forgiven for thinking, “Yes, ‘When the Green Star Waned’ was indeed fun, if dated, but I don’t see why so many people make such a fuss about this guy’s work.”

‘The Eternal Conflict’ was published in Weird Tales in October, 1925 – just six months after ‘When the Green Star Waned’. You may well wonder, on reading it, if it really was by the same author. This one was good then and it’s good now – excellent in fact. Told by an acolyte of a non-intrusive religious sect on Earth, it’s in equal parts a cosmic weird fiction tale and a classic Angels versus demons story of the battle/balance between good and evil, love and hate, which is as relevant now as it was back then – a true classic.

It was eighteen months before Dyalhis came to light again, this time with the only fantasy story he sold outside of Weird Tales.  ‘He Refused to Stay Dead’ appeared in the May 1927 issue of Ghost Stories. It’s an interesting tale of reincarnation, involving an undead revenant, described by the protagonist as troll and vampyr, albeit he exhibited no recognisable features of either. I was intrigued to note some elements of the occult detective subgenre in this one too. It does suffer somewhat from some common errors including a misunderstanding of the uses of Bell, Book and Candle in Christian lore, a Norseman and Saxon speaking Elizabethan tinged English to generate the proper ancient feel and horns on a Viking helmet. The latter two almost make me wonder if Dyalhis was an influence on Stan Lee! Despite that, it’s an enjoyable tale and I find myself intrigued by possibilities for sequels involving the main protagonists.

October 1927 saw the return of Dyalhis to the pages of Weird Tales, with ‘The Dark Lore’. Again, we have Elizabethan English used to emphasise the speech of demons and such. Plus the very readable, but still somewhat archaic, prose seems even more odd when elements of the modern World, such as an auto-accident are mentioned. All that aside, this quickly took the place of ‘The Eternal Conflict’ as my favourite story so far in the book.

Lura Veyle is a very nasty piece of work. This is a tale of her damnation, and her gradual struggle for redemption as she passes through several Hell dimensions, learning more about herself as she goes. I’m not, I have to admit a believer in religion, but I found this story very moving.

First published in Weird Tales, September 1928, ‘The Oath of Hul Jok’ is a direct sequel to ‘When the Green Star Waned’. This one is so, so good… and so, so wrong! On the one had, it’s a superb example of the sword and spaceship sub-genre as popularised by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline and Leigh Brackett. On the other hand it’s deeply sexist (albeit the women – referred to herein as the protagonist’s ‘Love-girls’, if you can believe it – do show themselves to be people to be reckoned with, once they’re no longer mind-controlled), pro- torture and pro-genocide.

It’s interesting to note that way back in 1928, Dyalhis had pretty much predicted the invention of computer tablets, with direct text messaging.

It wasn’t until the April 1932 issue that another Dyalhis story graced the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Red Witch’ is a tale of reincarnation and eternal lovers. When Randall Crone falls in love with flame-tressed Rhoda Day, he soon finds he has a rival. We flash back to the stone age, when Ran Kron fights alongside the mighty Athak, eventually becoming his blood brother… until that is, Athak sets his sight on Ran’s beautiful bride, Red Dawn. Throw in a crippled weapon-maker/magic man and a mighty stone axe worthy of an H. Rider Haggard adventure and you get a pretty good page-turner of a story.

I was intrigued to find out if making ‘The Sapphire Goddess’ the title story had any reasoning behind it other than it was a cool title. Indeed it does have a lot going for it. Originally published in the February 1934 issue of Weird Tales, this is a classic sword and sorcery tale, which falls somewhere between the fantasies of Lord Dunsany and the more pulpy style of Robert E. Howard. There’s also a strong similarity to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamworlds stories. A modern day man (he was modern when it was written) finds himself transported back into the body of one of his previous incarnations, that of a great ruler in a classic fantasy realm. I can easily see this having been voted best story of the issue by Weird Tales readers. The editor states in his introduction that he thought it was the best story in the anthology Worlds of Weird (1965), which was where he first encountered Dyalhis’ work.

It was close to four years later, in December 1937, before Dyalhis was to return to the pages of Weird Tales. ‘The Sea-Witch’ was worth the wait! A truly excellent tale of Norse legend and long awaited justice, with a star-crossed lovers reincarnation element thrown in for good measure. As per usual for this author, it’s sword and sorcery with the emphasis heavily on the sorcery. This was the point at which I really began to be seriously depressed that Dyalhis wrote so few tales.

This excellent collection closes with ‘Heart of Atlantan’, which was published in the September 1940 issue of Weird Tales. Like ‘The Sea-Witch’, this one involves the narrator meeting and becoming rather enamoured with an ancient sorceress – this time, it’s the very lady who brought about the doom of Atlantis. Having accused Dyalhis previously of showing the sexist attitudes of his time, it can’t be denied that he certainly had a thing for immensely powerful women.

‘Heart of Atlantan’ was to be the very last story the World would see from The Mysterious Mr Dyalhis. There are only four more known stories not included in this collection. These are not fantasies, being two westerns and two crime stories, and three of them at least are very hard to track down. However, Wildside Press dedicated the fourth volume of their The Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack Kindle series to Nictzin Dyalhis and, along with six of the stories which can also be found in this volume, they included – ‘For Wounding—Retaliation’, originally published in the 20th November 1922 issue of Adventure.

This was his second ever story, his first having appeared in the 20th October 1932 issue of the same magazine. Since I have a copy of this ebook on my Kindle, I decided I may as well see how this story holds up…

I can’t deny that the writing style seemed a little less accomplished than in the fantasy stories, albeit that may be down to the fact that Dyalhis was attempting to take on a style that I’m less familiar with. The hero is an aged Native American – Pima to be exact – woman. The story is surprisingly anti-racist for the time, racism actually being a major factor of the story.

I asked Dave Ritzlin and he confirmed my theory that he limited The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis to the fantasy stories for the exact same reason that my own plans had stalled – simply because the other stories were too hard to find. It’s a shame, and I still hold out hope one day for a complete stories of Nictzin Dyalhis collection; you never know there may even turn out to be a few more that have yet to be uncovered.

The Sapphire Goddess is available in print, and a very affordable Kindle version of this book is also available through Amazon – links below:

on amazon uk

on amazon us

Blimey, there’s a lot of creativity going on out there, so let’s slam out a mid-week medley of hot-off-the-press independent press projects. Today we spotlight author and publisher Nicole Givens Kurtz and her new supernatural private investigator mystery, a debut sword and soul fantasy novel from Sarah Macklin, and a new Mapp and Lucia book by Hugh Ashton. And we also have news of a big dark humour initiative from Crystal Lake Publishing – Coffee Beans and Conquest – in which that ancient reprobate John Linwood Grant himself is involved…

KILL THREE BIRDS

Nicole Givens Kurtz is an experienced American writer with many short stories and novels behind her, and she has a new book coming out on 20 July 2020, called Kill Three Birds.

“Sent to investigate a string of murders in a quiet remote egg, can Hawk Tasifa find the killer before she becomes the next target? Prentice Tasifa is an investigative hawk whose been deployed from The Order to the small egg of Gould, a mountain village. A missing girl had been found dead. Hawks investigate strange and difficult situations throughout the Kingdom of Aves. They can “see the unseen,” by accessing a unique ability to activate hawk-like vision, a trait they carry through their bloodlines. “When Prentice arrives in Gould, she soon discovers that there isn’t just one bird dead, but three. There’s a serial killer operating in Gould, and she has to find the person before she ends up next.”

And if you want to get a feel for what Nicole writes, you can read the first chapter of Kill Three Birds online simply by following this link:

https://midwestbsfa.com/2020/06/08/excerpt-of-nicole-givens-kurtzs-kill-three-birds/

“You wanna see what a killer looks like? Look in the reflecting glass,” Prentice Tasifa said over her shoulder. Her voice rose above the evening’s insects chittering. Not getting a reply, she stood up and looked over to Dove Baltazar. “Anyone is capable of killing.”

“Those that are with the goddess and follow along her path, don’t slaughter others.” Dove Baltazar said, with a sweeping arm across the bloodied body between him and Prentice. The white, gold-trimmed sleeves of his cloak just missed the carnage. “Hawk Prentice, try to remember how this woman lived. Holy. Pure.”

“She’s a teenager.”

Prentice pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. Baltazar, like most in the rural egg, was about to discover the true nature of human beings. Anyone was capable of great violence when dumped in the right situation. Doves like him only saw goodness in people. That was their role.

You check out the full range of Nicole’s writing through her Amazon author pages:

https://www.amazon.com/Nicole-Givens-Kurtz/e/B0057XEF0G?ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vu00_tkin_p1_i0

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nicole-Givens-Kurtz/e/B0057XEF0G?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1593613421&sr=8-3

Regular listeners will know that we are always keen to support good small and independent presses, so we must mention that Nicole is also owner of Mocha Memoirs Press.

Mocha publish “engaging stories that amplify diverse experiences with vivid storytelling, robust protagonists, and fearless voices.”

And they do produce all sorts of fascinating books. We’ve been aware of them for a while because they have also published in another of our favourite areas, Holmesian pastiche and related fiction, such as with An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which came out in 2015.

You should definitely go check out their site and full catalogue:

https://mochamemoirspress.com/

THE ROYAL HERETIC

Now, another new book from an independent press, this time from Milton Davis’s MVMedia. MV have a great range as well, but have been especially noted for their work on Sword and Soul. This fantasy/historical sub-genre brings Black fantasy characters to the fore and offers every reader a chance to go somewhere different. It abandons the pseudo-medieval European settings of most fantasy books, and takes us to rich new cultures, the perils of the open savannah, and Afrikan ports full of intrigue.

Sword and Soul not only gives Black readers real involvement in the action, but at the same time it’s a shot in the arm for the Fantasy genre as a whole (we’d recommend something like MVMedia’s Griots collection of short stories as an introduction to the  fun — and fear).

This week MVMedia have published Sarah Macklin’s debut novel (we’ve already nabbed a copy to see what she’s come up with). The Royal Heretic is out right now.

“Bakari is the netkoleh, ruler of the Ega empire and the living embodiment of the gods. When his eldest son and heir falls ill and dies, Bakari drowns in despair. He decides that the gods are nonexistent and bans the empire’s religion. He expects the people to rejoice at being “liberated” but talk of rebellion soon begins instead.

“In the north, in a long ago conquered kingdom, the second queen of the empire is sent to deliver the news. Her father, the king, wants to bargain with the netkoleh but she and her siblings know the man can’t be reasoned with. Their religion was the last bit of dignity th Ega had left their people. To defy this decree will bring the wrath of the netkoleh down on their lands and hopefully the path to freedom.”

“Macklin has created a vibrant world with a conflict that is simultaneously deeply personal and epic in scope. Do not miss this one!”
Rodney Turner, Microphones of Madness

The Royal Heretic is available in print and epub directly from MVMedia and on Amazon (all three links below)

https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/the-royal-heretic

https://www.mvmediaatl.com/product-page/the-royal-heretic-epub

https://amzn.to/2NN96zE

MAPP’S RETURN

Also on our ‘Must Read’ pile is Hugh Ashton’s sequel to his recent (and delightftul) short novel in the style of E F Benson, Mapp at 50. Faithful to Benson’s original Mapp and Lucia stories, we are once again drawn into a delightfully wry, very English world of village intrigues, posturing and general cattiness, with the new Mapp’s Return, from j-views Publishing. A beautiful cover again, as well.

“Since the disaster that was her fiftieth birthday party, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint has been avoiding Tilling society. But just as she decides to re-enter the round of bridge parties and dainty teas, an unexpected visitor to Mallards throws her plans for a triumphant return as the social leader of Tilling into confusion. Lucia and Georgie, Diva, the Padre and Evie, the Wyses, and quaint Irene (and of course, Major Benjy and Mapp herself) all come alive again in this tale of genteel snobbery and social climbing.”

mapp’s return amazon uk

mapp’s return amazon us

We covered Hugh’s Mapp at 50 here a few weeks ago: http://greydogtales.com/blog/past-and-future-dreams/

COFFEE BEANS AND CONQUEST

Finally, dear merciful gods, we have to mention another Brand New Thing, this time from Joe Mynhardt‘s independent press Crystal Lake Publishing. We say ‘have to’, because we’ve been contributing to it. Here comes the spiel…

COFFEE BEANS & CONQUEST IS LIVE!! But don’t celebrate just yet, dear friendo, cuz you’ll have to JOIN US to survive.

Sent to Earth to prepare the world for the coming of the elder-gods, the Preditor is here to save you from being harvested when the world is ultimately invaded and destroyed. Only those wise enough to subscribe to this newspaper (and partake in the Preditor’s Guatemalan Butt-Blend coffee bean side hustle) will be saved.

Our crack team of interdimensional journalists include:

• Jasper Bark
• John Linwood Grant
• Jessica McHugh
• Patrick Freivald
• Justin Coates

and a group of informants that can’t be named (for their own safety), with special guests including visitors from the past, beings from alternate dimensions and timelines, characters from popular as well as estranged fiction, and of course the elder gods (Cthulhu fhtagn!).

On the rare lucky day that he’s taking a break from global domination, you might even be blessed with a visit from our Preditor-in-Chief with his Letters from the Preditor column. But don’t take my word for it. The Preditor breaks it all down here in a completely professional, non-eggyweggish milieu. (https://youtu.be/goIujws7VN4)

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