This week I reached into my folder and pulled out a rejection from OMNI magazine:

If you’re going to get rejected, you could definitely do worse than getting rejected by Ellen Datlow.  Although I never did get into OMNI magazine, my old website did receive an OMNIVISION award wayyyyy back in the 1990s.  This site no longer exists, of course, but you can see it on the Wayback Machine on those days when it’s functioning properly.  And although I never got into any of Ellen Datlow’s anthologies, either, I did manage to score a mention in the 15th Annual Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collection:

Given how many other books are listed here this isn’t necessarily such a big deal, but I’ll take what I can get.

Don’t forget, this is the last week to vote for the book from which the July Scene-Of-The-Month will be taken!  It looks like my unfinished werewolf book The Wolf is way out ahead now — can anything catch it?  We’ll find out!

I’m going to file this one under “sentences that you are unlikely to see on contemporary elementary school writing assignments”. I’m sure you can guess which sentence I mean.

For what it’s worth, I think my “neatness” problem here is mostly due to an evidently faulty eraser and/or cheap paper stock …

Don’t forget to vote for the July scene of the month — we’re still looking for something to unseat Dragon Stones for “most requested scene”. It seems this may be the month that happens, as The Wolf is pulling out ahead!

A few weeks ago, I posted a capsule review of the PS2 game “Shadow Hearts” and mentioned that I had the sequel queued up for my next game. I’ve got a few hours into the sequel now and while it’s too soon for an actual review, I would like to make a few comments about it:

1. The graphics are much improved.
2. The (fairly numerous) cut scenes now feature (fairly decent) voice acting.
3. The game starts with a disclaimer that all the events and characters that appear are fictitious.  (This includes such fictitious occurrences as World War I and such fictitious personages as Rasputin, Tsar Nicholas, and Anastasia.) Perhaps this disclaimer was included to discourage the kids from using “Shadow Hearts: Covenant” as the basis for a report about the First World War …
4. One of the characters, Gepetto, is a retired puppeteer who uses his puppet Cornelia as a weapon.  (Presumably Pinocchio was unavailable.)  Cornelia is rendered such that she looks disturbingly like a child beauty queen (JonBenet Ramsey comes to mind), especially when you start giving her power-ups, which come in the form of special outfits that she wears.
   At the moment, as I am playing the game, she is dressed up like a little sailor.  *SHUDDER*
5. The “Judgment Ring” is smaller than it was in the first game.  I think this means I need a bigger television set.
6. And finally, the best thing I’ve yet seen related to this game:

That’s right, this game features John Smallberries of Buckaroo Banzai fame as the voice of Rasputin!  Apparently he took time off from his job at Yoyodyne Industries to perform on this game.  Those of us who thought all the Red Lectroids had been defeated in the mid-1980s were clearly mistaken.  (The voice actor’s real name was Bob Papenbrook.)

Voting is still open for the July scene of the month! Will July be the month that a book other than Dragon Stones wins the competition? To find out, stay tuned!

The results of voting are in and once again Dragon Stones is the readers’ choice for a scene of the month!  Taking the book off the shelf and flipping to a random page got me this scene, which is quite near the beginning and, once again, involves some misfortune befalling poor Adaran.  There really is a dragon in this book, honest — in fact, in this scene, Adaran and his companions have just returned from a raid on her lair.  I just haven’t pulled any scenes yet in which the dragon actually appears.  But if Dragon Stones keeps winning the polls, I’m sure she will turn up here eventually.

Just a reminder:  The Dragon Stones PDF file can be found here.

Someone shook Adaran awake. He opened his eyes and found a small, slim shadow beside his bed, its hand on his shoulder. “Redshen?” he murmured.

She shushed him, then whispered: “Get dressed.”

“Why?”

“We’re stealing the payroll, remember?”

Adaran sat up and looked at his partner. She was ready to go, her black cloak cinched tight, hood up over her head. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I remember that we are not doing that.”

She grinned. “If it were up to you, we would be long since retired, living a dull existence in some drab slum.”

Adaran snorted. “It would be a coastal village, and we would lay by the ocean eating figs all day,” he said. Then: “You really think Dosen has something worthwhile in his tent?”

“Of course. He’s the steward. The steward always has the silver and gold.”

“Well, I suppose it can’t hurt to look.” He got out of bed and dressed, aware that Redshen was watching him appraisingly. They had slept together once, a long time ago, after consuming a great quantity of wine in celebration of a particularly successful job; it had been a fumbling, embarrassing experience, and he had actually fallen asleep during it. Now she was more like a sister than a potential lover; but still, she was only like a sister, not really one.

As he slipped into his black cloak, he said: “And after we rob Dosen, how do you propose we escape?”

“Oh,” Redshen said off-handedly, “We’ll steal eagles.”

Adaran stopped, his belt untied, his cloak unfastened, and stared at her. “We will not.”

“Of course we will.” She made flapping motions with her arms, then laughed. “We certainly won’t get away on foot. Now close your mouth and finish getting dressed.”

He tied up his belt, reached for his black leather gloves. “But we don’t know how to fly them.”

“I do,” Redshen said. “I didn’t have my face buried in feathers the whole ride; I was watching how our fearless guide controlled his bird. They’re not so different from horses. You kick them to start, you pull the reins to stop, you squeeze with your knees to go up and down—”

“I’m starting to think this whole plan is just a pretext for you to steal an eagle,” Adaran said.

She grinned at him, and winked, but said nothing.

“Fine. We’ll steal one eagle, then, and you can fly it.”

“Of course I will,” she said, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. “You would run us into the mountain, flying around with your eyes closed.”

Adaran made a face at her, then pulled on his gloves and slipped into his boots. He pulled up his black hood—his cloak matched Redshen’s almost exactly, having been made by the same tailor—and cinched it tight. The two of them looked like versions of the same shadow, one short, one tall. Redshen looked him over. “Ready?” she said. Adaran nodded. She gave him an everything will be fine wink, then turned and ducked out of the tent; he followed close behind.

As he emerged into the crisp night air, hands grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms behind his back. He couldn’t see who had him. He felt himself lifted off the ground, spun around in a half-circle. There was Redshen, struggling with one of Dosen’s men. He had her in a headlock, his other arm around her waist.

What was going on? Had someone overheard them plotting to raid Dosen’s tent? Perhaps; but too many men were about, their shapes grey in the wan moonlight, for this to be a response to Redshen’s little plan. They had fanned out among the tents, weapons drawn; and now he could hear a commotion from Jenune’s tent, the clash of steel and wood.

Suddenly the wizard’s tent exploded in a burst of smoke and noise and white light. Two of Dosen’s thugs tumbled away from the blast, rolling along the stone face of the mountain before coming to a stop, twitching and smoldering. Taking advantage of the distraction, Adaran wrenched his shoulders up, dislocating both of them and slipping away from the henchman who held him. The thug cursed and lunged, trying to regain his grip, but Adaran spun away, cartwheeling to the side and delivering a solid kick to the side of his head. The man grunted and went down. Adaran landed in front of Redshen, dagger drawn and ready, but before he could do more than aim the weapon, a shower of hot, sticky liquid sprayed him, spattering his face and neck.

“Redshen!” Adaran cried. Dosen’s minion had cut her throat, and now he tossed her aside like a piece of garbage, lunging at Adaran, stabbing with his short, fat sword. He was too slow by far; Adaran easily sidestepped the thrust, grabbing the man’s arm and using his own momentum to pull him off balance. He thrust his dagger into the thug’s abdomen, slicing through the thin fabric of his shirt, opening up the flesh beneath.

As the wounded guard moaned and clutched at his belly, Adaran raced to Redshen’s side. He knew at once that he could do nothing to help her; the gash in her neck was long and ragged, blood spurting out with the weakening pulses of her heart. She looked up at him, eyes unfocused and blinking rapidly; she tried to speak, but the words whistled through her severed windpipe. Her lips told him to run.

He looked to the right. Three more retainers were coming at him from the direction of Jenune’s tent. Their weapons were drawn and bloodied, their faces bruised and pummeled. Even caught asleep and unarmed, Jenune must have put up a ferocious struggle. But there was no more use in fighting now; he was outnumbered at least five to one, with more killers on the way. He took a last look at Redshen, but she lay still now, her slashed throat steaming in the cool air.

Cursing, Adaran turned and ran for the edge of the ridge, racing along the rugged stone. He could hear Dosen’s men break into pursuit behind him but didn’t spare a look back, concentrating on his keeping his feet amid the rocks and rubble. If he slipped or fell, they would be on him in a moment.

Something clattered against the stone nearby, bounced away in front of him. A crossbow bolt. He cast a dire glance at the moon, which had chosen this moment to emerge from the dark clouds that had obscured it earlier, and began to zigzag as more arrows came skittering across the rocky spine of the mountain.

He had almost reached the edge now, where the ridge dropped away to the trees below. He needed to find a way down. Off to his right he spotted a cleft in the stone, like a chute leading into the forest. He darted that way and vaulted into it, but it was steeper than he’d expected, its damp floor strewn with loose rocks and years of accumulated dirt, foliage, pine cones. He lost his footing, fell, and started to slide, shooting over the edge of the ridge into open space, falling, the ground rushing up to meet him. He let his legs take the brunt of the landing, bending at the knees to absorb the shock, going into a roll that took him under the trees and out of sight of his pursuers. He dug his feet into the loam, checking his tumble, and came to rest just shy of the trunk of a massive pine.

He stood, brushed himself off, listening to the debris pattering to the ground and the distant voices of the men trying to figure out where he had gone. He doubted they would be able to climb the sheer cliff to reach him, but come the morning they could search for him from the air. He had to think of these pursuers as hawks, not as men.

He started down the slope, moving away from the ridge, darting quickly from one tree trunk to another, not stopping until he came to an abyss. This precipice appeared much higher than the last; the ground dropped away into a vast, howling darkness, as if he had run to the edge of the world.

Well, he had known all along that escaping from Dosen’s camp would not be a matter of walking down a slope, into a valley, and out of the mountains. He was going to have to climb, with little knowledge of what he’d be climbing into; he had not watched the terrain during their flight from the dragon’s lair, and so he had no idea where exactly they had landed. He remembered that Orioke had said they’d flown west. If the wizard were correct, that would have put them deeper into the mountains, perhaps even past the Salt Flats.

Well, in the morning he would be able to see into the gulf at his feet, and have a better idea of what he faced.

For now, he moved back under the shelter of the trees, curled up beneath the concealing spread of a thick pine, and drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

Obviously Adaran makes it off the mountain, as he can later be found in the walled city of Flaurent, down in the Salt Flats. But how he gets there is a scene for another month. For now, the poll results have been reset. Remember, vote early, vote often!

Thanks for reading!

So this week I finally finished up a game I’ve been playing for about six months, a fantasy RPG called Shadow Hearts.  This game is relatively ancient by video game standards (it came out in 2001), but what can I say — I only play one game at a time and I have a stack of games eight inches high waiting for me.  Once I’m done playing those, I can upgrade my PlayStation 2 to whatever is out at that point — probably the PlayStation 6.  But I digress.

Shadow Hearts is a mostly conventional RPG, with the usual turn-based combat, dungeon crawls, and wandering monsters, but it features a “Judgment Ring” feature that adds an element of hand/eye coordination to the mechanics; rather than your attack or spell succeeding or failing based on some behind-the-scenes random chicanery, like Kino, the player is presented with a disk that consists of a sweeping hand and one or more target sectors.   You have to press the targeting button on the controller while the hand is sweeping through the targeting sector for your selected action to occur.  Usually, the closer you let the hand get to the end of the sector, the more powerful your action (more damage, more healing, a critical hit, etc.)  So you can either play it safe and press the button in the middle of the sector, or you can get greedy and try to hit it at the very last second, risking a miss.  I found this to be a pretty cool feature, actually — it required attention, but was much less annoying than the feature in some games where you have to mash certain key combinations to perform an attack.

The storyline is highly linear (even more so than usual), and involves an alternate history of Europe from just before the First World War.  An EXTREMELY alternate history.  For instance (leaving aside the usual assortment of monsters, vampires, demons, gods, etc.), in this version of history, they had cellular phones in 1913, and everyone talks like a character from a grade B 1980s teen movie, and Catholic priests could get married and have kids.  I know it’s absurd to let stuff like that bug you when you’re busy trashing critters that look like upside-down dogs with arms coming out of their heads, but still.  Let’s just say that if you’re expecting a Final Fantasy-class storyline, you’re likely to be disappointed.  (Interestingly, though, the Big Bad’s motivation for his actions turns out to be rather more complex than you might expect.  But I’ll leave that to the player to discover.)

Speaking of the monsters, I would highly recommend reviewing the “Library” from time to time, just to read the descriptions of the monsters you’ve killed.  These usually include a blurb about where the monsters came from, which are often both absurd and highly amusing, along the lines of, “This is the ghost of a monk who slept with turtles; he wanders the monastery looking for soup”.

Anyway, I did enjoy this game, and have the sequel lined up as my next one.  I’ll probably finish that some time in 2010.  In the meantime, although it’s hard to rate video games according to my usual scale (how soon they would put my wife to sleep), I would estimate that if this were a movie, she would have spent the first 30 minutes wondering out loud why the heroine wanders around in a super-micro-mini-skirt with thigh-high stockings, and then fallen asleep.

And don’t forget, this is the last week to vote in the Scene of the Month poll for June!

Ummmm …. no. No it’s not.

On the other hand, it does show an early recognition of the importance of carrying a comepus in yore poket wen yoo go into the wuds … oh, sorry, I seem to have gone into Dennis mode after reading that.

If I were writing this little story now, the protagonist would probably get eaten by monsters, like these poor mountain bikers did. Probably best that I didn’t end it that way originally, though, or I might have had to pay a visit to the school psychologist.  If we’d had one.

I haven’t done a random rejection in a while, so here’s one from 1998 from the Design Image Group.  DIG was active in book publishing in the mid-to-late 1990s and I tried a number of times to get something going with them, coming closest with “The Exclusive”, a vampire story that I originally posted here back in 2007.  I did eventually get it published in a webzine (I was an early webzine contributor), where it won a reader’s choice award for the issue.  But still, it would have been nice to see it in DIG’s anthology, which was released in December 1998 as Kiss of Death.

I never got a chance to answer DIG’s questions, so now, eleven years later, I will do so:

1) Diego is the only vampire; Anne Mowry is his keeper and has been granted a few special powers by him, including extreme longevity and a hypnotic voice
2) The setting was the present day (now the late 1990s)
3) Anne Mowry came and went from Hollywood over the years, and Marilyn was just one of her incarnations (sure, I could have made her a fictional Hollywood legend, but then the reader would have been like, “She was who?”)

And now, so that you don’t have to dip into the archives to read “The Exclusive”, I present a rehash of the 2007 post in which it originally appeared.  Oh, and, by the way, the cat who broke the statue was Pooh Bear, who was not really a bad, bad cat at all.

Last week’s Scene of the Month post was an excerpt from Dragon Stones, which prompted my friend Almostgotit to plead, “More Dragon Stones, please!”  So after careful consideration, I have decided to give Almostgotit, and anyone else who wants it, more Dragon Stones (which are not to be confused with, say, kidney stones).  In fact, here’s the whole thing:

Dragon Stones

Now of course, this is the PDF version, so (unless you want to print out almost 400 pages) you will have to be sitting at your computer to read it.  Also, it does not include the lovely cover art provided by Roberto Bovo of Red Frog.  But it does have all the good stuff that appears between the art on the front cover and the picture of me on the back cover, which I’m sure no one needs to see.  This PDF is not copy-protected, so you can put it on any device that supports PDF documents, or convert it to a format that will work on your preferred e-book reader, such as the Amazon Kindle.

If you start reading Dragon Stones and decide you can’t live without having it in paperback form, you can pick it up from my storefront over at Lulu, or from Amazon.com and other fine locations.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to vote for your choice for next month’s scene:

I can’t guarantee I’ll post the full text of every selection, but one never knows …

The poll results are in, and this month it’s a blowout — 81% for an excerpt from Dragon Stones.  It looks like my advice to “vote early, vote often” was really taken to heart by readers in April!  So, without further ado, here is a randomly-selected scene from Dragon Stones:

From the cover of the trees, Adaran assessed the situation. First off, the voice; even though it was dressed up with thunder, he recognized it. Adaran had suspected all along that Orioke had escaped Dosen’s treachery, but why would he come here and threaten Flaurent except on Dunshandrin’s orders? Had the attack on the wizard’s tent been staged? He didn’t think so. Orioke must have found his way back to Dunshandrin and come to some arrangement with the lord and the princes. Now they had sent him out as their agent, to deal with Dosen’s failure.  Adaran doubted that Orioke had the power to level the college’s sturdy structures, but the Headmistress and Diasa would not know that. Faced with this display, Adaran thought, they would likely hand him over to spare themselves the risk of destruction.

Suddenly the light changed, intensified, and he found himself standing in a glaring column of it. Orioke was illuminating him for all to see. Shading his eyes, he spotted someone moving quickly toward his refuge, a big man carrying a sword. Certainly not Diasa, nor one of her guards.

He bolted, running toward the central avenue where he had walked with Diasa earlier in the day. The spotlight moved with him, blinding him. He crashed into someone and they both went down in a tangle of limbs. He rolled away and sprang to his feet, but he couldn’t see who he had knocked down, or where the swordsman was, or even what direction he was now facing.

“Who’s there?” he cried.

A voice, dark and scratchy like the surface of a well-worn bar, said: “You knocked down some old woman. She looks angry.”

“Barbarian!” That voice belonged, unquestionably, to the Headmistress. “This is not how you come to Flaurent to claim a fugitive!”

Suddenly the harsh column of light around Adaran faded, returning to its original glare; what had seemed intolerably bright before was now a welcome relief. The Headmistress was getting to her feet, adjusting her dirty robes; the man with the sword stood nearby, watching this with a smile, as if he found her an amusing clown. Adaran realized he had met this fellow before, in Dunshandrin’s castle, when they had first been dispatched on their errand. “Gelt?” he said.

“The very same.”

“You’re supposed to be in Enshenneah.”

“My job there is long since finished. I’ve a new task now.”

Realization finally dawned. “You took the little girl.”

Gelt laughed. “Here I am, come to kill you, and that is your concern? But yes, one of my men delivered her to Dosen for safekeeping. I hear he succeeded in that no better than he did in dealing with you lot.”

Diasa was coming, running toward them with a group of guards at her back. They seemed to have adapted to the light, or perhaps they found its reduced intensity less troubling. Gelt appeared not to have noticed them yet.

“Dosen was unsuccessful in many things,” Adaran said.

“Yes, well, perhaps Dunshandrin will thank you for ridding him of one of his less competent servants. I warned them not to entrust Dosen with that operation, but they were damned impatient.” He pointed his sword at Adaran. “Where would you like it? I’ve nothing against you, so I am willing to make this quick.”

“Why kill me?” Adaran said. “I’m no threat.”

“Because they told me to.”

“Can we make a deal?”

Gelt cackled. “What do you have to offer me? An Enshennean toddler and a crone?”

Diasa and her soldiers were closing, a hundred yards away, maybe less. Gelt glanced their way, turned to meet them. Suddenly the ground began to shake, throwing Gelt and the Headmistress off balance; Adaran managed to keep his footing, adjusting to the heaving earth. A chasm opened behind Gelt, spreading, widening, dirt and sand falling down into darkness. Diasa skidded to a halt just shy of the edge, then urged her creatures back as the lips began to crumble. More than one of them was lost, vanishing silently into the crevice.
Something emerged from the abyss, a column made of shifting earth and stone, bearing a lopsided figure that a child might have assembled of rocks and mud.

“Deliban!” the Headmistress cried. “I did not summon you!”

The golem raised its arms and spread them wide; a roar filled the night as the crevice spread east and west, splitting the college in two. Smaller cracks appeared, branching off from the large one. Trees toppled over; water gushed from broken pipes; grey fingers of dust scratched at the air. The ground itself swelled beneath Adaran, bulging, pushing him upward. Now he did fall, toppling over backwards, but talons clamped onto his shoulders, cutting through his clothing and digging into his flesh. Moments later he felt the earth fall away as beating wings lifted him into the sky. He reached up and felt the scaly legs of a great bird.

“Hello again, Adaran,” Orioke called from his perch on the beast’s back. “I am here to take you back to Dunshandrin’s castle. The journey will go by faster if you sleep through it, don’t you agree?”

The wizard spoke a few words; Adaran found himself growing weary, even though the pain in his shoulders was fresh and raw and his feet were kicking over empty space and the air was full of screams as the creature called Deliban tore Flaurent to pieces.

Moments later, he was fast asleep.

Things go from bad to worse for poor Adaran after this; if your day ends with getting carried away by a giant bird, you can be pretty sure that your morning isn’t going to be very good, either.

The poll results have been reset and you can now begin voting for June’s scene-of-the-month now!

Anyone who has been reading here for a while has no doubt seen comments from Kristen Tsetsi, a fellow small-press/self-published author.  You may also remember my short review of her terrific Operation Iraqi Freedom novel Homefront last year.  Now Kristen is preparing an eBay auction to benefit Soldiers’ Angels.  From the Soldier’s Angels website:

Soldiers’ Angels is a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and their families.

I’ve given one copy each of all four of my published books (just the novels, not the anthologies) to the auction, which also includes a number of other books (including vintage books such as a 1953 copy of The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway), photographs and other artwork, jewelry, and more. Rather than reiterate everything that Kristen will be listing, I would encourage you to visit her blog and view the variety of items that people have donated to the auction.  It’s for a good cause, and Kristen always has something there worth reading.