Happy New Year, 2023!

 

Wishing everyone a brilliant, safe, prosperous and peaceful 2024 ... may there be peace in our time, to coin a phrase; let good health visit your home, and happiness infuse life for every one of us. 

Happy New Year from South Australia, on this sunny afternoon, New Years Eve, 2023. Out with the old, in the the new!

(A Photoshop painting in honour of the occasion)

The Night After Christmas ("Whoville Chainsaw Massacre")

 

'Twas the night after Christmas and Whoville was rocking

With the kind of wild party that brings people flocking.

The noise and the booze, all the singing and dancing ...

The racket and rumpus, the shmoozing and prancing ...

Would drive to the point of starting a riot

Any poor fellow who just fancied quiet.

And you already know who was sane by an inch:

Poised on the brink was the poor old green Grinch.

By nine in the morning even Max was vibrating

With the jackhammer jollity; it’s not overstating

That not even Max could endure so much ‘cheer,’

No matter how snockered one became on Who beer.

And by two in the P.M., oh, Maxie was worried,

For the Grinch looked so manic; the beast who’d been buried

Beneath fudge and tinsel, and the charm of a child

Had clawed back to the surface ... and my, he was wild!

All the popping and bopping, the preening and prancing,

The swinging and zinging, and -- oh, the break-dancing!

Were more than the Grinch could guess how to endure ...

And then, all at once, he envisioned a cure,

For there by the Christmas tree, flat on the floor,

Was one lonely present. A forgotten chainsaw.

And the Grinch had no sooner set eyes on that tool

Then he said to himself, “Grinchie, you’ll been such a fool,

To think you could bear all this ruckus and humbug,

This rumpus and dumpus, this scampus and scumbug,

This noise, noise, noise, noise, that these Whofolk call ‘fun,’

While the stores are all closed and you can’t buy a gun --

There isn’t a fowling piece (nor even a pheasant),

But one of these idiots forgot his best present!”

For under the Christmas tree, left on the floor,

Wrapped up in red ribbons lay a brand new chainsaw:

All shiny and sharpy, all toothy and jagged --

Just begging for gasoline! So, out the Grinch swaggered

With a light, empty gascan and a bag full of quarters,

To the gas station downtown, with a brain full of slaughters ...

There wouldn’t be any Who left to make noise!

They’d be peacefully absent, the Who girls and boys.

The Who-guys and ladies would be quiet as the snow --

And Cindy-Lou Who’d be the first one to go.

For the Grinch could envisage the headlines tomorrow,

When no Who in Whoville survived to feel sorrow --

Here was a task to which the Grinch felt quite equal

(And MGM’s already contracted the sequel):

GRINCH II: WHOVILLE CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Merry Christmas, 2023

 

Merry Christmas

to all,

Christmas Eve 2003

From, our house to yours ...

Hoping for a wonderful 2024, and --

Peace on Earth

"...and then I dropped my cup of tea, because something magical happened that hasn’t since I was a child, no older than Tommy is now. The living room faded away. Every light shone brighter, and snow began to fall gently, silently, around the tree. I’d promised him, if he was very quiet and still, and watched, and watched, it could happen — a ruse, to get Tommy to take a nap on Christmas Eve, while mom snatched an hour of rest where she could. He’d fallen asleep — always the plan … and I hadn’t believed in magic in so many years." 

An excellent story comes together through a sequence of random images -- thinking with my fingertips

A courier arrives on a fast horse -- he's ridden for days in a time of direst emergency, and arrives in the Kingdom of Altheon to seek the aid of a great warrior, the one one who could undertake a quest of incredible danger...

 

Jirrel is no longer young. He's gown old on the war trails, and had returned to his homeland with the intention of remaining there for the rest of his life in quiet -- and in peace, where he might seek the salvation of a soul that's worn and bruised after seeing and suffering far too much. But the emergency is too dire, and ...

...knowing he can't face this one alone, he first journeys into the wild highlands of Calhanna, where is recruits his old friend, old comrade, to ride the trail with him. Bremmer is younger by several summers and hasn't seen so many battles; he's actually keen to undertake the quest, which Jirrel thinks is quite mad. But...

For this one, they'll need horses which have strange and magickal powers. Ordinary horses won't get them there, so Jirrel and Bremmer first head into the forests of Alkwood to ask the assistances of great creatures who have befriended them, and fought with them before. The great stallion, North Wind, agrees to help, for the sake of a friend.

And then it's into the marshes that lie to the west of Altheon and Calhanna and Alkwood. These swamps are not long or wide, but they're infested with the waterfolk, wyrfolk, who prey on travelers and will take the unwary for their food and valuables, their horses -- and their lives...

...and it's not much better once the friends have cut a path through the swamps. From the southwest of the region known as Dirtwater, they follow Desolation Creek, which has always been the fastest way through to their goal. But Desolation is plagued by bandits and cutthroats with wyrd powers, and getting through isn't easy.

Still, perseverance pays off -- and Jirrel and Bremmer at last find themselves on the lakeshore surrounding the city of Longlear. Many people, further east, refuse to believe Longlear even exists, but Jirrel has been there before, and he knows -- or knew -- its old king, from the days of his youth. 

Times have changed, and not for the better. The Kings of Longlear have, for centuries, been great sorcerers, and old King Narhagen was once the greatest of them all. But, like all kings, he has enemies, and one of them has become strong enough to turn his own magic against him, plunge him into a wasting sickness from which he cannot recover on his own --

Yet old Narhagen knows exactly who is behind this. It's his cousin, Rhothgand, who made a bid for the crown of Longlear when they were both young and not even fully trained. Thwarted, Rhothgand vanished north, to pursue his studies elsewhere. Now he's back, infinitely more powerful than he ever was, as dark as a barrel of pitch and, some say, driven insane by his lifelong study of arts too dark for sanity to bear. Jirrel and Bremmer must challenge him, defeat him ... it is the only way back to the light for Longlear. So ... it's into the drear Forest of Marnecht, along uncharted ways fraught with evil as well as danger. But at last -- 

 

They come upon Rhothgand in a place where the forest thins, and the black magician has made his stronghold, surrounded by birds and animals he has turned into fiends. The battle is intense, shocking, vile ... Jirrel and Bremmer are armed with the best charms and magicks the sorcerers of Longlear can provide, but it's barely enough. They do defeat Rhothgand, but...

...save for the intervention of Liliath, neither would have survived. Both are badly wounded when the Lady of Windcrest comes to their aid. She is a witch ... ancient, solitary, powerful, but even she could not have defeated Rhothgand before the warriors weakened him. She finishes off the evil and insane black magician, but it's all she can do to convey the warriors back to Windcrest, to heal.

Windcrest is a place of light, a wooded mountain facing the north and east, where the dawn sun angles through the great crystal arches, and Liliath drinks in the power for her own magicks. It is the force that keeps he ageless while the centuries turn and turn. This mountain is her place; no other foot has trodden there in a generation...

She lives with the forest folk, foxes, badgers, martens, squirrels, all of whom are spirits with whom she is in accord...

...and with rare birds who have the ability to talk, and possess the passed-down memories of the eons of their ancestors, of which human beings know nothing ... 

...and of other creatures of the light and air, which come to Liliath's call to sip the power that flows off the ancient witch like the morning dew.

Windcrest is a place of healing and rest, where the warriors of eons gone by would come to be healed of the wounds of both body and soul...

But even the power of Windcrest is not limitless. It has its sunset, just as it has its dawn ... its power fades with the encroaching night ... and before the dawn, when the night is darkest, Bremmer succumbs to wounds that Liliath could not mend. 

It seems the very woodland mourns as Liliath and Jirrel set his funeral pyre. Bremmer had still been young enough to be impulsive -- quick to strike where Jirrel was older, wiser, more cautious. And now, it is the old warrior, sad and tired, who will take his friend's ashes back to the wild highlands of Calhanna, there to be scattered on the morning wind.

Duty done, Jirrel sits on a crag, remembering, and listening to Bremmer's voice in the wind which whips forever over the heaths and mountains of his homeland.

Poem: Horizons

I would give all I have for a place to be

Where boundless horizons reach out to the sea --

Like the castles of war gods the mountains rise,

Crowned with ramparts of ice ’near tumultuous skies.

I’d trade easy comforts; I’d trade youth and looks

For a warm, dry cabin, a trunk of books,

And the health and strength to be mates with the vast

Till the winds and the stars call me home at last.

Announcement: A Darkness Incandescent is published in Best of Newmyths Volume 4

'A Darkness Incandescent' has just been released, in the Cosmic Muse anthology, from Newmyths ... it's a poem I'm rather proud of, and it's thrilling to see it in this volume.

The link to buy Cosmic Muse as an ebook is a little awkward -- it's available in so many formats, the publisher has supplied a "catch all" link which will send you to something called "Books 2 Read," and from there, you can bump on to your store of choice, with something like nine options ... though not without allowing Books 2 Read to set "preference" cookies (which, for myself, I prefer not to do. It's your call). 

So I'll give you three links here: this first will take you to the aggregator, Smashwords, where books funnel through to ebook stores galore; the second is to the "Books 2 Read" page, where you can make your own decisions about whether you'll accept cookies; and the third link is to the paperback edition of this anthology, available from Amazon. 

Announcement: A Glamour of Toads is out

It's been a long time indeed since I updated this blog ... life has been like that. As the saying goes, "One damn" thing after another.' 

Anyone remember the Farside-style cartoon of two monsters chasing each other down a street while a couple of middle-aged ladies look on, and one lady says to the other (!), "It's just one goddamn thing after another." Mmm. That's been life in a nutshell. Don't ask. 

But I'm back at last -- with less news that I'd hoped to be able to relay, but at least there's something. 

It begins with an update on A Glamour of Toads, which was published in Dragon Gems, Summer 2023 issue ... available as of last month, I believe. As the cover indicates, this is a kind of cute and/or "cracked" fairy-tale fantasy anthology, and I'm sure Glamour fits perfectly...

The story of a young woman who's blessed, or cursed, with enormous courage and physical ugliness (no other way to parse this, so -- grasp it, and weaponize it), and she finds herself born into the era of the witch hunts, what we call the 'burning times.' 

Worse yet, her village lies directly in the path of an oncoming Witchfinder who's notorious for his treatment of people just like her. She's not a witch, but she's going to be treated as one ... so, what's to be done about it? Sarah has recently lost her dad, who was a woodsman by trade. His work often took them into the forest, which is how Sarah knows of a certain cottage, way back in the wildwood: the house where three women live. Women who are so skilled in the Craft of the Wise, the world is oblivious to them. They have no fear of the Witchfinder and his troops, and once upon a moonless midnight, Sarah knocks at their door and begs for a boon. For magic. 

The only potential fly in the ointment is that to read Glamour, you'll need a subscription to something called SCRIBD.  Now, in and of itself, SRIBD is a marvellous idea. In a nutshell, here is their advertising line: "Enjoy millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more, with a free trial." 

You could read Dragon Gems Summer 2023 on the 30-day free trial, course ... but if I had a tablet, and I didn't mind a monthly fee of about AUD$20, I think I'd be subscribing. I'll be brutally honest at this moment: I have things to save for, so my own discretional spending is shackled and bound. But when I've bought the camera and lenses I want (price tag, around two grand -- you get the picture), SRCIBD will be on my list, along with a YouTube subscription (to get rid of those pesky commercials). 

So -- Find A Glamour of Toads right here, but be prepared to take them up on the offer of that free trial. You should be able to read on phones ... I certainly could!

I wish there were more to update, but the publishers for whom a whole raft of stories and poems were written have been delayed, and only recently opened back up for reading. Everything is late, so the news is a bit thin on the publishing front. 

However, there's more, if the hard, demanding and exacting work of the editor counts in this publishing game -- and it does. I spent some fascinating weeks working on A Tradition of Evil, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Mike Adamson. The job was actually a lot of fun, and the book (which went on sale, from Belanger Books, just a couple of months ago) is a great read that's being very well rated at Amazon. It was also my great pleasure to build Mike's new author website, not least because it gave me the opportunity to flex my illustrator's muscles, and provide all the original artwork...

And when I'd finished construction on that website, I was so envious -- I decided to build one for myself,  for my art and photography. I'm halfway through at this moment. And that is how time flew away, even before you add in some bad luck, car troubles, winter, flu, and the usual domestic drivel. Something had to go on the backburner, and the blogs were the unfortunate choice. I've barely kept touch with Facebook in the same span of time! 

Hopefully, this can turn around now.  

Announcement: Collateral Damage has been podcast by Analog!

 

News! ANALOG Science Fiction has podcast my story in the May/June issue -- "Collateral Damage." The podcast is online right now, and you can find it here ... happy listening!

https://www.podomatic.com/.../2023-05-17T08_52_30-07_00

(This artwork here is not from the magazine. I've put this together myself, as a "flag-waver," or an "attention grabber," but this *is* the character from "Collateral Damage," as she appears in one of the other stories, which you can find elsewhere. It's an Iray render from late '21, and it fits the story to a T!)