Wordgrinder

My new novella, THE BONE TREE, has been accepted for publication by Bad Moon Books for release in lettered hardcover and signed/numbered trade paperback editions.

Bad Moon Books has been publishing high quality books over the past few years, including work by Ramsey Campbell, Simon Clark, Gord Rollo, Gene O'Neill, David Niall Wilson, John Skipp, J.F. Gonzalez, and Clive Barker! Good company, I'd say.

I'll post more as a release date is firmed up. In the meantime, I plan to celebrate today by doing nothing but reading a book and napping on the couch, and probably going to the bookstore later and drinking coffee with my wife. (I know, I'm hardcore.)

From the moment I learned of Print on Demand (POD) technology in 2001, I figured it meant a massive change for traditional bookstores. Not immediately, but surely down the road. When I realized that you could send a digital file to a machine (an all-in-one duplicator/binder/trimmer) that would cough out a book in just a few minutes, I knew at some point this technology would appear in a bookstore. Just ask my wife. As soon as I pointed out yesterday's article in the L.A. Times (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/09/espresso.html), she said, "You were right! Your vision for the future arrives."

I wasn't the only one thinking this way, obviously. People with the means to make it happen have been working toward this end for many years. As with any new technology that appears on the market, it takes years to refine it, to make it smaller, convenient, and easier to use. As soon as that happens, you make it available to a larger client base. To make it desirable, even.

I still remember all those haughty attitudes on message boards five or six years ago, trying to associate POD closely with "evil" and "utter crap" and proclaiming that nothing POD would ever be worth the paper on which it was printed. These were the same people who refused to see it as a technology, and insisted on seeing it as a euphamism for "vanity publishing."

While POD technology has made it easier for people to self publish, or to wake up one day and say "I think I'll be a publisher" then surf to Lulu or Createspace, sign up and start churning out poorly designed books, it also seems to present opportunities that are good for the industry.

Point-of-sale POD technology could significantly reduce shipping costs and waste for publishers. It would reduce wait times for authors who have publishers that hold royalites in limbo for years waiting for returns. It would likely reduce the size (overhead) of current bookstores -- just have a line of kiosks where people sit and surf through a catalog, and either decide to download a book to their e-reader, or have a copy of it printed, bound, and waiting for them at a checkout. Better yet, pay for it at the kiosk, and eliminate the cashier altogether. I mean, we're already doing this with movies. Take a look at the 99-cent rental machine near the front door of your supermarket. No doubt there are other logistical details to be considered, but it seems workable to me. HarperCollins and Tor are both experimenting with POD imprints, so it clearly seems feasible to others. And no doubt they've given it quite a bit more detailed thought than me.

That said, I don't think that POD or e-books will ever completely eliminate traditionally published offset-printed books. As is, it's still probably cheaper to print 50 million copies of the latest Dan Brown book using traditional means, due primary to the higher per-unit cost of producing POD books. Also, some people -- myself included -- prefer the little mass market paperback with the pulpy paper and fresh ink smell. Or even better, the old yellowing paperbacks that smell like rotting pulp -- that wonderful musty scent of years gone by.

I don't say all of this hoping to see traditional books disappear. I love books. I love paperbacks and collectable hardbacks, and I get a little sad thinking that someday mass market paperbacks might go the way of the pulp fiction magazines. I have a massive collection of books, and I love each one of them.

I do not carry or use an e-reader. I'm old fashioned and still prefer my words on a paper page, except when I'm writing them of course.* In fact, this past weekend I went out and bought a stack of 80s horror paperbacks from the Eerie Books bargain boxes so I could have reading copies of some of my favorites (so I don't have to crack the spines of my pristine collectors copies).

I know that e-readers have been touted for their convenience, but I'm still not sold. This summer I read a couple of hardcovers and lugged them around with me everywhere I went (Stephen King's Duma Key and David Morrell's The Shimmer) without complaint. I love the stories, but I also love the books themselves, and something about reading an old paperback with yellowed pages takes me to a better place, allows me to somehow sink into the story with an air of nostalgia. And if anyone happens to glance over at me, they might even catch me with my nose buried in the pages, inhaling that precious scent.

POD and e-books may be the things to help the ailing publishing industry, but I hope that book lovers (not just story lovers) won't get left behind.

____________________________________

*(I came across a nice manual typewriter at a garage sale a couple of years ago. I wrote my first typed stories on one almost 25 years ago, so I thought I might try to recapture some of that writing magic from my younger days. I only got about a page and a half along before I put that thing away. It's been gathering dust in the closet ever since.)

Christopher Fulbright and Angeline Hawkes are proud to announce that their new horror novella, BLACK MERCY FALLS, has sold to Bloodletting Press for publication under their Morning Star imprint in late 2010.

About the book…

The small Colorado town of Black Mercy Falls has a ghastly past.

The folks who live there just call it Mercy Falls. And while the “black” part comes from the massive waterfall above the town whose waters run thick with black iron oxide, there are hushed suggestions that something diabolic is responsible. Tense whispers of the locals connect a list of missing children and teens with the old tale of Nehemiah Jacob, a mid-1800s pioneer who threw his deformed inbred children over the falls thinking that their deformities were caused by demonic possession, hoping the waters would cleanse their souls and release them to heaven. When he named the place Mercy Falls all those years ago, some say the waters were crystal clear. And when the darkness came, it came to stay. Is the waterfall haunted? Possessed? Or is the town cursed with something that stalks its children by night?

Now the town’s namesake waterfall and the land that it’s on have been bequeathed to Lance Evans by his estranged uncle. But when Lance brings his pregnant wife and son to explore the inheritance, they scarcely have a chance to marvel at its beauty and settle in to the rustic cabin than good fortune is overshadowed by a dark legacy. Pitting Lance against unknown forces, the truth is even more horrific than the rumors suggest as mists of the past swirl in a shadow of tragedy that threatens to take the lives those he loves.

BLACK MERCY FALLS is the third horror novella by Christopher Fulbright and Angeline Hawkes, authors of BLOOD COVEN and THEN COMES THE CHILD, which was lauded by James Moore, who said it was “beautiful, dark, and disturbing as hell,” John Everson, who pronounced it a “bloody good read,” and Gary Braunbeck, who said “if all extreme horror had this much grace, style, and intelligence, I’d read a hell of a lot more of it.” Please visit http://www.fulbrightandhawkes.com and the authors’ blogs for all the latest updates.

For more information about Bloodletting Press and all of their titles, please visit http://www.bloodletting-press.com.

That's right, everything you need to be a published author is in this magic Writing Kit! Angeline and I gaped in wonderment at (not to be confused with "openly mocked") a stack of these babies on sale at Half Price Books last night for a mere $12.98 each. That's right folks -- for a mere thirteen bucks you can sidestep years of learning your craft and massive piles of ego crushing rejection slips. Man, I wish they'd had this thing 15 years ago. I'd be making Stephen-King-money by now, fer sure.

I've got some more eBay items that I posted last week, so they're ending today. I'd be grateful if you'd check them out, and even, heck, I don't know, buy some stuff. Books, movies, and music -- all the good stuff in life. Here's the link: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/chfulbright

Well, this marks the end of the first week of school and I have to say that my motivation for school is at an all time low. Still, I must push on. I know that if I take too much time off, I won't ever get back into the flow.

I guess my primary cause for not wanting to go back to school is that I have so many writing projects on my plate I want to get finished. I shared this lament with Angeline who chastised me and reminded me that I got a lot done this summer -- polished a novel and got it ready for submission, wrote two short stories, finished a long novella, sent it out, and got about 25,000 words into a new novel. I guess I just know that, to get this new novel written by December, I will spend every minute of every day (and most of the nights) either working, doing schoolwork, or writing. Maybe if I can finish by early December I'll take a week or so off over the winter break and just relax.

I figure a lot of people who read my blog read angelinehawkes too, but for those who don't, we have been working through the process of adopting a child from Korea since late last year, and a few weeks ago were matched with a 14-month-old boy who's healthy, well-adjusted, and just cute as all get-out. We've named him Daniel Harding, and Holt International has told us he could be here anywhere from 3 to 6 months from the date we were matched. We're thrilled, excited, and just so happy. At times I admit that I am alternately struck with feelings of fear and weepy joy. This is okay, I'm told.

There's been much preparation for the arrival of Daniel, including the construction of a wall upstairs, dividing the game room to build his bedroom. Much thanks goes out to my buddy Chris Powers who came over to help finish the framing and hang the drywall. I got it finished, textured and painted last week, so we're all set for trimwork.

I was going to do a rundown of the books I read this summer as an end-of-summer blog post, but it turned into a huge project, and I'm not sure I'll finish it, as blog posts tend to take a low priority in the big scheme of things. I will have a few more posts to make in September though, as Fulbright & Hawkes have some good news to share, OF WOLF AND MAN is still creeping toward an actual release date, and FenCon is coming up in a few short weeks.

Now we're off to lunch with Bill and Jen, and probably getting coffee and nosing around the bookstore. Till next time....

Vampires face off against werewolves in Wylie, Texas as Gabrielle Faust and Steven E. Wedel visit Eerie Books for a joint signing this Saturday, July 17. If you have the time, come on out to visit the store, say hello to these two authors and buy some books! Visit the Eerie Books website for more info. The signing begins at noon.

William Jones of Elder Signs Press recently posted the preliminary cover for ANCIENT SHADOWS: Dark Tales of Eldritch Fantasy. My story "The Soulgrinder" is scheduled to appear in it some time this Fall. It's unclear whether this is officially up for pre-order on Amazon judging from William's post, but I'm sure additional information will be forthcoming soon.

I've been head-down writing novels for the past year and a half, and trying to find an agent for them, so I admit that I've been bad about sending out short stories. Still, it's nice to have a few coming out here and there as fuel for motivation, not to mention having something -- anything -- new to put on my website. So, this here post is as much for me as it is for you. Much to the dismay of my detractors, I'm still alive, still working, and still ornery as a Pamplona bull apart from the pack.

First up, my story "Into the Void" sold to Shadow City Press for publication in their October anthology HIDEOUS EVERMORE. I also sold a reprint of my story "Encounter on Old Temple Road" to Library of Horror Press for their upcoming HORROROLOGY anthology, release date TBA. Other reprints of mine soon to appear include "Lady Needs a Hand" in the always-cool, newly redesigned Hackers Source magazine (here's a sneak peak of the next issue's cover), and "The Split" scheduled to appear in the NVH anthology NIGHTMARES, slated for October as well.

Finally, my original story "Bloody Isle of the Kiyah-Rahi" will appear in a yet-to-be-titled Robert E. Howard tribute anthology, edited by Mark Finn and Chris Gruber, the proceeds of which will go to support upkeep of the Howard House Museum in Cross Plains, TX. Word on the street is this will be out before next summer.

All in all, not too bad for having been occupied with other things, I suppose. I have tried to visit Facebook a little, but it's a time-sink and message boards are poison for the soul. For the most part, if I'm sitting here, I need to be writing. Focus is key, folks, focus.

Sayonara till next time.

Angeline will be signing books at Eerie Books in Wylie, TX this Saturday, July 4. The bookstore has ordered copies of her collection Symphony for the Forgotten, and the Stoker award-nominated Beneath the Surface anthology, containing her story "The Relic: Father Santiago's Bones." Seems like they also had some copies of Frontier Cthulhu on the shelf, too. And we might bring some extra books out of the treasure box along just for kicks.

Please come out and join us in the historic strip in downtown Wylie this Saturday. The signing starts at 12 noon, and ends at 6 p.m. There's donuts next door, and a great coffee shop just down the street.

I also recently updated Angeline's website, so please stop in and check it out if you haven't been there in a while. The deluxe and limited/signed editions of her new collection from Dark Regions Press Shades of Blood and Shadow is up for pre-order at Horror Mall.

Hope to see some of you local folks up there on Saturday!

There’s four weeks left in the semester. Halleliejiah and amen.

The end of this semester is a special milestone because I will officially be done with all math classes needed for my degree. I’ve done better than I expected and managed to maintain an “A” in all of them, but not without considerable studying and developing some mad calculator skills. From here on out, I will only go to the college for classes on Saturdays -- my weeknight classes will be taken online. This means less time away from the family, eating dinner at home again, and the boy and I won’t have to miss nightly viewings of Buck Rogers because they see neither hide nor hair of me from 7 am to 9 pm on school nights. I’m ready for the summer. Oh boy, am I ready.

I do have some writing news, but before that, I’d like to say thanks to all the folks who have been so supportive of our adoption efforts. I assume most of you reading this blog also read Angeline’s blog, angelinehawkes, and know the latest, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say that your support is appreciated. Thank you.

On the writing block, my werewolf novel OF WOLF AND MAN, will be coming back into print via the good folks at Lachesis Publishing. The book had a long and unhappy road before I submitted it to Carole and Louise last year, but now after reviewing the final galleys and cover art, I’m excited about its new life. It has been completely rewritten and revised from the first edition, and is now, I’m convinced, the best that it can be. I’ll be sure to post another update as soon as ordering information comes available.

Angeline and I, along with a number of cohorts from the HWA, will be appearing as guests at Texas Frightmare Weekend in two weeks. If you’re in the area for the con, please come visit our table. We’ll be on rotating signing schedules throughout the three-day event. I hope to see some friendly faces there!

Angeline and I will be at ConDFW this weekend, for most of the day on Saturday, and for a few hours on Sunday. I have to take an exam Saturday morning, so we’ll be going to the hotel directly from the college. I hoped to catch Jim Butcher for his 11 a.m. signing, but since my exam starts at 10 a.m., I’m thinking that won’t be possible. I hope he sticks around for his late signing on Sunday.

Anyway, our loads are light for this convention, but after the past few weeks we've had, I’m certainly not complaining. It never fails that every time a convention rolls around, we're as busy as electrons in a particle accelerator. Our schedules are:

SATURDAY

Both of us:
3 pm DFW HWA Afternoon Lunch-Dinner Thing

Christopher Fulbright:
Panel Room 2 (Manchester)
5 pm Fools! I will destroy you all! - Creating Believable Villains

Angeline Hawkes:
Panel Room 4 (Churchill)
5 pm WWDD - What Would Dracula Do? - Horror in Modern Times

Reading Room (Winston)
6 pm Reading

SUNDAY

Angeline Hawkes:
1 pm Autographs

I'm looking forward to visiting with Bill in the dealers' room, meeting a new member of our local HWA chapter and seeing Dean and Nina and all of our other friends again. The con is down by the Galleria this year, so there's plenty of stuff close by to choose from for our late lunch. I'm thinking TexMex. Anyway, here’s a link for more information: http://www.condfw.org. Hope to see some of you there.

Heh...

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

So, a quick rewind to last summer finds Angie and I on the couch one balmy afternoon watching a box full of VHS movies, one of which turns out to be the 1982 camp fest B-film, The Sword and the Sorcerer. You remember this film. I know you do. Riding on the scaly backs of Conan the Barbarian and Dungeons & Dragons, it hits on just about every fantasy cliché out there, from evil wizards to gals in skins and skin, but adds something new and exciting to the mix -- a sword that shoots its blades like hurtling skewers of death! Awesome, I know.

As the movie winds up, we watch the credits, commenting on the "genius" of the film (it actually wasn't that bad at all, and Angie will swear that it's still head and shoulders above my personal favorite Fulci S&S offering Conquest), when we see at the end a notice that we should watch for the sequel, Tales of the Ancient Empire "coming soon." Well, twenty-five years came and went with neither hide nor hair of the sequel, so I hope nobody was holding their breath. Curious, I did some research online and read in a (now revised) Wikipedia entry, that when it was released, The Sword and the Sorcerer was the most successful independent film of 1982, grossing $40 million. I guess the producers decided not to gamble on a second film, and made off into the brazen sunset with their pack mules loaded with money.

So, the point of this blathering is maybe old news to some, but I just read this the other day -- Tales of the Ancient Empire is in production now. Lee Horsley returns presumably to reprise the role of Prince Talon, and is joined by Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Kull), Christopher Lambert (Highlander), and TV star Melissa Ordway in what the producers have dubbed a "sequel in spirit" to the cult classic from which it spawns. You can check out some stills here. In one of the stills I even spotted Ralf Moeller, who played Conan on the mid-90's TV series Conan the Adventurer. This should be cool. I'm hoping the new one will not only prove to be a film as fun and swashbuckling as the original, but prompt a DVD reissue of the original movie in a remastered widescreen format.

Time will tell if it was worth the wait, but I'll be one of the first in line to see Tales of the Ancient Empire. The release date listed on IMDB.com is June 1, 2009.

You can see, first off, that I've taken to naming my blog posts like 80s death metal songs. I think it adds drama and makes things more interesting. The process has also spawned the word "spectavaganzular," which I'm rather fond of.

So. It's the holiday season. I thought for some reason I should come make a blog post, but now that I'm here, I'm sure it's not necessary.

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you're all doing well out there in LJ land, getting ready to enjoy vacations and libations. I won't give much thought to how insanely fast 2008 passed by. Though it seems a blur, in retrospect, I accomplished a lot, and things in general have definitely changed for the better. Busy, but better. I think in my advancing years, I'm finally becoming domesticated.

Over a year ago, when I was still webmaster for HWA, I traded a few e-mails with young director Roger Scheck who was looking for avenues to promote his new horror film, Nobody Loves Alice. He was hoping to get a promo spot in an HWA publication, but I had to turn him away since HWA publications are only for members. At the time, I looked over the website and thought it looked intriguing, not to mention damn creepy. So I told him I'd be interested in checking it out when it's released on DVD, and wished him luck spreading the word.

Fast forward about 18 months or so -- I get an e-mail from Roger letting me know the DVD was out and asking if I'd like to check it out. I replied that I would, not sure if he meant like, "would you please buy it" or "hey I'll send you a copy." Three days later, I'm walking in the house, just home from work, when Angie, folding laundry, looking very beautiful says:

"Your torture porn movie came today."

She said it like she was telling me the kids just got done watching Mary Poppins.

"What?" I blinked, quickly rifling through recent memory to recall if I'd ordered any such thing. I felt like I was a kid again, Mom wagging the nudy magazine she found between the mattresses.

"Nobody Loves Alice," she said, reading my mind.

"Oh!" As relief washed over me I explained the deal and told her that I hoped it wasn't torture porn, because really, that's not my thing. She agreed to watch it with me, and a few nights later we found ourselves in front of the TV like we do with most independent movies -- hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

I'm pleased to say that Nobody Loves Alice is one smart, engaging, and genuinely suspenseful film that both of us really enjoyed. The synopsis:

Alice came into the world unloved. Bouncing from foster home to foster home she never experienced love in even the most basic of ways. As Alice changed from child into a woman she still failed to receive that fairytale romance she so desperately needed. Try as she may to find that love it seems to be just out of reach. Those poor mis-fortunate souls that fail to requite her love pay for it with a world of pain and torture.

Alice's story collides with one of her co-workers, Abigail. Abigail and her boyfriend, Alex, have that fairytale romance that Alice is so desperately trying to find. As Abigail catches onto her boyfriend's plan to propose, she comes up with a scheme to test her soon-to-be fiancée's fidelity. And who better to play the bait in the scenario... Alice.

Now, Alice finds herself face-to-face with the one thing she's always wanted -- true love.

As Alice becomes more disillusioned in her make-believe world of true love she'll stop at nothing to ensure nobody takes Alex from her.

And Abigail finds herself on the brink of losing the man she loves. Or at least some of him...

This film grabbed me from the very beginning. Leery of the possibility of some pointless carnage to justify naked, blood-smeared women, I was met instead with some witty dialog, a couple dealing with some slightly juvenile but entirely beliveable pre-marital anxiety, and a very disturbed woman with a "boyfriend" that she keeps in a dirty room of her apartment tied up on a blood splattered mattress.

The story structure was perfect, planting just enough of what we need to know to build suspense. Characterization is strong enough that I liked one of the main characters, Alex (Phillip Ward) who's getting ready to propose to his live-in girlfriend Abigail (Amanda Taylor). When Abigail finds out that he's going to propose, she talks to her shallow friend Megan who manages to convince her that most men are cheaters at heart and what she really needs to do before she agrees to marry Alex is test his loyalty. Megan makes a call to Alex's work, saying she saw him in the restaurant (which he manages) earlier that day and would love to meet him for drinks. Megan thinks she's sly, but Alex recognizes her voice and decides to play along, thinking (accurately) it's something cooked up by Abigail.

Well, Abigail's dumb friend Megan thinks she's got him fooled, but only one problem -- she can't show up herself so they need to send someone he won't recognize. Enter Alice (Nitzan Mager), the quiet and demure girl who just started working with them -- who also happens to be a dangerous psychopath with a propensity for doing dastardly things to her "boyfriends" in the privacy of her own home. Alice agrees to meet Alex, as she's seceretly jealous of Abigail's relationship and sees this as an opportunity to steal this hunk of man away from her, crazy-chick-style.

What sold both of us on this movie was Nitzan Mager's performance as Alice. She was amazing. When we were watching scenes with Alice in her apartment interacting with Ward, her new "fiancee", they were just chilling and really set us on edge. Most of the time we didn't even really think about the fact that we were watching a low budget independent film. The only moments that broke the spell for us were the interactions between Abigail and her friend Megan. The place where they worked never seemed real, and some of the scenes between them were stiffly acted, which we probably wouldn't have noticed had the scenes with Alice and Alex not been so stellar. There was only one over-the-top bone-head moment in the film when the P.I. hired to find Alex shows up at Alice's place and pretty much does everything stupid thing you could think of, and well...I won't ruin it. Suffice to say we were yelling at the TV.

Despite a few small hitches, we were entranced and emotionally engaged by this movie and very satisfied by how savvy it turned out to be. Once again in the face of more mindless Saw films and the endless march of bad remakes from Hollywood, this quality horror fare from Scheck and crew shows that the real contenders of the horror film genre exist in the underground -- Nobody Loves Alice is highly recommended.

Rent the film on Netflix, Blockbuster.com, or buy it at the lowest possible price directly from the film's official website at http://www.nobodylovesalice.com/.

Just a quick mention that Angeline will be signing books from 2-4 p.m. at Eerie Books for their grand opening this Saturday. Eerie Books -- in addition to horror novels -- also carries DVDs, games, comics, collectables, and art. I hope everyone in the area will come out not only to support Angeline, but also to support this store, which I hope has a long and healthy existence. They'll be giving away free books and horror movies to the first 100 people in the door, so you don't have anything to lose by coming out. Free stuff!

Here's the address and details:


Eerie Books
205 N. Ballard Street
Wylie, TX
Saturday, October 18
Angie's Signing: 2-4 p.m.
Store Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.
Phone number: 972-442-9393
Web site: http://www.eeriebooks.com/


Hope to see some familiar faces up there tomorrow.

FenCon has arrived! I will be participating on and off in the convention this weekend, as my schedule allows. Unfortunately, it couldn't happen at a worse time for me; I have three big projects on my plate -- one at work, one at school, and one personal writing project -- two of which have deadlines that will not give and require more work than it currently looks like I have time to do. Such is the chaos of my life these days. Never a dull nor idle moment.



My schedule for the convention:

Christopher Fulbright

Friday 8:00 p.m. -- What Would Cthulhu Do?
(S. Cupp, L. Donahue, C. Fulbright, T.M. Wagner, D.Duggins*)

Friday 9:00 p.m. -- Why Is This Crap Lodged in My Brain - and What Can I Do to Get it Out?
(J.K. Cheney, L. Donahue, M. White, C. Fulbright*)

Saturday 11:00 a.m. -- Reading
(C. Fulbright, K. Hutson Price)

Saturday 7:00 p.m. -- DFW HWA Dinner
Meeting at McArthur's in the Hotel

Sunday 1:00 p.m. -- Monster Mash: Who Is Really King of the Movie Monsters?
(A. Balthrop, D. Duggins, C. Fulbright, A. Martinez, S. Cupp*)

To see Angeline's schedule, please visit her blog here: angelinehawkes.

Hope to see some of you there.

Hurricane Ike has been something else. We watched CNN and FOX News till about midnight last night, as Geraldo Rivera clung like a fool to a palm tree, standing knee deep in water on the Galveston coast, debris flying by at 110 mph. What an idiot.

The center of the storm is 106 miles east of us as I write this, but we've had rain all day. Right now, it's raining sideways and the wind is blowing at about 50-60 mph. Not too bad, it's just a tropical storm now, no tornados or anything, but it was an interesting drive home from class this afternoon, especially across the seven miles or so of bridge spanning Lake Ray Hubbard into Rockwall. The traffic mist and spray and driving rain off the lake made it impossible to see. We're not going anywhere else today. As we watch the news reports from Houston and environs south, we're hoping for the best for our fellow Texans who were caught by the brunt of the storm.

I wanted to make a quick post today. I've been itching to make several posts, but time for blog posting is elusive, so hopefully this place doesn't gather too much dust.



On that note, I was excited to find this new book by Robert E. Howard in Barnes and Noble last Tuesday. Not one of the trade paperbacks being released by Del Rey, but a trade hardcover from Blackbart Books that is just plain beautiful.

The book, "...and their memory was a bitter tree..." is subtitled Queen of the Black Coast and Others by Robert E. Howard. It really has to be one of the highest quality hardcovers I've ever seen for the price: Smyth sewn binding with black and gold fabric backing, thick glossy pages with full cover Frazetta art, some full color art plus sketches from Brom, end papers including full color Hyborean Age maps by George Barr, and thick text pages with decent sized type and thoughtful layout -- all of this makes this book the crown jewel of Conan books for the person who doesn't have hundreds of dollars to spend on the now out-of-print Wandering Star editions. Really, it's the Robert E. Howard book I've been waiting for. A full size hardcover with easy to read type, full color glossy Frazettas, a durable library binding and dust jacket ... all for just $25.00 (and only $16.50 at Amazon as of this posting)!

I know that some folks in REH fandom have written some scathing letters to the publisher due to the introduction by Arnie Fenner. I've only had time to skim it, so I can't render any detailed analysis, but at a glance it's speckled with some full color graphics of Weird Tales covers and photos of Howard, and my initial impression is that the intro does seem to have a bit of a Dark Valley Destiny sort of bent to it (and we all know how most REH folks feel about L. Sprague deCamp's biographical effort). It's not very complimentary to Howard on a personal level, overall -- not that it needs to be -- but some have taken offense at the content of the forward, which isn't the slightest bit flattering in its albeit brief shadetree psycho-analysis of the author.



That said, the majority of the content is very good, of course, because the tales are all Conan stories by Howard himself, including "Queen of the Black Coast," "Shadows in the Moonlight," "A Witch Shall be Born," "The Devil in Iron," "The People of the Black Circle," "Shadows in Zamboula," "Red Nails," and "Jewels of Gwahlur." It includes an afterword by none other than H.P. Lovecraft, a memorial to his friend and correspondant that Lovecraft wrote after Howard's suicide in 1936. Rounding out this fine package are three poems by Howard, "The Singer in the Mist," "Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die," and "Recompense."

All in all, this is a book that a collector can proudly display next to the collector's edition Lord of the Rings that came out in the mid-90s in cloth and leather bound editions, with similar quality production and full color glossy art leafs. I'm happy to finally have an affordable book that showcases Howard's work on my shelf as it should be -- thoughtfully designed, heavy, durable, and darkly beautiful. Kudos to Blackbart Books.

So, tonight is supposed to be writing night, but the kids across the road are running around in the street like insane monkeys in an episode of Wild Kingdom. That and I placed two phone calls to Verizon FIOS to get a digital converter for our bedroom TV and let's just say it was a customer service nightmare of particular note, including the cherry-on-top-Loop-of-Stupidity I encountered on their Web site. If I get that damn converter thing, it'll be a miracle. A note to the kids across the street: if you're reading this, I've been drinking and might go outside and shoot some guns later.

While I'm here doing this instead of real work (it's okay, I've been good for several months, I can take a night off, with the first draft of a new novel finished and ready for revision), I thought I'd post a note about something that's irritated me about a recent purchase.

Roadrunner Records, God bless them, has been re-releasing a bunch of "classics" from their vault for several years now. One of them is a two-album deal from the band Pestilence, including Consuming Impulse and Testimony of the Ancients. I never listened to them back in the day, since they came around in the very late 80s and early 90s, a few years after I got into that brand of music. Not that I'm here to brag, but one of my meager claims to fame is that I was there in the golden age of thrash metal, when Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax, Megadeth, Possessed, and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost were new kids on the block, and Testament, Death Angel, Sepultura, Dark Angel, Bathory, and Death were close on their heels. About the time Malevolent Creation and Bolt Thrower came along, death/black/speed metal was old news, and I didn't feel a pressing need at the time to listen to the 3rd and 4th waves of metal onslaught. In recent years, I've decided to catch up on some of the stuff I missed. Pestilence was on the list.

That's the long way to my point, but like I said I've had a drink or two, so indulge me.

So I'm listening to Pestilence and reading the liner notes and an article written in the new edition of these two gems when I come across a line that raises my hackles.

"With the coming of the second album (Testimony) the vocals took on a more Chuck from Death sound" and "the band used a large amount of keyboards...to give the listener some of the earliest earshots of what would go on to be modern day black metal."

So, okay, here's my problem. Not that Pestilence doesn't deserve some serious props for their very good death metal albums released in the Roadrunner "from the vault" series, but that once again, another writer has failed to mention the true fathers of death metal and the sounds that even Chuck Schuldiner of Death subscribed to: Possessed.

It seems that because Death was named, well, Death, that everyone accepts the term death metal derived from them. Not true: the term death metal derived from a song called (surprise!) "Death Metal" off Possessed's 1985 album Seven Churches, much like the term black metal derived from the 1982 Venom album, Black Metal. Additionally, Possessed's 1986 album Beyond the Gates used keyboards in some of its songs, truly some of the first music of its type to do so, undoubtedly leading Pestilence to experiment with those sounds in their 1991 offering Testimony of the Ancients, followed in 1994 by Norwegian black metal kings, Emperor, in their full length debut In the Nightside Eclipse.

Possessed was truly one of the most influential bands of its time, even though they released only two albums and The Eyes of Horror EP to finish things off and call it a day in 1987. To put a final nail in the "Which came first: Death or death metal?" argument, 1987 is the same year that Death released their debut album, the seminal death metal masterpiece Scream Bloody Gore, which had a lyrical sound so similar to early Possessed the songs could have been sung by Jeff Becerra himself. You might have thought it was a new Possessed album except that Death's music was so much more melodic and better orchestrated. Death had certainly upped the ante for the genre, but they weren't doing anything radically new.

Look, I don't harbor any ill will toward any of these other bands. I love them all and appreciate their contributions to my audial enjoyment over the years. I'd just like to see Possessed get the credit they deserve for pioneering the death metal sound. Come on folks, do me a favor and throw an aging metal head a bone.

And if you can do anything about Verizon customer service, or the kids across the street while you're at it....

I've listed a bunch of books on eBay to offset some of my comic book purchases this weekend.

On the auction block: eleven books from the Robert E. Howard CONAN Lancer series, lots of Lovecraft books including FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH and nine other books, a smattering of VHS horror movies, and some As New SF/F paperbacks.

Check out my auctions here: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZchfulbright

Thanks for looking!

BTW - I'll try to post a Conestoga report some time this week. Since The Man has blocked my access to all "social networking sites," I find myself with little time to post to LiveJournal. When I'm home and in front of the computer I am usually writing, and too tired when finished to do anything else. That's good for making progress on the new novel, but not so good for ... well, social networking.

Angeline and I will be at Conestoga in Tulsa just about a week and a half from now. We're looking forward to seeing some friends and meeting some new folks. This is a con I've been to just a couple of times in the past six or seven years. It's small but friendly, will hopefully be productive, and I like Tulsa -- it has a great used bookstore, an excellent comic/toy store, a good Indian food restaurant, and is on average about 5 to 10 degrees cooler than here in the summer. These are good things.

All of our scheduled panels are on Saturday, so it's likely we'll scoot out on Sunday and experience some of what the city has to offer in the way of shopping, dining, culture, and what-not. It seems like every time I take vacation days from work we're doing a convention and I come back exhausted. I'd like for us to have some time together alone when we get out of town for a change. We'll see how it goes.

Details on the con:



July 25-27, 2008 - Conestoga 12, a fan-run speculative fiction convention, will be held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Guests include Diana Gabaldon, Stephen Hickman, and toastmaster Gordon Van Gelder. HWA members appearing as guests include Rachel Caine, Deborah LeBlanc, Steven E. Wedel, Angeline Hawkes, and me.

For those who have an interest, here are our schedules:

Christopher Fulbright
Sat 10:00 AM - Salon F, "Oh, the horror" Moderator
Sat 11:00 AM - Room TBD, Reading (Dark Fantasy) Chairman
Sat 01:00 PM - Salon G, "Collaborating: The care and feeding of your partner"

Angeline Hawkes
Sat 11:00 AM - Salon F, "Religion in Fantasy & Horror"
Sat 01:00 PM - Salon G "Collaborating: The care and feeding of your partner"
Sat 03:00 PM - Signing Table

The DFW HWA will have a dinner gathering at Conestoga in Tulsa, OK on Saturday evening, July 26, tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. We will wait near the couches just outside the main entrance to the dealer's room until everyone is assembled, and then leave from there. HWA members, plus those with an interest in joining HWA are invited to attend.