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Happy Monday, BDH!

A couple of quick updates to start the week.

First, for everyone asking about purchasing the commissioned This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me artwork:

If you are looking for prints of the character art, Helena Elias’ store is open and she has a special Ilona Andrews page.

Luisa Preissler announced that her store will soon be carrying character art cards, and she showed the proofs on Instagram yesterday.

If you’d like to know when they go on sale, please sign up for Luisa’s newsletter here.

Candice Slater is also currently working through options for the Kair Toren art, which you can admire here.

If you want prints and cards and probably calendars, please buy them from the artists directly. The Ilona Andrews merch store will focus instead on book tie-in items, such as vellum inserts meant to go into the hardcover, bookmarks, and similar goodies.

And speaking of goodies, here is the Zoom recording from Saturday, where Ilona and Gordon answered your questions about This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

If you would like to use the transcript function on YouTube, click on the video description or the three-dot menu, and select Show transcript.

Thank you all for the incredible enthusiasm, the thoughtful questions, and the general release-week chaos. The BDH has been in magnificent form.

The post Art & Zoomies first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

LitStack Spots Ali Smith Here are a few other titles Litstack spotted and are adding…

The post Spotlight on “Glyph” by Ali Smith appeared first on LitStack.

Is that…MY TAIL?! AAAAAAAAAH!

…the everloving hell?

She does that. Don’t worry about it.

I kinda am.

Who’s the new guy?

I have queeestions.

I reinstalled Elder Scrolls Online, which is a rabbit hole I jump down periodically. I usually do side, and zone, quests. But when I decide to follow some of the main storyline, I am delighted to come across John Cleese’s Sir Cadwell. He is the a rather mad soul shriven who guides the characters in Cleese’s inimitable style. Every scene with Cleese is fun, and he also plays a part in one of the large DLCs.

Here’s a short ‘official’ video on the creation of the character. I think you’ll get the feel of this erratic character. Includes Cleese talking about it.

It’s a blessing he is still with us; active at 86.

Some folks are aware of his The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (discussed at the end of this post). I set out to write about that awful Sherlock Holmes parody movie. I wrote this essay instead. And ten years later, I still have no interest in re-watching and writing an essay on Strange Case. It is just too dumb.

However, I do think folks who like Cleese, should give a watch to a better Sherlock Holmes project he did four years before Strange Case. It’s out there on YouTube. And while it’s not brilliant, I found it entertaining Cleese. And I will always watch something John Cleese, which makes me smile. He’s genuinely a feel-good kind of guy. So, read on about Elementary: My Dear Watson.

John Cleese is best known, of course, as the sardonic Q opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Die Another Day. He’s not as well remembered for his role in the British comedy troupe, Monty Python. I’m kidding!

On January 18, 1973, the final episode of Python’s third season aired. It was Cleese’s last episode with the group, which would continue on for one more season. That very same day, Cleese’s next project aired – Comedy Playhouse Presents: Elementary, My Dear Watson. It was produced by Barry Took, who had brought the Python members together.

I’m going to tackle the Achilles heel (really, it’s more like the entire torso) of this show, the plot: or rather, the lack of one. It’s barely a story. Try to stick with me, and no, I’m not leaving things out: it really goes like this…

SPOILER – THIS IS THE STORY. YOU CAN GO WATCH FIRST, OR KEEP READING.

The show opens in a room full of dead lawyers, slumped over their desks, each with a knife in the back. Thus the show’s subtitle, The Strange Case of the Dead Solicitors. A policeman and a secretary exchange what are intended to be witty comments, which immediately brings the lame laugh track to the viewer’s attention.

The scene switches to Baker Street where Cleese (an acceptable looking Holmes) is dining with his Watson, well played by William Rushton. Though there is no audience laughter, I enjoyed Watson’s comment about frequently neglecting his practice to dash off on one of Holmes’ hair-brained schemes, while still living comfortably.

After asking Watson what year it is (he looks at his watch and replies, “1973”), Holmes summons a cab, which pulls up to the curb: it’s a horse-drawn hansom and Holmes makes a reference to Doyle, letting us know that they know they’re in a television show. There’s more of that.

Holmes has been summoned by a Lady Cynthia to a country estate where the old family curse of a deadly rattlesnake has started up again. The snake is killing various animals. What?

But en route, Holmes and Watson are pulled into the case of the dead solicitors. While they are pushing a desk with a dead solicitor from London to Manchester to the studios of the tv game show, Call My Bluff, (the actual cast appears and lampoons their own show) Fu Manchu gets into the act.

I’m not making this up!

Fu Manchu ends up with the desk and body, while Holmes gets confused over the Euston and Paddington train stations and he and Watson end up riding back and forth all over England.

Holmes, annoyed with his deerstalker, throws it out of the train window and it lands on the dead solicitor being pushed along by Fu Manchu and his henchman. They fear Holmes is on to them! Inexplicably, Holmes had sewed the letter with Lady Cynthia’s address into the hat, and now they won’t be able to find her house. So, they go back and look for it. Um…

Animals keep dying at Lady Cynthia’s estate (all in the same room…) and she fears her son will be the next victim. Her frantic calls to the police provide no help. The train mishaps have resulted in Holmes and Watson spending three days en route and finally her son is bitten and dies. Soon, all her animals and son dead, we see her menaced by a rattlesnake as she tells it a story to try and distract it.

Holmes makes a wild series of deductions with no logic whatsoever, yells “There’s not a moment to lose” and rushes out the door: falling right off the train.

In a full-leg cast, arm in a cast, and head wrapped from the fall, Holmes and Watson confront Frank Potter, a reformed piano tuner who is actually Moriarty in Elizabethan drag. There’s something about piano tuning, which is the offense that put Potter in jail. Piano tuning is a crime? They convince Potter/Moriarty to come with them to help tune a piano. I don’t get it.Of course, you can tuna piano, but you can’t tuna fish (little classic rock joke for you).

We shift to Fu Manchu, loading five crates, labeled as dead solicitors with knives in backs, onto an airplane. Lady Cynthia, on the phone with the police screams. The snake had killed her as well. Everyone there is dead.

Watson is now dressed as Cyrano De Bergerac (I think) so that all three men look ridiculous and if confronted, can pretend they’re escapees from the nearby asylum.

Moriarty gets a phone call on the way and stays behind. He’s being booked for a show at the London Palladium. The less-than-dynamic duo arrives at the airport as Manchu’s plane takes off and Watson observes that they are too late. “I think not, Watson. Reverse the film!”

And yes, the film runs backwards, the evil doctor backs right into a police van, which takes him away, and the case is solved. Uh huh. The Prime Minister goes on television, congratulating the film editors for saving the day, under instructions from Holmes.

At Baker Street, Holmes tells Watson that Frank Potter/Moriarty had nothing to do with the case. He was a red herring to fill in time so that the script wouldn’t be five minutes short. Watson drinks from a glass in each hand, tells Holmes that he never ceases to amaze him and Holmes says, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And the show ends.

END SPOILER

John Cleese clearly knows sketch comedy. And he was just wrapping up his brilliant run in Monty Python. But a thirty-minute collection of “bits” with a practically non-existent plot doesn’t really make a television show. I’ll let you watch it to find out why Fu Manchu was trying to get five dead solicitors, slumped over their desks with knives in their backs, to China. Hint – they are presents.

Some things aren’t funny, or just don’t make sense, or both. Why is Jack the Ripper constantly calling Scotland Yard to make a statement? At his house, Moriarty makes a lewd comment and shoos out a blonde wearing only a towel. Watson leers at her as she goes up the stairs and he has to be called in to the other room by Holmes.

However, there is some humor in this show and it’s worth watching. Holmes’ observation of a particular type of mud found on Manchu’s elbow is an amusing dig at Doyle’s penchant for that type of thing. I think that Watson’s comments are among the best lines throughout the show and Rushton is a pretty good parody Watson without being a bumbling fool.

Josephine Tewson, playing Lady Cynthia, appeared in another Holmes parody. She played the nun in the miserable Peter Cook/Dudley Moore Hound of the Baskervilles. THAT was a dog.

It isn’t much of a surprise that the show did not get picked up. I can’t imagine what they would do on a weekly basis when they couldn’t even come up with a plot for a thirty-minute pilot. Two years later, Cleese would star in the short-lived but much funnier Fawlty Towers. Which he is working on a new play about, with his daughter.

Elementary, My Dear Watson, was not Cleese’s only attempt at spoofing Holmes, though it was his best. In 1975, he played Arthur Sherlock Holmes (the detective’s grandson) in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It. The only reason I don’t call it the worst Holmes-related film ever, is because I’m not sure whether the aforementioned Cook/Moore Hound deserves the title, or if Strange Case (next week’s topic) does. Or if that should be given to Will Ferrell’s Holmes and Watson (ugh). Maybe Strange Case was funny for its time (Henry Kissinger is gunned down by Arabs at the beginning), but I don’t think I laughed once, the entire movie.

Elementary, My Dear Watson does have enough funny bits to make it worthwhile. And as I said, John Cleese has a way of making you smile, even if if later you think ‘That was odd.” But as a thirty-minute comedy show, it came up short of making me want to see more. But I’ll watch this over Strange Case, any day. And I did smile as I re-watched it for this post. It is fun.

Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.

The Barbarian Swordsmen (Star, 1981). Cover by Gino D’Achille

The Barbarian Swordsmen, edited by Sean Richards, Star publishers, a British press, 1981, cool cover by Gino D’Achille. A collection of Sword & Sorcery (S&S) tales that likely wouldn’t exist except for Robert E. Howard.

I couldn’t find out much about Mr. Richards but Toby Hooper revealed to me that Richards has been reported as a pseudonym for Peter Haining and that appears to be true. His intro here doesn’t reveal anything.

Quest for Fire (20th Century-Fox, December 16, 1981)

The stories are:

“The War of Fire,” by J. H. Rosny. An exciting excerpt from The Quest for Fire, which was also made into a fine movie. J. H. Rosny was a pseudonym, often used by two brothers, Joseph Henri Boex, and Justin Boex. From what I understand, though, Quest for Fire was written solely by Joseph, the elder. The movie does a good job distilling the book but the writing is still enjoyable. We have a primitive cave man named Naoh, what we’d call a Cro-magnon, whose tribe loses its fire. Since they can’t make fire, only maintain it, they have to seek out fire from another tribe, and Naoh and his companions have many adventures doing so, including a battle with Neanderthals. That’s the piece featured in this book.

“The Sword of Welleran,” by Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany, an Irishman, is well known to fans of S&S. His fantasy work certainly skated the edge of that genre and he helped develop some of the tropes that later became important. He is said to have influenced Tolkien. His work is rather slowly paced and turgid for modern readers but I find it enjoyable. “The Sword of Welleran” is one of his most approachable tales.

Art for “The Tower of The Elephant” by Mark Schultz

“The Tower of the Elephant,” by Robert E. Howard. I consider this the strangest of the Conan stories. It certainly breaks ranks with most of the other Cimmerian tales in that there’s a strong SF element. I was much taken with it when I first read it, years ago.

“Brachan the Kelt,” by Robert E. Howard. Howard wrote a number of stories involving reincarnation, and several featured the character James Allison, a modern man capable of remembering his past lives. This is a short piece and definitely not fully developed, but it shows the power of Howard’s prose. Allison recalls being a wandering warrior from a time before history was recorded, when the first white-skinned tribes were entering Europe. As Brachan, he must defeat a beast that makes one think of the yeti.

Jirel of Joiry (Ace Books, November 1982). Cover by Stephen Hickman

“Jirel Meets Magic,” by C. L. Moore. Catherine Moore was just a superb writer and her stories of Jirel of Joiry are outstanding S&S tales. Beautifully written and emotionally charged. Jirel is one of the very first fire-tressed female warriors of fantasy fiction. This is not my favorite of the Jirel stories but it’s close. Moore was influenced by Howard, though most of the influence was in subject matter rather than story effects.

“Spawn of Dagon,” by Henry Kuttner. Kuttner married C. L. Moore and after that they mostly wrote as a team. I think Moore was the better writer but Kuttner was more prolific and very professional. Kuttner alone wrote a series of tales about Elak, a prince of Atlantis, and this is one of the best of those. Elak was certainly influenced by Conan but is his own character.

Weird Tales, July 1937, featuring cover story “The Thief of Forthe” by Clifford Ball. Cover by Virgil Finlay

“The Thief of Forthe,” by Clifford Ball. Ball was another writer strongly influenced by REH, which is clearly seen in this tale. It was still well written and enjoyable. Apparently, Ball created an earlier character who was essentially a pastiche Conan, but “Rald,” the “Thief of Forthe” shows some originality. I haven’t read much of Ball’s work but will seek out more.

“The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar” by Fritz Leiber. Leiber is another writer who was influenced by Howard as to subject matter, but who in no way appears to be an REH clone. His characters and settings are unique and there is a lot more humor in Leiber’s tales than in the Conan stories. Leiber’s characters are Fafhrd, a giant of a man, a barbarian warrior, and the Gray Mouser, a dark and slender thief. They are unlikely friends but friends they are. All these stories are enjoyable.

Appendix is: The Man Who Influenced Robert E. Howard. This is an excerpt from a letter written from Robert Howard to H. P. Lovecraft in which Howard indicates his admiration for the poetry of Alfred Noyes.

Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a look at The Mighty Sword & Sorcery Anthologies of Hans Stefan Santesson. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.

The fifteenth annual Women in SF&F Month continues with three new guest posts coming up this week, starting with a new one tomorrow. Thank you so much to last week’s guests for another wonderful week of essays! The new guest posts will be going up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week, but before announcing the upcoming schedule, here are last week’s essays in case you missed any of them. All guest posts from April 2026 can be found here, […]

The post Women in SF&F Month: Week 4 Schedule & Week in Review first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

 I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Two Truths and A Lie by Mark Stevens

Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Series: Book 2 of Flynn Martin

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (April 7, 2026)

Length: 459 pages

Author Information: Website

After having such an enjoyable time with Mark Stevens’s No Lie Lasts Forever, I went into the sequel Two Truths and a Lie expecting more of that same sharp cat-and-mouse tension. The good news is, I still received an engaging thriller. That said, this one didn’t quite hit me in the same way as the first book. While it’s still a great follow-up with plenty to like, I just think it was missing some of what made the original feel so tight and suspenseful.

The story picks up with the return of series protagonist Flynn Martin, a Denver journalist who finds herself back in the spotlight following her role in capturing the PDQ Killer, the man who terrorized the city fifteen years ago by murdering three women. At least this time, she’s making headlines for the right reasons, earning back the trust of her employer. But that high doesn’t last long. When a family of four disappears under suspicious circumstances, Flynn seizes the opportunity to prove herself, digging into what at first looks like a tragic but routine missing persons case. However, it quickly becomes clear that there’s far more to the story.

At the same time, Flynn begins receiving unsettling messages, written in a way that immediately brings the PDQ Killer to mind, even though he’s supposedly behind bars and no longer a threat. Or is he? The possibility that she’s being watched again leaves her fearing for her family’s safety, and that personal threat adds a new sense of urgency to the investigation. As Flynn follows the trail, the case begins to branch in multiple directions, pulling in connections to a powerful local church, whispers of corruption, and a web of secrets that may all be connected.

Much like the first book, what continues to work really well here is Stevens’ writing style. The prose is clean and direct, built for speed. It makes for another easy, bingeable read. The newsroom angle remains a strong hook, and I like how the case plays out like a police procedural while approaching it from a different perspective through Flynn’s role. Not being in law enforcement does limit her in some ways, but at the same time, her position as a journalist opens doors and gives her access to sources she might not otherwise reach. The high-octane, punchy pacing highlights the need for instant action as Flynn chases downs leads and puts the pieces of the puzzle together, giving the story a sharp edge.

That said, the structure of this sequel feels noticeably busier. There is simply so much happening all at once, it’s not always clear which thread is the main one, so the end result feels a bit scattered. Compared to the first book, where both the central conflict and the villain were sharply defined, this one comes across as more of a jumble. While it does keep things unpredictable and opens up a wider web of possibilities, this approach also ends up diluting some of the tension, especially when the antagonist and the story’s direction feel less focused.

Flynn herself remains a compelling protagonist, but frequently still manages to get under my skin. More often than not, she ends up being her own worst enemy, and it’s a lesson she’s failed to learn since the first book. And even though I understand it comes with the territory of her job, some of her methods for chasing information also leave a bad taste in my mouth. There are plenty of moments where her decisions feel frustrating, especially when she’s clearly worried about her own safety and her son’s, yet in the very next scene, she’s charging straight into another dangerous situation instead of pulling back. Yes, it creates tension, but it also makes it harder to fully get behind her choices, leaving her character caught somewhere between being admirable and idiotic.

Still, I had a good time with this one. Overall, Two Truths and a Lie is a solid if slightly less focused follow-up that continues Flynn Martin’s story in an engaging and meaningful way. Where the first book felt like a tight psychological showdown, you might find this one to be a broader, more chaotic mystery. Not necessarily a bad trade-off, but it does sometimes feel like it’s juggling a few too many ideas at once. Even so, while it may not reach the heights as No Lie Lasts Forever, it remains a worthwhile sequel that keeps you invested in both the characters and the world.

More on The BiblioSanctum:
Review of No Lie Lasts Forever (Book 1)

The House!

After what seems like strange aeons of dreaming about it, Mark Finn, Jason Waltz, and  I (Adrian Simmons) have pulled the trigger on running an in-person Sword & Sorcery writing workshop.  Added bonus, we’re holding it in the heart of S&S history, Cross Plains Texas, Robert E. Howard’s home during his days of creating characters like Conan, Soloman Kane, Brikenridge Elkins, El Borak, among others.

Our workshop will take place during the fortieth anniversary of the first Robert E. Howard Days gathering, and not only will help writers level up their skills, but serve as a fundraiser for necessary repairs to the Howard House.

The 2026 Emerging Writers Workshop is a one-day event designed to help provide advice, answers, and encouragement to new and upcoming writers of Howard’s genres — from historical fiction to weird Westerns to sword and sorcery. We won’t be doing poetry this year, but this is the first of what we hope to be a regular component of Howard Days, and perhaps we’ll be able to include verse in later years.

Robert Howard’s room, and desk, where the magic happened!

This will be an in-person affair, happening Thursday, June 11th, the day before Howard Days officially kicks off.  The plan is to have some short lectures, a bit of Q& A about S&S, but lion’s share of the time time will be spent in critiquing submissions by breaking into smaller groups for in-depth discussions.

We realize that there are plenty of writing workshops, but the reality is that S&S and its related sub-genres are often the odd-swordsman/woman-out.  Sometimes it is waaaay out.

While the number of S&S and adventure fiction venues has grown massivlely in the last decade, they are in the business of publishing stories, not helping writers get better at their craft.  The cold reality is that you already have to be a good writer to get any feedback (and even then, given time constraints…), otherwise you get a form rejection letter.  Without that editorial feedback, you’re mostly groping in the dark.

That’s the strongest parts of the Emerging Writers Workshop, you aren’t going to get ‘writers group’ feedback, you’re going to be buffeted by the cold winds of Valhalla from three editors looking at your work with their editor-eyes.

The Cottonwood Cafe, where our magic will happen!

And who are we to pass judgement upon your writing?  Behold!

Mark — representing with the ‘stash and beard

Mark is an author, an editor, and a pop culture critic. His writing can be found in various books, anthologies, comics, and elsewhere. When he’s not waxing passionate about popular culture or Robert E. Howard, Finn writes stories, publishes RPG zines, and sporadically appears on various podcasts.

Jason, with the classic goatee

Jason M. Waltz – Long-time reader, writer, publisher, facilitator and promoter of the heroic. THE MAIN ROGUE of Rogue Blades Entertainment (published popular heroic anthologies such as Return of the Sword and Neither Beg Nor Yield) & Rogue Blades Foundation (published award-winning REH titles Hither Came Conan and Robert E. Howard Changed My Life). Host of author interviews @ ’24 in 42.’ Connect via https://linktr.ee/jasonmwaltz

 

Adrian, sportin’ the chin scruff

And me?  I’m a founding member and primary editor of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly ezine (heroicfantasyquarterly.com), have produced 67 issues and four best of anthologies.  I’ve  had fiction published at Tales from the Magician’s Skull, Savage Realms, and Swords and Larceny.  Some of you here may remember me from my various reviews and musings here at Black Gate.

We’re already about 1/3 of the way to our membership cap (although there has been some talk of an online option, but those dragons have yet to hatch).

The cost is $50, and the deadline to get your work in is Sunday, May 10th.

We discussed the workshop in some detail during a livestream of the Robert E. Howard Foundation.  We talk about the workshop starting at the 6:30 mark.  Check it out to get a feel for the vibe.

Full details can be found here.

Favorite Shakespeare quotes shared during the month of April are a great way to celebrate…

The post Favorite Shakespeare Quotes – Love Letters, Sonnets, Insults, and Curses appeared first on LitStack.

So: what do holy relics, Neanderthals, UFO researchers and secret societies all have in common? They’re all in the latest book by Douglas Preston! Does the name sound familiar? Douglas has been a consistent best-seller writer since the mid-1990’s, perhaps best known for writing nearly 30 crime fiction novels with Lincoln Child, although he has…

It is great to hear everything is working out smoothly.Lets hope the edits you need to do just superficial. Like you said your half way through book 5 lets get cracking on the rest of the book(1st draft). Keep up the fantastic work

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Tesia Tsai! Her young adult fantasy novel released earlier this week, Deathly Fates, is described as a “a sweeping debut inspired by the Chinese folk practice of necromancy…perfect for fans of Descendant of the Crane, The Bone Shard Daughter, and A Magic Steeped in Poison.” I’m happy she’s here today to share about the women she writes in “The Fate of the Eldest Daughter.” About Deathly Fates: A sweeping debut inspired by the Chinese folk […]

The post Women in SF&F Month: Tesia Tsai first appeared on Fantasy Cafe.

This is all good news!

This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by T. Thorn Coyle, Ron Collins, Darcy Pattison, Anthea Sharp, and ten more great writers. Everyone’s book is an exclusive. That’s right. Everything in the bundle is exclusive to the bundle, including my book.

So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. If you don’t want a deal on the ebook or if you only read print, then you can always preorder the book on various retailer sites starting at the end of May. The new edition will release on July 14.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post appeared on my Patreon page in October of 2025, and is one of the early chapters in the book.

 

GETTING LOST IN THE WORDS

From 2025

This past week, I finished the largest Fey book I’ve written to date. It is the fifth book in my side series on the Qavnerian Protectorate…and it ended up at 240,000 words long. I trimmed about 50,000 words out of it, and wrote the scenes that I missed. (Mostly the validation, because I always skip the validation in my first pass.) I figured the book was long because of how I wrote it. I dabbled at it during the two years of crisis that we endured at the business. For a while, I gave the book up entirely because I simply couldn’t concentrate on a story that big. That was when I wrote some of the novellas that came out this year, as well as a novel that will appear in late 2026.

My mind was trending long, I think, because I didn’t want to keep coming up with new things. I didn’t have the brain space for that.

I also found that I couldn’t make any decisions while still in the thrall of that huge, gigantic, super-sized novel. I wasn’t in the position to decide what I would do next. I’m going to figure that out in the next few days.

But some of the small things I meant to do included typing in about 6,000 words that Mick Herron wrote in the middle of his Slow Horses novel Bad Actors. He wrote a scene filled with mayhem that stretched over a couple of square miles of London and had at least four main viewpoint characters. (If you want to know what scene, it’s the one that more or less culminates with the iron and the bus, as well as a brick to the head.)

When I first read the thing, two years ago now, I became aware at the very end of the section that I not only had a feeling of mayhem, but that I had understood each part of the action. When a writer uses a technique that isn’t in my writing toolbox, I figure out how that technique works. Sometimes I can eyeball it, but occasionally, I type it into my own computer using my word program and my set-up, so I can see how it all works on the page.

It took two days’ writing sessions to do the typing, partly because I stopped to give my wrists a break and also because I would look up any words I didn’t know. As a reader, I skipped over the British slang that I was unfamiliar with, choosing to get it out through context, but as a writer, I wanted to know what he was doing.

So louring, cack-handed, and a whole bunch of other words entered my consciousness and, in the case of louring, changed my perspective on a moment in the scene that I was typing in.

Usually, when I type in another writer’s work, it’s a serious struggle. I want to add commas or punctuation or paragraphs or different words. Aside from the British slang, I did not feel the need to add or change words, but I did realize that he uses punctuation very differently than I do. There are a lot more colons in his work than there are in mine, and not as many commas. The only quibble I had, in fact, was that he wouldn’t use a comma in something like “For a moment he was thinking of his wife…” I would add a comma after “moment.” And he wouldn’t use an ellipsis plus a period for the end of a sentence. I don’t know if that was deliberate, a British punctuation thing, or personal preference. It caught me every time.

But the one thing I did note was this: I have been deep in the words in my own writing. Because life has thrown me a lot of lemons in the past year, I would catch them and consider them before making the lemonade. In other words, my critical voice was and is on very high right now.

Sometimes as I worked on the biggest Fey novel to ever come out of my computer, I would stop and stare at the words and think them very plain. That’s not a normal thought for me—or it wasn’t before this past year or two.

As I typed in Herron’s section, I noted that I reached the “words are plain” stage somewhere around 3,000 words in. His words were plain and sometimes repetitive. There were copy editing issues as well, one or two misspellings (not British spellings, but actual misspellings) and a few missing hyphens that my eye caught while I was working out his technique.

I had to pause and consider that moment, though. By putting his words into my format, I hit the same “these words are plain” place I hit in my own writing. Which meant that critical voice was not doing its job and looking at the technique. It was critiquing the words used instead of the effect those words had on the reader.

Copy editors make this error a lot. I train copy editors and have done so for decades now. The traditional publisher for my Grayson books in the 1990s used my books to test copy editors. If I got a heavy hand, the copy editor didn’t get hired. My Grayson books, like Herron’s Slough House series, are voice heavy. If the copy editor missed that, and put the book into proper English with traditional punctuation, they had no right to be called a copy editor at all.

The copy editor’s job is to find actual mistakes (misspellings, inadvertently repeated details, misnaming characters) rather than “clean up” some established writer’s punctuation. And copy editors who are harsher on new writers will often strip those writers of the very things that make their voice strong.

I can’t imagine the discussion Soho Crime had early on with Herron’s copy editors. He breaks every single rule of grammar and punctuation on purpose and does it to make a point in the story.

For example, I noted in his latest book, Clown Town, that in another mayhem scene, one character’s point-of-view section was usually one paragraph long and just a single sentence. I slowly realized that single sentence extended over many sections and many pages. Every time we were in that character’s point of view, there was a lot of punctuation, and not a bit of it was an actual period.

The period arrived at the end of the character’s point-of-view section in that mayhem scene…and I realized (because of how I read) that the character was dead. Herron played with that idea (are they really dead?) for the next twenty pages, and most readers would have missed the period at the end of the character’s section. But I didn’t. (I had the same problem in the book Silence of the Lambs when Thomas Harris has Hannibal Lector escape a well-guarded facility. Harris used an odd phrase, a strange verb, and a long sentence in the middle of a gigantic paragraph. The odd phrase from such a careful writer caught me up short. So I went backwards, looking to see if I’d missed anything else.

And yep, I had. I knew exactly how Lector escaped pages before Harris wanted me to. Most readers didn’t catch it until Harris did a big reveal. And then they would go back and see the odd phrase. I saw it going in.

Those things that excellent writers do out of their subconscious as they’re in the moment are things that a copy editor would “fix.” I can imagine that a novice (to Herron’s work) copy editor adding periods throughout those character sections—and ruining them.

The best copy editors read the book they’re editing for enjoyment first, so that they will see the author’s intent long before they start “fixing mistakes.” Most modern copy editors don’t do that at all, which is why you’ll hear Dean tell you that you don’t need a copy editor. He’s right: better to let some mistakes through than muck up the voice.

I hire and fire a lot of copy editors even now because I have a tendency in my fiction writing to repeat myself. Some of that comes because I write out of order. So I might actually introduce a character for the first time when I write chapter 45, but chapter 45 might have been the very first chapter I ever wrote. Then, later, I might write chapter 7, where the character appears for the reader for the first time and I’ll write the same description (often in the same language without checking back) again. And maybe I’ll worry that I hadn’t described the character when I get to chapter 15, and I’ll write the same description again.

I need someone to find that stuff. What’s amazing to me is that the words-only, rules-only copy editors never find the repeated information. Or the silly stuff, like a character putting on a hat in chapter 27 and then putting on a different hat six pages later without taking off the first hat.

That’s what’s valuable about copy editors. Not fixing the grammar, but fixing the goofy stuff. On the latest book which will appear in 2026, the other book I wrote during the crisis, I changed the name of one of the main characters but never did a search and replace. So occasionally, his name goes back and forth with one letter different. The very good copy editor that I have caught that. None of my first readers did—and neither did I.

In storytelling, the words are tools. Punctuation is also a tool. Paragraphing is a tool.

The rules are there for beginners. Storytellers need to have a huge toolbox, and they need to learn how to use those tools. Most writers get by with a hammer, some nails and a few screwdrivers. The best writers have finesse tools (to extend the metaphor) like a cape chisel, saw set pliers, and an egg beater drill just in case the story needs them.

And I can guarantee you that if the story does need them, the copy editor will probably not understand why they’re there—unless the copy editor is someone who actually reads and understands the story before looking at the words.

As for the rest of us—we storytellers—we need to stay out of the words and not worry about them. So what if they’re “plain”? So what if you’ve written a passive sentence? So what if they seem to lie flat on the page?

If you’re thinking those things, you’re not in the story at all. You’re in copyedit or critic mode.

Stop it.

Remember that you’re a storyteller. Not a writer. And don’t worry about the little fiddly bits. If you misspell them and the story’s compelling, your reader won’t even notice.

Just like reader me didn’t notice all the words I didn’t know in Herron’s work. I was so caught up in that mayhem scene that I went right over those unfamiliar words, and ended up thinking that the sequence was brilliant.

Because it is.

“Getting Lost in The Words” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This ebook, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

 

From Lividian Publications:

Lividian Publications is incredibly proud to announce our most ambitious undertaking ever: the Robert McCammon Library, a new hardcover series created to publish every Robert McCammon book in a unified set. Our goal is to build something lasting and worthy of McCammon’s extraordinary body of work, both for collectors who desire a definitive collection of hardcovers and for readers who want to enjoy these stories again and again for years to come.

These will be beautiful but affordable hardcovers that are Smyth-sewn like our Limited Editions, bound in cloth with hot foil stamping on the cover and spine, and printed on acid-free paper with a very reader-friendly page design.

François Vaillancourt has been commissioned as the illustrator for the entire set, giving the collection a unified look and feel. Each book will feature full-color wraparound dust jacket artwork and approximately ten black-and-white interior illustrations. As a special bonus, these hardcovers will be issued with a double-sided reversible dust jacket: one side will be printed with cover text in the style of a bookstore trade hardcover, while the other side will leave the artwork unobscured, like many of our Limited Editions. You can choose which version to display in your personal Robert McCammon Library.

There will also be an optional slipcase for each book, designed like our Limited Edition slipcases, and constructed with the same care by our master case maker.

Whenever possible, these editions will include an introduction or afterword by Robert McCammon to discuss the origins and inspirations for his writing. In addition, Mathias Clasen, the acclaimed Danish scholar of horror fiction, will contribute a scholarly essay for each book, exploring the themes of the story, the state of the world at the time the tale was written, and the work’s influence on the genre.

While these are not signed Limited Editions, Robert McCammon plans to sign copies of each book for The Alabama Booksmith and some of our Patreon supporters.

Later this year, we’ll publish the first two titles in the Robert McCammon Library, Baal and Bethany’s Sin, and then we’ll publish four more books every year after that in the order of original publication. The Night Boat, They Thirst, Mystery Walk, and Usher’s Passing are already in production for 2027. Also: our plan includes the entire Matthew Corbett series, finally published in a fully matching set.

Lividian Publications welcomes readers, collectors, and fans of the marvelous Robert McCammon to join us as we begin this monumental project. We look forward to building this incredible library with all of you.

Lividian has an FAQ page set up to answer questions about the library!

Artist Francois Vaillancourt has posted some sample images and notes on his Patreon page

Baal by Robert McCammon
Book #1 in the Robert McCammon Library
Includes an introduction by the author, artwork by
François Vaillancourt, a double-sided reversible dust
jacket, and much more!

From Lividian Publications‘s Robert McCammon Library:

Lividian Publications is incredibly proud to announce our most ambitious undertaking ever: the Robert McCammon Library, a new hardcover series created to publish every Robert McCammon book in a unified set meant for both readers and collectors alike. These will be beautiful but affordable hardcovers that are Smyth-sewn like our Limited Editions, bound in cloth with hot foil stamping on the cover and spine, and printed on acid-free paper with a very reader-friendly page design.

The debut volume is Baal, his first novel, which was originally published in 1978. This new special edition includes the complete novel, an introduction by Robert McCammon, full-color wrap-around dust jacket artwork and ten black-and-white interior illustrations by François Vaillancourt, and “When the World Goes to Hell: Apocalyptic Horror and Human Evil in Robert McCammon’s Baal” by Mathias Clasen, the acclaimed Danish scholar of horror fiction.

As a special bonus, this edition features a double-sided reversible dust jacket that represents its unique place between a trade edition and a Limited Edition. One side will be printed with cover text in the style of a bookstore trade hardcover, while the other side will leave the artwork unobscured, like most of our Limited Editions. You can choose which version to display in your personal Robert McCammon Library.

Pre-order Baal from Lividian Publications

Pre-order Baal from Alabama Booksmith (signed)

Retail Price: $65 USD (book without slipcase)
Edition: Limited Trade Hardcover (unsigned)
Publication Date: Fall 2026
Page Count: 350

Special Features:
• Full-color dust jacket artwork by François Vaillancourt
• Ten black and white interior illustrations by François Vaillancourt
• Double-sided “reversible” dust jacket
• “When the World Goes to Hell: Apocalyptic Horror and Human Evil in Robert McCammon’s Baal” by Mathias Clasen

Deluxe Production Features:
• Offset printed on an acid-free archival quality paper stock
• A fine cloth binding
• Hot foil stamping on the front cover and spine
• Smyth-sewn to create a more durable binding
• Twine head and tail bands
• High-quality endpapers

Optional Special Features:
• Custom-made slipcase stamped with hot foil and featuring a unique die-cut window can be added to your order ($35 USD)

About the Book:
A woman is ravished…
and to her a child is born…
unleashing an unimaginable evil upon the world!

And they call him BAAL in the orphanage, where he leads the children on a rampage of violence…in California, where he appears as the head of a deadly Manson-like cult…in Kuwait, where crazed millions heed his call to murder and orgy.

They call him BAAL in the Arctic’s hellish wasteland, where he is tracked by the only three men with a will to stop him: Zark, the shaman; Virga, the aging professor of theology; and Michael, the powerful, mysterious stranger.

About the Author:
Robert McCammon is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books. He’s the winner of five Bram Stoker Awards and a World Fantasy Award, and he is best known for Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour, and Boy’s Life. More recently, he has published The Five, which Stephen King called his best novel ever, and the Matthew Corbett series, a ten-book series of historical thrillers that USA Network has called “the Early American James Bond.” McCammon lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

Our store has been cloned by a scam artist. Meaning it has been copied in its entirety and reproduced elsewhere. It is down now thanks to the quick action by the registrar and vigilance of the BDH.

Unfortunately, in the age of AI it is very easy to copy sites. This will happen again.

PURCHASE ONLY FROM THE REAL STORE

At the top of this site you will see a banner that says OUR STORE.

Use ONLY that link, directly from our site.

The real store has been unlocked pending the investigation. We are super not ready to open, so the merch sales are locked for now but books are available. I will try to work on it this weekend, so we at least have something.

That thing about cloning myself – I really need to look into it.

PS: Mod R takeover!

While Ilona cracks on with somatic cell nuclear transfer, I am taking over to remind everyone there will be a:

Zoom Q&A tomorrow with Ilona and Gordon at 10:00 am Central Time

to celebrate the release of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me!

For everyone who did not manage to get a space: as always the recording will be uploaded to the IA moderator account on YouTube early next week with captions enabled.

YouTube’s own transcript function is now good enough that I won’t be posting a separate transcript this time. Spoiler discussion will be limited by House Andrews’ desire to protect us from ourselves and by the covenant of the traditional publisher contract.

See you tomorrow!

The post Fake Store first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I’m very happy for you!
I’m glad that things are going well with book #5 and (hopefully!) the edits for book #4 won’t be too much trouble.

Austin Hall

Austin Hall was born on July 27, 1880.

While working as a cowboy, Hall was asked to write a story. This led to his career as an author, writing westerns, science fiction and fantasy stories, with westerns forming the majority of his published work. A one time, Hall may have worked as a sports editor for a newspaper in San Francisco.

Following the death of Hall’s father, his mother remarried and the family appears to have moved to Ohio, in an interview published by Forrest J Ackerman in 1933, Hall claims to have attended college in Ohio and California, but no details of his academic life can be confirmed. By the time he was thirty, Hall (as well as his mother and step-father) were living back in California and Hall had married Clara Mae Stowe and they had two children, Javen and Bessie.

All-Story Weekly, 10/7/1916

His first science fiction story was “Almost Immortal,” which appeared in the October 7, 1916 issue of All-Story Weekly.

His 1919 story “The Man Who Saved the Earth” was reprinted in the first issue of Amazing Stories. Everett Bleiler describes this story as Hall’s second worst, which given Damon Knight’s opinion of Bleiler’s writing says quite a bit.

He collaborated with Homer Eon Flint on the novel The Blind Spot, which Damon Knight described in In Search of Wonder as “an acknowledged classic of fantasy…much praised…several times reprinted, venerated by connoisseurs—all despite the fact that the book has no recognizable vestige of merit. Knight enumerates his problems, not just with the novel, but with Hall’s writing, stating that hall is bereft of, among other things, style, grammar, vocabulary, observation, scientific knowledge, or ability to plot. Knight’s criticism of Hall is almost enough to make someone want to pick up one of his works to see how it could be as bad as Knight describes it.

Bleiler does not believe the story was an actual collaboration. Although Ackerman claims Hall pitched the idea to Flint and the two planned out how to work on it, Bleiler believes that Hall couldn’t come up with the middle of the novel and had Flint take over to get him over the hump.

Eventually, in 1932, eight years after Flint’s death, Hall would published a sequel to The Blind Spot, the serial The Spot of Life, in Argosy. Hall’s other science fiction, “The Rebel Soul” and “Into the Infinite” focus on the life and adventures of George Witherspoon. His The People of the Comet has Alvar, the king of the Sansars, describe his journey to a comet, which had a hollow interior in which they could live.

Although the majority of Hall’s writing appears to have been westerns, they appear to be harder to identify, although he wrote Where the West Begins and stories that appeared in Western Story Magazine.

He died on July 29, 1933 and is buried in Madronia Cemetery in Saratoga, California.

Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

Thanks for the update and good to hear that Book #5 is going so well, a little anxious that Book #4 Edits are finally going to be with you and just hope that the reason for delay wasn’t anything about the book itself!

I’m very much enjoying the series and looking forward with eager anticipation for Book #4 in November (Chapter #1 in September too?) and perhaps a bit more information on Hobbs and Joanna’s contribution in Stephen’s life?