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The Write Attitude: Doing The Work Amid The Noise
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 Jamie Ferguson, T. Thorn Coyle, Dean Wesley Smith, Robert Jeschonek and others.
Everything in this bundle is exclusive to the Storybundle, including my book. So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. The Storybundle ends in two days, so you might want to get yours now. 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. The new edition will release on in July.
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 is from February of 2025, and is in the second section of the book.
DOING THE WORK AMID THE NOISEFrom 2025
There are times in life when being a writer is hard. I don’t mean real-world hard. Real-world hard is when your job is so important that one small error means someone else dies. There are a lot of real-world hard jobs in the world, and they keep the rest of us safe and alive.
As I said in Chapter 11, entertainment is important as well. We have an obligation to help those who are doing real-world hard jobs by giving them some kind of respite at the end of their long days.
But that means we have to do the work, and the work comes out of our brains. When we’re panicked and distracted—checking the news every fifteen minutes, looking at our social media, worrying aloud with our friends about what is going to happen next—it’s difficult, if not near impossible to concentrate on our made-up worlds.
They feel so small and unimportant.
We don’t see readers enjoying our work. We have no idea that a reader will close a book and hug it, like I did a week ago when I finished Robert Crais’s latest, The Big Empty. I know that Bob is a slow writer, and I wish he wasn’t, because I would love another of his books right now.
He lives in L.A. Not only are people there dealing with the chaos that is America right now, they’re dealing with the devastating losses of many parts of their community. I suspect he’s distracted.
I know that Connie Willis is distracted because I’m following her Facebook page in which she aggregates all the news of the day. I have no idea how she finds the time to write fiction or if she even is. I hope she is.
I’m a former journalist. I love information, the more the better. But, after the election, I shut off all media. I canceled all of my major newspaper subscriptions, stopped watching everything but the weather on any news channel, and got a lot done. I needed to because of an ongoing business crisis.
But I also needed the rest.
And I knew if I didn’t figure out how to control the information that came to me, I would not write another sentence—at least in fiction.
Writing fiction, as unglamorous as it sounds, is my job. It’s what I do for a living. But it’s also what I would do if the world ended tomorrow (which has gotten closer, according to the Doomsday Clock run by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).
I make up stories. I always have. I write them down and have done that since I was in grade school.
Storytelling keeps me sane.
After the despair of the election (not shock, because I kept saying all summer [hell, all year] that this was possible, even if I wasn’t really listening to myself), I needed that quiet. I needed to accept that the world as I had known it for years would change dramatically.
How dramatically? I had—and have—no idea. This post is not about what’s going on out there in the real world. It’s changing too fast. I sat down at 1 p.m. on a Sunday, knowing that by the time I finish, more news will pour in.
It might be good; it might be bad; it might be hopeful; it might be devastating. It might be all those things at once.
It’s too much for the brain to cope with—and right now, it’s designed that way. Which is why I urge you to take care of yourself and your family first. Then take care of your community, whatever that might be, and then pick one or two or three issues to work on and be part of the solution for. If all of us do that, our differences will make sure that we will cover the entire spectrum of problems that are popping up like weeds.
Yes, I know. People are dying. I know. The situation is growing more dire by the day.
One step at a time. That’s all we can do. See above.
The problem is, then, how to corral the brain and give it enough space so that you can write.
That solution is different for each and every one of us. And it’s different each one of us as an individual at different points in our lives.
I can only give you examples from my own life.
Example #1: I got very sick when I was living on the Oregon Coast. I’m already allergic to half the world; there, we later discovered, I was living in mold and was allergic to that too. We moved to the dry desert here in Nevada just in time. I doubt I would have made it through the year otherwise.
But, I was and am a writer. I wrote through all of that, and even wrote a book about my methods for writing when I barely had enough strength to get out of bed. The book is called Writing With Chronic Illness, which will appear in a revised edition in mid-2026.
Some of the solutions in that book might work for some of you now. Doing the writing first, being happy with what you can accomplish, accepting your limits—all of those are important.
I did them as best I could there. Here, in Las Vegas, I’m healthier, although the chronic conditions do fell me more than I would like. I can get through them easier in this dry climate, so sometimes I forget what I had learned.
Example #2: Our close friend Bill Trojan died, and Dean had to handle Bill’s horribly messy estate. At the same time, my editor at one of the traditional publishing houses had a mental meltdown and spent a half an hour on the phone, screaming at me and telling me I was the worst writer on the planet.
No one treats me like that. No one. So I immediately divorced that publisher, offering to pay back the money they had invested in me and my work so that I could get the rights to my books back.
That was at least $250,000 that I would have had to pay—even though we were embroiled in the estate mess and Dean was not working on publishing and writing, due to that big problem.
My confidence was shaken, and we were in financial difficulties. I had to figure out how to write a funny novel that was still under contract.
I did, a page here and a page there. I remember sitting in my office and writing long paragraphs about how awful that editor was to get her out of my head so that I could actually finish a book that was under contract for someone else.
I did it, but shutting out the noise was almost impossible. It took concentration. It took will power. It took a daily reminder to myself that writing is supposed to be fun.
And you know what? Many days, it ended up being that way, just because of the determination.
Example #3: As many of you know, the last two or so years of my life have been filled with turmoil. Dean lost much of his eyesight, which meant we had to make some massive changes in our lives. Then, just as he was getting used to the changes, he fell on a 5K race and destroyed his right shoulder.
He couldn’t do much work. He was healing. I cared for him and, as I dug deeper into the business at our publishing company, I realized it was sick too.
We had to make drastic changes there, and I had to take over the company completely.
Which meant it got run the Kris way—lots of questions, lots of systems, lots of data, lots of procedures. The old staff buckled under the Kris method (which had not been in place since I got very ill in 2015), and within two months, they were gone…leaving problems so massive behind that those problems either had to be solved or the company had to be dissolved.
Dean and I chose solving those problems, and we had (and have) great help in doing so. These sorts of events teach you who your friends really are.
I knew, as we dug in, that I was not going to be focused on the writing. I needed to figure out how to harness that focus in a different way.
I had a novel to finish as well as short story deadlines from traditional short fiction editors. I was not going to miss those deadlines, and I needed to finish that novel.
The problem was that in this small condo, I did not have a second business office. I had to do the work on my laptop and my writing computer in my writing office.
I knew I needed help.
So I set up a challenge with other writers. I made it costly for me to lose (not just pride—which, pardon my French, fuck if I care about personal pride). I started the first challenge in December of 2023, and continued the challenges through most of 2024.
I lost a couple of times. But the challenge was the only thing that got me to the computer. Daily word count…that I had to report (and God, I hate reporting). I couldn’t fudge it for my own sake, and I didn’t.
I finished that novel, and a lot of short fiction, before September hit, and the business stuff combined with some legal matters that were all do-not-miss and I had to miss some writing days.
It irked me—and kept the writing as a focus.
Usually I don’t bring others into my writing process, but I knew I would need it in 2024. So I did it.
I continued the writing challenges into early 2025, because I knew that I needed to get back to massive novel production, and I didn’t want to lose my short story focus. I have to do both (which I have done throughout my career).
It’s not as draconian as the 2024 challenge, but my life is different now. The business has settled into a pattern. We’ve moved the main offices to Nevada, which means I have a business desk. (Yay!) And we’ve gotten through some of the mess left by the old staff, and what’s left we’re slowly wrapping our arms around.
One thing I noticed, though, in all of those crises, is that the world swirled around me, with its problems and its demands. In each of them, it felt like a massive storm pounding on the outside of my house—you know the kind: the rain is horizontal, the winds are devastating, and the view outside the windows is black and gray, with almost no visibility at all.
You just have to wait out those storms and know that when they’re over, everything will be different, but some things will still stand. There will be rebuilding. There will be heartbreak. But the sun will have come out to reveal what’s left.
In the middle of it, though, you just have to survive it and keep the important things safe.
Your writing is one of those important things. It will take effort to keep it safe. Effort on your part.
And you’ll have to figure out what it will take for you to do it. My methods might not work for you. Find what works. Realize that those things might not work in a different kind of crisis.
But you can find a way to be with yourself during these tough times.
Here are a few practical things you can do in most (not all) crises:
- Protect your safe space. For me, that’s my writing space. I couldn’t do it during this last crisis, but I managed somehow. It felt uncomfortable and reminded me yet again about the importance of having a dedicated writing computer.
- Shut off the internet. Dean uses a different computer for his internet research—one that’s just a foot or two away from his writing computer. I shut off my wi-fi, so that clicking over to the internet for research takes a conscious action, and often makes me realize that I was just heading over to distract myself. (Different strokes, y’know.)
- Set a daily writing time. Make sure your family knows what it is, and that you shouldn’t be disturbed. Try to pick a time when it’s not easy to disturb you (early mornings; late evenings)
There are so many other practical things you can do, but again, they become specific to you.
One other thing—a tough thing—is that sometimes the project you were working on when the crisis hit is not the project your creative voice needs right now. You might have to switch—something shorter, something longer, something that requires less research, something that requires a different kind of concentration.
It’s up to you.
But the key here is to remember that when you write, you’re inside and safe from the storm. It will rage around you unabated while you’re working. It’ll probably (sadly) still be there when you’re done with today’s writing session.
But you got that session done. It’s a victory.
Celebrate the tiny victories. Keep writing.
And remember, in almost every difficult time, the only way out is through.
“Doing The Work Amid The Noise” 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.
Categories: Authors
“Lammie Loves Cubby” | Fanning The Flames of Long Held Desire
Other Titles by Nora Gaskin Along with Lammie Loves Cubby, we’re definitely adding these other…
The post “Lammie Loves Cubby” | Fanning The Flames of Long Held Desire appeared first on LitStack.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Book review: Sarafina
Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
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War, as it turns out, is a terrible place to discover you don’t want to be in a war.
Three brothers (Ethan, Mason, and Archie) have this revelation during the Battle of Shiloh and do the only sensible thing available to them: they run in the opposite direction of cannon fire. Sadly, the desertion results in navigating through mud, starvation, regret and the creeping realization that survival and morality don't always gel.
When they think, all's lost, they find the house. Now, in stories, a house in the woods is rarely just a house. It is, at minimum, a decision. This one comes with a beautiful woman named Sarafina, her son (or not), huge and dangerous dogs and a general atmosphere of wrongness.
At first, it’s all very convenient, especially that the hist is welcoming, has food and is willing to share. On top of that, no one is actively trying to shoot them. WooHoo.
Ethan, who narrates like someone trying very hard to believe his own version of events, starts to notice small things. Then larger, more theological things. Meanwhile, his brothers adjust and let their inner selves (angry, violent, corrupt) act openly. Not the best choice.
I liked how Fracassi lures you in with something familiar (war is awful, men are flawed, there is a strange woman in a strange house) and then plays with it and rearranges pieces while you’re not looking. By the time you notice, you’re no longer in a war story. Or a haunted house story, for that matter. You’re somewhere worse.
The brothers aren’t likable, which is rather the point. They are what happens when you mix violence, fear, and a lifetime of bad influences and then give it all time to ferment. Ethan tries to be better, but the book suggests that trying and succeeding are not the same thing.
There’s a middle stretch where you might think you’ve figured it out. You haven’t.
In conclusion, if someone offers you food in a perfect little house in the middle of nowhere, you should at least consider the possibility that you are not the guest. Other than that, it's a great slow-burn horror story.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review
Good afterevenmorn, Readers!
This past Saturday, I headed out with a few of my martial arts students, past and present, to watch the second installment of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptations. I’m not going to lie, the draw for me was the involvement of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. Cage was never a character I played, but the retired action movie star is a fun idea for this franchise, and I will generally support anything Karl Urban does. Even when it’s bad, he’s great in it. And sometimes when it’s bad, it’s good. Ask me about my love of the 2005 film Doom one day. I never said I had great taste.
The point is, I went and saw the movie, and the short review is, I loved it (see afore mentioned note about my tastes). Let’s dive in!
My entry into the Mortal Kombat universe was the original arcade game. I was, predictably, terrible at it. But it was a great time all the same. I credit Mortal Kombat, and shows like Xena: Warrior Princess, with pointing me to my long-term, much loved hobby of martial arts training (for those who don’t know, I train and teach Kickboxing and Northern Mantis Kung Fu).
It helped that the former had a character that shared my first name, albeit with a different spelling – Sonya. You bet I played her nearly exclusively. But the game also had a plethora of female characters who, importantly for little me, went toe-to-toe with male opponents. Their victory was not conditional to their gender (though a lot of the finishers were… I got very annoyed with Sonya’s finisher when they turned it into the ‘kiss of death.’ A kiss? Really? Anyway…), but on the skill of the person who had selected her as their avatar.
That’s my girl.
Oddly enough, I didn’t much like the first of the new Mortal Kombat films. There was something about them that just didn’t jive with me. I think, upon reflection, that the problem was that it took itself entirely too seriously for the ridiculousness of the premise. Perhaps? Not entirely sure. But I wasn’t a huge fan of the first of the most recent adaptations.
That was not the case for this one. Yes, this movie is so silly. It’s not a thinker. But what it is, is really, really fun (and gory). Don’t go if you’re looking for some deeper meaning into the human condition. You won’t find it. Do go if you’re looking for some excellent action, good laughs, and a lot of blood.
The story of Mortal Kombat II largely abandons Cole as the main character, relegating him to one of the crew. Enter Johnny Cage, a washed-up action hero from the age of really cheesy, badly choreographed action films of the kind we lost in the early 90s (making this film a little meta, as it is also a really cheesy (but much better choreographed) action flick, harkening back to the kind we lost in the early 90s). You know, when action movies were dumb and fun… or sometimes just dumb. Really dumb. I particularly enjoyed the really bad action scene from one of his movies we were subjected to as a character introduction. It was horrifically bad. And that was just awesome. A perfect way to set the tone for the character and the movie.
It was such a terrible sequence. And it showcased a particular character move from the games, too. So bad. So great.
I giggled my way through it.
For some reason, unseen by either his character or the audience, he has been selected as the replacement for Kung Lao as a defender of Earth Realm (Spoiler: Kung Lao was killed in the last movie); a call to adventure that he promptly rejects. Not that it does him much good. What I like about this is that Johnny Cage is not magically suddenly extremely good at martial arts when he is dragged into the Mortal Kombat arena. He was in his youth. But he is no longer young. And while he was a winning fighter as a young man, all of the hard work in his films were done by stunt doubles. And it shows. He doesn’t exactly perform well.
That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I don’t want to stray too far into spoiler territory.
I will say, however, that Karl Urban was very aware what kind of film this was, and very pleasingly hammed it up. So many of his scenes were flat out silly, and in it’s own self-aware way, hilarious.
To my surprise, however, that was not my greatest joy in this film. That honour once again belonged to Josh Lawson who reprised his role as Kano (he was in the trailer, so I don’t feel like this is too much of a spoiler). Kano was, to my mind, the best thing about the previous film. He also stood out here… but that might just be because of who I am and the fact that this time around he was so aggressively Australian that it very nearly killed me (I am much less aggressively Australian). I laughed hardest and loudest at his scenes. Even thinking about it now, I still giggle. It’s not often that Australia gets any kind of representation in films. In fact, the only other ensemble movie I can think of that had an explicitly Australian character was Pitch Black, and, well, he didn’t last long. To be fair, not too many characters did.
I am fairly sure that other folks of other backgrounds won’t take as much delight in Kano as I did, so I would not count on it to up the enjoyment of this film. But for me very specifically, it absolutely did.
Don’t let the poster fool you. He is a deeply unserious character.
Kano steals the show. Yet again.
The story itself is about what you’d expect for this franchise. Broadly, Earth is under threat, and heroes, under the tutelage of the lightning god Raiden, must overcome their personal limitations to rise against the foe in order to save Earthrealm from annexation. But even in this, through the figure of Johnny Cage, the film kind of makes fun of itself. Of course, the folks on the other side are up to shenanigans, and so they must be countered — both inside and outside the arena.
There are a lot of great fight scenes, a tonne of gore (which is to be expected, given the nature of the games), some unexpected deaths (no one is safe. No one. Side note: in my viewing, when one of the characters was killed someone in the front row exclaimed, “Nooooo!” quite loudly. Go see it with an audience, is what I’m saying. It was great.), and so, so many laughs. It was not deep, or profound, or even serious.
It was fun.
It evoked the old-school feeling action movies used to have: fun was the goal. I don’t know about you, but, given the state of well… everything, I desperately needed something fun. Mortal Kombat II perfectly scratched that itch. Definitely worth the cost of admission, silliness and all.
My goodness was it silly. What a good time in the cinema.
When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Daughters of Britain, Skylark and Human. The Timbercreek Incident is free to read on Wattpad.
Categories: Fantasy Books
ALL HAIL CHAOS by Sarah Rees Brennan (The Time of Iron #2)
All Hail Chaos is the second installment of Sarah Rees Brennan’s A Time of Iron, a portal fantasy which finds a young woman named Rae swept into the world of the fantasy novels she and her sister Alice hold dear to their hearts. The first installment, Long Live Evil, saw Rae embrace the identity of…
Categories: Fantasy Books
Free Fiction Monday: Dunyon
In a rundown bar on a space station at the end of the universe, a customer asks for passage to Dunyon. But the bartender has never heard of Dunyon.
But more and more people arrive, all wanting to go to Dunyon—creating a huge crisis for that little bar, the space station, and maybe the universe.
“Dunyon” is free on this site for one week only. If you’d like your own copy, you can get it at your favorite retailer or pick up a copy from WMG Books by clicking here.
Dunyon Kristine Kathryn Rusch
It started in the far reaches of the sector—ships firing on each other, some destroyed. Keeping track became hard—communications turned sporadic, and who really followed which government was in charge of what anyway?
Rumors started, rumors impossible to confirm as communications throughout the system grew intermittent. Entire ships, destroyed. Cities, gone. A planet, blown up.
But most people saw no evidence of any of it. One would think, if a planet had been destroyed, there would be some kind of repercussion, but most people knew of none. Most people saw nothing.
Until one day the ships appeared overhead.
Most people barely had time to gather the family and the money, barely had time to get away, to find refugee ships.
But “refugee ships” make it sound organized, like an effort conducted by some charity organization or a benevolent and surviving government.
The ships weren’t organized or tied to each other or even very similar. Some were old-fashioned generation ships. Some were commandeered space yachts. Some were stolen trading vessels.
They made it only so far. Some refugees died in the blackness of space, the ships powerless, spinning slowly, the only thing surviving an emergency signal that would go forever unheeded.
Other refugees made it to the outer reaches of the sector. To supply stations and military outposts.
And the rest—well, the rest ended up here.
The new arrivals always ask me where here is, and I tell them one of three things, depending on my mood.
I say, I used to know but I don’t any more.
Or, It’s the end of the line.
Or, Here? This isn’t a place. It’s an emotion.
But too many asked me what that emotion was.
Desperation, I’d say. Desperation, pure and simple.
***
In truth, “here” was once an outpost, so far on the edge of the sector that we weren’t even sure which government claimed us. Mostly we claimed ourselves. Eventually, we became a destination space station, a haven for the rich. We built fantasy resorts spiraling off the main part of the station—all virtual reality and holographic technology like nothing else in the sector.
If you wanted to be pampered, you came here. If you wanted to redefine yourself, you came here. If you wanted to hide from the public, you came here.
It would cost you more money that most people ever saw, but you came here.
I came here without money twenty years ago. Most women, when they arrived, either dripped money or had unvarnished beauty. I had neither.
I was a former soldier looking for a respite, scarred inside and out. I started as a bartender, and built a reputation as the person who solved everyone else’s problems quickly, silently, and efficiently.
I did nothing but work and save and meddle (unemotionally) in other people’s lives. So as the station expanded, built its first exclusive wing, I had enough money to build my own bar with my own apartment attached.
I could run things the way that I wanted to, keep the hours that I wanted, let in the clients I wanted.
By being exclusive, I became popular.
And rich.
Nowadays, the bar is still exclusive. We are the only place that still charges a cover. We have entertainment in the back room—usually a band, sometimes a comedian, once in a while an acting troupe—all of them famous, all of them refugees. I pay well. People want to run their show in my place because they like my place.
I have human employees not because I can afford them (of course I can) but because I’m trying to create jobs so that fewer people remain stuck in the refugee areas, the places we called the pens. So far, I’ve created twenty-five jobs, and I’m thinking of expanding.
I’ve already expanded more than I initially planned. In addition to my entertainment room, I have a high stakes poker room. No one gets in without a fifty thousand minimum. I raised the stakes when I learned the truly desperate were taking the last of their savings and trying to double their money on my tables.
I didn’t want to get rich by making desperate people poor.
In the main room, we serve dinner at eight sharp. When the five courses are over, we clear the tables and serve drinks until four a.m.
At four, I shut down everything except the high stakes poker (some games can go on for days) and wander the halls, looking at the decay. The hotels that once catered to the dilettante are now filled to capacity with the rich and desperate. The restaurants serve food to the people who pay up front. But their doors are all closed when I wander. I see the signs for specials or warning the people from the pens to stay out. Sometimes I see evidence of a scuffle—broken chairs, smashed tables, a hastily made “closed for the week” sign.
The only places still open when I close the bar are the information kiosks. They have no employees, so people can use them at any time. Even at four in the morning, I will pass lines in front of the kiosks, lines that extend through dozens of corridors.
Information. That’s where the premium is. People want to know if their home is still there, if members of their family are still alive, when (if ever) they can return. Most never let go of the past, unable to accept they’re in a new future, one they don’t recognize.
I barely recognize it, and I have little to hang onto. But I see patterns. For example, you can always tell which part of the sector is closed or ruined or under attack because the information stops flowing from there. What replaces information is rumor.
Rumor. This place thrives on rumor. You can hear it as you walk through the corridors, going from the old resort section (now part of the pens) to the condo wing to my little neighborhood of exclusivity. You hear it in the lowered voices, see it in the furtive looks. You know that someone is lying to someone else, maybe not intentionally, but always harmfully.
For the rumors are almost always harmful. They give hope where there is none.
And I think that’s the most destructive of all.
***
Last month, I finally became a victim of rumors. The whispers, the looks, all came toward me, and I had no idea what was causing them.
My bartender brought me the first hint. He used the silent call built into the back bar to bring me down from my office on the second floor.
The bar in the main room is spectacular. I designed it for looks as well as ease for the bartender. I insist on a human bartender, not some robotic mixer or automated machine. There’s an art to mixing cocktails—the right amount of this touched with a splash of that—which machines can never get right.
The bar circles around a blue screen that shows flat images of anywhere in the sector. Usually I set the imagery, and I try to keep current: any place that’s considered safe shows up on the image screen, and any place that might have exploded out of existence gets removed from the rotation.
In front of the imagery stand bottles of real alcohol, most of them imported. The bulk of my real alcohol is stored in a safe room off-premise. Only I know where that safe room is because now, much of the real alcohol is more valuable than jewelry or credits or any other commodity except food. Some of those liquors aren’t ever going to be made any more, and the fifteen bottles in my storeroom are the fifteen last known bottles in the sector, maybe even the universe.
I price accordingly.
Between the bar and the back bar is a floor so springy that you can stand on it all day and your legs don’t ache. Customers sit on high stools that gradually tilt if the bartender decides the customer is sucking too much air. Obnoxious people leave quickly. Pleasant ones stay so long, they often fall asleep with their heads on my well-polished bar.
The bartender, Jack Kunitz, had moved to the very edge of the bar when he saw me. He was a burly man with a history as checkered as mine. He dreamed of opening his own bar one day—or he used to, before all of this.
He was polishing glasses with a special bar rag, even though we had a machine for that.
“See that woman?” he asked softly, nodding at the other side of the bar.
I could barely see her. The bar was shaped like a giant C, and she was in the middle of the opposite curve. Slender, older, rich. Rich was easy to tell because her clothes fit, she looked well nourished, and she still wore expensive rings on her long, thin fingers.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“She wants to know how much passage is,” he said.
“Passage?” I asked. “To where?”
“Dunyon,” he said.
“Dunyon?” I repeated. I had never heard of it. I thought I had heard of every damn place. “Where the hell is that?”
He shrugged. “I asked her. She said it was somewhere far from here. Somewhere safe.”
“Why is she asking us for passage?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he said. “I asked her. She said I should know. So I called you.”
Sometimes I had special information. Or a ticket someone lost at a high stakes game for an expensive berth on a ship leaving from here, usually somewhere far away. Maybe not somewhere safer, but somewhere different.
After you’ve been here for a while, after you’ve finally accepted that your home is gone, you have no family left, and nothing is ever going to be as it was, you go somewhere else, figuring you’ll start new, figuring you have at least a fighting chance of rebuilding some kind of life.
At least, that’s what these people tell me when they spend thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—for the chance to get the hell out of here.
“I don’t know a thing about Dunyon,” I said. “Apologize and tell her to check her source.”
He did, and she left, and I gave it no more thought until the next night when three more people—obviously wealthy people—offered a small fortune to buy their way to Dunyon. And the following night, six offered. By the next night, twenty-five.
The amount of money was staggering. The number of people willing to pay it was growing by the hour.
I needed to find out what Dunyon was, and I needed to find out fast.
***
Believe it or not, bartenders—bar owners—don’t always have the latest information. I don’t believe rumor and innuendo, and while I have a few trusted sources, I only trust them on matters pertaining to the station and my operator’s license. Anything else is suspect.
So at times like this, I have to use an information kiosk like everyone else. Before everything went to hell, I could access information from my apartment. But that avenue got shut off as the pens grew larger and larger. First people hacked into our personal systems, and then the information got corrupted. That made the kiosks the only safe place for news.
The kiosks were tapped into the station’s space monitoring system. Information from ships approaching and leaving, from other systems, and from various networks filtered through the monitoring system. If its information was wrong, the station would soon cease to exist.
The kiosks were designed so that no one could tap into that system, and anyone who tried to modify the kiosks’ security was arrested and often never heard from again.
I paid one of the cocktail waitresses to stand in line for me. Poor thing, she waited for eight hours before she contacted me. She was three people from the kiosk door. I still didn’t hurry down. Three people, at a minimum, would take twenty minutes to finish their business.
I made it to the kiosk in fifteen. Still two people away. The waitress looked exhausted.
“Next time,” she said. “Get someone else to stand for you. I’d rather be moving than standing still.”
I nodded, thanked her, and waited another fifteen minutes before getting into the kiosk myself.
The kiosks were ten feet tall and seven feet wide. They were oblong, with doors on two sides. The person accessing information went in one door while the person who had just finished with the kiosk went out the other.
As the doors slid, the kiosk wiped its memory, so that the newcomer would face a blank screen.
At least, that was the theory. More than once, I’d seen what the person before me had been searching for. Mostly, those searches didn’t concern me—a name I had never heard before, a place I was only vaguely conscious of—but the searches almost always ended with a red no-longer-viable notice.
My searches were few and far between. Mostly they pertained to specialized booze or a particular type of glassware. This was the first search I would ever make for a place.
The kiosk doors slid closed simultaneously and the side lighting came on, faint but illuminating. The flat screen in front of me had its own backlight. If I wanted a holographic avatar that would talk me through various programs, I had to turn around and deal with the other screen.
I interacted with people more than enough. I didn’t need a fake person to walk me through programming.
So I asked the screen in front of me about Dunyon and got this response back:
Which Dunyon?
Which Dunyon indeed? I had no idea. But I couldn’t tell an information kiosk that.
“Dunyon,” I repeated. “The one that’s far from here. And safe.”
You are the six hundredth person to enquire about that Dunyon on this station in the past week, the system informed me. I have no Dunyon that fits such parameters.
“How about a place called Dunyon within travel distance from this station?” I asked.
I have no Dunyon that fits those parameters either, the system informed me. You are asking questions in the same pattern as four-hundred-and-eighty other inquirers. Would you like the remaining questions and answers?
I didn’t like being told I was unoriginal, but I did appreciate the shortened workload. I told the system yes, and let it inform me that there was no place called Dunyon in the known universe, that there was no place with alternate spellings or pronunciations of Dunyon in the known universe, and no place called Dunyon on any shipping lanes.
“No place nicknamed Dunyon?” I asked.
No, the system told me, and then informed me that I was starting down a line of questioning that 365 people had followed. I got their results as well.
So far as we could tell—all of us who inquired on this system—Dunyon did not exist.
Then I remembered the system’s initial response to my very first question.
“When I inquired about Dunyon,” I said, “you asked me to clarify. You said, which Dunyon? Which implies that there are several Dunyons. What are they?”
Dunyon, the system responded. An ancient family of hereditary rulers on Uteelly. The family was assassinated several thousand years ago. Uteelly was destroyed in the latest wars, along with all cities and landmarks named after the family Dunyon.
I wondered if that was the source of my rumor and was about to ask when the system continued.
Dunyon, it said. A mythological city in the Koppae Sector. A place that may or may not have existed. Thought to be the perfect city. The hereditary family Dunyon of Uteelly claimed to be the only survivors of Dunyon, although this is unproven. There is no evidence that this Dunyon ever existed.
But it sounded like my Dunyon, the place far from here, the place that was safe. In these troubled times, “safe” was better than perfect or idyllically beautiful.
I frowned. There was a long silence, and I realized that the system had finished its recitation.
“When did you get your first query about Dunyon?” I asked.
Seven days ago.
“Did that query fit into any of the patterns of inquiry you mentioned before?”
No.
“What did that questioner want to know?” I asked.
Personal inquiries are protected information, the system said, rather primly it seemed to me.
“Did I ask any of the same questions as the original inquirer?” I asked.
No, the system said.
I felt frustrated. I couldn’t find out where this information had originated, but it had clearly originated here on this station one week before.
“Did I receive any of the same answers as the other questioner?” I asked.
No, the system said.
I thought for a moment. Then I tried one last question. “Has anyone thought they’ve found the lost city of Dunyon?”
Time parameters?
Time parameters? It took me a moment to understand that. “When did that Dunyon disappear?”
Sixteen centuries ago.
“Has anyone thought they’ve found the lost city of Dunyon in the past three hundred years?”
I chose the number 300 randomly. I could have chosen 500 or even the full sixteen hundred. But I wanted some inkling of what was happening recently.
Seventy-five explorers believed they found Dunyon. But they could not find it a second time.
I recognized this myth. It had existed throughout human history. The vanishing city. The perfect city that you could only visit once.
“Has anyone found the lost city of Dunyon in the past fifty years?”
Lucas Ennelly found the lost city of Dunyon fifteen years ago.
“Where is Lucas Ennelly now?” I asked.
I got the red screen. Lucas Ennelly was no longer viable. Even though I expected something like that, I still felt discouraged. I could understand why most people fled the kiosk upon getting such news.
“When did Lucas Ennelly die?” I asked.
Eight days ago, the system told me.
My stomach clenched. I was on to something.
“Where?” I asked, even though I had a hunch I knew.
In a bar on this station, the system told me.
“Which bar?” I asked. I knew what the system would tell me. I really didn’t have to wait for the words, although I did.
My bar. Lucas Ennelly died in my bar, eight days ago.
The day before the woman arrived, asking about Dunyon.
***
People die in my bar all the time. That’s part of the new reality. No one has the money to do simple things, like eat properly or see doctors when they get ill. The pens are breeding grounds for all kinds of viruses, and no one is allowed to leave if they’re sick.
But that doesn’t always stop people. Nor do they benefit from the constant stress and worry. Heart attacks, once thought to be eradicated, are common now, along with strokes. Experts are saying that it is the stress which kills, but I think it’s a broken heart.
Lucas Ennelly passed out at the bar, not far from where that woman sat. By the time we realized he wasn’t a passed-out drunk, it was too late. He had stopped breathing an hour before.
I’m not held liable for such things, just like I’m not held liable for the attacks and the attempted murders that go on just outside. People have become hostile. They drink too much and get too angry.
I’m always happy when they pass out. I prefer to let them rest there, since God knows, they probably don’t get rest anywhere else.
Jake contacted authorities when we realized Ennelly was dead. One of the station’s six coroners eventually removed the body, and—I’m sorry to say—that was the last thought we had given him, if we had given him one before that.
I was giving him a lot of thought now. I had the system tell me all it could about Lucas Ennelly. Turned out he was taking funds from people—the money the woman had quoted to us—for safe passage to Dunyon. He had already made a down payment on a retrofitted generation ship. He was going to take everyone to a place he had only seen once.
And they were willing to believe him. I left the kiosk, and reported his scheme to the authorities. If things went well, they might find some of Ennelly’s funds and return them to the poor unsuspecting souls who had invested so much for escape to a mythical realm.
If things went the way they normally did, some low-grade bureaucrat would find the money, pocket it, and claim that Ennelly had spent it all.
I couldn’t worry about it.
I had to figure out how to keep Ennelly’s clients from coming to my bar.
I walked back. I didn’t usually have time off during the day and it was an odd treat to see people in the corridors, to see the full restaurants, and the back-and-forth of commerce, even if it was conducted furtively and with great desperation.
By the time I got back to my exclusive neighborhood, I was relieved. I was tired of the crowds, the grasping, the clawing, the questioning looks from faces shoved against mine. I had gotten used to the late night silence as well as the order I kept inside my own bar.
I preferred it.
I wasn’t going to get it, however.
Because as I got close, I heard shouting. Then I saw dozens and dozens of people, pressing against the bar’s entrance. A mob, screaming, pulling, punching. The windows looking into the corridor were already broken and people were pouring inside.
I had never seen such chaos at my place—or even in this neighborhood. I grabbed one man and pulled him back.
“What’s going on?”
“Free tickets to Dunyon to the first five hundred people!” he yelled back, then pulled away from me.
I stood there, breathless, as more and more people hurried toward my bar. None were well dressed. They all smelled like sweat and unwashed clothes.
People from the pens, running toward free tickets.
I scrambled away, heading to the side of the bar. The employee entrance was hidden. Only an employee’s DNA made it visible, and no one else’s. I made sure I wasn’t followed before I touched the wall, which opened for me, and let me slide inside.
Inside wasn’t much better. People crowded the main room. The images behind the bar were shut off, and it took me a moment to realize why. Someone had broken the screen. Bright light shone from it onto the floor above.
Jake was standing behind the bar, protecting the expensive liquors with some kind of unauthorized weapon. The cocktail waitress who had helped me was keeping people back with the broken edge of a bottle.
I didn’t see any other employees, but I glanced up. The doors to the back rooms were closed and locked. Someone had the presence of mind to seal off the entertainment area and the high stakes poker room.
The noise was deafening. I pressed the emergency call button beside the employee entrance and got a green light, which meant help was on the way.
Although I wasn’t sure what the authorities could do, except stun the rioters and maybe hurt regular patrons inside my bar.
I pushed my way to the bar proper, then climbed on top of it. I waved my hands, but nothing happened.
So I shouted, “I’m the owner of this bar!”
The people in front of me stopped yelling and pushing.
I shouted the same thing again, and again, until the entire room was quiet.
Now I had to tell them something. I could have said the authorities were coming and they would all be arrested, but that probably wouldn’t counteract the concept of a free ticket.
I had to be creative.
I had to let them think they were getting what they wanted.
“Thank you all for coming,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere. “It’s been a great promotion. Lucas Ennelly gave us tickets to Dunyon and I’m proud to tell you that we have just given the last one away. Congratulations to all the winners!”
I clapped my hands, as if I were congratulating someone. Jack watched me for a minute as if I had lost my mind, then he started clapping too. The cocktail waitress slapped one hand against the neck of the broken bottle.
A few confused people up front peered at me, but people behind them started to clap. And so did everyone else.
They were so used to losing, so used to being the ones who did not get the special treatment, that they weren’t angry when they realized the tickets they had come for were gone. They accepted the loss as one more in a series of losses. They pretended joy for my so-called winners, and then they slowly, calmly, filed out.
No one remained except Jake, the cocktail waitress, and one of our regulars, who had clung to his seat at the bar through it all.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked.
“I know how the rumor started,” I said, and told him about Lucas Ennelly. “He really was selling tickets to Dunyon from this bar for a lot of money.”
“A scam,” the waitress said.
“Most likely,” I said. Then I shrugged. “But people who claimed they found the lost city of Dunyon always tried to go back. I think he was using these poor people to fund his trip.”
“I don’t get it,” Jake said. He set his weapon in a drawer behind the bar that I had forgotten about. “Why come in greater numbers after he died?”
“Two reasons I think,” I said. “First, people had bought tickets here. And second, deaths don’t get publicized on the station. No one knew he was dead.”
“So they thought he was holding out on them,” the cocktail waitress said.
I nodded. “Which only made them more desperate.”
I didn’t have to explain the rest to them. Because they live here and they know: Desperation leads to rumors and rumors become wild stories, and wild stories ignite belief. People are taking action on the smallest things, the most unlikely things, because they need something—anything—to cling to.
I’ve seen it countless times.
I just hadn’t experienced it myself.
Until then.
The authorities arrived too late to do anything. We were already sweeping up the mess, replacing the broken tables with others from our back rooms, and scrambling to find more chairs.
I didn’t even file a complaint because who was there to complain against? God? The universe? The random unfairness of the conflicts we all found ourselves in?
So I had some damage and I lost some money. I consider myself one of the lucky ones.
I have a place. I am here on purpose, not because I have nowhere else to go.
Unlike most of the people outside my doors, I am not desperate.
Not yet.
Although I feel the press of humanity with the arrival of each new ship filled with refugees, as the pens grow bigger and the crowds more unruly.
At some point, there won’t be incidents any more, sparked by rumors, fed by hopelessness.
At some point, it really will be us against them.
And we will lose.
Because there are too many of them, desperate and terrified. And there are too few of us, pretending that civilization will go on.
Even when there is no real civilization left.
Dunyon
Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Starblue/Dreamstime
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of !ction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are !ctional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Any use of this publication to train generative arti!cial 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.
Categories: Authors
Some thoughts on renewables and the Iran war
The large scale uptake of solar generation and batteries in places like Saudi Arabia and the UAE speaks to the massive cost advantages of solar and other renewables and how that incentivizes switching from fossil fuel to electrical use cases where possible—ground transportation, heat pumps, induction for cooking, etc. It also speaks to their awareness of the forthcoming decline in demand for fossil fuels as fuel.
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One of the main reasons the UAE is leaving OPEC is they have made the calculation that oil sold sooner even if at a lower rate is more valuable than proven reserves left in the ground. This makes very good sense if we are at or near peak demand and much less sense under any other scenario. The cost case for renewables and battery storage is already cheaper and more sustainable than basically any burnable but natural gas, and that’s coming. The whole world knows it, even if it is currently considered heresy by the Republican party.
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The idea of peak fossil fuel demand should also inform our understanding of the Iran war. Iran knows that they have more leverage now than they are ever likely to have again. The combination of a unilateral attack by Donald Trump that has effectively separated us from our allies and his failure to make any kind of case for it in advance, which has prevented any kind of wag the dog patriotic effect is a unique blunder. This war started out highly unpopular at home and abroad and is only getting more so as the economic effects become harder and harder to hide. At some point even the stock market is going to figure it out.
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Add that all together and Iran has maximum incentive to make this hurt as much as possible for as long as possible. Top it off with the demonstrated fact that current Republican government at the Federal level will cheerfully ignore or tear up any international deals it finds inconvenient, and you have a recipe for Iran prolonging the closure of the Strait of Hormuz at least until the fall if they can manage it.
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Which brings me to: Can they really hold out that long? Well, we are starting to get reports that the Pentagon has revised its estimates of how long Iran can hold out without straining their capacity to absorb harm much more than they already are to at least two to three months more. Given how much political pressure defense analysts are under to pretend that Iran is on the brink of collapse, the safe way to bet is that two to three months number is very much on the optimistic end of things when rendered through the lens of the Trump defense department.
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Finally, food for thought. The average length of a modern war is about 15 months.
Categories: Authors
Book Recommendations Thread: The TKWNKM Support Group
Welcome to Book Devourers Anonymous. Please pull up a chair. This is a safe space of no judgement.
I know we all tried our best to pace ourselves and make it last, and then This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me simply took the reins and happened to us. Intentions were noble, but a Horde can’t change its spots.
Your comments tell me we collectively have a serious case of book hangover. Whether you’ve tried rereads, continuous relistens, or have reached the point of “I tried two other books and neither of them took” confessions: you are not alone.
The cure prescribed is hair of the bookmark that bit you: another story, recommended by a fellow Devourer who understands exactly what we are missing.
Maybe it’s the intricate political games, the dangerous people making spectacular decisions, the found family, the competent heroes. Maybe it isn’t high fantasy or portal fantasy at all, and it doesn’t even have any dukes, but it has the same immersive feeling we’re yearning for as escapism.
Bring your suggestions and requests in the comments below, and let’s get each other through the w*it.
A few gentle guidelinesWe’ve run enough of these threads now to know they work better with a little structure.
Please remember that the CTRL+F shortcut is your friend for checking whether your recommended author or title has already been mentioned. Here’s how to use the search on your mobile.
- Keep it recent. We have a wonderfully well-read Horde, and previous threads have given our beloved classics a thorough airing. This time, please stick to books released in the last decade. Everyone already knows of the fabulous Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey. Let’s make room for discovery.
- One recommendation per person. A focused comment is so much more useful to people than an intimidating wall of text. One book, a series, or an author. If someone’s already mentioned your pick, a +1 reply is more useful than a new thread.
I have already removed 10 comments that broke this rule and the post has barely been live for half an hour. 1 book, 1 author or 1 series, please.
- Stay on topic. If someone’s asking for something specific, such as a particular feel, a genre, triggers they want to avoid, please try to match that.
The comments are yours. Help a Hungover Horde: recommend your book cure!
The post Book Recommendations Thread: The TKWNKM Support Group first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.
Categories: Authors
Spotlight on “Sex in Public” by Angela Jones
Other LitStack Spots We’ve spotted a few other titles we are adding to our TBR…
The post Spotlight on “Sex in Public” by Angela Jones appeared first on LitStack.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Monday Meows
GUYS GUYS GUYS COME HERE QUICK AND LOOK
That’s it, I’m out.
You scared away my lunch!
I think it was more likely to eat you, to be honest.
He has a point.
I could take it.
Categories: Authors
Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition
So, last week, I talked about ten movies that you can stream for free over on Tubi. I could easily list ten or twenty more. There’s a lot of good stuff there.
I’m also watching TV shows on Tubi. Of course, a multiple season show takes a lot longer to work through, than a single movie. It’s got some cool animated shows, like Pinky and the Brain, The Looney Tunes Show, and The Pirates of Darkwater. I’ll probably do a post like this on just cartoons.
But today we’ll talk about live-action shows. Now, PlutoTV is terrific for TV shows. Entire channels dedicated to Star Trek shows, mysteries, Westerns, etc.. And I’m leaning into RokuTV (also free). But let’s look at ten shows you can catch on Tubi. Some of the biggest hits are there, but I’ll try to focus on some others.
A reminder: I talked here about how I was finally fed up with all the streaming apps I needed to watch stuff. So, except for Prime (the family orders a lot of stuff from Amazon), I cut the chord on all of them. I’m missing Daredevil, and didn’t watch a single Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game (I did listen to all of them). But it’s going fine.
I caught an episode of this here and there over the years, but had never watched it through. I’ve always liked it, and it hasn’t lost its charm. Two brothers barely make a living as private eyes in San Diego. This is the show that launched Gerald McRaney.
It’s definitely a little cheesy, but this is a fun buddy PI show. And love the two theme songs. Hardcastle and McCormick, and Riptide, and T.J. Hooker, are three favorites I’m going to re-watch on Tubi. But I’ll plug Simon and Simon here.
2 – RESCUE MEI was aware that this was a popular and critically praised show in the early 2000s. I didn’t like Leary much, and I never watched it. But I’m going to give season one of this fire-fighting drama, a try. Leary’s latest show, Going Dutch, just got canceled last week. It had its ups and downs, but I saw every episode.
3 – THE TICKI loved the animated show. And Amazon’s series was very good. But I was disappointed with Patrick Warburton’s short-lived series when it came out. I decided to give it a re-watch. It’s still my least favorite Tick, but I did like it this time around. I just had to get in the right frame of mind and accept it for what it was. Not how I would have done it, but it’s not a bad watch.
4 – BLUE RIDGE: THE SERIES
I liked the movie that started this off, and I liked season one of the streaming show which followed. It is now on Tubi. It stars Johnathon Schaech, who was the arrogant Jimmy in one of my favorite ‘under-the-radar’ movies, That Thing You Do!.
He’s a kick-ass ex-Green Beret, now sheriff in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A second season dropped last month, and I’m gonna try to find it. Go read my prior post – and you should start with the movie, if you can. But this is a cool show.
5 – DOC MARTINI am a big fan of Best Medicine, which had its first season earlier this year. It’s an American version of Doc Martin, a British show featuring Martin Clunes. Clunes actually appeared as Martin Best’s father, in the new show.
I like the new show, and I like the original. Doc Martin is socially awkward, and he’s kind of a butthead. Not in the Dr. Gregory House vein, but he can be difficult to root for sometimes. I recommend both Doc Martin, and Best Medicine.
6 – SHERLOCK HOLMES (JEREMY BRETT)You may know that my first three years at Black Gate, my column was called The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. I love me some Holmes. And as I wrote in this three part series, Jeremy Brett is the definitive screen Holmes. They have a bunch (though not all) of Brett’s episodes. HIGHLY recommended.
Tubi has a ton of television and movie Holmes. Even one from 2011 I’d never heard of. I’ll probably do a Ten Things on Tubi Holmes. But Jeremy Brett is a treat.
7 – COLUMBO/MURDOCH MYSTERIESI am a HUUUUGE Columbo fan. I’m still trying to get together a multi-contributor Columbo series here at Black Gate. I did write about the lieutenant, here. I have the entire series on DVD (no commercials), but I’d be remiss not to point out you can watch it free on Tubi. Possibly the greatest mystery series of all time.
Murdoch Mysteries has my vote as the greatest Canadian mystery series of all time.
8 -SOAPI saw a little of Soap during its run, but I was only 10 years old when it started. And I didn’t like it. Obviously, I didn’t understand much of it, as well. I do remember I regularly watched the spin-off, Benson. Robert Guillaume and Rene Auberjonois were terrific in that. But Soap was a critically acclaimed ‘adult’ comedy. I should probably check it out now.
9 – C.P.O SHARKEYDon Rickles was in his prime before my time. But he was still around as I was a kid in the 70s. He was a comb of Archie Bunker and the yet-to-come Dennis Leary. I don’t watch him, but this is a very nineteen seventies sitcom.
10 – ROUTE 66
I never saw this sixties show. I know the song from the King Cole Trio about Route 66. But only when I came across this on Tubi, did I realize it starred Martin Milner, who would later be on Adam-12. And he was the murder victim in the first episode of Columbo. Apparently it’s kind of a spin-off from The Naked City – another show I’ve heard of but not seen.
When you browse, you’ll probably say more than once, “Oh yeah. I should watch that again. There’s Perfect Strangers, Barney Miller, The Drew Carey Show, Major Dad, Dead Like Me, Saved by the Bell, and so many more shows from your past.
I definitely think I’ll do a post on animated shows – it’s a treasure trove for that.
I just added close to ten Bowery Boys movies to my Tubi list. It’s definitely filling the paid streaming gap.
Some previous entries on things to watch:Ten Things: Tubi Movies
The Hudsucker Proxy
Let’s Go to the Movies:1996
Firefly – The Animated Reboot
What I’ve Been Watching – February 2026 (The Night Manager, SS-GB, Best Medicine)
What I’ve Been Watching – October 2026 (Return to Paradise, Lynley, Expend4bles, and more)
What I’ve Been Watching – August 2025 (Ballard, Resident Alien, Twisted Metal, and more)
What I’ve Been Watching – May 2025 (County Line, The Bondsman, Bosch: Legacy)
What I’ve Been Watching – October 2024 (What We Do in the Shadows, The Bay, Murder in a Small Town)
What I’m Watching – November 2023 (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, A Haunting in Venice)
What I’m Watching – April 2023 (Florida Man, Picard – season three, The Mandalorian)
The Pale Blue Eye, and The Glass Onion: Knives Out
Tony Hillerman’s Dark Winds
The Rings of Power (Series I wrote on this show – all links at this one post)
What I’m Watching – December 2022 (Frontier, Leverage: Redemption)
What I’m Watching – November 2022 (Tulsa King, Andor, Fire Country, and more)
What I’m Watching – September 2022 (Galavant, Firefly, She-Hulk, and more)
What I’m Watching- April 2022 (Outer Range, Halo, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans, and more)
When USA Network was Kicking Major Butt (Monk, Psych, Burn Notice)
You Should be Streaming These Shows (Corba Kai, The Expanse, Bosch, and more)
What I’m BritBoxing – December 2021 (Death in Paradise, Shakespeare & Hathaway, The Blake Mysteries, and more)
To Boldly Go – Star Treking – (Various Star Trek incarnations)
What I’ve Been Watching – August 2021 (Monk, The Tomorrow War, In Plain Sight, and more)
What I’m Watching – June 2021 (Get Shorty, Con Man, Thunder in Paradise, and more)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
What I’ve Been Watching – June 2021 (Relic Hunter, Burn Notice, Space Force, and more)
Appaloosa
Psych of the Dead
The Mandalorian
What I’m Watching: 2020 – Part Two (My Name is Bruce, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Isle of Fury, and more)
What I’m Watching 2020: Part One (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr, Poirot, Burn Notice, and more)
Philip Marlowe: Private Eye
Leverage
Nero Wolfe – The Lost Pilot
David Suchet’s ‘Poirot’
Sherlock Holmes (over two dozen TV shows and movies)
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.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Book review: The Caretaker by Marcus Kliever
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Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marcus Kliewer is a writer and stop-motion animator. His debut novel We Used to Live Here began life as a serialized short story on Reddit, where it won the Scariest Story of 2021 Award on the NoSleep forum (eighteen million members). Film rights were snapped up by Netflix, and it was acquired for publication even before it had been extended into a full-length novel. His second novel, The Caretaker, is coming in Spring 2026. Marcus Kliewer lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books/12:01 Books (April 21, 2026) Page count: 320 Formats: audiobook, ebook, paperback
I checked out The Caretaker because horror subreddit kept hyping it up as one of the best horror releases of the year. That usually goes one of two ways for me: either I find a new favorite, or I spend 300 - 400 pages wondering if we all read the same book. Thankfully, this one absolutely delivered. It’s pretty awesome and unnerving.
Macy takes a weird caretaker job in the middle of nowhere because she’s broke, exhausted, and trying to keep herself and her younger sister afloat. Naturally, this turns into the worst employment experience imaginable. Forget toxic management. This house may literally doom humanity.
Kliewer knows how to build the suffocating sense of dread so that even ordinary things start to feel wrong. Lights. Doors. Phone calls. Written instructions. A rabbit. Especially the rabbit.
Macy makes the horror effective. At first, her narration almost tricks you into lowering your guard. She’s self-deprecating, awkward, traumatized, and kind of funny in a very tired way. Like, her life is already a disaster anyway. There’s humor in the narration, and she has enough distance from her own misery that the book initially feels lighter than I expected. Then the paranoia starts creeping in. Slowly, carefully, the story pushes her closer and closer to the edge of a complete breakdown, and I loved how convincingly Kliewer handled that spiral.
A lot of horror protagonists make dumb decisions because the plot needs them to. Macy makes bad decisions because she’s mentally and emotionally wrecked. That difference matters. She’s grieving, desperate, isolated, sleep deprived, and clinging to the hope that following the rites might somehow keep everything together. The horror here is less about shocking reveals and more about endurance and trying to hold onto reality while reality keeps slipping sideways.
The middle and final sections especially hit hard for me. The paranoia becomes relentless. Every interaction feels poisoned with doubt. You never fully know what’s real, who can be trusted, or whether Macy herself can still trust her own mind. Kliewer does an excellent job making the reader feel trapped inside that unraveling headspace.
I also appreciated how the book plays with rules. The rites feel absurd right up until they don’t. There’s almost an OCD-like rhythm to them, this terrifying idea that if you fail one tiny ritual, catastrophe follows. It creates this constant tension where even flipping a light switch feels loaded with existential dread.
And that ending. Brutal. I'll definitely remember it even if I'm not sure if I actually liked what just happened to me.
I’ve seen some readers get frustrated with Macy or with how chaotic the second half becomes, and I get it. This book absolutely wants you to feel anxious, helpless, and stuck in a downward spiral. For me, that’s exactly why it worked so well. Marcus Kliewer knows how to weaponize uncertainty better than most horror writers I’ve read recently.
By the end, I felt like I’d experienced something and I’ll take that over cheap shocks any day.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Two
Gor (The Cannon Group, May 9, 1987)
A veritable cornucopia of dodgy barbarian and barbarian-adjacent movies that I have never watched before, and will probably never watch again. Enjoy Part One here.
Gor (1987) – USA/ItalyAnother nail in the Cannon coffin lid, this effort to start a franchise based on the uncomfortable series of novels by John Norman spawned one sequel, and then went belly up before things could get worse.
It follows the same basic plot of the books; dull physics prof Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barbarini — dull as a dish cloth) owns a family heirloom macguffin that transports him to the barbaric planet of Gor, where he must right some wrongs and show the locals that human is best — so far, so very Barsoomy.
Urbano Barbarini and Rebecca Ferratti in Gor
Cabot falls in with a village being ransacked by tyrannical despot and maniacal giggler, Sarm (Oliver ‘I’ll get the beers in’ Reed, having a wonderful time). After a run in with some ne’er-do-wells, Cabot is nursed back to health by semi-clad princess Talena (Rebecca ‘more hairspray’ Ferratti) and soon they are off to reclaim another macguffin in order for Cabot to return home. It isn’t long before the landscape is strewn with bodies, slave girls, and partially covered bum cheeks, and it all culminates in a fiery showdown with Olly Reed.
John Norman’s series justifiably has its critics regarding his depiction of women — specifically the slavery and sexual abuse, which becomes a lot darker and pornographic as the books continued to be rolled out. Some (but not all) of the overt misogyny is glossed over however, and the film just serves as another one of the dime-a-dozen S&S videos to decorate your local Blockbuster in the mid-80s. I’m adding a point for Oliver Reed.
5/10
Outlaw of Gor (Cannon International, March 21, 1988)
Outlaw of Gor (1988) – USA/Italy
Hot on the sandal heels of the previous plod-a-thon came this one, not based on Norman’s 1967 novel of the same name, but featuring most of the same characters and actors, and a misguided determination to get some more female slaves on screen.
This time the plank masquerading as a physics prof, Cabot, is tossed back onto Gor following a car crash, but this time he’s not alone. He is joined by an annoying co-worker (Russel Savadier) who has been sandal-horned into the plot in an attempt to distract us from Jack Palance’s hats. Yes, Jack Palance, who had one of the top billings in the last film (he was on screen for 3 mins), has taken over the Olly Reed role, but he is having far less fun with it, and in fact is usurped by evil queen Lara (Donna Denton), who frames Cabot for Talena’s dad’s murder and send him on the run.
Cabot, along with his diminutive, white-haired chum, Hup (Nigel Chipps), wander around in the desert for a bit, stumble into a slave trader camp, free a slave girl, and generally cause a kerfuffle. Unfortunately, Lara has sent a hunter after them and he soon catches them and brings them back to the palace to face the music. Cue fights, wrongs being righted, and another generous sprinkling of sand-blasted flesh.
They upped the humour in this one, to no great effect, and Palance really doesn’t get to do much at all. At least Cabot gets to stay on Gor this time, thus saving his class from another boring physics lecture.
4/10
The New Barbarians (Titanus, April 7, 1983)
The New Barbarians (1983) – USA/Italy
Barbarians of the future this time (AKA Warriors of the Wasteland), as humanity has descended into Road Warrior style chaos, stealing much of the other film’s plot too. The rest of the story concerns a lone warrior, Mad Ma… sorry, ‘Scorpion’ (Giancarlo Preti), a former soldier of a quasi-religious bunch of nutters called the Templars.
These Templars, led by a cookie-cutter villain called ‘One’ (George Eastman), are determined to judge and exterminate all other survivors in order to purify the world or something. When they set their sights on a group of peaceniks, it’s up to Scorpion to save the day, but not before he has forced himself on several women, and then been raped himself by One in a scene that springs out of nowhere and sours an already less-than-sweet film. Director Enzo G. Castellari and his production team found a lovely quarry just outside Rome, and chose to never leave it, hurtling their cybertruck-lite buggies around the rocks with wild abandon.
Then blow me down, just as I was starting to tire of the whole debacle, who should turn up but Fred Williamson, playing a bad-ass dude called Nadir. Suddenly I was all in, and the film must have realized what an ace it was holding, because it ramped up the violence (sooo many exploding heads) and the hilarity (Nadir uses a bow with explosive-tipped arrows, but he takes an unbelievably long time to attach the tips to the shafts, while the people he is trying to save are getting the snot kicked out of them).
Ultimately though it’s a bit of a silly slog, but I’m sticking a couple of extra points onto this for Fred Williamson and exploding body parts.
6/10
Iron Warrior (Continental Motion Pictures, January 1, 1987)
Iron Warrior (1987) – USA/Italy
For a fleeting moment I was intrigued by this one. The opening scene of a pair of young brothers playing with a ball among some ruins was rather nicely shot, with some interesting framing and editing decisions, and I thought I might have stumbled onto a decent one. I could even forgive the clearly stolen James Horner strains from various Star Treks.
Oh, how I laughed when I realised my mistake three minutes later when it all plummeted into nonsense. One of the boys is kidnapped by a witch, Phoedra (Elisabeth Kaza), who encases him in a formidable suit of iron and turns him into her enforcer.
Flash forward several years and the unsullied brother, Ator, lurches onto the scene, all muscles, tragic hair and cheekbones to cut diamonds on. Ator then proceeds to protect various kingdoms from Phoedra, all the while coming closer to the final showdown with (shock!) his brother. Ator is played by Miles O’Keeffe, whom I remembered from the awful Tarzan movie he made with Bo Derek, released in 1981. This bloke, pretty as he is, gives planks a bad name as he vogues his way from one lackluster sword fight to the next.
I had no idea that I was watching the third film in a series of Ator movies, but it didn’t really matter, and following this one I had no desire to seek out the others. Feel free to comment if this was a mistake and I’ve actually missed some classics (but I won’t hold my breath).
4/10
The Dungeonmaster (Empire Pictures, August 24, 1984)
The Dungeonmaster (1984) – USA
AKA Rage War: The Challenges of Excalibrate AKA Digital Knights.
Jeffrey Byron plays a computer nerd called Paul, who has an unhealthy attachment to his A.I. assistant X-CaliBR8, predicting Richard Dawkins’ confusion 42 years ago. His long-suffering girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing), has finally had enough of her digital rival, but before she can do anything about it, they are both whisked away to a fantastical land by a demonic sorcerer called Mestema (Richard Moll), who has been searching for a worthy challenger for some reason, and has decided a nerd and his Siri are it.
Also, he fancies Gwen. Paul has a ‘pipboy’ style version of X-CaliBR8 (Cali for short, thank God), on his wrist, and this thing can do bloody anything, which is useful as Memesta is about to hurl a bunch of different challenges at Paul that have no real connection to anything, and seem extraordinarily easy to beat. Challenges are met, monsters are squashed, demonic sorcerers are defeated, and Paul and Gwen get to go back to their unholy love triangle in their apartment.
Now, I love me a good anthology movie, and this ain’t it. The challenges consist of seven story segments, made by seven directors to varying degrees of competence, ranging from almost interesting to crap. John Carl Buechler got to direct one, and I’ve always loved his films (Ghoulies, anyone?), but his effort was rubbish. Dave Allen, stop-motion maestro, also made one, but that was rubbish too. However, neither of these were as rubbish as the other five, and one of them featured heavy metal lads WASP — go figure.
Nothing made any sense, the wrist-mounted Cali developed super laser powers that I’m pretty sure Paul didn’t program, and the whole shebang is a ludicrous mess.
Recommended.
5/10
Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:
Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part One
Probing Questions
My Top Thirty Films
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Hoping For A Productive Summer
My class ended on Wednesday with a surprise A+ on a quiz I hadn’t studied for. That was lovely. A bunch of other things happened these past few weeks, all good, which I really can’t share except to say that they were marvelous. And Dean Wesley Smith and I celebrated our 40th anniversary on Monday. I’m astonished at that. It seems like I just met him a year or so ago. Amazing how time flies…
Anyway, with school ending and a bunch of other things closing down, it feels like summer has started. The end of the school year has always felt like a beginning to me anyway, as the daughter of a professor. I love school (which is why I take the occasional class at UNLV) and I love having school end.
Oh! And basketball season has started just this weekend, even though my Aces allowed themselves to suffer a tragic defeat yesterday.
My summer includes a lot of book design, some learning on a video program, and several writing-adjacent projects. I looked at that, then looked at myself, and realized, Uh,oh. Distract-o Girl will not get much writing done unless she plans really well.
I have learned over the last few years that without firm deadlines from the outside, I need something to get me in the chair first thing. Challenges work, especially when I have a lot of other distractions. (In the past three years, they were mostly bad distractions; now they’re mostly good ones.)
So, I’m in need of a challenge. When I’m in need of an exterior challenge, I set one up. I talked to Dean about it, and it seems that he needs one too. Plus we need to focus on the writing first again, which means we need to do some motivational things. When we get like this, we want to share.
Rather than have me explain it all, I’m going to copy Dean’s blog from Thursday night. (Note that the “I” in the italicized section below is actually Dean.)
Kris and I have challenges available that anyone can sign into, and we have done some focused seminars over the last year or so. They were great fun and the challenges are open to anyone at any time, to start at any time.
The Super Great Challenges run for an entire year from the moment you start. And making it work not only gets you a bunch of stuff written and published, but a subscription award to Teachable.
So I got a couple questions on what people got at the end of this challenge (that Kris has proposed)? Answer… a lot of stuff written through the summer. But the seminar part of this is the key. Taking the seminars in the past, you got knowledge, no award. This is a challenge mixed with a seminar.
So for 14 weeks you get two motivation videos from me and Kris every week. 28 motivation videos over the summer and then also three webinars focusing on motivation. That is the award for joining into this challenge and focusing on your own writing.
This idea came about because Kris was looking for something to help her stay focused on her writing this summer. Really, really focused. And a couple years ago, some challenges she had offered had really helped her. But this summer she tells me she is working on a really difficult project and wants to stay ultra-focused for three months.
Okay? She is normally frighteningly focused, so this could get interesting…
So we got talking about offering a challenge through this time of great forgetting, but then decided that we could also add a couple of motivation videos every week. We would plan them together, I would record them. Videos to help anyone signed up keep writing and publishing through this time of great forgetting.
And then we will add in a monthly webinar, three of them during the time of the challenge, making it into a strange form of seminar.
Start May 18th and end August 16th.
This is not a challenge against Kris.
You are only challenging yourself, and getting weekly motivation videos and a monthly webinar. At the start you will tell us how many FICTION words you plan to write per week and then report in every Monday. We suggest you keep the amount low because if you miss a week, if you want to continue with the videos and webinars, you have to buy back in for half price. Or just let the time of great forgetting win.
Your report does not have to be about your week, just the number of fiction words you wrote and maybe how far above your challenge number you were.
And Kris will tell you her goal and every week Kris will talk about her progress and how she is doing to those in the seminar. (That alone will be a major learning experience.)
So you get to challenge yourself, get weekly motivation videos, monthly webinar, and watch how Kris is doing up close every week. Three months of progress for yourself and staying focused through the time of great forgetting. All wins and great fun!!
SUMMARY OF THE BASICS1… Three months long, starting May 18th, ending August 16th.
2… You must send us before we start the amount of fiction words you want to write EVERY week during those three months. (Keep the total low, but not under 250 words per day, 1,750 words per week is minimum.) Goal starts over every week, not cumulative.
3… Original Fiction Only… No nonfiction or rewrites. ANY GENRE IS FINE.
4… LIMITED to 25 writers.
5… $300 price but $250 early bird sign-up until May 10th late. (THAT IS THIS COMING SUNDAY!!)
6… If you miss on a week, you can jump back in for $150.00
7… No subscriptions or credits on this because for this to work you must have skin in the game (Write me if you want me to explain why that works.)
8… To sign up, send the $250 fee to PayPal to the email address dean@wmgpublishingstore.com
I will get you on the list. Again limited to the first 25 writers signing up. Webinars will be recorded in case you can’t make it on a month.
This is going to be great fun and even though I am focused on the publishing side totally, I might jump into this as well, start ramping back up my writing, and report my progress to everyone.
Questions, write me at Dean (dot) WMG workshops @ gmail
Now…Kris again. I hope you all join me on this—or at least a few of you will. We would like the videos and the webinar to keep us motivated as well.
Let’s have a productive summer…together.
Categories: Authors
Comment on Editing by Benedict
In reply to Tharaniya.
The cover will probably be a bit delayed this time due to the slowness of the edits. Title should be relatively soon.
Categories: Authors
Comment on Editing by Benedict
In reply to Selma.
First I’ve heard of that! According to my publishers they’re still aiming for November 2026.
Categories: Authors
Comment on Editing by Selma
In reply to Benedict.
That’s wonderful news! A retailer’s website listed march 27th as the publishing date for book 4 so that had me a little worried for a moment.
Categories: Authors
An Obscure 70s Fantasy: The Vanishing Tower, by Michael Moorcock
The Vanishing Tower (DAW Books, June 1977). Cover by Michael Whelan
Here’s another in my series of reviews of “mostly obscure” 1970s/1980s books — the last one was of Evangeline Walton’s The Children of Llyr. That book was published in 1971, and so was the original edition of The Vanishing Tower (first titled The Sleeping Sorceress.)
And already I can hear people asking “Obscure? Obscure?! Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion retellings were not really obscure, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels are not remotely obscure!”
And I apologize — because you’re right. This novel in particular is part of one of the major sword and sorcery series of all time. Yet — as with the The Children of Llyr — it’s a book I myself didn’t read until just now, over 50 years after it first appeared.
Science Fantasy 47, June 1961, containing Michael Moorcock’s “The Dreaming City.” Cover by Brian Lewis
I’m going to delve into the publishing history not just of this book but of all the Elric books, because it gets a bit complicated. The first Elric story, “The Dreaming City,” appeared in the classic British magazine Science Fantasy in June 1961 (shown above). Over the next few years, several more stories appeared there and in Fantastic Stories.
Some of these stories formed a fairly coherent narrative that fundamentally ended with the 1964 story “Doomed Lord’s Passing,” though the publication order of the stories and the internal chronology don’t match at all. The first Elric book, The Stealer of Souls (1963), included mostly stories set somewhat early in the internal chronology, while the second, Stormbringer (1965), included four of the latest stories in internal chronology.
The Stealer of Souls (Lancer Books, 1967). Cover by Jack Gaughan
Beginning in 1970 Moorcock began to expand and reorganize his Elric sequence — first with a collection, The Singing Citadel, that included four of his earlier stories, and then in 1971 with some new work, that eventually included stories set before any of the earlier pieces, as well as stories set at various times in between the already published works.
Later books would include new stories and also stories from the first and third collections reshuffled — though Stormbringer remains the capstone of the whole series. (This chaotic chronology is actually quite appropriate for the themes of the whole series.)
The six-volume Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock (DAW Books). Covers by Michael Whelan
In 1976 and 1977 DAW published a set of six volumes, in internal chronological order, serving at that time as more or less the complete official Elric series, with restored texts and titles preferred by Moorcock. Three more books have been added in the subsequent decades, most recently The Citadel of Forgotten Myths in 2022.
The Vanishing Tower was fourth in the DAW set, and is sixth in the current chronology. It was first published by the New English Library in the UK as The Sleeping Sorceress in 1971, and by Lancer Books in the US in 1972. The DAW edition, from 1977, was the first to use The Vanishing Tower as the title.
The early collection The Singing Citadel, containing the Elric tales
“The Singing Citadel” and “Master of Chaos,” and the Eternal Champion tale
“To Rescue Tanelorn” (Berkley Medallion, August 1970). Cover by Gail Burwen
The novel comprises three closely linked “books,” all concerning Elric attempting to find and kill the evil sorcerer Theleb K’aarna. The first “book,” here called “The Torment of the Last Lord,” was published separately as “The Sleeping Sorceress” in the UK anthology Warlocks and Warriors, also in 1971, and reprinted in the February 1972 issue of Fantastic Stories in the US.
Elric, the tall, gaunt, albino warrior, long since exiled from his home Melniboné, and his sidekick Moonglum, come to the kingdom Lormyr, near the World’s Edge, where they believe they can find Theleb K’aarna.
Fantastic, February 1972, containing the Elric novella “The Sleeping Sorceress. ” Cover by Mike Kaluta
After some travails they happen on an isolated castle — and in it they find a beautiful woman in an enchanted sleep. This is Myshella, and she is another enemy of K’aarna. She, even as she is enchanted, reveals to Elric that Theleb K’aarna has allied with a certain Prince Umbda to attack her castle. If Elric can find a certain pouch Myshella may be able to wake and help Elric and Moonglum in a battle against Prince Umbda and the sorcerer.
Of course they succeed, but only partly, and in the second episode Theleb K’aarna, having miraculously escaped certain death, has come to Nadsokor, the City of Beggars. He has a proposition for the Beggar King, Urish, about the destruction of Elric, for Elric had previously stolen (or reclaimed) something from Urish.
The first two volumes of The Elric Saga omnibus editions from Saga Press: Elric of Melniboné
(February 15, 2022, cover by Brom) and Stormbringer (April 12, 2022, cover by Michael Whelan)
Meanwhile Elric and Moonglum, believing Theleb K’aarna to be dead, plan to go to the eternal city Tanelorn for some rest. But on the way, Elric loses the Ring of Kings to a thief — and soon realizes that the ring is on the way to Nadsokor. And — you guessed it — after some more adventures and perils, Elric and Moonglum are successful — except that Theleb K’aarna escapes again.
The final episode involves another encounter with Theleb K’aarna, who now threatens Tanelorn (and thus many of Elric’s friends.) This is in some ways one of the most interesting parts of the book, for Elric meets some avatars of — himself; which explicitly links this series to Moorcock’s overarching Eternal Champion series, and his “multiverse,” along with characters with the initials JC (and with the Three Who Are One!) There are journeys to other Planes, and a battle alongside Corum and Erekosë, and a bitter reunion with Myshella.
The first US release of The Vanishing Tower, first published as The Sleeping Sorceress
(Lancer Books, September 1972). Cover by Charles Moll
So, what did I think?
I don’t really think this is likely the best place to start with Elric. There are good points — Moorcock’s imagination is fecund, and the character of Elric is a worthwhile counter to traditional Sword and Sorcery heroes like Conan. But on the whole the novel doesn’t do a whole lot. The writing seems hurried — the prose isn’t terrible but it’s a bit slapdash. The action scenes seem run of the mill S&S — there isn’t a lot of suspense, just superhuman swordplay.
It’s not bad stuff, but it’s not special. I can see via the outlines of the entire series why this is a key part of fantasy history. But for me, the Moorcock I want to stick with is stuff like The Dancers at the End of Time — or like the novel up next, Mother London.
Rich Horton’s last article for us was a review of The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton. His website is Strange at Ecbatan. Rich has written over 200 articles for Black Gate, see them all here.
Categories: Fantasy Books
Comment on Editing by Bill
In reply to Benedict.
That is great news – looking forward to Book#4!
Categories: Authors
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