IT'S PHANTASTIC

It’s all happening as 2020 kicks off. No sooner is Stephen Jones’ THE LOVECRAFT SQUAD: RISING published, but Trevor Kennedy’s PHANTASMAGORIA magazine is running a special (#2, if we’re counting) based around the book and Lovecraft. Among its many delights will be a brief life and times of one Damian Paladin – which means I get to share cover billing with some quite delightful people. Probably be the one and only time, so I’d best make the most of it (and since it’s alphabetical, I get to be on top).

PHANTASMAGORIA #14 will also include my short story “Chasing the Dragon” (originally published in Emby Press’s SUPERHERO MONSTER HUNTER: THE GOOD FIGHT), and elsewhere in that issue there may even be some of my artwork. So don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Both mags will be available later in March, with an official launch at StokerCon, Scarborough, in April.

Also launching at StokerCon is THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS 2: STRANGE STORIES AND WEIRD TALES. Damian Paladin – along with Leigh Oswin, Andy Raven, and Leo Saint-Germain – crop up, the proverbial bad pennies, in “Digging in the Dirt”: an indirect sequel to the “Hastur La Vista, Baby” crossover with Adrian Cole’s Nick Nightmare published in THE LOVECRAFT SQUAD: RISING. Almost as if it was planned (and if you believe that, you give me way too much credit).

2019: THE YEAR THAT WAS

This year’s annual round-up is pretty brief. One of those outwardly calm years when nothing much seems to be happening.

It started with a short SF piece seeing publication in KZINE #23 in January – “A World in Aspic”. Set in the Derry & Toms roof garden, in an alternate 1920s/30s, with the sort of clunking robots that graced the old movie serials I’d catch the odd episode of at the Jacey cinema in Birmingham during rare childhood Saturday afternoon visits.

I also worked on a couple of novellas I’d promised people in moments of weakness. One was for Fringeworks: a steampunk Sherlock Holmes sequel to my VALLIS TIMORIS mash-up; the second for Dion Winton-Polak’s TWISTED EARTH shared world. All that interspersed with editing a couple of novels for a friend.

During the latter half I teamed up once again with old mate Adrian Cole to co-write another Damian Paladin/Nick Nightmare team-up for Stephen Jones’ THE LOVECRAFT SQUAD: RISING. Entitled “Hastur La Vista, Baby”, we somehow kept things going over two separate timelines that eventually merged; and I took the chance to shake things up a little in the Paladin-Oswin universe.

Speaking of Paladin and Leigh, they continue to fight the good fight in “Digging in the Dirt” for THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS 2 (out early 2020), and their decidedly VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA-inspired adventure “Cradle of the Deep” is due to appear imminently in STARTLING STORIES #1.

I also kept the Sherlock Holmes banner flying with the decidedly non-canon “The Direction of Sunbeams” for the self-explanatory SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE OCCULT DETECTIVES anthology coming from Belanger Books.

And in late 2020 I’ll be making another appearance in a Stephen Jones edited anthology, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF FOLK HORROR, with “All I Ever See”.

The year ended with one of those coincidences that crop up infrequently: two interview requests, each coming hard upon the other. One was for Trevor Kennedy’s PHANTASMAGORIA #13, the Christmas special, and the second for an article by Stephen Jewell on DC Thomson’s STARBLAZER digest comic of blessed memory, commissioned by the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE. Both issues emerged just in time for Christmas.

As for 2020 itself? Who can say. I continue to fly by the seat of my pants, with little to no planning – but at least I’m keeping boredom at bay. And life still, on occasion, surprises me.

And so may I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy New Year, and continuing good fortune in these trying days. 

WHAT'S THAT WEIRD BOOK...?

Weirdbook has existed, in a variety of iterations, since the late 1960s, coming into its own in the mid-1970s. It was a quality small press magazine long before the term Small Press was coined, and I discovered it in the early 70s. I'd joined the British Fantasy Society and was rapidly becoming aware of a hitherto unknown world of authors, books and magazines. The society's annual convention, FantasyCon, gave these publications flesh and I gladly offered up all my hard-earned cash to get my hands on them.

Edited by W Paul Ganley, Weirdbook looked the business. It had covers by Stephen Fabian, poems by Robert E Howard and Joseph Payne Brennan, fiction by the likes of H Warner Munn, Brian Lumley, Eddy Bertin, Adrian Cole, Darrell Schweitzer and L Sprague de Camp. It was as professional as it was possible to be on a tiny budget. It never occurred to me - fledgling writer that I was - that one day I'd by published within its pages.

Unlike its contemporaries, Weirdbook has managed to survive – now published by Wildside Press and edited by Douglas Draa, with W Paul Ganley as consulting editor - looking to the developing styles of weird fiction of the 21st century whilst unashamedly celebrating its roots. Once again, Darrell Schweitzer and Adrian Cole are regulars, along with plenty of fresh blood.

And I've made it too. Issue 40. Check it out.

THE RETURN OF THE PALADIN - PART TWO

Back in 2009 I wrote in this ’ere blog about it being over ten years since THE PALADIN MANDATES was published by The Alchemy Press, and how a review of same in THEAKER'S QUARTERLY DIGEST provoked me into writing a sparkly fresh Paladin story: “Sailors of the Skies” for DARK HORIZONS #55 (The British Fantasy Society, 2009).

Paladin himself had been born many years earlier, in “Death Wish Mandate” published in KADATH #5, by Francesco Cova. He’d had a long gestation.

Ever since he drew SWORD OF SORCERY for DC Comics (1973), I’ve been a fan of Howard Chaykin. In 1975 he wrote and drew the first two issues of THE SCORPION for Atlas/Seaboard Comics. Set in the 1930s, it pitted an apparently immortal character – Moro Frost – against slightly more mundane villains. At the time I didn’t know much about the rich history of masked avengers who had graced the pages of pulp magazines back before the Second World War (with the exception of Doc Savage and the Shadow), so I was pretty ignorant of where Chaykin was coming from. After THE SCORPION ceased publication, he took the idea over to Marvel and created, with a slight change of costume and dropping the immortal bit, Dominic Fortune. Despite my ignorance of history, there was something about both characters that sparked an interest in me. I wanted to do something similar. But what, and how? I couldn’t quite nail it.

It took a phone call from David Sutton to crystallise the idea. He told me that Francesco Cova wanted to do an occult detective issue of KADATH, and there was space left if I wanted to submit. That was all I needed. An occult detective – of course! Set in 1930s New York, and dressed in a style not unlike the Scorpion. Over the following years I wrote a few more Paladin tales – selling a couple – before The Alchemy Press collected them for their first publication in 1998.

The character went into something of a hiatus for over a decade, until his resurrection in DARK HORIZONS. Again it was just the spark I needed. I wrote several more Paladin stories, including: “There’ll Be A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”, for an expanded Kindle edition of THE PALADIN MANDATES (The Alchemy Press, 2012); a cross-over with Nick Nightmare (co-written with Nick’s creator, Adrian Cole) “Fire All of the Guns At One Time” for the British Fantasy Award winning NICK NIGHTMARE INVESTIGATES (Alchemy Press/Airgedlamh, 2014); and the Christmas-themed “Deck the Halls” in OCCULT DETECTIVE MONSTER HUNTER (Emby Press, 2015).

And finally, in 2017, almost treading on each other’s heels, OCCULT DETECTIVE QUARTERLY #2 included “The Black Tarot” (in which I sneakily introduced the world to a brand new masked vigilante character – having learned a little more of the Pulp tradition in the intervening years), and Pro Se Productions published the eagerly-awaited (well – I was all agog anyway) collection/portmanteau novel, WALKERS IN SHADOW: six new tales of adventure, plus a revised “Sailors of the Skies”).

So what’s next? Well, there are plans to re-issue PALADIN MANDATES in expanded form, and “The Black Tarot” is intended to be the first in a new bunch of adventures for Paladin, Leigh Oswin and his expanding repertory company.

One thing’s for sure: the world shall hear from Damian Paladin again.

Nick Nightmare Wins BFS Award

Reblogged from The Alchemy Press

Posted on 28/10/2015

We at The Alchemy Press are thrilled to announce that Adrian Cole’s collection Nick Nightmare Investigates was awarded the Best Collection Award presented by the British Fantasy Society. The news was announced over the FantasyCon 2015 weekend, and was presented to Adrian my Mistress of Ceremonies Juliet E McKenna.

Nick Nightmare Investigates was published late 2014 as a signed limited edition, and involved several people behind the project. We offer deep gratitude and thanks to Adrian, editor Mike Chinn (who also co-wrote one of the book’s stories), artists Bob Eggleton and Jim Pitts, designers Michael Marshall Smith and Stephen Jones, as well as Airgedlámh Publications’ Stephen Jones and David Sutton.

The book is available from The Alchemy Press.

Photo of Juliet E McKenna and Adrian Cole © Peter Coleborn

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Nick Nightmare Investigates

 

I've known Adrian Cole for ... let's say some time. In fact, he may be the first person I spoke to at FantasyCon numero uno in the dim and distant 1970s (although we had been corresponding for a while: he in his capacity as editor of the BFS magazine, Dark Horizons). The first two volumes of The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes included Nick Nightmare stories - a private eye based in a Lovecraftian New York - so when it was decided that The Alchemy Press would be publishing a collection of Nick Nightmare tales it was something of a no-brainer when I was asked if I'd like to edit said volume. I was even more delighted when it was suggested that Nick should meet up with my own investigator of the occult, Damian Paladin, in a crossover story written especially for the collection.

 

Now, I've heard all the tales of horror regarding collaboration; the cries of "Never again!" But I'm happy to say there were no tears, no clashes of ego and no fights over who got top billing. The two occult PIs might have knocked the odd spark off each other, but the writing went smoothly. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

So here it is, launching at FantasyCon in September: Nick Nightmare Investigates. A two-fisted, limited edition hardback with cover art by Bob Eggleton and interiors from another old friend, Jim Pitts.

 

Well, I'm happy...