Glen Cook Speaks!

There's a video interview with Glen posted on youtube. He was at some french convention recently as a guest of honor, and was interviewed in French. Fortunately for the non-Francophones, including myself, Glen was able to provide his answers in English.

The interview lasts for almost an hour. During that time, Glen expands on many of the things he's mentioned in his online interviews. There's added depth, such as learning that the publishers who bought A Shadow of All Night Falling, but failed to release it, were Lancer (went out of business) and Dell (a warehouse fire led them to cancel all books not projected to be best-sellers). However, the real cause for excitement is that Glen mentioned that the two Black Company stories published in the past year, Tides Elba and Smelling Darkness, are really the first two chapters in the long-promised new Black Company novel A Pitiless Rain! The full book is in-progress, and takes place during the five years between The Black Company and Shadows Linger. The equally long-promised Port of Shadows will be a coda to the series, if it ever gets written and published.

Glen didn't say anything about Working the Gods' Mischief. I'm still in the dark about that one, as the recent mass market paperback of Surrender to the Will of the Night makes no mention of it! It isn't listed on the various sites which show publishers' expected list of books to come out in the next six months, so I now wonder if, not when, it will come out. I hope that Tor is simply trying not to compete with Nightshade's release of the three concluding Dread Empire novels.

I picked up the re-issue of Reap the East Wind a few weeks ago. I'm annoyed that its dimensions are smaller than those of the other Nightshade Dread Empire editions. Now they'll look awkward next to each other on the shelf. Yes, I really am that petty. That said, the book turned out nicely, with no noticeable typos to suggest the text was OCR-scanned out of the original. I read the new edition, and if anything, the book was better than I remembered. Many hints were dropped that I missed upon my first reading, all those years ago.

I'll reread An Ill Fate Marshalling when its re-issue becomes available in a couple of weeks. Publishers Weekly did something of a hatchet job on the book, which you can read here. I suppose the reviewer is more accustomed to reading about chick detectives kicking butt, or dating vampires, or some other sort of "hip and modern" story.

The real excitement remains the January 2012 publication of A Path to Coldness of Heart. Follow to link and you'll see that Amazon has made sections of the book available to preview. I'm already intrigued to learn that Kristen and Daal are finding Sherilee quite annoying! I wonder how that will play out. (I always had a fondness for the Sherilee character because at the time I first read An Ill Fate Marshalling, there was a girl in my dorm who fit Cook's description of her perfectly)

Finally, the image to this post is an album cover from Russian folk metal band Arkona. I like them, though they aren't my favorites. The same can be said for Korpiklaani. The two bands play NYC the day after Thanksgiving, and I'll probably be on hand at the Gramercy Theater to catch them. Even if neither is at the top of my list, I still want to seize what may be my only opportunity to see them. It should be a lot of fun. Rock on and read on, everyone!

Winter's Coming!

The title of this post is meant both figuratively and literally. We're heading towards autumn as I type this, and winter will follow. I don't like winter, even if I know I'd miss it, were I to move to a tropical climate. But this time, I have a reason to look forward to winter's arrival. Nightshade have finally announced the new Dread Empire book, A Path to Coldness of Heart, scheduled for January!

If you click on the link and read the blurb, it states that the conclusion to the Dread Empire series has arrived. It doesn't explicitly say that A Path to Coldness of Heart is the final book. I wonder there will be one more, to tie it all up, much like the "conclusion" to The Wheel of Time is actually three books. Regardless, more kudos to Raymond Swanland for another eye-catching cover.

Note that Amazon list An Ill Fate Marshalling for January 10. Nightshade books tend to appear several weeks ahead of their listed publication date. So I expect Reap the East Wind by mid-September, and An Ill Fate Marshalling by mid-December. A Path to Coldness of Heart then might follow by the end of January. All of this, of course, is just my best guess. At any rate, the wait for new Dread Empire material is almost over...

Ill-Fated Update!

Good flipping god, Raymond Swanland has topped himself with this one! It's the cover to the reprint of An Ill Fate Marshalling, showing Bragi Ragnarson in all his snarling fury! Nightshade finally added this to their website, along with the full cover to Reap the East Wind.

What will Swanland come up with for the finale? We're getting closer...

Ill-Fated Announcement!

I know I've told some of this before. I'm a big fan of Ken Kelly's paintings, whether for KISS, for Rainbow Rising, or for various fantasy novels. I've followed him since around 1983, when I already owned Destroyer and Love Gun on LP, and started collecting books with his covers by Robert Adams, Robert E. Howard, John Norman, and others. I was aware of Kelly's work when, during 1987, I saw he had done the cover for Glen Cook's Reap the East Wind. It was announced as being "the new Dread Empire novel!"

I wasn't aware of any previous Dread Empire novels. A few months later, An Ill Fate Marshalling was released, with the Ken Kelly cover attached to this post, again as a new Dread Empire novel. Kelly's covers drew me in, and looking through the books made them seem fascinating. I bought them, and they were my introduction to Glen Cook's writing. I started hunting for the earlier Dread Empire novels in used bookstores, and finally found them, after around six months. I recognized October's Baby as one I had seen in stores some years earlier.

Reap the East Wind was great, if short. An Ill Fate Marshalling was better, and quickly became one of my favorite books. I've waited and waited for the story to continue, and gave up hope for a while. Then, Nightshade began their omnibus Dread Empire reprinting, and it was successful enough for Glen to decide to recreate the lost manuscript that continued the story.

I mentioned last time that Nightshade have changed their plan of releasing an omnibus with Reap the East Wind and An Ill Fate Marshalling along with the newly-rewritten Wrath of Kings (my spell-check keeps telling me that "marshalling" is an error, but my paperback dictionary states that "marshaling" and "marshalling" are both acceptable). My guess is that the last book became too large for this. Originally, the sequel to An Ill Fate Marshalling wasn't going to be the final volume in the sequence, but rather the penultimate one. Now, I believe Cook is writing a massive tome with two books' worth of plot. At least I hope he is!

There's reason to believe that the wait for this final Dread Empire book won't be too long. Reap the East Wind is out in the new edition in October, and now, the reprint of An Ill Fate Marshalling has been announced for December. No cover has been shown yet, and I haven't seen this anywhere but on Nightshade's site. But it suggests that the new book might be available in February or March of 2012. I'll of course pass along further details as I learn of them. Meanwhile, I need to order Ken Kelly's just-released 2012 calendar, to get my fix of heroic fantasy images!

Catching Up

I visited College Park, Maryland, for the first time, back in February. I fulfilled a dream of longstanding by spending three days at the National Archives (NARA) there, scanning Waffen-SS photos from the captured records department. I scanned nearly 700 photos, most of them concerning non-German foreign volunteers.

My French friend Charles Trang has visited NARA many times. He shared some scans with me last autumn, and these gave me the impetus to start work on a new book! I have many photos in my personal collection that deal with the Wiking, Nordland, and Nederland Waffen-SS divisions. Charles helped me understand that I could find many more at NARA, and so I decided to take a trip there. First, I contacted my friends at Helion, a UK history publishing house. They published my 2004 co-authored work on Walloon collaboration, For Rex & For Belgium. I asked them if they'd like to publish a new, large format photo book by me, about the Germanic Waffen-SS, and they quickly said, "yes!" I signed a contact during January, and a few weeks later was on my way to Maryland.

We have a working title for the project, Sunwheels & Siegrunen: Wiking, Nordland, Nederland and the Germanic Waffen-SS in Photos. Much of my free time this year has gone into researching the topic and organizing the photos. I hope to use roughly 900 in the finished product, but we'll see how that goes. I have begun writing the captions, making them as detailed as possible, but there's a long way left to go. I hope the book can be released by the end of 2012, but it's too early to make any accurate prediction about that.

When I need a break from the serious topic of war studies, I have been reading Conan comics, as mentioned in my previous post. Dark Horse collection #8, Black Colossus, has been added to my collection, and #7, Cimmeria, will probably be next.

But I've also been keeping tabs on Glen Cook's writings. As I've mentioned over the years, I love his Dread Empire novels. I've been waiting quite a while for any news of the final omnibus, which is to include the newly-rewritten Wrath of Kings concluding book. Finally, there's something to report. It seems the three books that would make up the omnibus are being released separately. The first, the long-out-of-print Reap the East Wind, is scheduled for release on October 4 of this year. It is supposed to be graced with another Raymond Swanland masterpiece for the cover, the image that accompanies this post.

I like Reap the East Wind, but I like the sequel, An Ill Fate Marshalling, even more. I hope it is re-released soon after, with the new final volume following closely. I'll pass along details as I find them.

I've heard rumors that Cook has signed a contract to write the 14th Garrett novel. I don't know yet if that is true, but Garrett is getting repackaged. Just a few weeks from now, on August 2, Introducing Garrett, P.I. hits store shelves. It's the first Garrett omnibus, containing Sweet Silver Blues, Bitter Gold Hearts, and Cold Copper Tears. The second omnibus, Garrett Takes the Case, is due on February 7 of next year. It presumably contains Old Tin Sorrows, Dread Brass Shadows, and the very-hard-to-find Red Iron Nights.

I haven't found a scheduled release date yet for Working the Gods' Mischief, but the mass market paperback of Surrender to the Will of the Night comes out on November 1. It doesn't seem like there's any plan for a trade paperback edition, which is odd, since that is now the primary way of acquiring the first two Instrumentalities books, The Tyranny of the Night and Lord of the Silent Kingdom.

It looks like 2012 will be a momentous publishing year for Glen Cook and for me!

Shadows and Shadows

Look at that cover, fine stuff, isn't it? Cary Nord no longer pencils Dark Horse's Conan comics, but he contributes the odd piece now and then.

I'd been meaning for a while to read more of the modern Conan comics. As I've indicated before, I have a LOT of varied interests. I sometimes let some of them lie dormant for a while, so I'll find something to start (or re-start) reading and collecting at a later date.

I bought the first Dark Horse Conan collection when it was new, and also own the first Savage Sword of Conan collection. I'm a big fan of both the Cary Nord Darkhorse Conan, and the John Buscema/Alfredo Alcala black and white Marvel version of the character. However, other things caught my attention, and only recently did the itch come over me to acquire more Dark Horse releases. I knew this time would come, sooner or later, and the wait is over.

In the meantime, I read some criticisms of the artwork by Tomas Giorello, who took over for Nord along the way. I'd see the collections in the bookstores, and, honestly, the art looked decent enough. Timothy Truman took over as writer, and I've been a fan of his since I acquired Straight Up to See the Sky, many years ago. I also remember Truman as an artist for D&D products back around 1987. Since I'm familiar with the plot to Robert E. Howard's original stories, I decided I should get a book in which Truman and Giorello were able to use a lot of their own ideas. Thus, I bought a copy of The Hand of Nergal, which is expanded from a REH synopsis.

It was a fun adventure, with plenty of bloodshed and grimness. The art is quite good, and I think complainers are only upset that it is different from Nord's work. Giorello is actually a better artist than Nord, in basic terms, but Nord has him beat in making an impact with his work. Both are fine choices for this sort of tale.

I was left with the urge for more Dark Horse Conan, and on the second purchase, I couldn't pass up Iron Shadows in the Moon, with its dynamic cover art. It isn't one of my favorite REH stories, but I was interested in comparing the Truman/Giorello take on it with the version by Roy Thomas and Buscema/Alcala. Both are equally good, overall, but Dark Horse has the advantage of not having Conan wear his notorious "fur diaper!"

I'll probably do a major purchase soon, of all the Dark Horse collections that I'm missing (I now have 1, 6, & 10, out of 10). These books are a worthy tribute to REH and his creations, done with respect and care. They are well-worth buying and reading.

Moonsorrow have long provided a great soundtrack for reading Conan and other REH material. I finally caught up with their latest,Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa, now that a legal American download has become available. The title translates as "As Shadows We Walk in the Land of the Dead," and the album is as cheery as that suggests. Their last full album, 2007's V: Hävitetty ("Chapter 5, Ravaged"), told of the end of the world, as described in Norse and Nordic legends. VKKM is a loose sequel, in that it tells the tale of the fate of a handful of survivors of the cataclysm.

My favorite Moonsorrow song remains Haaska ("Carrion") from 2005's Verisakeet ("The Blood Verses"). That album was the first time the band achieved a really tough production tone that reflected how they sound live. In particular, Baron Tarvonen's drumming was captured at its full potential. This new album essentially takes the template from Haaska, and expands it into four full songs (along with three short interludes that advance the story). This is a leaner, more muscular Moonsorrow than what was heard on Voimasta ja Kunniasta ("Of Strength and Honor") and Kivenkantaja ("Stonebearer"). The drums pummel, the guitars are aggressive, and the keyboards play only a minor role. If you're looking for the "happy" sounds of Voimasta and Suden Uni (A Wolf's Dream"), you'll be disappointed, but if, like me, you enjoy the Tama Ikuinen Talvi ("This Eternal Winter") demo, well, there's echoes of it here, twelve years down the road.

If you're new to Moonsorrow, listen to Huuto ("The Scream") to get a feel for their sound. It's the most accessible song on Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maassa, and also the most varied. There's some "tribal" drumming, some folk strumming, and plenty of heaviness around those moments. But all four full songs very good, and up to Moonsorrow's high standards.

Back to Conan, in the days since I first started composing this post I bought another Dark Horse collection, volume 9, Free Companions. I think Truman did a great job bridging the events of of Black Colossus (a REH story covered in volume 8) and Iron Shadows in the Moon. Truman himself did a good part of the art in this book, and Joe Kubert handled a bit too. I used to read Kubert's work extensively 25 years ago and more, in DC war comics such as Sgt. Rock. It was fun to see his first Conan work, but his scenes look out of place next to the other material. Truman does a decent job, but, ultimately, his sections and Kubert's pale next to Giorello's half of the book. The pencil samples in the back of the book really make clear how excellent Giorello is. It's good to know that Truman and Giorello are still working together, for adaptations of some of REH's stories of King Conan. The Scarlet Citadel is in-progress now, as a comic book mini-series. I'll definitely be getting the eventual trade paperback collection, whenever it is released. By that time, I'll hopefully own the other Conan volumes that I'm currently missing.

Minor Clen Cook News

I'm preparing a post on what I've been up to over the past few months. I'm working on a new book of my own, but meanwhile, Glen Cook continues to have his work repackaged and republished.

I was lucky to get a used copy of A Matter of Time thrown in on a purchase from an online auction site. The book was hard to find a couple of years ago, but Nightshade added it to their roster of reprinted Glen Cook titles. I haven't read it yet, but will probably get to it in the next year or so.

Penguin/Roc probably found it difficult keeping Cook's many Garrett books in print. They never did get around to reprinting Red Iron Nights and Deadly Quicksilver Lies (volumes 6 & 7), and have let Cold Copper Tears, Old Tin Sorrows and Dread Brass Shadows slip back out of print (volumes 3-5). Cook's other major series have been collected in omnibus editions, so it is no surprise that Introducing Garrett, P.I. will be out this summer. I'm not fond of that cover, but I like the idea that, in theory, the entire series will be in print again in a year or two. Now, Glen just needs to write two more Garrett books, so that there can be five omnibus volumes!

Finally, a second new Black Company story will be out soon in the anthology Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2. The book sports another "meh" cover, but hopefully the tale is a good one. I enjoyed Tides Elba, the story in last year's Swords & Dark Magic. I never did finish that book, fwiw, but I may eventually return to it.

The latest, and perhaps final, of Del Rey's Robert E. Howard collections came out since my last post. Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures is essentially an expanded, illustrated version of Lord of Samarcand, one my favorite REH collections. Both bring together the tales he wrote for Oriental Stories/The Magic Carper Magazine. They feature Crusaders and Sultans, Mongol hordes and Cossacks, all caught up in some of the grimmest, saddest stories written by a man who excelled at capturing the dark and tragic in his work.

There's moments of humor too, as REH wrote in many styles, and this new volume adds Spears of Clontarf, the "non-fantasy" version of Howard's telling of the 1014 Battle of Clontarf. That Irish battle had its 997th anniversary a few days ago, and while history books don't record that Odin was physically present, REH could imagine him there, when he re-wrote the story as The Grey God Passes. I prefer that version, but it makes sense that a story-collection that is supposed to be rooted in historical works would use the earlier piece. Anyone reading this who enjoys the dark vibe that Glen Cook injects into his Black Company and Dread Empire books will likely enjoy Sword Woman, even if they aren't Conan fans. If the book is your introduction to Howard, and you like what you've read, The Grey God Passes can be found amid many other REH tales in The Best of Robert E. Howard volume 1.

Back to Glen Cook, I hope to learn of a publication date for NEW full books by him soon. Working the God's Mischeif (Instrumentalties 4) and Wrath of Kings (the final Dread Empire omnibus) can't be too far from being announced, can they? I certainly hope not....

Time Out of Mind

My first meal of the new year was consumed at one of those mock-bakery restaurants, which feature overpriced sandwiches and baked goods. Still, it was a good sandwich, and the place makes wonderful monster cookies. They use real monster, not the artificial kind so common these days. And the place offers iced tea by the tub, which, no joke, is one of the best ways to attract my business.

The winter holiday season usually makes me reflective, and when I'm in that mindset, my musical taste changes. Man does not live by Metal alone. At least, this one doesn't, even if Metal dominates my listening. But I've been listening to Steely Dan for as long as I've been into harder rocking music. I played a LOT of Steely Dan in the car, when I was in high school. My mom found their material odd, but it must have made some sort of impression on her, as she was eager to attend one of their reunion concerts with me, back around 1993. She had a good time, and it was one of our last bonding experiences before she died a year or so later.

All these years later, the Steely Dan album I listen to the most, the one that really resonates with me, is Gaucho. This is probably the most-maligned of their original seven releases. It is generally considered the worst of the lot, but it works for me better than any of the rest. The band's career can be viewed as a gradual shift from being New Yorkers to becoming out-of-place Californians. I've seen Gaucho, released at the end of 1980, labeled as a concept album on life in the SoCal of that era. In a loose sense, that's certainly true, even if the songs are only related in theme, not storyline.

Mike Powell does an amazing job of echoing my thoughts about the songs in this piece, published a few years ago. I only wish he had commented on my favorite one, Third World Man. I'm amazed at how Walter Becker and Donald Fagen took a stellar Larry Carlton guitar solo, left over from the sessions for a previous album, and constructed a song around it. It fits together seamlessly, with the listener unaware that Carlton had no other involvement in the song or album.

The music is tired and laid back, but the tales it tells are sadder and tawdrier than ever before in Steely Dan's oeuvre. It appeals to the same part of me that loves John Crawford's compositions for Berlin. I won't defend Berlin as great music, but I admire how he wrote songs about sex and lust, rather than about imaginary romantic love. Yet, just as with Becker and Fagen, a bit of real feeling emerges from time to time, and is all the more poignant because of the artists' track record for emotional honesty.

So here's a shout out to Gaucho: Happy 30th Birthday! I'm glad you are finding appreciation, and that Steely Dan continue to play some of your songs on their current tours.

On a different note, regarding the reflection I mentioned above, it was a year ago today that I limped into Bedford, Pennsylvania, on my journey to the East Coast. As related in an earlier post, I became violently sick in the early hours of January 1, 2010. I was exhausted as I drove away from Columbus, Ohio, that morning. I should have completed my drive to New Jersey that day, with just a visit to Patti Bonn in Bedford. But getting to her home, at the halfway point of that day's scheduled route, was all I could manage. Patti is one of my publishers, so we're old friends and business partners, and she had already offered me her spare bedroom for a night. I took her up on the offer, and felt much better on January 2, when I finally made it my friend's house in western New Jersey (and picked up Ember from the kennel that was housing her).

2010 was a very lucrative year for me, and moving was well worth the effort and expense. Now I'm ready to take on even more challenges and changes in 2011. I'm expecting the best, and I hope everyone reading this finds it too! Happy New Year!