Saturday, June 25, 2011

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!