Conning My Way Across the Country

 I've lived on the East Coast for most of my life, but I moved to Minnesota last summer for personal reasons. In the winter, I visited Chicago, and late this spring, I drove to Maryland to visit some relatives and pick up the last of my belongings that I'd stashed there. But at the end of this summer, I traveled halfway across the country twice, to go to two different science fiction conventions.

At the left are the physical objects I brought back from WorldCon, the 2026 World Science Fiction Convention. Well, I forgot to include the T-shirt I received for donating blood via the Heinlein Society blood drive, but everything else is there: My badge (both versions) with ribbons and two pins, three used books I picked up, and an earcuff. At right are my Armadillocon badge and the program.

WorldCon/LACon V: Los Angeles, California

I flew here since it would have taken 6 days just for the driving back and forth. That was pretty uneventful. The big mistake was coming early enough to see some L.A. attractions and not renting a car, since it takes a long time to get anywhere and Lyft is super expensive because of that. My partner and I spent over $100 going back and forth to the L.A. County Museum of Art, awesome though it was. If I'd wanted to go to Disney right next to the Anaheim Convention Center, where WorldCon was, going early would've been worth it. Happily, it was still worthwhile, since friend Juan Sanmiguel had a car and was willing to drive to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (which was very interesting) and the Getty Villa (beautiful art museum), but sitting idle around the con hotel for a few days would have been fairly frustrating.

One thing about the Anaheim Hilton that was awesome, however, was its fitness center, which was in the basement and huge, with lots of different kinds of aerobic and weightlifting machines, like a full-service gym. I went there Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, enjoying the options, before the con started and I became too busy. (There was an outdoor pool, but it was small, and full of kids every time I looked.)

On Sunday or Monday, I forget which, we had dinner with Juan at In-n-Out; it was my first time there, and I had mine Protein-Style, i.e. wrapped in iceberg lettuce instead of a bun; it was fine, but I don't see why people enthuse so much over it. Another night, we had dinner with friends at a very good Mexican restaurant; the chili verde pork was quite tender and tasty. On Wednesday, we had supper with my friend/client Greg Wilson (Arvan Eleron) and his daughter at the hotel. On Thursday morning, as the con was about to start, we had breakfast with Jennifer Brozek, and I had an incredibly tasty omelet sandwich thing. Most of the other meals I had at the con were breakfast bars or sandwiches in the room. However, there was also a very tasty and nutritious tilapia bowl that I got from a food truck outside the con, and a delicious, nutritious salmon bowl that I got at the Native restaurant inside the airport on Tuesday.

Why Two Versions of my LACon V Badges?

This year, not only did I participate on WorldCon panels, I also helped out the photography team, not taking photos (except for a series of cell snaps at the Ig Nobel awards readings) but rather getting caption information from people that my Skiffy and Fanty colleague, Paul Weimer, was taking photographs of with his good Canon camera and lenses. Paul was the Area Head of Photography for this convention. I also added caption information to a number of photos that had been posted to the WorldCon account on Flickr. So, I had my regular WorldCon badge with a Program Participant ribbon, but also, WorldCon issued me a STAFF badge with a "Photography Team" ribbon, plus a nice, solid, metal brooch with wings on either side of a star, which says LAcon V Staff on the bottom. Also, Paul's "boss" Olav Rokne, who has been Head of Photography at a previous WorldCon and was the Division Head of Promotions and Marketing this year, gave me a coppery pin that says LAcon V: Thanks, with an image of Fuzzy, the channel island fox who was the mascot for LAcon V. I suppose that the idea behind having two badges was that if a staffer was rushing someplace and didn't want to be stopped by people asking "where is thing?", they could flip to their "civilian" badge to appear to be less of an authority/information figure.

Hugo Awards

Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher was the master of ceremonies for the Hugo awards, and she did a great job entertaining the panel with semi-horrific animal facts when technical problems delayed the program for about half an hour, plus later glitches. I was also quite happy that the names of all the finalists had been prerecorded by someone who sounded like a pro, who did not obviously glitch anybody's name. As usual, I strongly agreed with some of the winners and strongly disagreed with the results of some other votes, but nearly all of them were reasonable; you can see the winners here. 

My WorldCon Panels 

Back in mid-August, I wrote about the 7 panels that I was going to be on at WorldCon. I think I did pretty well on The Fan Hugo Categories (my only virtual panel), Poetry Deathmatch! (I was eliminated early but came up with some doggerel that the audience seemed to enjoy), Leading Ladies: Women in Early Science Fiction and Fandom (I talked about really early writers, including Mary Shelley and Marie Corelli), Critiquing the Critics (which made me feel more of a hack reviewer than a real critic, but I'll keep working on it). But I was really happy with the last three panels: 

Inconceivable! The Game Show of Nerdery and Nonsense -- I've been listening to this show for years on The Incomparable podcast, so I was thrilled to participate! I was on a team with John Coxon, who's on another podcast I listen to, Octothorpe, and award-winning author with Catherynne M. Valente, and we ended up working together really well. I actually managed to "Liz" my way to an answer (talking about seeming irrelevancies until the real answer popped into my head), and John said he actually saw the light bulb go on in my head. There should be a recording, so The Incomparable should release this eventually.

Live Podcast: The Skiffy and Fanty Show - Strange New Selves! -- I moderated this panel and had a very interesting discussion on this topic with Jennifer Brozek, Brandon O'Brien, and Paul Weimer. But I had another panel right after this one, so Paul stuck around to get a copy of the recording from a tech guy, after being directed to two successive rooms to find him. We'd been advised that this would be better/safer than trying to get a link/download from con staff at a later time. I've done a rough edit on the recording and turned it over to Shaun Duke, so he should release the podcast on the Skiffy and Fanty feed sooner or later.

Sidewise Awards/But What If the Other Side Won? Alternate Histories -- my initial inner reaction when Programming suggested this panel for me was a lack of enthusiasm, because it sounded a little bit 101-level, plus the military framing. However, Gideon Marcus was going to be the moderator, and we've had several friendly interactions, and Ronald D. Moore was going to be on the panel, and I thought, when else am I going to have a chance to meet RDM? As it happened, I briefly met RDM on the night of the Hugo Awards, when I was helping with the pre-Hugos posed photos, but he had some kind of work emergency on Monday and couldn't come to any panels. However, the person who stepped in for him was Olav, who wo I mentioned above and who writes the Unofficial Hugo Book Club blog with his wife, Amanda Wakaruk, the pair of whom I've enjoyed spending time with at previous WorldCons.  Anyway, Olav and I turned out to have great rapport together on this panel, building on each other's ideas and energizing each other. At one point, when someone in the audience asked what if Elvis hadn't died, I referred to "the historical documentary, 'Bubba Ho-Tep,'" and Olav said he was about to say almost the same thing, and we high-fived. It was great!

Other things

I attended a lot of other panels, too, but I've waited too long to write this report. On the online program, "My Schedule" no longer shows what I picked to attend. I'm not inclined to scroll through the program, which has 1,735 items on it, just to remind myself of what else I attended. I did have a very full and fun WorldCon, however!

My partner and I had about a week to partially catch up with life and recover after getting back from L.A. Then we were off again!

Armadillocon: Austin, Texas

Having the printed program guide for Armadillocon was invaluable, because the new Austin hotel that they'd moved to was full of dead spots where it was difficult to get any cellphone signal, via hotel wifi, so I hear (which I didn't want to touch anyway), or my Verizon data. The program included the full schedule, with dates and locations, so I was able to navigate to the panels and readings that I wanted to attend without much difficulty.

My Armadillocon badge lacks any ribbons, since I wasn't on any programming there. My partner was, though; a friend had been trying to get him down to Texas for the con for years. This year, they invited him onto six panels, and there was the added bonus that I had gone to college at Trinity University in San Antonio, just an hour and a half or so farther south. Two of my friends who live in S.A. were inspired to come attend the con, so we spent some good time together there.

We got to Austin late Thursday afternoon, in time to grab a bite and then stake out the Congress Avenue Bridge to watch thousands of bats go out to hunt insects, as they do every night after sunset. This is very cool and interesting! If anyone had been selling merchandise, I would have loved to buy a bat ballcap, since I forgot to take a sun-blocking visor to Texas, but the only strolling merchants were a guy and his kid selling cold drinks and bat toys/keychains. I put a couple of T-shirts on a wishlist online, but the temptation has faded. Later, we noticed that the con hotel was next to Austin Community College, whose mascot is the River Bat. There was a tower with River Bats and lots of purple bat silhouettes painted on it. But their merch didn't appeal to me. Just as well.

Since this was my first Armadillocon and I wasn't on any panels, I'll talk about all the ones I attended:
Friday:

Welcome to Armadillocon! with Paul Weimer, and two of the three of Scott Bobo, Kasey Lansdale, and Howard Carter. The moderator Devon Foster and one of the others didn't attend, but I didn't catch the names of the two besides Paul, whom I've known for a long time through Skiffy and Fanty. Paul, who had never been to Armadillocon, asked the other two leading questions about the con, and the audience also helped.

Holding the Line on AI, with Paul Weimer, Aaron de Orive, Stina Leicht, and Jayme Lynne Blaschke. Some of the panelists were adamant against using AI and all of them were at least cautious. There was significant pushback from some audience members who think it's OK in some cases, which panelists refuted, so it was a very lively panel.

Reading: Darcie Little Badger read from her new book, Children of Owl, which will be released Oct. 6. I'm planning to review it for Skiffy and Fanty. 

Shakespeare and Succession Drama, with Elizabeth Cobbe, Patrice Sarath, C.S. Humble, David Hopkins, and Paul Weimer. Panelists talked about their favorite historical plays by Shakespeare and what modern writers can learn from them: Go for the gusto!

Saturday:

Breakfast buffet at the con hotel. Reasonably tasty, very reasonably priced. Going down in the elevator, I chatted briefly with Elizabeth Moon, whose Paksennarion/Gird books I loved; I also enjoyed her Serrano space operas, starting with Hunting Party, a sort of "The Most Dangerous Game" in space. Entering the dining room, I realized that she didn't seem to be meeting anybody, so I invited her to join Paul, my two college friends and me. We had a lovely time talking with her. At first we were talking about basics of SFF with my college friends, then about the writing craft and publishing. 

Eventually, I told her how I loved the Paksennarion and Gird books, and mentioned the worldbuilding bit where it was explained that the peasants had given food to refugees from across the ocean, as charity, and the refugees took this as tribute and became their overlords, leading to centuries of misunderstandings and resentments. Moon explained that this was actually taken from her own life knowledge, not just research, because she grew up among Hispanics, Anglos, and speakers of Nahuatl. The Nahuas were a gift-giving culture, where the ability to give food or other presents was a marker of one's status, and the Spanish conquistadors and later Anglos never really appreciated/understood that.

I also brought up how Gird's chronicler, Luap, had twisted his legacy by leaving things out of the histories he wrote. We talked about who gets to tell the stories, what gets remembered, and how that affects culture. All this was a really great conversation, and probably the highlight of my Armadillocon. 

Reading: Marshall Ryan Maresca read from a work in progress that is not part of his Maradaine series. Fun worldbuilding and social maneuvering.

Space Tries to Kill You, with William Frank (NASA Chief Training Officer), with Stina Leicht, William Ledbetter, and MC Gallup aka Plum Parrott. Martha Wells was also scheduled to be on this panel, but unfortunately, she broke her wrist and didn't attend the con at all. The panel was still fun, as Frank introduced various scenarios and asked the authors how they'd deal with it.

The Cruel Magic of Wishes, with Clayton Hackett, Tonia Ransom, Mariana Colin, Paul Weimer, and Rhonda Eudaly. Panelists discussed wishes gone wrong, devil's bargains, and more.

What You Should Have Read This Year, with Jeremy Brett, Clayton Hackett, Ellie Blackwood, Paul Weimer, and Skyler Gray. Pretty self-explanatory.

There were several panels after those that sounded really interesting, but we went to dinner with Stina Leicht and one of my college friends, at Bombay to Kathmandu, very tasty! Then, early to bed.

Sunday:

The Story behind my "United States 1906 Mint Set" by Kurt Baty. I'm not particularly into numismatics, but I do enjoy history, and we did hear some interesting stories. Baty also showed several examples of asking an AI chatbot (I forget which one, since they're all evil) questions that it had answered both confidently and incorrectly.

To the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids, a presentation on Artemis and other probes by John K. Gibbons, a JPL volunteer ambassador.

Reading: Stina Leicht read from a work in progress, the third set in the Persephone Station/Loki's Ring universe. 

Geek Pictionary, with Randee Dawn, A.T. Campbell, A. Lee Martinez, Scott Bobo, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, David Hopkins, and Ariel Burgess. This was great fun! The audience was told the category each time, and then the drawing proceeded. I was very proud of two lucky guesses I made in the Books category: Someone drew a hand, and I guessed The Left Hand of Darkness, and someone drew some stars, and I guessed The Stars Our Destination.

Storytelling as a Game Master vs as an Author, with Ryan Leslie, Aaron de Orive, Viven Jackson, Nikhil Prabala (the rival team captain in my Inconceivable! game show panel at WorldCon), and Paul Weimer. No big surprises here, but fun to listen to, all the same.

 Final reading: Bruce Sterling. He was the toastmaster, and this was sort of the equivalent of closing ceremonies at other conventions. He said a little about the con, and about his friendship and collaboration with the late Howard Waldrop. He read an unpublished short story that they had written together, set in medieval Japan, about an investigator searching for a missing prince. The reading had been scheduled for 50 minutes, and I started getting a little restless about an hour in, but settled down as the story intensified. It ended up being nearly two hours long, but I didn't regret it, because they really nailed the ending of their story. A strong theme was Mono No Aware, a Japanese idiom expressing wistfulness about the impermanence of things (in this case, transition between different rulers and ways of life). As I said, this story is unpublished. If you want a science fiction take on the concept. I highly recommend Ken Liu's "Mono No Aware," which you can read at Lightspeed Magazine.

Dealer's room and art show: I visited both a couple of times. Unusually, the two shows were far apart instead of adjacent. I saw several sketches at the art show that I wouldn't have minded bidding on, except that my walls are already pretty well covered with various photos, posters, and artwork. But I did pick up three used books: Ishmael, by Barbara Hambly, since I couldn't find the copy I thought I had, before WorldCon, so I hadn't been able to ask her to sign it; The Lion Game, by James H. Schmitz, my favorite Telzey Amberdon novel; and The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels, by Dashiell Hammett, since I've read a couple of his novels but I don't have anything of his in print.

After Armadillocon, my partner and I drove to S.A. and had dinner there with my two friends at La Fonda on Main, which was delicious, and strolled around the Trinity campus, which has seen a lot of changes since I was there. We stayed the night at one of my friends' houses. The next morning, my partner and I visited the Japanese Tea Garden, a beautiful little park where I had an exciting and terrifying adventure back in college, and then we had breakfast at Schilo's, a German delicatessen that brews its own root beer and serves delicious schnitzel, sausages, potato salad, biscuits and more. That's not my usual breakfast fare, but we didn't want to stick around for lunch.  

The drive back home was long. On the second day, we had a delicious brunch at Scott's Kitchen and Catering at Hangar 29 in Kansas City, Missouri. I highly recommend the Bern Street Bowl with Burnt Ends. (Note: All meats here are assumed to be beef unless otherwise specified.) You might assume that burnt ends would basically be charcoal, but you would be wrong. Burnt Ends at Scott's are delicious, savory, melt-in-your-mouth brisket chunks that just have a little crispy blackening on one end. Yum!

We then drove to Des Moines, Iowa, which had a statehouse that was nicer than Texas' but less impressive than Oklahoma City's, both of which we had seen before Armadillocon, on the drive down (in Oklahoma) and the morning of the con's first day (Austin). But what left me gobsmacked was the Civil War monument on the Iowa capitol grounds. It's huge, and on one side there's a figure that "portrays Iowa as a mother offering nourishment to her children." According to the Greater Des Moines Public Arts Foundation website, "Because a controversy developed over the location and artistic details of the monument, nearly 50 years passed before its dedication in 1945." I strongly suspect that this figure contributed to that controversy. Just look!

I think it's a slightly lost opportunity, because from that pose, it seems that the mother-figure should be a statue in the center of a fountain, with water (representing mother's milk) spouting from those proud, naked nipples. I can certainly see why some people would have been clutching their pearls over it! Iowa artist Harriet A. Ketcham’s design for the memorial was chosen out of nearly 50 submissions. The text above it says "Iowa, her affections, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable union." The text below it says "Iowa's tribute to the courage, patriotism and distinguished service of all her soldiers and sailors who fought in the war of the rebellion. 1861-1865." I'm told that Iowa had a higher proportion of people volunteering to fight (for the Union) than any other state.

Anyway, we went on to have some ice cream with Shaun Duke, which was very pleasant. Then we drove home and had a quick, easy supper of a pouch of Tasty Bite Madras Lentils split over 90-second rice, with some frozen cook-in-pouch spinach on the side.

And so, we have returned to normal life, sort of, although we're both catching up with a mountain of stuff that had been delayed while we were traveling. I have many books to read and review, and podcasts to edit, etc. It's time to settle back down and get to work! 

 

My WorldCon schedule and the Hugo Award fiction finalists

I am going to be very, very busy at WorldCon in Los Angeles in less than two weeks! First of all, I'll be on 7 panels, details below. Secondly, I'll be part of the photography crew -- not actually taking the photos, but getting permissions and caption information and helping to upload to our Flickr account. Thirdly, I'll be at the Edmonton in 2030 bid table every now and then. Fourthly, I want to attend some panels and events for my own entertainment and edification, such as Barbara Hambly's Birthday Tea Party!

ArvCon 2026 streaming TTRPGs to fight cancer!

Twitch and YouTube streamer ArvanEleron is excited to announce the 12th annual ArvCon charity marathon, raising money for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation during the long Memorial weekend! The holiday will be filled with 8 TTRPGs including about two dozen participants ready to roleplay their hearts out! There will also be a concert, plus an interview with DRCRF scientists, who will later play in a one-shot special GMed by Brandon O’Brien! Spread the word, watch, and contribute if you can! Viewers will be encouraged to donate to DRCRF; meanwhile, they will be eligible for random giveaways of books, ebooks, audiobooks, graphic novels, gamebooks, boardgames, e-game codes, and more!

https://www.twitch.tv/arvaneleron

https://www.youtube.com/user/arvaneleron

ArvCon 2026 gets underway on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. EDT with our "Pre-Show": Expedition from the Mysterious Peaks, an ongoing science fantasy campaign GMed by Arvan Eleron and featuring Rhiannon Held, LaShawn M. Wanak, Toiya Kristin Finley, and Zac Clay! 

The ArvCon charity marathon officially launches Day 1 (including the fundraising part) on Friday, May 22, also at 7:30, with a back-to-back game of Expedition from the Mysterious Peaks with the same crew.

Day 2 of ArvCon, Saturday, May 23, launches at noon EDT on Saturday, May 23, with an interview of three young scientists (Hui Chiu, Ruoyu Wang, and Leslie Day) with the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, talking about some of the work that this marathon weekend of streaming goes to support!

At 12:30 EDT, Zac Clay will DM Arvan Eleron, Rem Alternis, and KP Upadhyayula in a D&D game.

At 3:15 EDT, Arvan Eleron will DM the By the Dice Roll crew (Wholesome Horror Gaming, DarkSaber2, Piran Jade, Dave Allen, Inanda, and Undeveloped Bruce) as they near the endgame of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign!

At 6:30 EDT, Kilg0re_Tr0ut and indy. will each perform in a concert!

At 9:15 EDT, watch ShadowedMage GM the ShadowCrew EX: A (Sorcerer?) One-Shot Adventure, with players Drew the Damager, T1ltedgaming, Jeoi Gawain Lin, and OhMyGodATruck.

Day 3 of ArvCon, Sunday, May 24, features the annual marathon session with the D&D with I&B crew: the epic finale of Eberron: Oracle of War from 12-8 p.m. EDT, with Trendane, Marie Bilodeau, Jennifer Brozek, John Helfers, and Brandon O’Brien!

Day 4 of ArvCon, Monday, May 25, begins at noon EDT with a Traveller one-shot using the Blue Planet setting, GMed by PrinceJvstin and featuring players Jennifer Brozek, Shaun Duke, ConfigurationQueen, Triffid, and DanDan Transient!

Finally, Day Four of ArvCon 2026 wraps up at 3:15 p.m. EDT with a special one-shot TTRPG adventure in the Gumshoe system, GMed by Brandon O'Brien and played by the three DRCRF scientists interviewed on Saturday!

ArvCon has raised over $40,000 over the years to benefit the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation so far. The goal for this year is $5,500, but it will be really cool if even more can be raised. But it’s free to watch and cheer everybody along!

Eligibility for 2026 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award nomination

I'm excited that this is the second year in a row that Nerds of a Feather has included me in its longlist of people to consider nominating for awards as fan writers for 2026.  This year, I'm in great company on that list with Tristan Beiter, Liz Bourke, Alex Brown, Jake Casella Brookins, Forestofglory, Jenny Hamilton, Nathaniel Harrington, Niall Harrison, Dan Hartland, Archita Mittra, Wm Henry Morris, Abigail Nussbaum, Jacqueline Nyathi, Renay, Alasdair Stuart, and Molly Templeton. Due to that list and several people telling me that they intend to nominate me for a Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, I've realized that I should again write an awards eligibility post.

In 2025, all my fan writing was in the form of reviews, dozens of them, almost all about new books. I put a few things up on my blog, but almost all of them appeared at the blog for The Skiffy and Fanty Show. If you want to see them ALL, they're here: https://skiffyandfanty.com/author/trishmatson/
(except for the joint review of Sinners that I wrote with Paul "PrinceJvstin" Weimer, which was posted under his name because we had to pick one of us to post it under: https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/joint-reaction-and-review-trish-matson-and-paul-weimer-discuss-sinners/).

But I don't expect many people to read all the writings of all the people they're considering nominating for awards. For everyone's convenience, I'm going to narrow it down to a few of my favorite essays from 2025.

The most important thing I think I wrote last year was my look back at the late Jo Clayton's work:  https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/mining-the-genre-asteroid-author-jo-clayton/

Inspired by her lovely prose, I had the most fun playing with words in my review of Amal El-Mohtar's The River Has Roots:  https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/book-review-the-river-has-roots-by-amal-el-mohtar/

And I think I had some interesting insights, and comparisons with other books, in these two reviews:
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/book-review-soulstar-by-c-l-polk/  and https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/book-review-making-history-by-k-j-parker/

This is my only review of a nonfiction book last year: 
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/review-folklore-davies-houlbrook/

And here are a few more reviews that I think were particularly good:
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/book-review-mindscape-by-andrea-hairston/
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/review-aunt-tigress-emily-yu-xuan-qin/
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/review-every-galaxy-a-circle-clark/

Enjoy!

Review: The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, by Kim Fu

Someone at Tin House sent a new novel to me because of how much I had loved that publisher's Smothermoss by Alisa Alering, which I reviewed at Skiffy and Fanty in 2024. However, that book is poles apart from this book, and I decided to write about it on my own blog rather than Skiffy and Fanty, because it's hardly speculative fiction at all, but rather much more a journey in psychological horror and bad life choices. 

Despite its not being what I had expected, The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts, by Kim Fu, is a skillfully crafted novel. At the beginning of the book, Eleanor is fantasizing about a community she could lead, but the first sentence gives a hint of doom to come. From the first chapter, I am chilled by her self-sabotaging decisions, highlighted by her purchase of a home in a remote development where construction had stopped after just two houses. Despite her job as an online counselor, she lets herself be persuaded that a hotspot from cell coverage will be sufficient. She is desperate to fulfill the dying wish of her mother to buy herself a house to achieve financial stability, and she's underbid or been too slow on four previous offers. 

There are reasons for Eleanor to be so persuadable, as Fu slowly reveals throughout the novel, dropping clues via reflections and flashbacks. It's shown very early that she has drifted through life, sheltered and nearly smothered by her mother. Later, it's shown that she's been betrayed by some people who should have supported her, and abandoned or at least sidelined by others. She's been accepting poor options as solutions/escapes from trouble for her whole life.

Soon after she moves into her new home, more problems begin to manifest. She's visited by her dead mother, frequently, and torrential rains reveal defects in the construction. Eleanor thinks of the visits as comfort from a ghost, but I think of them (and visions of others) as hallucinations brought on by stress and emerging guilt. As for the house problems, despite her training as a psychologist (not psychiatrist), Eleanor is completely vulnerable to manipulation by the real estate agent and the repairmen who offer pricey, patchwork solutions.

I spent most of the book hoping for Eleanor to grow a spine, but kept seeing more about previous pressures and previous bad decisions as the current problems snowballed. Fairly late in the book, I was both relieved and annoyed when it looked like a new protector was going to swoop in and solve Eleanor's problems for her, but Fu avoided that trap, courtesy of some more chilling revelations. However, by the end, Eleanor is finally facing up to her problems, being honest with herself about what she has done and how she needs to change her life. The book actually terminates on a pivot point of choice for whether Eleanor will just keep drifting, but she has taken some small steps for positive action, and the irresolute ending is actually kind of hopeful. I think this is a testament to Fu's ability as a writer.

The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts is definitely not a novel for everybody. It has some very triggering elements, which I will spoil somewhat in content warnings below. But if you're actually in the mood to read a psychological horror novel with increasing discomfort and dread, watching a not very likeable character dig herself deeper and deeper into holes, and finally face facts, this may be the book for you.

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The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu will be out in paperback on May 3.

Content warnings (SPOILERS):
Psychological horror, overpersuadability, grief, ghosts or hallucinations, parental illness and death, suicide, sexual assault with institutional indifference, natural disaster.

Book Review: All of Us Murderers, by KJ Charles

I've loved everything I've read by KJ Charles, and her latest novel, All of Us Murderers, coming out Oct. 7, is no exception. Misunderstandings and frustrated pinings, followed eventually by hot m/m sex? Check. Mystery and suspense? Check. Period details that ground the scenes? Check. Deftly inserted and relevant historical explanations illustrating some of the unfairnesses of the class system? Check.

Magic? Well, figuring out whether that's actually in this book is part of the fun. Charles has written some really good books in which magic plays a major part, but lately, she's been writing quite a few books which focus purely on the mundane, and they do that very well. (I wrote last year about how much I enjoyed Death in the Spires, a gaslight-era mystery about the travails of a former Oxford clique.) Here, there's apparently a family curse, or at least some family members who strongly believe in one; characters hear lots of footsteps and other mysterious noises in the isolated mansion; lights constantly flicker for no good reason; and several people claim to have seen ghosts, or mysterious monks, or something.

Yes, it's a Gothic drama, and it revels in its Gothicness (check out the lovely role-reversed cover!), and several genre-aware characters refer to the Gothic elements of what's happening around them. The original patriarch of the family, the ancestor of protagonist Zeb, actually wrote Gothic novels himself! But most of the family money has a much darker origin. 

The setup of All of Us Murderers, once revealed, also reminds me strongly of a certain Regency romance, Cotillion by Georgette Heyer. As the promotional copy on Charles' website says, the current patriarch has invited his relatives to the manor to announce that he's leaving his fortune to whoever marries his young ward. Tensions flare dramatically, and awful accusations are exchanged; unlike in Cotillion, consequences go far beyond landing a "facer."

Most members of the family are not nice at all, and Zeb himself, although meaning no harm, previously destroyed someone else's career by accident. He's seen as the loser of the family, unable to hold on to a job, converse without fidgeting, or even dress properly. However, eventually he finds a kind of redemption. 

I will admit to thinking several times to myself, while reading the book, that although I was really enjoying the journey, the overall plot seemed a little ridiculous; however, I should have had more faith in Charles, who is a very skillful plotter and writer. There were methods to the seeming madness, and everything ended up making sense after all. It was very satisfying, and worth buying for anyone to whom it sounds at all interesting.

Content warnings: Death, use of force; references to past sexual assault and to slavery; negatively portrayed ableism toward a character with ADHD.

Comps: Cotillion by Georgette Heyer, Knives Out movie; Gothic novels in general.  

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC for review from the publisher via NetGalley.

Mini-review: Hellions (stories), by Julia Elliott

Julia Elliott is at the top of her craft as far as descriptive prose and complex characterization go. I don't happen to enjoy how the majority of her stories resolve, but that's more of an problem for me than her. If you appreciate characters making what may seem to be foolish choices, out of desperation or just longing to get more out of life, and stories with horror elements, along with some stories that seem to be more like prologues than complete in themselves, you may consider her a great writer.

I requested Elliott's Hellions (stories) or maybe Hellions: stories (these seem to be the titles suggested by the cover's typography, although
Hellions
Stories
is how the publisher's webpage has it) from NetGalley mainly due to Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach series, who recommends it thus: "Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal." Sounds great, right? And everything he says is true, except maybe for the universal appeal.

Elliott's prose is indeed vivid, and many of her protagonists have compelling voices. I frequently paused in my reading to admire a passage's effectiveness. She's also a very creative writer, and I found the setups for her stories, and some of their twists and turns, very interesting. But I kept coming to the ends of stories being disappointed in how they resolved, either with a reaction of "Huh, so I guess that's it?" or simply recoiling. Out of the first half of the book, 5 short stories, I only really liked "Hellion" (despite some unpleasantness that happens) and decided that I had higher priorities than finishing the rest of the collection.

Double Review: Demo Reels and Arthouse Madness, by Vince A. Liaguno, and Fever Dreams of a Parasite, by Pedro Iniguez

I've been enjoying a lot of horror-adjacent novels in the last couple of years, and playing horror-focused games such as Call of Cthulhu, so I thought I'd be fine reading two new horror collections in rapid succession for Skiffy and Fanty. I was not fine. Maybe the problem is with me, and the way the world is now, not with those two works I had requested on NetGalley; regardless, I couldn't summon enough enthusiasm for either to write full reviews for the wider audience that sees my Skiffy and Fanty posts. So I'm giving quicker reactions here for each collection.

Demo Reels and Arthouse Madness is a collection of poetry by Vince A. Liaguno, coming out on Feb. 25. He's "a self-identified unapologetic horror and pop culture junkie" and an award-winning editor and novelist. He has an amazingly vivid way with words, and makes some really interesting connections between seemingly disparate elements. I thought the ideas behind "Dumbwaiter", "Demo Reels", and other poems were arresting, and numerous poems contained kernels of brief, dark humor. He eloquently states a thesis in "Storytelling":

"Fuck once upon a time and happily ever after, all those
lazy literary conceits that lull into false senses of security.
Good storytellers are like doomsday preppers
who spin conspiracies of fear wrapped in quaint fable jackets,
who knew the fictions that demand attention are the ones
with the piranhas' serrated bite."

But I strongly oppose Liaguno's apparent conviction that horror stories are the only ones worth telling. His poems are often viscerally effective, but rarely uplifting; the closest they get to that mood is exemplified by a couplet in "Horrors of the Female Persuasion":
"Hear her roar and listen to her scream and watch her kill and see her survive.
She's a woman in horror: Cheer her. Fear her. Reengineer her. Revere her."

Mind you, Liaguno obviously isn't trying to be uplifting. He seems focused on exploring various facets of people and cultures and how they can be monstrous and perpetuate horrors, individually and socially, and reactions to these horrors (with a few resisters and even fewer survivors), and he's very good at his craft. I also really appreciate his "Movie Reference by Poem" appendix, helpful to readers. Some people will definitely find this book very rewarding. It's definitely good work; it's just not my cup of tea.

Fever Dreams of a Parasite is a collection of horror short stories by Pedro Iniguez, coming out on March 13. They are effectively written, displaying various scary, nightmarish, weird, and folk-horror elements throughout that were told in coherent tales. And I like and sympathize with a fair number of the protagonists, some of whom are just trying to get by in hard times, including discrimination and economic deprivation, and some who are struggling to help and protect others.

However, en masse, the collection doesn't quite work for me. Perhaps that's because I was reading one story right after another rather than spacing them out the way one might encounter them in magazines. The characters and setups were different, but most of them consisted of "Here comes Doom! ... Here's the Doom! Let's roll around in it for a little while!" Sometimes they end when the Doom is complete, and sometimes there's a little epilogue where the Doom is spreading or, rarely, when a survivor reflects on their escape; however, they seemed much of a muchness to me.

"But Trish," you may say, "Aren't you just being one of those awful reviewers who complains when an [insert genre] book is written in [insert genre] style?

Maybe so, but I've reviewed a number of books in the last year or so that at least contained strong horror elements, and positively enjoyed and recommended quite a few. The stories here by Iniguez don't reach that level for me, but I definitely hope that Iniguez keeps writing and trying out new ideas, and that he'll find some kind of spark or story seed that he'll develop well enough for me to think of him as a master storyteller rather than a promising journeyman. In the meantime, anyone who wants distraction from the horrors of the real world via supernatural stories (with enough real-world flavor to keep them grounded) could do a lot worse than giving this collection a try.

Content warnings for both books: Horror, body horror, mental invasions, sexual violence, child abuse, deaths, poverty, discrimination.

Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of each book for review.

Eligibility for 2025 Best Fan Writer award nomination

 I was tremendously pleased and flattered that Nerds of a Feather recently put me on their longlist to consider nominating for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. The other nine people on that list are Anna (forestofglory at Lady Business), Gautam Bhatia (Words for Worlds), Jake Casella Brookins (Ancillary Review of Books), Elias Eells (Bar Cart Bookshelf), Zach Gillan (the Ancillary Review of Books, various others), Jenny Hamilton (Reactor, Reading the End), Archita Mittra (Strange Horizons), Renay (Lady Business), and Alasdair Stuart (The Full Lid). I haven't read essays by all of them, but I'm familiar with many, and this is heady company indeed!

Due to this honor by Nerds of a Feather, I'm writing now about my eligibility as a fan writer for my 2024 works. Almost all of my fan writing takes the form of reviews, mostly book reviews, and most of those appear either here on my blog or at Skiffy and Fanty (https://skiffyandfanty.com/author/trishmatson/). Notable exceptions for 2024 include an essay that I wrote for Issue 82 — "Be the Change" of the Journey Planet online fanzine, "Changes Needed for the Hugo Awards Process"; a poem that also appeared in that issue, which I originally wrote for this blog, "A Vanilla Villain's Variant Villanelle" (about Dave McCarty and the 2023 Hugo Awards fiasco); a Skiffy and Fanty interview of Natania Barron focusing on Netherford Hall; and a long composite interview I posted here, with Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery editor Oliver Brackenbury and the two authors whose novellas comprised DESS, Bryn Hammond and Daniel Quiogue.

Some of the audio/video/gaming updates I wrote last year included mini-reviews, and I also participated in a Skiffy and Fanty contributors' roundup of favorite things from 2024. But as for dedicated reviews, I wrote 26 for Skiffy and Fanty and four for my blog in 2024. Here are some of my favorites:

RPG review: Jason Thompson's Dreamland RPG
Book (collection) review: Resurrections, by Ada Hoffman
Book review: Sun of Blood and Ruin, by Mariely Lares
Books(s) review: Liberty's Daughter and Thoughts on Worker Bees
Book review: The Jaguar Mask, by Michael J. DeLuca
Book review: Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford

Audio/Video/Gaming Roundup, 2025 Part 1

This year, I'm going to reverse my process of previous years and post the updates up top so readers don't have to scroll down to see my latest activities. For roundups of my 2024 and 2023 activities in podcasting, gaming, media, videos, etc., please see here, here, here and here. Activities from before then are listed further back in my blog. And as always, check this running blog entry for links to my reviews that have appeared on Skiffy and Fanty's website.

June 12, 2025
ArvCon: The annual charity stream on Arvan Eleron's Twitch (and YouTube) channel went well, raising just over $5,100 for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation over Memorial weekend, May 23-26. I ran most of the viewer giveaways.

GAMING/STREAMING: On Shaun Duke's Twitch channel, AlphabetStreams, we launched a four-shot mini-campaign of Cats: The Conspurracy. Brandon O'Brien is GMing this adventure, called "The Nine Lives of Mrs. Bouvier." Shaun Duke, Stephen Geigen-Miller, Jennifer Brozek and I are all playing intelligent cats who are secret agents trying to save Mrs. Bouvier, a nice old "crazy cat lady" whose children are decidedly not nice.
The first episode, from May 28, is here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2471092097
and the second, from June 4, is here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2477322584
We expect the third session to happen on Wednesday, June 18.

PODCASTING:
On June 3 Skiffy and Fanty released a Speculative Dispatch Patreon-only podcast that Shaun and I had recorded, a retrospective look at the SFF writing career of Tanith Lee:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/speculative-44-130562460?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share

CONVENTIONS: I'm attending 4th Street Fantasy, a one-track mostly literary convention, this weekend. They require masks and proof of vaccination, so I feel nice and safe going there.
I feel less excited about attending the Seattle WorldCon, for various reasons, but I'm almost certainly going to attend anyway. Please let me know if you're a friend and/or follower and think we might meet up!

May 21, 2025
PODCASTING: On May 18, Skiffy and Fanty released a Patreon-only podcast, "Speculative Dispatch #42: The Most Iconic SFF Books of the 21st Century?" In this, Shaun Duke and I react to a Reactor post, discussing what we think iconic means and what the online magazine's post missed.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/speculative-42-129259317?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share

GAMING: On Saturday, May 3, I playtested a Cold City/Hot War game on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias server. "Perry Mason in ... The Case of the Banausic Burst" was set in the 1950s, like the TV show but with some mild horror elements. It was interesting and entertaining for me, but not yet fully baked, with possibly not enough horror for someone really interested in that element, and with play a bit unbalanced -- one of the players felt that the others were ganging up against him, but it's hard to see how that could have been avoided, with the adversarial nature of police and district attorney characters vs. the pool of suspects.

On Friday, May 16, we sort of wrapped the Cold City 2 playtest GMed by Groundhoggoth. We managed to identify and defeat a traitor at our multinational agency's headquarters in the divided post-WWII Berlin, although there were still evil occult/weird science adversaries out there in the city. There were several really satisfying emotional beats for all the players. My character, Ursula Weisskopf, got to deliver a really satisfying speech about not compromising with Evil for allegedly good purposes, how your good aims inevitably get tainted that way. This may have been a bit hypocritical for her, given her backstory, but then again we were talking with a guy whose eyes were turning oily sparkly black, an obvious marker of his eldritch corruption. Anyway, the players and GM had a great time.

Finally, Twitch and YouTube streamer Arvan Eleron, for whom I'm a channel moderator and paid assistant, is holding his 11th annual ArvCon this Memorial weekend, May 23-26. It's a fundraiser for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. There will be 6 TTRPGs, an interview, and a concert. Prizes will be raffled away to viewers as donation goals are met, and I'll be helping to run those giveaways. I submitted a press release to Rascal News, but until that goes live, here's a link to the Google doc I drafted: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Dbz6hCOmffDLJd-J2rLAPMcoI5tgcDTb5u002F4Ycs/edit?usp=sharing  

May 14, 2025
PODCASTING: I've been neglecting to mention the Speculative Dispatch podcasts that I've been on lately. These are specials that the Skiffy and Fanty Show pre-records for our Patreons. As of today, the Patreon levels have been adjusted so that there's just one tier, so anyone who's a member at all can listen.
    On March 10, Shaun Duke and I recorded a retrospective on Tanith Lee. This has not yet been released.
    On March 24, Skiffy and Fanty released a podcast that Shaun and I had recorded, "Speculative Dispatch #38: Social Media is NOT a Private Space"
https://www.patreon.com/posts/speculative-38-125086817?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share
    On April 28, Skiffy and Fanty released another podcast that Shaun and I had recorded, "Speculative Dispatch #39: 2025 Hugo Award Finalists!"
https://www.patreon.com/posts/speculative-39-127513576?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share
(Also, see the Podcasting/Streaming entry from April 9 for free public streams/podcasts that overlapped with this time period.)

STREAMING: 
On Friday, May 2, Shaun Duke and I interviewed Tochi Onyebuchi about his upcoming (May 27) book, Harmattan Season, live on https://twitch.tv/alphabetstreams (Shaun's channel). That was released the next day at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IbhUUmtovc&t=675s on Skiffy and Fanty's YouTube channel and at  https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/818tochionyebuchi/ on the Skiffy and Fanty website as a podcast.

On Saturday, May 3, I was part of the "studio audience" (online) for Inestimable, a gameshow for The Incomparable network. We answered questions like "how many zeppelins would it take to fill the Grand Canyon" and ranked various apples-and-oranges things in order of age. Audience wisdom won out! The podcast doesn't seem to be available yet in public, so I'll try to check back on this.

STREAMING/GAMING: 
On Friday, April 11, I drove to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., to watch the final session of Hearthglow, Arvan Eleron's D&D 5e campaign based on his sourcebook, Tales and Tomes from the Forbidden Library, for which I've been editing the podcast and videos (and that's finished now). The Gamemaster had invited me to stay the night at his house with the family and other guests, so I did. It was lovely. Excitingly, they invited me to participate in a previously unannounced game stream the next day! This game was Negocios Infernales, a role-playing game that imagines aliens coming to help ignorant, superstitious humans (ruled by someone comparable to Isabella during the Spanish Inquisition) and the humans who take their gifts of technology or knowledge imagine that they have sold their souls to devils. It's a DMless, diceless game that uses cards for character building, goals, and actions; the cards are beautifully imagined, written, and drawn. I've participated in several Writing Salons that just used the cards as writing prompts, but this was the first time I'd actually played in the RPG. The other players were C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez, the co-creators of Negocios Infernales, Arvan Eleron, Zac Clay, and me. We had a lot of fun! You can watch the video of our game on YouTube.

GAMING: 
On April 26 and May 10, both Saturdays, our campaign of Stargate SG-1 with Andrew Pontious as GM continued. It continues to be fun and interesting! Due to health issues for one of our players, we knocked off early on May 10, so this is actually turning out to be a three-parter. I'm not getting into details in case Andrew wants to publish scenarios eventually.

On Monday, April 28, I played a oneshot of Star Trek Adventures (first edition, although the second edition came out a while ago). Morpheus was the GM; I've played several other oneshots with him GMing (met him via The Good Friends of Jackson Elias' Discord). We played it via Roll20; my other, ongoing STA campaign where I play a Romulan has all been theater-of-the-mind, so it was a little different using the Virtual TableTop, but it certainly helped in some ways. I assisted Morpheus by making up six pregens for the other players, whom I hadn't met. This was the first time I'd done that, and I found it to be rather fun, especially after he'd found a tool for me that offers options and keeps track of the numbers: https://sta.bcholmes.org/
The game itself involved a small party in a shuttle checking in on a science station on an out-of-the-way planet; it turned out that Orion pirates had raided it, so we faced them down after fighting some critters similar to Smilodons (my human engineer, Charles, jiggered his tricorder to emit a painful whine). I'd definitely be willing to play this again.

On Friday, May 2, I was in another playtest of the Dreamland RPG created by Jason Thompson. The creator was the GM this time, and the scenario was entitled Neverland. This worked out well for me, since I had just read Pat Murphy's The Adventures of Mary Darling. We had fun, but we only made it halfway across the island, and ended up having dinner with fairies, and there appeared to be strings attached!

Sooner or later, Groundhoggoth's group wants to finish our Cold City 2 campaign, that started as a playtest. Currently, we're pondering May 16 or 23.

And ArvCon is coming up May 23-26! I expect to be heavily involved behind the scenes, as usual.

April 9, 2025
No gaming lately! I've done a few more Skiffy and Fanty transcripts but have slowed down due to other factors.

AUDIO/VIDEO EDITING: 
I edited the audio for another session of Gregory A. Wilson/Arvan Eleron's Hearthglow Actual Play TTRPG, so there's another YouTube episode and three more podcasts (#s 16, 17, 18) posted from that.

PODCASTING/STREAMING:
On March 28, I was on a Twitch stream for Skiffy and Fanty, discussing Torture Cinema: Bad Camp Experiences: "The Monster of Camp Sunshine" (1964), directed by Ferenc Leroget, with co-hosts Shaun Duke and David Annandale. I can't recommend the movie, but we had a good discussion. It was released as a podcast and a YouTube video.
On April 4, I was on a Twitch stream for Skiffy and Fanty again, for a Mining the Genre Asteroid discussion with Shaun Duke and Paul Weimer about The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974) by Patricia McKillip. I loved the book and the discussion, which was later released as a podcast and a YouTube video.

March 26, 2025
GAMING: As mentioned above, I played Foretold: From Earth at Capricon during the first weekend of February. Shaun had wanted to record something since we were all going to be there together, but there wasn't any particular topic that strongly appealed to us. I had played a couple of versions of Foretold before on Groundhoggoth's Discord channel (more about that in the Jan. 21 gaming roundup), and I thought we could get it done in an hour or so, so I suggested it and led us through it. We had a lot of fun!

On Jan. 25, I played a one-shot of Swords of the Serpentine: Takedown, organized by someone on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias server. Paul Weimer was also in this, so that was fun. The SotS system adapts "the GUMSHOE investigative roleplaying system to create a fantasy RPG with a focus on high-action roleplaying and investigation inspired by the stories of Fritz Leiber, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, and others." So we were doing detection and political intrigue; we had conversations with various people in the city (involving some verbal fencing), ended up sneaking into someone's mansion while they were at a party elsewhere, and interrupted a magical ritual that could have doomed the city.

On Monday, Feb. 17, I played a one-shot of Deadlands on the Wacky Wednesdays channel, an offshoot of TGFOJE. They set it up for Wednesdays, but the games usually start too late for me, but this one was held on the afternoon of Presidents Day. Deadlands is based on the Savage Worlds RPG; it's Weird West with steampunk elements. This was my first time playing in Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE), and several others were beginners too, but we had fun learning it together. First, the team worked together to stop a runaway stagecoach; later, we were investigating a town and suddenly got ourselves into a gunfight.

On Feb. 22 our Stargate campaign (using Wyvern's system, adapted from D&D 5e) launched Season 2 (S2E1 "Welcome to the Jungle"). Gatemaster Andrew Pontious figured out a way for us to move forward in time despite one of the players not wanting to be spoiled beyond Season 2 of SG-1: Our team has been transported to another galaxy along with some refugees from Goa'uld tyranny, and we don't have a way back yet. The Tinkerers, the leaders here, are aware of the G but don't want to get into war with them; they don't want to send us home until they're sure they can trust us. And they want us to gain their trust by doing some missions for them. So far, we're going along with it.
On March 15 we continued with S2E2 "The Labors of Hercules" by starting one of those missions. A spaceship has started attacking a peaceful mining world with drones at regular intervals. We figured out that these attacks started a couple of years after the people of that planet started broadcasting radio, and convinced them to stop doing that. The attacking spaceship left, but NOT by wormhole/hyperspace, so we figure it's from just a few light-years away. Stinger at the end: My Aturen character, Jileria, found a mystery box in a locker at our lab with the Tinkerers; some kind of organic-metallic "fly" was inside, but we managed to contain it before it escaped.

On Feb. 28 I started participating in a playtest of Cold City 2, being run by Groundhoggoth. The kickstarter for Cold City Hot War 2nd edition ended March 25, but the playtesting continues for a little while. Cold City is set in post-WWII Berlin, with weird horror elements; each player's character is from a different faction (usually American, British, French, or Russian), so although we work together to investigate and defeat some common threats, we're also working against each other to keep secrets and gain advantages for our factions. I'm playing Ursula Weiskopff, a German who openly worked for the Nazis while secretly trying to help my queer friends escape and survive; later, I secretly worked for the OSS. Sooner or later, I'm expecting Ursula to be attacked by someone who only knows about her overt past. I'm not sure I'd want to play her for a long campaign, but this was planned for a short run anyway. After our first session, which was a couple of hours focused on designing our characters, we played on March 7 and March 21; we may continue for a few sessions in April to wrap things up, although the playtest feedback period will be over by then. So far, we dislike that this version of CCHW seems to value player input considerably less than the original, heavily leaning toward GM planning vs. collaborative storytelling. But we're still having fun together. 

On March 24, I played what ended up being the conclusion of our Thunderchild campaign, in which Groundhoggoth had modified Cold City Hot War and set it a few months after H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. We played several other times in February and March; this was our 11th and ultimately final session. We had known we were approaching the endgame, but events just kept gaining momentum for the exciting conclusion. My character, Iris Worthington, had gained control of the Thunderchild program, but she ended up being killed. However, we did eradicate some lingering Martian influences, so that was satisfying. This has been one of the best campaigns I've played in, for setup, GMing, role-playing, and players working with each other (although characters were occasionally opposed) to build a story together. 

 

March 25, 2025: Oh dear, it's been a while!
TRANSCRIPTS: I've made progress in transcribing the 2024 Skiffy and Fanty podcasts, but I'm not quite done yet. I hope to get them all done by mid-April.

AUDIO/VIDEO:
Only two Skiffy and Fanty streams that I've been on have been released since January. On Feb. 3, the podcast for our annual year-in-review-and-forecast show "Looking Back, Moving Forward" was released; the video released "last month" is here. (Why is YouTube so nonspecific on dates?) I was talking/streaming with Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, and David Annandale; if you want to know my specific recommendations, check the shownotes or the transcript.

On Feb. 13, Skiffy and Fanty released an actual play podcast of a game Shaun, Paul and I played together at Capricon in Chicago (also on YouTube with just audio). We played the science fictional indie collaborative narrative game "Foretold: From Earth" and had a blast doing it.
Of course, I continue watching Skiffy and Fanty shows on https://twitch.tv/alphabetstreams on Friday nights at 8 Eastern, participating in chat even if I'm not on camera.

Jan. 21, 2025
AUDIO/VIDEO: I continue to edit podcasts and YouTube videos professionally for the Twitch streamer Arvan Eleron. The Hearthglow campaign based on the Tales & Tomes from the Forbidden Library D&D 5e module had a new video and podcast posted Jan. 15 and will get another podcast episode Jan. 22. This will probably wrap up in March, and he'll launch something else later. (UPDATE 3/25: Actually, Hearthglow will wrap up with a live show in Connecticut in April!)

AUDIO: For Skiffy and Fanty, one podcast and video that I'm on have been released so far this month. It's a "Mining the Genre Asteroid" episode about Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow (1955) that Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer and I recorded this fall on Shaun's alphabetstreams Twitch channel. Skiffy and Fanty will resume streaming there starting Jan. 31, at 8 p.m. Eastern, and should have new programs, mostly live, every Friday.

GAMING:
Jan. 13: Thunderchild: The modified Cold City/Hot War campaign, set in London a couple of months after H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, resumed after its winter break. As other characters explored their own agendas and objectives, my character, Iris Worthington (a suffragist and the daughter of an industrialist), finally won the trust of the head of the Thunderchild science/defense project when she realized her brother had secretly obtained and experimented with Martian War Machine materials, and turned him in to Captain Spencer.
Jan. 20: Thunderchild: It's worse than that; Ronny Worthington was also selling information to the French, and by the end of the session, they had established a beachhead in the south of England. Meanwhile, other characters are finding out horrific things about the Aurora Project to create modified humans who no longer need sleep, and the Royal cousin in our group has been marked for destruction by whoever has been wielding a captured heat ray.
Thunderchild is a game being run on a private Discord server, so I can't share it here. However, the DM, groundhoggoth, is great. He has a number of games for sale at itch.io; I've played two of the Foretold one-shot narrative card games and enjoyed them greatly. 
Meanwhile, Cold City/Hot War will be launching a kickstarter for a second edition soon. That page includes a link to sign up for playtests. You can also find out more about the game at the DriveThruRPG link there.

Mini review: And the Mighty Will Fall, by K.B. Wagers

 And the Mighty Will Fall, by K.B. Wagers, is an enjoyable, exciting, occasionally intense, adventure set in space in the semi-near future. Earth is still the center of human civilization, but it has numerous outposts. Mars was settled long enough ago to be on the brink of winning its freedom after a lot of struggle, pain, and deaths. The protagonists of this book are members of the Near Earth Orbit Guard, kind of like a space coast guard, dealing with terrorists who take over a large orbital platform in order to make a violent political point.

This is actually the fourth in a series, but billed as a stand-alone novel in that universe, and I thought that was quite reasonable. Information was given as needed to understand what was happening, and I had no trouble with distinguishing the major characters or following the action.  I do take issue with descriptions of this book as "Die Hard on a space station" because that led me to expect a heist twist, which never happened — the terrorists really were terrorists, intent on sharing their pain and grief. 

I was interested that in using a coastal-type guard that often focuses on saving lives, Wagers had their characters extend a few more chances for redemption to some of the terrorists than  I would have expected if they had been serving in a more militaristic space navy or army. Most of the terrorists were intent on taking revenge for people they'd lost in the struggle for independence, but some were able to see the futility and cruelty of their own acts, and work to avert more tragedy.

Shaun Duke and I interviewed K.B. Wagers about their work recently on Shaun's Twitch network. This interview will eventually appear on YouTube and as a podcast, but for now, here's the Twitch link:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2308665562

Enjoy!

Review: The Body in the Lighthouse, by Kate Hardy

Storm Publishing put me on a list of automatic approvals for ARCs this year after I gave a positive review of KJ Charles' Death in the Spires, a mystery set in England in 1905. Storm apparently focuses on murder mysteries, however, judging by the notifications I've received; and although I love that genre, I've been very busy reviewing science fiction and fantasy for Skiffy and Fanty and have let most of those opportunities pass.

During a brief lull in my genre commitments, however, I had the chance to look at Storm's offerings, and decided to read an ARC of The Body in the Lighthouse, by Kate Hardy, being released Oct. 29. Described on the cover as "a gripping cozy mystery novel," it's the fourth in a series, but I decided not to let that stop me. 

I'm happy to report that this novel stands on its own perfectly well; there were quite a few characters to keep track of, as well as a previously begun and now developing romance, but I never felt lost or even slightly confused. Hardy explains context for what's happening without belaboring the points, so I was able to step in and hit the ground running. Well, maybe jogging would be a better word -- things do happen in this book, but at a comfortable trot, not a flat-out run.

Importantly for me, the protagonist, Georgina Drake, is likeable and interesting. She's an older woman, a widow and professional photographer, with a springer spaniel, a trio of female friends, and a fairly new relationship with a handsome Detective Inspector. She loves flowers and food and trading literary quotes with DI Colin Bradshaw and other people.

I was a bit startled to discover on the first page that Georgina also sometimes hears a ghostly voice through her hearing aids, since the book's promotional copy didn't hint at any supernatural elements; however, this ghost is more of an occasional visitor who can sometimes give helpful tips, rather than granting leveled-up supernatural detection powers to Georgina. Mostly, Georgina just talks to people and gets them feeling comfortable enough to open up to her. Certainly, this novel stays firmly in the cozy subcategory of mysteries rather than veering into the spooky or scary. 

Unlike another British novel I read recently, which I didn't even realize was British (I'd assumed Appalachian) until nearly the end, this book is firmly grounded in the here and now, despite ghostly revelations. I particularly enjoyed reading about the architectural details encountered in various buildings and towns. Even though the murder site is in a town made up by Hardy, it had a solidly local feeling, with discussions of priests' holes, historical smuggling and wreck-salvagers, and current development woes.

Oh, yes, the murder site. Actually, Georgina and Colin stumble across two dead bodies when he accompanies her to a photo shoot at a picturesque lighthouse; the owner seems to have fallen victim to carbon monoxide poisoning, but Georgina's dog also digs up human remains that had been buried on the property.  [This is all mentioned in the promo copy, so no spoilers here.] Colin reminds Georgina about the rules against interfering with police investigations, but there's no harm in asking questions, right? Seriously, I do enjoy how carefully Georgina and Colin are navigating their new relationship, thinking about what they can assume and what they need to ask each other about, and tell each other (he doesn't know about her ghost friend yet).

This is partly a cozy mystery because the primary victim was reportedly a terrible person; readers need feel little sympathy for him aside from knowing that violence is rarely the best way to solve problems; since he  was so awful, there are lots of suspects, so Georgina gets to have lots of conversations with relatives and townsfolk as Colin goes through the police routine. The buried remains are another story, but eventually there is closure for all the threads.

This book provides a very enjoyable light read. The plot elements are intriguingly entangled, but the connections make sense once revealed; historical and architectural details give a good sense of place; characters are distinct, the romance is progressing nicely, and the protagonist is fun. Really, the only qualm I have is that Georgina the professional photographer is surprisingly agreeable to delay telling her magazine that there won't be any lighthouse photo package due to the owner dying, but maybe that's just because I've been an editor much longer than I was a reporter. ("Oh no! What will be the next issue's centerpiece NOW?")

I'd be happy to try another Kate Hardy novel when I have time for another cozy read. Indeed, I see that Hardy won three Romance Novelists' Association awards in the last 20 years. Additionally, under her real name of Pamela Brooks, she's written more than a dozen books about history and legends, so that helps explain how Hardy's novel feels real.

Content warnings: Dead bodies, blood; child endangerment, past abuse; character's bigotry (negatively portrayed). 

Disclaimer: Free eARC for review from publisher via NetGalley.

Interviews: Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery

“Two novellas, bound in one book. Mongol-inspired Sword & Sorcery. A claustrophobic, pressure-cooker siege, and a caravan striking out under an open desert sky. Orhan the Snow Leopard and Goatskin the nomad. Dariel Quiogue and Bryn Hammond.”
― from the Backerkit page for Double-Edged Sword and Sorcery

I'm excited by a new project from Brackenbury Books: Double-Edged Sword and Sorcery. Oliver Brackenbury is the editor of the New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine, of which I enthusiastically reviewed the first few issues in November 2023, for The Skiffy and Fanty Show blog. ("Last year, I became aware of a debut magazine called New Edge Sword & Sorcery, which aimed to revive the “outsider protagonists, thrilling energy, wondrous weirdness, and a large body of classic tales” of this old subgenre of fantasy with a focus on inclusivity and diversity (of both characters and creators).")

Do you remember the old Ace Double Books, dear reader? I do! My SFF-loving daddy had quite a few of them. These were the old two-books-in-one paperbacks, bound together head-to-toe style so that you'd finish one short book, reading through to the middle, then flip it over, and read a whole new story, usually by a different author. This way, each of them got their own front cover and equal billing. (This was back when genre books were usually short, not the typical doorstoppers of today.)   

After following NESS #0-2 with two more upcoming issues of NESS and an anthology of spicy/romantic S&S stories, Brackenbury is bringing back the doubles format with a book that comprises two novellas stuck together head-to-toe, with characters who've caught readers' interest in the first few magazine issues. They're both centered on  Asian adventurers, but Dariel Quiogue's Orhan the Snow Leopard and Bryn Hammond's Goatskin the nomad are very different characters, written engagingly but in very different styles. I'm looking forward to seeing more of each of their journeys.

The project successfully crowdfunded at over $9,000 raised as of Wednesday, including an extra Orhan story for all crowdfunders and bookmarks for all physical copy backers, plus some poems coming from Hammond if about a dozen more backers join. The stretch goals are colored spray edges (like old-fashioned paperbacks) at $10,600, and a two-page art insert between the novellas if the campaign reaches $12,800. The Backerkit campaign concludes on Saturday, and I'd really like to see it get a little more support.

To that end, and because I like talking with writers and editors about the craft, I emailed questions about the project to Brackenbury, Quiogue and Hammond. Please read on and enjoy, share if you're so inclined, and back the project if you have the funds and interest. (Answers have been very lightly edited for format, e.g. making everyone's dashes the same style.)

Oliver Brackenbury, editor, NESS, DESS and more

Oliver Brackenbury, photo by Ardean Peters

Q: How did you come to select a Mongol-inspired Sword & Sorcery theme, and these two authors and novellas in particular, for this book?

A: In short, because it's a fascinating culture & period of history, Asian set S&S is almost always rooted in Chinese or Japanese historical inspiration, and because it allowed me to pair two authors I love in one book, writing characters I'd seen people react strongly to in our magazine, each exploring basically the same setting in their own unique way.

In detail, it was an organic product of how the magazine began, and grew into book publishing.

The magazine started with a sweat equity prototype issue #0, available free in digital and priced at cost in soft/hardcover, and the table of contents was drawn almost entirely from a single online community where a bunch of us had strong feelings about how to take Sword & Sorcery into the future.

This included two authors who set their stories in Mongol-rooted settings yet write with totally unique voices: Bryn Hammond writes the nomad Goatskin having adventures in a more fantastic version of our world, while Dariel R.A. Quiogue writes the deposed warlord Orhan the Snow Leopard's adventures in a secondary world heavily rooted in the same setting & time period ― that of Genghis Khan.

Bryn is a respected, published scholar of historical non-fiction about that period, while Dariel is an amateur student of the era with over ten years experience writing fiction set in it. Bryn writes in a awe-inspiring, poetic, Weird-with-a-capital-"W" style, while Dariel specializes in pulse-pounding stories that astound with their action. Both can bring the full spectrum of Sword & Sorcery to a tale, but those are some of their specialties.

As part of the crowdfund we actually did a short story panel discussion livestream where we analyzed one Goatskin and one Orhan story, getting deep into what makes them worth reading'.

But yes, having organically lucked into working with two knowledgeable, skilled authors ― and great people ― writing with complementary voices in a similar setting, Mongol S&S made perfect sense to me for this pairing of novellas.

To the novella format itself, many have correctly said before me that the pacing, episodic nature and other genre elements of Sword & Sorcery make it ideally suited for shorter tales. Wanting something more "Book" than a short story or novelette, which are much harder to get reviewed or even read, to me the logical format then is a novella. Bind two of them together in a Double and hey hey, you've got a wordcount that contemporary Fantasy readers without a prior investment in the genre might feel more comfortable with.

Q: My father had a bunch of old Ace Doubles, which I remember fondly. What fun to read a short, snappy story, turn the book over, and then read a whole new story! Have you encountered many old Ace Doubles yourself? Is that what gave you the idea for packaging your second Brackenbury Books publication this way, or was it more because of the practicality of printing two novellas in one blow? Or some other reason?

A: I'm lucky enough to live in a large city with a vibrant second-hand bookstore scene, so I've come across a decent amount of Ace Doubles in the flesh and have added a few to my personal library. I very much had them in mind, as well as some contemporary riffs on the format in other genres such as Shortwave's horror novelette pairings in the Split Scream series. So yes, I was indeed inspired by them.

However, there was also absolutely some practicality in play. Brackenbury Books is barely two years old, a real baby of a publisher, the idea of saving money on printing while making the more economically lucrative traditional printing more in reach was an appealing one. Being able to, once the print run is paid off, deduct expenses from the full sale value of the book makes a big difference in both what profits the company makes and how much we're able to pay our authors in royalties. With print-on-demand you're always starting from the value of the book minus printing cost, since there is no print run, just eternally printing...on...demand.

But yes, it's also just fun! Art direction is one of my favorite things in publishing, so getting to commission two original covers and two full page interior illustrations doubles my enjoyment for sure. Add in the creative reasons given in my last answer and doing a double felt like a no-brainer.

Q: Does the tête-bêche head-to-toe flip printing make production a lot more complicated than just giving both books the same orientation, one after the other? (But it’s cool that this way, both authors/stories have equal weight/promotion, with two full covers, one on each side.)

A: Blessedly it's as simple as laying it out normally, rotating and reversing the page-flow of one half, and voila! Shout out to my talented friend & collaborator Nathaniel Webb, who does our most excellent layout & design.

Q: You've hit the basic funding goal with a few days to spare; congratulations! The stretch goal of spray color edges also seems feasible; does that have any functionality like making the books last longer, or is it just aesthetically pleasing? Also, the stretch goal of two pages of full-color illustration inserted between the novellas is desirable, much nicer than the cigarette ads, etc., I would see in the middle of some Ace Doubles, but is it realistic to hope for the kind of last-minute surge in backers that it would take to make that happen? 

A: Thank you! It feels great to have had this many people show this much faith in what we're doing. I don't know that the spray edges make the books last longer, however, going by some classic paperbacks on my shelf, the color can still be quite vibrant even fifty years later. As for our art insert stretch goal, it's certainly a lofty one at this point in the campaign but...never say never. If nothing else it exposes our audience to Sajan Rai's art, which is good because it's only a matter of time before I work with Sajan on something I publish. Dude is too unique & talented not for me to keep pursuing that.

Heck, as I finished typing this answer a kind backer who was already pledged for a hardcover just upped their pledge by another $40; not buying anything extra; they're just showing they want us to succeed as much as possible. With that kind of positive energy being directed our way, who knows what we might achieve?

Q: This is the second Brackenbury Books publication (as opposed to New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine). The first was the Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes anthology, which easily funded successfully on Backerkit in July. Do you feel like you’re starting to establish a solid foundation as a new publisher, or is there no such thing?

A: I feel like I should knock on wood before I answer that definitely this year giving us three for three in successful crowdfunds, with the first at just under 200% funding, the second at 151%, and the third looking to land somewhere comfortably north of 100%...it ain't bad, that's for sure! My goal is very much to make this what I do for a living, to eventually be able to have paid employees, and further increase what we're able to do for our authors & artists. This year feels like a solid step toward all that.

Q: Has BH&B-A been delivered to backers yet? And are NESS #3&4 still on track for the revised November fulfillment?

A: Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes, our spicy/romantic S&S anthology, is still being edited, as we expected it to be at this point. Everybody involved is working hard to get the anthology and the magazine issues to our backers before the year is over, and we'll keep people updated if anything prevents that. To the magazine in particular, the printer has been paid, their presses are hard at work, and issues should be put on the boat to cross the Pacific before the month is over. How the waves, and US customs, treat us is outside of my hands, naturally, but we'll keep people updated if any delays occur. Honestly, considering everyone involved is doing this in their spare time, not as their job, I'm quite proud of what we've been able to accomplish so far.

At the table where I write this, there sit final proofs of NESS 3&4, unbound but otherwise finished softcover editions. Flipping through those, seeing the assembly of what's only been so many disparate files on my computer until now, gives me faith that whether our backers get the issues sooner or later, they'll feel it was worth the wait.

Q: What’s next for you, Brackenbury Books, and/or NESS?

A: After we finish this crowdfund, I reckon...a nap. In my madness I chose to raise a puppy through its first year of life in the same year I expanded the magazine into a book publishing business, so for me sleep has definitely become something other people get to have.

But, beyond the steadily fulfilling the year's crowdfunds, work has already begun on 2025's issues of the magazine, and rough plans for publishing some S&S novellas next year - two of which will be second volumes in episodic series kicked off by those in the Double - are taking shape. Other than the magazine and the novellas, it all comes down to me sitting with a pile of index cards, one for each potential publication, and really figuring out what else we can accomplish next year.

We shall see what that is! 

Bryn Hammond, author of the Goatskin the nomad stories (and more)

Bryn Hammond

Q: What led to your fascination with sword-and-sorcery and to your specializing in stories set in the Asian steppes?

A: Sword & sorcery is a style of fantasy I enjoyed when young, and I happily got neck-deep when I found there was a revival going on. There was a stack I liked about New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine and the ideas of the people behind it: not just its conscious pursuit of ‘a wider swathe of humanity’ than traditional sword & sorcery was famous or infamous for, but I was in sync with much else. Oliver [Brackenbury] and I saw eye to eye on a certain joy that we feel belongs in sword & sorcery, a life-affirmation, if I have to use those words, that isn’t so nasty, short and brutish. The magazine, crucially for me, isn’t tongue-in-cheek about its subgenre, it’s straight-up sincere. The community drew me in, further than I meant to go …

Before that I’d been self-publishing historical fiction that isn’t terribly commercial but that I invested heavily of myself in. That’s set in the Asian steppes, which I had been attracted to too far back to analyse why. One of my early memories is getting my hands on Anna Comnena’s Alexiad young, and being entirely won over by her Turkic antagonists. It’s a Byzantine history of the 11^th -12^th centuries, and they have a lot of run-ins with Seljuq Turks, straight off the steppe. That was certainly a milestone in my steppe craze. Another was going straight for the Attila and the ‘Zingis’ (Genghis) parts of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I can’t remember which I stumbled over first, in my teenage years.

Q: Goatskin is often irritated by people but has learned a lot about different cultures in her wanderings. She’s enough of a leader to be deferred to as a respected caravan guide. She’s very complex, far from the naivete one might expect from her rural background and the rustic clothing that generated her nickname. How did you come up with this intriguing character?

A: I’d say she’s mostly irritated by settled folk who condescend to her as a nomad from a people of goatherds, or she’s irritated by those who hire her, when they don’t know how to live in what they think of as the wilderness. But also she likes to be alone, solitary wandering is her preference. I wrote her that way as a woman who thinks of myself as a loner, mostly, who shares that preference for solitude.

And I’m conscious of how women, when they are dropped into adventures to feature, are often grouped, given company ― like when the Doctor in Doctor Who suddenly had several companions when she regenerated as a woman for the first time. As if she can’t hold a story down with one other. I think of Rebecca Solnit who writes magnificently on walking, and put that in light of recent discourse on women walking in public spaces, in isolated places. Walking has been so necessary in my creative life, and in my practical life since I’m a woman who lives alone and doesn’t drive. Goatskin gets to wander as freely as Conan does, on her own, and that’s important to me.

I wanted her to be an intelligent person who has listened and learned, although not literate – she’s from an oral culture, and she dodged education in the schools that assimilate and convert her people. In the same vein, I make her bandit girlfriend, a commoner, a ex- villager, notably philosophical. This is quite deliberate.

Q: In the two Goatskin stories that I’ve read, “The Grief-Note of Vultures” in NESS #0 and “Sister Chaos” in NESS #2, I appreciate that although there’s plenty of action and combat, Angaj-Duzmut (Goatskin the nomad) solves some problems creatively and some through talking, rather than just facing everything head-on with her weapons. What’s your process for putting Goatskin into predicaments and figuring out resolutions?

A: Yes, I’m never going to be a swords-first writer, clobber them on the head and that resolves your plot. For one thing, my monsters tend to have a case, and Goatskin is as likely to learn a sympathy for them and she might end up on their side. If I have a pattern, that’s it. I start with the monster and its meaning, what I want to say by that piece of weird, and work outwards from there to how Goatskin encounters it, what changes for her, what she takes away.

Q: I also appreciate the warm and sexy relationship, on- and offscreen, between “Duzzy” and the many-named bandit leader. But will readers find out whether it’s a committed partnership, or if other entanglements are possible when Goatskin is off on her own solo adventures? 

A: It might be spoilery of another story to answer that one. I have a novelette out early next year in an anthology of sword & sorcery & romance, Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes, again from Brackenbury Books. It’s set early in their friendship, and her girlfriend drops the c-word on her, commitment.

But I’ll say she only asks for a loose commitment, no clause to exclude other flings ― she specifies she won’t hassle Goatskin about those. Obviously she’s had far more experience than Goatskin and has been fairly casual in the past. Still, it’s her bandit girlfriend who seems most tenacious of a partnership, sometimes, as may come across in Waste Flowers.

I’ve wondered about this question myself. It hasn’t happened in the few stories I’ve done, but in the one I’m plotting, subsequent to Waste Flowers, it’s an issue. That’s a bit of a tease of an answer.

Q: Will readers ever learn why Goatskin left her mountainous homeland, whether it’s just wanderlust or if she has some more urgent, personal reasons in her backstory?

A: There’s a glimpse of this in Waste Flowers. Both Goatskin and her bandit girlfriend are forced to look back and ― with different levels of reluctance ― reveal the old stories as to why they had to leave their home mountains or their village as girls of fourteen or fifteen.

Q: I enjoyed the weirdness of the creatures Goatskin encountered in the stories I’ve read so far. Will we see more of these oddities in Waste Flowers? Are some of them drawn from specific Mongol legends, or more generally inspired by stories from the steppes?

A: There are certainly more of these oddities in Waste Flowers. Most of the weird I’ve written so far, or mean to write in future for the Goatskin tales, does come from the Mongol imaginary or adjacent cultures, is based on or at least sparked by a Mongol conception. My monsters ― although ‘oddities’ is better ― try to throw light on a piece of that world, too. I want them to function as part of my world-painting, to contribute to an understanding of world view, not to be random. I guess it helps that my monsters tend to have a point.

Q: Is your scholarly work (Voices from the Twelfth-Century Steppe; and Secret History of the Mongols) a resource for your fiction? Does anything flow the other way, from the creative toward the academic, such as what topics you choose to research and study?

A: [amendment: my Voices is about the 13^th-century text, the Secret History of the Mongols]
They go hand-in-hand. Voices was commissioned by Simon J. Cook at Rounded Globe, because he liked my historical fiction: he encouraged me to write a novelist’s-eye view on interpretation of primary sources, in this case the Secret History of the Mongols. My blog posts which sometimes burst their seams originate in research for my fiction, but one becomes committed, beyond the novels, to historical investigation for its own sake. I began to care as much about how Mongols are written in our history, about the historiography of it. I have ambitions to do a reception history of Chinggis in English.

Q: Please share a little about your Amgalant novels.

A: Amgalant closely follows the Secret History of the Mongols, which is the chief Mongol source on the life of Chinggis Khan. It’s a history told with epic flourishes, a painstakingly honest history assembled from communal memoirs, back to those who knew Chinggis Khan. It’s oddly intimate. It’s strikingly humane in its focus, as in concerned with human things. It’s strong on speech and on interaction, like a novel itself. It dips into the style of oral epic to lend its subject grandeur, but only at finely judged moments ― not to obscure the reality.

This fascinating text I set out to put into a novel version, being as faithful as I can to its matter, to its style, and to its positions ― its angles on the story, the things it cares about.

Q: Can you say anything about whatever works you’re developing now?

A: I’m writing a second Goatskin novella. Oliver Brackenbury has said in public that he’d like to follow up next year with another instalment from both Dariel and I, if this crowdfund goes well. However it ends up being published, I’m irrevocably engaged in the next, titled What Rough Beast?, which I hope is a leap beyond Waste Flowers. It’s even more personal a story for Goatskin. 

Daniel Quiogue, author of the Orhan the Snow Leopard stories (and more)

Dariel Quiogue

Q: What inspired you to focus on what you call “Forgotten Asia” stories? What drew you to the Sword & Sorcery subgenre in general?

A: My fascination with Sword & Sorcery started first, when my sister gifted me one weekend with a copy of Conan the Swordsman (by Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg & L. Sprague de Camp) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Fighting Man of Mars. It was the very same year Star Wars came out, so I developed a taste for swashbuckling adventure tales in exotic settings early on ― I was ten years old at the time. That dovetailed with early introductions to Homer’s The Odyssey and Herodotus’ Histories, Arthurian tales – Boorman’s Excalibur came out only just a few years after – and at the time, our TV stations would show sword and sandal films every Holy Week. So I had a taste for historically-flavored adventure.

As I started writing and playing fantasy role playing games, I noticed the dearth of material with Asian inspirations that were not Chinese or Japanese. From Araby and Asia Minor to Xinjiang, from Siberia south to Ceylon and Southeast Asia, there was a yawning void ― and being Southeast Asian myself, I thought, hey, this could be my field.

Q: One of the two novellas in Double-Edged Sword and Sorcery will be your Walls of Shira Yulun in which your hero Orhan is “trapped in a besieged city” while striving to keep an old promise. Crowdfund backers will also get a loosely related digital exclusive Orhan story, “The Shaman’s Blood Price.” I see that you have another story coming in NESS #4; will that be another Orhan story? What fascinates you about this character?

A: Yes, my story in NESS #4 is also an Orhan Timur story. I think there are two main reasons that make make this character so fascinating and easy to write for me. Number one, he’s got a powerful, clear-cut and constant motivation – he’s been overthrown by his own sworn blood brother, that’s a really serious breach in Mongol culture, and he wants revenge; at the same time, his former blood brother is always scheming to get rid of him, so he’s always in danger. At the same time, I get to contrast that long-term motivation with his more human side, the two are often in conflict, and he’s often in situations where his pesonal code will cause him to torpedo his own long-term goal.

Second, he has a very wide playing field to have adventures in ― practically all of that West to East gap I mentioned earlier in talking about Forgotten Asia. So I can have Orhan Timur adventures set anywhere from my secondary-world equivalents to Persia, the Tibetan highlands, Northern India and of course the steppes. In that regard he’s like REH’s Conan, he can wander across most of his known world, though I’d say he’s different in that his wanderings are more driven.

Q: In “The Curse of the Horsetail Banner” in NESS issue #0, Orhan is alone, recently betrayed and deposed, although he eventually makes a sort of alliance. In “The Demon of Tashi Tzang” in NESS #2, he’s alone again, but receives aid from some unexpected people. If he is ever to regain power, he’ll need to build some lasting support. Will Orhan eventually start building and leading teams, or will your stories keep focusing on Orhan the fugitive? Is his loner status partly just a function of what Sword and Sorcery stories are, and the kind of character fans want to read about?  

A: That’s a good question. I believe most of my stories will focus on the time between Orhan’s deposition and his final destiny, which I won’t reveal yet. Partly that’s because I feel Orhan-in-trouble fits the needs of a pulp-styled Sword & Sorcery story best; it’s when he’s at his most driven and desperate. For me, affirmation of values like self-reliance, the ability to survive the toughest trials both mental and physical, and indomitability are core Sword & Sorcery values ― and they’ll be tested more with Orhan as fugitive than with Orhan as Khagan.

There have been stories wherein Orhan tried to build support, a power base from which to regain his throne – but things always happen. In my story "Valley of the Yellow-Eyed King" Orhan has united the bandits of the mountains and is forging them into an army, but then he gets called away to hunt down a demon tiger. The novella The Caves of Koro Shan is set after that, and shows the aftermath of his (unintended) long absence from that warband. Both stories can be found in my collection, Track of the Snow Leopard.

Orhan Timur, being based on Genghis Khan, will of course never stop trying.

Q: I love your combination of descriptive passages of scenery and temples, etc., combined with the hard-hitting action scenes. They feel very grounded in details, with vivid word choices. What can you share about your writing process? Do you outline plots and fill in details later, or start with a vivid scene and then follow it forward and backward in time, or what?

A: Thanks! Part of that I believe is because I have a really visual imagination ― when I’m writing I often see things like a movie playing in my head. Also I make sure I have a good visual library to draw on when writing – I research locations that are analogous to my settings, plus I used to have a big collection of National Geographic magazines. For vivid writing, there are no better teachers than Robert E. Howard himself – he really knew how to choose and pace his words. Refinements to that I learned from reading Leigh Brackett, David Gemmell and others,

and when I wax lyrical, I believe I’m channeling Tanith Lee.

As for my writing process, I’m a trying-to-reform pantser. I can’t seem to work with detailed outlines, but I do a lot of preparatory work before drafting; though sometimes I’ve written an opener, just a few paragraphs, then do the background work, including a very rough outline, after doing the opener. Stories usually start out as a what-if premise, often based on a historical event or snippet of mythology. Then I research and take notes – like for Walls of
Shira Yulun I bought Osprey Books’ Siege Engines of the Far East Volume 1. Sometimes I have to kill a story premise and do something else when my research shows things couldn’t have/wouldn’t have happened that way. And as I said, I do visual research – I look up photos and videos, the explosion of travel photography and videography is a boon for me there.

After I’ve digested and internalized my research, I’ll start writing – or just as often, spend days trying to figure out my opening scene. The first few sentences for me are crucial. The reader has to be hooked within just a paragraph or three. This is the same leeway I give myself when choosing a book to purchase – if the author hasn’t gotten me hooked within the first page, I put the book back on the bookstore shelf.

Q: Your own anthology, Swords of the Four Winds: Tales of swords and sorcery from an ancient East that never was, looks like a lot of fun, too. Do you think you’ll mostly stick with shorter stories, or are you developing any other longform fiction plans besides the soon-to-be-published novella?

A: I’m currently working on a novel, a sword and planet piece, but have to shelve that temporarily to do another Orhan Timur novella. I believe the bulk of my work will continue to be shorter fiction though, as that’s the form I believe works best for Sword & Sorcery. Eventually I’ll do an Orhan Timur novel, but like Moorcock, I’ll likely be doing it as a sequence of interconnected short stories.

Thanks!