Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts The writing on Growing Up Metal is done. (there’s your title reveal, Arcane Arts readers!) Outside of some copyediting and formatting that will occur during layout, the writing portion of my heavy metal memoir is finished. I made the final tweaks to chapter 11 Monday night. It’s as good as it is going to be. (flashes devil horns) I will have a lot more to say in the coming months. For now, just know that nearly 4 years of thought and effort and sweat...
8 days ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.” --Jack London, The Call of The Wild You don’t realize how bounded modern life is until you get out and see the far places of the world. I returned Monday morning from the epic trip of a lifetime. Alaska exceeded all my expectations. Our 10-day trip began July 15 with a flight into Anchorage, then a guided rafting tour down a glacial river in Talkeetna. We toured the massive Denali state park July...
15 days ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts By the time this issue of Arcane Arts hits your inbox I’ll be headed to The Last Frontier, the rugged state which served as the frontier setting for many of Jack London’s most famous stories including The Call of the Wild. The Land of the Midnight Sun, as its residents experience up to 85 days of continuous daylight during the summer months. I’m talking about Alaska of course. My wife and I are embarking on a 10-day land-sea cruise to celebrate our...
29 days ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts I’m sure I’ve got some writers in the Arcane Arts readership. If that includes you, here is a bit of advice if you eventually find yourself writing a memoir. A memoir is a story, not a chronicle. It has to obey the same laws of good storytelling you find in a novel. Plot, character, conflict, resolution. I’ve finally figured this out, fully. Because I am the main character I’ve had to work through some heavy shit about myself and my relationships....
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts I’m back from a sorely needed week+ vacation up north at our family camp in Andover, NH. Lots of pontoon boat rides, long walks with my wife, copious amounts of beer, good fellowship … and some sword-and-sorcery, of course. In the last issue of Arcane Arts I briefly recapped the June 20 online conference Afterlives of World Building: The Legacy of Robert E. Howard, in which I was asked to serve as a panelist. You can now view the recordings of the...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts I’m taking a long-overdue week off from work. My wife and I are up the family seasonal cottage on Highland Lake, NH, and MAN do I need this. Weeks of accumulated stress and computer tunnel-vision have left me mind-weary and spiritually numbed. But that didn’t stop me from talking Robert E. Howard. On Saturday my wife and I hosted a dozen guests for the afternoon, but I closeted myself in the loft, logged onto Zoom, and participated in a panel session...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts Metal is vast. Metal is diverse. Metal is sprawling. The number of subgenres is staggering … more than 70, are you kidding? And to be honest, a little stupid. Drone metal. Funeral doom. Djent metal. The finer points of classification make sword-and-sorcery vs. heroic fantasy look like high school debate club. And so I don’t think it’s possible to write an absolutely definitive history of heavy metal. And even if you could, who would be interested in...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts It appears we might be getting King Conan after all. Heroic Signatures made the announcement in its newsletter, and it looks authoritative—or as authoritative as it gets in the volatile, fickle world of movie-making. I don’t actually want to talk about that right now, though I’m sure I’ll have much more to say later. I do want to talk about negativity. Jim Zub, writer of the current Conan comic, posted the news with enthusiasm on his Facebook page....
2 months ago • 4 min read
Dispatches from the silver key Arcane Arts Interesting fact: Ronnie James Dio was raised in New York, but born in Portsmouth, NH. Less than 30 miles/30 minutes from my home, practically my backyard. I’m tickled to live so close to the birthplace of arguably the greatest voice in heavy metal history. A man of whom Bruce Dickinson once said, “He was the world’s shortest singer apart from me, but he sang his ass off, and sang rings around me, and always will.” Pretty high praise coming from...
2 months ago • 4 min read