Sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal are among a small handful of my great passions. I write about these and other related topics on my blog, The Silver Key (https://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/). Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (2020, Pulp Hero Press) is my first book. I'm working on a second book, a heavy metal memoir.
Spinal Tap volume dial: A bit too plain and a bit too clever.
Guitar: Clean look, great font, but implies I play the instrument.
Average dude with silhouette of guitar hero—near perfect, nearly the cover. But I could only pick one. It lost out to this one.
Fuck yeah!
Why did I go with this cover?
1. The over-the-top imagery and garishness. All characteristic of metal.
2. It's nostalgic. For a time of tapes, and of a time when heavy metal was new and vital and emerging from primordial sludge.
3. Its symbolism. The figure that is vaguely me stands atop the music that has helped make him who he is. He is made of metal.
4. It places me on the center stage. The book is a memoir, and the story is my own.
My cover designer nailed it. My only edits were to add a few more metal touches (amplifiers to match the “amplifier” sidebars you’ll find in the book) and a picture and the copy for the back cover design.
The full spread! ISBN barcode to populate the blank box.
I hope it grabs you as it did me and inspires you to give Growing Up Metal a read. It’s almost ready for print.
This week I set up my Amazon Author account, which included enabling two-step verification, scanning my face (!) and driver’s license to verify my identity, and connecting my bank account to ensure I can receive payments.
I also selected a half-dozen representative photographs for a picture collage included in the back matter. I purchased two ISBNs, one each for print and digital editions. Next I’ll be exporting the final print-ready file and uploading it and the cover to the KDP platform. Setting the price, filling in the details and marketing copy on the Amazon website.
And pressing publish.
An email from marketing guru and author Seth Godin hit my inbox as I was writing this issue: On the Verge of Done. It can’t be a coincidence.
Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival
September is right around the corner, which means the start of Fall and the return of the Merrimack Valley Halloween book festival (Oct. 17, Lawrence Public Library).
I went to the festival a couple times pre-COVID and found it to be a great little event. Panel sessions, book signings, a community of like souls in an event dedicated to the mighty little book. It had a strong gothic vibe, an explosion of tattoos and black leather and nose piercings and nerdiness. A lot of fun.
In 2017 author Grady Hendrix had a table to promote his new book, Paperbacks from Hell. I bought a copy and he added a personalized signature.
We need an S&S version of Paperbacks From Hell by the way and I continue to beat this drum. Who wouldn’t want a gorgeously illustrated, half-homage, half tongue-in-cheek tour of the great paperbacks of the 1950s-80s. Muscular dudes and tentacled horrors and half naked women?
Enjoy Your Hell! Cool.
Brian Keene of The Rising fame was there as well and I purchased an autographed King of the Bastards (sword-and-sorcery co-written with Steven Shrewsbury) as well as his homage to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Last Level.
This year the event has been relocated to neighboring Lawrence due to some ongoing maintenance at its traditional site at the Haverhill Public Library. Here’s a link to a Facebook website that includes a lengthy list of attending authors. Recommended.
The Wind in the Willows
Somehow I’ve lived 53 years on the planet without ever reading Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 children’s classic. I can now cross it off the list.
It’s a great little story of anthropomorphic animals of the kind Michael Moorcock critiqued in his essay Epic Pooh, targeting the cozy, nostalgic, and consolatory "nursery-room" style of children's and fantasy literature that the book represents. Moorcock's (in)famous essay is a political critique of British conservatism, which to be fair underpins the book. Mr. Toad is the lynchpin of the story, dragging Mr. Mole, Water Rat, and Badger to his rescue due to his unhealthy infatuation for motor cars and the latest gadgetry. He values the new and the flashy rather than the simple pleasures of hearth and home.
But this sort of political critique misses the stories’ magic, of which The Wind in the Willows is steeped. J.R.R. Tolkien loved the story and its influence on The Hobbit is plain. There is an odd chapter in the middle called “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” which achieves Tolkien’s highest calling of fantasy literature, full immersion to the point of unguarded belief in something beyond our own world. As he wrote in “On Fairy Stories,”
[Willing suspension of disbelief] does not seem to me a good description of what happens [in fairy-stories]. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.
Grahame manages somehow to evoke the pagan god Pan in the pages of the book, and bring him to life in a mesmerizing bit of utter enchantment. This chapter seems to have a strong hold on the English psyche. Pink Floyd borrowed it for the name of their 1967 psychedelic debut album and Iron Maiden quoted it in 2000’s “The Wicker Man” off Brave New World.
I found it charming, one of those foundational works every fantasy fan should probably read. And its lessons remain quite relevant today.
RIP Dolly Parton
Rest in peace to a fantastic performer and even better person. Dolly transcended country and event went a little metal. Here’s a memorable duet with the great Rob Halford who celebrated his 75th birthday on the day of her passing.
Sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal are among a small handful of my great passions. I write about these and other related topics on my blog, The Silver Key (https://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/). Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (2020, Pulp Hero Press) is my first book. I'm working on a second book, a heavy metal memoir.
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