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. The conflict in the book is internal. All of which has gone into the memoir.

This past weekend I made the big turn, fixing something in the manuscript my editor wasn’t happy with. A conflict he thought was resolved. He was right, it was. That bit of unnecessary exposition came out. And another conflict I realized I hadn’t properly identified. That went in.

After I made these changes I pumped my fist, literally. It felt so right, like I had finally seen the completed image of a puzzle for which you’ve got a bunch of pieces but no guiding picture on the box. There it was, finally.

On to the finish.

I live in Lovecraft Country

I live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, from which it was not meant I should voyage far.

​Others might call it ... Merrimac, MA.​

Merrimac is part of Lovecraft Country, which is not Lovecraft’s beloved Providence RI, but the Mistakonic region of Massachusetts, an area that spans the rural, decaying inland town of Dunwich to coastal hubs like Kingsport, centered around the rushing Miskatonic River and Miskatonic University in Arkham.

All fictional places, but located in the real Essex County in which I live.

I found a map staking out the territory and was pleased to see my little flyspeck town of on it. Look on the upper left; there it is.

We recently suffered a huge sewer pipe break in neighboring Haverhill that pumped 7-10 million gallons of filth daily into the Merrimack River, shutting down beaches from Newburyport to Salisbury and Ipswich. Who knows what Lovecraftian horrors might have been born, or awoken, from the spill.

I better check the woods behind my house for Colours out of Space and the Fungi from Yuggoth.

The End Of The World As We Know It

Recently received in the mail: An anthology of stories set in the postapocalyptic world of Stephen King’s The Stand: The End Of The World As We Know It. I was inspired to pick it up after my recent Stand re-read, which led me to a podcast, which led me to an interview with Christoper Golden, who co-edited the volume.

This thing is a monster—778 pages, not as long as the original novel but not far off, either. It contains 34 stories set in various stages of the pandemic, from the outbreak to societal disintegration to reconstitution and events post-Stand. A lot of familiar names in the TOC and King himself provides the introduction.

It will be a beast to read but I can’t wait to start picking away.

What do we call this type of fiction? Pastiche doesn’t seem right … shared world?

The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune and the Weird

There is something about this story that gripped me from the moment I read it, many years ago (which may have been in Savage Sword of Conan #34, or if not, in the Lancer King Kull).

It is Weird. With a capital W, meaning strange and transgressive, but also just plain weird in the modern, colloquial sense. Instead of swordplay (save at the very end, and more or less offscreen) we get a lot of philosophizing over the nature of reality. Small w weird.

​Anyway, I love the story, and wrote about here on the blog.​

Weird fiction predates sword-and-sorcery, originating with Edgar Allan Poe and carried on with Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft. But it was married to swordplay, probably, with the likes of Lord Dunsany, then continued in works by A. Merritt and Clark Ashton Smith, and on into Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, and Michael Shea. Today you’ll see it in John Fultz and Schuyler Hernstrom, and others.

I don’t want S&S without the Weird. I’m not saying your S&S must be weird, oh author, but the subgenre itself must accommodate stories like this, or Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seven Geases,” or Hernstrom’s “The Gift of the Ob-Men,” or Darrell Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends, else it starts to feel like a series of Clonans.

A recent article on Reactor ("Bored of the Swords: The Rebirth of Sword & Sorcery and the Death of the Weird") expresses the same sentiment, but the author seems to think there is a deliberate movement to push it out of modern S&S. I can’t say I fully agree; the Weird remains vibrant and alive in corners of S&S, if you look for it. If we only get it in small doses, that’s OK. It is weird after all, not meant for the mainstream. And I do appreciate the link to The Silver Key.

A trio of extras

• A new Jirel of Joiry novella Blue Fire has not only funded, it smashed all its stretch goals. Congratulations to publisher New Edge. I bought a copy myself.
• ​This post by Deuce Richardson on Excalibur artist Bob Peak (DMR Books) is “peak” (ahem). Check out these glorious images. Agree with Deuce that if there is better movie poster art than Peak’s work on the best Arthurian film ever made, I haven’t seen it.
• RIP Kjell Nilsson, who played the muscled, metal goalie mask wearing villain Lord Humungus from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. I always thought that dude was super cool, and scary, and I loved that his origin story remained a mystery (was he burned? Disfigured in a car wreck? Exposed to radiation?) He always seemed like a relatively reasonable man. Be still, my dog of war.

Should Brian investigate the lonely Lovecraftian marsh behind his home? Send a yay, or nay.