The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 7)

     

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted intermittently. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

DMR Books: Boris Vallejo at 80, by Brian Murphy. "If you grew up in the 1980s it was impossible to avoid Boris Vallejo’s influence. Love him or hate him, he is inextricably intertwined with all things sword-and-sorcery, sword-and-planet, and fantasy art in general."

Tales from the Magician's Skull: Bran Mak Morn, Doomed King, by Bill Ward. "Bran Mak Morn emerges out of Howard’s fascination with the Picts – but not the Picts of modern, sober archaeology – rather the Picts of turn-of-the-century pseudo-scientific conjectural anthropology, the sort of thing that was available for a young Howard to read."

The Cromcast: Karl Edward Wagner's, "Raven's Eyrie." "Hail, Cromrades! We return with discussion of another story as we continue down the Left-Handed Path! Here we discuss 'Raven's Eyrie. Be sure to check out our story list for details and links to ebooks!"

REH World: The Robert E. Howard Museum. "Thanks to Arlene Stephenson and Rusty Burke I have put together an information page about the Robert E. Howard museum, run by Project Pride in Cross Plains, Texas. Just click on the brochure to read all about it."

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The Sorcerer's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 6)

    

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted intermittently. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Goodman Games, publisher of Dungeons Crawl Classics, hosted a digital convention, Bride of Cyclops Con. Part of the convention was a "Sword and Sorcery Writer's Track." Here are the videos of the panels.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: The Best Sword and Sorcery of the 20th-Century. Six sword-and-sorcery fans and scholars compare notes about the important works in the genre, starting with foundational fiction and moving on to more recent times. This panel will talk details, not just an author’s name, but why a particular story or novel is worthy of note.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: Finding the New Edge for Fiction Writers. Seven modern crafters of heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery sit down to discuss how they plot stories and create characters.

Goodman Games: Digital Panel: Getting Sword-and-Sorcery into your Role-Playing Game. Four veteran game masters talk about tips and tricks for getting your game sessions to feel more like a rip-snorting sword-and-sorcery tale.

Goodman Games: Behind the Scenes w/ Publishers of Sword & Sorcery Fiction. Where can you find heroic fiction in the modern age? Well, at least five of those places are represented by the members of this panel, who’ll be talking about trends in the industry, how to get your story ready for the editors, and related topics.

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 5)

   

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Book Review: Deep Cuts: The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage (2013) by Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock. "The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage is not quite a biography, however. It is primarily a collection of obscure but critical sources and essays on her life and work: memoirs and interviews normally only found in moldering and expensive fanzines, as well as new essays that expand on her life before and after Weird Tales. On top of that, the book includes a full gallery of her pulp art, and numerous photos of her life and art you won’t find anywhere else, all reproduced without the clipping or muddying of color typical of a lot of pulp art books. It is a gorgeous production from start to finish—and an enlightening one, as Brundage herself is a fascinating subject." 

Lexicon: Grognardia: Words Gary Taught Me. "High Gygaxian is the term I coined to refer to the pedantic, archaism-laden, run-for-the-dictionary writing style often employed by Gary Gygax, particularly in his AD&D rulebooks and adventures. I'm on record as adoring this idiosyncratic manner of speech. For me, High Gygaxian establishes the feel of the particular strain of fantasy that I associated with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This is one area where I believe AD&D is superior to OD&D and goes a long way toward explaining the enduring influence of this version of the game, even though it's been twenty years since any currently published RPG bore this title."

Dungeon Synth Album: Amn: Lands of Intrigue. "The Lord of Murder shall perish, / But in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny / Chaos will be sewn from their passage / So sayeth the wise Alaundo / So sayeth the wise Alaundo."

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 4)

  

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Ten Greatest Sword-and-Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard, by D.M. Ritzlin. "I asked a panel of wizened experts (disclaimer: said panel consists solely of myself) to select the ten greatest sword-and-sorcery stories by Robert E. Howard. All of Howard’s most notable characters are represented here: Kull, the Atlantean who became King of Valusia, the Puritan avenger Solomon Kane, and of course, Conan the Cimmerian. If you’re mostly familiar with Howard’s work through the Conan the Barbarian films or comic books, this should prove to be a helpful reading guide." 

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

Academic Blog: The Weird Tales Three and Verbal Black Magic, by Chase A. Folmar. "While reading any of the Weird Tales Three, there’s a certain quote by Clark Ashton Smith that always springs to mind: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation."

Dungeon Synth Album: Eldritch Wizardry: Where None Dare Venture. "Far over the treacherous waters of the western sea, there is an island shrouded in an unearthly fog. Upon it stands an ancient fortress, once the dwelling place of a merciless warlord whose defenses were unmatched by any kingdom. Until one day, a curse was brought upon the island, when an old sorcerer was burned alive by the warlord's men. A curse that swallowed them all in the earth and roots beneath them. The fortress still stands upon the forsaken isle, surrounded by the very roots that conquered the once-mighty warlord; as a warning to all who dare enter and attempt to claim the treasures left behind by the condemned."

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 3)

 

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Silvery Key: Masculinity in S&S: It's Complicated. "Make no mistake: I love this stuff. I was drawn to it as a kid, and inspired to pick up weights to try to look like my heroes of the comics and silver screen. Today I continue to champion and defend it. I push back, hard, against censorious critics who want this type of fiction memory-holed. You can pry my sword-and-sorcery from my cold, dead fingers." 

Blog Aggregate: The DMRtian Chronicles, 9/6/202. This is DMR Books weekly aggregate of sword and sorcery and pulp-related and blog posts and news articles. 

Academic Blog: The Pavilion Blog: Conan the Barbarian and the Collapse of Civil Discourse. "Make no mistake: this is still a very fun movie and its classic soundtrack works with its visuals and campy, committed performances to create a shockingly thrilling experience. But what I want to focus on here is how the film’s politics map so neatly upon our own in 2020."

Goodreads Review: Howard Andrew Jones, The Desert of Souls, reviewed by Jason Ray Carney. "If my descriptions give the impression that this is an over-artful/overwrought novel, let me conclude by assuring you... it is not: to the contrary, it is an enthralling and joyful tale of mystery, daring, wonder, and adventure."

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 2)

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every Wednesday. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: Deep Cuts: "Her Letters To Lovecraft: Catherine Lucille Moore." "If C. L. Moore had never received a letter from Howard Phillips Lovecraft, she would still be known and regarded as one of the greatest Weird Talers of the 1930s. Yet they did correspond, from 1935 until Lovecraft’s death in 1937, and in that brief span of time that exchange of letters changed both of their lives."

Podcast: The Cromcast: A Weird Fiction Podcast (Season 5, Episode 12: "An Owl Hoots in the Daytime." his week, we join John the Balladeer in a lonely cabin at the base of a secluded mountain, where possums as big as dogs wander, an ancient treasure lies buried, and Owls Hoot in the Daytime! This story was one of the later John the Balladeer stories that Manly Wade Wellman published, and it certainly has that feeling of a sort of finality that we couldn't quite put our fingers on to describe accurately!

Reddit Community: /r/Cimmeria Robert E. Howard Reading Club "We are reading through all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in order of publication [...]. This month we read and discuss: "The Tower of the Elephant"

Review: DMR Books: Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: A Review. "The one hundred and thirtieth natal anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft is upon us. HPL was nothing if not a writer of letters. It was one of his defining traits. Lovecraft’s correspondence with Clark Ashton Smith is among his great legacies. Fortunately, Hippocampus Press has finally published Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P.  Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith in fairly affordable trade paperback editions."

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 1)

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems. Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

This is the first post of what will be a regular feature, a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. -JRC

Classic Blog Post: Conan and The Fan Fic Writers of Doom, by Howard Andrew Jones. "You can fit the sum total of all the Conan that Howard wrote (including some fragments and rejected stories) into one large hardback. That’s not a lot of fiction about such a great character, and so for decades people have been trying to create new tales of adventure starring Conan, mostly because they wanted MORE!"

Podcast: Appendix N Book Club (Episode 74): Andrew J. Offutt’s "Swords Against Darkness" with special guest Brian Murphy "Brian Murphy joins us to discuss Andrew J. Offutt's "Swords Against Darkness," reading fantasy fiction as a kid, writing about swords and sorcery, second generation sword and sorcery authors, the understated prose of Poul Anderson, O. Henry’s sword and sorcery, multiclass characters, the collected Ryre stories, elves and dwarves in swords and sorcery, sword and planet, and much more!"

Reddit Community: /r/Cimmeria Robert E. Howard Reading Club "We are reading through all of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in order of publication, and this time it's 'The Scarlet Citadel.' In two weeks on August 15 we start the next one 'The Tower of the Elephant.' Join the conversation!"

New Sword and Sorcery Fiction: Swords and Sorcery Magazine: In the House of Vezzanius, by Davide Mana. "It was the thieves’ dance that had often allowed her to walk through houses where masters and servants were asleep, or minding their chores, like a ghost, unseen and unheard. Past a trunk under an old carpet, past a wooden mannequin on which a sharp blade had outlined the major organs, and stabbed them, she came to the trap door leading down." This is an intriguing story about a rogue who strays into a wizard's study at her peril.

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