Covenant of the Faceless Knights Re-Release! (kind of)

As a writer, artist, musician, or whatever it is that you do for work, hobby, fun, torture, etc...there comes a time when you find your stride. It is something inexplicable and as mysterious as the cosmos. But, when it happens, suffice to say, you will know it. The reason I am bringing up the topic, is because I believe I have finally hit a stride with my writing. It is just coming much easier to me these days and with fewer drafts/revisions. As my writer friends might empathize, that stride occurs when your voice takes the jumbled mess in your head and spits it out on the page in a cohesive way that makes you say: 'yep, that's what I meant to say!'

And I could not be more excited.

I had been working my 4th manuscript in the series over the last year, entitled Tower of Torment. This was in between medical issues, starting a new career and other nonsense, but I have since finished it up. I have an editing procedure in which I read my written word out loud. (not gonna say how or go into details to bore you) Anyhow, I wrote it, listened to it one time, did my edits, and am happier than a pig in...well, you know what.

William Kenney's artwork, unimpaired by words!

For those of you who do not partake in the often torturous and typically flighty mistress that is independent writing, finding your voice is something to be achieved and somewhat expected...hopefully. Spending less time editing is just a boon! Independent writers more so than any other author, can relate to this arduous task. I liken finding your voice to when a musician identifies a note clearly for the first few times, or an artist sees the image inside his or her head so vividly, that the image comes out with ease, clearer and more vibrantly than ever. All writers hit their stride at some point in their career and I feel that I have recently hit mine.

Let me clarify something. That is not to say my prior work was poor, it simply means that I can say what I meant to say a few years prior with a bit more clarity and ease.

So, I have spent the last few weeks painstakingly re-working Covenant of the Faceless Knights, my first written work, and have made some changes, edits and other things. The content is much the same, but the minimal changes in sentence structure, dialogue and action, I would hope are worth another (or perhaps an initial) look! This is something that I had wanted to do for a long time, but could not find the time or patience. Now I have a publisher that may or may not be interested and decided that this was the right time. I was going to do it anyway, so this was as good a time as any after finishing the 4th manuscript in my Realm of Ashenclaw series.

Also, as a one time courtesy, if you have purchased the book before, and would like the updated version free of charge, please contact me with a DM on Facebook or twitter and I will gift you a copy! Or email me your contact info at the address below.

The almost-chosen blue background!

And for those of you who haven't read it yet--and you know who you are!--I am giving away up to ten free copies in exchange for reviews. All you have to do is comment below using the tag, 'give me my free book!', and then send an email to info@ashenclaw.com with the same subject line and body text. That's it! It’s that simple! The first ten to place comments below are the winners. First come, first served. PLEASE understand that I would like the review! I have given away work in the past and have yet to receive the promised reviews, (some) so please keep this in mind.

Cover art to Wothlondia Rising

And in celebration of this accomplishment, I am reducing the price of Wothlondia Rising: The Anthology back down to 99 cents indefinitely! Get all of my previously released short stories that build up our favorite heroes together in 1 tome! Plus the never-independently-released tale of our favorite half-ogre barbarian, Orngoth, entitled REFLECTIONS.

Ever wonder what a sets a hero  on his or her path? Wonder no more! Grab your copy today!

Thanks for listening to my rants and pitches as usual, and please feel free to comment on how you may have found your own writing voice or artistic stride, or musical ear, or whatever it might be that you do well!

There and back again and again and...

First of all, an apology. It’s been over two months since my last confession, sorry, blog post. You know how it is—xmas, work (the one that pays the bills), some writing/editing/proof reading. And I’ve been a little unfaithful to this blog, seeing another blog or two on the side....

Anyhow, happy new year. And to kick off this year’s posts where better to start than The Hobbit. I saw it with the kids in the Xmas holidays at our brand new cinema in Halifax, in glorious 2D (as watching films in 3D when you already wear glasses is little better than watching a dodgy bit-torrent version with Arabic subtitles and little silhouettes walking across the bottom of the screen). Now I should declare that there was no way I was not going to like this film. Seriously it could have been just a 180 minute still of Bilbo with Sting and Gollum and a caption saying ‘Eggsies’ and I would have soiled my seat. I’d been awaiting this film since before LOTR, since I was 11 and read the book for the first time (not least because LOTR pre-Jackson had a great film version already in the shape of Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon).

Yet just before I went to see it, the powers of the Necromancer (Sauron for kiddies) had already worked their wicked way on the public. Little mutters of desecration, alteration, new material, ‘untrue to the book’ expanded into ‘milking the fantasy cash cow’ (and what a gargantuan cow it could be in a fantasy world... a 15HD AC2 monstrosity with udders that imitated a Beholder’s twiddly eye stalks). So I was a tiny bit nervous when I watched it—I felt almost protective of the film, like they were insulting my mother in some strange Scorsese type-way (‘Waddya say about my mudder? Huh? Huh?’). After all, Peter Jackson is the Creator in my eyes—he who has brought forth majestic films for all to see (and I include ‘Bad Taste’, ‘Meet the Feebles’ , ‘Heavenly Creatures’ and ‘Brain Dead’ in that statement too).

And I was content. Because he didn’t screw it up. And I know there’ll be dissenters who were probably the same ones who lamented the loss of Tom Bombadil, the barrow wights, and were irritated by that whole Osgiliath diversion in Two Towers, but I loved all the modifications. Well, I could have skipped Sylvester McCoy as Radagast with his Bunnies of Protection +2, but the rest was perfectly pitched. I thought back to the book, which is after all a kids’ book, and wondered how it could have been done differently. Part of the problem is that there are some great scenes in the book that would be a bit naff if directly translated to film—the Trolls, the scene with Golem, even the Spiders. They would be rather twee if left as they were, and I considered Jackson did a good job of making the first two feel far more dramatic and not so silly. The sub-plot with Thorin and Bilbo was perfect—the characters had to make a journey within a journey or the film has no drive: after all, what is a story if nothing evolves, nothing changes?

The extra material with the White Orc gave a great finale, which came just right after the escape from the Goblin caves. The alternate would have been bringing the goblins out onto the mountains, which wouldn’t have seemed as dramatic to me—less personal for Thorin, less opportunity for Bilbo’s bravery.

Similarly the meeting in Rivendell was well done, if a tiny bit slow. The Hobbit is a prequel to LOTR whichever way you look at it. The dialogue was engaging enough, and I also liked the more sympathetic treatment of Saruman before he becomes swayed by Sauron and the Palantir. You do kind of want to slap them and shout, “Duh! How can you not know who’d hiding in Mirkwood?”

So like many I’m eager for the next film, not least to try and predict where they’ll cut it. Will it culminate in Smaug’s death, or will they put that in film 3? Will they focus on the battle of the Five Armies in film 3 or what? Or more linking material?

And it’s that extra material that is really irking folk, as it did to a lesser extent with LOTR. But why? What is so sacred about Tolkien and his work beyond the devotion of fantasy fans? I adore the books, but I’m happy to see the alterations in the same way I was happy with the ‘modernisation’ of the CS Lewis books for film. They’re good films, after all. I see adaptations that are dire, especially of comics—the League of Extraordinary Gentleman is shocking, despite the brilliance of the comic; Wanted is an OK film, but bears a minuscule resemblance to the comic version. There’s a school of thought that considers all art to be adaptable, changeable. When we see the twentieth interpretation of Great Expectations, or Pride and Prejudice, we don’t kick back over the alterations, the omissions, when the key plot points and most memorable dialogue remain. And that’s all that has happened with The Hobbit at the moment—the plot is still the same, the idea of Bilbo Baggins making a journey both physically and meta-physically, with the great quotes and the great songs, a bunch of dwarves (undoubtedly cooler than any Elf softies) and a dude in a grey hat.

For me the thrill of seeing such works on film is second to none, and the same applies to the adaptation of comics such as Thor, Spiderman, Iron Man, X-men and Avengers. I adored the originals, but they could not be replicated panel by panel on the big screen. And the kids these days don’t know how lucky they are to be seeing such awesome stuff at the cinema!




So happy new year, and I promise it won’t be as long until I post again. And I’ll kill the time to Hobbit 2 by playing the fab Lego Lord of the Rings, which has Radagast and Tom Bombadil in it!!!

A Blackrazor by any other name...

Continuing the theme of books that influenced DnD (and therefore my writing!) the next one I thought I’d tackle was Michael Moorcock’s Elric saga. A lot of Moorcock’s work in the sixties and seventies probably had a direct influence on Gygax and the other creators of the game, not least the Corum sequence and the two Hawkmoon series (The Runestaff quartet, and the Chronicles of Count Brass trilogy), but undoubtedly Elric was a key one.

Everyone who played the game in the early Eighties with me knew of Elric, although only a few of us had read it. The RPG Runequest had a particular supplement relating to Elric as I recall, and since then I think there has been a specific game around him. I got around to reading the Fantasy Masterworks collection of Elric last year, and enjoyed it. I could see why it had appealed to so many people, although I’ve never really got into Moorcock’s style (I did enjoyed Dancers at the End of Time).

Moorcock is often quoted as saying he wrote Elric as a direct opposition to the traditional fantasy works of Tolkien and RE Howard (he famously described Lord of the Rings as akin to a fantasy Winnie the Pooh). Elric, in his original inception in the nine short stories that comprised Stormbringer (re-published by Fantasy Masterworks as ‘Elric’) is a superb anti-hero. He starts the stories leading an attack upon on his own kingdom, he then proceeds to (admittedly inadvertently at times) chop up all his mates, and he becomes addicted to his magical sword, Stormbringer. Perfect for the Sixties, when people wanted their heroes rather more flawed than the idealistic Fifties!

The influence on the game is overt in a number of areas. The DnD alignment system owes a large debt to the concept of Law and Chaos that Moorcock used, although this in itself was probably evolved from Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (which I’ll review next time). Moorcock took it further, and this battle between the two forces was the key plotline in the later part of the Elric saga (and continued in parts of the Eternal Champion sequence). Law and Chaos are balanced by Neutrality (the Cosmic Balance) and in his books the Eternal Champion served the Cosmic Balance. Moorcock created deities aligned to both Law and Chaos that feature in his books. It’s easy to see how the addition of good and evil created the 9 alignments in AD&D.

Stormbringer, a runeblade that is essentially a Chaos demon in sword form, was a major aspect of Elric’s saga. It was a mighty sword that could chop through anything and drank life energy to sustain Elric, in a vampyric fashion. Its sibling blade was ‘Mournblade’ which had similar powers. In the DnD game the idea of life-drinking magic swords was most obviously emulated in White Plume Mountain (S2), which to my gang was the most frequently played module next to B2: Keep on the Borderlands. I’ve still got the original pale-orange covered one at home! The sword in question was Blackrazor, one of the three personalised magic weapons in the adventure. The author of the module, Lawrence Schick, later admitted he was embarrassed by his blatant rip-off of Stormbringer (he’d thrown the module together from his favourite bits of his own scenarios). Personally I thought it was awesome, and each time we played it there was a full-on scrabble for the soul-drinking sword.

The more subtle influence of Elric on the game was the adventuring aspects of the books. Elric has a group of companions—Moonglum, Dyvim, Rackhir—with whom he adventures, fulfilling ‘missions’ and ‘quests.’ We also had a healthy collection of opposing sorcerers, and a few monsters chucked in for good measure.

There’s a criticism of Moorcock’s Elric books that the characters can be a little flat, and the dialogue a little cheesy, but I think if you read them as a fun fantasy read in instalments (as they can get a touch ‘samey’) then you’ll not go far wrong. And let’s face it we all wanted to have a character as cool as Elric... soul-drinking sword, hot-line to demons to save your arse in a fight, a goth-look that the lasses adored... perfect.

Next up... torn between Fritz Lieber and Poul Anderson....Thieves vs. Paladins...

The Periapt of Eponymous Dweomers

There’s a list in the back of the 1^st edition AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide that always proved fascinating to me as a DnD loving child. It’s tucked away on p224, Appendix N, between Conjured Animals and Encumbrance of Standard Items (not areas of the book I used frequently it must be said).

The list is of ‘Inspirational and Educational Reading’ and was written by Gary Gygax as a sort of source guide for the things that inspired him to write DnD the way he did. What interested me as a kid was that UK book stores never seemed to have half of these authrors. The main fantasy books at the time I found were Donaldson (which I skipped), Eddings, Brooks and, latterly, Hickman and Weis’s Dragonlance. Yet I dug around then and found Robert E Howard, Michael Moorcock,  Fritz Leiber, HP Lovecraft and, of course, JRR Tolkein.

Ironically, in this series of posts on books that influenced AD&D, and thus influenced me (and I suspect most of the Skull Dust Circle) in my writing, I plan to start with books that I have read recently from that mighty list. These include Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, and Roger Zelzaney. The likes of L Sprague De Camp, Fletcher Pratt and A Merritt are on my radar to read eventually.

Jack Vance’s seminal series Tales of the Dying Earth was published over a thirty year period, with the third and fourth books (Cugel’s Saga & Rhialto the Marvellous) published in the early Eighties, and thus not a direct influence on Gygax.

The first book, The Dying Earth, is essentially a collection of linked short stories about inhabitants of an earth far into the future, where magic and science have merged together, and most recorded history is long lost. It takes a while to get settled with Vance’s prose, but once you do it is simply excellent. The tales involving mages are particularly good, and the basis of the AD&D magic system (in its first incarnation) arose here. Spells are learned, but once used disappear from the mind, until refreshed after rest. The good old Prismatic Spray pops up here, along with the penchant for eponymous dweomers (Phandaal’s Gyrator; Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell).

The second book tells the story of Cugel the Clever, and how he falls afoul of Iucounu, the Laughing Magician. The title ‘The Eyes of the Overworld’ refer to a magical rose-tinted lens that Cugel is sent to fetch after a burglary goes awry. He is encouraged in this quest by having a clawed demon grafted into his liver. Cugel is a wonderful anti-hero: a cheat, a liar, a coward, a rogue, a thief. He feels his wit is quicker than it is, although he still cons a fair few people on his long journey back to Iucounu. In most encounters he comes off the worst, yet you can’t but help root for him. Cugel was an evident inspiration for the thief character class in the original game, and Gygax had admitted as such in interviews he gave over the years.

The characterisation in Vance's Dying Earth quartet is excellent. He creates a selection of bizarre, verbose and articulate characters whose dialogue fizzes along. There were moments when the spectre of Blackadder rose in the verbal fencing, and I chuckled at many of Cugel's witty remarks.

Vance’s work offered a number of other things to the DnD game—Ioun stones, The Robe of Eyes, Evard’s Black Tentacles—but the influence of the magic system (and the love of eponymous spells) was the greatest contribution.  I really enjoyed reading the book and would say it’s definitely worth the time, although gentler than more modern fantasy offerings.

My review of the book on Fantasy Book Reviews is here

FREE GIVEAWAY Thru JULY 4th!

Gifting FREE copies of my debut novel, Covenant of the Faceless Knights thru JULY 4th in exchange for reviews. I would like to get a few more reviews up on both Amazon & Goodreads (copy and paste is fine). I would like some avid/voracious readers that can get the reviews up in 30 days or one month’s time. The limit I have set is between 50 and 100 copies, first come-first served, so you may have to hurry.

Criteria: This is pretty simple

1.  Must have an active Amazon account
2.  The account must be in the United States of America
3.  Must visit ƦЄƛԼM ƠƑ ƛSĦЄƝƇԼƛƜ and click on the CONTACT tab at the top right (Or simply click this to bring you to the CONTACT PAGE) and fill it out. Under the 'How may we help you line', simply put: Send me my FREE book! 

That’s pretty much it!

In order for redundancy, please leave me a comment here on the blog and say ‘I’m in’ or ‘Yes, I’ll review it for you’ or something along those lines as well as your name. I will look for your email to send you out a copy.

This is not until Sunday, so if you feed me your information before then, I will be better prepared! Hope to see plenty of contact forms before Sunday!

Covenant of the Faceless Knights Weekend Sale!

Through the weekend and until Monday, ƇƠѴЄƝƛƝƬ ƠƑ ƬӇЄ ƑƛƇЄŁЄSS ĶƝĮGĦƬS, Beginnings series BOOK ONE  is ONLY $2.99 on KINDLE! This Weekend ONLY! So, if you were on the fence about buying it before, here is your chance to get it at a reduced rate!



Some details about the book:
4.9 out of 5 stars on 14 reviews through Amazon~EPIC FANTASY SERIES and it is available in the UK, US, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. I have linked the US and the UK (Though the US is outselling the UK by far...they need to step it up...lol.)

ƇƠѴЄƝƛƝƬ ƠƑ ƬӇЄ ƑƛƇЄŁЄSS ĶƝĮGĦƬS ~ ƲS

ƇƠѴЄƝƛƝƬ ƠƑ ƬӇЄ ƑƛƇЄŁЄSS ĶƝĮGĦƬS ~ ƲĶ

When a dangerous artifact goes missing from the Temple of The Shimmering One, the high priest in charge of the artifact's protection realizes that he will not be able to retrieve the stolen relic without help. Calling upon Garius, the man who was once his own apprentice, Tiyarnon the High Priest enlists the aid of a man who is now an Inquisitor among the Order of the Faceless Knights. Garius, now a man of power and prestige, gathers a handful of allies to help complete his quest—but who among them is worthy of his trust? Aided by the mischievous Rose, a rogue among rogues, the stoic and blood thirsty Saeunn, and a promising but naive elf named Elec, Garius hopes his training as one among the Faceless Knights has prepared him to keep his small company in check, let alone survive the trials to come. Garius must lead his band of allies into dark regions to recover the artifact before it falls into the hands of the evil being that once held it in order to ensure the continued safety of the Realm of Ashenclaw.

 Begin your journey into the Realm of Ashenclaw TODAY!