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More Thoughts on Ghostwriting for a Living

More Thoughts on Ghostwriting for a Living

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I haven’t written this many books, but I’m working on it

Last year I wrote an article about making a living as a ghostwriter. I talked about how a plethora of small presses have created a new pulp era, in which ghostwriters put out large numbers of stories and short novels under house names. It’s a world that rewards hardworking writers who can hit high word counts and deliver in a variety of genres.

That was more than six months ago, and I thought I’d share some more insights I’ve had from the crazy new world of wordsmiths.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Back to the Stone Age

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Back to the Stone Age

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back-to-stone-age-first-edition-cover-john-coleman-burroughsI’ve now arrived at that period in the Pellucidar series. The period any Edgar Rice Burroughs series eventually reaches: the late 1930s. I took a break from my Pellucidar retrospective to look at Burroughs’s 1913 horror-adventure novel The Monster Men just to delay taking the next step and driving my snowmobile headfirst into the hard ice of the poorest period of Burroughs’s career. But now I’m here and must accept the facts of the late ‘30s and an author trudging through his weakest creative years. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Perhaps I’ll discover a few pleasures in the last three Pellucidar books.

Anyway, enough procrastination. I’m getting on the snowmobile.

Our Saga: Beneath our feet lies a realm beyond the most vivid daydreams of the fantastic … Pellucidar. A subterranean world formed along the concave curve inside the earth’s crust, surrounding an eternally stationary sun that eliminates the concept of time. A land of savage humanoids, fierce beasts, and reptilian overlords, Pellucidar is the weird stage for adventurers from the topside layer — including a certain Lord Greystoke. The series consists of six novels, one which crosses over with the Tarzan series, plus a volume of linked novellas, published between 1914 and 1963.

Today’s Installment: Back to the Stone Age (1937)

Previous Installments: At the Earth’s Core (1914), Pellucidar (1915), Tanar of Pellucidar (1929), Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929–30)

The Backstory

The ending of Tarzan at the Earth’s Core set the scene for a direct follow-up. Wilhelm von Horst, one of the German members of the O-220 expedition to Pellucidar to rescue David Innes, was still stranded somewhere in the inner world, and Jason Gridley chose to remain in Pellucidar to locate him. But other projects and business concerns prevented Burroughs from moving fast into writing this proposed sequel. He wouldn’t start work on the new Pellucidar novel until January 1935, writing it under the working title Back to the Stone Age: A Romance of the Inner World. It took him eight months to finish the 80,000-word novel, an unusually protracted length for him. And that was only the beginning of the difficulties.

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Goth Chick News: A Unique Musical Take on a Weird Tales Classic

Goth Chick News: A Unique Musical Take on a Weird Tales Classic

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Weird Tales May 1933-small The Beast of Averoigne-small

When musician Matthew Knight contacted me about his new release, The Beast of Averoigne I admittedly had to do a bit of research. I knew I had heard of the story somewhere, but could not immediately place it.

The story’s author, Clark Ashton Smith (1893 –1961) was one of “the big three” of Weird Tales, alongside Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft. Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle and his literary friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecraft’s death in 1937.

First appearing in the May, 1933 issue of Weird Tales, Clark Ashton Smith’s story “The Beast of Averoigne” concerns itself with a man of science whose superior knowledge enables him to deal with a dark threat that the ignorant, religion-besotted inhabitants of 14th century France simply cannot. What sets “The Beast of Averoigne” apart is that it might be called a science fiction tale rather than a fantasy one, for the titular “beast” is not some demon from Hell but an alien invader.

And it is around this story that Matthew Knight weaves his debut release under the label Haunted Abbey Mythos. The theatrical, musical audiobook presentation consists of a dramatic narration of “The Beast” read by Knight and set to a backdrop of eerie soundscapes scored by avant garde electronic musician, Jon Zaremba. The CD also contains five unique interlude pieces by Knight, which range from ambient synth-driven, to darkly romantic.

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Vintage Treasures: The Pulp Fantasies of E. Hoffmann Price

Vintage Treasures: The Pulp Fantasies of E. Hoffmann Price

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The Devil Wives of Li Fong-small The Jade Enchantress-small

E. Hoffmann Price is one of the grand old men of the pulps. He published no less than 28 stories in Weird Tales between 1925 and 1950, including a collaboration with H.P. Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key.” He continued writing right up until his death in 1988, at the age of 89. He published four SF novels in his Operation series (Operation Misfit, Operation Longlife, etc) with Del Rey in his 80s, producing the last one in 1987.

But he’s perhaps best remembered by modern readers for his pair of Chinese fantasies, The Devil Lives of Li Fong (1979) and The Jade Enchantress (1982), also published by Del Rey, with gorgeous covers by Rowena Morrill and Laurence Schwinger. These books were ubiquitous among adventure fantasy fans in the early 80s, passed around and shared like the tales of Elric and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser.

The Devil Wives of Li Fong (217 pages, $1.95 in paperback, December 1979) — cover by Rowena Morrill
The Jade Enchantress (297 pages, $2.75 in paperback, June 1982) — cover by Laurence Schwinger

Originally from California, Price began his professional career as a soldier, graduating from West Point and serving in World War I. In his autobiography, Jack Williamson called him a “real live soldier of fortune.” Here’s his colorful bio from the back of these Del Rey paperbacks.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: The First Chapter of The Wreck of the Marissa

Black Gate Online Fiction: The First Chapter of The Wreck of the Marissa

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M Harold Page The Wreck of the Marissa (Eternal Dome of the Unknowable 1)
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Trust me, I’m a doctor. Some people need killing.

OK, yeah, Doctor of Archaeology but that gives me the long view. (Professor James Brandistock Ph.D. at your service, by the way, but you can call me “Jim”.)

Where was I?

Some people need killing.

It’s true! History turns out better when certain individuals are removed from it.

Case in point? His Royal Highness Prince George, galactic playboy and hereditary ruler of the Planetary Principality of Badland. Now he was a man who’d make your trigger finger tense even if you’d never fired a blaster.

I can tell you this because I was groundside during the ’34 Badland Revolution, avoiding looters and opportunists as I negotiated the streets of Fortunata — that’s the planetary capital.

The smug little f–ker popped up on every TV screen in every bar and cafe, and — I assume — every home. He called for calm, promised to see justice done and grievances met.

And he didn’t bother to keep the smirk off of his jowly face.

Prince George didn’t need to. His bullshit was just box-ticking in case the Empire was paying attention: “I reached out to them, Your Excellency, truly I did. Mass murder was a last resort. I wept when I gave the order…”

See, the real message — the reason for Prince George’s smirk — was the Devastator. They’d set up the TV camera so you had a good view of it through the Prince’s study window. The alien super weapon has its own pinnacle above the Citadel Rock — imagine a clenched fist making a thumbs up — so I guess the study was built with that view in mind. They’d also taped the speech at the right time of day so that harsh white sunlight flashed off the thing’s weird tubes and dishes as the gun crew swept it left and right, showing off its field of fire.

Look, Prince George was saying, I have a literal gun to the city’s head.

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A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn

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clark-ashton-smith-vol-2-door-to-saturn-coverI’m back from my latest amble through the collected SF and fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith from publisher Night Shade. I’m reading these at a gradual pace, sprinkling a story here and there among whatever else I’m reading. It’s like having Clark Ashton Smith casually hang out with you for months at a time, a darkly erudite and sporadically mordantly humorous traveling companion who occasionally asks: “Hey, what are you reading there? Well, let me tell you this story I just thought up…”

Same caveat as for Vol. 1: If you’re a Clark Ashton Smith neophyte, these Night Shade chronological editions aren’t the best starting point discovering him. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want a quality primer with a collection of some of Smith’s stories in an inexpensive and easily available volume.

Contents

Vol. 2 features stories written over a more abbreviated period than in the previous volume: July 1930 to May 1931. Each story is listed below with its original date and place of publication — often (as is the case with “The Red World of Polaris” and “The Face by the River”) many years after when it was first composed, and sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text Night Shade presents.

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Pellucidar Break: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pellucidar Break: The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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monster-men-original-dust-jacketI’ve reached the halfway point on my retrospective of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar novels — and if I’ve learned one thing from having done two other complete ERB retrospectives (aside from never get in a flying vehicle with Carson Napier), it’s that I should take a break before plunging forward into the second half. Or maybe plunging down into the second half. Once a Burroughs series enters the late 1930s, the drop off in quality can get frightfully steep.

So before going Back to the Stone Age, I’m rewinding to the salad days of ERB’s career and exploring a lesser-known work: a take on Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau filtered through the pulp jungle adventure; a book of great promises and great frustrations.

The story that would eventually become The Monster Men is an ambitious thematic and character experiment that explodes with the exuberance of early Edgar Rice Burroughs. It’s also a misfire where generic pulp elements and a terrible ending undermines the potential for one of its author’s most intriguing works. The ebullience of youthful ERB bursts through, but the control and follow-through with complex ideas seem to have been left to the concurrent Tarzan, Mars, and Pellucidar series.

Burroughs wrote the novel in April 1913 during a feverish period between The Cave Girl and The Warlord of Mars. He may have devised the idea in late 1912 as a short story. But he soon discovered the short story wasn’t his medium and expanded the idea into a full-length book titled “Number Thirteen.” It appeared as “A Man without a Soul” in the November 1913 issue of All Story. For its first book publication in 1929, the name was changed to The Monster Men, by far the weakest of the trio of titles, but the one we’re stuck with. “The Man without a Soul” had been used as the title for the U.K. book publication of The Mucker, which probably accounts for the change. The title coincidence between these two books, however, isn’t exactly a coincidence, something I’ll examine later.

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Thrilling, Startling, Futuristic: The Adventure House Pulp Reprints

Thrilling, Startling, Futuristic: The Adventure House Pulp Reprints

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Adventure House Thrilling Wonder-small Adventure House Captain Future-small Adventure House Startling Stories-small

I acquired many fine treasures at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Show here in Chicago last week. And there were more than a few that escaped my vile clutches. One of the biggest mistakes I made was not spending more time in the Adventure House booth. I passed it several times — you couldn’t really miss it, they had an absolutely marvelous wall display with hundreds of colorful pulps — and just about every time my eye was drawn to a rack crammed full of high-quality pulp replicas. Thrilling Wonder Stories, Planet Stories. Captain Future, Startling Stories, all bright and crisp and brand new… it looked like a magazine rack from the 1930s, catapulted eight decades into the future.

Now, I’ve picked up one or two pulp replicas in my day. They’re not just reprints of the editorial contents of old pulp magazines, but photostatted replicas, right down to the ads. For example, Girasol Collectables in Canada does a brisk business in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and Spicy Detective replicas. Most cost $35 each, which is more than I paid for the original issues of Weird Tales I have in my collection. So I’m a little guns shy about replicas, and I didn’t stop to investigate that eye-catching rack.

But I thought about it after the show was over, and two minutes online showed me that Adventure House pulp reprints are broadly available — at Amazon and other online sellers — and that they’re much more reasonably priced than the Girasol variety, at just $14.95 each!

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Evil Wizards, Robot Guardians, and the Maze of the Minotaur: Rich Horton on The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson

Evil Wizards, Robot Guardians, and the Maze of the Minotaur: Rich Horton on The Reign of Wizardry by Jack Williamson

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Unknown March 1940-small The Reign of Wizardry Lancer The Reign of Wizardry Sphere-small

Jack Williamson’s novel The Reign of Wizardry was originally published in three installments in the grand old pulp magazine Unknown, beginning in the March 1940 issue (above left, cover by M. Isip). Its first complete appearance was as a 1964 Lancer paperback (middle), with a cover by none other than Frank Frazetta. It’s been reprinted nearly a dozen times since, including a 1981 paperback edition from Sphere in the UK (right, artist uncredited), and most recently in the 2008 Haffner Press collection Gateway to Paradise.

Jack Williamson was a SFWA Grand Master. His first story appeared in Amazing Stories in 1928 when he was 20 years old and, in a remarkable career than spanned nearly eight decades, he was still winning major awards in his 90s, including a Hugo and a Nebula for his novella “The Ultimate Earth” (Analog, December 2000). He died in 2006, at the age of 98.

The Reign of Wizardry enjoyed multiple editions over the decades, and last year it was nominated for a Retro Hugo for Best Novel of 1941 (it lost out to A.E. van Vogt’s Slan). Recently Rich Horton gave it a warts-and-all review at his website Strange at Ecbatan.

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Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg

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Famous Fantastic Mysteries Weinberg-smallI spent yesterday and Friday at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback show in Lombard, Illinois, about 30 minutes from my house. And as soon as I finish this article, I’m going to scoot over there again.

I found a great many treasures at this show this year. More than usual, even. And I’m looking forward to reporting on them here. One of the more interesting was a copy of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a 1991 pulp reprint anthology from Gramercy edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg, in terrific shape, which I bought for just $5.

Famous Fantastic Mysteries was a much-beloved fantasy pulp which ran from 1939 to 1953. The publisher was Frank A. Munsey, a name well known to pulp fans. The first bi-monthly issue was cover-dated September-October 1939, and contained A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool,” Ray Cummings’ “The Girl in the Golden Atom,” and stories by Manly Wade Wellman, Donald Wandrei, and many others. The magazine was a success, and it quickly switched from bi-monthly to monthly.

While the magazine relied chiefly on reprints, especially in the early days, it commissioned original art from many of the top artists of the day, especially Virgil Finlay and Lawrence Sterne Sevens, and today is treasured as much for the fabulous covers and interior art as the fiction.

In its 81 issues, Famous Fantastic Mysteries offered reprints of SF and fantasy pulp stories by Max Brand, E. F. Benson, Robert W. Chambers, William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany, Bram Stoker, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and countless others, as well as brand new fiction from Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Murray Leinster, Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, Margaret St. Clair, Arthur C. Clarke, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and many more. See the complete issue checklist at Galactic Central.

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