Karl Edward Wagner.

I rarely meet anyone these days who even knows who Karl Edward Wagner was. I knew him and exchanged letters with him and spoke to him a number of times at various conventions and writer gatherings. He was one of the most brilliant fantasists who ever lived. And he was from the South and part of Everywhere, and it's sad that so much of his work is forgotten. Wagner was a giant personality, but terribly flawed.

I say I knew him, but not really...and I don't want to give the impression that we were in any way close. But we would exchange letters from time to time. He even critiqued my work occasionally, for which I have always been grateful. But almost every time we would meet I would have to remind him who I was. Yes, this could have been partially because he was always drunk; but also because I am not a shining, glowing personality who is easy to remember.

I met Karl at least a dozen times. I always had to reintroduce myself. The only time he recalled who I am was when I saw him at an sf show in Atlanta not long before he died. He noticed me across the room and came over to chat. And although I said nothing, he could see the pure horror on my face and he stopped what he was talking about and said: "I have Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever." Then he showed me red spots on his pale, emaciated arm. "That's why I look the way I do." I later found it was a story he had concocted to tell people who were similarly horrified at his physical state. He didn't have the Fever, of course, and was just dying of a liver that had ceased to operate due to his chronic alcoholism. But I could not hide the shock that was painted over my face. The last time I'd seen him he was his hale, hearty, vibrant Viking self. And then I see this sick, wizened, obviously dying old man. Noting that horror on my face, he had to say something.

Now...damn. It seems no one recalls him. Until recently his books were out of print in any affordable way. I had seen his novels and stories appear in the past decade or so, but in very expensive limited edition books far beyond the affordability of casual readers. This giant of fantasy and horror is completely out of the view of the reading public.

These days, I think you can land his fiction courtesy of the company who seems to have inherited the rights of the works that he published under the old Warner imprint.

I recommend his fiction as highly as I possibly can.

Karl Wagner during his healthier days.

Wagner and a rendition of his alter-ego, Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.

This is how most people became familiar with his work--through the Warner books paperbacks with those amazing Frank Frazetta covers.

MY CURRENT WORKS OF FICTION.

When I'm not hiking and kayaking and camping and backpacking and generally enjoying the outdoors, you can find me working on my short stories and novels.

Here, then, are my current published works of fiction.

First up, WORKING CLASS HERO: The Autobiography of Billy B., A Hyper Human.

First chapter in what is slated to be a trilogy all nicely bound and wrapped up by the end of the third novel. Hopefully, I'd like to even continue writing WORKING CLASS HERO novels for years. I could, quite actually, keep the series going for a long time.

What are you waiting for? Read it now! Pure fun for cool people! Available in paperback, ebook, and audio! Woo-HOO!

WORKING CLASS HERO by James Robert Smith.

Next up is FOUR FROM MANGROVE. When Hippocampus Press published my short story collection, A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS, they excised the four "Mangrove" stories for being too fantasy oriented. These stories are set in the mythical world of the city-state called Mangrove. The stories range over a period of hundreds of years, during which Mangrove might be a might continent-spanning empire, or a busy trading port controlled by outside forces. But it's always Mangrove and its citizens are always busy about the task of commerce and mischief.

Influenced by my love of the works of Karl Edward Wagner and Robert Ervin Howard, here are four fantasy tales of swords and sorcery, of humanity. FOUR FROM MANGROVE.

FOUR FROM MANGROVE by James Robert Smith.

Next up is LOVECRAFT'S COMIC. This horror novella concerns itself with some extreme Lovecraftian creepiness. Two old comic artist friends, one flush with success in the comics industry, the other left behind to live in poverty and failure, are taken on a ride straight to living Hell by the accidental discovery of something evil. One decides to translate the evil to comics format, and the other is caught between friendship and pure horror.

Available in print and ebook. (Warning: this ain't a pleasant fireside ghost yarn.)

LOVECRAFT'S COMIC by James Robert Smith.

And, last, some folk were clamoring for the next chapter of WORKING CLASS HERO (and it's not quite ready), so I offered up this short story of superhumans Billy B. and SHYLOCK HOLMES as they do battle with a particularly creepy outlaw.

Here, then, is TURN OF EVENTS. Available only in ebook format. (Alas.)

"Turn of Events" by James Robert Smith.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??!! BUY A COPY! MORE FUN THAN A BOTCHED REVOLUTION!

WORKING CLASS HERO!

Sometimes.

Sometimes I love the Internet. Many years ago, when he was still active and working, the late Karl Edward Wagner published two stories in his old Year's Best Horror series by a writer I'd never heard of: John Gordon. The two stories were amazing and effective and chilling. They deserved to be there, and it was a rare honor for one author to have more than one story in a DAW Year's Best Horror.

But old Gordon was a complete unknown to me, then. Wagner went on to state that, effectiveness aside, the stories had been published in a collection meant for children/young adults! I was floored. What? Are they trying to traumatize the kiddies in the UK?! So I set about trying to find a copy of the collection from whence these two amazing yarns. It was called CATCH YOUR DEATH AND OTHER GHOST STORIES. But here I was in the USA and there was the book and its publisher in the UK. And keep in mind, this was in the days before the Internet.

Try as I might, I just could not land a copy. Apparently the book went out of print quickly and no US distributor had picked it up. Whenever I heard a close friend mention that they were going to the UK I would give them the book title and author and ask them to search for it. No luck.

After some years, I located a few copies, but at $200 to $300 each they were just way the hell out of my price range. In due course, I just forgot about ever being able to own a copy.

Until last week. I was trolling the Net looking for books and decided to key in CATCH YOUR DEATH by John Gordon. It popped up. Not a huge surprise--they sometimes do, with a high price attached. But this time...99 cents!! WTF?! I didn't debate and I didn't even bother to look too closely at the fine print. I just grabbed it, paid the small shipping charge, and waited to see if the book would actually come.

Today, it did. And a copy in very good condition, indeed! Only a small nick on the back cover, otherwise in fine condition.

I am a happy reader today.

CATCH YOUR DEATH and Other Ghost Stories by John Gordon.

Too Similar?

Among my favorite writers of ghost and weird stories is yet another British author, John Gordon. Most of his work is considered for young adults, but almost all of it is exceptional in some way and can be appreciated by older readers. He excels at old-fashioned ghost yarns and for years I sought to buy a copy of his collection CATCH YOUR DEATH AND OTHER GHOST STORIES. But the copies I'd find were generally too expensive for my budget and I'd have to pass. Recently, I landed an original hardback copy, but as it has yet to arrive from the UK, I'll hold comments on the contents until it arrives (I'd read some of the stories therein, presented in the late Karl Wagner's YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES).

This week I read one of his more recent novels, THE FLESH EATER (1998). This is a young adult novel concerning a fellow in his late teens. I don't recall that his exact age is ever mentioned, but for some reason I assumed him to be between 17 and 19 years old. A likeable and physically imposing young gentleman with relatively wealthy parents who own a very large hotel in a village in the Fens. The hero, one Harry Hogge has the enviable quality of attracting pretty girls. And the girls are what get him entangled in a mystery that soon becomes rather dangerous and equally chilling.

 
The writing here is classic Gordon. Which is to say it's also classically Jamesian. The thing about the plot that eventually got on my nerves is that I realized about three quarters of the way into the novel that it's just a re-telling of "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James himself. It wouldn't have much bothered me except that it's so much like that classic story (the source material for the excellent film CURSE OF THE DEMON) that it got on my nerves. I could give it a pass if it had been a bit less like the story...but it is not. At a certain point the plots are pretty much paralleling one another.

Still and all, I'm glad I read it. I always learn something new about writing when I chance across a well-constructed novel. This is certainly a well written book, but I wish the plot hadn't been so much like something so famous from the author who has obviously most influenced Mr. Gordon.

 The creature, from CURSE OF THE DEMON.

DAW'S YEAR'S BEST HORROR

When I was a young man learning how to write, one of the publications that I looked forward to every single year was THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR published by DAW Books and edited by Karl Edward Wagner. DAW no longer publishes a year's best collection of the finest horror stories, and of course Karl Wagner has fled this mortal coil. Anyway, who was going to try to fill Wagner's shoes at the helm of DAW's year's best collection every year? It would have been a really tough act to follow.

Wagner had a truly unique way of looking at horror fiction, and no one who collects this material has equaled his ability to choose the finest of the works of short fiction to be published each year. And, of course, the industry itself has changed. Almost all of the magazines are gone, and even the little fanzines and micro-zines have, like Wagner himself, faded into oblivion.

I really miss that yearly collection. More than anything else from the days of my youth, I miss that volume that would hit the shelves every year. I'd go to the bookstores and check every week until it arrived. I have every single one of that series. Including the six that preceded Wagner's arrival, mostly edited by Gerald Page. Mr. Page did a good job, too, with some memorable hits in his own tenure at the editor's desk. But nobody topped Wagner.

I miss DAW's Year's Best Horror. And I miss the professional presence of Karl Wagner. I wish they were still with us.

Alas, time passes. And everything, and everyone, eventually heads for extinction.

Two of my editions of DAW's YEAR'S BEST HORROR. I have them all.

Ensconced Scudded Across My Fancies

When I had only been writing seriously for about a year, mainly in the short story form, my work was indeed very serious: seriously awful.

My fiction contained all the attributes of the work of a neophyte. Despite my youth, the ideas were tired, the style was petrified, and the plots ancient. Like the work of almost everyone else who first turn their hands to fiction, my prose totally sucked stinking chimpanzee ass.

After I'd been at it for some time I decided to send a story directly to Karl Edward Wagner. The story that I sent to him had never been published, so there was really no reason for him to see it. After all, the main public work for the late Dr. Wagner was as the editor of his excellent YEAR'S BEST HORROR that he produced annually for DAW Books. I can't even recall the title of the story that I sent to Karl Wagner, but I do remember that it was a ghost story. He responded in short order, telling me that I showed some talent but that I needed to weed out some of the worst pulp fiction elements of my work. I'd apparently been reading too much Robert Ervin Howard at the time and tended to utilize words like "thews".

"Fuck that", Karl told me. Just say 'muscles'.

Later on, I sent him another story. Like the first one, it had never been published, so I was way the hell out of line sending it to him. (Oh. I got his address because an editor at Warner Books forwarded a fan letter I'd sent to him in their care and he replied by post--with his return address intact. Thus my rude self felt welcome to send lousy stories for him to read.) The second story is also one that is mercifully lost to history. I'm not even sure there's a copy left in the stacks of boxes of papers from those days. It's possible, I suspect, but I have no reason to dig it out. I'm not that cruel.

With the second story Karl Wagner was once more his friendly, helpful self. He told me yet again that I showed talent, that I knew how to tell an effective story. But in the case of this second one--a ghost story--well...I'll quote him. I've not forgotten it and I get a lot of laughs when I tell about it.

"Well, Bob. Not bad story-telling. But the idea here has been done.

To death.

By many other authors.

Long, long, long, long before you wrote this version."


Even then I got a chuckle out of his response. When it comes to criticism of my work, I have always had a very thick skin. I don't mind criticism and I don't worry about editors having me retool my fiction. I generally appreciate the help and accept it as such.

Recently I was reading a novel by a mystery writer who is far less famous than he deserves to be. Toward the end of the book he was describing a thunderstorm and mentioned that "the clouds scudded across the sky". Now, I know what "scudded" means. Everyone I know generally recognizes the term when they see it. The trouble is, the only time I ever see this word is when it sits precisely in the same order this author used it: "The clouds scudded across the sky". That's the only way anyone seems to use the word "scudded". I never use it in conversation and I don't know anyone who does use it. It's apparently an Old English word that just lingered, mainly in books where someone wanted to describe clouds fucking scudding across the fucking sky.

Truth to be told, I've used it in just the same way. Every freaking writer I know has done it. It's even older than fiction from the 20s and 30s pulp era. But it's the kind of thing that we need to shed when delivering a novel or short story.

A second such word that my writer friends (and I) have used to extreme is "ensconced". Again, I don't know anyone who says that in day to day conversation. I suppose there are some folk who might blurt it out as they babble on, but I don't know anyone who does. Some years back I used that very word in one of my critically praised short stories ("NUMHED"). Describing a fellow sitting in a McDonald's Restaurant I wrote that his "ass was ensconced in plastic". It seemed clever at the time, but I regretted it almost as soon as I saw it in print. I've never, to my knowledge, used the word in conversation and it wasn't right to use it that way in a work of fiction.

Basically, using tired words and terms like "scudded" and "ensconced" is dishonest. There's no truth to them. One breaks the illusion of the fiction when such terms are included within a story or novel. I don't like encountering that kind of thing from other writers, and I work hard to try to keep these things from popping up in my own fiction.

In fiction, in criticism, and in life, honesty seems to always be the best policy.

Red Beard and Two Gun

Years and years ago, after I'd gotten my foot in the door and sold some comic scripts to Marvel and got DC Comics to open the way (just a crack, mind you), I was able to submit proposals at *******. One editor there was quite open and I was about to sell him a ***** *** proposal when ***** ****** suspected that he was in danger of pushing her out and taking her throne and she conspired to get rid of him. So I never sold the *** series (it would have kicked ass).

When he left, my contact at that point was a truly hideous bitch named ***** *******, a lying whore of a woman. At any rate, I'd gotten her to actually read my submissions and she was returning letters and even phone calls and I was getting close to selling a pitch even to her. But I realized all was lost when I sent her this one for the comic book *** ********, for which I was told I had a very good chance of landing at least a single issue story. To sell there at that time, you either had to be a friend of **** ******'s, or have had your genitalia mutilated by a crazed physician so that you could pretend to be a woman, or both. So it was fortunate that I'd been able to have my proposals read without either of those credentials. In those days, a pitch had to be terse and to the point, and I'd gotten really good at writing one-page pitches. I sent this one, which she liked, but ultimately rejected.

"Karl"
By
James Robert Smith


A Story proposal for

*** ********

The protagonist of this story is "Karl", homage to the late Karl Edward Wagner. Red bearded stocky guy who carouses in the bar all day. A guy called Two Gun (Robert E. Howard) is always trying to get Karl to follow him to the top of "the mountain". Karl will never go since, for all his size, he will not fight through the crowds of zealots who guard the flanks of the mountain. But each month, Two Gun takes it upon himself to go to the heights and hack his way through the zealots and climb to the pinnacle and look down upon the world and experience the chill air and the amazing sunsets. And each time he descends the peak, he takes it upon himself to visit Karl in his tavern and try to talk him into coming along.

All the while, we are shown that Karl enjoys his wine. He also enjoys his smoke and he enjoys his snort and he enjoys his hash brownies. Then a certain woman introduces herself to Two Gun. He brings her into the tavern, and she gives Karl a hit of something new. Two Gun makes his monthly offer and this time Karl accepts, since he seems to be in the throes of some strange, new kind of high. Together, they hack their ways through the zealots and climb the heights and look down from the pinnacle and see the world from the chilly spire.

Karl comes down.

He has always been a peaceful sort. But now he has hacked his way through the zealots who guard the mountain. He has killed.

Pondering, growing more agitated as he goes; he makes his way toward the tavern. He is now in a frenzy.

At the tavern, all turn to see Karl, no longer his usual musing self. Now he is all fire and rage. He smashes down the door to the tavern, his face a mask to do Odin credit. The one who gave him the drug is there. She is his target. "You!" And, "You," he screams through foaming jaws. He grasps her and hauls her to him.

"Give me more," he says.



THE END


And what was her reason for rejecting the above proposal? It was specifically about Karl Wagner and Robert E. Howard, two of fantasy's greatest who were powerfully linked. She was aware of this and familiar with both. As she spoke to me over the phone one day, apparently very much interested in taking this plot, she said, "Why don't you change it to two writers people actually care about?"

I was, of course, struck dumb. I made a quick excuse and hung up the phone and never spoke to her again, although we did end up exchanging a few very nasty letters over a separate situation. Ah, my stillborn career in comics.