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!

Advice from a Dead Writer

Years ago I bought a copy of ONE WHO WALKED ALONE, a biography of the last years in the life of pulp writer Robert Ervin Howard. This books formed the basis for the excellent movie "The Whole Wide World" starring Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard and Renee' Zelwegger as Novalyne Price Ellis, the author of the biography.

That book focuses on the emotional problems that beset Howard and which derailed the budding romance between Price and Howard. But from time to time along the way Price-Ellis reveals some details about Howard's work ethic and practices in his job as a writer. And for Howard it was a full-time job, and he was quite good at it. In his day he was the highest paid man in his town, even though he wrote for low rates for the adventure pulps. His output was astounding, so he kept earning even though the country was in the midst of the Great Depression.

And one thing that struck me in the book was an instance in which Novalyne Price explained that Howard actually spoke the lines aloud as he pounded out his stories on his typewriter. Initially, I found that this seemed a strange thing to me. But later, reading my own work aloud (after it had been put down), I would find clumsy passages that did not "sound" right. And so, I'd revise them until I had decided that the words flowed more easily and the lines made more sense. It was like having an objective reviewer standing by, I discovered.

These days I still actively do this. I've found it works best with dialog and when I'm working on a conversation I do try to recite the lines as they occur to me. How good does it sound? Have I chosen the right words to convey emotion, tension, situation?

Thanks to Novalyne Price and her biography of crazy old Two-Gun Bob, I found something that has helped me to create.

ONE WHO WALKED ALONE by Novalyne Price Ellis.

Haunted Bob Howard.

Novalyne Price.

The doomed romance translated to film in THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.

Pulp Fiction

I enjoy many aspects of pop culture. Not music so much, because for some reason I cannot delineate, I stopped listening to pop music when I hit my mid-20s. I still listen to the stuff that came out during that time (and before), but anything since is largely foreign to me and does nothing for me.

But I do enjoy a lot of the more vulgar forms of pop culture. Books, comics, movies, some TV shows. I also don't muck about with video games, the appeal of which is totally lost on me. But if it floats yer boat, then fine.

My main interest in popular fiction and film is what I would term "pulp fiction". This originated as a largely derogatory term to describe the output of the fiction magazines that were quite widespread and profitable from the late 1800s until around the mid-1950s when TV killed them off. Today, there are only a bare minimum of pulp magazines remaining on the marketplace--ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, ISAAC ASIMOV'S MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE FICTION, ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION & FACT...and that's about it. I can't think of any other pulp fiction magazines on the shelves of modern newsstands, bookstores, and convenience shops.

Pulp fiction has generally gotten bad press from the critical community. And to be sure it's pretty basic stuff. You aren't going to get much in the way of deep meaning or thinly-veiled philosophy from the likes of Robert E. Howard, John D. McDonald, Mickey Spillane, or their contemporaries. And as the pulps faded the practitioners of that kind of fiction had to migrate like an animal fleeing the effects of global warming. They had to move higher up the slopes or farther toward the poles. In the case of the pulp writers they transitioned to film, or to paperback originals, or to teleplays. There were so few markets for the kinds of modern fiction-speak they were creating that they had to do something.

One thing that I have always liked about pulp fiction, whether it's in comic books, or magazines, or paperback books, or on a TV or theater screen is the simplicity of it. The genius of pulp fiction is that everything is boiled right down to its essence. In this case, conflict. That's what pulp fiction is all about: conflict. You don't have to wonder about anything or dig around trying to figure out what it's all about. It's about a bad guy versus a good guy, or a bad guy against an even badder dude. There are slight variations, but that's basically the theme.

And it's there in all sorts of pulp fiction. Westerns, crime, suspense, science-fiction, fantasy, horror...you mention it, and the name of the game is conflict--the more violent, the better.

That's where, I suppose, the bad rep came in. Pulp fiction was about the basics. Violence and vulgar language and hot sex. As the years progressed, the hotter the sex became and the more bloody the violence, the more crude the language. I've enjoyed the whole sorry lot of it.

The old pulp venues are long-gone, it seems. Those pitiful few volumes on the newsstands, the dwindling bookstores with their paperback books...all going or soon to be extinct. This is sad to me. I am left to find it in film and TV, I suppose. Even the comic books are fading slowly away, supported, I reckon, because it seems for the moment to be fertile ground for the entertainment industries to grow their crops.

Here's to the pulp fiction of old, though! Raise yer glass high for the guys and gals who wrote the great old stuff and the ones who are still with us writing the great new stuff. They'll be gone too soon.

Jove help me, I loved it so.

Two-Gun Bob

When I was in my early teens I was helping my dad stock the shelves of one of his bookstores and I happened across this cover art on one of the novels I was putting up in the science-fiction and fantasy section:

It was, of course, painted by Frank Frazetta, and it was the cover art to one of the Bantam Books editions collecting some of the stories of Conan the Barbarian created by Robert Ervin Howard.

Grabbed by the power of the painting I took the book down as my own and read it. I'd heard of Howard, of course, but it was the first time I'd read his work; and I was hooked. Howard was the quintessential adventure pulp writer. His style was actually rather stark for a man earning his living by the pennies-per-word, but there was brilliance--perhaps even genius--in that style. Other writers have picked that style apart, trying to figure it out and doing their best to copy it. But it was unique and Howard was even, perhaps, doing his best to emulate the likes of Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Who knows? But whatever his influence, the result was amazing.

Although the quite highly disturbed Howard committed suicide in 1936, his work lives on. He had an amazingly fertile imagination and his output of fiction was impressive. Because his work was so well written and has been able to transcend the passage of time, he remains popular today. In addition to prose, his work has been translated to film, television, and comics. In some weeks, the new version of a feature film of Conan will hit the screens. I was never a fan of the original films that starred Arnold Schwartzenegger, so I'm hoping that the new movie will do a much better job of interpreting Howard's characters and themes.

We'll see.

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.