Does the Sword-and-Planet (also known as Planetary Romance) genre qualify as Sword-and-Sorcery? Or, more precisely, can it?
Yes. Next question.
Wait, you want some sort of explanation rather than a blanket agreement or denial. Fine.
When I first started writing, years ago, it was primarily as a challenge. Could I get a story published? Then, how about a few more? After a while, I wanted to see if I could get a novel published. That accomplished, I discovered I had more novels I wanted to write, that it wasn’t enough to have a published book under my belt.
At the moment I find myself dealing with multiple projects in various stages. I’ve got the word mines running, and the words must flow. It is gratifying. It is also time consuming for someone with a profession that already demands most of his nine-to-five hours.
When you have more than one thing to write about but little to link the subjects, start with a bombastic title.
Don’t leave the best for last. Or do. I don’t know, it’s confusing.
How about this? Boss: Falchion’s Company Book One is now an audio book. That’s pretty good new, I think.
This web log post brought to by the letter “A” for annoyance. And anger. And abashment.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon at McMenamins’s Hillsdale Brewpub for the annual Battle for the Belt, wherein the myriad McMenamin’s brewpubs compete for the popular vote of best beer. Each one enters a beer. Trays full of four ounce pours are provided. We drink, we fill out a top three ballot. We drop our ballots in the box. Simple enough.
In a previous post I’ve written about the five Swords & Sorcery writers the novice reader should be familiar with. Let’s assume this imaginary individual has completed that introductory course of study and is ready to move on to the intermediate-level: S&S 201.
Actual writing constitutes the bulk of creating a book. Sitting my ass down and getting the words transferred from my fevered, abnormal imagination and into the computer. Then there’s the revising, the editing, etc. But that’s all part of writing.
Cultures, whether writ large or sifted down to the level of subculture, link us together. Like it or not, my fellow misanthropes. (Is that an oxymoron, fellow misanthropes? And, I’m really not. People are — fine.) One of linkage a culture offers is a shared day of celebration. A holiday, for example, like Christmas, or a national day of remembrance. Or, the Superbowl, a purely organic artifact of American culture, utterly secular and without government origin or sanction.
I grew up in the Northwest. Rain is the norm. Wet weather can limit activities, hinder weekend recreation. I recall one of the go-to choices for a rainy Saturday was a trip to Bonneville Dam. Tour the museum, count the fish, visit the hatchery. Not a lot of pizzazz, perhaps, but it can occupy a kid for a few hours.
Some days you just need to punish innocent steel plates and sheets of paper. And as a writer, it is good to remind yourself of the sounds, smells, and feel of firearms. You think, “I really ought to go back and revise that scene, get in at least a mention of the noise.”
I hope to cram in a number of items in today’s post. A mishmash of topics. A salmagundi, if you will.