Welgar, Nadrain and Ossani - three intertwined swords and sorcery characters

In my own swords and sorcery stories I have chanced to create three characters so far who have appeared in more than one tale, and only one of them is what could possibly be described as a Northern barbarian, though Welgar's fate is a far cry from Conan or any of his clones, having been disfigured into the semblance of a walking corpse by the Agryptian "god" that possessed his body in one of these stories.

The others are:

Ossani - a sorcerer who hides behind the cover of being nothing more than a healer. He appears briefly at the end of The Storyteller of Koss, which was published last year in Summer of Sci-fi & Fantasy edited by Dustin Bilyk (Author's Hand Publishing).

Ossani returns as the titular character in Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus, which also introduces us to Welgar the Northerner. I am currently working on a third Ossani story.

Nadrain the Storyteller - he is the main character and narrator of The Storyteller of Koss. Nadrain next appears in The Dark Priestdom, alongside my Northern mercenary Welgar - this story has been accepted for publication and should appear sometime this year.

Welgar - His first appearance is in Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus, followed by The Dark Priestdom. His third story, which briefly features Nadrain once more in the opening pages, is in Welgar the Cursed, due to be published in March this year in Swords & Heroes, edited by Lyndon Perry.

All three characters have intertwining fates, despite being completely different from each other. I would add that nothing was planned about this beforehand; it grew organically with each tale I wrote. Now I am looking forward to continuing their sagas and seeing how they intertwine even more.

 

 

The last Grudge End story

Several years ago now without planning to do such a thing I began a series of loosely connected stories based around a fictitious area of a fictitious town in Lancashire. The town was Edgebottom - the area of this town was known as Grudge End, an area of ill repute, with a long history of violence, murder, cults and worse!

The first story in which Grudge End is mentioned, though it doesn't take place there, is Lock In, first published in The Black Book of Horror, 2007.

Following this came these:

The Fragile Mask on his Face (Dark Discoveries magazine No 15, 2009)

The Worst of all Possible Places (Houses on the Borderland, 2008)

The True Spirit (Back from the Dead, 2010)

Old Grudge Ender (The Screaming Book of Horror, 2012)

Scrap (Dark Visions 1, 2013)

Grudge End Cloggers (Scare Me, 2020)

The Psychic Investigator (Lovecraftiana Magazine, 2022)

Advert for A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

All four stories in this collection cover a wide range of tropes within the zombie genre. 

Dead Ronnie and I is a tale of high adventure by plane and sea, with an abortive escape by our protagonist to the as yet untainted Isles of Scotland. This was originally published in Sanitarium Magazine No 44 in 2016.

His Pale Blue Eyes is probably the most traditional take of zombie stories today, featuring a young girl’s determined search for her parents during a zombie apocalypse. It’s a story, though, about conditioning and how what someone is taught can radically affect their behaviour. Is the horror in this the shambling undead or the girl herself? See what you think. This first appeared in Bite-Sized Horror edited by Johnny Mains for Obverse Books in 2011.

By contrast Right For You Now, originally published in Weirdbook Zombie Annual No 3 in 2021, harks back to the original concept of the zombie in Voodoo-haunted Haiti, though this tale is set in present-day Britain. It’s a combination of a crime story, revenge, and a man’s obsessive fascination with age-old practices.

Our final tale, Romero’s Children, is more in the way of a science fiction story. The zombies here are certainly the most different. For a start off they are not dead but have been granted near immortality by a drug that swept the world with its promise to stop aging. Alas for those caught up in the frenzied demand to use it, though, its side effects were such that they would have been better off dead. This story appeared in 2010 in The Seventh Black Book of Horror edited by the late Charles Black and was subsequently picked up by American editor Paula Guran for her 2012 anthology Extreme Zombies.

 

First story to be published in 2023

At the moment it looks as if the first story I'll have published this year will be Welgar the Cursed in Lyndon Perry's swords and sorcery anthology Swords & Heroes. 

I have as yet to receive confirmation of the actual date when this book will be published, but I'll post it here when I do.

Lucilla - published in Bewildering Stories

My story Lucilla has been published in 11 parts in Bewildering Stories. To read them for free follow this link.

The Triptych of Hell to be published in Lovecraftiana magazine

My Lovecraftian short story The Triptych of Hell is to be published in the Candlemas (February) 2024 issue of Lovecraftiana magazine.

The story was inspired by the collaborative illustration used for the front cover of the Phantasmagoria Magazine's Fantasy Tales Special between Jim Pitts, Dave Carson and Allen Koszowsky. 

Possible front cover for Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 6

Jim Pitts has been busy in the past week working on colouring a previous black and white illustration for the front cover of the next swords and sorcery anthology in May 2023. Below is a copy of the original illustration together with the coloured version and a copy of what the cover will almost certainly look like.

 

Volume 6 will be open for submissions on the 1st April for the full month.

 

My story After Nightfall reprinted in the Phantasmagoria Fantasy Tales Special

It was nice to see one of my earliest stories, After Nightfall, reprinted yet again, this time in the massive Phantasmagoria Fantasy Tales Special. 

This story previously appeared in the following:

1970 Weird Window 1, Shadow Publishing edited by David A. Sutton

1971 The Year's Best Horror Fiction 1, Sphere Books & DAW Books edited by Richard Davis

1985 Fantasy Tales #15 edited by Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton

1992 Tayaschiysya Horror 2, (Таящийся ужас 2) published in Russia, translated by Vladimir Vladimirov

2011 Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! edited by Otto Penzler, Vintage Books

2012 Zombies: A Compendium of the Living Dead edited by Otto Penzler, Corvus/Atlantic Books

2013 The Lurkers in the Abyss & Other Tales of Terror, Shadow Publishing

2017 Gallery of Curiosities edited by Kevin Frost

2018 Gallery of Curiosities webzine edited by Kevin Frost

2020 After Nightfall & Other Weird Tales, Parallel Universe Publications

2022 Phantasmagoria Fantasy Tales Special edited by Trevor Kennedy

Book Review: Savage Realms Monthly November 2022

My review of the latest issue of Savage Realms Monthly:

SAVAGE REALMS MONTHLY November 2022

Edited by William Miller

Literary Rebel, 73 pages. Paperback

 Savage Realms Monthly has been running for almost two years, publishing three stories per issue with an impressive regularity. And, under the editorship of William Miller, some outstanding tales it has published too.

This issue is no exception.

It kicks off, almost literally, with a true Norse adventure by Garrett Boatman. In Ragnar’s Bane our barbaric protagonist, King Ragnar Broadaxe is a giant of a man even amongst his Viking subjects, out raiding for plunder when he is cast onto a storm-swept island, where he encounters a beautiful woman he soon learns is a witch – a witch imprisoned by a powerful wizard who she begs Ragnar to kill for her. It’s a request, which along with all the promised wealth this will bring to him, Ragnar is unable to turn down. Of course, in the event this task is far from as straightforward at it looks at first glance and its conclusion far from what Ragnar expects. A well-constructed rollicking tale, full of grim twists and turns for our rapacious hero.

Contrastingly, the second tale, To Outlast the Moon by Jared Kerr, is in a deceptively far more civilised setting, the ancestral home of General Jalan Hazim. Although he is the Empire’s most successful soldier, now turned sixty-one by tradition he must honourably die in one-to-one combat to make way for younger men. To compel him to comply the Emperor has already sent an anonymous knight-executioner, along with an imperial witness to make sure everything is carried out according to law. Hazim is prepared to die, though he is equally determined to do so defending himself to the best of his ability, knowing that even if he defeats his first opponent another will be sent a few days later to make sure his death is accomplished. This is a touching tale of honour, the passing of time and pathos, with again some twists to what otherwise would seem a straightforward tale.

The final entry is City of the Forgotten Kings by H. E. Johnston, and to me a more traditional swords and sorcery yarn than the others,  in which two thieves, hearing of a great treasure, head for the feared realm of the City of the Forgotten Kings, whose ruins teem with the ghosts of its long-dead past inhabitants. The main protagonists are the worldly-wise female warrior Tanet, deadly at swordplay, and her companion, Ghede of Zabal, “a small man with a wiry frame and a grin that held more secrets than mirth…” Tales about looters of lost cities are always entertaining, the more dangerous the environment the better – and few come more dangerous than the City of the Forgotten Kings!

So, again three highly entertaining stories, all well-written, with inventive plots and colourful settings and convincing characters.

David A. Riley

Amazon.co.uk

 

Our new chapbook: A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead now available in print as well as kindle

After several expressions of interest in a print version of our new e-chapbook A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead we have now published it in softcover, priced at just £5.00. If this experiment in chapbooks proves popular enough we intend to publish more in the future by other authors.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

All four stories in this collection cover a wide range of tropes within the zombie genre. 

Dead Ronnie and I is a tale of high adventure by plane and sea, with an abortive escape by our protagonist to the as yet untainted Isles of Scotland. This was originally published in Sanitarium Magazine No 44 in 2016.

His Pale Blue Eyes is probably the most traditional take of zombie stories today, featuring a young girl’s determined search for her parents during a zombie apocalypse. It’s a story, though, about conditioning and how what someone is taught can radically affect their behaviour. Is the horror in this the shambling undead or the girl herself? See what you think. This first appeared in Bite-Sized Horror edited by Johnny Mains for Obverse Books in 2011.

By contrast Right For You Now, originally published in Weirdbook Zombie Annual No 3 in 2021, harks back to the original concept of the zombie in Voodoo-haunted Haiti, though this tale is set in present-day Britain. It’s a combination of a crime story, revenge, and a man’s obsessive fascination with age-old practices.

Our final tale, Romero’s Children, is more in the way of a science fiction story. The zombies here are certainly the most different. For a start off they are not dead but have been granted near immortality by a drug that swept the world with its promise to stop aging. Alas for those caught up in the frenzied demand to use it, though, its side effects were such that they would have been better off dead. This story appeared in 2010 in The Seventh Black Book of Horror edited by the late Charles Black and was subsequently picked up by American editor Paula Guran for her 2012 anthology Extreme Zombies.

I would like to thank my friend Jim Pitts who has kindly allowed me to use his illustrations both for the covers and for the interior.

 

New e-chapbook available from PUP: A Handful of Zombies

At PUP we are experimentng with a new line in cheap e-chapbooks, which will be available online for £1.99 each..

The first is now available, with a cover and interior illustrations by Jim Pitts. Called A Handful of Zombies: Tales of the Restless Dead e-chapbook number 1 includes four stories by David A. Riley: Dead Ronnie and I, His Pale Blue Eyes, Right For You Now, and Romero's Children.

 

amazon.co.uk  £1.99

amazon.com  $2.99

 

Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 5 now available in paperback and kindle

Cover: Jim Pitts

 

I am pleased to announce that Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy Volume 5, presented by Jim Pitts and me, is now available as a paperback and kindle e-book.

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com 

The contents are: 

The Rotted Land by Charles Gramlich

Skulls for Silver by Harry Elliott

For the Light by Gustavo Bondoni

People of the Lake by Lorenzo D. Lopez

Free Diving for Leviathan Eggs by Tais Teng

The Black Well by Darin Hlavaz

Degg and the Undead by Susan Murrie Macdonald

The Mistress of the Marsh by David Dubrow

Silver and Gold by Earl W. Parrish

Bridge of Sorrows by Dev Agarwal

Prisoners of Devil Dog City by Adrian Cole

Of the eleven writers included this time, five hail from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, one from The Netherlands and one from Argentina. 

This is our biggest volume so far, with over 300 pages, though the price has stayed the same. 

 

The latest issue of Lovecraftian: The Magazine of Eldritch Horror

I received the latest issue of Lovecraftiana: The Magazine of Eldtrich Horror today, appropriately enough Halloween.

This issue includes my 12,000 word story The Psychic Investigator, which is set in my fictitious Grudge End. 

My story The Psychic Investigator is in the next issue of Lovecraftiana Magazine

I am pleased to see that my story The Psychic Investigator will be in the next issue of Lovecraftiana Magazine (Halloween 2022).

I have had a number of stories in the Lovecraftiana Magazine but these have always, till now, been reprints. This is the first brand-new story I have purposefully written for the magazine to appear in it.

Though the title might not sound Lovecraftian, believe me it is. It is also set in one of my favourite fictitious places: Grudge End.