Short Stories

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Couple of Short Story Items

July 9, 2009 in Fall of Thanes, Interviews, Reviews, Short Stories by Brian | No comments

Some minor stuff about me, me, me – specifically my recent adventures in short fiction – that’s shown up on the web.

First off, I answer some questions over at the Rogue Blades Entertainment site, partly relating to the story – ‘Beyond the Reach of His Gods’ – I’ve contributed to their Rage of the Behemoth anthology. Imminently available, I believe.

Second off, Pat of Fantasy Hotlist fame provided a brief update on progress regarding the anthology he’s editing for Subterranean Press, titled Speculative Horizons. As reported there, I sent in my story for the anthology – ‘Flint’ – a little while ago. Some minor tweaking is currently underway, but Pat’s basically given it a thumbs up. No confirmed publication date for this one yet, as far as I know, but it shouldn’t be too long.

(And since I’ve been poking around Pat’s site to find that news update, I might as well indulge myself by pointing out his jolly nice review of Fall of Thanes, too.)

Kort & Krachtig!

April 29, 2009 in Interviews, Reviews, Short Stories, Translations by Brian | No comments

I happen to know that a handful (albeit the kind of handful that might be contained in a Lilliputian hand) of Dutch folk have been known to pay an occasional visit to this blog. Hello Netherlanders! Because we’re all about total service at this establishment, here’s something just for you – and, I suppose, for anyone else with truly l33t language skillz – a Q&A (or K&K as it’s apparently called over there) I did for a big Dutch book website: Ezzulia.

A whole load of other interesting people have also been interviewed there - at least I know some of them are usually interesting; whether they’re interesting or not in this particular case, I can’t be sure, since I don’t read Dutch. Heck, I can’t even be sure I was interesting, but there I am, chatting merrily away in a foreign language.

And in case anyone missed it in the comments on the previous post, first review has showed up for the previously mentioned Rage of the Behemoth anthology, over at the jolly good Grasping for the Wind blog. Modesty prevents me from pointing out which of the stories gets the biggest thumbs up. No, really. It does. Big bully, that modesty stuff.

Short Fiction: My, That’s a Big Snake

April 24, 2009 in Books, Short Stories by Brian | No comments

One of the nicer surprises of last year for me was being asked to write short stories for a couple of anthologies. Makes you feel all kind of warm inside, that does. One of them is all done and dusted. It’s called ‘Beyond the Reach of His Gods’, and will be found in Rage of the Behemoth from a little outfit called Rogue Blades Entertainment, due for publication at the start of June I believe.

No one, famously, gets rich from writing (or publishing, for that matter) short stories these days, so, much as any invitation to write a story is welcome for that aforementioned warm feeling it engenders, you kind of need some other reason to say ‘yes’. In this case, I had the time to write something, I had been toying with the idea of trying to write some short stories anyway since I hadn’t exercised those creative muscles in a while, and the premise for this anthology – heroic fantasy involving giant monsters – just struck me as a chance to have a bit of uncomplicated fun. Plus as soon as I heard that theme, the basic idea for the story popped into my head more or less fully formed, so it seemed a shame to ignore it.

The story is about … well, it’s pretty much about this:

Seems pretty clear, no? And yes, that’s the main reason for this post: to show off the rather fine illustration that Johnney Perkins came up with for my story. Surely nobody could look at that image and not think ‘Why, yes. That story’s got to be some kind of fun, in a serpent-hero-jungle mash-up kind of way’? Nice work by the artist, and should you so wish you can actually buy the anthology with this image as the cover art from the Rogue Blades website. Whatever your taste in cover art, if doughty heroes and gargantuan monsters sounds like your kind of thing, why not give the book a try?

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