Category Archives: Adventure

Island of the Lost by Milton Lane – a Review

Review by INFAMOUS 🦀

 

When I first decided to review this I was a bit nervous. What made me feel that way was the disclosure found under the book details on Amazon:

 

“Paperback and ebook editions have been revised and updated following customer feedback as of 31 OCT 23.”

 

To me that was an instant red flag as the term ‘revision’ these days can mean anything in a book. What was revised exactly is something I will further discuss with the author in an upcoming Q&A interview, so stay tuned.

By the time I was done reading, however, I knew this was going to enter our 5-star elite club here at VP! This novel absolutely delivers everything you would expect by looking at its cover (fantastic cover, by the way!). All my fears wiped away, Milton Lane absolutely crushed it by bringing back a traditional pulp classic genre that is authentic, respectful of those authors who pioneered the genre, and keeping a fine balance between fantasy trope injected with an acute sense of realism.

After surviving the mysterious sinking of the ship The Invincible, former Naval Officer Hannibal Harken (a.k.a. The Adventurer) finds himself stranded on an uncharted island with a group of other survivors. Now, facing not only the natural adversities that the island itself poses, but also some not-so-friendly locals, the Adventurer must rely on his skills, intuition, and a few unexpected friends, to survive and get back to civilization.

Pretty simple concept, and yet SO easy to bungle up if the writer doesn’t do his homework. Fortunately in The Island of the Lost (paid link) this is not the case. Far from it!

Lane is able to capture that retro pulp style we got to know in Doc Savage, Solomon Kane, and even The Shadow to an extent. The story moves along nicely beginning to end, the prose is classic 1930s-40s style with rich and witty dialogues. 

The characters are not dull and predictable. In fact, although there are a few good looking female characters featured, our main character does not get involved in a romance, or ‘demand’ a heartfelt kiss from the girl before going on risking his life. Not that there’s anything wrong with romantic tropes, but as an astute writer you also gotta know when this would aid the story or  simply feel too forced while doing nothing to propel the main narrative.

Last thoughts that really bring this review to a positive conclusion: this story is self-contained. It has a 1)beginning,  2)bridge, 3)climax, and 4)conclusion. You don’t have to wait for the next book in the series to find out what happens, yet, at the same time you hope there will be more adventures facing the Adventurer so that we can join him amidst strange lands, strange peoples, and the pursuit of TRUTH!

Man of Swords: The Eye and the Dragon – a Review

By THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO

 

Note from THE INFAMOUS: this is the first of a 6-part review series that will cover each tale included in Man of Swords by R. V. Mills. I feel that Mills is the most exciting fantasy pulp writer of the last few years and his latest publication deserves a thorough breakdown which would be impossible to achieve in one single review. Hope you guys will tag along for the ride and enjoy this as much as we will!

 

 

“Through spilt milk of stars, whirls of worlds most wondrous, spirals of splendour spinning atop the fingertips of Gods, through void unimagined he raced to straits and reaches never by mortal seen.”

 

If this short tale does not find an initial overwhelmingly warm reception from a majority of readers, I will understand why. Let me explain.

This is the opening short story of Man of Swords (paid link), and it takes us back to a time of a young Rhoye before he was even called as such. This is not a very story-driven tale and that’s why some folks might find it too slow or even downright boring. Not much happens if you’re expecting epic battles, sword fights, or the rescuing of damsels in distress.

Basically this is about young Rohye’s initiation, the quest to find his identity as a man, and for the most part the story will take us into a world between reality and dream (I wonder what Uncle put in that drink they gave Rhoye!). 

Under the watchful eye of the old Shaman, young Rohye goes up the Mountain to sit in a cave where all sorts of lucid dreams will take him through a trippy interdimensional experience. 

Nothing makes sense on the surface but that’s the nature of dreams after all. It’s hard to deny traces of E. A. Poe and H. P. Lovecraft here.

Despite the slow pace, what makes this a must-read is its prosaic style. Mills is a master of the English language and this is a perfect example of it. It is a delight to read the beautiful words that create this world of visions and dreams. You feel transported to a dream world along with the main character and get to experience the ethereal realms young Rohye visits. THAT, my friends, is worth taking the time to read this opening act! 

It’s not always about the well-choreographed fight scenes or the intricate subplots. Sometimes you just gotta let the magic of exquisite prose take you to another realm!


Our series will continue in 2 weeks with part 2 of 6: “The Knight Who Would Not Kneel”

Citadel of the Seven Swords – a Review

You may have noticed that Gio has been reviewing a lot of fantasy lately that may or may not qualify as Iron Age (depending on who you talk to). Well, I also have recently bought some new fantasy and sci-fi by based authors. Maybe I’m not knocking down my TBR pile as fast as Gio is chopping down his, but I’ll have some reviews coming your way, too.

This is Book One of Erik Waag’s Wandering Sword Series.

The story opens with the protagonist (the wily Northman, Skarde) a slave bending the oar on a ship–due to misfortune from a previous misadventure.

I know we’ve been making many comparisons to Robert E. Howard’s fantasy lately (and that’s a good thing), but I’m not done yet. The beginning of this adventure felt very Howardesque.

Skarde escapes from the ship, and enslavement to the Iron Brotherhood–but is doggedly pursued even after reaching the seeming safety of an island.

That island is ruled by a cult with some serious muscle at its disposal. A literal titan  dwells in the fiery bowls of the island’s volcano, forging the seven swords of the title. The adventure takes us through the island’s underground labyrinth where, with the help of other slaves, and a powerful sorceress, Skarde hatches a plan to defeat the titan and the cult leader, and secure his freedom.

Waag shoots for verisimilitude in his action sequences. Skarde is certainly clever, agile, and strong, but is not superhuman and far from infallible. And the tension runs high in between the action. My only complaint is that the story feels like it’s just finding its rhythm when the book ends. No character arc or development to speak of–the reader is just getting to know Skarde, in fact.

This is not unusual for the first book in a series. And, of course, the current market is friendliest to series fiction–so it’s no wonder so many authors choose to write them. I found enough promise in Citadel of Seven Swords that I do want to read the next book. But I expect it to delve deeper into characterization (at least enough to make Skarde stand out in some way from other fantasy adventure heroes) and provide a more immersive reading experience.

Paradox Chapter Reveal: “Culture Shock”

I blogged about my decision to break Paradox into a series. I thought of the idea literally years before I committed to doing it. The cause of my reluctance was my compulsion to spin one self-contained, stand-alone saga with time travel, babes, action, football, and nuggets of wisdom for boys and men, and that’s what my rough draft was.

Having made the commitment to make it episodic, I then had to tweak the respective episodes so they wouldn’t read like literary fragments with no context. So each episode had to have it’s own story question, and it’s own wrap-up. But I didn’t want to contrive some kind of cliffhanger to end every book on. A cliffhanger here and there is fine, can even be good, but when they’re forced over and over again, I think it’s weak storytelling. Remember: I’m a reader, too. I bought a virtual “box set” once, with every book ending on a cliffhanger. I thought it was manipulative and annoying.

Anyway, I had to tweak stuff here and there, re-explain stuff from previous books, add on to first chapters, and in some cases write new chapters to fit this episodic format.

Book One (Escaping Fate) ends after the still-preadolescent protagonist gets a new identity, a new family, new “home” coordinates in the time-space continuum, and is about to begin his new life. In the mammoth-sized rough draft, the next plot point is that he starts that new life. But now I have to tell that part in a different book. What if A new reader picks this one up first for whatever reason? What if a reader finished Book One, but there’s been a delay in between and some of the details are fuzzy in his memory? This chapter was written to guide those readers into the new episode:

My Spanish wasn’t good enough yet to follow such a rapid-fire conversation, with advanced vocabulary. Still, I wouldn’t characterize it as an argument.

Mami sounded confused, sad, and worried. She never argued with Dad—at least that I ever saw.  Dad took good care of her, and she was easy to please anyway. Whatever disagreements they might have had must have been resolved quickly and respectfully, because they were never angry with each other. But that morning she was distraught, and pleading, while Dad was resolute and unmoving.

I stepped outside the adobe hacienda into the warm California air and the scent of citrus. I’d never seen Mami unhappy and didn’t know how to handle it. As much as I would have liked to restore her to her normal happy state of mind, this was grownup business and I had no jurisdiction, I strolled into the nearest row of orange trees. Quick as Tarzan, I climbed my favorite tree up to the highest branch that would support my weight. Normally I would read a comic book or one of Dad’s pulp magazines at my normal perch. This time I just took a seat and swung my feet back and forth.

I had witnessed more than my share of grownup bickering, and preferred to be somewhere else when it took place. Back in 1988 St. Louis, my biological parents argued just about whenever they saw each other. It wasn’t all that often, so I was thankful for that. Evidently they could only put up with each other long enough to make a baby. I guess it was all downhill from there.

When the Erasers murdered my biological family, I was shocked and sad for a while, but I didn’t miss them—except for Abel, my younger half-brother, sometimes.

I shifted my gaze from the huge, flat-roofed adobe structure over to the fake barn that housed Dad’s “Temperature Wheel”—the ingenious engine that turned the generator which powered the estate. To the south of both structures was a separate, enormous building with multiple garage bays. Some were garages, some were aircraft hangars. Dad kept them all under lock and key, not so much because thieves might find their way to the Orange Grove, but because some of the vehicles he stored there had not been conceived or manufactured yet.

Before I get too far along, I should probably explain that “Dad” was really my Uncle Simon. Even before my rescue from the time-traveling assassins who erased the existence of my family, my uncle had lifted me out of a pretty bleak childhood. It wasn’t him who saved me from the Erasers, though. That was one of his doppelgängers. Yeah—it gets confusing.

And no, the little Mexican woman inside the house wasn’t my biological mother, either—though she was my real mother, so far as I was concerned.

They came outside, now, Dad’s arm around her shoulders. She looked to the left, then the right, and called out, “Pedrito?”

Ya viene, Mama!” I replied, scrambling down the tree.

I hit the ground running toward her. She wiped her eyes and spread her arms, leaving Dad behind by a few paces. When I reached her, she embraced me with the warmth and affection I had become addicted to in a short time. I hugged her back and she planted kisses on my forehead.

“Oh Mijo, I mees you already!” she cried, giving me an intense squeeze. She let go and stepped back, taking my hands and meeting my gaze. Her brown eyes were glossy and edged with sadness. She switched to Spanish, but spoke slowly so I could follow. “Don’t ever forget that this is your home, Pedrito. Don’t ever forget that I love you and I am here for you. If you ever need anything, come home.”

“Dad says I’ll get to see you every weekend, Mamita,” I said.

“Don’t act like such a grown man—weekends are not enough! This house will be so empty without you, my precious one.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to stay here with Mami anyway, but Dad was sure he had a better arrangement.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, Mami,” I said.

I knew nothing at all about love, with this one exception: I loved her. She was the best mother anyone could ever hope for. Were it not for football and Gloria Benake, Dad would have had to pry me away from 1934, and this woman.

Football.

Just months ago (in relative time) I had been indifferent toward the game. Now it was my obsession. Not just because it was simulated combat—although I did like that aspect of it. There was something else about it that appealed to me which I couldn’t identify. It was more than a game. More than a sport. On a football team you were part of something. I had never been part of anything.

I wasn’t great at punting or kicking, but I had good hands and could catch the ball if it came anywhere near me. I could run the ball too. And when it came to passing, I could really sling that pigskin. I thrived on solving the tactical problems presented by the other team. My instincts led me to call the right plays in most situations. A shoo-in for quarterback, right?

But my Achilles’ Heel was my leadership ability…or lack thereof. Dad had broken the bad news to me that I was a loner, not a leader. I had bristled at this pronouncement, but he was probably right. I had been alone more often than not as far back as I could remember. I had pals at school, but never really any deep friendships. Nobody in my biological family valued my company. I was alienated back in my old life, and socially inept, for lack of healthy models to emulate. When very young, I hated my isolation. By the time Uncle Si/Dad came into my life, I had come to prefer it most of the time.

Without much experience functioning in a group, and an acquired disinterest in such, of course I was clueless about how to lead one. So I wasn’t a natural leader, by any sober evaluation.

My desperate hope was that leadership could be learned.

Dad and I watched movies together, periodically. Typically we watched them twice in a row, playing armchair anthropologist. I didn’t say much on the second viewing, mostly listening to Dad’s analysis. He pointed out specific human interactions and compared them to what happens in real life. If they were realistically depicted, he would pass judgment on how smart, right, and/or effective the characters’ words and actions were. I learned a lot from his commentary about group dynamics while watching war movies. I had learned some leadership principles already, just in the months since I had come to know him.

Maybe I could rebuild myself. If I learned the lessons Dad was teaching me, perhaps I could be a part of something great. Maybe I could become a great quarterback—and not just in my own mind. I wanted to rise to the level that coaches, other players, people who watched games…they would recognize not only that I was part of something, but I was also great at something. Something I loved.

Normally, I was as uninterested in validation as I was in social interaction. But I wanted validation in this one area. I wanted it bad.

Dad and I climbed into his big Duesenberg roadster and drove off to start a new life, while Mami stood in the drive, waving goodbye.

The warm wind pulled gently at my hair as we drove down the long gravel driveway. When we were no longer within sight of Mami and the house, Dad opened a panel on the dashboard, cued up our new coordinates on the warp interface, and initiated the jump.

“Jumping” through a dimensional warp to different space-time coordinates gives you the sensation of driving into a swirling vortex that swallows up all sight and sound for a moment. When your eyes and ears latch back onto what seems normal, you’re somewhere else, somewhen else.

In this case, we were on a lonely road outside Bakersfield in 1953.

The road took us to a warehouse Dad owned in a burgeoning industrial park, where he swapped the Doozy for his hopped-up ’41 Willys. We drove that into the residential neighborhood where Dad owned a typical middle class home with front-and-back yards.

“I’ve been thinking about the Big Spooky,” I said, now that the wind noise didn’t interfere with conversation.

“Oh yeah?” Dad replied, eyebrows raised. He was the first adult I remember ever taking an interest in what I thought about anything.

“What if it has something to do with the Erasers?”

He already looked skeptical.

The Big Spooky was something he introduced me to during our summer vacation. At certain coordinates, I would feel an overwhelming sensation of dread for no apparent reason. It always felt momentous, or tumultuous. Sometimes the flavor was downright repulsive. Other times, it had an almost seductive quality. Dad had encountered it before and conducted an impromptu experiment to see if I felt it at the same times and places he did.

“Hear me out,” I said, “okay? The government covered up whatever happened in Roswell in 1947. Right? Wouldn’t the Erasers want to cover it up, too? I mean, if somebody was able to get the story out about what really happened, that could cause a split in the timestream. So the Erasers have to wipe out whoever had the real story, witnesses, and whoever else knew them. And we feel the Big Spooky there because of the deaths.”

Dad didn’t say anything right away, so I pushed on.

“Same thing at Jeckyll Island. Somebody found out what they were doing, and was gonna blow the whistle. Boom. In come the Erasers. That’s the obvious conclusion for the JFK assassination, right? The Olympiad? I mean, the Nazis had all kinds of secrets that could have split the timestream if the world found out what they were planning before the war even started. And maybe there was some technology that couldn’t be shown at the World’s Fair. If it had, it might have led to a split in the stream, so the Erasers had to kill off whoever would have introduced that tech..”

Dad sighed, but kept his tone bright. “I don’t think so, Sprout. I’ve been around enough death to know that, by itself, it doesn’t cause the Big Spooky. Was the Big Spooky there at the trailer park when the Erasers got your relatives?”

Anybody else would probably have avoided mentioning the murder of my biological family, assuming it was too sensitive a subject to broach. But Dad was painfully blunt—especially with me. Also, it often seemed he could read my mind, so it was no surprise he somehow understood that he could broach the subject now without triggering a flashback or traumatic breakdown.

I had been returning to the trailer from my daily run when my big dumb German Shepherd started going nuts. She was not very vigilant or protective, for a dog, but she knew something was wrong that day. I finally realized it, too, when I saw my biological mother’s body being carried into what looked, on first glance, like a hole in reality. I couldn’t see what was carrying her at first, but after a moment I noticed the visual anomalies all around the trailer. Then I saw Abel’s body folded at the waist, arms and legs dangling. He bobbed up and down as one of those patterns of distorted light carried him toward that hole in reality.

The Erasers, and their vehicles, were cloaked by an active camouflage similar to what “the Predator” wore in that Arnold Swarzenneger movie from a couple years ago.

Years ago? It was all decades in the future, now.

Anyway…the “hole in reality” was just an open cargo door in one of their camouflaged vehicles. After the hit was executed, the assassin team were disposing of the bodies. Erasing people from existence. They murdered my biological family, and my poor stupid dog, trying to kill me.

I puffed my cheeks and told Dad, “No, you’re right.”

He flashed me a sidelong grin and backhanded me playfully in the chest. “You’ve got the brain of an engineer. Can’t help but try to figure stuff out.”

He turned onto the street where my new home awaited. A middle-aged mailman walking on the tree-lined sidewalk with a canvas sack slung over one shoulder waved cheerfully at us as we passed. Across the street, two young mothers who had been pushing baby strollers in opposite directions on that sidewalk were having an animated conversation with each other. Both their smiling faces turned toward us and they waved, too, before resuming their discussion. Further down the street, a man, perhaps in his 20s or 30s, was playing fetch with a fuzzy little dog in an unfenced front yard, apparently having a great time.

Now I understood how Marty McFly must have felt in that scene from Back to the Future when he first sees his home town as it had been in the 1950s. In relative time, it had been months since my reality had been immersed in that St. Louis trailer park in 1988. But the radical contrast between that and this world that  previous generations knew (and took for granted) still left me flabbergasted. I half-expected all the doors of those nice, clean, middle-class houses to slam open and an army of the undead emerge. The friendly, carefree people who waved to us would shapeshift into bloodthirsty monsters who would converge on us and drag us, screaming, from Dad’s car.

Dad’s expression turned solemn. “Remember our conversation, Sprout: the Erasers are looking for you. It’s a vast continuum, and they’re not sure where you could be hiding. You should be safe at these coordinates, so long as you don’t do anything to draw unnecessary attention. What’s your name?”

“Isaac,” I replied. “Peter is my middle name, now.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “What’s our last name?”

“Jaeger.”

“Who am I?”

“My dad.”

“Who is Angelina?”

“She’s my mother.”

This was a sore point with me. Dad lived different lives at different coordinates, and in each life I knew of, he had a different woman—or “spinning plate” as I had come to think of them. I considered this to be unfaithfulness to Mami by him. By extension, me accepting this arrangement with another woman as my mother made me feel like I was being disloyal, too. I didn’t need any mother but Mami, and believed Dad shouldn’t need anyone but her, either.

“Good,” he said. “Make sure you always call her ‘Mom,’ and think of her that way. She’s a nice lady, so give her a chance.”

I nodded, not saying anything, lest it come out as a grumble.

“I’m really glad you and Hortensia think so highly of each other,” he added. (Hortensia was Mami’s name.) “And I’m sorry for how confusing this might be. But trust me: it’s necessary. You’re gonna live the best possible life this way. And I’ll make sure you get to spend time with her on the regular.”

I nodded again and he seemed satisfied.

“Stick to our cover story any time somebody asks you a personal question,” he reminded me. “We’re just normal people, with normal problems and normal aspirations. Copy?”

“That’s a good copy,” I replied, using the lingo I had learned from him.

Our house looked very similar to all the other houses in the neighborhood. He braked the Willys to a stop just past the mailbox, then backed it into the concrete driveway. He didn’t park it in the two-car garage because that was currently occupied by the Auburn Speedster and a Packard sedan.

As we got out of the Willys, the front door opened and Angelina appeared, grinning and greeting us in a thick Sicilian accent. “My two handsome boys are finally home!”

She was dark like Mami, but not as short, and without as much padding. Despite my resentment of her, I recognized she was beautiful. And even with an apron on over a simple house dress, it was obvious even to my pre-adolescent self that her body was, frankly, perfect.

She rushed over to meet me halfway and embraced me. “I’m so happy to see you, Isaac. Just wait to see what I have for you in the kitchen!” Despite the accent, she seemed to be comfortable with all the typical American colloquialisms.

Honestly, she was a sweet lady, like Dad said. She had no knowledge of Dad’s other lives, or Mami, so it wasn’t fair of me to think of her as “the other woman” trying to steal Dad’s affections away from their rightful recipient.

“Good to see you, Mom.”

It wasn’t that hard to say, after all.

She released me and turned to Dad. Their embrace was of an entirely different character. I averted my gaze, not wanting to see them play tongue tag.

They went inside holding hands, and I followed.

 

***

 

Bakersfield, California had just suffered an earthquake the previous year. Many houses had been damaged, and some destroyed. Real estate prices had dropped as a result. Developers rushed in to buy up land, promising to rebuild the town even better than it was before. Dad was one such developer.

We had met the Benakes at a campground in 1947, during summer vacation. Dad and Mr. Benake had a long conversation while I was developing an intense infatuation with his daughter, Gloria. Benake spoke of property values and investment opportunities around California. Dad did some research and decided Bakersfield, right after the earthquake of August, 1952, was when and where to buy property. He bought a lot, for cheap—including warehouses, restaurants, and several lots right in this neighborhood. He was raking in “passive income”—rent, mortgages, retail profits, and was working toward buying controlling stock in the phone company.

The Benakes, who were from Oakland, apparently found the opportunities in Bakersfield too enticing to pass up as well. They moved here a couple years before the earthquake—not having Dad’s advantage of temporal flexibility.

During Dad’s reconnaissance of the area, I had a chance to do some scouting of my own, and found the town idyllic. It turned out the kids I had met at the park would be schoolmates (except for Gloria, who was one of the “big kids,” in high school). They all lived in the same neighborhood I now did.

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but most families at these coordinates were either able to buy a house outright, or pay it off within a few years. That was pretty rare where/when I came from. Even my mother’s shabby trailer back in St. Louis was a rental. So far as I knew, neither my biological mother nor father ever owned a home.

What really surprised me was how nice that Bakersfield neighborhood was—despite being inside the city. I thought only the suburbs could be this nice. Dad told me slums were the exception instead of the rule, in the 1950s.

There was no crime to speak of in Bakersfield. Every house had a well-tended lawn and back yard. The picket fences were more to keep toddlers contained than to keep other people out. The mail man and milk man seemed to know everybody by their first name, and performed their jobs cheerfully. Once in a great while a cop would come through the area, in a car or on foot—and even they were friendly. Kids could play in each other’s yards, or on the streets, and easily obtained parental permission to wander around or go to a store, and there was no fear that a kidnapper or some kind of sicko would nab us. To hear some of the mothers talk, the world was much more dangerous than in previous times…but it sure didn’t seem dangerous to me.

What really impressed me was how courteous, considerate, and respectful everyone was to each other. I had never seen that. The neighbors I’d had in the future were antagonists, busybodies, junkies, or thieves.

Ronny’s family were the only blacks in my new neighborhood. They kept their home nice, like everyone else, were neighborly, and shared the common values, so far as I ever saw. They fit in, despite how often I’d heard what a racist dictatorship America was back in the dystopia of the postwar era, where lynching blacks was a more popular pastime than baseball.

I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed the Pledge of Allegiance at school. I didn’t know what was going on, but I stood up like all the other kids, and approximated the same pose, as they recited words I wouldn’t memorize until later:

 

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

And to the Republic for which it stands:

One nation, under God, Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

 

Ronny recited it along with the rest of the class, and seemed no more irreverent than anybody else was. In the world I came from, we were conditioned to believe America was racist, greedy, exploitative…the cause of all the world’s problems. All of us were influenced by the anti-American narrative, but especially blacks and other minorities. They hated white people in general, but especially if you said or believed anything positive about our country. This pledge honoring a republic under God was a real stunner. The culture in 1953 actually encouraged Americans to appreciate their country, and freedom. Americans of all ethnic backgrounds seemed to do just that.

There were a couple times I heard somebody make a racist crack about Ronny. Once it might be something about watermelon. Another time it might be purposely mispronouncing words to approximate stereotypical black speech. Another time it would be a comparison of Ronny to somebody else of the same color—like Buckwheat from Our Gang or Rochester from the Jack Benny Show. The kind that seemed to be the hardest for Ronny to ignore was somebody humming or whistling “Swanee River” when he made an entrance. Sometimes even his friends would do it. It angered me, but Ronny would just shake it off and go on. However, one time I spoke up.

“Hey, don’t talk like that. That’s not cool.”

“What?” the other kid protested, innocently. “I’m just joshin’. Ronny knows I don’t mean anything by it.”

“If you don’t mean anything by it, then don’t say it,” I said. “Words mean things.”

“Who do you think you are, Slinger?” I’ve known him longer than you have. Right, Ronny?”

(“Slinger” was the nickname I originally introduced myself with to these boys, after a recently famous quarterback: “Slingin'” Sammy Baugh. They often pronounced it with a derisive tone, due to what they considered my lack of humility, I guess.)

Ronny flashed a grin and shook the kid’s hand, so I let it drop, surprised and disappointed.

When I reflected on it, I considered Ronny’s position. He wasn’t trying to embarrass me after I stuck up for him—he was wisely defusing the situation. If such confrontations became ugly, they might devolve into some kind of black vs white conflict—in which case, he would be completely isolated and outnumbered.

The cracks and jokes stopped after that for a while; but then the habit began redeveloping. Whenever it happened after that, I simply began making fun of whoever did it. I zeroed in on superficial characteristics that the person had no control over—like freckles, big ears, a stutter, a lazy eye or a big nose. I would be relentless for the rest of the day—sometimes getting downright nasty in my harassment of the perpetrator. Ronny never participated in that. But one day we were both the first ones in the locker room for practice, and he made a point of shaking my hand.

“Be cool, Slinger,” Ronny said, with no irony in his tone. “Maintain an even strain, okay?”

That comment puzzled me the more I thought about it. I guess he was warning me to be careful not to make too big a deal about all the little backhanded slurs.

Still, our circle of friends caught on after a while. We all liked Ronny, and thought of him as one of us, but young kids can be superficial and cruel. Guys like Ronny were just natural targets for superficial cruelty. I had been on the receiving end of prejudice in St. Louis, and would always remember the unfairness and ignorant tyranny of it.

 

***

 

I got to know Kip, Charlie, Ronny and the rest of the gang pretty well. When pressed for my real name, I gave them my new identity details. As we grew closer over time, “Isaac” would be shortened to “Ike.” Some of them still called me “Slinger” when they were feeling buddy-buddy, or when I’d thrown a good pass in a game.

I got used to it. Like Dad said, Ike Jaeger was a big improvement over Pete Bedauern. Also, it drew a connection between me and the president of the USA: Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, who was popular with a lot of people. If popularity was part of what it took to become a great quarterback, then I’d accept any help becoming popular I could get.

We played more sandlot football, but had a lot of fun together doing other stuff, too. We took trips to the soda shop (a popular hangout for kids of every age, though high-schoolers seemed to have a monopoly on the stools and tables), the record store (Dad bought me a period phonograph and pretty much all the records I asked for, so I made it my mission to learn and keep up on all the popular music of the time), the YMCA, and the hobby store.

My new friends and I talked about sports, comic books, radio shows and, increasingly, girls.

Like me, few of the boys knew that much about the subject. To us, sex was about breasts and lips. I suspected there was more to it than that, but I didn’t think about it that much, and didn’t yet have an appreciation for all the steps to that primordial dance. There was so much fun to have, usually it took a sighting of Gloria to get me obsessing about “sex” (breasts and lips).

It was a fantastic summer, but came to an end too quickly.

 

***

 

Once school began in Bakersfield, I was grateful that I knew some of the other kids, already.

After the first day of class, I brought the football permission slip home, assuming Dad would just sign it without fanfare.

Instead, I had to endure a health lecture before he would sign. He said it was related to the earlier lecture he gave me about life paths. Just as foolish decisions I made could put me on the wrong path through life, so could seemingly simple mistakes on the football field.

Me and other boys were growing bigger and stronger by the day, Dad explained. Serious injuries could occur now from collisions on the field that wouldn’t have broken anything when we measured at smaller proportions. It all had to do with mass. He wrote the equation out for me. Then he warned me about scrimmage drills at practice. I might wind up playing a position that required tackling—so I needed to do it right every time to avoid getting hurt. He took me out to the back yard and demonstrated how to deliver hits in football, then had me mimic the techniques. After training me how to tackle correctly, he commanded me to always do it that way—even if a coach wanted it done differently.

He said my physical conditioning was already more than enough for football, but he went on at length about eating habits before a game, and the importance of staying hydrated.

I doubted if any other boys had to go through all this to get their permission slip signed. It also told me Dad didn’t consider me a natural at the game. If I could ever get him to believe I was a great player, it was a cinch I had finally arrived.

 

***

 

I tried out and made the football team. Kip, Ronny, Charlie and Fredrico were on the team, too. Six had been my jersey number on the Bulldogs, so that was the number I asked for at Carson. The coach said somebody else had it, and threw me a jersey with the number eight. That was my number, now.

I was still far from an expert on the game, it turned out. I had never quite seen the kind of football practiced and played under Coach Filbert. He deployed a “single wing” offensive formation, which made for a run-heavy game, based largely on trickery—much different from what I’d watched and played. But at first I didn’t even get to play on offense. He had me in the defensive backfield, second string.

My fortunes changed one day in P.E. Filbert was the P.E. teacher, and on Fridays, if we behaved ourselves, he’d let us spend the period playing a game. On that day, we played a game with some similarities to “flickerball.” My team trounced the other one, because whenever I got the ball, and no matter how far I was from the goal board, I could lob a perfect spiral right through the center of the hole. At the very next practice, he had me try out for wingback. Apparently, in a single wing, anyone in the backfield could run or throw a pass…and the quarterback threw more blocks than passes in that offense. I was too small to be the fullback, but I could catch well. I was hard to tackle; and now Coach Filbert knew I could throw the ball a long ways, with accuracy.

The pads were skimpy and the helmets had no face masks. The uniforms were dorky-looking hand-me-downs and the numbers were random. But I was a real football player, now. Dad bought me a pair of cleats that fit well, and boy, could I juke and cut with those on. It amazed me what an advantage a good pair of cleats could give a player. I felt like John Riggins with those cleats on.

 

***

 

Classes in school were different from what I was used to. Teachers were strict, and their expectations were high. Goofing off in class resulted in a visit to the principal’s office, or swats with a wooden paddle—for everybody, not just white kids. Not finishing homework or studying for tests could get you flunked. I squeaked by in history, because I’d been studying parts of it at BH Station. Math and science were my strong subjects, so I held my own in those, and I was competitive and in terrific shape, so P.E. wasn’t any problem. But English was tough and civics seemed useless. I had to push myself just to maintain a B average.

Whatever my day-to-day concerns, I tried to keep my situational awareness sharp, as Dad had emphasized. The Erasers could come for me at any time. It was “standard operating procedure” (another of Dad’s terms) that they strike with no warning, and when their victims least expected it.

 

UPDATE:  This book is published! Click here to buy on Amazon.

Click here to buy anywhere else.

The Alchemy for Art Indie Library

The deck is really stacked against indie (independent) authors. It’s even worse for non-woke indie authors. You get no help with marketing from a publisher. Chances are slim your titles will ever be discovered in a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Your name isn’t associated with the prestige of the legacy publishing houses (dwindling, though it may be). Alternative media doesn’t care that you exist  and in most cases won’t plug your work to their audience. (Some of the alternate media outlets are controlled opposition and only promote ticket-takers, if they promote anyone at all.) The goose-stepping cultural Marxists who control the MSM and social media will get you censored/deplatformed/demonetized if they can, but if you succeed anyway, they will assassinate your character in the typical ways (“racist!” “conspiracy theorist!” etc.).

Thankfully, there are some folks who understand that indies should be taken seriously,* and through selfless effort, are trying to make their books more visible. Virtual Pulp (and the Two-Fisted Blog, before it) has always been a site that gave indies exposure, and now gets contributions from THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO to amplify that effort. Writer Katie Roome also specializes in reviewing indie fiction at Periapsis Press. And then there is author Mark Bradford, who has built an attractive online aggregation of indie books.

Alchemy for Art (https://alchemyfor.art/books/) is growing, and I assume it will continue to grow. As of this moment, it boasts 12 authors and 33 books. The books are grouped by author, and by genre. Fantasy is the most represented genre so far, with sci-fi coming in second. But other genres are represented, including some that I write in.

My theory is that as more books are added to the list, the more readers will want to peruse it. So it looks like a win-win endeavor.

In other words, both readers and writers should visit the library. Authors should get their books added, and readers should check back regularly to see what books have been added.

 

* Indie books are much like tradpub books, in that quality varies. There are plenty from both sources that are terrible. The advantage of the indie end of the spectrum is that is where you’ll find the non-ticket-taking, non-woke authors. And because the gatekeepers have no direct control, that is where you’ll find  most of the superb storytelling in the book biz today, IMO.

An Interview with Robert Victor Mills

As in the recent review of the author’s latest, this Q & A is brought to you by the INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO.

Gio: This being only your second publication, how long have you been writing and what made you decide to publish your works only recently?

RV Mills: Well, on leaving university in ‘94, I decided to have a stab at this writing game. Over the next five years I wrote two fantasy novels, submitting them to publishers and agents. A different business, back then, just before the birth of the internet, when sample chapters had to be printed out and mailed in big brown envelopes. I stuck at it for about five years of silence and polite rejections, but, life forged on; family, a full time job and more college. I don’t recall ever consciously giving up on the dream, though I definitely gave up on the reality. All those papers were thrown into a document box and forgotten about.

Nearly twenty years later, 2017, with both my parents gone and me in the process of selling the old family home, I came across that document box. It was, shall we say, interesting and informative. One experience that a writer can never have, is to read his own work completely cold, with fresh eyes. Reading the contents of that box was as close as one might get, because I’d forgotten almost everything I’d written! Of course, the tale would be wonderful if I could romantically announce that I had rediscovered some lost masterpiece. Oh no, it was all terrible! Just awful! But, with that fresh perspective and an older head, I could see plain as day where all my failings as a writer lay. A very useful experience.

Should you be wondering, I burned those manuscripts in the garden in a steel bucket. The world has no need of such horror!

I guess, that would have been that. However, once again, life happened. The virus came, and lockdowns. Like everyone else I read books, watched movies, listened to music, picked up new hobbies, slow tortured by increasing boredom. It drove me to again pick up the pen. I started scribbling science fiction stories, just for my own amusement, nothing else.

Towards the end of that very peculiar period, three things happened, all seemingly the same week. First, I read an article which essentially argued that many talented writers were being turned away by publishers and agents for the sole reason that they didn’t fit a desired demographic, and that this had been going some years. Second, I caught a livestream by the comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver. There’d been an incident with a movie director that had him really riled. And he persuasively called on his viewers to have a go at creating, something along the lines of: “If you can draw, draw! If you can write, write! We need you!” Thirdly, that same night, I had a dream.

I quite often have vivid dreams. Boy, this was one! An entire story played out in my head, like a movie, of a mighty warrior with hair like flame, and his companion, a poet and bard with a tongue like quicksilver. Together they were rescuing a princess snared by a snake cult. Vicious fights, monsters, gore, glory. No names, no dialogue, just images and allusions, but as real as if I were there, involved. I woke up, it was as if a switch had gone over in my mind. I got up, sat down, started writing. And that, eventually, became the first story of Rhoye and Astropho.

Gio: The first thing that we notice when reading ‘The Isle’ is your prose. How did you come to develop and hone such a brilliant prosaic style?

RV Mills: Well, firstly, thank you for the compliment, that’s incredibly kind.

I suppose the short answer is, a long lifetime of reading. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, youngest of eight children, in quite a traditional working class family. Having five older brothers, there was always a lot of stuff left lying around to read, not all of it of a suitable age rating, either. I adored reading. I would read anything I could get: Bond novels, horror, movie tie-ins, comics, magazines, but I always gravitated to more fantastical stuff, myths and legends. Then, for Christmas 1982, my eldest brother gave me a copy of ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. That gift pretty much started me down the path I’ve followed since. From reading those fantasy gamebooks I progressed to Tolkien. I remember saving furiously for weeks to buy a paperback edition of ‘Lord of the Rings’ in 1985. And from there to Mervyn Peake, Anne McCaffrey, Robert E. Howard, and so on. Those books also got me started on a decade of Dungeons and Dragons, first as a player and then, while I was at university, as a dungeon master. I long since gave my rulebooks away, but I still have the dice! 

Naturally, I suppose, my love for reading channeled me in that direction academically, which led to a degree in English Literature. That opened me to a deal of far older material, such as Homer, Mallory, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and classic novels and poetry. That’s chiefly where my reading interests lie now, in older writings, in heroism and chivalry. I often joke that the most recent book I’ve read is ‘The Return of the King.’

As you can tell, my jokes are seldom ripsnorters!

Gio: Your novella seems to be paying tribute to the greats of pulp narrative such as Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft. How do you prevent modern progressive culture to leak into your work, as we seem to be constantly bombarded with it?

RV Mills: Part of it for me, I think, is modern stuff just doesn’t interest me. I’m engaged, as a reader and now as a storyteller, in older ideas, of nobility, of chivalry, of duty, of sacrifice. And I think Van Sciver and the creators in the Iron Age movement are right, there has to be representation of those older strains of literature and entertainment for those members of the audience that still want and desire them. That’s where I’m at, and, honestly, it’s where I’ve always been. That is what my fictional world of the Wandered Lands represents, I think, a place where a reader can become lost in pure escapism, like Middle Earth, Hyboria, or Lovecraft’s old Arkham. My creations are never going to be for everyone. And I’m fine with that. Plenty of other stellar creators out there doing great, great things to satisfy other tastes.

Gio: Rhoye is your MC, however your novel is so rich in characters that he really never steals the spotlight. Was that something you did consciously?

RV Mills: You mentioned Howard. One of the aspects of his Conan stories I really admire is that, in quite a few of them, Conan is almost a secondary character, while the heroine leads the narrative. Valeria in ‘Red Nails’ springs to mind. I like that technique. I think it broadens the scope of the story and grants fresh perspective to events as they unfold. So in ‘The Isle’ we see Rhoye’s standpoint, Astropho’s, and Aona’s. Each offers a unique flavour, I think, which allows the tale room to breathe.

Gio: Speaking of supporting characters, I must admit the crabs were my favorite ones. How did the concept of an island so very much dominated by these crabs come about?

RV Mills:

Another dream, a nightmare, and with a very specific source. I’d been reading Dr. Jordan Peterson’s ‘Twelve Rules for Life’. That opening chapter, the one with the lobsters, really stuck in my mind. That night, I had a dream of two swordsmen dueling to the death on this hellish shore just swarmed over with the most disgusting crustaceans, not just lobsters but crabs and horrid sticky slimy things. So vivid, I just had to weave it into a story! So I got me a cup of tea, sharpened my pencil, and set to work!

As it happened I’d been working on an idea for a pirate story which really had very little direction. And I had another idea for a tale about a lost shrine. Suddenly these three ideas fused as one in my brain, and that was that. I had no real conception of how long it would turn out to be. I tend to just let each story dictate its own length. It came out long! But I’m exceptionally proud of it. I think it’s a very entertaining piece.

Gio: Can we expect more longer format stories similar to ‘The Isle’?

RV Mills: Yes, I have another finished novella which I’m hoping to put out in February. I’m waiting on artwork for that. It is called ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ It was written before ‘The Isle’ and is a little shorter, but I’ve included a back-up story which is a natural sequel and companion piece.

I’m currently writing the sequel to ‘Man of Swords’, hoping to put that out at the end of summer, which will contain further adventures of Rhoye as a younger man, his wandering through Bruthulia against the backdrop of the war with the Sarkaenid. About halfway complete on that project, as we speak. 

Gio: What inspired the title of this novel?

RV Mills: I struggled to decide on the best permutation! I wanted to mention the ‘shrine’, because shrines are mysterious, and the ‘scarab’, because also mysterious, and also ‘sickness’ to add a pinch of peril, but also the ‘isle’ to hint at location. I wrote it all down, read it back, and yes, it is indeed a mouthful. ‘The Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab.’ But I love it. The ‘e’ in Sick’ning was the only edit I could stand to lose!

Gio: Any plans for spinoffs? Astropho seems to be a very complete and well defined character who could possibly branch out and have his own adventures.

RV Mills: Astropho will return in ‘The Girl with the Fire in Her Hair.’ I have half a dozen other completed stories featuring the two friends together, I’m just in need of some connective tissue to link them into a narrative that is itself compelling, rather than just throw out a collection of disjointed short stories. But, yes, there’s more to come from Rhoye and Astropho, for sure.

Regarding spin-offs, I have two other characters that I am very endeared to, and have written two long stories with a third in outline. They are two templars of Erishala, Vicatiora and her mentor Kionates of Dalathopos. They are essentially sleuths in a fantasy setting, with Kionates being observant and wise if a tad senile, and Vicatiora being green, yet headstrong and quick. Together they solve very peculiar mysteries which abound in the city of Altamantia, and which usually have a magical bent.

But, that is a good ways off, as yet. Watch this space!

Note from Virtual Pulp: Stay tuned for a follow-up interview of Robert Victor Mills by Gio!

Isle of the Shrine of the Sick’ning Scarab – a Review

By THE INFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO

 

The tragic loss of Robert E. Howard from this world also represented the creation of a vacuum of creativity in a pulp genre unique in itself. Seldom had a writer been able to inject such vivid realism into a fantasy genre to such a degree that the reader could actually almost see, hear, and smell the places where they were transported via the written word such as Howard did…

Introducing Robert Victor Mills, an up and coming author who, by way of this 126-page pulp novella, seems to have boldly picked up the torch to continue into the footsteps of the late Howard.

The first element to jump out at us when reading this piece of pulp fiction is the…

PROSE:

Mills is a true master at carefully choosing every word, every noun, every sentence to elevate his work to a place where few other indie authors can reach. If you like a modern and direct style of written English language with plenty of modern euphemisms, this book is NOT for you! But if you long for a language that fully matches the world and characters we are presented with, and you care for tradition, ancient myths, and authenticity, then this might as well be your best pick of 2024!

CHARACTERS:

Mills is not just satisfied with good prose, oh no, he also has to indulge his readers with well thought-out characters that resonate with each of us individually. You won’t find dull characters or dumb villains here. Every player has a story, a vested interest, a strength and a weakness. By the time we’re halfway in, we can’t help but feel fully invested in these fellas and their perils.

PLOT:

What on paper seems a pretty straightforward storyline (which it is) in the hands of Mills becomes an ‘unpredictable hike’: you know where it starts, but it may suddenly take abrupt turns to only the author knows where. Again, that R. E. Howard’s realism makes this all the more interesting with the island, the elements, the beach crabs (LOTS of ‘em!), the turn of the tide, all intersecting.

Boys and girls, if this is not a 5 out of 5 pulp novella I don’t know what is. Robert in my opinion is destined to become one of the GREATS of our modern fantasy literature. Only the future will tell us for sure, but as the other Robert once said (and I’ll leave you chewing on this):

“I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don’t believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed. ”

Robert E. Howard

 

Come back soon for an author interview!

Coming Soon: Robert Victor Mills’ Isle of the Shrine of the Sickening Scarab

Got a couple treats coming up for you from guest poster IINFAMOUS REVIEWER GIO Probably next week, you’ll see the review right here–followed by an interview with the author.

Gio calls this a legendary tale in the tradition of Robert E. Howard.

Sounds like this book is a standout, five star read, so start the New Year off right and come back to check it out!

The (Short) Story of a Bestseller, in Pictures

Part of the story has been told in previous posts.  It turned out that November would be the best month for the debut of the first book in the Paradox series. When I had a publish date, my next step was to arrange a promotion.

I hate marketing; I’m not good at it; but it’s one of those pesky chores you just have to do if you want folks to know your book exists, so I did what I could. My hope was to assemble a package of promotions that would overlap and feed each other seamlessly.

That didn’t work too well early on. I got some sales that bumped my sales rank, but it petered out before the next promotion kicked in. I was driving long hours on the 19th and couldn’t get my “smart” phone to take a screen shot. When I got to a place with an Internet connection I was able to take one with my laptop (I’m using Amazon to track sales, rankings, etc., because they update all that the fastest. Other sellers might give you sketchy info a week after the fact–which doesn’t help with this kind of data study).

The overall ranking had slipped by over 10,000 places by the time of this screen shot, but it never reached an impressive rank during this phase anyway.

The next phase began on the 21st. From early morning until about 2pm, the ranking continued to slip, down to about 220,000+ overall. Then, finally, evidence began to show up that the needle was finally moving upwards again.

 

Not a bestseller yet, but moving in the right direction with enough time left in the day to possibly get there. Two of my Retreads novels had already topped multiple categories at this point in their promotions, while the other one took a little longer (it got harder every time to reach the top, though all three did crack #1 bestseller rank). Then around 6pm I checked for a data update:

 

 

Top 100 in three categories was less than what I hoped for, but might possibly mean that the book was showing up where book shoppers could at least see it. And technically, it was now a bestseller.

Around 8pm, when the data updated again, Escaping Fate was  at #6 in Time Travel Science Fiction (for the Kindle); #25 in Time Travel Fiction (all formats); and #45 in Conspiracy Thrillers (all formats). Glass was half full.

 

This not being my first rodeo, I remembered to go to a bestseller’s page to grab a screen shot.

Here’s where I noticed a John Scalzi book was holding the #2 spot. My first encounter with Scalzi fiction was in a library many moons ago. I knew almost nothing about the author at the time, but after a reading a chapter or two, decided it was representative of everything wrong with the pozzed, woke publishing industry. Later, after discovering Vox Day’s blog, I learned more about the author and discovered my instinctive assessment was spot-on. Long story short, I thought it would be a satisfying coup if my underdog politically incorrect heteronormative red-blooded right-wing indie novel could unseat his gatekeeper-approved Establishment Left cookie-cutter book from that #2 slot.

Lo and behold, at 11:30ish pm…

Not only was it sitting at #2 in Time Travel Science Fiction (Kindle), but it was now designated as the “#1 New Release.” So a quick re-visit to the Bestseller’s Page was in order.

And there you can see Escaping Fate sitting at #2 with Gay Time Between the SJWs coming in 3rd. I wanted to stay up and see if it would hit #1 that night, but pooped out and went to bed.

I’ll probably never know if it cracked #1 in that category for a hot second–unless one of my readers just happened to be grabbing screen shots in that corner of the Web right then, and sends me one.

It had slid down to #3 the next morning when I checked it, and held that position throughout the day–so in that respect, at least, my promotion package has managed to sustain a decent ranking for a while. Not bad for a one-man operation cutting against the grain with none of the advantages handed out to the woketard authors.

On the subject of bestsellers, it hasn’t met with the same success as my Retreads novels (yet), but it’s a pretty strong launch, and the series is just getting started. I’ll call this one a “W”.

BTW, heartfelt thanks to the readers who have posted reviews. Those help immensely with visibility.  I’ve written about the importance of reviews before and elsewhere, and groused about what’s been happening to mine, so will spare you that this time.

Publishing Follies

The promotion for Escaping Fate begins tomorrow. The price of the E-book has already been reduced to 99 cents across all platforms, so if you haven’t already picked it up, there’s no better time.

The pilot book has three reviews so far, for which I’m very grateful. Motivation to complain comes a lot easier than to praise; and I’m pleased for those who are willing to expend a little effort to share their thoughts on a book they enjoyed. I know ‘Zon can make it a pain in the 4th point to post a review, too. (I’m glad Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, BookBub, etc. are not quite as painful.)

However, one of the early reviews has confirmed that one of my feared outcomes is probably in play. When I pontificated on turning Paradox into a series, one of my worries was that readers of the first book might fall under the impression that the entire series is a young adult coming-of-age story. My remedy was to try to make it obvious in the blurb that the hero is only a boy at first. (He’s a young man entering college by the end of the second book.)

Evidently it’s not so obvious in the blurb. At least not to all readers.

I’ll be pondering this in days to come.

I hope you are all on your way to a restful Thanksgiving week with loved ones. I’ll be traveling and (God willing) spending some quality time with family. But I’ll try to keep an eye  on rankings and such. If the book performs well, hopefully I’ll be able to get some screen shots and share them here.