David Alastair Hayden

At 50,000 words, dur­ing a bout of ennui, lying in bed for no good rea­son save (let us say) for imag­in­ing my lat­est tale again, the end­ing of the cur­rent work in progress took a hard right into awe­some. I have a new end in sight.

I was expect­ing this, only not to such a degree. The last third of the res­o­lu­tion phase was going to have to change from the orig­i­nal plot I wrote because of char­ac­ters added dur­ing the first mass cru­ci­fix­ion. (!) I was good with this. But I didn’t expect to change over 75% of the end­ing, leav­ing only the basic where and how it starts of the first and third parts.

It’s all for the bet­ter, though. I’m really excited. More excited than when I first thought up the tale. My sub­con­scious has worked really hard on this one, and I’m grateful.

For my first three nov­els, even the ridicu­lously mas­sive first novel, I had the very end of the book in sight the whole time and never wavered. I’m break­ing new ground. But I really am exceed­ingly pleased.

• 8 of 10 Dag­gers (story)
• 3 of 5 Dev­ils (malevolence)

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sor­cery, Edited by Jonathan Stra­han and Lou Anders, is a must read for all fan­tasy fic­tion read­ers, except those that don’t like sto­ries that kick ass. Just hold­ing the book you can almost smell the wretch of sor­cery and hear blood drip­ping from cold steel.

“Sev­en­teen Orig­i­nal Tales of Sword and Sor­cery penned by Mas­ters Old and New”: Steven Erik­son, Glen Cook, Gene Wolfe, James Enge, C.J. Cher­ryh, K. J. Parker, Garth Nix, Michael Moor­cock, Tim Leb­bon, Robert Sil­ver­berg, Greg Keyes, Michael Shea, Scott Lynch, Tanith Lee, Caitlin R Kier­nan, Bill Will­ing­ham, Joe Abercrombie.

With such an amaz­ing list of accom­plished authors, you know you’re get­ting tales well told. How good? In my opin­ion, it’s worth the admis­sion price for just the Lynch, Wolfe, Moor­cock, and Parker sto­ries. And after pay­ing for those you’ll be immensely pleased to find excel­lent tales by Nix, Enge, Aber­crom­bie, Cher­ryh, Leb­bon, and Lee as well. The remain­der are all solid tales. (Per­son­ally, as a Moor­cock fan, I would have bought the col­lec­tion for the Elric story alone. And after read­ing the anthol­ogy, I have to say that I would buy it just to read Scott Lynch’s “In the Stacks.”)

You can’t under­es­ti­mate my glee at see­ing the sword & sor­cery genre get­ting some love. We have new Moor­cock and Howard col­lec­tions on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. We have new nov­els like James Enge’s “Blood of Ambrose.” We have this anthol­ogy. We have hope again.

So how does Swords & Dark Magic stack up as an anthol­ogy of sword & sor­cery fiction?

If you’re a hard­core fan of old-school, Robert E. Howard pas­tiche, or bar­bar­ian fic­tion, you might be dis­ap­pointed. (Broaden your hori­zons!) But if you’re a fan of sword & sor­cery in gen­eral, I think you’ll enjoy this vol­ume, espe­cially if you like hav­ing lighter fare mixed in with the heavy stuff. (I thought the vol­ume a bit light over­all for my per­sonal tastes, but I like my sword & sor­cery as dark as a demon’s ass­hole. Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane kind of dark, you know.)

Only one story didn’t meet my per­sonal cri­te­ria for what makes a tale sword & sor­cery. Two oth­ers were bor­der­line to me, but they were damned good sto­ries. While Swords & Dark Magic didn’t meet my stan­dard with all sev­en­teen tales, I would never expect it to. No one per­son can rigidly define an entire genre, espe­cially one as diverse as S&S. And if you don’t think sword & sor­cery is diverse, then you should prob­a­bly stick to Conan pas­tiche. Inclu­sion is the bet­ter option for any genre, and I refer you to this arti­cle on the Cim­mer­ian, which says it bet­ter than I can.

One of the ironies of S&S is that while it is plot dri­ven, it has largely been defined by a few strong, iconic char­ac­ters. Other than Elric, who has long been a genre-defining fig­ure, the only char­ac­ter in this col­lec­tion that I really felt had the sort of immense per­son­al­ity you would expect in the best of S&S was Enge’s Mor­lock who has appeared in other tales and in two books from Pyr thus far, with a third upcom­ing in the fall. But most of these sto­ries were not writ­ten with recur­ring char­ac­ters in mind. (I would cer­tainly like to see some more tales with the char­ac­ter set from Abercrombie’s “The Fool Jobs.”)

Con­cern­ing “Red Pearls: An Elric Story,” it is clas­sic Moor­cock and though the end­ing is per­haps a bit rushed, the tale is remark­able in that it reveals details about the Mel­ni­boneans that have only been hinted at thus far!
My favorite tale of the bunch, though, was Scott Lynch’s “In the Stacks.” Armed sor­cer­ers ven­tur­ing into a dan­ger­ous magic library. Because that’s what you have to do to check out a book. How can you not like that? Plus, it’s dark enough to suit my tastes.

The Gene Wolfe story was inter­est­ing. I don’t con­sider it S&S per se, though if it had been writ­ten in 1920, I would put it in a Clas­sics of Sword & Sor­cery anthol­ogy and label it an imme­di­ate pre­cur­sor. Strange, I know, but it felt a lit­tle too mythic and high fan­tasy to be true S&S, and I think this puts it on foot­ing with “The Fortress Unvan­quish­able, Save for Sac­noth” by Lord Dun­sany. Not a bad place to be, and as it was one of my favorite sto­ries, I wel­come its inclusion.

I didn’t see any love in the Intro­duc­tion for “The Shadow King­dom” by Robert E. Howard. It’s a shame how often poor Kull, whose sto­ries kicked off the S&S genre, gets over­looked. Nor did Karl Edward Wag­ner get a notice, though sadly this is common.

Lou Anders has expressed some regret in call­ing Swords & Dark Magic “The New Sword & Sor­cery” because the title mis­leads some to think that the anthol­ogy is try­ing to rede­fine the genre. And yet, I think the sub­ti­tle is appro­pri­ate. In this vol­ume we have cur­rent authors writ­ing sword & sor­cery now. A liv­ing genre evolves, which is a good thing. And a col­lec­tion of S&S by such esteemed authors in this time of scarcity can’t help but rede­fine the genre, if ever so slightly.

Cer­tainly, the vol­ume chron­i­cles some of the shifts in sword & sor­cery that have occurred over the last few decades. I see two major move­ments here.

First, we have an abun­dance of sor­cery. Per­haps more spells than swords. And often the pro­tag­o­nist is a magic wielder. I think the trend here started chang­ing in the 60’s with Elric. Whereas in the tra­di­tional Conan / Weird Tales S&S we would see sor­cery only used by the bad guys. (Okay, Mouser dab­bled in magic, but he wasn’t very good at it!) I’m sure this trend relates to cul­tural and reli­gious changes in our soci­ety, but I’m not about to go down that path right now.

Sec­ond, we have teams of adven­tur­ers in the Aber­crom­bie, Cook, Lynch, and Erik­son sto­ries. In the past it was one hero, maybe with a part­ner or  a com­pan­ion, a tag-along for a sin­gle story per­haps. I think this is a direct result of Dave Arne­son and Gary Gygax’s influ­ence on mod­ern fan­tasy lit­er­a­ture, though you could sur­mise that it orig­i­nated with the Fel­low­ship of the Ring. Still, I don’t see this hap­pen­ing with­out D&D. (And Erikson’s open­ing story really does read to me like a fic­tion­al­ized take on someone’s role-playing adven­ture. Not to demean the story in any way.)

In sum­mary: Swords & Dark Magic is fun for boys and girls who like badass tales of heart-thumping action, sin­is­ter spells, evil libraries, and moth­er­fuck­ing Elric. Now, go buy the damned book and get to reading.

• 8 of 10 Dag­gers (story)
• 3 of 5 Dev­ils (malevolence)

• Buy it from Amazon.
• Signed hard­cover from Sub­ter­ranean Press.

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In down­trod­den Hareez, the golden age of pros­per­ity is long for­got­ten. The gods have fallen into a deep slum­ber, unaware that demons roam their lands and the Palym­far Order no longer pro­tects their peo­ple. In these days all men fear the palym­far while the palym­far fear only their Grand­mas­ter and Jaska Bavadi, his infa­mous Slayer.

But Jaska has no idea he’s a sadis­tic assas­sin feared by all Hareez until an encounter with Zyrella Anthari, the last high priest­ess of the White Tigress, wakes him to that night­mare. Free from Grand­mas­ter Salahn, a man he thought he loved as a father, after twenty years of mind con­trol, Jaska sets out with Zyrella to save the White Tigress and stop Salahn from open­ing the Gates of the Under­world. But in order to suc­ceed, he must first con­quer the mad­ness within.

» Read the rest of this entry «

In Hareez, the golden age of pros­per­ity was long for­got­ten. The gods had fallen into a deep slum­ber, unaware that demons roamed their lands, and the Palym­far Order no longer pro­tected the peo­ple. In those days all men feared the palym­far while the palym­far feared only their Grand­mas­ter, and his Slayer.

~THE SAGA OF PAWAN KOR~

“Hear me, O God­dess! What must I do?”

There was no response, no sound at all except for the golden leaves crack­ling in a bra­zier on the altar. Their aro­matic smoke swirled through the ancient shrine and coiled around Zyrella Anthari, the last true priest­ess of the White Tigress, as she lifted her hands beseech­ingly towards the statue of the god­dess on the dais before her. She had begun her rit­ual upon arriv­ing with her tem­plars but still had no answer to the dream that had led her here. Her knees ached from hours spent on the flagstones.

As she called on the god­dess again, des­per­ately now, faint sparks danced in the amethyst chan­nel­ing stone that hung around her neck. Instinc­tively, she now knew what she must do. Unbid­den dreams and unex­plained urges—this was all she had ever had to guide her. It would have to be enough this time as well.

With a ges­ture and a few arcane words, Zyrella acti­vated the witch-sight spell that allowed her to see into the Shad­ow­land. Her azure eyes turned milky white and she gazed intently into the smoke, her mind focused on the Tigress and the future. She expected to see a vision that would give her instruc­tions for a rit­ual that could free the god­dess from bondage. Instead, her spell uncloaked an enemy spy­ing on her through the Shadowland.

The man wore the rust-colored garb of a palym­far assas­sin, and at his neck was a jet qavra stone puls­ing with malefic energy. His mask was low­ered, reveal­ing a scowl­ing, hawk-like face. Zyrella had never seen him before, but his amber eyes were lit by zeal­ous fire, and by those eyes she instinc­tively knew who he was. Her mus­cles tensed. Her heart pounded. If he could observe her in this way, then he was near, no more than a few hours away.

» Read the rest of this entry «

Over the last few months, I’ve pri­mar­ily been work­ing on an expan­sion and sig­nif­i­cant revi­sion of The Storm Dragon’s Heart, a YA novel I wrote back in 2005. (Has it been that long?!) My test read­ers called it “Johnny Quest in fan­tasy Asia.”

I’m very excited by the result, and I’m sure I’ll be telling you much more about it in the near future.

Many were the changes I made to the book:

• Expanded the nar­ra­tive by 13,000 words.

• Added a new sub­plot and character!

• Changed the main character’s back­ground and abilities.

• Altered how magic works to bring it in line with the newer mate­r­ial that I’ve writ­ten in the same world.

• Replaced Japan­ese and Chi­nese terms with Eng­lish equiv­a­lents. The set­ting is a fan­tasy ver­sion of a num­ber of East Asian cul­tures smashed together. It is not Japan with magic. This unex­pect­edly caused some prob­lems for some pre­vi­ous readers.

• I dras­ti­cally sim­pli­fied the set­ting, thereby reduc­ing the bur­den of expo­si­tion. Some com­plete alter­ations, but in many cases I sim­pli­fied unnec­es­sar­ily com­plex aspects and replaced their fan­tasy names with stan­dard Eng­lish equiv­a­lents. Fan­tasy aspects that did not con­tribute to the plot or char­ac­ters or that did not add sig­nif­i­cant atmos­phere were neutered.

• The orig­i­nal text had 500-word trav­el­ogues between longish chap­ters. These trav­el­ogues were inter­est­ing and helped with the bur­den of the more com­plex set­ting. They were now obso­lete, and frankly, they really threw off the pac­ing. Even though I cut 16 of these, the book grew by 5,000 words.

• Shorter chap­ters of much more var­ied lengths. Stronger chap­ter hooks.

• And, of course, gen­eral improve­ments in the qual­ity of the writ­ing and in storytelling.

So what, you may ask, is in the works for this one? A pod­cast? I hope so. Sam­ple chap­ters soon? Almost cer­tainly. Oth­er­wise, I can’t say for cer­tain yet. But stay tuned.

A horde of face­less chil­dren shuf­fled toward Jaska. He tried to back away, but Grand­mas­ter Salahn loomed behind him and whis­pered into his ear: “Kill many, Jaska, so that we may bathe in style tonight.” Jaska tried to resist, but his arms moved of their own accord and drew his weapons. Then, even with his eyes closed, he con­ducted his grisly task.

Hours later, he was in a shal­low, marble-tiled pool filled with blood. As he slid between Mardha and Salahn, gasp­ing in orgasm, Zyrella sud­denly appeared, chained to a col­umn ris­ing from the mid­dle of the pool.

Mardha left Jaska’s embrace and took a scourge from the pool­side. » Read the rest of this entry «

When Jaska next awoke, the dim sun­stone barely illu­mi­nated the cave. Zyrella slept on a pal­let along the oppo­site wall; Ohzikar was absent. Jaska’s stom­ach churned, demand­ing food. So with creak­ing joints and trem­bling mus­cles, he retrieved dried meat and dates from the sup­ply packs. He sat by the pool and ate.

Jaska was dressed in a grey shirt and pants that cinched at the ankles and knees. His pack, weapons, and uni­form lay stacked nearby. No, he thought, those weapons can’t belong to me. Mine fell into the river. These … must have belonged to my students.

He nearly wept as he thought of the young men he had trained for the last few years. But then what sort of men had they truly been? » Read the rest of this entry «

A warm glow emanated halfway up a rock wall on the north end of a dry canyon. Along a nar­row ledge was a cave not vis­i­ble from the canyon floor. Fire­light flick­ered on the walls inside and illu­mi­nated hunt­ing scenes and ani­mal lords painted by tribes­men cen­turies ago. Many of the scenes depicted species long extinct from the region, their pop­u­la­tions dec­i­mated by the inex­orable approach of the north­ern desert.

Zyrella chalked her own sym­bols onto the walls: twist­ing runes that chan­neled the geo­man­tic forces in her sur­round­ings and called upon the divine pow­ers of the great deity Kashomae, the Gen­tle Sav­ior. After Zyrella fin­ished, Ohzikar fas­tened a sheet of can­vas over the cave entrance. Then he joined her at the back of the cave where water, shim­mer­ing like liq­uid fire, trick­led into a small pool.

“That should mask our fire­light.” He frowned at the small pile of brush, dung, and coal. “Not that we’ll be burn­ing much.”

“I’ll con­jure sun­light into a stone tomor­row.” Zyrella didn’t let on to Ohzikar that she was utterly spent. Mak­ing a sun­stone would tax her, and an appren­tice sor­cerer could han­dle such a task with ease.

Ohzikar turned his gaze to a pal­let set into a nook two-thirds of the way back into the cave. » Read the rest of this entry «

Start­ing the 1st of May or June:

The Dark Cru­sade Weekly Pod­cast.

From that point on I will pod­cast fic­tion each and every week, for so long as san­ity per­mits. I’ll start with a short story or two, and from there we’ll pro­ceed to my next podi­o­book, The Storm Dragon’s Heart.

The east­ern sky bright­ened as dawn approached while the west remained dark with retreat­ing storm clouds. Along the river­bank, the swollen waters sloshed as they receded. Wind sighed through brakes of reeds and the leaves of three stunted palms. In a nearby stream, Jaska caught two fish bare­handed, despite the pain that tun­neled deep within his mind and the lim­ited range of motion in his neck and left arm. His barely sealed wounds burned with punc­tu­at­ing waves of needle-sharp stabs.

With cold-numbed fin­gers, he ripped the flesh from the bones of the fish. He swal­lowed more than chewed for his jaws would barely open. He was exhausted, but he wouldn’t let him­self fall asleep again. He couldn’t bear to face more night­mares of car­nage and torture.

He needed to get help. Lying here for days would only expose him to ene­mies and preda­tors. It might also mean suc­cumb­ing to his injuries. Jaska splashed his face and drank from the stream. Then he gath­ered a few half-rotten dates that had fallen to the ground and stuffed them into a pocket.

He was ready to move on, but where to? » Read the rest of this entry «