Book Spotlight – The Golden Sword

Tags

dysptopian, epic sci-fi, Fantasy, Fantasy Author, Janet Morris, Perseid Press, Sci-FI, worldbuilding

Book – The Golden Sword – Book II of the Silistra Quartet

Janet Morris – fantasy, science-fiction, epic

 

Beginning in May 02 2015, after more than 30 years of print, the four volumes of The Silistra Quartet are being published in all-new Author’s Cut editions by Perseid Press, revised by Janet Morris.  The second of these, The Golden Sword, released in May 2016.

The Silistra Quartet is a series of fictional memoirs by the High Couch of  Silsitra herself, Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi. The books chronicle the adventures of the most beautiful courtesan in tomorrow’s universe, The Silistra Quartet is Mythic Fiction, combining elements of science fiction and fantasy with mythology, metaphysics, and magical realism from a distant realm.

The Golden Sword

http://www.theperseidpress.com/

Overview: The Battle of the Sexes is never over…

She had the power to create planets.
The sixty carved bones of the Yris-tera foretold her ancient fate.
Her heritage of power took her beyond time and space and stole from her the
one man she loved.

Enslaved on the planet Silistra tomorrow’s most beautiful courtesan unleashes the
powers of the gods.

Overview:  High Couch of Silistra:  Biology dictates reality

One woman’s mythic search for self-realization in a distant tomorrow…

Her sensuality was at the core of her world, her quest beyond the civilized stars.

Aristocrat. Outcast. Picara. Slave. Ruler.

Praise for the Silistra Quartet:

“Engrossing characters in a marvelous adventure.” – Charles N. Brown, Locus Magazine

“The amazing and erotic adventures of the most beautiful courtesan in tomorrow’s universe” – Frederik Pohl

“To be an outcast in Silsitra means travel and Estri is a traveler between stars and planets as well as between time. The best single example of prostitution in fantasy is Janet Morris’ Silistra series. […] Each the books exhibits a consciousness its form as an historical autobiography; the author appends glossaries for each novel and includes prologues, epilogues, biographical sketches, and copious notes to guide the reader into a better grasp of the mult-levels of the work, […]  To be an outcast in Silsitra means travel and Estri is a traveler between stars and planets as well as between time.  — Anne K. Kaler, The Picara From Hera To Fantasy Heroine

FOR ADVENTUROUS READERS ONLY

“Long ago the human colonists of Silistra waged a war so vicious that centuries later the planet has not recovered. Men and women alike suffer from infertility — the deadliest legacy of that deadly war. Because the birth rate is so low, the Silistrans value above all the ability to bear children . . . and their social order is based on their fertility and sexual prowess.

“On a planet desperate for population, women hold the keys to power. These are the adventures of Estri, Well-Keepress of Astria and holder of the ultimate seat of control: the High Couch of Silistra.” — Jim Baen, publisher, Baen Books.

 

“The best single example of prostitution used in fantasy is Janet Morris’ Silistra series… Estri’s character is most like that of Ishtar who describes herself as “‘a prostitute compassionate am I'” because she “symbolizes the creative submission to the demands of instinct, to the chaos of nature …the free woman, as opposed to the domesticated woman”. Linking Estri with these lunar and water symbols is not difficult because of the moon’s eternal virginity (the strength of integrity) links with her changeability (the prostitute’s switching of lovers). […] Morris strengthens the moon imagery by having Estri as a well-keepress because wells, fountains, and the moon as the orb which controls water have long been associated with fertility, […] In a sense, she is like the moon because she is apparently eternal, never waxing or waning except in her pursuit of the quest; she is the prototypical wanderer like the moon and Ishtar. She is the eternal night symbol of the moon in opposition to the Day-Keepers […] At her majority (her three hundredth birthday), she is given a silver-cubed hologram letter from her mother, containing a videotape of her conception by the savage bronzed barbarian god from another world. […] If Estri’s mother then acts as a bawd, willing her lineage as Well-Keepress to her daughter, then Estri’s great-grandmother Astria as foundress of the Well becomes a further mother-bawd figure when she offers her prophetic advice in her letter: “Guard Astria for you may lose it, and more. Beware of one who is not as he seems. Stray not in the port city of Baniev …look well about you, for your father’s daughter’s brother seeks you”. Having no brother that she knows of does not stay Estri from undertaking the heroic quest of finding her father.” – Anne K. Kaler, The Picara: From Hera to Fantasy Heroine.

https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Sword-Silistra-Quartet-Book-ebook/dp/B01FCMA7LM/

https://www.amazon.com/High-Couch-Silistra-Quartet-Book-ebook/dp/B01B1M1JBY/

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Review – Golden Sword – Janet Morris

Tags

dark fantasy, Fantasy, Intelligent Fiction, Janet Morris. Perseid Press, Review, Science fiction, sensual fantasy, Silistra Quartet, Women in fiction

The Golden Sword – Janet Morris

5 stars

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Sword-Silistra-Quartet/dp/0996898271/ (UK link)

https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Sword-Silistra-Quartet/dp/0996898271/ (US Link)

Let me start by saying this is the SECOND book in the SIlistra Quartet – and it helps to have read the earlier book, although I think you could get by without it.

The action starts immediately, and thus some prior knowledge of the world and the main character is useful. That said The world building, like Janet Morris’s other books is superb and there is a helpful glossary at the back for the unfamiliar alien terms. When Morris creates a world she doesn’t hold back and this darkly sensual book ticks all the boxes for drama, cleverness and the ability to make the reader think. What is duty? What is love and how does it bind a person. Is sex merely pleasure or is there something far more profound in our genetic and cultural identity – and for that matter how fixed is it? Silistra is a world once ravaged by a war and environmental damage which almost destroyed everything – greed, vanity, selfishness and all the dark deeds of which an ‘intelligent’ society is capable. From these ashes rise the Wells and the alien but hauntingly possible culture of this world.

Silistra is a world where the ability to reproduce is perhaps the most important aspect – as wars and a bloody history almost destroyed the races. Thus sex, and the relationships between men and women, the way their society sees them, is important. And women ofter hold the power.  Yet it isn’t that simple (these things rarely are), for the various factions fight between themselves, try to hold the more technologically advanced races at bay, and seek to find themselves.  Love of those simply not worthy of it by the rational mind and of the call of one person’s allure to another.  The role of men and women, master or mistress and subordinate, of slave and free, of tribe and tribe, city and city, Silistrian and environment are woven about a tale of one woman’s quest to find out who she is and not necessarily liking the answer.

The secret of the Silistran longevity is threatened, and with it the Silistran way of life and all they hold dear. This is more than just Estri’s own fight for survival as allies and enemies duel, intrigue and switch allegiances.  Secrets are revealed, bargains struck and betrayed and threats loom from the stars without, the people within and the treachery of one’s own fear.

It’s not a book for those looking for a simple adventure, or a happy ever after. It’s not a love story, and it’s not a story for those who are easily offended. But it is a great story. There is sex, violence, betrayal, blood, death, loss, love, hatred, fear, power struggles and people being really quite shitty to one another, and in this I found a reflection of ourselves – our world as could be, and might well be. This is a book which makes one’s blood sing and one’s mind ponder.

I loved the first in the series and enjoyed this as much, perhaps more. The ending leaves the reader desperate to know what happens to Estri next – courtesan, slave, warrior, lover, rebel.  What is next for our heroine?

Book Spotlight – The Carnelian Throne – Science Fiction/Spec Fic/Fantasy

Tags

Dystopian, Fantasy, Janet Morris, Perseid Press, political fiction, Science fiction, Silistra Quartet

Title: The Carnelian Throne

Author: Janet Morris

Genre: allegorical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, political fiction

Main character description (short).

In a far and dystopian future, three rulers seeking to make truth of prophecy explore the “shores of which none are empowered to speak,” a forbidden continent where humanity no longer rules.

Synopsis:

Brief Excerpt 250 words:

“Gate!” he bellowed over the storm, his dripping lips at my ear. The deluge had made us sparing of words. Under leathers soaked to thrice their weight, I shivered in spasms. Arms clutched to my sides, I stared into the rain. The driven sheets slashed me for my audacity. Lightning flared, illuminating the riverbank white. A moment later, the bright noise cracked through my head. The hillock trembled.

Over the gate danced the lightning. Its crackling fingers quested down thick-crossed slabs of iron, seared flesh. Emblazoned as they tumbled were those six-legged amphibians, their streamered tails lashing, scaled, fangful heads thrown back in dismay. I saw their afterimage: beryl and cinnabar, aglow upon the storm. Then their charred remains splashed into oblivion, spun away on the fast current.

“Down!” One man shouted, the other shoved me, and as I staggered to kneel in the sedges, the god that washed this land shook it, grumbling. I crouched on my hands and knees on the bucking sod, between them. Little protection could they offer up against shaking earth and searing sky, not even for themselves, without divorcing themselves from the reality they had come here to explore. And that they would not do.

Somewhere far off the weather struck earth again. We knelt on a fast-declining shore. On our right and left, steeps ascended, cresting in a plume of dense rain forest. In that moment of illumination the whole river valley and the gate set into the river stood bared of shadow. Six times the height of a man was that gate.

Why should readers buy this book (50 words max)?

The Carnelian Throne makes you think as it explores the revenge of nature upon humanity once we have despoiled land and sea, and what our manipulation of genetics may mean for the future as the three foretold seek truth in prophecy where men no longer rule.

 

 

Links etc.

Kindle On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDC8Y4K/

Hardcover on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Carnelian-Throne-Silistra-Quartet/dp/099775835X/

Trade paper on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Carnelian-Throne-Silistra-Quartet/dp/0997758341/

 

Hardcover on Barnes and Noble

Paperback on Barnes and Noble

Nook Edition

 

The Silistra Quartet on Black Gate Magazine: https://www.blackgate.com/2016/03/19/vintage-treasures-the-silistra-quartet-by-janet-morris/

Google Books: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Carnelian_Throne.html?id=NJcIMQAACAAJ&source=kp_cover

About the Author:  Best selling author Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels. She wrote the bestselling Silistra Quartet in the 1970s, including High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne. This quartet had more than four million copies in Bantam print alone, and was translated into German, French, Italian, Russian and other languages. In the 1980s, Baen Books released a second edition of this landmark series. This third edition is the Author’s Cut edition, newly revised by the author for Perseid Press. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of nonfiction, as well as papers and articles on nonlethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.

 

Character Interview Number Thirty-Eight – Estri of Silistra

Tags

Character Interviews, Fantasy, Intelligent Fiction, Janet Morris, Perseid Press, Sci-FI, science fantasy, Science fiction

Tell Us About Yourself

Name (s) Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi

 

Age: Three hundred forty Silistran years old

Please tell us a little about yourself.

First, I must say that your language is difficult, not one intuitive to me. Nevertheless I shall try to answer you in your own tongue. Excuse my syntax, and I will tell you what I can.

Once I ruled the greatest house of pleasure in the civilized stars. When I reached my majority of three hundred years, I undertook a quest to find my father at the behest of my dead mother. So I left my position as Well-Keepress in my beloved Astria, and nothing has been the same for me since. All I thought I knew, I now question. So many truths proved false, so many assumptions groundless, so much love lost and found. I have greater powers now than I once did, but wisdom can triumph over power, and color all life anew.

I have been many things: aristocrat, outcast, picara, slave, ruler. I have served powers greater than my own, and baser than my soul could stand. I have had everything, lost everything, and gained knowledge by seeking love along the way. Doubtless I am wiser now than when I began my journey out of Astria, having learned that true wisdom comes only to a loving heart. But where love lies, there hatred takes root, and envy, and fear, and dangers undreamt. And yet, love is the key to every mystery: to life and death and creation itself. For without love, what are we, but a brief glimmer seen against eternal night? Where are we in this combustible universe? What arms hold us safe? What we learn, exploring, brings us home to ourselves, to our own loves, our own hearts. Creation plays no favorites, seeking only change. Love can surmount all, I once believed as a naive girl, and believe it yet.

 

Describe your appearance in 10 words or less. Copper -skinned, copper-haired, with a body to please the gods.

 

Do you have a moral code? If so what is it? Silistra’s moral code I still hold as mine: my world was wrecked and sundered by unbridled lusts for power. We who remain must rebuild not only our population, but our faith that whatever man destroys, nature can put to rights . . . given time.

 

Would you kill for those you love? I have done so, and killed that I myself survive.

 

Would you die for those you love? Would that I had the chance. To die for something is an honor.  To die for nothing is a cruelty greater than any other.

 

What would you say are your strengths and weaknesses? Ha. You must not know my people, to ask such a thing. Some say my strengths are in my blood, that I was bred to this battle between the spirit and the flesh, between man and woman, between life ineffable and life everlasting, a battle long conceived before ever I was born. Some say my coming was devoutly to be wished, and others say I and those who love me are travesties, a flaw in the natural order. I myself say that life and love are their own justification, where passion rules.

 

Do you have any relationships you prize above others? Why?What entitles you to know my heart, my mind, my soul? Shall I feed you platitudes, disarming truisms and children’s tales? Of my beloveds, you need to know very little, perhaps only one thing: “We are all bound, the greatest no less than the meanest,” as my lover says. I prize the sky and earth and every creature upon it with a love fierce enough to defeat even the foolishness of man.

 

Do you like animals? Do you have any pets/animal companions? I have whatever walks or crawls or slithers or swims, slinks or flies free in our air. We are part of our world’s nature, sometimes its victims, but never its masters. I have friends among the honest killers of the wild, for all kill to eat and thrive and risk their own lives so their offspring will survive. Sometimes I ride on the backs of those who roam the plains or stalk their prey, or live cheek by jowl with them; sometimes not. But they are not mine any more or less than I am theirs.

 

Do you have a family? Tell us about them. You haven’t the time to hear my story. I’ve written some of it; look there to see my mother, my father, my lost child, my relations, deadly every one. My bloodline is old: to live so long, to prowl the universe and shower in star’s breath, my family well learned the wisdom of survival, when to destroy and when to succor.

 

Can you remember something from your childhood which influences your behaviour? How do you think it influences you? Where I live, some can survive for hundreds of years or more. When my mother bade me seek my father, she sent me on a trek more dangerous than my young and foolish self understood. Before then, I thought that men and women were put on the ground to reproduce, to conserve, not to destroy. To claim my heritage, I learned hard lessons — about the nature of life, and the degree to which we are all controlled by the wisdom of our sex. And thus did I blindly go forth to claim my inheritance, thinking all I had to do was ask and the universe would serve my pleasure. I learned otherwise, in the doing; that the world turns by a greater will than mine; that reality is the child of biology, that all things come into being by strife; battling against men, against women, and sometimes against the gods themselves.

I learned many lessons about what men will do to win, and what women will do, and why. I learned that men who punish men and women lust to rule all; that women who punish men and women lust after dominion, and how dangerous both can be.

From childhood’s days to these, I have strived to keep my wits well about me, and shape my own fate.

 

Please give us an interesting and unusual fact about yourself. In my three hundredth years, I was known as the most beautiful and exotic courtesan in the civilized stars. I commanded a great price.

 

Tell Us About Your World

 

Please give us a little information about the world in which you live. Silistra is a planet in the Bipedal Federate Group.  Our main exports are our life-extending serums. Our men, in their romance with machines and technology, warred until our planet and its ecology were nearly destroyed and life on the surface became nearly impossible. One result of this war was that conception became very difficult, and those who could conceive a child had power. Then did our leaders develop the life-extending serum which gave us some hope of not becoming extinct.  For thousands of years, a few survivors languished in underground shelters, while women took power away from the men that had nearly destroyed us all.

When the time came that Silistrans could live above the ground, we instituted the Well system, where fertile women could come to find a man who could impregnate her, and the nature of our culture, under the guidance of our spiritual leaders, became life-conserving, rather than life-destroying.

 

Does your world have religion or other spiritual beliefs? If so do you follow one of them? Please describe (briefly) how this affects your behaviour. On Silistra, some believe in gods, some are descended from gods, some meet with gods, face to face. Whether or not we believe in gods, the gods who made us take a hand in our fates. We are a culture that values those skills by which an individual mind can shape the future. Our dhareners, interpreters of the will of those gods who walk with mankind, guide our development by choosing our paths and making our laws.

 

Do you travel in the course of your adventures? If so where? I have been to places on Silistra that are thought mythical and mystical, where few outsiders have ever been; I have gone to the places where gods hold sway, and seen what few Silistrans have ever seen. I have traveled among the stars, and farther.
What form of politics is dominant in your world? (Democracy, Theocracy, Meritocracy, Monarchy, Kakistocracy etc.) On civilized Silistra, our government is controlled by our dhareners, our spiritual leaders, and by the Well-Keepresses, hereditary matriarchs, or by the cahndors, hereditary patriarchs. But our governments have no simple rule by the lowest common denominator as seen on other worlds, nor the rule by wealth, nor are we controlled by a theocracy as you will know the term. The composition of our high councils varies, depending on where one lives or travels. Like our government or not, it has kept us safe from the depredations of plutocracy and the tyranny of mercantilists and their machines. Some parts of Silistra are timocratic, some oligarchic, and some, such as the Wells, are controlled by a hereditary matriarchy or patriarchy.

 

Does your world have different races of people? If so do they get on with one another?We are few, and some are black, brown, copper-colored, red or white. On Silistra, what is in the heart, the mind, and the bloodline determines status, not the color of skin.

 

Name a couple of myths and legends particular to your culture/people. Silistran myths are predominantly memories, from before the fall of man. My favorite is the legend of Se’keroth, and if you read my writings, you will see why.

We also have a divination system, called Ors Yris-tera, that guides some of us and helps us forecast the Weathers of Life.  But on Silistra, any legend that survives is a memory of truths from the past or a portent of the future. Or both.

 

What is the technology level for your world/place of residence? What item would you not be able to live without? Most of us live without technology, as you know it, by choice. The off-worlders who visit try to seduce us with their machines of ease and speed, but we have lived upon and below the surface of a world ravaged by technology for too long to be fooled. True strength lies in the one’s mind and heart. If we wish to do more than a person should, the old weapons and tools of our fallen past still exist in our ‘hides,’ where those who lust for those can still find them.

 

Book(s) in which this character appears plus links:

 

High Couch of Silsitra:         https://www.amazon.com/High-Couch-Silistra-Quartet-Book-ebook/dp/B01B1M1JBY/

 

The Golden Sword…………. https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Sword-Silistra-Quartet-Book-ebook/dp/B01FCMA7LM/
The Silistra Quartet consists of four books in chronological order:  High Couch of Silistra, The Golden Sword, Wind from the Abyss, and The Carnelian Throne. The first two books are now available in hardcover, trade paper, and e-book “Author’s Cut” editions from Perseid Press.  The final two books will be available from Perseid in 2017.

 

The Bantam and Baen editions of the Silistra Quartet are out of print.

 

Author name: Janet Morris

 

Website/Blog/Author pages etc.

http://www.theperseidpress.com/

https://sacredbander.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Janet-Morris/e/B001HPJJB8/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
https://www.blackgate.com/2016/03/19/vintage-treasures-the-silistra-quartet-by-janet-morris/

Back into Hell – Hell Week 2015 – Altos the Angel

Tags

adult fantasy, angels, Audio books, Chris Morris, dark fantasy, Fantasy Author, Fantasy world, Halloween, Hell week, Heroes in Hell, Perseid Press

Now who’d expect to find an angel in Hell, except of course his lordship, the Fallen One? Amongst the damned his presence is…unusual. So over to you… (brave angel this one…misguided perhaps but brave).

Character Spotlight

About yourself:

*Who are/were you? I am Altos, an angel on special assignment.

* Why do YOU think you’re in Hell? I am here to rehabilitate His Satanic Majesty.

Who are your friends/allies here? All well-meaning souls I consider my allies, those not entirely given over to iniquity.

Describe your home/environment in Hell. I arrived with the fallen and have watched Hell develop from total darkness to its current state. Although I hail from on high this is my home for now, wherever the Prince holds forth you will find me.

Do you have any enemies here? My adversaries are the blind passions of the damned, most significantly Vengeance.

Come on be honest, what do you think of HSM leadership? Satan is comprehensible, if not justifiable, and actually a lover of beauty in his way.

Author Spotlight

*Name and bio.

Chris Morris

* Tell us about your story for this edition. The Wager relates an incident involving Satan and Altos where militaristic hordes from all ages have gathered for a “final” reckoning.

What inspired you to use the character(s) you’ve chosen? Satan’s isolation and profound understanding of humanity are fascinating, yet very difficult to draw—in this story by resort to a ghastly and grand-scale event demonstrating the worst proclivities of his charges, the lost souls of men. Because of his proposition to the angel—his most worthy, divine audience—he can indulge his urge to instruct his eternal adversary on high. Even Satan loves company.

What are you currently working on? I’m narrating audio books; I’ve completed The Sacred Band a novel by Janet Morris and myself and I, the Sun by Janet Morris. Next up is Shards of the Glass Slipper II: Queen Alice, by Roy Mauritsen.

Name the last two books you’ve read – tell us about them. Re-read The Golden Sword by Janet Morris, the second volume in her Silistra series quartet and The Best Poems in the English Language by Harold Bloom, his compendium of great poetical works and a great starting point for those like me who seek a chronological framework in which to appreciate the history of poetry in our language.

What marketing tips/writing advice can you offer other authors? Until you’ve found your storytelling voice as distinct from those writers you admire, write only what you know as passionately and articulately as you can without distorting your effort by trend-following or obeisance to niche-market rules and practices. Find and write what only you can and love the moments of total immersion necessary to bring them to life.

Heroes in Hell (series)

Chris Morris (Christopher Crosby Morris)

Chris Morris Music 

Chris Morris History & Bibliography

Chris Morris (Wikipedia)

Janet and Chris Morris Facebook page

Chris Morris Sings Facebook page 

The Perseid Press

Soundcloud.com/christopher-morris

Back into Hell – Hell Week 2015 – John Milton

Tags

adult fantasy, Anthologies, anthology author, Author Interview, Character Interviews, Dystopian, Fantasy, Halloween, Hell week, Heroes in Hell, Heroes in Hell series, History, Janet Morris, Milton, Perseid Press, Science fiction, shared world

The Jack O’Lanterns are carved, and the marshmallows are toasting over the hellfires. Pull up a pitchfork and join me once more in the devilish domain of His Satanic Majestic.

Characters and authors aplenty for your infernal entertainment.

Character Spotlight: John Milton

About yourself: I am the author of Paradise Lost, the English epic in blank verse, and other reflections on life and immortality, including Areopagitica, a blow stuck against pre-publication censorship. Free speech and freedom of the press were my passions while alive.

*Who are/were you? A poet, a revolutionary, a sentry guarding the gates that kept ignorance at bay. Samuel Johnson called me an acrimonious and surly Republican. Perhaps. I did fight with my tutors, who felt need to tame my mind’s adventurism, put caution in my heart. Caution has no part in an honest heart. I was born in 1608. I was eight years old when Shakespeare died. In 1660 I hid from the restoration lackies, avoiding a warrant calling for my life and the burning of all my works. In 1674 I died, blind and destitute, of kidney failure – to escape such pain, I welcomed death.

*Why do YOU think you’re in Hell? Paradise Lost brought me to Hell, for taking Satan’s part. I tried to make Christianity classical, make freedom the birthright of any soul on Earth, and failed because politics have no part in the true struggle, against death itself.

Who are your friends/allies here? You jest. The Great Deceiver finds me useful, and that puts me on the opposite side of Cocytus from most penitent souls. Nor am I penitent -, nor will I ever be. But no fool, these days, with an infernity around me. The fallen angels enjoy my company.

Describe your home/environment in Hell. I make my home in Pandemonium – a term I thought I coined, for a place I thought a product of my own mind. Pandemonium is a vast breath of foul air and brimstone, a citadel whose spires scrape the heavens, with adamantine walls and filled with Satan’s legions, both doomed souls once men – full of mischiefs and hardier souls who’ve never been men. Some days I have comfort, more than most, when I’m sent with messages or punishments to this damned soul or the other. From Pandemonium ‘tis a long walk to anywhere, but a short flight when the angelic wings of the Devil’s stalwarts wrap me round.

Do you have any enemies here? Do I have anything but enemies? I brought the underverse to life, made infernity real and inescapable. The damned duly hate me.  I have peers – quite a different story; an innumerable lot, including Kit Marlowe and his wittol, Will Shakespeare. These two love words for their own sake – and each other. I find them too full of greatness self-proclaimed, chasing after this clever turn of phrase or that rhythm:  they forgive all for tragedy and comedy, and naught for the true fight: the fight for freedom of the mind. But the devil doth love his Bard of Avon – more than me, so until obliteration comes to pass, I suffer them, and fool upon fool, so every realm of hell is littered with their wrongs.

Come on be honest, what do you think of HSM leadership? Honest?  About the Prince of Darkness?  About the Father of Lies? About my hero – whose glorification brought me here to waste away and away?  The Adversary allows me my sight, so I can see all the evil done and blamed on me; he allows me my youth, so I can go among the damned from one hell to another – except for Tartaros, so far: even a glimpse of the afterlife of Hellenes is denied me, who wanted so to put a Christian face on Homeric odes.

So, this plague – who’s responsible? The damned themselves: the selfish, the foolish, the overly bold and the bloody. The plague seeks the damned, who in their turn seek escape, every dumb brute among them. Satan’s so-called rulership of all the New Damned fell to laxity: the problem with the devil is he’s not devilish enough, by half, to suit the Maker. So those who rule Above sent down Erra and his Seven personified weapons, to put the punishment back in hell that Satan’s sly courtship of the doomed eschews. Satan’s plan is too clever for those punishers from Above: his ever antic calculated to prove the damned are damned by their flawed nature, by all they do and all they say, and Satan’s soft-seeming leadership forces the Almighty into the role of Overlord of Evil. This, Satan watches, and bides his time, and proves again and again that humanity’s flaws are intrinsic, and not the fault of the stars or of hellfires where their souls finally abide. Thus, call humanity the bringer of plague, not the Babylonian god who brings pestilence only on orders from higher powers. And call the devil the greatest of poets, who brings this tragedy to life and light.

What is the WORST thing about being here? The worst thing about being in hell is that mankind creates it every day, anew and worse. As I said in my poor play, obliteration is the cure.  Sad cure.  And yet the animal within each soul wants only to live to struggle on, and on…

Erra and his Seven – what’s going on there then? I said all I should need to say about the lackeys from Above, those ministers of due punishment and undue suffering alike. Erra’s forte is plague and mayhem, and hell is, truly, where he doth find his place.

What are your best tips for surviving in Hell? Keep eyes averted.  Write and say the truth. Hell is no worse than Reformation England, really – with faults aplenty to fight and fools to spare.

Before you arrived here did you actually believe in HSM and his fiery domain? Bet that was a shock! I thought…I’d dreamed Paradise Lost. Yet when I wrote it, each day was a summoning of His Infernal Majesty. So here I came, and am, and will be until obliteration can be mine – and sleep.

Eternity – that’s a damned long time. How to you spend the endless years here? I foment what discontent I may, and take commissions from the lords of hell when warranted.

What do you miss most about your old….life? Nothing. My life turned out to be practice for my sentence here. If what I publish here is bowdlerized, at least to some those words strike true and ring the knell all the damned so crave:  their final rest.

What is the technology level of the culture you chose to write about? Technology provides amusement for the shallow and ungifted, who’ll proliferate inanities until we slog waist deep in the dimmest wits ever born. What humanity does is no better or worse now than before technology – yesterday’s, today’s or tomorrow’s. All gadgets reproduce, but ne’er make anything unknown become known – or knowable. I wrote about infernity, about humanity’s reality – about what we are: our wizened souls, our selfish lusts, our need to break others to our will. Now I can be anywhere among the manifold mistakes of the Almighty’s cruelest jokes:  they are no better in the future than in the past. I wrote about this hell in which I stand, and now here I am.

Author Spotlight

*Name and bio.

Janet Morris.  Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 40 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris or others. Her debut novel, written as Janet E. Morris, was High Couch of Silistra, the first in a quartet of character-driven novels with a female protagonist. According to original publisher Bantam Books, the Silistra quartet had over four million copies in print when the fourth volume, The Carnelian Throne was published. Charles N. Brown, Locus Magazine, is quoted on the Baen Books reissues of the series as saying, “Engrossing characters in a marvelous adventure.”

Morris has contributed short fiction to the shared universe fantasy series Thieves World, in which she created the Sacred Band of Stepsons, a mythical unit of ancient fighters modeled on the Sacred Band of Thebes.

She created, orchestrated, and edited the Bangsian fantasy series Heroes in Hell, writing stories for the series as well as co-writing the related novel, The Little Helliad, with Chris Morris.

Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Her 1983 book “I, the Sun”, a detailedbiographical novel about the Hittite King Suppiluliuma I was praised for its historical accuracy; O.M. Gurney, Hittite scholar and author of “The Hittites,”^[2] commented that “the author is familiar with every aspect of Hittite culture.”^[3]

Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of non-fiction, as well as papers and articles on non-lethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.

*Tell us about your story for this edition. In Doctors in Hell, with Chris Morris, I wrote about the underworld’s single volunteer angel, and a wager he made with the Price of Lies. Chris then wrote about Milton, who is sent on a mission for Satan. Then together Chris and I wrote about Shakespeare and Marlowe, to whom Milton is sent with the true ‘cure’ for the plagues in hell. Hearing this ‘cure’ gives Marlowe the malady an author most dreads when facing an infernity never-ending: writer’s block. And Shakespeare tries to help Marlowe by taking him to the most fearsome and famed witch doctors in New Hell… so they think until they cross a certain threshold…

What inspired you to use the character(s) you’ve chosen? I wrote these characters almost accidentally: I was doing an introductory story for Rogues in Hell, and down came a clutch of new characters, into my story which was called Babe in Hell. One I’d had a taste of Shakespeare and Marlowe, they found enticements against which I was helpless, including the introduction of John Milton. Milton is daunting to portray, and his voice complex, so Chris and I waited as long as we could to introduce him – first in walk-on roles, and now finally, in an entire story that’s worthy of such a character, therefore a story that begins to turn hell on its collective and pointy ear.

How did you become involved with this project? Serendipity, truly. I had a multibook contract with Baen Books, and proposed the Heroes in Hell series, since at that time my parents were dying and death and what may lie after were much on my mind.

Writing for a shared world is challenging, how do you meet that challenge? Writing for a shared world is challenging, yes; but editing one, and writing the introductory and final stories for the volumes, tests me every time I do so. But in HIH I can try things, do stories I wouldn’t try to do elsewhere.  Hell is, in its way, liberating.

Tell us why you chose this story to tell out of so many possible options? This ‘story’ is actually a group of three:  one an introduction, followed by Chris Morris’ characterization of Milton, then in turn followed by Chris and my final story for the volume, in which the final story “Writer’s Block” sets some groundwork for later volumes while bringing our several strings of plot together.  Writing this way is difficult but great fun.

What drew you to these characters? These characters came because I wanted to rewrite and use the first story, which was the only HIH story that Jim Baen wouldn’t publish because the content offended him, and so we sold it to be published in different form for the current version in an a literary sf quarterly, Argos.  Since that story would have been the first in a different volume, it was already structured properly to be an introductory story, so we updated it and rewrote it into the current HIH moment, where it worked very well. SO we had had Altos the volunteer angel for a very long time, and it was a good time to re-enter him.  As for Milton, he’s a bit daunting but in Hell, we choose a story we want to tell, then we find characters who would be the best a telling that story. For the story we wanted to tell that would wrap the Doctors in Hell volume, we needed to end with Shakespeare and Marlowe – and a few others….

What are you currently working on? A novel.

Name the last two books you’ve read – tell us about them. Euripides, The Rhesos, Lattimore translating; Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, A. J. Bowen.

One is directly for the book I’m doing, Rhesos of Thrace, in which the Euripedes version figures;  the Aeschylus is part of my rereading of Greek tragedies, as much to recover the sensitivities of this period as to clarify what concerned the writers and protagonists.

I really always write the book I want to read, and to write Rhesos the way I want to read it I need to be deeply seated in his culture, both while alive and what Euripdes made of him.

What are your views on authors offering free books? In general, I think that people don’t value what they do not pay for.  In the book business, however, there is a long tradition of giving books to people to read who may talk positively about what they’ve read.  The numbers of copies involved now are simply greater.

What marketing tips/writing advice can you offer other authors? Write what impassions you:  you’re trading away your real daily life for time spent in an imagined construct:  make sure it’s worthwhile for you to do so.

If you could pick any quote about Hell which would be your favourite?

“Hell is just a frame of mind.” – Marlowe in Faustus.

What other books/short stories have you written?

From Wikipedia:

Science fiction novels	·         High Couch of Silistra ·         The Golden Sword ·         Wind from the Abyss ·         The Carnelian Throne ·         Dream Dancer ·         Cruiser Dreams ·         Earth Dreams ·         Threshold ·         Trust Territory ·         The Stalk ·         ARC Riders ·         The Fourth Rome ·         The 40-Minute War ·         Active Measures ·         Outpassge ·         Target
Heroes in Hell	·         Heroes in Hell (book) ·         Heroes in Hell (series)
Fiction	·         I, the Sun ·         Medusa ·         Warlord ·         Kill Ratio ·         Afterwar
Historical fantasy	·         Beyond Sanctuary ·         Beyond the Veil ·         Beyond Wizardwall ·         Tempus ·         City at the Edge of Time ·         Tempus Unbound ·         Storm Seed ·         The Sacred Band
Short fiction	·         Raising the Green Lion ·         Vashanka’s Minion ·         A Man and His God ·         An End to Dreaming ·         Wizard Weather ·         High Moon ·         Basileus ·         Hero’s Welcome ·         Graveyard Shift ·         To Reign in Hell ·         Power Play ·         Pillar of Fire ·         Gilgamesh Redux ·         Sea of Stiffs ·         The Nature of Hell ·         The Best of the Achaeans ·         The Collaborator ·         […] is Hell ·         Moving Day ·         Sea Change
Nonfiction work	·         Nonlethality: A Global Strategy ·         Weapons of Mass Protection ·         The American Warrior

If you could have a dinner party with any man and woman from anywhere and anywhen who would invite and what would you eat? Heraclitus of Ephesus, Homer, Sappho, Harold Bloom, Suppiluliumas 1 of Hatti, Kit Marlowe.

Which 10 books would you save to keep you sane after the apocalypse? (Only 10 allowed). Oxford Classical Dictionary, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Complete Shakespeare (RSC), Lattimore’s Iliad and Odyssey;

What are your views on authors commenting on reviews? Don’t, unless some specific review was important to your development and you’re commenting in the course of an interview that includes something salient to say about a review/reviewer.

Which books/movies/plays have influence your life? Too many to list.

In these days of movies and video games are books really influential? I hope so.

http://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Hell-Heroes-Janet-Morris-ebook/dp/B00Z753EX8/

http://www.theperseidpress.com/

Twitter: @uvmchristine

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/JanetMorrisandChrisMorris?fref=ts

http://sacredbander.com/

http://www.theperseidpress.com/

Hell Week 2017 – Day 7- Chris Morris/Orpheus

Tags

Fantasy, Hell week, Heroes in Hell series, Perseid Press, Pirates in Hell

Character Spotlight

About yourself:

*Who are/were you? Tell us about your life before you came here, and after.

A: I am Orpheus, son of the Thracian king Oeagros or perhaps even of Apollo, but most certainly sprung from the belly of the Muse Calliope, forever to hear the strains of her harmonies in all things. The strings of the lyre thrill to my touch as I to them and men and birds and fishes to the tides of all that is.

* Why do YOU think you’re in Hell?

A: I am in hell, as in life, to be taken amiss in perpetuity, to poetize, sing and play upon my instruments in accord with each unfolding moment and sway all souls about me to respond according to their nature and be reviled for doing so, for their differences cast them at odds.

Who are your friends/allies here?

A: Friends? Jason, for one, who steers our ship away from shoals and plies roiling seas. Atalanta is a friend as well and longs to chase my demons from me. Allies to me are forever the octaves of eternity, knowable to myself alone and mystery to all others.

Do you have any enemies here?

A: “Here” is mine enemy and daily do I war with him; I turn his rage to song and he doth rage the more. Shh…I take some small pleasure in that.

How do you define ‘piracy’?

A: All is stolen which has no owner; piracy is an illusion promising possession.

Come on be honest, what do you think of HSM leadership?

A: All things have a head and a tail; guide, yet follow. He must be for the Grand Punishment Continuum to exist; He is not to be envied or feared, though He must be more than those few things: He is a verse, then a chorus, then a coda; like us, He knows not his beginning, no more than I.

What is the WORST thing about being here?

A: The food.

What are your best tips for surviving in Hell?

A: Feel the rhythm; take your next breath fully; stand straight; drop your shoulders; raise your chest; sing to glory!

Before you arrived here did you actually believe in HSM and his fiery domain? Bet that was a shock!

A: I had been to Hades’ to retrieve my sweet Eurydice and returned, almost, so I knew this place before and now again. Have you seen her; sometimes she slips from view?

Eternity – that’s a damned long time. How to you spend the endless years here?

A: Inquisitor, know ye not that there can be no such thing as time?

What do you miss most about your old. . .life?

A: Amplifiers.

Author Spotlight

*Name and bio.

A: Chris Morris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_(author)

* Tell us about your story for this edition.

A: Evil Angel is a collaboration with my partner in prose, Janet Morris, my personal Beatrice, guide and companion through the literary depths of Hell. It posits a vengeful Medea, about trapping her mythic nemesis, Jason and his celebrity pirate crew in snares fabricated by no less than the Fates themselves—before whom even Satan pauses. Any Hell story fascinates because if written to form, death has no motive force and the storyteller must dig a little deeper to find the hinges of drama and portray rewards of victories which are pyrrhic at best. Does she still yearn for him? Is she exquisitely a victim of her darkest design?

What inspired you to use the character(s) you’ve chosen?

A: I wished to look through Orpheus’ eyes, hear though his ears, and for a fleeting moment field his musical magic midst Medea’s stark malignity.

How did you become involved with this project?

A: I was present at the inception.

Writing for a shared world is challenging, how do you meet that challenge?

A: Janet Morris and I write stories to “bookend” the collection and impart a sense of proximity to the usually very different themes and perspectives our contributors bring. More than that, our faves, Kit and Will, are writers too and impart a writerly camaraderie that extends beyond their episodes to color the character of the series.

Tell us why you chose this story to tell out of so many possible options?

A: Who wouldn’t want to find out how it feels to munched by a frosty leviathan?

What are you currently working on?

A: Still struggling to get the backlist up in trade, Kindle, e- and audio versions. We’re about halfway. Over the past year I learned enough InDesign to be a little bit dangerous and I love to get lost in producing stuff that with any luck will outlive us.

Name the last two books you’ve read – tell us about them.

A: Brideshead Revisited and Tempus Unbound. Waugh is the consummate stylist, able to twist, turn on a dime, fly high above yet touch down instantly in the mind, not just through the speech of his characters. Tempus Unbound is a rarest of rare birds, a late-coming foundational work for Janet’s archetypal sage and his counterpart, Cime.

What are your views on authors offering free books?

A: “Offering” in exchange for…?

*If you could pick any quote about Hell which would be your favourite?

A: “Now I could drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look upon.” —Hamlet

If you could have a dinner party with any man and woman from anywhere and any when who would invite and what would you eat?

A: Jesus…bread.

EXCERPT from “Pirates in Hell.

“Evil Angel” (Goat-Beard Part 2)

Janet Morris and Chris Morris

*

Up the steep the crew of the Argo must climb to attend her parley. Any who faltered would freeze solid on the slope, languish ice-bound for a hundred years — time aplenty to think things over.

“Come ye, bloody Argonauts, and meet your fated punishment,” she whispered, as if Jason’s shipmates could hear her.

Come one, come all, and let demons devour the hindmost.

Medea set the scene about her with a Colchian standard flapping on a pole, a rallying point fit for such a parley, a solemn conference to discuss terms for the Argo’s surrender. Beneath her fleecy mantle she invoked a robe of snowflakes; on her head she made a three-spoked crown. That done, with her fingertip she kindled a fire on her peaty peak, then summoned a brace of gray and stinking fiends and gave them orders.

As the crew of the Argo ascended and the fiends descended to devour any laggards, Medea spotted her quarry: Iolcian Jason still looked twenty; hell so far had been easy on this son of Alcimede. But not much longer would it be so . . .

Screams of the hindmost, being torn asunder by fiends, sounded a welcome fanfare in her ears. In response, the landing party’s rear-guard turned back to help their brethren, while those in the forefront quickened their ascent.

Alongside Jason hurried Argos, shipwright of the Argo; behind him, Meleagros and his beloved Atalanta, a sometime lioness and fleet-footed virgin huntress whom Medea once healed.

Despite the rear-guard’s swords and spears and best efforts, ravenous fiends grabbed stragglers in their jaws.

The luckless begged the icy wind for help or speedy death. But fiends always take their time, torturing their prey before tearing it limb from limb and sitting down to feast.

The sailors in the lead scrambled faster.

Of all those come ashore, nearly a third would never crest the ridge. The remainder plowed on grimly, taking no backward looks.

Many of these heroes Medea knew. Hadn’t she sailed with them to the Colchian grove to steal the fleece of the golden ram, the very mantle she now wore? She thought she spied Zeus’ son Herakles and man-slaughtering Peleus, climbing to either side of Theseus, founder of Athens. Her eyes lingered on Orpheus, Thracian poet, prophet, and father of songs. But those voyages, those feats, belonged to another time — to life, not afterlife. She banished any thought of glad reunion.

Were it not for Jason and his crew and this damnable fleece forever wrapping her shoulders, she might have spent her afterlife in Erebos, officiating as a priestess of Hekate, sending sinners to Tartaros and innocents to the Elysian Fields. Jason! Every wrong, every ill, every misery, every blot began with Jason. Jason it was who’d ruined Medea in life . . . and haunted her ever since. Mad with love of him she’d been, that fateful day she killed their children.

Vengeance, love’s antidote, always comes hard. And costly.

Watching the Argonauts climb, she recalled that few had treated her as equal. But then, she wasn’t equal: she was superior. If among this damned crew a few were female, a few unknown, then hell maketh bedfellows undreamt in life. She had punishments aplenty to dole out to those who’d top the ridge, fit for one and all.

Dark and frowning, Jason gained the summit first and paused, breathing hard, followed closely by four souls new to her.

Who are these?

One was slight-bearded, auburn-haired and tender-mouthed, sloe-eyed and lithe in a leather jerkin, breeches and hose. By his side came a goat-bearded fellow with fleshy cheeks, one sparkly earring, sloping shoulders and puffy pants. In their wake followed a woman lit with a loveliness otherworldly, which swaddled her better than her simple shift and somehow kept away the cold. This woman got help to top the final rise from a big soul robed in brown, stalwart, hirsute and resolute, who used a knotty staff.

Not one of the four had the seafarer’s eye, the windburned lips, the leathern skin earned by facing hellish weather. Nor were they flowing-haired Greeks or tattooed barbarians.

Medea waved a hand at her fire-pit of peat, and it roared high; in the light from its flames she could see the strangers better. “Pirates, are ye? Come to parley for passage out of the Abyss? No intruders do I welcome here.” Before the strangers could respond, she whipped her gaze across them, to her erstwhile lover: “Jason, whom have you brought me? And why?”

“You! You called us here?” Jason rummaged through her soul with wide, reproving eyes. “Pirates, are we, Mother?” He sighed. “Heroes, while we lived. You know the truth, helped make us what you see. In those days, what we took by force and guile we won honorably, not by theft or piracy, but by deeds done to please our gods. And you know it. As for whom we brought — we brought those we need.”

“You’re pirates all, you and yours, Jason: robbers on sea or shore — of goods and hearts and souls.” In that distending moment, Medea wrestled her fatal flaw: she yet found Jason fetching; as much as once she’d loved him, she loved him still: an infuriating weakness, a wound within her riven breast that would not heal. In hell’s own time, that love would turn to hate. Must. For his fate — and his crew’s — she had predestined.

Behind, a shuffle in the crowd of sailors begat Orpheus, elbowing his way to the fore as the sloe-eyed creature by Jason stared hard at her and asked, “And now? Pirates still? Or is it something else? I’ve often said, ‘Where both deliberate, the love is slight.’”

The goat-bearded soul with him added: “And I, that ‘the lunatic, the lover, and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact.’ Pirate once is pirate forever, good for our purpose and for the lords of hell. Orpheus, what say you?”

Medea blinked, dumbstruck by these brazen strangers, so full of themselves and obscure pontifications.

Orpheus, red-haired master of music and poetry, wizardry and augury, unslung a lyre from across his back, then glanced from Jason to Medea to the strangers, and said:

“You ask what I say? I say, beware this sorceress, her caustic hate. One who tears her family to shreds cannot be trusted.” Curling around his lyre, Orpheus plucked one string, one chord, and strummed another. “Set your terms for this parley, old shipmate. Say what you want.”

From the lyre of Orpheus, a theme surrounded the Argonauts. Tones to make Sirens coo, teach trees to dance and rocks to sing, set about seducing Medea’s heart.

“Stop that music, Orpheus! Put by thine instrument of fell design. I know your fey tricks of old. Stay your hands. Part from that lyre. There’ll be no sorcery here but mine.”

The lyrist palmed his strings. Music died a death too curt.

*

 [End of Excerpt]

Links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y8WWKMT/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pirates-in-hell-chris-morris/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_(author)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_in_Hell

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/janet-morris/

https://www.facebook.com/christophercmorrissings/

https://soundcloud.com/christopher-morris

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pirates-in-hell-chris-morris/1126191917?type=eBook

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pirates-in-hell-chris-morris/1126191917?ean=9780997758443

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/JanetMorrisandChrisMorris/

https://www.facebook.com/christophercmorrissings/

Blog/Website

http://www.theperseidpress.com/

https://sacredbander.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/uvmchristine

https://twitter.com/uvmchristine/media

RT: "Christopher Crosby Morris has it all," says Vinnie Colaiuta: Everybody Knows Singing Horse https://t.co/LdYOR5uqGF via @amazon

— janet morris (@uvmchristine) November 25, 2016

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Morris/e/B008L41JNO

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y8WWKMT/

https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Hell-Heroes-Janet-Morris-ebook/

https://www.amazon.com/Chris-Morris/e/B008L41JNO

https://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Hell-Heroes-Janet-Morris/dp/0997758449/

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/series/40812-heroes-in-hell

Hell Week 2017- Day 1 – Joe Bonadonna/Quasimodo

Tags

Fantasy, Hell week, Heroes in Hell, Perseid Press, Pirates, Pirates in Hell

 

Name: Joe Bonadonna

Character Spotlight

About yourself:

*Who are/were you?   Tell us about your life before you came here, and after.

My name, it is Quasimodo. In life, I was once crowned Pope of Fools, for I was and still I am the most ugly and misshapen cathedral bell ringer of them all. The Hunchback of Notre Dame . . . that is who I was and what I am now and forever more. The story, as I was later to learn, is that I was born to a Gypsy tribe, deformed at birth as if possessed by the Devil. My parents switched me with a normal baby girl . . . the one and only Esmeralda, of whom you will know from that most famous novel written about me. Her own bereaved parents had me exorcised, and later they abandoned me, placing me on the Foundling’s Bed of the cathedral. There was I discovered by the Archdeacon himself, Claude Frollo, who raised me, gave me what little education I have and then, when I was old enough, appointed me to be the bell ringer of Notre Dame. I was his foundling, his slave, his whipping post, and his accomplice in many acts of a nefarious nature.

My life, such as it was on earth, was one of misery and hard labour, empty of joy and love and hope. And the pain I suffered, much physical pain, in spite of my great strength. But the bells which I loved so much . . . ah, the bells of my cherished Notre Dame . . . their voices made me deaf, which did much to further my alienation from the society. You see, I was shunned as a monster, a flesh and blood gargoyle, which is what I still am. In Hell it is, perhaps, a little better, for the sights one sees here and the things that exist in the nether regions make me look lovely by comparison.

There is a sculpture of me at the cathedral, on the exterior of the north transept along the Rue du Cloitre-Notre-Dame. I was found on and named after Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter. In Latin, my name means “almost the standard measure.” In other words, “almost human.” Most apropos, don’t you think?

* Why do YOU think you’re in Hell?

I do not think: I know exactly why I am here, in Hell. For my master Claude Frollo, Archdeacon of Notre Dame, I committed many sins and many crimes. But none were so bad as when I threw him to his death from the high places of my beloved cathedral.

Who are your friends/allies here?

Life is strange, the perfect example being that of how Esmeralda, with whom I was switched at birth, (almost a sister, you might say) . . . how she came back into my life so many, many years later. And that story, I am most certain, you know. But here, in Hell, the afterlife is, by far, more strange. Here I have many friends, namely Doctor Victor Frankenstein, the master I gladly and willingly serve. The fine creature he made of his own two hands and brought to life, Adam Frankenstein, is also my friend. And so are Galatea, his beloved; Mary Shelley, the author; the Hellywood actors Jean Harlow and Errol Flynn; Argus the shipbuilder, and so many, many more. I have searched and searched for my beloved Esmeralda but have never found her. It is my hope, it is my prayer that she is not in Hell, for she was no witch in life and was unjustly hanged.

Do you have any enemies here?

One does not exist in Hell without making at least one enemy. In my case, the enemies of Doctor Frankenstein are also my enemies, and for him I would risk even the mortuary of the Undertaker and all his tortures and torments. I love the mad doctor, you see — love him as a son loves his father, for he gave me a home at Goblin Manor, gave me work, and gave me his trust. His enemies, my enemies . . . he and I, or I alone, have dealt with them in one manner or another.

Pirates – is that a word you resent?

And why should I resent such a word I consider to be one of praise? Pirates often ruled their vessels in a most democratic fashion. They are neither prejudiced nor judgmental, and never have I known a bigot among them. But we, Doctor Frankenstein and I, along with our crew, did not sail from New Hell in order to commit the acts of piracy, per se. No, we sailed under the pretence of filming a movie about pirates. But in truth, we sailed in search of the Isle of the Damned and the secret passage out of Hell. We fought many a pirate on the way — airship buccaneers and submarine corsairs, not to mention monsters of land and sea few of us ever knew existed in Hell. Plus, we battled or tried to battle the unknown monster that haunted the Snark, our very fine ship, and preyed upon our crew. No, to me, being a pirate is a noble calling, and I, for one, would gladly sign on and go to sea again, with Doctor Frankenstein as my captain.

 

Author Spotlight

*Name and bio.

My name is Joe Bonadonna, formerly a musician and labourer, now retired and writing as much as I can. To date, I have published three novels: the heroic fantasy Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser, published by iUniverse; the space opera Three Against the Stars, published by Airship 27 Productions; and the sword and sorcery pirate novel, Waters of Darkness, (in collaboration with David C. Smith), published by Damnation Books. For Perseid Press I have stories appearing in Heroika: Dragon Eaters; Poets in Hell, Doctors in Hell, and now Pirates in Hell. I have also written short stories for Griots: Sisters of the Spear (MVmedia); Sinbad: The New Voyages — Vol. 4 (Airship 27 Productions); and Azieran Presents: Artifacts and Relics — Extreme Sword and Sorcery, (Heathen Oracle).) At this time I am waiting to hear back from a publisher regarding my fourth novel, a sword and planet sequel to my Three Against the Stars; I have also submitted a short, space opera story to a new shared-world anthology. In addition, I do some editing on the side, and help out with the Blue Ribbon Arts Initiative, which provides art supplies, toys, games, and other things to children on the autism spectrum; this organization was founded by my friend, author Rebecca Miller and her brilliant, autistic son Max, also an author.

* Tell us about your story for this edition.

In the original Baen Books editions of the Heroes in Hell series, screenwriter/author Bill Kerby (The Rose, starring Bette Midler) created and wrote about the film industry in Hell. I’m a movie junky, especially the old Golden Age Hollywood movies, have some knowledge of the industry and have written 5 unsold screenplays. So Janet Morris, author, editor and series creator, suggested I resurrect the Hellywood film industry, even if it’s just for one story.

My story is called The Pirates of Penance. At heart it’s an old school, pulp-fiction adventure, but with all the tropes, pitfalls, horrors and irony that are unique to Hell. In this story I resurrect the film industry in Hell — or try to, at any rate. Basically, under the guise of filming a pirate movie in Hell, Doctor Frankenstein and Quasimodo, along with silver screen legends Errol Flynn, Jean Harlow, Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Douglas Fairbanks Junior, and a number of others, sail in search of the Isle of the Damned. This all occurs during a time of massive floods plaguing all the nether regions, and the island must be reached before the oceans swallow it up again. From the Isle of the Dead there is purported to be a cave that leads to Hades and up to an exit on Cape Matapan, an island off the coast of Greece. While Flynn is actually shooting a film he hopes to show to the world once they escape, the others are more concerned with escaping Hell. Of course, Hell being Hell, there are dangers and set-backs galore before they eventually reach the island, where things are not what they hoped they’d be, and the futility of their mission hits them with despairing realization.

 

What inspired you to use the character(s) you’ve chosen?

Well, when the project was first announced, I had just re-watched The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, both starring Errol Flynn. The idea to use old, long dead film actors known for playing pirates in the movies — like Flynn, the two Fairbankses, Wallace Beery — and combine them with other historical figures, just seemed like a natural for me, especially because it allowed me to write another pirate adventure. The irony of Hell, the failure of one’s ambitions and projects in life as well as in the afterlife, plus the futility of lost souls, long dead and trying to escape infernity, as we call it, were all right there for the using. The tropes of Hell are amazing, the rules of the shared-universe liberating, rather than constricting. I was able to use those as to further the character studies amidst all the action, create new creatures, ideas, punishments and torments, and to play the ultimate joke on my cast and crew. I was also able to tie this into earlier stories of mine, adding to the overall arc to my characters, as well connect it to events that took place in Hell long before I came on board. It was a long and hard story to write, but also much fun and very rewarding for me, personally.

How did you become involved with this project?

About 4 years ago Janet Morris became aware of me through some articles I wrote for Black Gate online magazine and a review I wrote of Rogues in Hell. She sampled some of my own stories, and I guess she liked my style and, more importantly, my sensibilities, because she asked me to write for Hell. Having the right attitude, sensibility and feeling for Hell is very important, because Heroes in Hell, like Hell itself, is a very special, very extraordinary and unique series. The Pirates of Penance now marks my third appearance in the series. I also have one story in another Perseid Press publication, the heroic fantasy collection Heroika: Dragon Eaters.

What are you currently working on?

Mad Shadows II: The Return of Dorgo the Dowser; another story for Heroes in Hell; some editing for other authors, and hopefully, I’ll be involved in the publication of my fourth novel.

In these days of movies and video games are books really influential?

Not really, these days. I don’t read much because my time is spent writing and editing. I read in other genres from those in which I write, and I occasionally re-read classics of fantasy and science fiction . . . the books that originally inspired me. Very few post-modern films influence me. My best cinematic influences come from silent films and the Golden Age of Hollywood, between 1930 and 1950; it’s amazing what one can learn from the films made back then. I am not a gamer, so video games, computer games and such hold no interest for me. I played a lot of pinball and backgammon in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, so many I can find some inspiration in those.

EXCERPT from your story.

Fading in through a muck-stained window, crimson light illuminates the laboratory of Goblin Manor. Doctor Victor Frankenstein stands there, gazing into the distance as the rising waters of the Lake of Tears threaten to flood New Hell. Dressed in red-flannel shirt, blue pea coat, canvas trousers and heavy black boots, he feels safe and secure high above it all in the Golem Heights — as safe and secure as anyone can ever feel in hell. With the seas and oceans of hell merging, with the Flux causing the always unstable geography of hell to become even more unstable, he wonders if all infernity will soon be flooded.

Turning from the window, Victor makes his way through a maze of tables sagging under a sorcerer’s sanctum sanctorum of crucibles and alembics, and a variety of scientific implements and instruments. Walls of blood-red stone bristle with electrical panels, toggles and switches. A few sputtering torches, set in iron brackets, illuminate the laboratory but cannot chase away the shadows hanging near the vaulted ceiling. Victor’s collection of gizmos and gadgets are as silent as the grave in which his mortal remains lie buried.

Frankenstein reaches his desk, sits in his chair and skims through a pile of reports from Hades, Gehenna and all over infernity. Rivers such as the Styx and the Lethe have either overflowed their banks or gone bone dry. Shorelines in one circle of hell or another have fallen into the sea, while in other areas landmasses have risen where before had only been open water. Even the great Sea of Purgatory has receded to such an extent that islands now poke their crowns above the surface. After the torrents of plagues cast down upon the damned by Erra and his Seven, Sibitti sons-of-bitches, Victor suspects the self-righteous bastard and his brood are responsible for the oceans threatening to swallow everything and everyone whole.

But Victor isn’t worried. Victor doesn’t care.

Victor has a plan.

He dons a stocking cap to conceal his brain, visible through the wire mesh that replaces the top portion of his skull, which had been removed by the Undertaker. It is Victor’s very own brilliant but tortured brain inside the head and body once belonging to Adam, the creature he assembled from parts of dead bodies and to which he had given life. Their brains had been switched by Merlin the magician, as part of a prior business agreement.

Still floundering in a private sea of guilt and sorrow over the part his vaccine had played in obliterating thousands of damned souls, Victor wishes he could remember the formula for his serum. But all his notes were destroyed when his Crapple Slablet crashed and burned; Satan himself then stole the vaccine and made sure Victor could never tell another lost soul about it. Soon afterwards, scores of black-market versions of the vaccine were being sold all over hell under various generic names to damned fools seeking protection against the ravages of the plagues sweeping the underworld. If he had even one drop of his vaccine, Victor would administer it to himself and go gently into sweet obliteration, all sins expunged in past, present or future.

A ship’s bell rings three times, echoing loudly throughout his quiet laboratory. He turns in his chair as a trap door in the stone floor pops open. A thick length of rope shoots into the air like a stage magician’s prop, standing stiff and straight without attaching itself to anything. The whistling of a sea chantey announces the arrival of Quasimodo, who emerges from the opening in the floor, climbing the rope as nimbly as he once scaled the walls of Notre Dame.

“Ahoy, le Capitaine Docteur!” the hunchback said in his quaint French accent. He gave Victor a sharp salute. “I ask the autorisation to come aboard.”

“Who taught you the rope trick?” asked Victor, rising from his chair.

“Harry Houdini.”

Victor eyed his lab assistant with amusement. The hunchback sported white knickers, a flowery shirt open at the front, black shoes and a black Monmouth hat. He resembled Pip, from Moby Dick, although with his humped back he looked more a spawn of the infamous whale than the frail cabin boy. Victor noticed that Quasimodo’s clothes were dirty, torn and stained.

“It’s getting bad out there?” he asked.

Quasimodo gave a lopsided shrug. “No worse than it was when the plagues were raging, Docteur. Hell will forever be hellish, no?”

***

Links:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/BonadonnasBookshelf/

https://www.facebook.com/pulpfictionrules

 

Blog/Website

http://dorgoland.blogspot.com/

 

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Bonadonna/e/B009I1KYIK

 

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5464289?shelf=read

Swift Six and Blog Tour – Janine Ashbless – Erotic Romance/Fantasy

Tags

Author Interview, Blog tour, Erotic Romance, Fantasy, Swift Six

Name:  Janine Ashbless

What attracts you to the genre in which you write?

I write erotic romance and erotica, mostly with fantasy or paranormal settings. It’s the perfect genre for me: I can build whole unique worlds with dramatic settings and life-or-death plots, and at the heart of the story is all the tension and fear and challenge of passionate attraction. I know my readers are going to get a huge kick out of the sex scenes, but I can also use the sex to explore depths of character and pivotal moments of decision.

And yeah, I think love and sex are two of the most important things in life. They can transform it, destroy it, or make it worth living. So why would you not want to write about them?

What piece of writing advice do you wish you’d known when you started your writing adventures?

You are never going to please everyone, no matter what you write or how well you do it. So write for those who love what you do, and don’t worry about the others.

 If you could have dinner with any famous person or character who would you chose?

The god Dionysus … The wine would be great and the entertainment truly memorable!

 Who has been the greatest influence on your own work?

My greatest literary inspiration is Angela Carter, with her wonderful lyrical fairy tales in the collection “The Bloody Chamber.”

 Do you think the e-book revolution will do away with print?

No – there’s something about physical books that people love. In the UK this year the sales for e-books fell for the first time, and the sales of paperbacks rose!

Speaking personally, I buy both. But when I’m hunting for something to read, I’m much more likely to pick up a paperback – and if I read one I love, then I’ll buy that author again.

 Which 3 books would you take to a desert island and why?

The Lord of the Rings – because it’s a book I can get lost in every time I read it.

The SAS Survival Handbook – for obvious practical reasons!

A large book of blank pages – so I could write!

  

Please introduce yourself (250 words or so):

Janine Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure. She likes to write about magic and myth and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.

Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000. She’s also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora’s Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology ‘Geek Love’.

Born in Wales, Janine now lives in the North of England with her husband and two rescued greyhounds. She has worked as a cleaner, library assistant, computer programmer, local government tree officer, and – for five years of muddy feet and shouting – as a full-time costumed Viking. Janine loves goatee beards, ancient ruins, minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake and eating it, and holidaying in countries with really bad public sewerage.

Her work has been described as “Hardcore and literate” (Madeline Moore) and “Vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love.” (Portia Da Costa)

You can find Janine on Facebook or at her website or blog.

Tell us about your book(s) – title, genre etc (short)

In Bonds of the Earth is the new paranormal erotic romance by Janine Ashbless, and is the second in the Book of the Watchers trilogy.

 

“Broad at the shoulders and lean at the hips, six foot-and-then-something of ropey muscle, he looks like a Spartan god who got lost in a thrift store. He moves like ink through water. And his eyes, when you get a good look at them, are silver. Not gray. Silver. You might take their inhuman shine for fancy contact lenses. You’d be wrong.”

 Milja Patek’s bloodline were sworn to guard the fallen angel imprisoned beneath their family church, until Milja fell in love and set him free. Now she has to learn to navigate her new life as wife and plaything to Azazel.

Angel or demon, protector or tyrant, right or wrong, Everything Milja once knew has been flipped upside down and all she can do is follow her heart, even if that means waging war against Heaven and releasing the rest of the fallen.

Unafraid to tackle the more complex issues surrounding good and evil in mainstream religion, Janine has created a thought-provoking and immersive novel which sets a new standard for paranormal erotic romance. The first in the series, Cover Him With Darkness, was released in 2014 by Cleis Press and received outstanding reviews.

In Bonds of the Earth is published by Sinful Press and is due for release on March 1st, 2017.

 

 Ebook:

Amazon

Apple

Kobo

Google Play

Barnes and Noble

 

Print:

Support your small publisher and buy direct

Waterstones

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

Goodreads

 

*****

GIVEAWAY!

Make sure to follow the whole tour—the more posts you visit throughout, the more chances you’ll get to enter the giveaway. The tour dates are here: http://writermarketing.co.uk/prpromotion/blog-tours/currently-on-tour/janine-ashbless-3/

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/8b9ec5be178/?

 

Blog tour organized by Writer Marketing Services.

 

Excerpt from In Bonds of the Earth

Wrapping the cheap cotton throw from the foot of the bed around my bare body, I padded through to the doorway. The Archangel Michael stood in the middle of my small apartment, looking about him at the book shelves and the pictures. A paperback copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo slipped from his hand back onto the low table.

“Hello, Milja. Nice place. Has he moved his toothbrush in yet?”

It was like waking to find a giant bird of prey in my tiny living room; he looked wildly unsuited to a domestic setting and way too big for it, even with wings furled. In fact, with that Roman nose and those unblinking amber eyes, there was something distinctly golden eagle-like about him. If he stretched out he could knock over walls, I thought.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked. “This is my home. You can’t just come barging in!”

“You’re right,” he said, looking startled. “I have to have your permission. No, hold on, wait…that’s vampires. Shame.”

I pursed my lips. “Well, God certainly did not hold back on the sarcasm when he made you guys.”

He smirked. If you’re that good-looking, even a less-than-warm smile can be a weapon of devastating charm. Turning to the couch, he sat down with arms draped over the back and knees spread. It was not so much an invitation as a claiming of territory.

“What do you want?” I kept my voice hard, even as I thought of the icon of Saint Michael that had stood guard over the key in my father’s church. That holy painting had always made me feel nervous as a child, and he was no less intimidating in the flesh. His piercing gaze rested lightly upon me, with all the gentleness of a sword-point.

“Nothing.”

His rigger boots were caked in dried mud, I noticed, and flaking on my rug. I wished he would blink. It still creeped me out, even though Azazel should have inured me to it. “Angels aren’t supposed to lie. What are you doing here?”

“Waiting.”

“So, what…you’re sitting guard over me until Azazel comes back? Is that your plan?”

“He’s too much of a coward to face me. Runs every time.”

“If that’s the way you want to call it.”

He looked at the kitchen door. “I see you have a kettle. You got any tea? I like that Earl Grey stuff. Tastes like flowers.”

“I know the rules, you know. You can’t actually do anything to me.”

“True enough. And I’m not stopping you leaving, if that’s worrying you.”

“I can move out. Get a new place.”

“That’s fine, I’ll find you. This apartment’s a bit small for the two of us, to be honest.”

I clenched my jaw, weighing my options. “Okay,” I said, and dropped my wrap to reveal my naked body, in all its post-coital salty glow.

That wiped the smile off his lips. “Don’t play those games,” he growled, sitting up and looking away from me.

Love is Azazel’s weak spot. Shame is theirs. They’re terrified of their own human flesh.

“What? Does this make you uncomfortable? That’s a pity, seeing as how it’s my house and I like to walk around it naked.”

“You are shameless.” His gaze was sliding all over the place, not daring to settle on me.

“I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” I hefted my breasts and jiggled them. “They’re my tits. In my apartment. If you don’t want to see, clear out.”

“Put your robe back on,” he rasped.

“Oops,” I said. “Did I drop it?” Turning my back to him, I spread my feet and, straight-legged, bent over to pick the fabric up again. Nice and slow…

He moved so fast he’d launched me across the room and onto my bed before I even realized he was out of his seat. The abused mattress twanged in alarm. It knocked the wind out of me—and more than that, shocked me half to death. I wasn’t in the least bit hurt, not even bruised, but I hadn’t expected him to touch me at all, under the rules. Maybe the Boatman sailed closer to the wind than I’d bargained for.

“Don’t do that, whore!” he barked, leaning into my face. He looked furious. I knew why. It takes a human decades to learn how to deal with all the things that come with an adult body—all those hormones and instincts—without losing control. Angels never had the advantage of a gradual introduction.

I had two choices: surrender or fight. I bared my teeth and snarled right back at him, matching his rage and contempt. “Or what? You’re going to rape me? ’Cause I think that might just count as a fall from Grace, don’t you? And then you’d be royally fucked, Mister Michael.”

He recoiled, drawing himself up in undisguised horror. I took advantage of the gap between us to roll over and pull the drawer of my bedside cabinet open, pulling out the silicon rabbit sex toy I’d been given at my graduation party. I hadn’t used it in months, I couldn’t even remember if there were any batteries in it, and I certainly wasn’t feeling horny, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

“Wanna watch?” I asked, spreading my legs wide. “Because that’s what us girls do when we’re home alone these modern days. You can go into the other room if it squicks you out to see. Then you’ll only have to listen to the noises I make.”

He turned on his heel and stomped away, slamming his hands into the doorframe hard enough to crack the wood. But he didn’t leave altogether. He was just that bit too stubborn.

 

Monsters and Myth – Dragons

Tags

Celtic Myths, dragons, Fantasy, Heroic fantasy, Heroika, Monsters and Myth, mythology, St George and the Dragon, Wales, Welsh Dragon

This post  previously appeared as part of https://jenniferloiske.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/author-interview-meet-a-l-butcher/ which featured last year to promote Heroika: Dragon Eaters 

http://www.amazon.com/HEROIKA-DRAGON-S-E-Lindberg-ebook/dp/B00VFVCQRS/

Dragons – why do they captivate us?

Dragons have been part of mythology for centuries. The Welsh, for example, have Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon as the national emblem – a dragon passant (standing with one foot raised) on a green and white background. Although the currently flag is relatively new the mythology of the Welsh Dragon is at least fifteen hundred years old, possible even Roman. The kings of Aberffraw used it to symbolise their power and authority after the Romans left. The first recorded use of it to Symbolise Wales is from the 9^th Century (Nennius – Historica Brittonum).  Geoffrey of Monmouth linked the dragon to the Arthurian legends – after all King Arthur’s father was Uther PENDRAGON, and so again the dragon is intrinsically interwoven with British myth.

Henry VII (Henry Tudor) had a dragon on his coat of arms – the Welsh heritage again coming to the fore and during the reign of his son, the might Henry VIII the red dragon standard was often flown on Royal Navy ships.

In the Mabinogion the Red Dragon fights the invading White Dragon and his pained shrieks cause women to miscarry, animals to perish and crops to fail. The king of Britain (King Lludd) visits his French brother Llefelys and, on his advice, digs a huge pit, filled with mead and covered with a cloth. The Dragons cease their battle, drink the mead and fall asleep, still covered in the cloth. They are then trapped beneath Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia. Centuries later King Vortigern attempts to build a fort there, and every night the castle foundations are demolished. Wise men tell him to find a boy with no father and sacrifice him – to appease whatever is causing the problem. That boy is Merlin, who will become the Great Wizard, and he dismisses this advice and tells the king about the dragons. The two dragons are freed and continue their fight – the Red Dragon symbolising the people of Vortigern and the White Dragon the Saxons. The latter is defeated – thus these are the Saxons who failed to subdue the people of Vertigorn who would become the Welsh.

Sources: http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofWales/The-Red-Dragon-of-Wales/

Dragons symbolise great power and strength. They are, perhaps the most legendary of beasts and to defeat one (or field one) was only the territory of the greatest of heroes.  Chinese, Indian, Malayan, Japanese, Khymer, Phillipino, Korea, Catalan, French, Greek, British, Germanic, Scandanavian, Slavic, Romanian, Albanian, Pre-Islamic, Tartar, Judeo-Christian and Turkish mythology all speak of dragons, wyverns, wyrms or basilisks.  The ancient Egyptians worshipped a crocodile named the Messah – which later became a dragon, and the sign of Kingship. Think about it – the Nile Crocodile is a supreme predator, a feared monster and little can best it. What better ideal for kingship – powerful, terrifying and unbeatable.

Then of course we have the symbolism of dragons as the ultimate evil – the devil or other wicked beast destroying the good Christians and being vanquished by a Christian Hero. On the other hand Chinese Dragons are seen as lucky.

Dragon literature is diverse – Christian mythology (as mentioned), Norse, Celtic, Beowulf, St George, to name but a few. And more modern writers such as Tolkien, Cindy Lyle, George RR Martin, Cressida Cowell, JD Hallowell, David Gaider and many, many more feature a dragon of one sort or another. Here’s a challenge – type Dragon in the search engine of Good Reads – I tried and there were over 100 pages of books with ‘Dragon’ in the title and that’s just the beginning.  Movies, video games, table-top games and toys feature the most legendary of monsters. Dragons are all around us – some kind and benevolent and some much less so.  We are culturally bound with Draco and his kind.

St George and the Dragon 

This part originally posted here:

https://libraryoferana.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/fantasy-its-everywhere-part-2-st-george-and-the-dragon/

I am British, and Britain has a very rich heritage of myth and folklore; we have dragons, we have knights who slay them, we have mythical kings and magic swords, we have monsters inhabiting Scottish Lochs, we have fairies, pixies and ghosts aplenty, we have heroes and antiheroes.  Yet many people scoff at fantasy, thinking it is simply elves, dwarves or similar; a genre read by geeks and nerds. Well yes, in part it is, but fantasy and folklore have been with us from the dawn of time in one form or another.

Let’s look at one of the best known English myths – that of St George and the Dragon.

Most accounts claim St George was born in Cappadocia, in what is now Turkey, of Darian origin. He enlisted in the Roman army, and quickly achieved a reputation for his physical strength bravery, loyalty and courage and he achieved a rank of Tribunus Militum, in charge of over 1000 men. He was martyred during the reign Emperor Diocletian in 303 AD in Lydda, Palestine, for refusing to persecute Christians, when Diocletion brought in edicts against what was then a reasonably small but vociferous sect. Including the burning of churches, the destruction of holy scriptures and the execution of Christians. George defended the Christians and their faith and was imprisoned, tortured and executed. There are various accounts of is martyrdom, some claiming it took seven years as God restored him to life three times. His fame was carried as far as Russia, with his head was carried to Rome.   His emblem of the red cross on a white background was carried on the tabards and shields of crusader knights. It is also the flag of England and forms the red cross part of the Union Flag of Great Britain. St George is the patron saint of England, taking the role from St Edward the Confessor who is now often forgotten. His tomb attracted pilgrims, and his fame spread when Richard the Lionheart introduced his military cult to England during the crusades and the Battle of Acre, before this his cult appeared in Byzantium.  John Cabot carried his emblem to Newfoundland and both Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake flew his standard. It was also carried by the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower.

Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legends (13^th Century) speaks of him in Silene in Libya. Another 10^th Century account places St George in the fictional area of Lasia, ruled by a tyrannical emperor called Silinus. The area had a lake, inhabited by a venomous dragon, local inhabitants would feed it sheep to keep it passive, and then when these failed to satisfy it, children were chosen at random. One day the lottery fell on the king’s daughter, the king offers half his kingdom if his daughter was spared. This is an idea which appears in other mythology – the king – unable to defeat a monster offers his daughter and riches to a hero. St George, the knight, happened to be passing and wounding the dragon with his lance (and with God’s blessing)  then capturing the dragon with the princess’s girdle allowed it to be led by the noble lady to the city gates, where St George converted them to Christianity and duly slew the dragon.

In some accounts he was the son of an English Lord, Lord Albert of Coventry and his mother died in childbirth. The babe was stolen by a ‘wild-woman’ of the woods (possibly a witch or gypsy) but he eventually outwits her and becomes a knight. Of course after the slaying of the dragon and rescue of the princess he married the maiden, returned to England and lived happily ever after… Although as with many legends another version states he faces a second dragon, in Warwickshire, kills it but subsequently dies of its poison.

Of course this is a religious myth, and many would say not fantasy as such – the dragon represents evil, and those who slay them champions of Christianity. He is also believed to have protected horses from witchcraft – one should hang a flint with a hole over the stable door with verse depicting him vanquishing a hag. But there is more than religious allegory, he epitomised courtly and chivalrous values; he was a warrior, saviour of damsels in distress and vanquisher of monsters.  And some would say religion uses elements we class as fantasy, and ideas which appear in religion appear in myth and folklore. The two are intertwined. The more magical elements of the myth probably appeared after the Reformation, with the overtly Christian inferences stripped out by the Protestants and the more romantic elements of the story take the fore.

His heart (allegedly) lies in Windsor and was a favoured relic of King Henry V, who invoked him at the siege of Agincourt (1415), where the English were victorious against the French, but later kings have claimed his protection and as the patron saint of England his influence is firmly entrenched.   There are other local English myths – including one in an Essex village where a dragon (probably a crocodile escaped from the king’s menagerie) was killed by a local nobleman – one Sir George Marney.    The Uffington White Horse, in Berkshire, England (an ancient white chalk horse cut into the landscape) has a dragon myth.  There is a hill named Dragon Hill, is claimed by Thomas Hughes in his book The Scouring of the White Horse (1859) to have been the site of the slaying of the dragon by ‘King George’. The bare patch is supposed to be where the blood of the dragon spilled, nothing will grow. Hughes cites another region, Aller in Somerset, where a shepherd tells of a hill which saw the death of the dragon and the burial of its slayer. The horse at Uffington is itself curious being linked with Alfred the Great, (878 AD) Hengist the Anglo Saxon leader, Celtic (100BC) but in fact has been in existence since the Bronze Age – around 1000BCE. Brinsop in Herefordshire also claims ownership of St George – its parish church has a medieval carving of the deed being done. The dragon apparently residing in the local ‘Dragon’s Well’ and the next village being known as Wormsley – ‘worm’ or ‘wyrm’ being an alternate word for dragon.

Heroika: Dragon Eaters 

This brings me to Heroika: Dragon Eaters. This anthology turns the tables. Our dragons are not the nice sort. They are the alpha predator, the scourge of land, water and sky, they are true monsters. Only the bravest, most desperate or foolhardy take them on and fewer life to tell the tale. Dragon Eaters came from an idea from fantasy author Janet Morris – who wanted a ‘snake eaters’ type of anthology. The best of the best fighting the worst of the worst you might say. What was born was seventeen diverse tales from ancient mythic to futuristic and steampunk. They share a theme, albeit a loose one, and all types of dragons are slayed, vanquished and devoured. I suppose you could say the winners eat the losers. As you’d expect it is filled with blood, scales, fire and magic, swords, airships, flying beasts and so very much more.

Do you have a favourite dragon story? If so feel free to comment on it.

http://www.royalsocietyofstgeorge.com/history_of_st_george.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dragons_in_mythology_and_folklore

http://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca16.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George_and_the_Dragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Legend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dragons_in_literature