Not a Blog

Three Kings, One Throne

March 21, 2023 at 8:14 am
Profile Pic

((No, no, not the Iron Throne.   An entirely different throne, on an entirely different world.   There are lots of worlds, you know.   Lots of books.   Lots of thrones)).

The queen is dead.   Long live the king.

Ah… but which king?   Charles III, you say?   Well, maybe in this world.   But not in the world of the Wild Cards, which diverged from our own reality on September 15, 1946, when Jetboy died in the skies over Manhattan.   History was never the same.

Elizabeth II never took the throne of the United Kingdom in that world.   It was her younger sister Margaret who ascended after the passing of their father, King George VI, and it is Queen Margaret I whose long reign has just come to an end there.   Her eldest son is about to succeed her as King Henry IX… but his younger brother has his own designs on the crown, and dreams of being Richard IV… and if the whispers can be believed, there may be another claimant as well, a joker prince hidden away for half a century.

Who will claim the throne?  To find out you’ll need to check out THREE KINGS, volume twenty-nine in the Wild Cards series (but have no fear, you do not need to read the first twenty-eight to enjoy this one).  Tor is releasing the trade paperback edition today, and you will find it at your local bookstore or your favorite online bookseller.

(

Melinda M. Snodgrass stepped up as editor this time around… no easy task, as THREE KINGS is a mosaic novel, with the storylines interwoven from start to finish.   The writing team consisted of Melinda herself, Peter Newman, Mary Ann Mohanraj, Peadar O Guilin, and Caroline Spector.   Featured characters included Double Helix, the Green Man, Badh, the Seamstress, Enigma, and the aforementioned three wannabee kings.   Yours truly was the assistant editor.

Some of you like signed books, I know.   Have no fear: we will have them soon at Beastly Books in Santa Fe, autographed by both of the editors, Melinda and yours truly.   The other signatures you’ll need to run down yourself.   You can place your orders with Beastly at https://www.beastlybooks.com/

Beastly Books has signed copies of all the other Wild Cards books as well… along with autographed editions (hardcovers and paperbacks both) of that other series of mine, the one where the throne is made of iron.   (Queen Elizabeth II visited our GOT set in Belfast once, and declined to sit in it.   Smart woman.   That thing is dangerous.  All those rusty old swords.  You could cut yourself).

Current Mood: busy busy

Cooters Take Wisconsin

March 15, 2023 at 7:47 pm
Profile Pic

VERY pleased to announce that NIGHT OF THE COOTERS kicked ass and took names at this year’s Midwest Weirdfest in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, winning the festival laurel as the Best Short.

It’s the third victory for our little movie since we hit the festival circuit.   COOTERS was also named Best Sci-Fi at the LA Shorts Film Festival back in November, and again at the New York Shorts earlier this year.

NIGHT OF THE COOTERS is based on the short story by the one and only Howard Waldrop, adapted for the screen by Joe R. Lansdale, directed by and starring Vincent d’Onofrio, produced by Trioscope and Lumenscape.    The film is not in general release yet, but we’re out on the circuit, so look for it at a film fest near you.   Next up on our calendar, looks like, will be Atlanta.   See you there.

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Oh, So True

February 26, 2023 at 9:54 am
Profile Pic

Tags:

Me and the Rock

February 23, 2023 at 10:53 am
Profile Pic

That blog post of mine about my inspiration for Casterly Rock got widely noticed, it seems.   Even on the original Rock, the one at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula.  They wanted to know more about my visit to Gibraltar, so I did a zoom interview with the GBC.

I really need to get back there one day.   I want to return to Morocco, Granada, Seville, Toledo, Madrid, Barcelona, and Asturias as well… oh, and to Portugal too.   Lisbon and Porto are amazing.

But not until I finish WINDS OF WINTER.

Current Mood: hopeful hopeful

This, That, T’other Thing

February 19, 2023 at 8:53 am
Profile Pic

Lots of things going on, hard to keep up, let alone blog about it all.

Let’s see… well, big news, we wrapped filming on the second season of DARK WINDS a few days ago, with several days of shooting in Monument Valley.   This is the Navajo detective series we’re doing for AMC, based on the fantastic Joe Leaphorn/ Jim Chee novels of the late great Tony Hillerman.   The first season was largely based on LISTENING WOMEN, with some of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS folded in.   The new season completes the PEOPLE OF DARKNESS storyline.   We got some great reviews for season one — and I really hope we get some Emmy attention too, though the show ran last June, and people do forget — and they tell me season two is even better.   If you missed season one, you can still catch it streaming on AMC+.  Post production is just starting on season two, no release date yet, but I’m thinking summer, maybe spring.

(Please note that I did not use “Winds” in the title of this blog.   The last time I did that, the internet went nuts.   Guys, gals, c’mon, Tony Hillerman wrote and published THE DARK WIND decades before I ever dreamed of Westeros).

On other fronts, we’re still working on a Wild Cards television series.   It’s… sigh… “in development,” which means… hell, nobody knows what it means.   But if we can get it up and running, it will be a fun show.   The world of the Wild Cards as a big as the Marvel or DC multiverses, with thirty-one volumes published to date and more on the way, forty odd authors, hundreds of stories, a vast lineup of characters.   This particular take on the world is based largely on FORT FREAK, and centered on Jokertown.

For a glimpse into what it means to adapt a book or story for television, check out David Anthony Durham’s latest blog post on the Wild Cards website, “A Tale of A Tail.”  You can find it at https://www.wildcardsworld.com/a-tale-of-a-tail/

And check out the rest of the website while you’re there.   We’ve got a ton of blog posts and other content for Wild Cards fans to explore.

Oh… shifting gears again… anyone here from Wisconsin?   If so, watch out: the Cooters are coming to Eau Claire.

Yes, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS has been officially accepted into the Midwest Weirdfest.

http://www.midwestweirdfest.com/

Based on the classic short story by Howard Waldrop, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS tells the tale of the day the Martians invaded Pachuco, Texas.   Vincent d’Onofrio directed the short film, and  stars as Sheriff Lindley.   Trioscope did the effects for us.

Here’s our trailer:

Weirdfest will be screening our short on March 4, we’re told.   They have a lot of other… ah, weird… movies to showcase too, so if you’re anywhere near Eau Claire, get your tickets now.

And for all you other Waldropians out there, well, this is just the start.   MARY-MARGARET ROAD-GRADER finished shooting here in Santa Fe in November, with Steven Paul Judd directing.    That one looks to be a lot of fun as well.   We’re deep in post now.   Watch this space for further news.

There’s more, there’s always more, but I don’t have the time right now.   Back to work.

Current Mood: busy busy

Before We Were Us

February 15, 2023 at 7:18 pm
Profile Pic

We all have to start somewhere, even National Treasures like Howard Waldrop.

Howard — or H’ard, as our mutual friend Gardner Dozois used to call him — came into this world on September 15, 1946, which makes him even older than me.  (Yes, that is also the day Jetboy died and the wild card virus was loosed upon an unsuspecting world, which is not as coincidental as you might think).   He started making up stories almost immediately, before he could even talk.   I think his first word was “Shemp,” but that may be an urban legend.    It was a couple of years before he started writing, but once his little hands were strong enough to start pounding the keys on a manual typewriter, there was no stopping him.   He wrote and wrote and wrote.   And no one wrote like H’ard.

Eventually people began publishing his stories.  Fanzine editors at first.   Howard was there at the birth of comics fanzines in the 1960s, the same as I was.   That was how we met, back in 1962, when I bought a copy of BRAVE & BOLD #28 (Starro the Conquerer, yay!) for a quarter.   Howard had only paid a dime for it, so he made a big profit.   He was always a canny businessman.    We started corresponding after that, when stamps were only three cents, although we did not meet in person until a convention in Kansas City in 1972.

Those were heady days in comics fandom, and for me and Howard too.   We both began to publish stories around the same time  (Publish, not sell, no one was paying us a penny) in fanzines like CORTANA, HERO, and STAR-STUDDED COMICS, the big photo offset zine from the Texas Trio.   (Howard lived in Texas.  I did not).   I was writing amateur superhero stories starring characters created by the Trio, like Powerman and Dr. Weird, and some of my own creation, like Manta Ray, the White Raider, and Garizan the Mechanical Warrior.   Howard, though publishing in comics fanzines, stayed clear of superfolks (well, until Jetboy).   His stories featured Roman legionaries, the Three Musketeers, hardboiled PIs in small Texas towns, a swordsman called  Wanderer, the Flying Wing, and… well, pretty much anything and everything.

None of us knew quite what to make of Howard, or his stories.   But we loved them.

In  the due course of time, the prozines started to take note as well.   Howard’s first professional sale was a story called “Lunchbox,” which the legendary John W. Campbell Jr. bought for ANALOG a few weeks before he died.   I made my first sale right around the same time, a story called “The Hero,” to GALAXY.   Other sales followed, for both of us.    Eventually both of us had published enough stories to publish collections.   Howard called his HOWARD WHO?

But we knew.

He did not include everything in HOWARD WHO? though.   He left out some of his early professional sales, and of course all those fanzine stories.   Some of those had been published on ditto’ed fanzines that were fading more with every passing day, and were in danger of being lost to the ages.

We couldn’t have that.   So I got together with my friend Bradley Denton (an amazing writer himself, author of BUDDY HOLLY IS ALIVE AND WELL ON GANYMEDE, which really needs to be a movie), and we put together a collection of Howard’s early work, most of it long out of print.   We call it H’ARD STARTS: The Early Waldrop.

I’ve never edited an anthology that was more fun.   We’ve got the Wanderer stories here, we’ve got Howard’s con reports (including his account of our first meeting), we’ve got “Lunchbox” and “Billy Big-Eyes” and “My Sweet Lady Jo,” and the never-before published “Davy Crockett Shoots the Moon,” a couple of plays he wrote in college, his essays for Crawdaddy (the one about the Flying Wing still moves me), even a sketch he wrote for Red Skelton, who did not buy it.   (Imagine if he had, and Howard had gone on to a career writing comedy for television.   That’s a truly Waldropian alternate world).

But there’s more than just fiction here.   Brad sat down with Howard for days, and compiled an amazing set of interviews about the history of every one of these pieces.   Howard’s recollections are not always accurate (I was there for some of them), but they are funny, and moving, and give us a peek into his own life, and the lost world we lived in during the 60s and 70s.

And now Subterranean Press is bringing it out, in one of their gorgeous limited edition hardcovers.

Here’s the pre-order page:   https://subterraneanpress.com/hstew/

All the money from the sale of H’ARD STARTS will be going to Howard himself.

Oh, and I almost forgot.   All of the books are SIGNED.   By Brad Denton.   By yours truly.   And by the one and only Howard Waldrop, his own self, sage of Austin, father of Jetboy, National Treasure.

Get yours now.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

NEW WILDCARDS Pairing Up Cover!

February 13, 2023 at 6:25 am
Profile Pic

Hey Gang,

Here comes some new work from the WildCards World, and here’s a first look at the new cover with our fun tie in concept coming to light.

We hope you love it as much as we do!

AVAILABLE  7/11/23

THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MINIONS OF FEVRE RIVER.

Current Mood: artistic artistic

Lost and Found

February 7, 2023 at 9:15 am
Profile Pic

“You can buy anything you might desire from Gray Alys.   But it is better not to.”

Those were the opening words of my short story “In the Lost Lands,” first published in the DAW anthology AMAZONS II  in 1982.   In the first decade or so of my career most of what I wrote was science fiction, set amidst the Thousand Worlds, the shared background of dozens of my stories and my first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT.   “In the Lost Lands” was a bit of a departure; a pure fantasy.  (I loved fantasy just as much as SF, but back in the 70s and 80s there was not much of a market for fantasy shorts).   It was meant to be the first in a series of stories about Gray Alys, a mysterious sorceress in a distant, magical realm, who provides her patrons with whatever they might wish… if they are foolish enough, to buy from her.   You deal with Gray Alys at your peril.

I wanted to write six or eight or ten Gray Alys stories, then put them all together in a collection… or perhaps a “fix up” novel.   That was a common approach back in those days.   And one I used myself with another character, Haviland Tuf.  I wrote a series of Tuf stories, then an interstitial to bridge them all together, and published them as TUF VOYAGING.

Alas, for whatever reason, I never wrote that second Gray Alys story.  (I did begin one, long ago.   Got two pages, I think, then set it aside, and never returned to it).   Why?  Damned if I know.   It was a long time ago.    I always liked the character, though.

That’s why it thrills me to announce that she will soon be appearing on the big screen.   IN THE LOST LANDS, the movie, wrapped filming in Poland a few weeks ago!   Paul W.S. Anderson, director of MONSTER HUNTER, EVENT HORIZON, and the RESIDENT EVIL series, helmed the picture.   Milla Jovovich stars as Gray Alys, and Dave Bautista as Boyce.   Constantin Werner (PAGAN QUEEN) served as writer and producer.

IMDB has information on the rest of the cast.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4419684/

We’ve just started the post production process, and there’s a lot of special effects and other work yet to do, so IN THE LOST LANDS likely won’t be appearing at your local cinema until some time in 2024.    We are also hoping to do a tie-in graphic novel, which will include both my original story (quite short, at 6,000 words or so) and the larger, darker, more expansive world of the film.   That’s still in early days, though.

And who knows?   If the gods are good, and IN THE LOST LANDS turns out to be a hit, maybe we’ll get to tell the further adventures of Gray Alys after all.   I have a sheet of ideas around here somewhere…

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Tags: ,

Reaching Out

January 18, 2023 at 3:17 pm
Profile Pic

You’ve all read about GRRM’s Jean Cocteau Cinema and Beastly Books here before. Now, with other ventures on the horizon, we’ve unified the realm under the moniker Highgarden Entertainment.  To keep you up to date with current events, programming and exclusive content please consider subscribing to Highgarden Entertainment’s patreon at patreon.com/grrm

When you become a patron you’ll get exclusive content from  Beastly Books, the Jean Cocteau Cinema and GRRM! You’ll also get discounts, merch and an inside look through “Highgarden Entertainment: Inside the World of George RR Martin” with exclusive video and photo content. This is a great chance for anyone interested in the other aspects of George’s  life that include the bookstore Beastly Books and movie theater Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Subscribe now and you can see the full video showcasing the original table top games that inspired Wild Cards!

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MINIONS AT FEVRE RIVER

Words For Our Times

January 17, 2023 at 8:04 am
Profile Pic

Current Mood: gloomy gloomy