Lord Jago Wants You

March 29, 2025 at 8:56 am

Lord Jago Branok is having a party at Loveday House.

Truth be told, he has a party every month. No two are ever the same. But nothing is ever the same at Loveday, his lordship’s rambling mysterious (some say haunted) manse, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea on Keun Island, off the Atlantic coast of Cornwall. It’s a queer place, Keun,. Three miles of mudflats and an ancient stone causeway connect the rocky island to the Cornish mainland during low tide, but when the tide comes roaring in… fast as a galloping horse, as the locals say… the road is submerged and Keun becomes a true island, accessible only by boat.

The island has been inhabited, off and on, for millennia. Archeologists have found Stone Age cairns there, and the jagged remnants of standing stones larger than any of those at Stonehedge. A ringfort stood atop the island’s sheer black cliffs during the Dark Ages; later a crude castle of rough-hewn stone went up in its place. For hundreds of years Keun was the stronghold of a clan of reavers and pirates known as the Hounds of the Sea, who raided and plundered up and down the Cornish coasts and into Wales and England. It was from them the island got its name; keun being Cornish for ‘hound.’ They were finally extinguished in 1308 by Piers Gaveston, new-made 1^st Earl of Cornwall, who put to death every member of the clan and razed their castle. Legends claim that the last surviving hound pronounced a curse on Gaveston as he died.

Thereafter the island remained uninhabited for several centuries, save for seabirds and an occasional fisherman. The fisher folk did not like to stay overnight, however; it was said the island was haunted. There were also tales of merfolk in the waters surrounding Keun Island; some stories spoke of beautiful mermaids who lured sailors to their doom, others of more grotesque creatures, not unlike the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Humanity returned to the island in the 1500s. A new castle arose atop the cliffs on the seaward side of the island, and a fishing village on the landward side. Over the years half a dozen noble families came and went, leaving legends of their own behind,. The last and greatest of the lordly manors on Keun was called Loveday Castle, the seat of the family St. Gerren…. but when the last of the line, the widowed Lady Morwen (known as Mad Morwen) died during the Great Storm of 1703 as the castle collapsed about her, she left no heirs, the ruins of Loveday were left to decay… until 1857, when a wealthy merchant styling himself Marcus St. Gerren laid claim to the island, pulled down the overgrown ruins of the old castle, and used its stones to build a large, splendid Victorian mansion on the site, which he named Loveday House. By the turn of the century, however, most of the money was gone, and the great house had begun to decay, a process that continued until the Great Depression, which took the last of the family wealth.

The last St. Gerren attempted to sell Loveday House, but found no buyers; the mansion had become a white elephant, too huge to maintain without servants, impossible to heat, its paint peeling, its foundations cracked. When old Tristan St. Gerren died in 1937, Loveday was abandoned once more and left to rot. And so it did… until a new owner turned up and set about restoring the old house to its former splendor. The “new lord” is a mysterious figure who goes about in a hooded cloak, always masked, who seems to have no limit to his wealth. A dozen mutually contradictory tales are told of him in the village, but on one point the villagers agree: Jago Branok is a wild card of some sort. An ace, a joker, a knave, no one is quite certain… but one of them, no doubt.

And the quests who visit Loveday each month are just as queer, the villagers will tell you. They come to Keun from all over the world. Most of them leave after the party winds down. Most of them. As to the others…

None of the villagers are quite certain. There are stories, though. Stories told by the likes of Stephen Leigh, Mary Anne Mohanraj. Kevin Andrew Murphy, Peter Newman, Peadar O Guilin, and Caroline Spector. They know a few things. They were guests at Loveday last year, accompanied by their characters old and new.

You can read all about it in HOUSE RULES, the latest volume in our long-running WILD CARDS series of mosaic novels. Volume thirty-four in the ongoing series (which launched way back in 1987)… and no, you don’t need to read the preceding thirty-three to enjoy this one… HOUSE RULES was released by HarperCollins Voyager in the UK in December, and by Bantam in the USA on January. (Yes, I am a few months late in getting out the word, but I have been crazy busy of late).

For those of you who like autographed editions, Beastly Books in Santa Fe has signed copies of both editions in stock.

(And they have many of the older volumes as well).

Whether you’ve been a Wild Cards fan from the very beginning, or are a newcomer curious to visit our world, do come to Keun. Jago Branok’s parties are not to be forgotten… and who knows, we may even let you leave.

GRRM

Current Mood: weird weird

Tags: anthologies, wild cards

The Sleeper Awakens

February 6, 2024 at 9:06 am

Exciting news for all the Wild Cards fans out there. Today is the publication day for the newest Wild Cards hardcover from Bantam, the thirty-third volume in the overall series… but no, you do not need to have read the first thirty-two to enjoy this book.

SLEEPER STRADDLE is the title. And yes, as our long-time readers will no doubt guess, this one features a character who has been around since the first Wild Cards Day (September 15, 1946 — the day Howard Waldrop was born): the Sleeper, created by the late great Roger Zelazny.

In poker, a sleeper straddle is a blind raise, made from a position other than the player “under the gun.” Sleepers are often considered illegal out-of-turn play and are commonly disallowed. In Wild Cards, the Sleeper is Croyd Crenson, who was a high school freshman on his way home from school when the virus was released over Manhattan. From that day on, Croyd has been continuously reinfected by the virus whenever he sleeps, his body reshaping itself into a myriad of new shapes and forms. Each time he wakes, he is changed. Sometimes he wakes as an ace, with astonishing new superpowers, different every time. Other times he wakes as a joker, malformed and hideous. He lives in terror of the day he draws the black queen, and does not wake at all. Croyd can sleep for days, weeks, even months, but when awake he does all he can to keep sleep at bay. Unable to hold a normal job or have a normal relationship, he lives on the margins of society; he has been a bodyguard, a thief, a mercenary, a con man, a hero for hire… whatever it takes to survive. Everyone knows Croyd, and no one really knows Croyd.

You never know what you are going to get when the Sleeper wakes. He is the ultimate wild card… and our most iconic character. It is long past time he had a book of his own.

The lineup this time around:

“Days Go By,” by Carrie Vaughn,
“The Hit Parade,” by Cherie Priest ,
“Yin-Yang Split,” from William F. Wu,
“Semiotics of the Strong Man,” by Walter Jon Williams,
“Party Like It’s 1999,” from Stephen Leigh,
“The Bloody Eagle,” by Mary Anne Mohanraj,
“The Boy Who Would Be Croyd,” from Max Gladstone.

The stories will be tied together by “Swimmer, Flier, Felon, Spy” from Christopher Rowe, featuring his enigmatic investigator Tesla. Other featured characters will include old favorites like Golden Boy, Oddity, Lazy Dragon, and Ramshead, along with some great new aces and a colorful assortment of jokers and jacks.

Ye editor is hardly objective, of course, but I have to confess, I have always loved Croyd, and it was great to see him in action again, in tales that spanned the decades, from the Fifties to the present day. Those of you who are already Sleeper fans will be delighted, I think, and as for all the readers out there who have yet to meet Mr. Crenson… you have a treat in store.

Roger would have loved this book, I like to think. I hope you will as well.

Tags: bantam spectra, editing, wild cards, writing

Howard Is Gone

January 19, 2024 at 2:08 pm

Howard Waldrop died on January 14 in Texas, of a stroke. He was 77 years old. (Two years my senior, barely).

The world got a little darker then.

I learned of Howard’s passing through a phone call from a mutual friend. I was away from home when it happened, out of the country, with no email and no internet, else I would have posted something here much sooner.

Howard and I never lived in the same city, nor the same state, but we had been friends for a long long time. When we first “met” — via comic fandom and the US mail — John F. Kennedy was in the White House and both of us were in high school, Howard in Texas and me in New Jersey. I had just bought a comic book from him. BRAVE & BOLD #28, as it happened. Starro the Conquerer. Howard charged me a quarter. When he sent the comic, he backed it up with a nice drawing of a barbarian on stiff cardboard, and a friendly letter asking me if I liked Conan. We struck up a correspondence that lasted more than half a century. We finally met in person in 1972, at MidAmerican Con in Kansas City. He was my oldest friend from the SF community… the kindest, brightest, funniest man you could meet… and one of the greatest writers of his generation.

He was one of a kind. There will never be another like him. But he only wrote one-and-a-half novels, so he never got the acclaim (or the money) that he deserved. These days, short story writers get little respect (’twas not always so, at least in SF and fantasy) and less money. And Howard Waldrop was among the very best short story writers ever to work in our genre.

And certainly the most original.

I last spoke to Howard less than a week before his death. He has been living in an assisted living hotel in Austin for the past few years. We have been adapting a few of Howard’s classic stories into short films, and our mutual friend Robert Taylor had just screened a rough cut of MARY-MARGARET ROAD GRADER for him on his laptop. (Howard did not use a computer and had no truck with email, texts, or social media). I was calling to ask if he liked it. He did, I am pleased to say… and I am so so so happy that he got to see the film before he left us. He was not entirely happy when we spoke… he had fallen out of bed a few days before, and had required help to get back up. That made him grouchy. Howard gave good grouchy. But talking about the film cheered him up. That was good to hear. He was laughing by the time we ended the call.

We are making a couple of other Waldrop adaptations as well, and I promised him I’d get him a cut of those as well before the end of January. I never dreamed when hanging up that we would never speak again.

There’s so much more I could say about Howard… and I will, I will. But not today. This would turn into a novel if I told all my stories in one long post. So many memories. So much laughter. So much love.

I still cannot believe he is gone. I want to call him up right now, and hear him laugh again.

Current Mood: gloomy gloomy

Tags: friendship, life and death, wild cards, writing

And That’s Not All!

July 11, 2023 at 9:13 am

… for all you aces and jokers, old or new.

As it happens, PAIRING UP is not the only Wild Cards book coming out on July 11.

On the same day, Tor Books will also be releasing their trade paperback edition of FULL HOUSE.

FULL HOUSE is a collection of stand-alone Wild Cards stories originally published electronically on Tor.com.

We have a great lineup once again:

“When We Were Heroes”                                                 Daniel Abraham
“Evernight”                                                                         Victor Milan
“Lies My Mother Told Me”                                 Caroline Spector
“Nuestra Senora de la Esperanza”                  Carrie Vaughn
“Discards”                                                                             David D. Levine
“The Elephant in the Room”                           Paul Cornell
“When the Devil Drives”                                Melinda M. Snodgrass
“The Atonement Tango”                                 Stephen Leigh
“Prompt. Professional. Pop!”                      Walter Jon Williams
“How to Move Spheres and Influence People”              Marko Kloos

If you missed FULL HOUSE in hardcover, here’s your chance to fill out your collection.

Current Mood: pleased pleased

Tags: anthologies, wild cards

Hugo Nominations Open

April 2, 2023 at 8:47 am

This year’s World Science Fiction Convention (the 81st) is happening in Chengdu, China, from October 18-22.

That’s later than usual. Nominations for the Hugo Awards opened later as well, but they DID open on March 1. They will close April 30, so you have a month and change left to nominate your favorite books, stories, fanzines, writers, TV shows, and movies from last year. That is, assuming you hold a membership in the Chengdu worldcon. Both attending and supporting members are eligible to nominate, so you don’t actually need to be planning on a trip to China to take part.

If you are eligible to nominate, I urge you to do so. The Hugo Awards are our field’s oldest and most prestigious awards… and they are a FAN award, given by readers and viewers, not by a jury. It is a huge honor to win one… and a proud and noble thing to lose one too. I speak from experience. I’ve won a few, and lost a lot more, even helped found the Hugo Losers Party with the late great Gardner Dozois.

It has been a few years since I last did one of these “eligibility posts” that have become so common in the past decade or so. In large part, that’s because I did not put out anything that was eligible… aside from various Wild Cards stories and books, which qualified me in the “Editor – Short Form” category. That’s true for 2022 as well. FULL HOUSE, a hardcover collection of Wild Cards stories from Tor.com, came out in mid-year, and a number of older volumes in the series were reprinted in trade paperback and mass market. We also released the American edition of THREE KINGS, a Wild Cards mosaic novel edited by Melinda M. Snodgrass, so she is eligible in Editor as well.

I might also mention that Tor.com featured two more Wild Cards originals during the year:

GROW, by Carrie Vaughn https://www.tor.com/2022/07/20/grow-carrie-vaughn/

HEARTS OF STONE, by Emma Newman https://www.tor.com/2022/05/18/hearts-of-stone-emma-newman/

Lovely stories both, and they are also eligible for nomination. You can read them — for FREE — at the links above.

Editing was not all I did in 2022. I also did some work in television as an executive producer and co-creator of a new series on HBO. You may have heard of it. It was called HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.

The series debuted in August and ran until late October, making it eligible for nomination in either of the two Dramatic Presentation categories in the Hugo Awards. Either… but not both. The rules there are a little complex. Fans can nominate the show in both Short Form and Long Form, but it won’t appear on the ballot in both categories; if a series gets enough votes in both categories, one has to make a choice. (This happened to GAME OF THRONES twice, as it happens).

The entire first season — ten episodes, each approximately one hour long — can be nominated in Long Form, where it will compete against the year’s biggest movies (or possibly seasons of other TV shows). The first season of GAME OF THRONES was nominated in Long Form.

The usual category for television shows is Short Form, however; there it is individual episodes that are nominated, not entire seasons or the show as a whole. It helps to know the titles of the episodes if you want to nominate your favorites.

Here the first season episodes of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON:

101    The Heirs of the Dragon
102    The Rogue Prince
103    Second of His Name
104    King of the Narrow Sea
105    We Light the Way
106   The Princess and the Queen
107   Driftmark
108 The Lord of the Tides
109 The Green Council
110 The Black Queen

You can nominate as many episodes of a series as you like… but these days, only three will make the ballot. (In decades past, there were years when a popular series would completely fill the ballot, but that’s not allowed any longer). All the listed episodes were first televised in 2022, so they are all eligible.

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON was adapted from portions of FIRE & BLOOD, Archmaester Gyldayn’s history of the Targaryen dynasty from Aegon’s Conquest to the regency of Aegon III. Unlike the various volumes of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, FIRE & BLOOD was not a novel, but rather an imaginary history. Though it is still in print, it was first published in 2018, and is not eligible for a Hugo. However, in November 2022, my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic released RISE OF THE DRAGON.

RISE, if anything, is even harder to categorize than FIRE & BLOOD. Definitely not a novel, it covers the same period and the same events as Archmaester Glydayn’s history, but in far less detail. Elio M. Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson of the Westeros website did the abridgement. The text is only a small part of the book, however. RISE OF THE DRAGON is a lavishly illustrated coffee-table sized volume featuring 150 original paintings by fantasy artists from all over the world. Myself, I think it is gorgeous, but then, I am hardly objective.

The Hugo Awards have no category for art books, and RISE does not fit in novel… so if you would like to nominate it, the appropriate category would be RELATED WORK. That’s a bit of a grab bag category that in the past has included not only art books, but critical studies, biographies, speeches, memoirs, and… ah… other, stranger stuff.

Bottom line, though, you should nominate what you love best. That’s what gives the Hugo its meaning.

Nominations close APRIL 30.

And remember, only worldcon members can cast a ballot.

The rocket rules.

Tags: editing, hugo awards, television, wild cards, worldcon

Three Kings, One Throne

March 21, 2023 at 8:14 am

((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

Tags: Beastly Books, editing, signed books, wild cards

This, That, T’other Thing

February 19, 2023 at 8:53 am

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

Tags: Dark Winds, television, wild cards, writing

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