Wo3lfMad

New Release: The Carrion Hunter and Other Tales from a Broken Earth

“Snapshots of life on a dying earth, where humans and aliens co-exist carefully and with suspicion, and fragile alliances are forged only to shatter overnight.“

It has been a while since I last updated you with what is going on in my life. I have been generating an income from writing articles online and working as an industrial relations practitioner here in new Zealand while writing my stories.…

Writers of Past Renown: Lord Dunsany

Dunsany stands dedicated to strange and lovely worlds of fantastic beauty. To the truly imaginative he is a talisman and a key unlocking rich store houses of dreams.” ~H.P. Lovecraft

Described as the fantasist’s fantasist, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, more commonly known as Lord Dunsany, was a prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays, poetry, and essays—all set in fantastical and…

The Emperor of Dreams: The Literary Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith

Smith in 1912

Tell me many tales, O benign maleficent dæmon…. Tell me tales of inconceivable fear and unimaginable love….

~ To the Dæmon” Clark Ashton Smith, December 16, 1929

Clark Ashton Smith was considered one of the big three of Weird Tales, along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, and was a member of the Lovecraft Circle. An American poet, sculptor, painter, and intermittent…

Essays on Conan the Mighty-Thewed Cimmerian

Conan painted by Simon Bisley An intro of sort…

I have a post here by Bob Byrne, which he wrote on the Facebook group ‘Robert E. Howard: The Father of Sword & Sorcery.’ Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ was a regular Monday morning hardboiled pulp column on Black Gate in the Fall and Winter of 2018. His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black…

Pursuit as Happiness by Ernest Hemingway

I have been dividing my time between researching Clark Ashton Smith for the next installment of “Writers of Past Renown” and writing articles for Medium and writing articles for paying markets while also reading five or six books simultaneously. Or rather, trying to because in between all of these activities, I also have my kids that I need to feed and get to school and sports and listen to their…

A little while ago, I wrote a post about compiling a master list of must-read authors. You can read that post here. It also made me wonder whether I should not create a new blog series, not unlike Art of Fantasy, except this one would focus on authors of past renown, whose work are now out of print and who had laid down the foundational pillars for genre fiction. These authors would come from the…

With the Covid-19 virus keeping a stranglehold on households all over the world, many of us find ourselves in the position where we have to work from home. Some of us have had our income cut off. Some, temporarily until the lockdown lifts. Others, permanently. The author I’m introducing today lost his job because of the lockdown.

I too find myself between contracts, at least for the foreseeable…

A Master List of Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors

The other day on Twitter I tweeted the following:

https://twitter.com/Woelf20/status/1201683054571315200

My intention was to capture a list of authors that I myself can read, from various subgenres of fantasy and science fiction, and from eras when a good story was considered more important than hamfisted activist drivel masquerading as plot. An easy reference for when I’m in secondhand…

Stretching Our Imagination With Vintage SciFi Month

This week I am playing host to a drive to promote vintage science fiction month which celebrates science fiction stories that are older than me. It is my first time participating and I hope to contribute more next year. Other posts in this drive thus far can be viewed here, here, and here. You can also follow VintageSciFiMonth on Twitter here and its founder, Andrea, here. Oh, and dont forget her…

Bestselling Author of the Iron Dragon Saga and dry-witted Twitter warrior, Robert Kroese is creating a new series and I think you might be interested.

From the Kickstarter campaign page:

A hooded man, his face marred by a mysterious black brand, walks the Plain of Savlos. Some say he has the power to summon demons. Others say he is the only one who can vanquish them. His name is Konrad,…

A Robert E. Howard Monday

Flu got a tight hold on me this year and kicked me solidly under my bum. I am on steroids and antibiotics right now because of secondary infection and so I’m constantly irritable. Suffice to say, I have been in a miserable state, both physically and mentally, for the last two weeks. At least until this morning. I have not been able to get in the gym for the same period and that has driven my…

Impossible Hope: An Update

A little while ago I wrote about donating my short story, “Bullies and Soggy Soup Bones” to an anthology aimed at collecting inspiring stories of hope to give away to people who donated to Bonnie’s GoFundMe.

After the campaign has run its course the anthology will be published on Amazon and all proceeds will continue to go to Bonnie and her family to help them with their medical bills. The…

Black Gate: “Wolves Beyond the Border”

A while ago I mentioned that my good friend Keith West wrote a guest post over at Black Gate as part of the “Hither Came Conan” series that runs every Monday. The series features a different leading Robert E. Howard expert each week, examining one of the original Conan stories, and trying to persuade the reader why the particular story in question is the best Conan story ever told.  

I too…

Aragorn Never Had an Identity Crisis

Jeffro wrote an interesting article today about true heroism that I want to share with you, because I agree but mostly because he makes an important distinction that seems to get lost today. You rarely find a solid hero these days that are honour bound. The troubled hero with a factory of personal issues that he must work through before he dies in some stupid sacrifice to redeem himself has…