Stratofanatic's Emporium

One thing that's occurred to me: many ECRs and grad students have probably never seen a good response from an author to an editor over a peer review. It's not a genre of writing commonly shared. So this message (see below) is something I just submitted to a journal editor. The peer reviewer was thoughtful and considerate one -- believe it or not, these are more common than the other kind! -- but I wasn't thrilled with the direction the reviewer was suggesting I go. This is a successful example, too ... the journal editor was cool with this proposal, and I suspect most journal editors would have been: they just want to see a sincere engagement by authors with their reader reports. Btw, nota bene: when I'm doing a blind peer review, I personally don't necessarily expect authors to follow my suggestions. As a reviewer (and as with teaching), you offer authors/students suggestions in order to jumpstart their thinking. The important thing, as I suggested above, is that ...

Prepping for ENGL 378: Fantasy Fiction has been a rollercoaster ride for two solid months -- I'm doing all my lesson plans ahead of time, but since I'm taking a literary history approach to genre fantasy, I've needed to fill in several gaps in my own knowledge. Partly, that's necessitated an insanely deep dive into sword-and-sorcery (more on which soon). Another part, though, has been a dive into Dungeons & Dragons fantasy fiction. For fantasy readers of a certain age, the D&D novels produced by TSR publications define the essence of "genre fantasy." Even for someone like myself who never really got into the whole D&D thing, avoiding these books simply wasn't possible. Back during the 1980s and 1990s, I still remember walking into Waldenbooks and seeing half the fantasy section -- already much larger than the SF section -- filled with nothing but Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance novels. Trying to learn more background, I discovered a wonderful ...

So! The other day, I picked up Swords of the Four Winds   (2013) by Diriel R. A. Quiogue (Kwee-o-ga), a book I discovered after reading an interview by the editor of New Edge Sword-and-sorcery , who praised Quiogue's work highly.  I'm always a bit skeptical of self-published work, but I have to say, this collection by Quiogue is Grade A sword-and-sorcery fantasy. The pacing is very Howardian. Quiogue proceeds from scene to scene with scarcely any pause, and although his characters occasionally engage in rapid infodumps or Grand Reveals to keep the pace from flagging, I tended to appreciate this technique rather than deplore it, as it seems so genre-appropriate. What's unusual or unique about  Four Winds ? Well, since this collection counts as "sword-and-silk" (i.e., Asia-centered S&S), I couldn't always -- as a Western reader -- pinpoint Quiogue's historical analogues. I'm guessing "Lord of the Brass Host" owes itself to the Terracotta Ar...