A while back, I was doing research on Vikings for my next novel, which will be the sequel to Enoch’s Device. In the course of that research, I spent some time on Norse mythology, since many a tenth-century Viking would have clung to the worship of Thor or Odin instead of embracing the Christian faith…
This is an update of last year’s tribute to Samhain – Halloween. I still love this opening from Bernard Cornwell every time I read it … To the Celts, October 31st was Samhain (spelled “Samain” in Old Irish), a harvest festival that many believe became the inspiration for Halloween. I could write more about Samain,…
The folks at Middle-Earth News previewed two TV spots for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which will debut in December. One of the spots is featured below. You can view the other one here. Meanwhile, Andrew Russo of Scifi Bloggers published an article on the demise of the TV show Heroes titled How Heroes Devolved:…
I’m back from fishing – without any sighting of the Midgard Serpent, I might add – and back to a mountain of work. I had planned on writing a post on why I chose an Irish monk as the main character for my upcoming novel, Enoch’s Device. But since I’ve lacked the time to give that post…
This week, author Marie Brennan, at Science Fiction & Fantasy Novelists, wrote an interesting post on portal fantasies, titled This Wardrobe Closed Until Further Notice. The premise is that agents and publishing houses have no interest in portal tales — those stories where a character from our world goes through some looking glass or other…
Norse mythology has a great tale about fishing. The god Thor (he of booming thunder and the hammer Mjölnir), decides to go on a fishing trip with the giant Hymir. As for why, who knows? I thought Thor hated giants, killed a whole bunch of ‘em at one point, but maybe Hymir was good company. While…
One of the most interesting bits of news this week concerned a heretofore unpublished poem by J.R.R. Tolkien titled The Fall of Arthur. Middle-Earth News announced this week that the poem will be published in its entirety by Harper Collins on May 23, 2013. For anyone who has read Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and…
Last week, I mentioned how my upcoming novel, Enoch’s Device, was a bit of a journey tale. This was a reference to a series of posts I wrote on Long Journeys about a year ago, during a time when I was travelling constantly, with little time to write. A year later, I find myself in…
It was a slow week for tidings, but the Wayward Herald found one post by author Jane Lebak quite interesting. The post, titled No Protagonist? No Problem (but don’t try this at home), starts with the premise that a protagonist is critical to any good story. And by “protagonist,” she means the character who “faces…
On a lazy weekend back in the early ‘90s, I stumbled across a movie on TV that helped me discover one of the finest books I have ever read – and the story that became the inspiration for my first novel. I was drawn to the movie by its medieval setting, and became immediately intrigued…
Bernard Cornwell’s new novel 1356 came out this week in the UK. Unfortunately (and for reasons that still vex me), it won’t be released in the U.S. until January 8, 2013 – but I can hardly wait! The novel is about the famous Battle of Poitiers during the Hundred Years’ War, and it brings back one…