Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword
Book Synopsis: HARK! to the sounds of battle. Mighty men and women who take their destinies with the strength of their arm and the sharpness of their blades. These are tales of warriors, reavers, barbarians, and kings. Lands of wonder populated with monsters, black-hearted sorcerors of Stygian power, and heroes who have blood on their hands and on their steel.This is SWORD AND SORCERY.
Edited by James R. Tuck, acclaimed author of the Deacon Chalk Novels, the Sword volume features tales from the following authors:
G. Gerome Henson
Jay Requard
D.T. Neal
John F. Allen
Marcella Burnard
David J. West
Alexis A. Hunter
James R. Tuck
Loriane Parker
W.E. Wertenberger
Stephen Zimmer
J.S. Veter
Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery
Book Synopsis: BEHOLD! the clash of war. Steel upon steel and heroes fighting shield to shield. The only true victory is a brave death and the destruction of your enemies. These stories harken back to a barbaric past that never was. A time when heroic men and women cut glory from the cloth of a sorcery-filled world and stole gold from the hands of the gods themselves. This is fiction that takes no prisoners. No quarter asked. No quarter given.
This is SWORD AND SORCERY.
Edited by James R. Tuck, acclaimed author of the Deacon Chalk Novels, the Sword volume features tales from the following authors:
Jeffe Kennedy
Alex Hughes
Selah Janel
Steven Grassie
James R. Tuck
M. B. Weston
Brady Allen
S. H. Roddey
Steven S. Long
D. A. Adams
Mark Taverna
Steven L. Shrewsbury
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Guest post by James R. Tuck
Keep It Short Stupid (or writing short stories instead of novels)
James R. Tuck
I love writing short stories. I love writing novels too, but short stories are their own brand of awesomesauce. See, in a novel you get to wander around, chase down some rabbit trails, and really unpack some stuff and look it over.
Not with a short story.
In a short story you have to get to the point. No screwing around, get in and get it done.
And that narrow margin gives short stories an impact that novels don't get.
Short stories are all bang for your buck.
As a writer they give you the challenge of shorthand, which is writing in a way that the audience is on board from sentence one and they are not left scratching their heads going: "Huh?" at the end of it. When I write a short I have to study the character I'm using and figure out how to tell you the reader the most about him in the least amount of words.
In the two stories I contributed to the anthologies (Where The Red Blossoms Weep and Angels Of Scrawl) I used Theok, a character that I created many years ago. He's a Northland barbarian who wanders the time of the Old Testament. He worships Yahweh as a warrior-god and hates evil, sorcery in particular. His preferred weapon is an axe and he makes his living as a mercenary and a swordsell. Heavily muscled, heavily tattooed, and marked with a Death's Head carved into his back by a Stygian witch, he moves through a world that is basically: what if Robert E. Howard wrote the Old Testament?
It's part mythology, part history, and a huge part fantasy world building.
Theok has a rich backstory, and you will learn it as we go (because there will be more stories with him). I used his thoughts and his reactions to the two very different situations I put him in for these anthologies to clue you into some of it. He's still got an intrigue about him, but you know enough to enjoy his story.
He's the big damn hero of the world he lives in, a man who will do right or die according to his own barbaric code of honor. One day he'll get a novel, hell a few novels, but most of his story will be in short fiction.
Short stories have the dynamic POW! factor that a character like Theok deserves.
And that's why they rock my socks.
Editor James R. Tuck’s Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamesTuckwriter
Website: http://www.jamesrtuck.com
Thanks for hosting a great post! :)
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