Life is not fair

Adventures Fantastic has reviewed the June 2011 issue of Realms of Fantasy. They liked my story:

Euan Harvey’s “Wisteria” was the highlight of the issue for me, and not just for the great illustration.  It was the closest thing to sword and sorcery in the magazine, and one of the few where the action wasn’t solely emotional or internal.  The structure of the story, with nested narratives, will require attention, so I don’t recommend this one right before turning out the light at bedtime.  Harvey had a story in the previous issue, and I have to wonder if he’s going to go for a hat trick and get one in the next issue.  I hope so, because his stories seem to be more to my taste than most of the other stories in the two issues he’s been in.

Ah, yes, that illustration is awesome. I still haven’t got my contributor copies yet, but I can almost smell them now . . .

Tangent Online is running a few months behind reality. They’ve just posted a review of the April 2011 Realms of Fantasy:

“By Shackle and Lash,” by Euan Harvey, tells the story of a mysterious prisoner with blue eyes like the warm harvest days of summer. Kemal and Wahid are men of the Mukhabarat, a sort of police organization that serves the Shah, but they abandon their duties and are sentenced to work in the dungeons. It is here that they come across the woman in cell Alef seven. She is weak and sick and has recently soiled herself, but she has her eyes and a mouth that tells the men things they cannot remember and cannot disobey. I am unfamiliar with folk traditions from the Middle East, so it very possible I am missing references; I do know, however, that the story stands on its own. It has a hypnotic quality that should not be denied.

Which is an okay review, I guess. I’m never entirely sure what to make of Tangent; they seem kind of out of step with other review sites. (And generally, they don’t seem too keen on my stuff.)

My story Wreathed in Wisteria, Draped in Ivy is in issue 100 of Realms of Fantasy. It’s just been reviewed by Lois Tilton at Locus Online:

This title seems like it should belong to the Bobet story above, but in fact the author is only using the vines to drape a tomb in this dark historical fantasy of revenge and undeath in Han dynasty China. It is in the “ancient manuscript” mode, the text redacted in places for good reasons the reader will discover by the end, and the narrative is triple-nested. Its core is a tale told by an old, old man.

The ancient’s beard reached down past his chest. His face was shrunken, cheeks fallen in, skin deeply wrinkled. His eyes had sunk deep into his head, and now they peered out from caves under thick eyebrows of bushy white.

In his youth, he had set out for the imperial examinations and in one village encountered a demonic sorcerer who predicted that he would meet death in three days. The young man suspected extortion and refused to pay the fee for warding off this fate. And death did come to him, sent by the sorcerer, but he managed to defeat it three times. It will not come again.

This is a horror story, and an effective one. The author connects his narratives well, including redactions and notes by both author and a later editor, which all combine to complete and enhance the tale. The story does not require specific knowledge of the historical figures mentioned in the text, which I find just as well, given the variations in translation and transliteration that can snare the uninformed. Yet the author writes with sufficient authority about this setting that I hesitate to point out that the imperial examinations would not have been established by the time of Yu’s youth, if I have understood the author correctly.

I think she’s right about the imperial examinations. But, um, [footshuffle], ah poetic license? Yeah. That’s it.  Otherwise, I thought the review was pretty good.

Another review of my story “By Shackle and Lash”.

The Shackle and Lash,” by Euan Harvey, is another in a recent series of fantasy short stories and novels to take advantage of the rich culture of Arabia for a setting and a magic system. In this tale, two members of the Mukhabarat are demoted to prison duty when they run from a Hand of Afaz. We are told little about the Hands, or why these brave men fled; that adventure is merely the starting point for a tale of a mysterious blue-eyed prisoner who abides in unspeakable filth but carries in her eyes cloudless summer skies and the smell of hay. What this prisoner does to the two men makes a story worth reading.

Sounds like she liked it, which is good.

From Adventures Fantastic:

“By Shackle and Lash” by Euan Harvey:  A disgraced soldier is demoted to assistant gaoler and given the task of emptying the slop buckets of the prisoners.  It turns out there’s a cell that isn’t always there, and its occupant has been imprisoned a really long time.  Those to whom she chooses to appear are changed.  The author implies the story takes place in the far future, when oceans are mostly gone and the population has moved into the sea bottoms because the formerly occupied land areas are no longer inhabitable.  This, along with “The Sacrifice”, is one of the two longest tales in the issue, and my favorite.  It is the closest to sword and sorcery that’s to be found here.

Nice to hear, and glad to see the worldbuilding is catching people’s attention.  Personally, I think the story is definitely sword and sorcery, but I can see how opinions might vary on that. There’s a fair amount of sorcery, but not a great deal of . . . swordery? Swordplay? Swords? Hm.

From Rich Horton in Locus, reprinted* in entirety by Doug Cohen at Realms of Fantasy. Here.

And the review of my story is below:

Euan Harvey’s ‘‘By Shackle and Lash’’ is a strong Persian-flavored story about a couple of soldiers whose cowardice gets them assigned to cleaning duty in a prison – and to dealing with a mysterious woman and, eventually, her hopes to escape to her city – a city long vanished.

Sounds good to me. Better go and buy a copy of the mag. (Follow the link above; you’ll see a link to buy an ecopy of the magazine.)

This arrived in my mail today:

That’s right: The complete Hok the Mighty. The Planet Stories subscription is the gift of awesomeness that keeps on giving. The last one was a bit thin (not keen on paying for juvenilia), but this more than makes up for it. I’ve got most of the Planet Stories reprints–but there’s a few missing.

For those of you not familiar with these, Planet Stories are a reprint series of pulp Sword & Sorcery and Sword & Planet. Anyone who enjoys uncomplicated adventure fiction should check them out.

Wreathed in Wisteria, Draped in Ivy is going to be published in the 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy. Dave Leri has done the illustration, and it’s pretty awesome. In fact, it’s so awesome, I had to shrink it a little, because the first time I posted it,  its sheer power BROKE THE INTERNETS!

So, I’ve been looking around, and quite a few people are charging 99c for a single short story. When I designed my e-books, I thought that no one would be interested in a single short for 99c, but now I think otherwise. I’ve read some articles on perception of value and price points, and I’m going to price each story that I think is worth it at 99c. This means each e-book will contain a single solid story. Something I think is really good, instead of one good story and three that are filler.

Thumbnail gallery is below. I’ll be updating the books for sale page when the Amazon links get sorted out.

Editor Douglas Cohen has a post about the ASFA and RoF’s nominations for the Chesley Art Awards. He’s also got a list of artists who’ve been nominated for work done for RoF. Three of the illustrations done for my stories have been nominated. So go check ‘em out!

Dave Leri’s interior illustration to “The Demon of Hochgarten” by Euan Harvey

Frank Wu’s interior illustration to “Hanuman’s Bridge” by Euan Harvey