I’m a middling Stephen King fan. I became a fan after reading ‘Salem’s Lot and I stopped being a big fan after reading Cujo. I was so angry with the ending of Cujo I didn’t read anything by Stephen King for five years. Now, I occasionally read Stephen King “short” story collections–even though the stories are sometimes 100 pages long! No more 1,000 page Stephen King novels for me!

I am a big fan of King’s non-fiction: On Writing and Danse Macabre. And recently, I picked up a paperback I didn’t know existed: Stephen King Goes to the Movies (2009). As you know, the movies based on Stephen King’s work vary in quality. This book allows Stephen King to weigh in on how his work got translated to the Big Screen.

If you’re a Stephen King fan, you’ll find a lot to like in Stephen King Goes to the Movies as King reveals insights you’re probably not aware of in the production of these movies. Do you have a favorite Stephen King movie or TV series? GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1408 — 1

The Mangler — 57

Hearts in Atlantis (“Low men in yellow coats”) — 89

The Shawshank redemption (“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption“) –435

Children of the Corn — 581

My 10 Favorite Adaptations — 627

“The term sword-and-sorcery itself is phrase of Fritz Leiber’s, agreed upon in 1961 by the members of a loose association of writers of this fiction to identify this manner of story. Michael Moorcock desired a name to identify the sort of fiction written by Robert E. Howard, and he and Leiber both ‘were united in a desire to distance themselves from The Lord of the Rings‘… The matter was settled in correspondence published in the fanzine Amra.” (p. 11)

Way back in the 1960s, I discovered Sword-and-Sorcery paperbacks. I read Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales. I was transfixed by Michael Moorcock’s incredible Lancer paperbacks featuring Elric of Melnibone’s magic sword. Fritz Leiber’s “Bazaar of the Bizarre” in Fantastic–featuring The Gray Mouser and Fafhrd–triggered a hunger for more of their adventures.

Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (2025) isn’t just another writing manual. David C. Smith has published sword-and-sorcery novels. And a quick look at Smith’s Recommended Reading and Bibliography sections is clear proof he knows what he’s writing about. Not only does Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction give you a history of sword-and-sorcery fiction, but Smith gives detailed analysis of over a dozen major writers of the genre.

If you have any interest in sword-and-sorcery fiction, Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction will enhance your reading experience. Highly recommended! Are you a sword-and-sorcery fan? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Forward By John O’Neill

1. Sword-and -Sorcry Fiction: What It is and What It Is Not –1

Robert E. Howard –11

After Howard — 13

Fritz Leiber — 21

Mid-Century Authors — 24

The 1970s and After — 36

Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction and Heroic Fantasy Fiction — 43

World Building — 50

The Mythic Dimension — 61

2. Story Structure –73

Character and Setting — 73

Must a Protagonist Even Be Human? — 108

Flat and Round Characters — 119

Plot and Scenes — 121

Style, Voice, and Tone — 161

Theme — 184

3. The New Edge: Current Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction — 187

4. Some Final Words — 229

AppendixI: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction — 231

Appendix II: Recommended Reading — 253

Interview with the Author — 257

Bibliography — 267

About the Author — 281

Index — 283

Where the Music Had to Go (2026) tracks the influence The Beatles and Boy Dylan had on each other over the years. Even after The Beatles broke up, Dylan worked with George Harrison and Paul McCartney on various musical projects.

“Recorded over a mere there days, Bringing It All Back Home was electric on one side, acoustic on the other.” (p. 102)

“Cher had already been part of a scheme to cash in on Beatle-mania. Days after the group’s arrival in the U.S., she had recorded the novelty sing “Ringo, I love You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)” and released it under the name of Bonnie Jo Mason. Cowritten and produced by Phil Spector, it failed to catch on. ‘My voice was so deep that a lot of people thought I was a gay guy singing a love song to Ringo,’ Cher recalled.” (p. 184)

“‘It was 10 pages long,’ Dylan said after writing it… ‘I had never thought of it as a song, until one day I was at the piano, and on the paper it was singing, ‘How does it feel?’ in a slow motion pace’ Like McCartney with “Yesterday,” Dylan didn’t know what to make of his own role in the creation of “Like a Rolling Stone.” ‘It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that,’ Dylan said. ‘It gives you the song and it goes away.'” (p. 134)

Jim Windolf manages to trace the careers of the four Beatles and Bob Dylan from the 1960s to the 21st Century. Their paths intersect more than you would imagine. Do you have a favorite Beatle song? A favorite Bob Dylan song? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — xi

SIDE ONE

Pilgrimage — 1

Disciples of Little Richard — 8

The Names — 19

Picture Imperfect — 35

It’ll Never Happen — 47

Ego Equals — 63

Beatlemania Here — 81

Hide Your Love –94

The Savoy — 111

How Does It Feel — 130

SIDE TWO

Number One — 151

Northern Songs — 163

Costars — 183

Retreat — 198

Penny Lane and Bourbon Street — 214

Everybody’s Song — 229

Beatles & Co — 251

Serve Yourself — 272

Rolling on — 294

Coda: McCartney on Dylan — 311

Acknowledgements — 319

Notes — 323

Index –351

Haffner Press has just published The Vampire Stories of Robert Bloch. I first read ROBERT BLOCH back in the 1960s when Pyramid Books published several paperback short story collections featuring some of Bloch’s best stories.

Of course, Robert Bloch is best known for Psycho but the 28 stories in The Vampire Stories of Robert Bloch show the range of his work. Bloch wrote several stories in H.P. Lovecraft mode. This collection includes the classic “The Shambler from the Stars.” Just great!

I’ve reread several of the stories in this collection: “The Opener of the Way” is a story that really stays with me! And, who can forget “The Skull of the Marquis de Sade” or “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”!

“Tooth or Consequences” was a new Bloch story for me…and extremely silly. A great contrast to the other, darker stories in this wonderful volume!

If you’re a Robert Bloch fan, The Vampire Stories of Robert Bloch is a must-buy! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

“Foreword” by Paul Winters
“Introduction” by Robert Eighteen-Bisang
“The Shambler from the Stars”
“The Opener of the Way”
“The Mannikin”
“A Question of Identity”
“The Cloak”
“Unheavenly Twin”
“Nursemaid to Nightmares”
“The Fear Planet”
“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”
“Black Barter”
“Death Is a Vampire”
“The Bat Is My Brother”
“The Skull of the Marquis de Sade”
“The Bogey Man Will Get You”
“The Girl from Mars”
“Tooth or Consequences”
“The Hungry House”
“The Man Who Collected Poe”
“The Light-House”
“I Kiss Your Shadow—”
“Dig That Crazy Grave”
“Sleeping Beauty”
“Hungarian Rhapsody”
“Underground”
“The Undead”
“The Yougoslaves”
“The Bedposts of Life”
“The Scent of Vinegar”
“Afterword” by Gahan Wilson

I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for some comedy during these Trying Times. My sister in Arizona recommend Bad Sisters to me and it was exactly the kind of fun medicine I needed.

“Bad Sisters is an Irish black comedy television series developed by Sharon Horgan, Dave Finkel, and Brett Baer. Set in Dublin and filmed on location in Ireland, it is based on the Belgian series Clan, which was created by Malin-Sarah Gozin.”

“The five Garvey sisters—Eva, Grace, Ursula, Bibi, and Becka—live in Dublin. After Grace’s abusive, controlling husband John Paul dies unexpectedly, the sisters find themselves at the centre of a life insurance investigation. The series flips between timelines, one before John Paul’s death, in which Grace’s sisters plot to murder their repulsive brother-in-law and another after his death, in which a determined insurance agent tries to prove the sisters’ malicious involvement to save his struggling business.”

The interactions among the sisters is saucy and hilarious. If you want to laugh, give Bad Sisters a try. GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B+

Belle Burden gets a phone call: “Your husband is having an affair with my wife.”

Belle confronts her husband, James. “He said: I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t…. I feel like a switch has flipped. I’m done…. You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids. I don’t want it, I don’t want any of it.” (p. 14-15)

After 20 years of a seemingly happy marriage and three kids, James–a hedge fund manager–opts out of everything. Belle–a pro bono lawyer–is stunned and tries to understand how her Life just got completely upended. She asks James to tell her what she did wrong. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” (p. 16). Belle begs Hames to do therapy with her on Zoom. He refuses and stops answering Belle’s phone calls.

Strangers chronicles Belle Burden’s struggle to understand how her happy marriage to a man she loves…blew up. Belle, who should have known better, gets burned when James brings out the prenuptial agreement she signed before she married him. James considers completely ruining Belle financially.

“I fell into a deep well of despair and shame. I could no longer see the road ahead of me. I couldn’t leave the house. I couldn’t get out of bed. It was the same paralysis I felt in the first weeks after James left, but it felt much darker. When I closed my eyes, I saw myself hanging from the rafter in my bedroom.” (p. 227)

I was drawn into Belle Burden’s nightmare. The husband Belle loved and thought she knew turns out to be a complete stranger who rejects the 20 year marriage–and the three children–Belle and he shared. This is a harrowing memoir shows how strange Life can be. GRADE: A

PATRICK ARRIVED OCTOBER 28, 1983!

KATIE ARRIVED APRIL 7, 1986!

 Lucy Lawless (aka, Xena: Warrior Princess) plays a former detective, now a Private Investigator, Alexa Crowe. She assists DI Kieran Hussey (Season 1) and Detective Harry Henare (Season 2—) in solving a variety of complex homicides with the help of tech-savvy assistant Madison, convicted felon brother Will, and café owner and friend Reuben Wulf.

My Life Is Murder is an Australian–New Zealand murder mystery crime comedy-drama television series. The ten part series premiered inJuly 2019. In the United States, the series began streaming on Acorn TV in August 2019. Now PBS is running the series. I caught it by accident the other day and I just wanted to give you a heads up.

My Life Is Murder would qualify as “Summer viewing” since so many of the series we watch won’t return until the Fall. My Life Is Murder is nothing special, but I’m a Lucy Lawless fan so I’ll watch anything with her in it. GRADE: B

I’m a huge Jack Vance fan. And, I very much like the pastiches Matthew Hughes has written to emulate Vance. But back in 1974, DAW books published Michael Shea’s pastiche of Vance’s classic, Dying Earth.

In the early 70s, Michael Shea found a copy of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novel The Eyes of the Overworld in the lobby of a hotel in Juneau, Alaska. Shea wrote to Jack Vance, asking if he could write a sequel…and shockingly, Vance gave Shea permission to write a novel.

A Quest for Simbilis is an early work of Michael Shea. He produced better fiction over the years. But Shea did capture the essence of Vance’s Dying Earth in this book. The Sun is about to fail. The Earth is a mish-mash of cultures featuring demons, aliens, and a variety of humans living on a planet in decline. Shea takes one of Vance’s most famous characters, Cugel the Clever, and sends him on a quest to find an arch-wizard missing for long, long time. Mumber Sull, the exiled Thane of Icthyll, makes Cugel his partner in the journey to find Simbilis.

Rumors allege that Simbilis is locked in battle with the hordes of the subwords league. Sull and Cugel travel the wastelands to reach Simbilis and gain his favor.

While A Quest for Simbilis is not equal to Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories, it manages to foreshadow Michael Shea’s superior works like Nifft the Lean while still providing entertaining adventures. GRADE: B