Lancelot reviews

The Lancelot book that I contributed to has gotten a couple of nice, five-star reviews on Amazon (no negative reviews yet, either). They rightfully focus on the poetry, but one reviewer also mentions my part. JL Orluck attributes that section to "the authors," but it's actually mine.

Orluck talks about how the book establishes "the historicity of this fabulous story, tracing the roots and variations of the legend from its very beginning in the middle of the 9th century to its current form in literature today. But more than that, they follow the development of the magnificent themes of the Lancelot legend, from his mystical heritage, to his ferocity in battle, to his weakness in love and the betrayal that not only destroyed a kingdom, but his own life, and the lives of the women who loved him." [Edited to add: Thinking more about it, the poems do a lot of that too, which is probably what Orluck is referring to. I may have just been looking for a reference to my essay when there wasn't one.]

But back to the poetry, Orluck calls that "earthy, poignant, raw and true to the full range of human emotion that a man is capable of ... eloquent, passionate, sensual and, at times, brutal." The other reviewer calls it "beautifully written" and says that though she's never read the classic Arthur-legends, she found the poems easy to follow.

Buy My Stuff: Lancelot

Hey! I have another book out!

You won't see my name on the Amazon page, but I wrote the intro to this book of illustrated poetry about everyone's favorite home-wrecking knight-in-tarnished-armor. In fact, that's what my intro's about: Lancelot's literary history and my coming to terms with the sleazier aspects of it. I'm no Arthurian scholar, so - though I survey the various written legends - you'll be able to marvel at my lack of understanding about them. Hopefully the heart of the essay is sound anyway.

The rest of the book should be fantastic though. Alex Ness and Guy-Francois Evrard have both written poems about the various facets of Lancelot and the whole thing is gorgeously illustrated by a combination of US and French artists.

You can get a copy either through the link above (which is the same link as on my sidebar under Other Stuff I've Written) or through my store.

Lancelot Poet Interview

Alex Ness - one of the poets in the Lancelot book I wrote the foreword to - was just interviewed by Flexwriters. I've read (and even conducted) interviews with Alex before, but this was the first one I've seen specifically about his poetry.

The questions are very general and the Lancelot book never comes up, but since most of the stuff Alex and I work on together is adventure fiction, it's cool to see him talk about that side of his work.

Writing Update: Lancelot

My occasional writing partner Alex Ness has posted an announcement about a book I contributed the foreword to. There's no hard publication date set yet, but here's the skinny so far. (I'm the "writer of prose," by the way.)

Lancelot from Diminuendo Press (an imprint of Cyberwizard Productions)

“He was the perfect knight, he was the fallen one. He rode to Arthur’s defense, he broke Arthur’s marriage apart. He was noble, kind, and great. He was selfish, foolish, and broken. Who was Lancelot du Lac? Was he a knight of virtue, or a traitor to the crown? He loved a woman, who was queen, but was he a tortured soul in love, or a brazen gigolo who would steal his best friend’s wife? This book is a collection of prose consideration of the man, poetic interpretation of the stories of Lancelot, and artistic renderings of the two very different, yet valid approaches to the story of Lancelot du Lac.”

Two poets, one writer of prose, many fine artists, gathered to create a work that is beautiful, poetic, brutally honest, and romantic about a figure from legend, Sir Lancelot du Lac. It came about at the urgings of a French poet G.F. Evrard that he and (Alex) work together. We gathered our friends, some who did the work, others who fell off project, and we produced something unique. With a prose consideration of the history of the character, two poets each writing their views of the character, in poetic form, and color and black-and-white illustrations of the poems that round a project into more than poetry, more than art, but something quite different.

Lancelot of the Lake (and other writing updates)

Arthurian peoples by Frank Godwin.

If you blinked you missed it, but I said something earlier about an essay on Lancelot that I was working on. It's done now and I hope I can tell you what it's about, because I'm going to.

My sometimes co-writer Alex Ness has written a series of poems about Arthur's right-hand man Lancelot that will be published alongside a French fellow's Lancelot poetry with lots of illustrations by both US and French visual artists. It's going to be very classy and cool, but for some reason they asked me to contribute an essay anyway.

They wanted a piece about the historical Lancelot to accompany their artistic impressions of him and I said, "Sure." To be absolutely candid, I wasn't sure how it was going to come out because I sort of have some problems with Arthur's traitorous friend. But the research helped me appreciate Lancelot in a new way and I'm really happy with how the article turned out.

The publisher is too, which is nice. Her exact words were, "Oh my, this is wonderful." And she's going to make it the foreword.

So, yay, Lancelot. I'll give you more details about the book when they're available.

I've also got a little news from the Jesse James vs. Machine Gun Kelly beat. I mentioned before that low preorder numbers killed the one-shot before it had a chance to reach stores, but that my co-writer Alex and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do with it. Well, we've got a plan.

It's too early to go into a lot of detail, but we've got a new artist who's excited about the project. He's on for at least the Jesse vs. Kelly story, but we'll see if we can't keep him around for longer because we have a lot we want to do. A series of graphic novels, probably, based on the further adventures of one of the characters. That's all I'll say for now, but I'm way excited about the ideas Alex and I have been tossing back and forth.

I'll share more when I can about that too.