Tag Archives: short story

A note on the Norgolian Empire

I have to admit something. The name of the Norgolian Empire, the home of the characters of Cannon Fodder, isn’t original by me. I lifted it from “The Eye of Argon,” a remarkable short story by Jim Theis.

Now in the public domain, the short story was first published in 1970 in OSFAN, a fanzine. It’s … well, it’s more or less Conan the Barbarian fanfic, but that doesn’t do it justice. I first ran into the story at a party game at Science Fiction and Fantasy club back in college. We’d printed out copies of the story and handed them out to the participants. The object of the game was to read an entire page of the story out loud, pronouncing all the spelling errors, and keep a straight face. I’m pretty sure nobody won that night.

You have to see this story to believe it.

I’ve read godawful writing before, but “The Eye of Argon” manages to transcend godawfulness and become a kind of work of art. I wanted to celebrate this story by throwing the name of the Norgolian Empire into Cannon Fodder. Theis’s short story is about the Empire’s outer reaches, so who knows what might be going on at the capitol? Hence the setting for Cannon Fodder. I like to think that at the time of Alec’s kraken problems, Grignr is still out there somewhere, hacking away at other barbarians.

Ravensdaughter’s Tale is up

The Smashwords edition of “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” is complete and now up on the site.  Even if you weren’t a backer of the Kickstarter campaign, now’s your chance to get a copy.  It’s only 99 cents.

And check out the lovely cover art that Kelsey has made for it.  She’s awesome.

Updates of Two Kinds

First of all, the surviving lettuces on my balcony have set flower:

Secondly, my Kickstarter for “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” finished the other day, not only fully funded, but also having made its first reach goal of $300!  This means that I’ll be able to post “Ravensdaughter’s Tale” up on Smashwords as well as a new edition of Grizelda.  I’ll send links when there’s stuff to see.

Kickstarter: Ravensdaughter’s Tale

Hey, guys, I’m getting on the Kickstarter bandwagon.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it before, Kickstarter is this really cool website where people can post ideas for artistic projects.  Other people on the Internet can help fund these projects so they can become a reality.  Sometimes, so many people get together to back a project that a certain webcomic can raise over a million dollars.

I’m giving Kickstarter a go for one of my short stories.  In a nutshell, I’ve found a great local artist to draw cover art for the story, and I’m raising funds to pay her commission.  Her concept for the cover of Ravensdaughter’s Tale looks like this:

Check out my campaign, and then check out all the other cool projects on the site.