{"id":7165,"date":"2017-03-03T17:15:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T17:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/?p=7165"},"modified":"2017-03-03T17:15:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T17:15:51","slug":"secret-projects-and-the-wish-for-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/sword-and-sorcery\/secret-projects-and-the-wish-for-style","title":{"rendered":"Secret Projects and the Wish for Style"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/HJ-Sagan-Tree.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-4880\" src=\"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/HJ-Sagan-Tree-235x300.jpg\" alt=\"HJ Sagan Tree\" width=\"167\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/HJ-Sagan-Tree-235x300.jpg 235w, http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/HJ-Sagan-Tree-803x1024.jpg 803w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 167px) 100vw, 167px\" \/><\/a>Monday I briefly touched upon some secret projects and sparked some speculation. Rather than answering thedarkman’s question on that older post, I thought I’d open by touching upon it today. Yes, one of those secret projects is rich with old school sword-and-sorcery. So much so that your socks are going to be blown off when you get it in your hands. I am grinning with delight every time I think about the quality of the work involved, and the art I’ve seen, and other components, and when the time comes I’ll shout about project x from the rooftops and hope that you’ll help me spread the word about it so it can\u00a0reach as wide an audience as possible. With a little luck and hard work more and similar things will come to fruition.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Yes, I wish I could say more. Soon I shall. No, it’s not a secret novel. And yes, the new novel project is definitely sword-and-sorcery as well, although it’s got more of a Zelaznian than a Howardian spin… and I’d like to say it’s got a Howard Jonesian spin to it as well. It would be nice to think that I’ve got my own style at this point, although maybe that’s not always apparent.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, in the Dabir and Asim stories I deliberately use a formality to give it a faux “ancient manuscript” vibe, and relate everything through an unreliable narrator, and THAT’s not my style, just one that I use for those stories. And the Pathfinder books are a little pulpier — though in a good way, I hope — than what I might normally draft.<\/p>\n<p>So maybe THIS series is more like a straight presentation of my prose stylings. I think you can see all of my favorite writerly influences, and my love of strong pacing and interesting characters. Perhaps the most common thread in my fiction is that I believe in heroes who will stand up and do the right thing even when no one is watching. As a student of history, I know that they have existed and come through for us in the past, and I know that heroes\u00a0still live\u00a0today among us. And I’m frankly a little tired of reading about the unhreoic ALL the time.<\/p>\n<p>That’s not to say I like flawless, unrealistic do-gooders. Or that I never want to read about anti-heroes or rogues. Any frequent visitor to this blog knows how influential a lot of the Lankhmar stories were on this storyteller, and the tales of Leigh Brackett, and maybe they know just how much I love the movie <em>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. <\/em>There are scads of rogues in that there fiction, folks.<em>\u00a0<\/em>But I like to <em>write<\/em> stories about heroes and I don’t see any sign of that stopping.<\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday I briefly touched upon some secret projects and sparked some speculation. Rather than answering thedarkman’s question on that older post, I thought I’d open by touching upon it today. Yes, one of those secret projects is rich with old school sword-and-sorcery. So much so that your socks are going to be blown off when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-sword-and-sorcery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7169,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7165\/revisions\/7169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.howardandrewjones.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}