John ONeill on Understanding Gamers through Belly Laughs: Knights of the Dinner Table by Jolly R.

Mark Robinson on Retro Review: Two F&SFs from Robert P.

Andy on Talking Tolkien: Religious Themes in Lord of the Rings – Joe Bonadonna.

HOME Search Search for: Search Mad Shadows Darker than Weird Hither Came Conan Get Back Issues of Black Gate Recent Comments See all our coverage of recent work by Black Gate authors here.

It is 244 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback.

Tales of Attluma was published by Pulp Hero Press on April 23, 2020. Here’s the complete TOC, complements of Dave Ritzlin. Unfortunately Pulp Hero Press doesn’t have a website - but Dave Ritzlin of DMR Books comes through by providing a virtual website for the book, with all the essential details. Thanks, Dave. And I feel the quality of my writing has improved, too. The early stories revolve around plots as I got older, the stories became character-driven or dealt with ideas.

And it’s interesting to see how I matured as a writer. They work closely with their authors, so what I had in mind and what Bob was going for dovetailed nicely. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell of an oversized commercial publisher picking up Tales of Attluma, but Pulp Hero Press is ideal. And that was only possible because of Bob McLain. A few of the later ones didn’t need much done to them, such as “Patience Serves,” or even a very early one, “Ithtidzik.” But most of those written when I was in my twenties, I was no longer happy with… So I’m glad I waited so long to pull them together. As I improved as a writer, I found ways to open up many of the stories or take them into new directions, so that’s what I did. Periodically, I went through them, off and on, during the past twenty-five years, tweaking them or reworking them. I’d wanted to pull these stories together into one collection for many years.

I asked Dave to tell us a little about his new book, and he obliged in fine style. His newest is Tales of Attluma, a collection of classic S&S tales from Bob McLain’s Pulp Hero Press, most of which appeared in hard-to-find small press magazines like Gordon Linzner’s excellent Space & Time. He’s also the author of twenty-six novels and collections, including Oron, The Fall of the First World trilogy, and Robert E. Smith has written a number of articles for Black Gate, most recently a fine review of Brian Murphy’s history of Sword-and-Sorcery, Flame and Crimson.

Oron by David C. Smith