Fifty years ago, the Great Bookie Robbery occurred in Melbourne, Australia when a gang of well-prepared robbers made off with millions from a bookmaker that was never recovered. While the large sum of missing monies was well known, what was not as known was a secret stash of diamonds that were absconded with, their purported fate even more mysterious.
Five decades later, Gary Chance, a former soldier of the Australian army who served in Afghanistan, now turned criminal, finds himself in a botched robbery of a cult. Though the operation is a bust, he gains a new partner, Eva McCulloch, another criminal who had eyes on the cult’s hidden fortune.
Both searching for that one last job to put their respective criminal lives behind them, Chance and Eva accept a mission from Vera Leigh, an aging socialite/madame/S&M dungeon owner who needs monies to fight ruthless property developers. The new job: track down the mythical diamonds from the Great Bookie Robbery from ages past. With only sparse clues at their disposal, the duo accepts the gig, which will take them to the United States and different cities in southeast Australia, while also being pursued by former accomplices, cult members, criminals, and a retired police officer who all have eyes on the diamonds themselves.
Andrew Nette’s Orphan Road is an Australian crime novel, though with a greater emphasis on the adventure aspects of the criminal underworld rather than the criminal element proper. The protagonists of Orphan Road are “good” criminals in that their adversaries are all unsavory characters themselves, be it a ruthless developer, White Nationalists, a greedy former police officer, and so on, making the morals depicted in the novel black and white, rather than the grey area that is found in more noir-ish crime stories.
The lead protagonist, Chance, is incredibly fun to follow. He is akin to a Jack Reacher-style character: former military, nomadic, off the grid, cunning, finding themselves in the middle of bigger criminal schemes, and extremely proficient at bedding the ladies. The big difference between the two characters is that Reacher is far more noble and near invulnerable compared to Chance, while Chance is a much more grounded character and less of a Gary Stu.
The adventure/mystery of Chance trying to track down diamonds, for all purposes lost to history, it fairly exciting, especially considering the roadblocks and dead ends he and his cohorts encounter. There is a tiny bit of globetrotting, fisticuffs, and gunplay, but the forefront is the mystery. Nette crafts a new mystery (the diamonds) and anchors it to a real-world event (the robbery), which gives the story credibility and buy in from the reader. This does cause a small problem: how does one graft this new mystery when decades have passed and most historic players are long dead and leads dried up. How can in-world amateur sleuths and professionals alike fail to find the diamonds, but Chance is able to get a new trail? The clue is fairly lackluster, a newspaper clipping that, in theory, anyone else would have access to, but its serviceable to get the heroes on their adventure.
The strongest component of Orphan Road does arise from Nette trying to work within these real world confines of lapsed time inherent in old cold cases, and that is its critique on the past and nostalgia. The majority of players in Orphan Road are fairly old, in their 70s and 80s, having served in Vietnam, or East Coast American Mafia of the 80s, or lived through other events. The Melbourne that Chance remembers has been demolished and gentrified, which is supposed to be the ultimate fate of Leigh’s establishment. Leigh, herself, tries to retcon the past by positing it was a time when criminals had class, code, and honour. Chance is quick to point out this rose-coloured view of old school crime, and even confirms it firsthand when he encounters the American mafia, still holding onto their old ways as if in a Scorcese film. Everything in Chance’s mission is old: the archive of files and photos around the diamond caper, the Ford Falcon that is driven, the Luger that is the sidearm, the ruins of burnt down buildings, and even the cult at the beginning of the novel, who worship the lost continent of Atlantis. While there are many adversaries in Orphan Road, the spectre of the past is the prominent one.
The weakest component, on the other hand, is the end of Orphan Road. Not so much the end-end proper, which does nicely wrap up all loose ends of Chance’s adventure – diamonds and all, but it is the in between the book’s climax and then end revelation. After the climax, the adventure resolution is still not within hand, so the book changes its focus from a time-is-of-the-essence thriller to a leisurely explore around and let a large passage of time elapse pace, which kills the momentum. This is unfortunate because everything up to this point is a real page turner, coupled with heightened stakes as Nette is unafraid to kill off a pivotal characters.
There is a passion from Nette on display in Orphan Road, and this is no doubt due to his love of the pulp genre, police procedurals, and gritty crime cinema, all of which he has written essays and commentaries about. With Orphan Road, Nette is able to seize a historic robbery, make it even more interesting, and throw in characters like Chance that are easy to become invested in, while at the same time not resorting to the tried-and-true method of pulling rabbits out of the pop culture reference hat. Orphan Road is anchored historically, despite being contemporary, and it succeeds extremely well.
For more information on Orphan Road and Andrew Nette, check out these links:
My publisher, McFarland books, is having a Holiday sale on all of their tiles! From November 15th to December 2nd, if you use code “HOLIDAY24” during checkout, you’ll get a 35% discount.
If you want to support me, consider buying a copy of The New Peplum or Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern:
Normal Price: 19.99 35% = 6.99 Price after coupon: 12.99
A Hero Will Endure Paperback Relese + Discount
Vernon Press, the publisher of A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator, has just released a cheaper, paperback version of the book, just in time for Gladiator 2!
The paperback is at the much more friendly price of $57 compared to $96 for the hardcover and $107 for an electronic version. All editions of the book can be found at the Vernon Press product page.
In addition, the publisher is offering a coupon on purchases of the collection! From now until the end of January 2025, if you use code SLZM30 at check out, you’ll get 30% off the title. So, the $57 book now becomes $39.99. Nice!
ECOF 2025
In September of 2025 there will be an Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) event down in Willcox, AZ. This event is to celebrate the 150th birthday of Burroughs while also honoring him with a plaque in the town due to his stationing with there the 7th U.S. Calvary in the 1890s. (Note: another ERB convention was held in Willcox back in 2019 and an event recap of that can be read at ERBZine #7059).
Here is a flyer for the 2025 event:
I’ll share more information about the event as I find out more on my website updates. There currently is a fundraiser going on to raise funds for the ERB plaque, and details for that can be found in the QR code in the above graphic, or by checking out the donation page at the Sulphur Springs Valley Valley Historical Society. 3.8K of 5K has been raised already.
Michele and I will be in attendance for this convention, so I’ve added it to the appearances section of my website as well.
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#2″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #327.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#3″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #328.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus / Warlord of Mars #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #329.
“Wondercon 2019 Coverage: Tarzan, John Carter, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.: What’s New?” reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #330.
Calls for Papers/Proposals
Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.
Edited by Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein and Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis
Building on discussions in the edited volume, Global Indigenous Horror (University Press of Mississippi, 2025), this is a call for chapter proposal submissions focused on the topic of Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Beautiful, luminous and resonant moments of horror exist in the work of writers like Shane Hawk, Kim Scott, Tiffany Morris, Waubgeshig Rice, or Ambelin Kwaymullina. But Indigenous horror tales thrive in many narrative or storying forms—from fiction, plays, and music, to graphic novels, art installations, or experimental films fortified by sonic and oral manifestations.
In response to the forthcoming inaugural essay collection, Global Indigenous Horror (2025), Judith Leggatt states, “Global Indigenous Horror is a timely and welcome addition to the growing field of Indigenous Horror studies.” Over the past decade, there has been a (re)surgence in Indigenous works focusing on tales of horror, such as Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror (2011; Hawk); Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic (2011; Tinsley and Qitsualik); Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Anthology Collection (2023; Hawk and Van Alst Jr.); Whistle at Night and They Will Come: Indigenous Horror Stories (2023; Soop); Midnight Storm, Moonless Sky: Indigenous Horror Stories (2022; Soop); Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories (2019), Moosebumpz: Scary Stories from the Rez, and The Land Has Spoken—Tales of Indigenous Horror (2024; Hawk and Rogers), and Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction (2024; Akiwenzie and Adler), just to name a few.
Responding to the widening gap between Indigenous horror and academic responses to it, editors Naomi Simone Borwein and Krista Collier-Jarvis solicit contributions for Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Shane Hawk broadly defines horror as that which “prioritizes the fear factor, often using graphic depictions of violence, monstrous beings, or otherworldly threats to achieve its effect. The ultimate purpose of horror is to confront the reader with their deepest fears, creating an experience that is visceral and unsettling.” When taken up by Indigenous storytellers, horror often engages with a colonial past that has never really passed, and as such, it haunts contemporary Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous horror thus often blends traditional stories as well as Indigenous ways of knowing and being with contemporary issues. In many cases, Indigenous horror is about our lived experiences, not as the victim of ongoing coloniality, but as resistance. According to Elizabeth Edwards and Brenna Duperron, “Indigeneity is a resistance — in the usual sense of opposition, repudiation, and refusal to comply […but also] resistant to assimilation. Indigeneity is the lived and embodied experience of peoples who have participated in that resistance” (94). In many other cases, Indigenous horror is about what Scott Gordon calls “colonial whiplash,” where “white people who haven’t turned into zombies [or other monsters] are at the mercy of the oppressed”—their Indigenous saviours. And in other cases, what Indigenous horror is has yet to be revealed.
Chapters (6,000-8,000 words including bibliography) may examine modern, contemporary representations of Indigenous Horror from a variety of perspectives. With a focus on analysis of current horror (narrative) production by self-identifying artists, writers, and other creators, some areas of consideration include, but are not limited to:
the future of Indigenous Horror;
Indigenous futurisms;
Indigenous futurism in relation to Afrofuturism;
the post-apocalyptic;
after the Anthropocene (or other labels);
pre-contact/post-contact;
Indigenous “monsters”;
Indigenous identity/identities;
unsettling, activism;
love, reciprocity, and horror;
Indigenous horror and visual, digital, or textual sovereignty;
mixed media, experimental media;
virtual, embodied, extended, or augmented reality;
multisensory installation and the horror experience;
ecological discourses and horror manifestations in relation to speculative narratives;
interrogation of “rewilding” and alternatives;
decolonization of Indigenous stereotypes in mainstream Horror and their counterparts in Indigenous narratives;
authentic Indigenous horror images, visions, “metaphors” or “motifs”;
social media and h/Horror in relation to fiction marketization;
sonic landscapes of horror;
systems of Indigenous horror that move between fiction, film, music, and other media;
NDN and Horror media;
inter-tribal horror/Horror and trans-Indigeneity or pan-Indigeneity;
exploration of various land-based, place-based, sky-based, star-based, or water-based horrors in narratives by Indigenous creators;
blood, heredity, categorization, and holocaust/genocide narratives;
reconciliation;
virtue signalling, horror, media cultures and spaces;
metacommentary;
analysis of Indigenous Gothic and Horror;
Indigenous Horror fiction and ways of knowing;
reading (and teaching) Indigenous horror fiction;
horror systems as epistemologies;
Indigenous Horror fiction and scholarship;
and more.
This follow-up collection seeks contributions from self-identified Indigenous scholars in any stage of their academic journey. We also encourage submissions from allies to the community. To acknowledge the various ways in which Indigenous scholarship may emerge, we welcome both traditional as well as more exploratory approaches, including submissions of proposals for non-fiction works by self-identified Indigenous storytellers reflecting on the process of writing, or otherwise producing, horror.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word bio to editors Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca) and Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca) by May 30, 2025. Accepted chapters will be due June 30, 2026.
Miscellaneous Tidbits
Some fun things and shout outs from these past few weeks.
Gladiator 2 Cinemark Popcorn Bucket
Collectable popcorn buckets are becoming a big thing now. Gladiator 2 has one, of course. Thankfully this bucket could be ordered online instead of actually going to a Cinemark theater. So, of course I ordered a bucket:
Sword and Sandal Blu-rays
Coinciding with the release of Gladiator 2 in November, there’s been a handful of older pepla getting new releases on UHD/Blu-ray. In mid November three came in the mail: Steelbook edition of the original Gladiator (2000), a new cut of Caligula (1979), and a new edition of Hercules Returns (1993).
Rest in Peplum Tony Todd
Tony Todd, horror actor extraordinaire best known for his portrayal as Candyman, passed away. He starred in a handful of pepla: Xena (1995-2001), Hercules (1995-1999), Beastmaster 3 (1996), and Minotaur (2006).
Michele and I had the honor to meet him way back in 2008 at a horror con in SeaTac. He autographed my Criterion Collection edition of The Rock (1996):
When Candyman 2021 came out I did an article on bands that sample dialogue from the original Candyman (1992). Do check out that article to see some innovative ways that Todd lives on via textual sampling.
Art of Michele Brittany
Michele has started a Facebook Page devoted to her crafting and art. If you want to check out her projects or purchase some of her journals, give the page a like and follow!
The peak years of the 60s Italian peplum cycle and the 80s sword and sorcery cycle have many films with transgressive, subversive, erotic, or excessively violent content. The Italian wave of pepla presented overt sexuality with their portrayal of vamps, belly dancers, shirtless strongmen, harems, and sexual seductions. With lax attitudes of what could be portrayed in media, the 80s wave of barbarian films upped with violence with overt gore, but also turned retrospective with more meta and parodic content.
Iconoclastic writer J. Manfred Weichsel seeks to tap into these eras of subversiveness with his new edited anthology, Sword & Scandal. The volume contains twelve short stories of sword and sorcery that is on, as the title suggests, the scandalous side. In this interview Weichsel talks about his newest endeavor and the future where he wants to take the scandal formula with other genres.
Book cover provided courtesy of J. Manfred Weichsel.
What is your relationship with the sword & sandal and sword & sorcery genres? What got you into them? What are some of your favourite texts from these genres?
I’ve been reading sword & sorcery for as long as I’ve been reading books. I’ve probably read all the same stories everybody has; Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mauser, Kane, and stuff like that.
As for sword & sandal movies, a friend from college who first got me into world cinema, Evan A. Baker, showed me the Mario Bava Hercules movie in the late 90’s, but I didn’t do a deep dive into the Italian peplum stuff until very recently.
I’m a regular contributor to Cirsova Magazine. The publisher was doing an anthology called The Mighty Sons of Hercules, that was an homage to the old peplum movies. I was invited to contribute, so of course I did a thorough study of the genre in preparation for writing my story. And that’s how I got into it. I think my favorite one I’ve seen so far is Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules.
You’ve dabbled with the sword and sandal genre before with “Maciste in the Land of the Snakes” (from the aforementioned The Mighty Sons of Hercules anthology) and your short novel The Calydonian Boar Hunt. What was the genesis of how this story came about? What was the primary goal you wanted to accomplish with this specific book?
The Calydonian Boar Huntis actually set during the bronze age, before there was hard metal to make swords with. I know it looks like the guy is holding a sword on the cover, but it’s supposed to be a stone knife!
The book is based on the eponymous Greek myth. I became interested in The Calydonian Boar Hunt years earlier, after seeing the famous Peter Paul Rubens painting at the Getty Museum in LA illustrating a scene from the story. Years and years after first seeing the painting, I was sitting at home during the pandemic, deciding what to write next, and I realized it was the perfect time to do a deep dive into Greek mythology. I remembered the painting and the impact it had on me and began to research the myth.
The Calydonian Boar Hunt takes place shortly after the story told in the film Jason and the Argonauts, and features many of the same characters. It’s the generation before the Trojan War, and many of the Calydonian hunters also either appear in the Trojan War as older versions of themselves, or are the parents of major figures in that story. It’s a very central myth in the Greek canon, so it gave me a lot to work with.
Of course, my books are comedies, so my retelling of the myth may be a little different in tone from what modern readers are used to. Well, many of the original Greek myths, such as the Argonautica of Rhodes, were comedies too, so my retelling is also closer in spirit to the original than many modern readers might suspect.
The Calydonian Boar Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens. Public Domain image provided by The Getty Museum.
The Kickstarter for Sword & Scandal hinted it was looking for transgressive peplum-inspired stories, but the final collection is less sword & sandal and more sword & sorcery. Based on the types of submissions you were getting for the project, was there a commonality you noticed? Something like you didn’t receive as many peplum stories as sword & sorcery (that one genre is more popular than the other)? Or maybe you received a decent amount of stories from both genres but that the sword & sandal stories tended to be lacking in those transgressive elements that you were looking for when compared to sword and sorcery? Or something else?
Of the twelve stories in the anthology, most can be described as falling into various subgenres of sword & sorcery. For example, “Kai-zur the Godless” by David Carter is a pretty pure barbarian story. But “Windblades” by C. L. Werner is a samurai tale, and a really violent one too, like a 70’s Toei movie. And “Flesh and Ink” by Rebecca Buchanon has a really unique premise. It’s about a female assassin whose tattoos leap off her body and kill her victims.
There are also a few folk tales in the mix. For example, “The Baron with a Thousand Cats” by Gary Every is a retelling of an Italian tale about a groom who must save his bride from suffering prima notte with a grotesque baron. And “The Harem of Al’Azeri” by Jasiah Witkofsky is set in the Arabian world in 1,001 Nights. There’s even a weird tale the anthology in “Vermina’s Creature,” by Bitter Karella.
I really only received two submissions that read like peplum movies, and while both were great, they shared the same problem, which was that I was looking for stories that placed their focus on sex, and these stories placed their focus on the violence. So, they were good, but they weren’t great fits for the anthology.
Sword & Scandal is overt in its want to feature stories heavy on sex, nudity, and violence. Aside from these facets, there other means to push genre boundaries to their limits. What are other transgressive and avant garde elements featured in Sword and Scandal?
The most subversive element you can put into fiction nowadays is humor. If you look at old books and movies, even if they weren’t comedies, they still had humorous elements, such as, for example, irony. But nowadays, humor is so absent from popular entertainment that audiences don’t know what to do when they encounter it. And because they don’t know what to do, they become frustrated, and respond by getting angry at the book or movie for frustrating them. This had led to a pervasive idea in our culture that if something is funny, that must mean it’s bad.
I want to help society get beyond this prejudice. This shouldn’t be terribly hard a task. It’s such an ingrained part of human nature, that it should be obvious what you are supposed to do when you encounter humor. You’re supposed to laugh! So, I actively looked for stories that were funny, in order to reintroduce humor into popular entertainment.
One of the funnier stories in Sword & Scandal is “Abduction from the Seraglio” by David J. West. This is about a sellsword who is hired by a man to rescue his girl from a harem, but… well… I don’t want to give the punchline away. Another funny story is “Shaven Beards” by Ross Baxter. This one is full of rude British humor!
Were there any specific stories in Sword & Scandal that blew you out of the water because you had never read anything as uncompromising/perverted/graphic/etc. before?
Every single story in Sword & Scandal was one that, the moment I read it, I knew I needed it in the anthology. Many of the stories contain graphic sex, but not all of them. That wasn’t a prerequisite. A few were chosen not because they have sexual content, but because they have sexual themes. I was looking for stories that were dangerous in some way, and I think that describes all the tales in the book, whether they are graphic or not.
But, to answer your question, the sex scenes in “The Gateway of Pleasure” by Jim Lee are insane, like, really hardcore. This is a story where a knight rescues a damsel in distress, and she rewards him with a blow job and a lot of sex. “The Snow Princess” by Pip Pinkerton is, in part, an outrageous porn parody of Disney’s Frozen, with a great scene where the girls use magic to create an Ice Golem and then have sex with it. There’s lot of lesbian sex in this one too. And “He Who Sows” by Austin Worley is about two female thieves who break into a temple to steal the stone phallus from a fertility God, only to become enchanted by it and start playing with it.
In 80s sword & sorcery cinema terms, on a scale of Deathstalker I (for sex and nudity) to Deathstalker II (for irreverent humour), how would you situate Sword and Scandal?
I love both the Deathstalker movies for different reasons. Jim Wynorski has a few movies like Deathstalker II, where they were sequels to bigger budget movies, but instead of going for a cheap cash grab like other directors in such situations would, he created really unique movies that, while they don’t have much to do with the original, are a lot of fun. 976-EVIL II is probably my favorite out of these.
As for your question, there is a lot of sex and a lot of irreverent humor in Sword & Scandal. Enough to satisfy fans of either film.
Sword & Scandal was financed via a successful Kickstarter campaign. What were some of the obstacles you encountered while running the Kickstarter? Will crowdfunding be a model you will use go forward for other entries in your Scandal series?
I got the idea to use Kickstarter because Cirsova used it to raise money for The Mighty Sons of Hercules, a book I mentioned above. I made sure to play an active role in the Kickstarter, both to help that anthology happen, but also to learn about fundraising so I could run my own campaign one day.
Kickstarter was great because it allowed me to do so much more than I would have been able to otherwise. I mean, without Kickstarter, I wouldn’t have been able to offer payment to the writers or have interior illustrations! I would have just written the book myself like I normally do, which was my actual backup plan had the campaign failed. So, I will definitely use Kickstarter for any future anthologies I do, including my next one, Jungle Scandals.
My process was a little different from Cirsova’s. He asked the writers to write stories up front, and then used the table of contents in his fundraising campaign as he raised the money to pay us. I ran the Kickstarter first and then had an open call for submissions. I like doing it this way because it gives me the greatest flexibility in choosing the stories that are best for the anthology.
Author photo provided courtesy of J. Manfred Weichsel.
Your contribution to Sword and Scandal, “Confessions of a Wicked Harpastum Player,” was the result of one of the Kickstarter perks where the pledger could design their own story. That pledger, Alexander Joyner, wanted “a tale with a female protagonist, about women’s soccer, with torture and lesbians.” That is quite the order – how did you go about tackling this compared to stories you pen yourself?
Well, instead of soccer, I used Harpastum, which is an ancient ancestor of modern soccer. Then I added a lot of sword & sorcery elements, such as having them play the game with a severed head instead of a ball. I came up with a sexy plot involving torture and lesbians, and voila.
Overall, writing it was a fun experience. I often start outlining a story with an image or a few images in my head, so outlining one where the images were given to me didn’t change my process very much. If anything, it forced me to be more creative and to think outside the box. It was a fun experience, and one I hope to repeat in the next book.
Aside from your introduction to the book, you also gave space for your artist, Apolonster, to share his musings and importance of working on the project. How did you connect with Apolonster? How did you two collaborate on the interior artwork, juggling artistic asks, feedback, and so on.
When I want to hire an artist, I usually go onto websites like DeviantArt and search artists until I find one that is already doing what I want to do. Then, I contact the artist to see if they are looking for work.
I found Apolonster when I was looking for somebody to do the cover to my novel Into the Bush. The moment I saw his portfolio, I knew I wanted to hire him, because he had some pictures that were exactly in the style I wanted.
I knew Sword & Scandal would be a much more complex project than that one was, because it needed a painted cover as well as interior illustrations. Apolonster is a talented and versatile artist who was classically trained at a European art academy, so when I started thinking of people to ask to do Sword & Scandal, he was my first choice.
My process for working on illustrations is that I write a worksheet that usually ends up being a couple of pages describing for the artist what I want, and then the artist gives me concept sketches. I pick one, and the artist makes the art.
Unfortunately, Apoloonster won’t be available for the next anthology for personal reasons. I already have the painting for the cover, and I’m looking for somebody right now to do the interior illustrations.
The next anthology in your Scandal series is going to be Jungle Scandals. What is some news you can share about that project? And aside form Jungle Scandals, what can folks expect to see from you in the near future?
I’m currently writing a science fantasy book called Space Escapades, which I plan to be the final book in my Action Girls trilogy of books about three ditzy wannabe Hollywood starlets.
I am creating the Kickstarter campaign as we speak. I hope to launch it early next year. I’m also working on a novel for the first time since my last one came out in March. Exciting things are on the horizon.
Do you see yourself revisiting the sword & sandal genre? If so, where would you like to take it next?
I want the “scandal” to be its own genre. I get into this in the introduction to Sword & Scandal. So, I want to do a bunch of differently themed books in the Scandal anthology series. The next one is Jungle Scandals, and then after that I want to do a science fantasy themed book, maybe called Planet Scandals or Outer Space Scandals. I’m going to do one called Scandal & Sorcery at some point, and might also do one called Sword & Scandal vol. II. I’m really taking them one at a time right now, so we will see what the future holds!
I do know that Cirsova is thinking of doing another Mighty Sons of Hercules anthology, and I really want to be a part of that if he ends up doing it.
I’ll probably revisit peplum at some point regardless. The thing is, if you look over my website, I have a pretty restless imagination and my books tend to all fall into different genres. I never really know what I am going to write next until I finish the book I’m working on.
Sincere appreciation to Weichsel for his time for this interview. For more information on Sword & Scandal, J. Manfred Weichsel, and Apolonster, check out the following links:
A brand new Scholars From the Edge of Time vidcast is online!
For the spooky month of October Michele and I revisit the world of sword and scary with a horror-filmed Neo-peplum film, The Head Hunter!
The episode can be viewed on YouTube here – check it out!
Panthans Journal #330
The newest issue of the The National Panthans Journal has been published. This issues contains a re-print of my convention coverage of the Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. panel at Wondercon 2019.
Paraphrased from the zine: The National Capital Panthans Journalis a monthly publication issued as a .PDF file on the Saturday before the first Sunday of each month. Contribution of articles, artwork, photos and letters are welcome. Send submissions to the editor: Laurence G. Dunn at laurencegdunn@gmail.com in a Word document for consideration.
ECOF 2025
In September of 2025 there will be an Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) event down in Willcox, AZ. This event is to celebrate the 150th birthday of Burroughs while also honoring him with a plaque in the town due to his stationing with there the 7th U.S. Calvary in the 1890s. (Note: another ERB convention was held in Willcox back in 2019 and an event recap of that can be read at ERBZine #7059).
Here is a flyer for the 2025 event:
I’ll share more information about the event as I find out more on my website updates. There currently is a fundraiser going on to raise funds for the ERB plaque, and details for that can be found in the QR code in the above graphic, or by checking out the donation page at the Sulphur Springs Valley Valley Historical Society. 3.5K of 5K has been raised already.
Michele and I will be in attendance for this convention, so I’ve added it to the appearances section of my website as well.
Publishing Recap
Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#2″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #327.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#3″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #328.
Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus / Warlord of Mars #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #329.
“Wondercon 2019 Coverage: Tarzan, John Carter, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.: What’s New?” reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #330.
A side note, I’ve done some organizing on my bibliography page. The magazines/zines/etc. section was getting rather long so I broke it up into a section for Exotica Moderne, a section for Panthans, and a section for the rest. In the future, when a particular outlet starts to appear more than a few times I’ll parse it to its own area as well.
Calls for Papers/Proposals
Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.
Metal Music Studies Retrospectives
In celebration of the 10th year of Metal Music Studies, we (Ross Hagen and Edward Banchs) are compiling a section of short retrospectives on foundational and important publications for the reviews section. We are aiming for a mix of titles that includes books aimed at general audiences in addition to academic monographs and edited collections. We are looking for short retrospectives of around 1000-1500 words that would address the following threads of inquiry:
What is the significance of the work?
What did it contribute to Metal Studies?
What aspects of the book still seem most relevant today?
Are there aspects of the book that you are critical of?
The tone of the writing does not need to be rigorously academic; we are looking for more personal sorts of reminisces about these publications.
If you are interested in writing a retrospective, please reply with up to three titles you are interested to write about. We’re operating on a “first-come, first-served” basis so it will be good to have some alternative titles in case your first choice is already spoken for. We would like to have the first drafts by Dec. 1 – it’s a quick turnaround but since these will be short and less academic hopefully that won’t be too much of a discouragement.
We have reviews lined up already for the following:
Christie, The Sound of the Beast
Dawes, What are You Doing Here?
Kahn-Harris, Extreme Metal
Moynihan, Lords of Chaos
McNeil, Please Kill Me
Clifford-Napoleone, Queerness in Heavy Metal Music
Roccor, Heavy Metal. Die Bands. Die Fans. Die Gegner.
Hein, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal: Histoire, cultures et pratiquants
We would like to get 5–10 more pieces to round out the section. We’d be particularly interested in reviews of some of the early collections like Scott & von Helden’s Metal Void: The First Gathering (2010)along with other edited collections and special issues of journals.
Some fun things and shout outs from these past few weeks.
Autographed Crawlspace
The folks at RedLetterMedia recently did a two-part episode on Full Moon’s Puppet Master series of films. They briefly brought up Puppet Master one’s director David Schmoeller and how he did a movie called Crawlspace with Klaus Kinski who was a nightmare to work with – so much so that Kinski became the inspiration for the Blade puppet.
Back in the late 2000s I contacted Schmoeller and asked him if I could post him my copy of Crawlspace to be autographed and he said sure! So, pictured here is my copy of Crawlspace, signed by Schmoeller (and producer Charles Band), along with a copy of “Please Kill Mr. Kinski” that Schmoeller sent as a gift.
Art of Michele Brittany
Michele has started a Facebook Page devoted to her crafting and art. If you want to check out her projects or purchase some of her journals, give the page a like and follow!
