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2021 Accomplishments

2021 was definitely a crazy and hectic year. The global Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the world with multiple variants. Michele and I continue to play it safe: we mask up, limit us going out, and received our vaccines, though we need boosters soon. The move from Orange to Phoenix also required some normalization. There was also personal ailments, family issues, work woes, and lots of anxieties. 

Despite all this, 2021 was a successful year on many fronts. I didn’t have any books published and outside my regular contributions to Exotica Moderne, nothing else saw physical print. However, Michele and I really ramped up the focus on our H. P. Lovecast Podcast. We launched an additional show and tweaked the format a little bit and the results so far have been quite positive. In 2022 we are going to concentrate on growing our audience, which right now as a cult following. But with 30 episodes published this year plus other podcast appearances, we were both successful on this front, and we hope the books and authors we featured also received a spike in promotion.

Vanity shelf at the end of 2021

What follows is a break down of all major 2021 accomplishments. 

2021 Accomplishments

Podcast Accomplishments

  • 50 podcast appearances

Publication Accomplishments

  • 6 physical/print publications
    • 4 articles for Exotica Moderne
    • 2 book contributions
      • Mark My Words
      • StokerCon 2021 Souvenir Book (co-written with Michele)
  • 16 articles at my website
    • 7 interviews
    • 3 book reviews
    • 6 articles/essays
  • Essay published at Academia Letters

Conference Accomplishments

  • Co-chaired with Michele the 4th year of the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference
  • 2 Conference Presentations
    • AnnRadCon
    • Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association

For some of the above accomplishments I’d like to give a shout out to: Brenda S. Tolian and Joy Yehle (Burial Plot Podcast), Sherri (Scaredy Cats Podcast), Hercules Invictus (Voice of Olympus Network), Ken Holewczynski (Exotica Moderne), Josh Viola (Hex Publishers), and Lee Murray (Mark My Words) who all gave me platforms and opportunities. I sincerely appreciate you all. Of course I have to think Michele for being my biggest supporter and partner in crime in these endeavors.

2022 Projections

Only a few days into the new year and 2022 is already filling up with new projects, opportunities, and publications!

Things to look forward to in 2022

  • Publication of Kevin Wetmore’s The Many Lives of the Twilight Zone: Essays on the Television and Film Franchise which contains my essay “Strange Realities: Twilight Zone-sploitation in Encounter with the Unknown
  • Publication of Rachel Corazo’s untitled Gladiator book which contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling”
  • Issue of Exotica Moderne that contains my interview with New Zealand Pinup model Miss Corsair Debonair
    • Other Exotica Moderne appearances will happen
  • Essays and interviews co-written with Michele for the 2022 StokerCon souvenir book
  • Co-chairing and presenting at the Fifth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference
  • Secret magazine article (due at the end of January)
  • More episodes of H. P. Lovecast
  • More articles and interviews at my website

Projects I’ll be starting in 2022

Projects I anticipate to be starting on or working on in the next year:

  • Composing a Highlander essay for Michele’s Highlander Book (see CFP here)
  • My first monograph (which will be on Lovecraft and Rene Girard)
  • Publishing a CFP for the Emmanuelle and Black Emanuelle films
  • Editing my Acylum presentation into a journal article proper
  • And others tbd! 

Thank you everyone who has been along with me on my academic journey. 

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News Roundup W/E 2020-11-29

Personal / Website News

Apologies, I missed putting out a news roundup for 11/22, so this post will cover both weeks.

Podcast News

Michele and I interviewed Michael Oden (creator of the Elysian Fields comic) on the Scholars from the Edge of Time segment of the Voice of Olympus show. Episode has been added to the podcast index and can also be streamed here.

For H. P. Lovecast Podcast, the upcoming schedule is going to look like this:

  • 2020-12-06 – Wonder and Glory Forever
  • 2020-12-20 – Interview with Nick Mamatas (already recorded)
  • 2021-01-03 – Eight Cylinders
  • 2021-01-17 – Interview with Jason Parent

Call for Papers

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.

General Neo-Peplum News

Rest in Peplum

David Prowse, better reknown as the actor who portrayed Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, passed away at the age of 85. His contributions to the sword and sandal genre include:

  • Dr. Who “The Time Monster” (1972). He was a minotaur
  • Up Pompeii (as an muscular extra)
  • Jabberwocky (1977, Terry Gilliam)

Daria Nicolodi passed away at the age of 70. She was known for her many contributions to Italian cinema in the 70s and 80s and her collaborations with Dario Argento. She appeared in Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989, Enzo G. Castellari)

Miscellanea

The folks at Comicon have quite a few articles that have gone up in the past two weeks:

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News Roundup W/E 2020-11-01

Personal / Website News

Podcast Appearances

Michele and I appeared on the Chatting with Sherri program and the episode went live this past Thursday.

Earlier today we recorded the newest episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast. In this episode we discuss Kij Johnson’s The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe. Both podcasts have been added to the podcast index.

Our upcoming podcast schedule looks like this:

  • 11/25 – HP Lovecast Fragments: Interview with Robert Ottone
  • 11/26 – Scholars from the Edge of Time appearance
  • 12/06 – HP Lovecast: Stories from Wonder and Glory Forever, edited by Nick Mamatas
  • 12/20 – HP Lovecast Fragments: Interview with Nick Mamatas
  • 12/24 – Scholars from the Edge of Time appearance

Call for Proposals

The Call for Presentations for Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is live. The CFP can be read at the StokerCon 2021 website.

The Call for Abstracts for my collection of essays on neo-medievalism is live. The CFP can be found here.

ICYMI

In case you missed them, here is a wrap up of my essays published at my website since going live:

General Neo-Peplum News

Netflix is looking to develop an Assassin’s Creed series. Hopefully they will bring in Kassandra?

Both Looper and The Cinemaholic have write ups on the Blood of Zeus animated series on Netflix.

While IGN reviews season one of Netflix’s Barbarians.

Rest in Peplum

Legendary actor Sir Sean Connery, iconic for bringing pop culture phenomena James Bond to life, passed away earlier this week at the age of 90. Aside from his portraying Bond, Connery starred in numerous peplum films and TV programs:

  • An Age of Kings (1960)
  • Adventure Story (1961)
  • Zardoz (1974, John Boorman, counting film as sword and planet genre)
  • Robin and Marian (1976, Richard Lester)
  • Time Bandits (1981, Terry Gilliam)
  • Sword of the Valiant (1984, Stephen Weeks)
  • The Name of the Rose (1986, Jean-Jacques Annaud)
  • Highlander (1986, Russell Mulcahy)
  • Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, Kevin Reynolds)
  • First Knight (1995, Jerry Zucker)
  • Dragon Heart (1996, Rob Cohen)
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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-25

Personal / Website News

The New Peplum Citation

Dr. Claire Elizabeth Greenhalgh sites myself, Hannah Mueller, and Jerry Pierce from The New Peplum in their PhD thesis, “The Depiction of Slavery in Ancient World Television Drama: Politics, Culture and Society.” The thesis can be read here and the citation has been added to The New Peplum page.

Podcast Appearances

Michele and I interview author Janet Joyce Holden on the Scholars from the Edge of Time show.

Michele and I were interviewed on the Chatting with Sherri show. The episode will be published on 2020-10-29 at Blog Talk Radio.

Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference

The CFP for the Ann Radcliffe Academic conference is still open until the end of November. It can be viewed at the StokerCon 2021 website.

General Neo-Peplum News

New Netflix Show

Netflix premiered a new neo-peplum miniseries on Friday called Barbarians. The brief description reads: “Torn between the mighty empire that raised him and his own tribal people, a Roman officer’s conflicted allegiances lead to an epic historical clash.”

Literature

The folks at Lousy Book Covers feature a Biblical peplum book with a, well, lousy book cover: Unworthy: A Soldier. A Servant. A Savior by T. M. Hedlund.

Amy Wolf recently published The Further Labors of Nick, book 2 of their Mythos trilogy.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

A demo for Immortals Fenyx Rising is available to play online via the Stadia service. Access to the demo ends on 10/29.

Rest in Peplum

Marge Champion (better known as a model at Disney on many of their animated features) passed away at 101. She was in Jupiter’s Darling (1955, George Sidney).

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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-18

Personal / Website News

The Call for Papers for the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon 2021 is still open until the end of November. Details can be found at the StokerCon 2021 website.

The Podcast Appearances has been updated:

General Neo-peplum News

Rest in Peplum / #RestInPeplum to Rhonda Fleming who passed away at the age of 97. The classic artist started in rather big time historic epics:

  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949, Tay Garnett)
  • Serpent of the Nile (1953, William Castle)
  • The Queen of Babylon (1954, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia)
  • The Revolt of the Slaves (1960, Nunzio Malasomma)

Polish actor Ryszard Ronczewski also passed away at the age of 90. He was in the historic epic An Ancient Tale: When the Sun Was a God (2003, Jerzy Hoffman)

Spanish actress Marisa de Leza passed away at 87. She was in Alexander the Great (1956, Robert Rossen)

Dynamite Entertainment is launching DIEnamite – a big cross over comic series with lots of IPs they have the licenses of. This include John Carter and Red Sonja.

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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-11

Personal / Website News

Sara Tantlinger Blog Appearance

For the month of October, horror author and poet Sara Tantlinger is doing a series at her website called Delicious Horror. I had the honour to make an appearance on her 10/07 entry, talking about my love for Mikel Koven’s book La Dolce Morte and giving a cocktail recipe for the Buona Vita.

Ann Radcliffe Academic Conf 2021

The CFP for the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference (year 4!) for the 2021 StokerCon is live at the StokerCon website. Please consider submitting!

HP Lovecast Fragments

The next episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be a fragments episode. We will be interviewing author Kathleen Kaufman, whom we had the honour to interview last year on the Scholars from the Edge of Time show.

Exotica Moderne

Issue 9 of Exotica Moderne will be published next month. This issue will have my write up of the Severin Films release of Horrors of Spider Island. The cover art of the new issue looks like this:

General Neo-Peplum News

Netflix is releasing an anime-styled animated series called Blood of Zeus. Release date is October 27. The trailer is on YouTube, or you can see it embedded here:

Blood of Zeus trailer

Comicon.com has a review up for Knights vs. Pirates: “A Great Sword, Sorcery And Swashbuckling Adventure From Start To Finish.”

Comicon.com also has a back and forth on the comic Kill the Minotaur.

From Dread Central: Hex Studios announces sword and sorcery epic Dragon Knight

From CBR: “10 TV Shows That Feel Like Old-School Dungeons & Dragons Campaigns.” Lots of neo-peplum fare on this list.

Fanbase Press has a review of the comic book Norse Mythology #1.

At CinemaBlend: “What The Witcher’s New Season 2 Images Tell Us About Henry Cavill’s Geralt And More.”

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News Roundup W/E 2020-10-04

Personal / Website News

Book Citation

Emily Anctil’s essay “Not a Bedtime Story: Investigating Textual Interactions Between the Horror Genre and Children’s Picture Books” from Horror Literature From Gothic to Post-modern: Critical Essays has been referenced in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Fall 2020 Vol 45 No 3.

McFarland Book Sale

McFarland is doing their yearly October sale for their horror books. If you use the code “HORROR” (without the quotation marks) you will receive 40% off the order from now until Friday, October 16. There are numerous horror books I am a part of that you can purchase: Horror in Space, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern, and Uncovering Stranger Things. If you want to support my academic endeavors, purchasing copies of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern benefits me greatly.

New Episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast

New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online. In this episode Michele and I talk about two short stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology: “Modu” by Mark Sims and “The Sword of Lomar” by Jason Scott Aiken. The episode has been added to the podcast appearance index.

General Neo-Peplum News

The book, Xena: Their Courage Changed Our World was recently published by AUSXIP Publishing. The large book is a collection of essays from the Xena fandom and the impact of the show on their lives. The book can be ordered from the AUSXIP web store or Amazon in a variety of formats: e-copy, soft cover, hard cover.

Per Deadline, Netflix looks to be developing a live action Conan the Barbarian series.

Paul A J Lewis has written an article at The Film Magazine called “Loincloths, Muscles, Sorcery and the Rock of Uranus: A Journey Into the Realm of the Italian Peplum (c.1958-1965).

Screen Rant ranks the 10 best gladiator films.

  1. Spartacus (1960)
  2. Ben-Hur (1959)
  3. Gladiator (2000)
  4. The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
  5. Barabbas (1961)
  6. Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
  7. Cabiria (1914)
  8. Centurion (2010)
  9. The Eagle (2011)
  10. The Arena (1974)

Article at Deutsche Welle called “What Hollywood got wrong about the gladiators of ancient Rome.”

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News Roundup W/E 2020-09-27

Personal/Website News

Michele and I interviewed cosplay couple Steven and Tiffany Carmel Lake on the Scholars from the Edge of Time program where we talked about the art of cosplay.

Earlier in the week I had a quick appearance on the Voice of Olympus program to talk about Antonio Margheriti’s film Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules. Both podcast appearances have been added to the podcast appearance index.

I did a write up of the neo-peplum comic Elysian Fields #0 and an interview with the comic’s creator Michael Oden.

This upcoming weekend we will be recording our newt episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast where we discuss stories form the book Swords Against Cthulhu.

Michele and I will also be appearing on the program Chatting with Sherri.

General Neo-Peplum News

Michael Oden’s neo-peplum comic, Elysian Fields: The Pyramid Gambit, launches on Indiegogo.

Screenrant has an article up “10 Behind-The-Scenes Facts About The Making Of Gladiator (2000)” in honour of the film’s 20th anniversary that was celebrated earlier this year. A condensed list of the trivia:

  • General Maximus was an amalgam of many historic peoples, with Mel Gibson, Antonio Banderas, and Hugh Jackman all considered for the role.
  • There was lots of re-writes and ad-libbing
  • The coliseum was 1/3 built and 2/3 CGI
  • Opening battle scene in Germania took 3 weeks to film
  • Oliver Reed died and his remaining scenes were accomplished with rewrites, body doubles, and CGI.
  • Maximus was going to fight a rhino instead of a tiger.
  • Film shot with different cameras and different frame rates.
  • The blurry sequences during a big fight scene were accidentally caused during post-production, but they went with it.
  • Joaquin Phoenix was super nervous to play his part, so to help out, Russell Crowe got him drunk.
  • Crowe got lots of injuries making the film.

The upcoming Hindi fantasy film Brahmāstra (trailer) looks to contain many India-style sword and sandal elements.

Just learned of the Byzantine Empire neo-peplum comic Theophano: A Byzantine Tale. The folks at Fanbase Press have an interview with the comic’s illustrator, Chrysa Sakel. The graphic novel is readily available on Amazon, I’ll be checking this out!

Legendary sword and sorcery film Beastmaster is getting the 4K treatment over at Vinegar Syndrome.

Comicon.com offers a sneak peak at Vampirella/Red Sonja #10.

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News Roundup W/E 2020-09-20

Here is a news round up for weekending September 20th, 2020. On these weekly posts, I’ll list not only personal and project news, but I’ll be rounding up neo-peplum news that has occurred in an attempt to aggregate and promote the genre.

Podcast News

New episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online. In this episode Michele Brittany and I discuss Gou Tanabe’s manga adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City.”:
URL: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1022692/5521708-hplcp-fragments-ep-02-gou-tanabe-s-the-nameless-city

This upcoming week I’ll be on a sword and sandal cinema segment on Hercules Invictus’ Voice of Olympus program on Tuesday the 22nd followed by Michele’s and my monthly Scholars from the Edge of Time segment Thursday the 24th. For that episode we will be interviewing cosplayers Tiffany Carmel Lake and Steven Lake. Links will be added to the podcast page when they are live.

The next episode of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast will be on stories from the Swords Against Cthulhu anthology.

General Neo-Peplum News

Ubisoft, publishers of the historic epic/neo-peplum video game series, Assassin’s Creed, announced two titles later this year that are in the sword and sandal genre: Immortals Fenyx Rising (trailer) and a remastered version of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (trailer). This is in addition to the prior announced next entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (trailer). I’m saddened that Kassandra’s storyline from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is officially at an end, but happy to see Ubisoft continuing to pump out neo-peplum video games. I look forward to writing about these titles after they are released.

Late last week I received my copy of issue 0 of Elysian Fields by Michael Oden and published by 9 Realms Publishing. I’ll be interviewing Oden and doing a write up about this comic in the very near future. More info about the comic can be found at the 9 Realms Publishing Facebook page or at the Indiegogo campaign page for the comic.

Issue one of the neo-peplum/Lovecraft comic Isidora and the Immortal Chains by G. A. Lungaro just concluded their Kickstarter campaign.

I’ve also backed a neo-peplum comic on Kickstarter that takes place in the Mesoamerican period that is called Aztlan. I’m always excited for sword and sandal that is outside traditional antiquity.

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New Website Work in Progress

My new website is under major construction. This is all filler for right now. Please continue to visit my old website as I get this up and running:

https://sites.google.com/site/vnvdiak/