Tag: Castalia House

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH

When an unknown man is shot, then stabbed to death on the road between Morijuku and the village of Iwagi, it is natural to assume that he fell victim to bandits preying on travelers passing through the Kiso Mountains. But when Daikawa Tadashi, a samurai from a poor, but ancient noble house, encounters the body, he realizes that there is likely more to the tale than a simple robbery.

And when Tadashi’s attempt to dutifully report the murder to one of his daimyo’s lieutenants unexpectedly results in a second murder, he finds himself, and worse, his lover, ensnared in a dangerous web of deceit and death. For clan war looms over the mountains, the Tiger of Kai, the lord of the Takeda, is on the prowl, and shinobi stalk the shadows of the night.

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH is Mojo Mori’s debut novel. A historical murder mystery set in a mystical version of 16th century Japan, it is a unique and enthralling tale. From the reviews:

  • Fans of Medieval Japanese history or traditional Japanese culture will be pleased.
  • This is an interesting tale of murder and intrigue during the Sengoku Era of Japan. This was a time of great upheaval and conflict, when the entire country was at war. A mysterious murder of a traveler outside of a small village catches the attention of a humble samurai, and before he knows it, he is up to his neck in a plot that could embroil his whole land in an unwinnable war…. The writing in this book is quite good. The author has a nice feel for Japanese sensibilities and aesthetics.
  • The honor of the samurai is contrasted well with the cunning of the ninja, and both are presented with respect due their traditions.
  • Author Mojo Mori’s future is writ bright with this unique and sparkling debut.

SIX EXPRESSIONS OF DEATH is 218 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $5.99 at Amazon and the Castalia House store.

The first million is always the hardest

Congratulations to the Castalia House team, as the site passed one million WordPress pageviews earlier today. Jeffro has done a phenomenal job of assembling a crack team of diverse bloggers, who focus on everything from pulp SF to wargames.

Today, for example, Morgan tears the corpse of the execrable Damon Knight, the founder of SFWA, a new one for his shamelessly hateful reviews, while yesterday Rawle Nyanzi defended backstories from the assault of fellow Castalia blogger Jasyn Jones, who shared his vision of a world ruled by the Pulp Revolution.

And that’s just this weekend! We have not even begun to touch upon Blog Editor Jeffro Johnson’s response to critics who seek moderation in the SF/F cultural war, Nathan’s review of Yoshiki Tanaka’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or Brian Renninger’s exploration of a naval Napoleonic role-playing game from 1978.

Excellence in esotericism could well be the motto. Either way, if you’re not reading it regularly yet and you have even a modicum of interest in SF/F, I can assure you, you’re missing out. I suspect the second million will arrive rather more quickly.

UPDATE: As per a reader’s suggestion, we have moved the blog to the main page in order to make it easier to find on the site. If you maintain a regular link to the blog, you should adjust the URL accordingly.

SOMEWHITHER now in audio!

The 2016 Dragon Award-winner for Best Science Fiction Novel, Somewhither is the first part of A Tale of the Unwithering Realm, a new science-fantasy series from science-fiction master John C. Wright. It is an adventure, it is a romance, and it is a coming-of-age story of a young man who is not a man, in a world that is only one among many. It is a tale of a greater and darker evil with longer reach than anything he could imagine, of despair without bounds, of pain beyond measure, and of the faith required to surmount all three. It is a story of inexorable destiny written in the stars and the stubborn courage that is required to defy it.

Ilya Muromets is a big, ugly, motherless boy who does not look like anyone else in his Oregon town. His father is often absent on mysterious Church missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters. Ilya works as a janitor for Professor Achitophel Dreadful of the Cryptozoological Museum of Scientific Curiosities, and he has a hopeless crush on the Professor’s daughter, Penelope, who pays him little attention and appears to be under the impression that his name is Marmoset.

One night, when Professor Dreadful escapes from the asylum to which he has been temporarily committed, he sends a warning to Ilya that not only is his Many Worlds theory correct, but those many worlds are dominated by an unthinkably powerful enemy determined to destroy anyone who opens the Moebius Ring between the worlds. And, as it happens, prior to his involuntary absence, the Professor left his transdimensional equipment in the basement of the Museum plugged-in and running….

So it is that Ilya, as he has secretly dreamed, is called upon to save the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter. With his squirrel gun, his grandfather’s sword, and his father’s crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world.

Narrated by Jon Mollison, Somewhither, The Unwithering Realm, Book One is 22 hours and 9 minutes long.

The return of Walt Ames

Just to take a break from all the political drama, Peter Grant offers an excerpt from his forthcoming Western, the sequel to Brings the Lightning:

Walt was interrupted as the batwing doors slammed back, and a big, burly man stalked through them. His gait was unsteady, as if he’d already had more than a few drinks and was feeling their effects. He was dark-haired, with a big, bushy beard. His grubby, stained checkered shirt was tucked into black trousers that fell to mud-stained boots. A revolver was holstered at his right side, balanced by a long-bladed knife on his left. He was followed by what looked like a younger version of himself, dressed and armed in the same style, also not very steady on his feet.
    Rosa hissed in anger, and started forward. The men at the bar looked around, then backed hurriedly away from the new arrivals as the bartender lowered his hands out of sight behind it.
    Walt pushed back his chair, and murmured to Isom, “Stand by for trouble.”
    “Got it.” Isom gently moved his chair back as well, to give himself room to move.
    Rosa stepped in front of the burly man, arms akimbo, fists clenched. “I told you not to come back here, Señor Furlong!”
    “Aw, shaddup, Rosa!” the man slurred, trying to focus his drink-sodden eyes on her. “I gotta wait here in town for a reply to a telegraph message, an’ I want someone to keep me warm ’till then. Here – I’ll pay.” He fumbled in his pocket.
    Rosa exploded with rage. “You hurt my girl last time! She couldn’t work for two weeks! No more of them for you! You get out of here, and take your son with you!”
    “Aw, you’re cute when you’re angry. Maybe I’ll take you tonight instead!” Bart’s hand shot out and grabbed her right breast, squeezing. Rosa’s eyes bugged out and she yelled in pain, pulling back, trying to free herself.
    The bartender lifted his hands above the bar. They were holding a sawn-off double-barreled shotgun. He began to swing it into line, but Walt was faster. He threw himself forward, drawing his right-hand revolver, lifting it, then chopping down with vicious force, clubbing Bart over the head with the butt of the gun. The man collapsed as if he’d been pole-axed.
    Isom was right behind him. As the younger man staggered unsteadily, reaching for his holstered revolver, the teamster grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and launched a haymaker that came around with all the weight of his body behind it. It landed on the side of the man’s jaw with an audible crunching sound. His victim flew sideways, crashing into the wall with an impact that shook the room. He hung there limply for a moment, then toppled forward to land face-down on the floor.
    “Thank you, señor,” Rosa said, rubbing her breast absently, her eyes on the revolver in Walt’s hand. “You are very fast with that.”
    “I get by,” Walt said shortly, holstering the gun and looking round at Isom. “I heard something break – not your hand, I hope?”
    “Naw,” the other replied, massaging his knuckles with his left hand. “I think it was his jaw.”

There is an expanded excerpt at his site.

In praise of moi

The estimable John C. Wright, Dragon Award-winner and grandmaster of science fiction and fantasy, explains what makes a good editor:

Someone asked me privately why I say that Vox Day is the best editor under whom it has been my privilege to work. I wrote a private answer, but I see no reason not to share it with the world. Mr. Day does not suffer from false modesty.

I do not mind elaborating.

The question is broader than just one author’s opinion about one editor. It is asking what editing is. That is a deeper question, too deep for this column, but I can plant a few signs pointing the direction where a fuller answer hides.

A good editor does not substitute his tastes, his politics, his pet peeves, or his sense of where your story should go for his own. A good editor is like a beauty parlor that brings out the best-looking version of the hair style you want framing your face, not someone else’s face.

That is, a good editor can tell the difference between the subjective and objective parts of the way one judges a story, and limit his comments to the more objective.

A good editor want you to tell your story your way, but he want you to tell it in your highest and best way, not your merely workmanlike way.

A good editor does make specific suggestions rather than vague ones, that is, he tells you which lines should be amended and how, rather than simply say “this needs to be tighter” or “this lacks punch”

Let me amend that. I should be more specific. A good editor knows when to be specific (to cure specific flaws) and when to be general (when he knows you know how to address a general flaw, and trusts you to find a specific solution). That requires good assessment both about the writing and about the writer’s professionalism.

A good editor reads the work and his comments show he understands what point each scene is trying to make, how characters develop, how description works or does not work.

A good editor keeps you informed of his decisions that might effect your book. Vox Day has contacted me more often in the last two weeks than Tor Books has in two years.

A good editor finds good covers.

There is, as you can probably imagine, considerably more there, as well as a few other Castalia authors weighing in on the basis of their own experiences working with me and other editors. For me, one of the biggest challenges in editing Mr. Wright is dealing with his massive vocabulary, which exceeds my English vocabulary, and frequently forces me, or an assistant editor, to resort to the OED in order to determine if the unfamiliar word is a typo, a misspelling, or simply a word with which we are unfamiliar.

8 times out of 10, Mr. Wright is correct and our vocabularies are expanded accordingly.

One mistake I think many editors make is to believe that they, and not the writer, should have the final say in how the book will proceed. While I will occasionally pull rank on a beginning writer whose grasp of what works and what doesn’t can be dubious, with more experienced writers I am inclined to view my edits as suggestions they can take or leave. Usually they listen, but sometimes they don’t, in which case I am content to let them take the chance that they’ll hear it from the readers as well.

It’s their name on the book, after all, not mine. Therefore, it has to be their call in the end. My primary objective as an editor is to make their book better and more successful, not make it my book. I don’t have to agree with them, or even like what they are writing, in order to do that, I merely have to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish.

Of course, it probably helps that, unlike many editors in SF/F, I am actually an established writer in my own right, so I have no need to seek vicarious input in someone else’s book. As Mr. Wright noted, I have even been known to suggest a turn of phrase or two on occasion. And, as some readers have observed, all this editing over the last three years appears to have improved my own writing, as having to articulate various issues to a wide variety of writers helps me better understand some of the weaknesses of my own writing.

In any event, I regard editing Mr. Wright as both a privilege and a serious responsibility. While it would be nice if my own books were read one hundred years from now as well, there are worse things to be remembered for than having been a grandmaster’s editor.

The return of the Red Horse

Nick Cole announces Riding the Red Horse, Vol. 2:

Tom Kratman and I have approached Castalia House with an idea put forth in this blog last week about doing a California Secession Anthology:  and it’s a go!

It’ll be the next installment of Kratman’s Riding the Red Horse anthology and it will focus on a fictional successful Secession of California and resulting Civil War within the US.  Currently we’re developing a timeline for the conflict with the assistance of an MI Officer who had POTUS level briefing access during the Iraq war.

Once the timeline is completed we’ll be inviting a Dream Team of today’s best MilSciFi and Science Fiction authors to game the ruination of the Golden State within short stories set against the backdrop of the conflict.  We expect controversy to accompany the launch as the real-time craziness of the current culture war probably spirals into a mess no one could’ve conceived.  But controversy sells and we’re stubborn enough to try, so… game on.

And if you look in the comments, you’ll even be able to see who a few of the contributors will be.

Moth & Cobweb 4: Daughter of Danger

The nameless girl does not know who or what she is. She does not even know her name. But she quickly learns that she has enemies who are trying to kill her, as well as lethal skills that no girl her age should know. And, she inadvertently discovers, she can also fly.


Her only clue to her identity is the mysterious, shape-changing ring on her finger that appears to be alive. And the one thing she knows for a certainty is that she must find out who she is before the monsters chasing her are able to hunt her down. DAUGHTER OF DANGER is the fourth book of MOTH & COBWEB, an astonishing new series about magical worlds of Day, Night, and Twilight by John C. Wright.


John C. Wright is one of the living grandmasters of science fiction and the author of THE GOLDEN AGE, AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND, and IRON CHAMBER OF MEMORY, to name just three of his exceptional books. He has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and his novel SOMEWHITHER won the 2016 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel at Dragoncon.


DAUGHTER OF DANGER is 155 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $4.99 on Amazon and the Castalia House bookstore. It will soon be available on iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and the Google Play store as well.

It probably won’t have escaped your attention that we’ve got a new cover artist for the series; we will have new covers out for the first three books as well. Below is the image that will be the cover for both the Swan Knight’s Son ebook and the print editions of the Green Knight’s Squire trilogy which is presently in production.

The Collected Columns, Vol. I

Three-time nationally syndicated columnist Vox Day has been one of the most astute observers of the American political scene since the turn of the century. Known for successfully predicting the financial crisis of 2008 as well as the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, the iconoclastic writer’s work appeared regularly around the country in newspapers such as the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Beginning in 2001, Vox Day wrote more than 500 columns for WorldNetDaily and Universal Press Syndicate. INNOCENCE & INTELLECT is the first of three volumes of collected columns, and consists of the columns published between the years 2001 and 2005. It addresses a wide variety of subjects, from encryption technology and economics to politics and video games. INNOCENCE & INTELLECT, 2001-2005 is DRM-free, 719 pages, and is available from Amazon and the Castalia House store for $6.99.

From the Foreword, by longtime reader Laramie Hirsch:

This was not a blowhard emotional young narcissist with a flimsy opinion. He always knew what he was talking about. Nor was he a one-trick pony. By the time the tide was turning, and Americans were having second thoughts about what Vox called the “War on a Tactic,” Vox was already discussing the state of America’s failing economy. Comparing Keynesian and Austrian economics, reconsidering American policies on international trade, and exposing the lying financial media, his articles were some of the first to recommend caution in the expectation of a coming recession. He recommended people get out of debt and invest in metals. In mid-2003, Vox was already discussing an inevitable real estate crash that wouldn’t happen for another five more years. His expression of America’s disdain for crippling “free trade” would not be fully realized until President Donald Trump’s election in 2016—almost a decade and a half later.


From the beginning of his time with WorldNetDaily in 2001, his writing seemed to surpass all of the typical right-leaning thinkers up until that point. And now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that almost every one of his positions from that early period have been vindicated by the recent events of 2016. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to discover such a writer from the beginning, and I truly feel as though I witnessed the embryonic stages of what would later become a great cultural change in America. Vox Day did not hesitate to call out the grinning jackals and betrayers of our nation from the very start. He was, and still remains to this day, ahead of the curve.

However, this first volume of the Collected Columns is not the only book we are releasing today. New Release subscribers, be sure to check your email today, because it’s an offer you will NOT want to miss. Brainstorm subscribers will certainly remember the wonderful session we held with Dr. Christopher Hallpike, the well-traveled anthropologist who has utterly demolished the fairy tales of the evolutionary psychologists with his actual experience of living with hunter-gather tribes in Africa and Papua New Guinea. Well, I stayed in touch with Dr. Hallpike, and we managed to acquire the rights to his excellent book, DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD?

Anthropologist Christopher Hallpike has spent decades studying religion and morality in a wide variety of world cultures. In this book, he examines moral philosophies that range from primitive paganism to advanced secular humanism, as well as the sciences that attempt to study them.

Dr. Hallpike’s insight into the human condition is unique, as he has lived among tribal societies in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea as well as the academic elite of the West. His scientific observations are fascinating, his logic is sound, and his scrutiny of evolutionary psychology, from the perspective of an experienced professional anthropologist, is among the most comprehensive scientific critiques of a popular theory ever published.

Featuring a Foreword by astrophysicist Sarah Salviander, DO WE NEED GOD TO BE GOOD? is a brilliant examination of an age-old question by a renowned scientist. 237 pages, DRM-free, $4.99 on Amazon, at iTunes, and at the Castalia House store.

Take the Star Road

Nineteen-year-old Steve Maxwell just wants to get his feet on the star road to find a better homeworld. By facing down Lotus Tong thugs, he earns an opportunity to become an apprentice on a merchant spaceship, leaving the corruption and crime of Earth behind. Sure, he needs to prove himself to an older, tight-knit crew, but how bad can it be if he keeps his head down and the decks clean?

He never counted on the interstellar trade routes having their own problems, from local wars to plagues of pirates – and the jade in his luggage is hotter than a neutron star. Steve’s left a world of troubles behind, only to find a galaxy of them ahead….

TAKE THE STAR ROAD is the first novel in Peter Grant’s popular five-volume Maxwell Saga. Narrated by Bob Allen, the audiobook is 9 hours and 26 minutes. Castalia House will be releasing the entire Maxwell Saga in audio and paperback.