Iron Armour Heart

And so January draws to a close, paving the way for February, and eventually the changing of the seasons. As I write this, there remains but one hour of the first month of the year, which means that by the time you read this, the last chance to download Cultivating Howlers will probably have passed.

Thank you all, both downloading and reading, and expect word of new projects and old projects nearing completion soon.

Fukubukuro is a tradition amongst Japanese retailers of bagging up old stock in random, assorted bags and selling them as grab bags for a small amount. It’s a way for shops to clear their stockrooms of old goods and a chance for diligent shoppers to obtain sometimes expensive products for the discounted price of the fukubukuro bag. The catch is, of course, that whatever is in the bag is entirely random, therefore you might indeed get that much sought after Sega Dreamcast title, but you might also just find yourself with yet another copy of ChuChu Rocket!. As an example of this sort of lucky bag policy being implemented outside of Japan, the notable and highly mentionable natural cosmetics company Lush offered similar lucky bags in their stores during New Year 2009.

In the spirit of New Year festivities and with a mind to clearing out some of my own random backlog of stories, I thought I’d put together my own fukubukuro.

Cultivating Howlers is a collection of assorted stories ranging from 1999 to 2009 and available for free download from the 1st of this month right up until the 31st. After the 31st, I’ll be taking it down and laying to rest the older pieces, which means that this may be the only time I offer them for your attention, dear reader. Other pieces are intended as previews for projects currently awaiting publication whilst others still are an attempt to persuade you to part with your pennies for previously published work.

Yet just because I will be ceasing distribution of this work at the end of January, it doesn’t mean you have to. The collection is made available under a Creative Commons license, which means you have the right to re-publish, adapt and fashion sequels featuring the characters involved here as long as it remains on a purely non-commercial level.

As a last note, for those of you with a long memory, you may also be pleased to note the ‘publisher’ mentioned by name on page 4.

Please enjoy this mixed bag of New Year’s festivity and, if you should find it worthy of merit, please pass either the link, the file or your own re-published version of it on to anyone you think might be interested.

Thank you very much in advance.

Now that chestnuts have roasted by open fires, presents have been opened and mummers and wrenboys alike have had their merriment, in order to preserve the sense of festivity and absurdity, I have mutilated Wizards of the Coast’s d20 system on your behalf. This is something akin to giving a guitar to someone with no musical skill whatsoever and then ushering them onto a stage in front of a crowd expecting some minor celebrity.

I won’t pretend to understand the d20 system or its ancestor, the equally celebrated and maligned Dungeons & Dragons, and having failed to come to terms with some of the more complicated aspects of the rules – I have thus thrown them out of the window in favour of references to the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and Final Fantasy. This isn’t to say that I have some particular dislike for the rules… but I am a simpleton. Therefore, in the name of fun you may find some aspects of the rules and monster statistics skewed in favour of simplicity. This of course means that the entire project will appeal to neither people well versed in pen-and-paper role playing games or to people who are oblivious to the rules. I, however, am more than content with this, having spent three days merrily scribbling notes and looking up profiles of various different monsters. So obsessive was I about said monsters, that I even managed to borrow some festive Final Fantasy derived sketches my wife made as part of a friend’s Christmas present.

Therefore, if you can put up with simplified rules, my godawful handwriting on a poor scan of the ‘map’ and various other handicaps, then I welcome you, one and all, to the Hall of the Owlbear King.

http://jacobmilnestein.co.uk/omake.htm

Once again, it’s that time of year. Mulled wine warms on the stove and mince pies await nothing but a dash of cream for the adventurous. For those of you far from both home and such simple comforts, this year’s Christmas story is a discussion taking place in a dank and festering pit in an unknown field in France, circa early 1915.

Initially, having removed the older stories from the omake page earlier this month, I wanted to attempt to provide an introduction to lecteur de tarot. This story is not said introduction. Instead there is a touch of Sophistry and a further examination of Mononoke theological themes first mentioned in The Winter House last year. I want to tell you that you can read this without prior knowledge of the Mononoke or of lecteur de tarot, but I’m increasingly feeling that the only person who understands how these ideas fit together is now typing you this missive and needs to learn to express his thoughts in a clearer fashion.

Which isn’t to say I’m trying to dissuade you from reading, but I wanted to warn you all in advance.

Yet fear not! If the warning puts you off, I promise I have a few more aces up my sleeve for this holiday season. All tastes will be catered for!

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Well, perhaps not, but certainly this is far from the last of my seasonal posts for the month.

So, now that everything has been explained in as awkward a manner as possible, it only remains for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thank you once again for reading.

"Once we are close to St. Paul’s, we shall await nightfall."

On Saturday, my wife and I took a short walk around St. Paul’s in order to take a few photos for the cover of the ‘remastered’ edition of A Nation of Shadows.

Walking back along Ludgate Hill, I tried to suggest that in order to sell more copies of Sophistry, she should dress up as an old lady whilst I dressed up as a bear and we could walk up and down between Ludgate Circus and St. Paul’s Churchyard, yet she seemed oddly resistant to this idea.

And so December in England begins with a downpour, a torrent of rain that leaves a residue of mud on cracked paving stones that the council declines to fix, having already squandered the money on pointless pursuits and cheap fairy lights for the town centre.

There’s a saying in this godforsaken part of the country that it’s ‘too cold for snow’, certainly right now it’s too wet for it, but we can at least bring everything else required for the beginning of Christmas festivities, commencing with a trip to the unedited highlights of last year’s Christmas story languishes still on the jacobmilnestein omake page.

I made a recent decision to remove the years prior as they need a bit of editing and they somewhat ruin the surprise of the forthcoming lecteur de tarot novel (due next year, I have been told). If they had still been there, then I would have recommended them as a perfect entry into the lecteur de tarot story… but it would have been an entry into the deep end, so you might be better off waiting until next year when you are assured a physical copy of the central text to leaf through.

If you’re looking for something more current then I can confess to being hard at work on this year’s Christmas story and that the opening word of the tale is ‘The‘. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter until later on in the month.

In other news, a copy of Mister Watts’ Guardian Force Roboman v1: Let’s Go Robo! arrived here last month with something of a surprise inside. You shouldn’t need me to tell you about it as the contents of Mister Watts’ story speak well enough without need of me trying to sell it. Head over to amazon and take a look inside the book, certainly it’s a title deserving of a place on the shelves of any tokusatsu fan.

Last but not least, the elventh part of The Black Iron Prison is available within the pages of Artifice Comics’ Obento #2. As promised, the series is set in a world where it would be impossible for any of the established Artifice heroes to come into existence. It is a world of cruelty and vindictiveness, a world presided over by the ethics of the four libertines who once holed themselves up in the Château de Silling. The story will unfold over twelve installments presented out of sequence.

I won’t ask you to enjoy it but, if you do read it, I will ask you to understand that this is a cautionary tale with no morals. Their world, extreme and absurd as it may seem, is not far removed from our own.

As a coda to last month’s Hallowe’en tale, the haunted knight and his youthful companion return once more for a brief foray into the wilderness of the Home Counties on the fifth of November.

This brief little tale, no more than 900-odd words, is available on fauxnoir.

One of the traditions of [fauxnoir] as a mailing list has been to produce a Hallowe’en story and a Christmas story every year.

This year’s festive fright is the tale of a former knight and a funeral procession, the tale of a lost London and an oni with a dark gift.

This year’s tale, boys and ghouls, is called Pumpkin Night and can be read at leisure in your inbox or at the mailing list’s homepage.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Frederic de Bones

Frederic de Bones came from another London, one composed entirely of bones and shadow.

Beneath Ribcage Arch, built as a gateway to His Exhumate Majesty’s freshly reconstructed Buckingham Palace and down the cobbled streets that led between the bone markets of Covent Garden, Frederic de Bones walked a veritable distance, somehow eventually crossing the unmoving waters of the Thames and away from the echo of rumbling, bestial skeleton-trains in the Underground to a London that was not his own, a London of Portland stone and rich red soil.

To this day, Frederic de Bones walks, searching forever to find a path back across the river and to that other London with its haunting fog and dimmly remembered dance hall melodies.

To this day, Frederic de Bones walks.

Love Amongst Strangers (Again) - COMPLETE

You may or may not recognise the above piece of paper from a previous post, in fact you can still see the details of lecteur de tarot’s completion (now accompanied by a word count of progress for the delayed Pulp Bonanza piece and a sketch of heronaut’s contents) but below that, marked out in yellow, green and blue marker pen is the chart detailing progress on the now complete Love Amongst Strangers sequel.

At this point, I’m very tempted to title the entire short novel, An Echo of the Way You Knew Me Under Foreign Skies ~ Love Amongst Strangers (Again), if only because I’m somewhat in love with the idea of having a full sentance as a book title. The line itself comes from the song When Everyone Forgets by ThouShaltNot which can be found on the Neil Gaiman tribute LP, Where’s Neil When You Need Him? or, alternately, can be listened to on the last.fm site. This song is one of many that has made a significant impact on writing this book, almost to the point where I’m considering uploading a track listing for a Love Amongst Strangers (Again) ‘album’.

More on that later, perhaps.

So, one more project down, only another million to go.

Once I get past cursory editing, I should have something more substantial to show off, including, possibly… freebies!

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It’s okay, you can start breathing again now guys!