“Roll the Bones” Is Here

February 16, 2011 in Fantasy, Short Fiction
Tags: Fantasy

So the ad copy goes:  “Attention!  Old school stalwarts, sword and sorcery diehards, weird fantasy aficionados of every stripe — ROLL THE BONES is here!  At long last FIGHT ON! thunders down upon the sleepy world of fantasy fiction with 22 thoroughly thrilling tales of harrowing scope.  Within these weird enclaves and black pits, you will find dark tombs, dragons, faeries, lepers, ostriches, Cerberus, Bush Nazis, love, vengeance, apotheosis, ignoble death, priceless golden hoards, and much, much, more!”

You’ve seen the cover two times before, so why not a third (but just a little one)?  ROLL THE BONES arrived in the mail yesterday, in time to curl up with while munching the last of the Valentine’s Day candy.  Edited by Ignatius Umlaut and Del Beaudry, ROLL THE BONES features nearly two dozen stories in 371 pages — starting with a werewolf on page 1 and ending with the decline of the Norse god Odin — with 15 full page illustrations (the one for my story is neat!*) and a full color wraparound cover by Mark Allen.  A handsome book by appearance alone and the stories, to the extent I’ve dipped into them, aren’t exactly shabby either.  Jan. 31′s entry, below, has a button for clicking to order on Lulu, but if you prefer Amazon instead you can now find it here, or  here if you’d like to get it directly from Amazon Createspace.  My dog in this fight is the next to last entry, “The Walking,” a far future, dying Earth, ghostly love story — with ghouls! — and is part of my series of tales from the “Tombs.”

*For another artist’s interpretation of the same story, although of a different scene, see the cover for DARKER LOVES at the top of the column to the right.