Michael Eging's Blog: The Silver Horn Echoes and Assorted Other Tales

While at Awesome Con, and live author events, I have been asked what inspires some of my work.

I have been widely read in science fiction and fantasy since I was a kid growing up on a farm in Ohio. Some of my earliest favorite authors inspired my initial writing style, my topics, and work drew upon Edgar Allen Poe, Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, and Roger Zelazny. Television, movies, and a love of history fueled my exploration of themes, characters, and situations.

Early on, I had a professor in college, "Doc" Smith, who along with other aspiring authors I interacted with in college, encouraged me through classes and work on the Leading Edge, a science fiction and fantasy magazine published by students at BYU. During this time 1985-1990, much of my short stories and poetry works were produced, including the award winning Lost Spell, Dancing with Demons , the award winning What's in a Name?, etc. This was a very productive period of my life as many of the stories were written as assignments in "Doc" Smith's short story class, as responses to religion and English classes, etc. Tales of the Lost Horizon grew from publishing the stand alone short stories in 2015 as a compilation of these works.

The poetry was also written during this earlier period. For example, Cry of the Hunt was was written to tell a story in poetic form for a college English class.

The most recent piece in the collection, Cast Iron Sights was written in 2020 for my daughter, Gwen. The inspiration to compile these stories also came from Gwen, who wanted to see work by her dad published during a time when we hadn't published anything new since late 2017, even if they were stories and poetry that she grew up remembering from her father sharing them with her. Fortunately, we found the works on both old hard drives and paper copy. We had a masterful editor; and Gwen worked with the artists to produce unique pieces for the compilation. She inspired me with her energy.

Steve and I wrote Annwyn's Blood in the early 1990's based on the short story written in the autumn of 1985 entitled One Dark Knight. That tale grew into a novel, and was shopped into the market place by the mid 1990's. At the time, many of our responses to the piece included commentary on how the vampire genre was over saturated, and yet we saw the 2000s explosion of interest in vampires and undead tales.

Paladin of Shadow Chronicles, which includes Annwyn's Blood, has drawn heavily from historical events, mythology, and imagination. I attended graduate school at the University of Maryland College Park, studying Byzantine and early Slavic history. Both Paladin of Shadow and The Silver Horn Echoes are grounded in this intellectual pursuit of understanding aspects of the late Roman and early medieval periods.

In the 2000s, I began work in writing screenplays. Of course, the story of Roland and his companions became the subject of my first optioned piece simply called Song of Roland. That was followed by Blood Money, in 2008, which grew from a story outline written by Steve and I. We completed Feast of St. Nicholas together in 2012. This was drawn from my love of old horror films, and the area where I grew up in Northeast Ohio, called the Western Reserve. So the script is steeped in the region, and the community I love so much.

Where do we go from here?

Paladin of Shadow Chronicles will tie together our exploration of the early medieval world in the final installment of that work, due out in 2025. I have begun outlining a new western screenplay entitled Son of Thunder and I intend to revisit the historical fantasy world of Roland. I continue to read primary sources from the period, and have found stories that yet need to be told. Be patient with me. I look forward to sharing them with you.

Steve and I have been working away at the sequel to Annwyn's Blood, which is currently under edit and revision. However, something very extraordinary happened along the way...

We had such a wonderful experience producing the audiobooks for The Silver Horn Echoes: A Song of Roland and Tales of the Lost Horizon that we decided that the Paladin of Shadow Chronicles should also get narrated versions.

In the autumn of 2020, we opened up the book script to auditions on Audible. And the auditions were varied and by and large very well produced. However, there is one that just grabbed us by the throat.

I received a message from an artist that said, "Holy hell, I need to do this book." And after listening to his audition, we agreed. Josh Innerst is a classically trained Shakespearean actor who has produced a number of audiobooks, but his interpretation of Annwyn's Blood in the very limited audition recording blew us away. He understood the characters, the materials, the flow of the narrative, etc. His performance was urgent, reflected the rawness of the events unfolding, and left us wanting the whole performance!

We are so pleased to not only bring you a new edition of Annwyn's Blood, with a book cover that captures the spirit of this Dark Ages Tale, but a performance that took our breath away. We hope you enjoy this very special edition.

Annwyn's Blood

I am a huge fan of short stories that also span multiple genres. One of my author heroes from my childhood was Robert E. Howard, who wrote not just the Conan tales which people are more familiar with, but stories that spanned time and space. From the prehistoric past to what would be for him "modern day" of the 1930's. What most people don't realize, Conan is a series of short stories that were published in "pulp" magazines. However, at times you would see his themes recycled from Conan to a more modern tales about an American sailor cast adrift in an exotic land. I read Pigeons from Hell as part of a Howard collection set in the 1930s, but the stories range from the pre-historic the the "present."

Short stories are not novels. They are not entruncated versions of novels. In my earlier post from 2015, when writing on this same topic I noted that author's choose short stories for a variety of reasons. For example, Murder on the Rue Morgue or even Tell-Tale Heart tell very contained stories that while connected by the theme of murder, the stories that are wildly different. The first is told from the perspective of a detective, sort of a proto-Sherlock Holmes, while the other is narrated by a murderer descending into madness. The characters, the narrative voice, they are all very different. One of my favorite writers of short stories is also a novelist. He used to comment that he chose the short story or novel based on what he intended to convey to the reader. I imagine they would find humorous observations that short stories are inferior to novels in some way.

My collection of Tales of the Lost Horizon are similar in that they span genres because there were different purposes behind the origin of the tale and the story I intended to create. So, for example, Dancing with Demons was composed to show the descent into madness of a young king who began his journey based on good intentions. But by the end of the tale, his choices led him to an unescapable pathway.

Why a short story?

Short stories allow authors to focus on themes, characters, setting, motivations, etc. in a very different way than novels. They permit the author to craft tales that deliver very differently because of the compactness of a short story. For example, Ellie, in the post-apocalyptic thriller Cast Iron Sights, undergoes a journey in her story that is very personal. She begins extremely cautious at the beginning of the tale, a deer ready to run at the thought of living or dead being close enough to do her harm. Over the course of her journey, she finds something inside that allows her to rise above that fear. She accomplishes something she never would have thought herself capable of. The story, like most short stories, doesn't tie up all the loose ends, and shows that life is more complicated than that. But she is given by the experience what she needs to push on with life in a very bleak world.

The Cyborg Heartache focuses on a mother's journey and her perspective throughout the quest to find her son's reanimated shell that is assigned a mundane task by the authorities. But the hook at the end is how human spark for life can overcome the barriers placed around it, push beyond those who would control and suppress that spark to become whole once more.

Complexity in Short Stories

Faulkner and Updyke are two of my favorite short story authors from the mid 20th century. In their work, you find motivations to explore, character development realized, and watch life lessons unfold. Short stories provide the author with a pallet from which words and sentences matter in a way not seen in novels. Literally word choice can be very deliberate to paint the story in a way that provides twists and turns that the reader must navigate and puzzle over. Short stories are not "easy" reads. In the award winning What's in a Name?, the hero of the tale begins as a young Elvin officer who has had leadership thrust on him by a mission that has gone awry. Through his journey, he exhibits foibles, humility, and willingness to learn, allowing him to be successful when confronted by the horrors of a war that breaks out around him between good and evil. The end of the tale finds the hero elevated by his adventure.

Tales of the Lost Horizon is very typical of other author anthologies that follow their interests, reflect their own journey in life, and their understanding of themes, settings and characters. My stories were written at different points in that journey. They are a collection that exist for no other reason than the author's daughter wanted to share them. They are tied together by my life's experience and bring together themes that I've thought about through my life. Whether it is the growth of someone with a biased view of another, or thinking about death and what lies beyond. Many excellent authors have written short story anthologies bearing that same diversity of themes, styles and thoughts.

While in college, I took a number of short story classes. And the thing that was drilled into my head was to be prepared as a reader to think, and put a bit of effort into reading short stories. You cannot consume them like fast food at the drive through. You need to set aside time to read, ponder and savor. That takes effort. And it takes, if you don't read them often, dropping preconceptions of what a short story should and shouldn't be.A short story doesn't suffer from not including things a novel might include. In fact they often focus where novels cannot. They do not necessarily follow the same rules as novels, or your rules as a reader. And they are not intended. to.

But if you are like me, you could take a short story collection to read beside a campfire, spend some time with the stars and the expanse of the sky, and uncover worlds that take your breath away. In my case, some short stories also made it hard to turn off the lights.

BOOK REVIEW

Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

Tales of the Lost Horizon by Michael Eging is a collection of original poetry and short stories in a convergence of fantasy and yesteryear, each piece of varied length and independent of the others. In total Eging has compiled eighteen pieces, ranging from the moral-infused Procession of the Ants and its Hindu deities to the rhythmic poem Splendor, which succinctly depicts the glorified death of a knight in battle. Each work is accompanied by illustrations that have been contributed by multiple artists, such as Benjamin Fountain Butcher's fantastic metallic-themed toiling dwarf, his sinewy strength at one with the iron as he plies away at the anvil. This completely bucks the stereotypical trope of dwarves with axes, finally. There's also Jarod Krupp's portrayal of a windswept Ellie as she takes stock of a landscape dotted with the silhouettes of approaching danger, a hauntingly beautiful Mignola-esque design for the story GI Sights.

There's a lot to unpack after reading Tales of the Lost Horizon, which is a credit to author Michael Eging since fantasy fiction tends to color within the lines and it's infrequent that someone tries to reinvent the glaive. This is well and truly a mixed bag, but everything I was able to pluck from it was actually really good. My favorite was the science fiction mini space opera called Stardusted, which ended with what could arguably be the first successful pun finale in the history of pun finales. Eging is a master of his craft and is a real treat to read. If there was one thing I'd have preferred to see different it would have definitely been crediting the contributing illustrators at the presentation of their individual artwork as opposed to a list in the front matter. Still, I loved every page of this work and am looking forward to seeing what Eging puts out next.

Review on Readers Favorite

First, I want to apologize for being a bit behind in updating the blog. There have been so many things going on with the book, as well as with Steve and my work, that they have been keeping us very busy. As many of our readers know, Steve and I undertook 2018 with a passion to get The Silver Horn Echoes in front of audiences. This has been a tremendous amount of work, and I find that our most effective method to reach readers is to interact with them at author events. We began this journey a year ago with live events here in Northern Virginia, followed by additional events in late 2017 in Northeast Ohio. Then we launched into 2018 with book reviews, live web interviews, and followed by pop culture and comic conventions, beginning with Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. We took opportunities, both large and small, to introduce the book and story to readers who often had never heard of Roland, Charlemagne, Aude or the tale of Roncevaux. As a result, we have made friends, sold books, and introduced hundreds of potential new readers to a Dark Ages world of intrigue and danger.

Along with live events, The Silver Horn Echoes has won awards that we publicize on social media, as well as on our website. We will be working to pull this recognition together on one page for you to find it all with a simple click. But that is a future update! This update, well, it is intended to announce another award for the novel. Drum roll please… New Apple just announced the winners of their 2018 Summer E-Book Awards. This contest literally draws hundreds and hundreds of entries and is one of the most respected contests and awards for independent new content.

The Silver Horn Echoes: A Song of Roland
Official Selection Action and Adventure, Summer 2018

We are ecstatic about the recognition of the novel, and thank the judges at New Apple for taking the time to read and recognize the tale of Roland and his companions. Stay tuned for more information as the organization begins publicizing the announcements.

On December 2, 2018, we wrap up our life on the road supporting the book in 2018. This doesn’t mean that we won’t be busy in 2019! But both Steve and I need a breather to spend time with friends and family for the holidays. Also, we have another novel coming in 2019 that we are very excited to get into your hands, the long awaited sequel to Annwyn’s Blood, Book One of The Paladin of Shadow Chronicles. A few months ago, we published a brief excerpt of the book in our blog! Stay tuned, as we are currently working with the artist (yes, the same artist who crafted the cover for The Silver Horn Echoes) to design a new cover for Annwyn’s Blood and Sword of the Magnus. Also, we have been working with a number of artists to bring to life Roland, as well as other tales that we’ve been crafting, so keep an eye on this blog for future announcements!

I’m going to wrap this blog post up. So, before I go, I’ve added the most recent book promo video that we’ve produced. We hope you enjoy it!

Another event is in the books, and each brings its own unique flavor to our experiences as authors. This is the first major event that I participated without Steve, who is a few hundred miles away from us in my native Ohio. His enthusiasm was missed! But, it also meant I had a few extra feet of space behind the table to stretch my own legs.

This was the first Fairfax Comic Con, and we had a presence which allowed us to showcase our work, but also interact with our own readers! After nearly 6 months doing live event, our readers are seeking out our booth. And as we get better at using the targeting tools on social media with our event announcements, we also had Facebook followers who came to the event and met us for the first time!

How cool is that?

And what was really fun was meeting so many people who continue to have interests in the Dark Ages. Whether it is the tale of Roland and distant battle in the Pyrenees, or the adventures of a young knight from Birkenshire in post-Arthurian Britain, many stopped by to just learn more about these times they had never really considered before. And isn’t that the joy of a book? Being transported to a new world, where you can see and experience things that are outside of your everyday life. That’s why we love super heroes, and fantastic adventures. They give us a sense of wonder and that is the fuel that draws people to these events.

Steve and I are grateful for our readers and the enthusiasm they bring to our endeavor! I think we sometimes forget that independent authors sacrifice a good portion of their “time-off” to create and bring their work to us. Most of them have day jobs, so the work of creating is crammed into life around that other employment, kids activities, volunteering in the community, etc. So the next time you read an independent published book, please remember to leave a review for the author. You, the reader, mean the world to us, and we love to hear about your experience in the worlds we jointly create when you read our work.

Keep your eye on the events page! You never know where we might pop up next!

 

An early draft passage from the upcoming Sword of the Magnus, Book Two of the Paladin of Shadow Chronicles:

A tangle of tunnels twisted through the catacombs that once provided refuge to the earliest adherents of the Christian faith, those who fled the streets of Rome above from the horror of imperial pogroms. Many of those refugees scratched a brief word or two across the crudely hewn walls, their scratchings covering centuries of other, older communications left behind by fleeing slaves and black market gangs that operated through the Roman centuries in the darkness far outside the law. Yet amid all the primitive artwork, none chronicled the movements of the undead. But the moldering bones scattered through nooks and grottoes surely held those horrible secrets in their twisted repose. And those silent remains were not about to give up those secrets even to the keen glowing eyes of a familiar.

I recently posted on social media, “Lost in the catacombs beneath ancient Rome… I get to go some strange places when I write.”

And it is something of a truth for me. If you’ve read The Silver Horn Echoes: A Song of Roland, or even Annwyn’s Blood, Book One of the Paladin of Shadows Chronicles, then you know that one of the things I love about writing is the ability of the author to take the reader someplace they have never been before, whether it be an old monastery at Canterbury, a village burned out by pillaging bandits, or a musty old castle inhabited by the creeping dead. And that is the beauty of being a novelist.

You see, I am also a screenwriter and am currently in talks with a couple of production companies surrounding Song of Roland, the screenplay from which sprang The Silver Horn Echoes. Writing a screenplay is a very different, and collaborative exercise in storytelling. As a writer, I give the other collaborators enough guidance on the major actions in a scene, all flowing through a three act structure. Through my use of prose, I give them the bones of what will be a fully realized story once it enters development and brings on board a director, is shaped by other collaborators such as producers, actors and studios. These collaborators bring a vision for the story and the particular material that I as a writer may help them in realizing, or they will fully develop through rewrites to the script, selection of location, costuming, casting the actors, etc. However, as a novelist, or short story writer, I am free to more fully develop those worlds.

Roland receiving the horn at Roncevaux

That said, here is a balance that is important in the material. I want to give you enough information that you feel grounded in the world so that you begin to help paint a picture of the scene. Why? Because writing fiction allows me as an author to enlist many, many people I’ve never met before into a collaborative relationship for world building. You also get to help in casting, populating scenes with background characters and activities, imagining voices, imagining the caress of two lovers, feeling the dust of battle and the anguish of the wounded and dying. And you get to imagine the exhilaration of victory; and the redemption of a soul burdened by the darkness of his or her own choices. Once the novel leaves my hands, you become an active partner in the production because all this must play out in a way that taps your creativity as a reader. You become my production partner.

I know this isn’t very profound. Likely, it has been part of what makes reading so joyful to you. But as an author, I never get to see the worlds you create when you produce my work by reading.

And I hope one day you share that with me!

Well, another wonderful gathering is in the books where among the celebration of all things pop-culture there was significant interest in a knight named Roland. We have been truly grateful for the opportunities to share both our story, as well as the tale of Roland and his peers. As you can imagine, the conversation often begins with… who? But there is a lot of connective tissue between Roland and the events chronicled both in history and fiction and things familiar to the modern audience. Among them are a few of the following:

Did you know that while Arthur was likely based on a historical figure, the tales of Charlemagne and his champion knight, Roland, provided imaginative basis for the tales of the British figure? The Normans rolled into Britain in 1066, as described in the prologue of The Silver Horn Echoes, and, according to tradition, brought the tale of Roland with them. The Normans ruled an area in France that incorporated an area of territory that included the Breton March, which was the home of Roland and his family.
As the British kings were also vassals of the French king for territories in large portions of France, they sought talent to tell British stories to their courtly audiences. And where were the best storytellers in their territories? Well, the French troubadours and storytellers that frequented their continental courts. And these storytellers brought with them a rich tradition of Charlemagne and his paladin knights that became the model for Arthur and the knight of the Round Table.
Charlemagne is arguably the greatest of Western Europe’s Dark Ages kings. He reigned over a kingdom that encompassed a large portion of the Western Roman Empire, including Northern Italy, Gaul, portions of Germany, and Northern Spain.
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, was a complex monarch. He was the patron of an early renaissance in Western Europe that saw the revival of learning, letters, and understanding of the ancients. But his court was not the only light of learning in Western Europe. Spain, conquered nearly a century before by the Umayyad Caliphate, provided the Christian scholars with access to ancient learning that had been lost to the region for nearly three centuries.
The tale of Roland and his stand at Roncevaeux is grounded in historical fact. In 778, Charles the Great did withdraw his forces from Spain after a very long campaign. And the soldier charged with the rearguard was likely a man named “Hrōþiland.” On August 15 of 778, the Frank chronicler Einhardt records that the rearguard was attacked by the Basques; and Roland is among the dead. Thus began the tale of the ages that centuries later morphed into La Chanson de Roland, or Song of Roland.

I have been truly amazed by the attendees’ willingness to learn more about the tale of Roland, and of course pick up the book. All this in the middle of very busy days full of superheroes, television shows, and pop culture. The story of a knight willing to defy the odds in order to protect both King and country resonates with modern audiences. And of course, Jordan Raskin’s fantastic cover artwork does help catch their attention!

So, thank you ALL-STAR Comic Con! Thank you to our friends at Comic Logic in Ashburn, Virginia for encouraging us to participate in these events. There are many more to come throughout 2018. Please keep an eye on this page for more information on author events, giveaways and…

The sequel to our first novel, Annwyn’s Blood! Yes, it is coming! We have been writing the ongoing story of a young knight, Erik of Birkenshire, who is caught between the worlds of the living and the dead in post-Arthurian Britain. Stay tuned to this page for samples of the new chapters in The Paladin of Shadow Chronicles!

Memorial Day in the United States is a holiday that embodies so many layers of American culture, the gateway to summertime, and the launch of the backyard grill. And I don’t have to even say… ‘and yet…’

I grew up in small town Ohio. My family have lived in and around Chardon, Ohio since the middle of the 1800s. On my father’s side, our family was all immigrant, part of the great migration of that period. The Egings came from Germany, while the Torisky family came from a region of Slovakia that depending on the time of day, could either be part of Russia, Austria-Hungry or Germany. In the early 1800s, the Toriskys of my branch of the family were farmers, according to some of the initial research that a cousin conducted into the primary towns and locations from family records. They immigrated to the United States in the middle 1800s to become shop keepers and blue collar workers that powered Cleveland into the 20th century.

However, according to a family tradition, and referenced in Contributions of Modern History, from The British Museum and State Paper Office, By Friedrich von Raumer, there was a linkage to royalty in an earlier time. Catherine the Great promised one of the heirs to the Polish crown that “in case the crown of Poland should become vacant, she would use her best endeavors to procure it for him, or if possible, for one of the Czar-torisky family.” Of course, Poland was gobbled up by the great powers of the late 1700s. Czar Torisky became something of a folk hero in our home and this family story was one of my favorites as a child. It brought a nobility to my working class family where the German and the Slovak entwined with the Danish and the English heritage through my father’s marriage to my mother.

In my small town, Memorial Day was more than a barbecue or picnic with family and friends. We rose early with my father who took us to the Chardon and Hambden cemeteries where we visited the graves of those in our family who served this country as soldiers in both war and peace. As a boy, Memorial Day morning was punctuated with trumpets, gunfire, and parades of grizzled veterans of The Great War. My father’s generation who served in World War II marched along side, and often stood at the parade route, as my father did, with their families. When they passed, we children chased along behind to where the parade stopped in the cemetery to listen to speeches, the recitation of the Gettysburg Address, and the crackle of gunfire against the sky.

My father was a product of his family and our place in the world. He often shared humorous stories of his adventures in the US Army during World War II. As a child, I thought the Army must be great fun–what with shooting rifles and cannons, camping under the stars and engaging in madcap adventures such as my father told. But I and my brothers didn’t realize that the humorous stories masked something deeper, something very personal for my father. Something he never shared. I was older when I began exploring the events of World War II and found that my father had served in France during the Allies push against the Third Reich. Stories of my father’s adventures with his buddies took on new meaning as I learned of the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Rhineland, and my father was an engineer assigned to an infantry brigade.

One of my father’s favorite tales was of his experience during the winter of 1944-45 when his unit was caught by a massive advance of the German army. As my father told the story, he and his buddies were in a small French village when the Germans cut them off, leaving the village and these soldiers well behind the new enemy lines. The punch line of the story was that my dad and his mates got to live off French bread and wine for a few weeks, while the normal soldiers rations would never have been as good. But what he didn’t share with us was the loss that his unit and others suffered in this prelude to the Battle of the Rhineland where my father fought alongside his friends and was awarded a Silver Star. My father, who looked like a salt and pepper speckled shopkeeper, never shared this with his children for it was buried beneath his undying humor.

So, this brings us back to my thoughts on Memorial Day. A time to pause and reflect. And this day in particular, my thoughts turn not to my own father, who I love more and more with each passing year. But rather, to his friends and comrades who got in trouble with him beginning in basic training and served with him through Europe, and then those who survived sailed with him to the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan. His friends who lived, loved and died on foreign soil so that Clifford Eging’s son might raise a family, pursue dreams of writing, and, of course, change the world through public policy. I owe them. And I hope my life in some small way honors their sacrifice.

We have been so thrilled with the response to our blog on http://www.silverhornechoes.com. Recently, we had the opportunity to host independent writer, editor, blogger and reviewer Alex James. Alex is a science fiction author, also on Goodreads <https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7055040.Alex_James. Alex has an interesting journey as an author and literary professional. The following is an excerpt from the blog post.

It is with great pleasure that we bring author, editor, and reviewer Alex James to The Silver Horn Echoes. Alex has released four novels, The Antpod Faction, Roc Isle—The Descent and Tempest, and Marcellus, The Mantle. Living in Leeds, the United Kingdom, Alex is a part of the science fiction and fantasy community, as you may just run into him at various events, or find him signing books.

Alex is also a professional who brings with him a unique perspective as someone who lives with Asperger Syndrome. From his website—

“The condition challenges me to seek understanding of people and situations, and to express myself in writing because I struggle with social understanding and unpredictable environments. I’m a quiet, solitary person, so I see writing as my main outlet for emotional expression. As an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy books, both indie and traditionally published, I’m not often short of inspiration, especially where writing style and familiar settings are concerned.”

Currently, Alex is working on his next fantastic story, Marcllus: Great Barbarism. Alex, welcome to The Silver Horn Echoes!

Read the rest of the interview at http://www.silverhornechoes.com/alex-james-writer-editor-and-reviewer/

The Antpod Faction