 Horror/Scary: May 18, 2016 Issue [#7644] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: WEIRD TALES Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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Weird Tales
The Back Story:
Weird Tales has always been the most popular and sought-after of all pulp magazines. Its mix of exotic fantasy, horror, science fiction, suspense, and the just plain indescribable has enthralled generations of readers throughout the world.
Weird Tales magazine first hit the news stands in 1923. The October 1923 issue was the key issue of that first year, marking the appearance of three writers who would dominate Weird Tales over the next decade, those being Frank Owen, Seabury Quinn and H.P. Lovecraft.
Weird's later years were distinguished by an influx of newer writers, including such major figures as Ray Bradbury, Manly Wade Wellman, Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Theodore Sturgeon, Joseph Payne Brennan, Jack Snow and Margaret St. Clair.
Among the new writers found for the magazine were Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard, whose Conan the Barbarian stories, among many others, were hugely popular. Tennessee Williams was also put into print for the first time (Aug 1928)(with his story "The Vengeance of Nitocris"). Edmond Hamilton's earliest science fiction stories also first appeared in Weird Tales. Weird Tales published perhaps the only short story which has survived by film director Val Lewton - "The Bagheeta" (July 1930). The playwright Joseph Kesselring (best known for Arsenic and Old Lace) - "King Cobra" appeared in the December 1933 Weird Tales, whist "Java Madness" appeared in its short-lived companion magazine Oriental Stories (Spring 1932). Other new or little-known writers acquired by Weird Tales included Nictzin Dyalhis, and the British writers G. G. Pendarves and Arlton Eadie.
In April 1995, HBO announced they had plans to turn Weird Tales into an anthology show similar to their Tales from the Crypt series. The deal for the rights was facilitated by screenwriters Mark Patrick Carducci and Peter Atkins. Directors Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, and Oliver Stone were attached as Executive Producers and Directors with Stone planned to direct the pilot. However, this series never came to fruition.
Writing Pulp Fiction:
There's no trick in writing pulp fiction, a good story is a good story, but Robert E. Howard was perhaps the best example of this. His Conan series, wrought with 'sword and sorcery' was so highly received by the public that he became the most sought-after writer in the 1930s.
Stephen King wrote: "Robert E. Howard's writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks."
The best way to learn how to write pulp fiction is to give you an example from the best of its time. Here is an excerpt from The Phoenix on the Sword by Robert E. Howard...
Conan put his back against the wall and lifted his ax. He stood like an image of the unconquerable primordial -- legs braced far apart, head thrust forward, one hand clutching the wall for support, the other gripping the ax on high, with his great corded muscles standing out in iron ridges, and his features frozen in a death snarl of fury -- his eyes blazing terribly through the mist of blood which veiled them. The men faltered -- wild, criminal and dissolute though they were, yet they came from a breed men called civilized, with a civilized background; here was the barbarian -- the natural killer, and they shrank back.
Conan sensed their uncertainty and grinned mirthlessly and ferociously.
"Who dies first?" he mumbled through smashed and bloody lips.
And one of my favorites, The Pool of the Black One
The superb symmetry of body and limbs was more impressive at close range. Under the ebon skin long, rounded muscles rippled, and Conan did not doubt that the monster could rend an ordinary man limb from limb. The nails of the fingers provided further weapons, for they were grown like the talons of a wild beast. The face was a carven ebony mask. The eyes were tawny, a vibrant gold that glowed and glittered. But the face was inhuman; each line, each feature was stamped with evil -- evil transcending the mere evil of humanity. The thing was not human -- it could not be; it was a growth of Life from the pits of blasphemous creation -- a perversion of evolutionary development.
Sword and Sorcery at its best, that's Conan the Barbarian as created by Robert E. Howard.
Until next time,
willwilcox
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Good Reads
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|  | Scales (13+)
A small town is overrun by an unknown cause
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DEAD LETTERS
drifter46
Writes:
From my story "Invalid Item" The opening paragraph...
Date October 31, 1892.
This, I fear, will be the last entry. They're all around me now. Dark bloodshot eyes peering through the window. Howls of desperation and loathing filling my ears in between the clashing of the lightning and the ominous claps of thunder as they roll over my head. There's a moldy stench of death lingering in the air above me. My concentration, what there is left of it, fades each time I lift the pen from the paper for me to glance around. I can't see them but I can feel them creeping closer. It won't be much longer: not much longer at all.
An opening does so much to set the stage for the rest of the story.
LJPC - the tortoise 
Writes:
Hi Bill!
I thought your newsletter was excellent. Atmosphere is so important to horror and every one of your examples showed the expert use of word choice and description to create a lasting and creepy impression. Great newsletter! 
~ Laura
River 
Writes:
I also think trees are scary. The movie that warped my young impressionable mind was Babes in Toyland. The trees in that movie were gnarled, deformed, and leafless. They also had grotesque, twisted faces and creepy long arms. I never really got over it.
Thank you so much for featuring my story, The Check Mark, in this April newsletter!
~River
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