And so we hit Chapter Four of The Old Ways. It seems to be gathering some fans, which is nice. Among those fans is my father, who’s also a big fan of Theftworld. I think some depth comes into play in this one.

For the record, as of yesterday we’d broken 200,000 words on this site, not counting comments. Which is a good amount of content for 70 days of blog existence, any way you look at it.

It kind of scares me that we’ve been doing this for seventy days already.

Anyhow. Here’s Jack and the merry band.

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This is the second Home Front story, though it was the first I wrote. I hadn’t submitted it to Greg at Mythic Heroes yet, mind, though I was going to eventually.

The Home Front got its start, more directly than almost anything else I’m putting on here, in Superguy. Superguy, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a mailing list devoted to superhero fiction. Its heydey was the late eighties through the mid nineties. I wrote in the neighborhood of a million words for it over a period of about seven years.

It was Superguy writers who formed the core of Mythic Heroes. We’d known each other for years, and written together on more than one occasion. And I was happy to adapt a few stories taken far out of ‘continuity,’ for lack of a better term for the new medium. A fellow named Rob Furr had started a “Historical Superguy” project, taking his love of history and applying it to our somewhat goofy superhero list. I wrote about mystery men for it. This story was adapted from the first post I did on the project. Last week’s — “My White Plume” — had been the second Historical Superguy story I wrote, but the first Mythic Heroes story I’d adapted.

Next week’s installment, “Diamond in the Rough,” had also been a Superguy story first but had been heavily edited and changed to fit the new format. And a serial that followed — “Homecoming” — was (mostly) written exclusively for Mythic Heroes, but never had a chance to be published.

One last note: each of the Home Front stories is meant to be told in archival format of some sort. Last week’s was a letter. This week’s is a radio documentary edited from an old interview. The idea is simple enough: all of these are from history. We are supposed to be reading them from some other form.

Just, you know, for the record.

Enjoy!

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And here we have part ten of “Interviewing Leather.” A moderately well-anticipated part, as near as I can tell, as we’ve got Dynamo Girl and Todd out in the city proper now, out to save the world.

There’s not much more I can say, other than ‘enjoy!’

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Hello and welcome to Yet Another Week on Banter Latte. It’s Monday, and that’s Myth day! Huzzah! And today the myth comes from enthusiastic friend of Banter Latte Goblinpaladin, who asks:

What *really* causes hangovers? It can’t be just drinking, because plenty of people drink them and don’t get them, or throw up the alcohol and do. It can’t just be dehydration because even folk who drink lots of water get them.

Which, you know, is a fair question. I mean, think about it. There’s lots of scientific basis and explanation given, but nothing’s been definitive. They talk about hypoglycemia or B-12 deficencies or God punishing them for sin.

And where there is question, there is a ripe field for myth. Which is, after all, what we do here.

So, let’s do this thing.

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Here we have Chapter Three. Some of the feedback’s been quite amazing, and I’m really glad to get it. I get the feeling a number of people like The Old Ways, at least in theory, but the execution is a bit off.

On the other hand, I think this chapter begins to move more towards narrative and less towards storytelling devices (though not all of the way, of course), and people might think it’s finding its place now. Or not. We’ll see. Regardless, enjoy!

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This is a story that occupies a special place in my heart: it was my first full on professional publication. The magazine was called Mythic Heroes: The Serialized Superhero Prose Alternative, and in a lot of ways it was the first attempt of the Superguy authors to try and make a (very) small amount of coin doing what they did. This included some of the better writers — Gary Olson had a serial in it, and so did Christopher Angelini. Ben Brown had a cool story about super powered couriers. And there were lots and lots of other stories that were pretty cool and I wish they’d had more of a chance.

I wrote for it, and I was an assistant editor. The editor in chief and publisher was Greg Fishbone, an intellectual property lawyer and cool person who put the money up for the magazine. I should digress and mention Greg has a book coming out in a couple of months, and you should all own a copy.

The magazine didn’t last long. While the concept was sound — comic book sized magazines with some black and white art but mostly devoted to prose stories, sold in comic book shops alongside the comics — it launched right at the big comic bust and never had much of a chance. Though some issues (not all of them, but some) are still available at second hand shops if you’re lucky.

I launched with two serials — one an actual serial called Daybreak in Dark City which I’ll get around to putting on here one of these weeks, and the other a series of collected short stories called The Home Front. These were the stories of the mystery men of the twenties and thirties, gathered together by President Roosevelt into one grand force of heroes who… traveled around the country putting on a show to convince people to buy war bonds. See, there were these actual superhumans who were taking the war to Hitler and the Pacific, or breaking up spy rings and the like. The guys and girls who were just putting on costumes and fighting crime? Not so much.

Is this my best writing? Not really. I’ve learned a few things since 1996. But for all intents and purposes, this is the first story I was ever paid for. It’s fitting, perhaps, that this was the story of the first of the mystery men in this setting. It’s called “My White Plume,” and if it’s not the best thing I’ve written, it’s also not the worst and I’m fond of it.

Enjoy.

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Hey hey, kids! It’s time for another “Interviewing Leather!”

This is a story, as I’ve mentioned before, that I’ve been working on for just over a year. That includes some of my notes, and also includes the character of Darkhood, mentioned in the last couple of episodes as a C-list superhero.

Well, it only hit me last week, with a reference made in a rather poignant strip, that Brad Guigar had included a Dark Hood in his brilliant Evil, Inc. comic strip. No confusion or infringement was intended, which I figure you all know but it’s worth saying. And you should read Evil, Inc. regardless.

Otherwise — last week’s episode inspired more fan art! One comes from Dave Van Domelen, a cohort from the Superguy days (as well as lots of other things) and features Dynamo Girl shouting the catchphrase I stole from Scott Kurtz. The other come from Gossamer Commons co-conspirator Peter Venables who renders a post-car wrecking moment from earlier in the series. Yay! I get fan art! You should click on the thumbnails for full sized, of course!

Beyond that, please enjoy the story!

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This week, we have a myth com from reader Streon, who asks us:

Why do we get spam email that’s complete gibberish or random sentences from books strung together?

Streon’s question is a good one. He is careful, by the by, to differentiate between the spam e-mail that uses a block of gibberish like a shield, allowing the spamful content to slide in when we least expect it and tell the wife and children that you can have a large penis and low mortgage rates all at once. No, these are the e-mails that are nothing but sentences from books, nonsense phrases, bits of semi-comprehensible detritus and semiliterate ranting.

It is Streon’s thesis, unstated, that there must be some meaning behind these random e-mails. Some purpose.

As it works out, he’s half right.

Entirely right, I suppose, if one extends the defintion of the word “meaning,” but for the most part I don’t think that’s the right word for it. But that, as you can imagine, is a matter for the myth.

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I am in Ottawa this weekend, which doesn’t stop you from sounding off! And here’s the action topic!

We’re now in a situation where there are several multipart stories that are running here over Banter Lattes, no whip, with a shot of sugar free hazelnut. This includes some of the most popular stuff on the site. However, some folks are beginning to notice… well, some difficulty in reading them sequentially, because the blog navigation is designed to go to the next post instead of the next entry in that specific story.

Now, right now someone can use the category archives to follow along, at least on some of the stories, but that may not be ideal. So. How would folks want to navigate on stories like “Interviewing Leather” or The Old Ways, given their druthers? Webcomics style “first, next, last” link buttons? A serial-specific link page to the chapters? Some kind of pie-based medium?

Let me know, and keep looking up, Stargazers and Star Hustlers. Jack Horkheimer demands it.