But Who Would Be Dumb Enough To Even Try It? (Episode 4)

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  Time for “Speculative Story Saturday” here at Marcher Lord Press! Here is the latest installment. *** Two rats the size of a small dog slowly rotate above the campfire on a makeshift spit. They smell like dog too, only more smoky. They pop and sizzle, their skin turning a crisp red. Up above, the sky is black as ebony and filled with thousands of tiny stars. A warm, humid wind blows, causing the ancient trees around us to creak. I sit on a nearby log, careful to keep my white plated boots out of the encroaching swamp waters. The …

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But Who Would Be Dumb Enough To Even Try It? (Episode 03)

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At Marcher Lord Press, Saturdays are “Speculative Story Saturdays.” Several Marcher Lord Press authors are playing fiction relay to write this story together. Here is the latest installment. ***   An ever-present twilight enveloped the Fortress of Gloom as if even the sun only reluctantly looked upon the blackened stone walls. The great ramparts of Gloom rose from the bedrock of a charred mountain, cursed to let no living plant or creature find sanctuary. Garish gargoyles perched along the grisly battlements, each positioned over a length of chain from which dangled the dead and dying. Be they incompetent slaves or …

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But Who Would Be Dumb Enough To Even Try It? (Episode 02)

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At Marcher Lord Press, Saturdays are “Speculative Story Saturdays.” Several Marcher Lord Press authors are playing fiction relay to write this story together. Here is the latest installment. ***   I shouldn’t have gone. I knew that from the start. My masters had always taught me to heed the Flow, to read it, to sink myself into it, and carry me where I needed to go. The Flow guided my hands in a fight. The Flow had kept me alive longer than most in our Guild. The Flow brought Cludge and me together, a fortuitous pairing. I owed my life …

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But Who Would Be Dumb Enough To Even Try It? (Episode 01)

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  At Marcher Lord Press, Saturdays are “Speculative Story Saturdays.” And this week we’re beginning our very first collaborative story project. The Marcher Lord Press authors–those who have been foolish (er, brave) enough to sign on–have embarked upon a quest to write a short Christian fantasy story together, in tag-team relay fashion. Up first is Steve Rzasa. He took his inspiration from the cover and title (both done by me), and launched us in the right direction. Steve, take us away! *** But Who Would Be Brave/Dumb Enough to Even Try it? Part One   The Rancid Boar was a …

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What I learned from Ray Bradbury

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So far, this year is full of significance for me. First, there’s the significance that one of my all-time favorite books, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was finally released as a live action motion picture, with huge production values and a notable director…and yet somehow flopped at the box office. (<sigh> I happen to think that John Carter is much, much better than the revenue might indicate, but that’s fodder for another essay.) The second significance is that the author of another well-known Martian missive, and another of my all-time favorite books, The Martian Chronicles, recently left …

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First Blog Post

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Since 2007, when we started announcing Marcher Lord Press, and since October of 2008, when we actually released our first books, MLP has been—and remains—the premier publisher of Christian science fiction and fantasy books. In the years since then, the publishing industry has been turned on its head. The givens of the whole industry—the major players, the big bookstores, and even the publishing model itself—have been radically changed. When MLP first launched, our publishing model was considered unusual. I’d tell my professional colleagues what we were planning, and they’d look at me like I’d eaten a funky mushroom. I’d love …

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