Pastiche, A Retrospective by author Scott Oden

I’m reblogging this post by Scott Oden whose blog I have followed for many years. It has some great information and insight into Scott’s writing process and what it takes to write stories in the style and voice of Robert E. Howard. Take it away Scott:

Yesterday, Friend o’ the Blog Stan Wagenaar suggested I talk about writing pastiche — REH/Conan pastiche in particular. Well, as it turns out, last July I wrote my thoughts about that very thing. It’s a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of how I wrote my two licensed pastiche stories: “The Shadow of Vengeance”, […]

Pastiche, A Retrospective

Publishing Pirate Poetry In a Perilous Pandemic

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” -H.P. Lovecraft

So it has been a long time since I have written and posted anything in my blog. Life has certainly taken a turn down a dark, strange, and terrifying alley since my last post several months ago with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S.A. in the Spring of 2020. I have been fortunate to have been able to work from home all this time and continue to support myself and family and be able to isolate myself from the general public and possible exposure to the virus. Most of our necessities are able to be delivered or obtained with contact free curbside pickup fortunately which my wonderful wife Ali has been able to take care of, allowing me to focus on work and other things.

I haven’t been writing much unfortunately other than bits of poetry from time to time. However, I have been able to get three poems of mine published in an anthology which was released in October 2020. Island Terrors and Sea Horrors is edited by Ethan Nahté and features twenty short stories and sixteen poems from Ethan Nahté, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, H. G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Alfred  Lord Tennyson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Washinton Irving, and more.

Included are my poems “Drag Me Down to the Depths of the Sea” “A Pirate Adrift”  and “Doom of Destiny” which I have recited at many events as my pirate persona Lars Shortshanks, with The Seadog Slam piratical performing troup. Ethan asked me earlier this year if I wanted to contribute to this anthology that he was putting together and if I had any stories or poems I thought would fit with the theme of the book.

I’m really grateful for the opportunity to be included amongst so many great authors. Coleridge, Poe, Lovecraft, Stevenson, and Tennyson are some of my favorite classic poetry and prose writers and I really like Ethan Nahté’s stories and poetry. I’ve recited some of his poems which are included in this anthology at some of the pirate shows at which I’ve performed. Ethan’s writing has the quality of being able to evoke a powerfully visceral emotional response from the reader, especially in his horror stories that leave one terrified, shocked, and gripping the book,  anticipating what will happen next.

Ethan and I did an interview together about the book and other topics on internet radio station tmvcafe.com with William Snider a.k.a. Zombie Zak on his live broadcast show After Rot.  Below is  the link to the archived recording of the show.

AR394 – Larry Atchley Jr and Ethan Nahté

Also noteworthy of late, I recently joined The Fort Worth Poetry Society which was established in the year 1910 and is the oldest continuously run poetry society in the  Southwest. Steve Sanders, my friend and fellow shipmate in the Seadog Slam pirate poetry performing troupe, and former President of the Fort Worth Poetry Society invited me to join at the end of last year. I had considered joining for some time, and Steve’s urging me to become a member sealed the deal so to say. I attended my first meeting with the other members in December. We all met using Zoom which is how I will most likely continue to attend even after the Pandemic is over because the meetings are held quite far from where I live and work so it will be difficult to make it there in person most months. Here’s a link to their site: https://fortworthpoetrysociety.wordpress.com/

I’ve been re-reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings which is something I do every few years as it’s one of my favorite fantasy books and a great influence on and inspiration of my own fantasy writing. I also have set myself the task of reading all of Robert E. Howard’s stories and poems which I started at the beginning of this year in 2021. I’ve read a lot of his work over the years but there is still much of his prolific writings that I’ve yet to read. He wrote I believe, over 300 stories and more than 100 poems so this is a considerable task to read them all, but I want to experience to entire range of his work, including historical fiction, westerns, weird west, action adventure, boxing, horror, and not just the primarily sword & sorcery Conan and Kull tales that I have mostly focused on in the past.

I am going to wrap this post up, as it’s getting quite long and I had intended on finishing and posting it a few weeks ago but things in the world and my own personal life caused me to put it off again. About those things, maybe I’ll include in my next post. Until then I bid you all to take care, stay well, healthy, safe, and in good spirits. And keep reading everything you can get your hands on.

From Pastiche to Original

Author Scott Oden reveals how his Conan pastiche writing influences his original character stories, and what sets the two apart from each other.

The Thread Between Conan and Grimnir (Tip o’ the hat to Stan Wagenaar, for inadvertently suggesting this topic) I consciously imitate Robert E. Howard in my original fiction, and I have done so since at least the late 1980s.  Some call it riding the coat-tails; others might think it a mark of depressed creativity — […]

From Pastiche to Original

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part Three

The next post in Scott Oden’s series on writing Robert E. Howard pastiche using his iconic character, Conan of Cimmeria. Please subscribe to his blog, it’s interesting and informative. And buy his books! They are excellent reading.

Read Part One here. Read Part Two here. “I hadn’t yet seen my fifteenth winter when I sacked my first city, part of a horde that came howling out of the north. Venarium, it was called. Aye, I’ve drawn blood in cattle raids, tribal feuds, rebellions, wars between barons, and on the road of kings.” […]

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part Three

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part Two

Part 2 in author Scott Oden’s series of posts about writing Robert E. Howard pastiche stories.

Read Part One here. This is a long post, so grab a frosty beverage and buckle in. So, we’re skipping ahead a few pages from the opening of “Conan Unconquered”. After the establishing scene of Conan receiving the hill-men, I laid out the frame story — soldiers on the night before battle, drinking ale and […]

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part Two

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part One

I’m sharing another of Scott Oden’s posts in his continuing series on how to write Robert E. Howard pastiche with his most iconic  character, Conan of Cimmeria. Here Scott pulls back the veil to reveal his processes and techniques.

After my post on the Art of Pastiche, the other day, I had a discussion with Matt John, freelance author and contributor to Monolith’s Conan board game, about pastiche writing and the flavor text in games.  He had a snippet he wanted me to read over, if I had the time, to see if he’d […]

Anatomy of a Pastiche, Part One

The Art of Pastiche

I’m sharing this post from friend and fellow author Scott Oden’s blog on writing in the style of Robert E. Howard. Please subscribe to Scott’s blog and buy his books. He writes some excellent tales.

They beheld a giant of a man clad in steel plate, a scarlet cloak draped carelessly about his broad shoulders.  One scarred hand rested lightly on the long hilt of a sheathed broadsword as, from beneath a square-cut black mane, smoldering blue eyes appraised the hillmen as a lion appraises its prey.  For all that […]

The Art of Pastiche

Writing Process Blog Hop

Okay, so I haven’t been keeping up with the blog every week like I keep saying I was going to do. I guess I’m just a slacker. I was supposed to post this a week or two ago, but better late than never I always say. A writer friend of mine, Jenn M (@brewedbohemian on Twitter) who posts her brewed bohemian blog asked me to do a blog hop tour and answer some questions and pass the baton on to three more bloggers who are supposed to do the same. Jenn’s blog has all kinds of cool stuff about writing, and her culinary adventures about beers, coffees, tea,food and other assorted topics. You can read some of her excellent poetry and flash fiction there as well. She is a very talented wordsmith and I’m looking forward to reading some of her longer fiction that she is currently working on. I met Jenn at ConDFW a couple of years ago when I was there as a guest author and she became one of my first big fans of my writing.

1) What am I working on?

A lot of things. I’m writing a short story for a horror anthology that John Manning is producing, and  another story for Michael H. Hanson’s Sha’Daa shared world anthology series. I’m workimg on a story for a space opera shared world anthology called Not to Yield that Michael Hanson, Ed McKeown and I are collaborating on with several other writers. Janet Morris and Chris Morris are putting together a heroic fantasy anthology that I plan on writing something to be submitted but I have only gotten into the early brain storming stage on that.  I have three novels in progress that I go back and forth working on from time to time when I figure out what’s supposed to happen next. One of these is dark fantasy/sword & sorcery, another is a sort of light, funny (hopefully) adventure fantasy, and a paranormal romance, just to see if I can write in that genre and because well, they sell like hotcakes and I really could use the money. I really want to get my first novel done and on the market. I’m always working out ideas and characters for the next Heroes in Hell shared universe anthology. Poets in Hell comes out this June, and the next book we are working on to be released in 2015 is Doctors in Hell, which should be as much fun or more to do than any of the other books I have stories in. I still don’t know who my character doctors will be. We use real figures from history and fictionalize them for the stories which all take place in hell in all it’s myriad forms and from all the myths and religions of the world. I do know that my recurring characters, Anton LaVey and Guy Fawkes will be in the story, getting into more trouble as always. I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately, some of it specifically of a piratical theme for the performing group The Seadog Slam that I was asked to join earlier this year. We also put on a Steampunk show every month and so I’ve been composing some things in that vein as well.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Hmmm. Well, other than when I’m submitting to a genre specific anthology I really don’t write specific to a certain genre. But I’d say that my work tends to blend  irreverent humor with dark subject matter and has a certain snarkiness to it that defines my writing. With my poetry I tend to do a lot of free verse, although I do sometimes have some rhyming verse.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Because it’s fun! As I mentioned above I tend to write darker stuff, but with a certain amount of tongue in cheek humor to lighten the mood. I grew up reading pretty much everything I could get me hands on, but Science fiction, fantasy, sword & sorcery and  horror, were my mainstays of entertainment reading and still are. I like to write what I read. I figure I know these genres like the back of my hand so they come naturally to me as a writer. Now, the exception to this is the paranormal romance novel I mentioned. I want to challenge myself to get outside my comfort zone and see what I can do with this. I need to do some more reading of the genre I think to get a better grasp of how thing are supposed to work. Although I’m sure I’ll break a lot of the rules and standard tropes that paranormal romances tend to employ.

4) How does your writing process work?

My writing process is described as sporadic at best. I usually start with a kernel of an idea, maybe I know the general plot premise, or who the main character or characters are, and then have to build a story around that. Often I know how a story will begin and end, very early on. The middle bit is what stumps me a lot of the time. Sometimes the process doesn’t work at all. Some days I just can’t get my head into the characters, or they aren’t speaking to me to tell me what they are going to do or say next. I get frustrated at this, but it is an inevitable part of a writer’s life. I keep a lot of stories going all the time, so if I can’t figure out what I am doing in one of them, I have plenty of others to work on that hopefully I will be able to make progress on. Some days I am just too mentally drained to write at all. I put a lot of emotional and mental energy into my writing. It can be exhausting drawing that out of myself and into the story or poem.  And sometimes what I’m writing doesn’t feel right and I have to change things or even start all over again until it resonates with me more completely.

Picking up the Blog Hop Tour baton and posting answers to these questions next is Jessica Scott, a writer whose poetry and prose I have only just recently gotten to enjoy. She is an awesome writer and her work is very emotionally evocative. Also I think the title for her blog is so cool. Here is her info:

Jessica Scott is a Texas native, born in Tulia, Tx and raised in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She’s just beginning her writing journey, though she’s been writing since high school. Her focus is mostly poetry but she is currently working on some story ideas. She writes often on her blog, The Lunatic, the Lover, & the Poet at peaseblossym.wordpress.com where she shares some of her poetry, stories, and thoughts.