Japanese Sword and Sorcery

'A Blade for the Dead' will be appearing in RBE's Assassins.

The fourth Shintaro Oba story is complete. 'A Blade for the Dead' will hopefully be finding a home quite soon too!

'Shini-tai' has been included in the table of contents for the new Rogue Blades anthology Roar of the Crowd. More info here: http://www.roguebladesentertainment....-of-the-crowd/

Well, it involves ninja, namahage and nue.

Brief synopsis please?

Just finished a fourth Mu-Thulan story. This one seems to have a pretty good chance at getting into print.

A new Rogue Blades anthology has been announced: Roar of the Crowd. Go to the RBE site to check the submission guidelines.

Rage of the Behemoth is now on sale at the Rogue Blades site, and he still has some of the limited edition covers too.

Well, I'm developing two more plots, one titled 'Lady of the Frost' which deals with an onryo and the second is 'Demon Witch of Nagashima' which has an onibaba as its monster. Both of these are Shintaro Oba stories. I hope to try 'Demon Witch' at Black Gate magazine and 'Lady of the Frost' with Baen.

I've always liked Japanese mythology, and I went on a rampage studying it a couple years ago when I attempted a big story about the Ryukyus and Ryujin.

Just sent in my own submission for Demons. Doubt it'll get in, though. But hey, I gotta back into the swing of writing somehow. Short stories are good exercise.

It's too bad "Foxfire" got rejected. I rather liked it

Nice Mirren, I didn't think anybody would know what a gyuki was (I couldn't call him an ushi-oni because I already used an oni named Ushitora and didn't want the two being confused).

Gyuki? As in, a demon-ox? Get that story published, man. I wanna read it!

Yeah, I saw that and was pretty stoked. Keep your fingers crossed that can get alot of mileage out of Oba.

Sadly, 'Foxfire' didn't make it - indeed, I'm not very happy getting what turns out to be a form rejection e-mail for it. Very condescending so far as I'm concerned. I may try it over at Black Gate, but maybe with a bit of expansion of the text since it is a different sort of market (and I can probably get away with a bit more violence on the part of my gyuki).

I'm still really thinking about the Shinsengumi as witch hunters angle. Since this isn't a straight lift of Japanese history and culture, I'm sure I can get away with it. I'm thinking that they execute witches by the Japanese version of crucifixtion, which involves tying the condemned to a cross and then running them through with spears. Indeed, a very nasty idea for a story revolving around this sort of character has already suggested itself to me. Picture a much more ruthless and unforgiving Mathias Thulmann who travels with a trio of Eta (Japanese pariahs, the guys who do all the 'unclean' work in society like hunting, burying the dead, executing criminals... assassinations) as his entorage.

I've been picking up alot of Osprey books about ancient Japan to further expand my knowledge on the subject.

Someone really liked your story, Clint. This comes from an advance review of RotB by Black Gate-

"...while C.L. Werner’s “The Rotten Bones Rattle” was one of my three favorites in the collection."