The Forgotten

Yep, that's me. I have nothing to post. Or I can't think of anything interstin' to say. I suppose it's because I can feel summer coming and I feel the words drying up in me for a time. In any case, hope you people don't mind if I hang out at your places more than I do here.

(Warning! Book-geekery post ahead!)

Wow. My very first colored line.

Anyway, I was looking through my to-be read books and I was suddenly struck by a thought about midlisters-- authors who've produce books that don't seem to register with the genre community. It's just a feeling but there seems to be a lot of midlist fantasy writers-- as opposed to SF mid-list writers-- that have slipped past the genre community's radar without a ripple.

Now, a number of books I've found in secondhand bookshops I had no prior knowledge about. Likewise, I haven't read any of these yet so I don't know if these are good or not...

Gregory Frost (Lyrec, 1984) is interesting because I've seen a new book by him recently published in 2003 called Fitcher's Brides, part of Terri Windling's Fairy Tales series. So at least we know he's still alive (and he's reputedly a good writer).

Dragonworld (1980) had two authors: publisher Byron Preiss just recently passed away but Michael Reaves is a television writer who does a lot of short and media tie-in fiction. Interesting enough, Reaves also co-edited (with John Pelan) the Sherlock Holmes-H.P. Lovecraft anthology in 2003 , Shadows over Baker Street.

This is the second (1984) of a number of Oriental-flavored fantasy books done by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Currently, she runs an online antique bookshop called Violet Books and though she doesn't write as much anymore, she comes out with a story or non-fiction collection or two.

On the other hand, I first heard about Joy Chant from another fantasy writer Dennis McKiernan (who had avowed that he wrote his own fantasy books in direct homage to JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings) and when I saw this one by the same author, I picked up. However, there doesn't seem to be any word on where she is now and what she's doing.

So what's my point? I'm not sure; I just thought it sad that most of these books I've mentioned came out the same time or a couple of years before Terry Brooks had his Sword of Shannara published in 1983. As the above books were written in a different vein as Tolkien's LoTR (no companions with traveling with a wizard on a quest for magical ring/sword/etc. against a darklord), I thought it a shame that these books may have been ahead of its time considering the number of cookie-cutter fantasy books that followed the Shannara books.

Ah well...