This is a blog that concentrates on the influences and writing of two aspiring author friends called Thadeus Morticaine and Dan Coghlan. They have been friends for many years and found that they have a common interest in what they write, even though they write different things.

Thadeus Morticaine is working on a series of Folk horror stories, fantasy stories, some ghost stories and some sci-fi. He likes HP Lovecraft, Gareth L Powell, Robert Rankin and Kim Newman. He is also very much into his folktales and Celtic and Norse myths and legends.

Dan Coghlan is currently working on a Sword and Sorcery series about a Wood Elf Barbarian, and also a pulp fiction style series of Post-Apocalyptic stories. He likes Robert E Howard and Steve Dilks, as well as Lin Carter and Clarke Ashton Smith.

The Dark Garret twitter account can be found here at @GarretDark.

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

 Hi everyone!

This is sort of one of the extra blog posts about other sundry stuff that has been happening recently that I think would be of interest to everyone, something that is writing, fantasy or sword and sorcery adjacent.

This is sort of a shout out to a friend who is a very talented artist, who's art has been used as a inspiration for many a fantasy story. He has a selection of colouring books out and also a portfolio of his work.

His name is Gilead.

For a bigger selection of his work than I can provide here, please take a look at his Instagram, his Twitter, his Amazon shop, and if you really like what you see, please take a look at his Patreon.

He has a selection of T-shirts, stickers and things available here on Redbubble, if you follow the link.

But mainly I wanted to share some of his artwork and to also plug the kickstarter for his next portfolio of work. If you click any of the pictures below, it should take you to his kickstarter. Please take a look and consider supporting a talented artist who has supported many a creative - myself included - so that his work can be enjoyed anon.

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Tentacles and Ziggurats

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Ned the Barbarian

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Sorcery!

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Gilead's Dragonz Coloring Book

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Gilead at work

Sunday, September 25, 2022

 Hello everyone!

I realise that its been a while since I last did a blog post.

Unfortunately, life somewhat got in the way a bit. There have been illnesses and deaths and to be honest, things got on top of be a bit back there. But I'm back now, hopefully with a regular blog post again.

My made plan is still going ahead, I want to write a small selection of fantasy novellas and also, some short stories to send off to anthologies. I'm sort of planning on doing this in batches. Write a bunch of first drafts, then rewrite them, then edit and have beta read and all that jazz. Then will come self-publishing the novellas and then sending out the short stories.

There are a few regular  anthologies and magazines that I'd like to send them to. These are mainly Tales from the Magician's Skull, Whetstone and Swords and Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy. This will all hopefully get the ball rolling.

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Tales from the Magician's Skull: issue 3

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Whetstone Magazine: issue 3

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Sword and Sorceries:
Tales of Heroic Fantasy
Volume 1

Currently, and I regret that things haven't moved on quicker, I am still on the first draft stage. I've two short stories and a novella involving Gwaeloch Irisgarth, a barbarian. he is the last elf in a medieval world mainly populated by humans and monsters. But other fantastical races do exist.

My current work in progress is a novella where Gwaeloch Irisgarth teams up with a wizard to explore strange energy fluctuations in the magick field. On the way, there are pirates, insane knights, a demonologist and a fomor township. I'm not too far into this story yet, but I'll be happy finishing the first draft in three weeks. But there'll be updates about that as time goes by.

After this, I want to get into another novella about ghoul dwarves and also write about four short stories, one involving a barroom brawl between wizards. Another will be a shorter piece about defeating an ancient liche. And in another, I'd like to do something like a dungeon delve, riffing on the concept of the DnD party, but where everyone back stabs each other and where many members die to the party's own incompetence and selfishness.

One thing I've always had in the back of my mind, something I was going to pursue before starting this novella, was to write a swords and sorcery novel. I just wanted to get the first draft done. I think it would help with some development with the character and the series, but that was something I wanted to do later on. I currently don't know what I would do with the novel, whether I'd self-publish it or get look into getting it traditionally published. I'm not sure yet. Ideally, I'd turn that into a trilogy, as you do with fantasy novels.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give a bit of an update on stuff, remind you good folks that I'm still here. There are other relevant things I'd like to tell you about, but I think that can wait until another blog post. Rest assured, it is still fantasy and sword and sorcery related. Some of it is even DnD related.

With that, i'll just wish you all a good farewell for now.