I was asked by Diana to tell you all about my inspirations for Rollicking Tales: The Farmer’s Almanac. Well, I suppose this can be broken down into two parts. Firstly why was I inspired to edit an anthology of agriculture based tales, after all it doesn’t immediately grab one as a thrilling subject.
Well firstly I am a farmer, and the old adage, stick with what you know, has some merit to it. I like farming, my family has been farming for more generations than anyone knows, so why not.
But also, it is quite a universal theme. People always need to eat, and that means there will always need to be agriculture of some sort. It could be a tale of Neolithic man, when first they sowed some wild corn; or a tale of 28th century slug farmers on the outer reaches of the known universe.
More than this though, looking at a society through its farmers gives, I think, a new and interesting perspective on a universe. It is all very well to write tales of the heroes and kings, but these egotistical posers need to eat something, so somewhere there will be a downtrodden peasant, with a team of oxen, and New Holland 6070 or what ever the 28th century equivalent is. Let’s hear his (or indeed her) story, itsn’t it time they had an adventure?
The other half of the question is why edit Rollicking Tales at all. This is probably easier to answer. I love story telling. Since I’ve started writing properly and even had a couple of things accepted for publication I’ve really felt like I’ve found my calling. But to me, I don’t want to just be involved in the process from one angle. In this day and age storytelling doesn’t just need a teller and a listener (both roles I am happy to fulfil), it also needs a publisher, someone to get these stories from the writer to the reader. It might not sound like the most exciting link in the chain, but I’m loving it.
In some ways it is the best of both worlds. I get to decide the flavour of the stories I want, the topic and the style. But I also get to read great stories sent to me from all over the world.
Really, as the name suggests, Rollicking Tales is inspired by the old pulp magazines of the early part of the 20th century. I want to capture the sense of excitement these publications conveyed. My aim is the same as theirs was, to package great stories as inexpensively as possible and make them available to a wide readership. With the advent of digital books, and the increasing technology behind printing this is becoming more possible by the day. I think a new era of pulp is around the corner, and Rollicking Tales is here in the vanguard.
This post is part of the Rollicking Tales Blog Tour. Tomorrows post is at The Daily Steampunk (http://daily-steampunk.com/steampunk-blog/).
To follow the tour from the beginning go to The Various Electronic Missives of Thomas H Pugh (http://thomashpugh.blogspot.co.uk/).
The Rollicking Tales website can be found here: http://www.rollicking-tales.co.uk/
Thank you, Tom, for joining us today. Tom also likes pigs and included a pic of pigs in his blog tour package to me. Aren't they cute?
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