Zang Rises Again...

Art by John Molinero

From the pages of Weird Tales

To the city of the holy spider...

From the arcane catacombs of Ghoth

To the haunted crypts of the Golden City...

The art of sorcery brings legends to life

Where dreams are bottled

like delicate wines...

A brave wordsmith

defies the power of tyrants...

A rising rebellion that brings revelations...

The Revelations of Zang

The Revelations of Zang was my first-ever story collection, and it's been out of print twice since it was first published in 2013. Now the book is back in print again, and this time it's on the Flying Wizard Press imprint, so it will stay that way. It consists of twelve interlinked stories that work together to tell a novel-length tale.

The following is an updated version of an article I first posted three years ago...

Back in 2003, I wrote the story that would become my first professional sale: "The Persecution of Artifice the Quill." Three years later, that story appeared in WEIRD TALES#340. It even got the cover! The faceless Vizarchs of the story create an eerie scene in the painting by the legendary Les Edwards. Over the next few years, I wrote one new Zang story after another. Selling the first one had filled me with confidence and inspiration. Placing a story in WT had been a goal of mine for fifteen years--ever since I started writing back in college. So I wrote over a dozen more tales set in the weird and magical World of Zang.

The cover of WEIRD TALES #340, featuring a painting by Les Edwards that evokes the undead warlocks in "The Persecution of Artifice the Quill."

Josh Finney's cover to the REVELATIONS OF ZANG First Edition (2013).

The Zang series soon jumped from WT to the pages of John O'Neill's BLACK GATE magazine, where it flourished for several years. A decade after I wrote the first story, all 12 of the Zang tales were collected into a single volume with a great cover by Josh Finney. The Zang Cycle was my first experiment with long-form storytelling.

I wasn't quite ready to tackle a novel yet, but I wrote these stories as a "mosaic" that would interweave characters, plots, and themes to create a huge payoff at the end. That payoff took the form of the 16,000-word novella "Spilling the Blood of the World," the concluding story of the cycle.

This illustration for BLACK GATE'S presentation of "Return of the Quill" was done by the talented Kent Burles. It depicts a performance of Artifice the Quill's Glimmer Faire, an event which prepares the City of Narr for its own mystical rebirth.

"The Vintages of Dream" is not part of the original cycle, but it's the phantasmagorical heist-tale where I first envisioned the World of Zang. BLACK GATE published the story with this superb Kent Burles illustration.

Half of these stories were published in either WEIRD TALES or BLACK GATE, but the other half were published for the first time in the 2013 collection. Since then it's built a nice cultish fanbase, while I went on to write several novels.  

Zang holds a special place in my heart. It represents where my head was at when my writing career was just getting off the ground. It also explores the concept of Art as Sorcery--and Sorcery as Art--an idea that has always fascinated me. After all, the written word is the original sorcery--and there's a reason you have to "spell" a word. But don't get me started 'cause I get metaphysical real quick.

(Art = Magic)

"Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine" introduced the Zang series secondary lead, a clever thief named Taizo. BLACK GATE magazine commissioned two great interior pieces by Mark Evans to accompany the story. This one features Syyra, Taizo's erstwhile love interest.

Mark Evans' second piece for "Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine" offered BLACK GATE readers a peek into the catacombs beneath the spider-worshipping city of Ghoth.

When I look at John Molinero's cover painting for the 2nd Edition, I see it as a symbol that represents my entire writing career. Much as Artifice was forced to flee across a strange continent in order to pursue his Art, I've had to fight my own battles over the years--and I'm still fighting.

Every writer fights those same battles. It's what we're born to do. And every victory is precious.

The Revelations of Zang is available now in paperback and ebook.

Peace & Broadswords,

John