Goth Chick News: The Route to My Little Black Heart

Goth Chick News: The Route to My Little Black Heart

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I had to go check to discover the last time I mentioned Mr. Goth Chick here in my weekly posts was back in 2012. It isn’t that I avoid mentioning him. Instead, it has everything to do with the adage that “opposites attract” and somehow, I ended up with someone who has little to no interest in anything scary. For the entirety of spooky season Mr. Goth Chick has always been conveniently busy during any of my typical celebratory events. Though he has indulged my desire to visit cemeteries while on vacation, and has accompanied me on the occasional ghost hunt, he is more than happy to send me off with Black Gate Photog Chris Z, along with his, Mr. GC’s, heartfelt thanks.

Between us, I can tell you Mr. GC absolutely hates a jump scare, leading my mother to speculate that it was nothing short of black magic which brought us together.

But even though he loves hot temperatures and direct sunlight, Mr. GC still understands that “my time of year” must be celebrated – mostly with nights out and presents – and this year he outdid himself.

This week Universal Pictures Home Entertainment sent out a press release announcing Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection, which will collect six of Hitchcock’s classics on 4K Ultra HD + Digital: Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. And though this collection isn’t releasing until November 26th, it’s available now for preorder on Amazon, which is precisely what Mr. GC did especially for me.

*Sigh*
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A Surreal World: St Trinian’s: The Entire Appalling Business by Ronald Searle

A Surreal World: St Trinian’s: The Entire Appalling Business by Ronald Searle

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St. Trinian’s: The Entire Appalling Business (Overlook/Rookery, March 13, 2008). Cover by Ronald Searle

St Trinian’s was first created in a series of magazine cartoons in the 1940s and 1950s. Ronald Searle began drawing them in 1941, with a long hiatus while he was a prisoner of war in Southeast Asia. Most of them were set at an English boarding school for girls, and the rest showed characters who attended it. The Entire Appalling Business collects all of them in a single volume.

Boarding schools are a long established subject for English storytellers, from Tom Brown’s School Days, an autobiographical novel by Thomas Hughes set at Rugby, to the Harry Potter novels. Most portrayals take them fairly straight, staying within the traditional strictures of boys’ books — or girls’ books, as in this case. But there’s also a more subversive tradition, as in the Kipling stories that were collected as Stalky and Co. Searle’s cartoons are very subversive; that’s the whole point of the joke.

Most of the St Trinian’s girls are children rather than adolescents (some later cartoons show sixth form girls who are visibly more mature, particularly the recurring character Angela Menace). However, many scenes show them smoking — usually cigarettes, but occasionally cigars, and one panel refers to pot — or drinking beer, wine, or spirits. There are also references to gambling, particularly betting on horses or on school athletic events.

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction: The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction: The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The Chessmen of Mars (Ace Books, December 1962). Cover by Roy Krenkel, Jr.

Chess in Sword & Planet fiction: I learned the basic rules of chess in grade school and liked that it was a game that didn’t require luck. I didn’t do well at “luck!” The first adult I played was my brother-in-law, who rather gleefully mopped the floor with me. Out of resentment, I began to study and in our next game, probably when I was about 16, I mopped the floor with him.

I played quite a bit in college and actually joined a chess club in graduate school and began to study the game seriously. I got close to “expert” level, still well below Master level, before realizing I had to quit serious chess if I were going to be able to do my graduate work. Both were very time consuming and chess wasn’t going to pay the bills so it had to go bye bye.

I bring the game up here because I remember with distinct pleasure discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Chessmen of Mars. Wow! A whole book in which a chess-like game plays a major role, and where living chess pieces must fight for the control of squares during the game. I know this isn’t the first time someone used the concept of living chess pieces but it was my first exposure to it. It sent my imagination soaring.

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Writing Advice: Dynamic Dialogue (Red Sneaker Writers)

Writing Advice: Dynamic Dialogue (Red Sneaker Writers)

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I started reading William Bernhardt’s Ben Kincaid books back in the mid-nineties. I seem to recall I went on a ‘lawyer’ kick and read him, Steve Martini, and Robert K. Tannenbaum. But years later, Bernhardt made a bigger impact on me with his Red Sneaker Writers series. These slim volumes with the brightly attractive colors are jam-packed with great writing advice. The first book I read was on story structure, and I think it’s still my favorite. Though every one has been both interesting to read and thought-provoking. If I ever get my act together, I’ll add “taught me a lot.”

I’ve read through a couple of them more than once, making notes on paper (I CANNOT highlight a physical book. I’m incapable of it). Last year, I decided to be a little more systematic and I went through EVERY title, be it Theme, Plot, Character – all of them: and I outlined the key points in each chapter. I printed them all out and have a very cool binder. Which, if I ever actually sit down and write a novel, will be of great use.

I sent one of the outlines to him, telling him that I’d like to include it in a Black Gate post, promoting the series. He kindly granted his permission. Today, it’s the third outline in this series.

I’m fortunate that many actual, real, Writers (note the capital ‘W’) with books you can buy on Amazon, or at bookstores (if you can find one that is still in business), are friends of mine. And they are FAR more qualified than I am to talk abut writing advice. I think I hold my own as a Black Gate blogger, and there are worse Sherlock Holmes short stories out there than mine (And certainly better ones!). But my unfinished novel is just a bunch of words strung together, until I finish it.

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Recognizing Genius: Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, edited by David E Schultz and S.T. Joshi

Recognizing Genius: Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, edited by David E Schultz and S.T. Joshi

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Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and and Clark Ashton Smith,
1922-1931, Volumes 1 and 2 (Hippocampus Press, July 14, 2020). Cover art by David C. Verba

I’ve been reading Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, a two-volume set edited by David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. I talked about this in my company newsletter sent out a short while ago, and I’ll repeat it here for the interested.

Lovecraft paid great deference to Smith on their initial contact, but they soon became fast friends, with fun nicknames for one another. Lovecraft recognized genius when he saw it.

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Operatic Evil: The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Operatic Evil: The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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We are now well into autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (according to John Keats) and what’s more, we are well into October, the month of shrieks and gore, according to Prime and Hulu and Netflix and the other streamers, all of which are offering up full slates of horror movies in preparation for the bacchanalia of fright, candy, and cosplay on the 31st. (The Roku collection is called “Stream & Scream”, naturally.)

The horror movie — thanks in large part to those aforementioned streaming services — has apparently never been in better health, at least if we’re measuring nothing more than quantity. Quality is of course an up-and-down, hit-and-miss attribute in any era, but the never-ceasing torrent of “content” (hate that word) simultaneously issuing from so many different “platforms” (another ugly expression) may make it harder than ever to discern the diamonds among the detritus.

But that’s what Black Gate is for, right? We’re here to lift the burden from your tired shoulders and make life easy for you! Therefore, may I suggest for your Halloween season viewing… drumroll, please… a creaky, black-and-white warhorse that’s damn near a hundred years old?

No, I’m not kidding. I am here to seriously assert that the best horror movie you can watch right now is not some newly-minted fright-fest flung fresh from the gaping maw of the Entertainment-Industrial Complex, but the 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. …

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A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

A to Z Reviews: Wheel of Dreams, by Salinda Tyson

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A to Z Reviews

From 1992 through 1999, Del Rey books published a series of 27 novels under the “Del Rey Discovery” imprint. These books weren’t always first novels (at least three of them were actually the second books in their respective series), but they were all novels by relatively newly published authors, ranging from Nicola Griffith, Mary Rosenbaum, and L. Warren Douglas to Michelle Shirey Crean, Don DeBrandt, and Kevin Teixera. The 24th novel published under the imprint was Salinda Tyson’s fantasy Wheel of Dreams, which appears to have been her only novel, although she began published short stories in the 2010s. Wheel of Dreams, the 40th entry in the A to Z Review series, is also the first novel I’ll be discussing.

Wheel of Dreams opens with Kiera’s father hosting several travelers on an evening that culminates in Keira being sold to one of the travelers, a soldier named Roshannon, to be his wife. This is just the first indication of the level of misogyny which plagues the world in which Keira and Roshannon live. The morning after her forced wedding, Keira flees from Roshannon before he awakes, stealing his clothes so she can travel as a man. Keira’s goal is the city of Cartheon, where her dead mother had told her about when she was growing up.

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Goth Chick News: Scared Sh**less – Now I’ve Seen Everything

Goth Chick News: Scared Sh**less – Now I’ve Seen Everything

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This last weekend Black Gate Photog Chris Z, Mrs. Black Gate Photog and I spent an evening doing my favorite Spooky Season activity – visiting a new haunted attraction.

During our pregame dinner we regaled Mrs. BGP with stories of our thrilling BG adventures like driving five hours in a blizzard to cover the Haunted Attractions Association show, doing Fireball shots from the trunk of the car before covering Cedar Point Amusement Park’s Halloweekend, and being freaked out by meeting a low-talking Norman Bates-y guy who made lamps out of old doll heads.

It was no wonder the people at the next table with the kids asked to be moved.

One of the topics was all the truly disturbing B-movie horror films we’ve come across, specifically the ones Chris Z. tried to coerce me into writing about. All the BG staff have heard the lecture from Big Cheese John O. about how we’re family-friendly and no, you can’t cover something called Zombeavers, and what the heck were you thinking trying to post about Zombie Strippers, etc., etc.

Actually, I’m probably the only one who has heard that lecture.

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Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

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September-October 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog
Science Fiction & Fact, and the Summer issue of The Magazine of Fantasy
& Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, NASA, and Mondolithic Studios

The big news this month is the arrival of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, after a nearly 8-month hiatus. In the pages of the new issue, publisher Gordon van Gelder reports that “Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue and to switch to a quarterly schedule.” The new issue is cover-dated Summer 2024.

It’s a huge relief to have F&SF back on schedule — and the new issue looks terrific, with new fiction from Albert Chu, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Esther Friesner, Deborah L. Davitt, Phoenix Alexander, and lots more. The September-October issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog don’t disappoint either, with new stories from Naomi Kritzer, James Patrick Kelley, Robert Reed, Alice Towey, Stephanie Feldman, Anita Vijayakumar, Robert R. Chase, Susan Shwartz, Ray Nayler, Adam-Troy Castro, Wil McCarthy, Mar Vincent, Kedrick Brown, Tony Ballantyne, James Van Pelt, Mark W. Teidemann, and lots more.

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Publishing: A Quick Overview

Publishing: A Quick Overview

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Image by Jose Antonio Alba from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn!

I have taken a protracted break from social media for the past fortnight, which has been both a boon and a source of deep frustration for many reasons I will not rant about here. But while it has been an overall win for my mental health, it does mean that I’m very out of the loop when it comes to writerly news, and any gossip and drama happening in that world. Which leaves me with few options for today’s post. Which means, today I’d like to address all the aspiring writers of the readership.

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