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Month: September 2015

August Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

August Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

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Swords and Sorcery Magazine August 2015-smallIssue 43 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated August 2015, is now available.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett. Each issue contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue includes new fiction from Connor Perry and Sandra Unerman.

“Stragglers in the Cold,” by Connor Perry, is the tale of a skin changer faced with the choice of dying of starvation in the snow or breaking the rules of his kind and taking another person’s body. Perry is new to Swords & Sorcery but not to fantasy. His work can be seen on-line in his web serial, Monsters of Nottingham.

“Thorncandle House,” by Sandra Unerman, is the story of a man coming home against his will to a house that wants him more than he wants it. Unerman’s work has not previously appeared in Swords & Sorcery but she has been a fantasy writer for many years. She has recently published stories in Frostfire Worlds and in the Worms anthology from Knightwatch Press. She lives in London and is a member of the Clockhouse Writers’ Group.

Read the current issue here. We last covered Swords and Sorcery Magazine with Issue #42.

Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett, and is available free online. Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue #42 in his July Short Story Roundup.

Our September Fantasy Magazine Rack is here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.

Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

Politics: Slightly Less Important Than Breathing?

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The Gate to Women's Country-smallThere’s been a lot of election talk in the air lately (here in Canada we’ll have our federal election on the 19th of October) and that’s led me to thinking about politics in general, and politics in genre fiction in particular. Without having gathered any statistics, just on a gut feeling, it seems to me that politics plays a stronger or more obvious role in genre writing than it does in non-genre writing.

Unless we’re writing thrillers or mysteries, when we create our worlds, we can’t just take the background of the real world for granted, as non-genre writers can. Even if our focus is family drama or interspecies romance, we have to create the socio-political framework for our novels along with everything else – this is part of the “world building” that so many panels at so many conventions address.

I know this to my cost, as my editor at DAW, Sheila Gilbert, is always asking me for details that I just take for granted. I always thought that when I say “king” everyone else just fills in the socio-political blanks, and I can get on with my story without having to figure out where the food and the saddled horses came from.

That turns out not to be the case.

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New Treasures: Crucible Zero by Devon Monk

New Treasures: Crucible Zero by Devon Monk

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Crucible Zero-smallOne of the great joys of buying original fiction is seeing the talented writers you found in the slush pile finally get wider recognition. The very first story I ever purchased for Black Gate, a delightful piece called “Stitchery’ by Devon Monk, gradually evolved into the House Immortal fantasy trilogy, as Devon explained on her blog last year…

[House Immortal] isn’t a “standard” urban fantasy, but more like a science-fiction-y urban fantasy. But even though it’s set in the future a bit, it still (I hope) reads like urban fantasy, with a strong female lead character, some butt kicking, some humor, some trouble that could spell out the end of a world or two, and a host of interesting people and places.

Publisher and Editor John O’Neill at Black Gate noted here, that it reminded him of “Stitchery” the first short story he bought from me for Black Gate. I’m so happy he noticed! The series is based off of that short story, (albeit loosely) and Matilda, Neds, and Grandma were all first introduced in that short.

The first novel in the series was House Immortal, followed by Infinity Bell. Now Devon completes the trilogy with the final novel, Crucible Zero, on sale this month from Roc. The truce between the ruling Houses has shattered and chaos now reigns. Only one woman has the power to save the world — but she could also destroy it…

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Goth Chick News: Crushing On Neil Gibson’s Tortured Life

Goth Chick News: Crushing On Neil Gibson’s Tortured Life

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Tortured Life-smallAdmittedly, I’m a sucker for a Brit.

And that goes double when he’s also a comic writer.

If he also happens to write dark, gothy stories…

Well, you get the idea.

We first met Neil Gibson back in early 2014 at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (C2E2 for you cool kids). Then he was promoting volume one of Twisted Dark; the illustrated story he had written which had just been published by indy comic house TPub in the UK.

TPub believes it is their mission to change the way people view comics and get more people to read them, and in May last year Twisted Dark had already reached number one on the UK Kindle chart. And though I could not locate current stats, when I was in London’s famous Foyles bookstore last month, Twisted Dark was highlighted as a “staff pick” in the graphic novel section.

So a couple weeks ago when Neil emailed to let me know his newest project with TPub, Tortured Life was complete, I was has happy as a cosplayer in at a 2-for-1 spandex sale to get a look and tell you all about it.

Tortured Life tells the story of Richard Carter and his little “problem.”

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A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling

A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling

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The Book AwardsOne thing that’s been a constant in the back-and-forth over the Hugos has been the refrain from the folks who think there’s nothing wrong with them as they stand: “Why don’t you create an award for stuff you like?” Comments on this very blog have raised that point, and at least one commenter meant it in all seriousness.

This grates on me a bit. In one sense, to create a new award sounds like an admission of defeat, of an inability to make an award that’s supposed to represent all of fandom really do that. In another sense, though, it’s a way to ensure that at least one set of awards for SF/F represent what it is truly about: the story above all else.

I’ve developed a proposal for just that: a series of awards to celebrate and commemorate the SF/F storyteller’s art. It’s modeled after the Hugos, with two major changes: a panel of judges evaluates the nominees to ensure that they are indeed good SF/F stories, and can reject a limited number of them; and the pool of eligible voters is based on a web of trust starting with the signers of the proposal. All voting and nominating is done automatically, on the Web.

I’ve tried and failed to come up with a unique name for the awards. My first choice was the Heinleins, after the greatest storyteller in SF, but that was taken. Next, I thought I’d use the name of one of Heinlein’s characters who was a great storyteller, Noisy Rhysling, but that was taken as well. Rather than thrash around the question, I decided to punt and let others suggest names.

The actual proposal-cum-manifesto is after the jump.

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Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

Tips on Writing a Great Swordfight from a Professional Swordsman

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Sword fight in Robin Hood-smallIn my book Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists, I devote about 45 pages to advice to writers. I thought the readers here at Black Gate might like me to expand a bit on some of the points I made there. Let me start with a quote:

There are several distinct skills that go into a good written fight. They are:

  • visualizing the fight accurately, to avoid describing impossible actions;
  • maintaining dramatic tension and pacing the fight to be exciting;
  • maintaining characterization: making sure that the characters’ actions in the fight give the reader the sense of their personalities that you want; and
  • serving the plot, so that the fight meets the needs of the story and is not just shoehorned in.

Dramatic tension, characterization, and plot are key skills for a novelist; ask M. Harold Page if you don’t believe me. Visualizing a swordfight accurately is a much less common writing skill.

Assuming that training in actual swordsmanship for a few years is out of the question, here are three ways to get it right, if you want to go into technical detail (which blade goes where).

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Future Treasures: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin

Future Treasures: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin

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A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms-smallMany of George R. R. Martin’s legions of fans are unaware that, parallel to the epic storyline of A Game of Thrones, Martin has been quietly telling another tale of Westeros, featuring two unlikely wandering heroes. The story has unfolded in a series of novellas published in anthologies Martin and Gardner Dozois have edited over the past few years, and now at long last the stories are being collected in a deluxe volume, heavily illustrated by Gary Gianni, to be published in hardcover by Bantam Books next month.

Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R. R. Martin’s ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness.

Before Tyrion Lannister and Podrick Payne, there was Dunk and Egg. A young, naïve but ultimately courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals — in stature if not experience. Tagging along is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg — whose true name (hidden from all he and Dunk encounter) is Aegon Targaryen. Though more improbable heroes may not be found in all of Westeros, great destinies lay ahead for these two… as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.

Featuring more than 160 all-new illustrations by Gary Gianni, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a must-have collection that proves chivalry isn’t dead — yet.

Here’s what GRRM said about the book on his blog back on February 25th.

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Road Trip from Hell: Warhammer 40K: Gaunt’s Ghosts: Honour Guard

Road Trip from Hell: Warhammer 40K: Gaunt’s Ghosts: Honour Guard

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Honour Guard Dan Abnett-smallHonor Guard
A Warhammer 40K novel
Volume 4 of Gaunt’s Ghosts
By Dan Abnett
Black Library (312 pages, $6.95, August 2001)
Cover by Martin McKenna

The faith of the Imperium of Man — the only faith, thanks to a massive Inquisition — is centered around the God-Emperor of Mankind, who sits upon his Golden Throne on Holy Terra. Whether he’s a divine being incarnate, or a man who somehow gained god-like powers, is a question I don’t know the Warhammer 40K lore well enough to answer, but the emperor is kept eternally alive by the arcane machinery of the Golden Throne, and his massive psychic energies provide a beacon which allows mortal pilots to navigate spacecraft through the treacherous realm of the Warp.

The Emperor stands as the sole God, but there’s room in the Imperial cult to include various other figures, “saints” who are venerated for their faith in the Emperor and their deeds in his service. Given the Imperium’s nature, and the character of the WH40K universe in general, these saints are primarily warriors. One such is Saint Sabbat, the warrior woman who originally won the Sabbat Worlds for the Imperium, and in whose name the present-day (sometime in the 41st millennium) Sabbat Worlds Crusade is being waged.

We catch up with the Ghosts as they’re locked in street-to-street combat on the Saint’s own homeworld of Hagia, fighting the Chaos fanatics who have claimed the world’s holy cities as their own. This particular band of Chaos worshippers is particularly keen on denigrating the Imperial faith, so they’ve taken on the name Infardi, formally used by pilgrims to Hagia, and are heavily tattooed with blasphemous scenes involving the Emperor and various others figures of worship.

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Uncanny Magazine Issue 6 Now on Sale

Uncanny Magazine Issue 6 Now on Sale

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Uncanny Magazine Issue Six-smallLynn and Michael Thomas, editors of Uncanny Magazine, celebrate a year of magnificent accomplishment in their editorial for the September/October issue.

With this issue, we can check off the Uncanny Magazine Year One Kickstarter backer fulfillment as completed. We promised we would bring you six issues of stunning covers and passionate science fiction and fantasy fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, and provocative nonfiction by writers from every conceivable background. Not to mention a fantastic podcast featuring exclusive content.

We did it. We crossed the finish line on time and on budget, and delivered everything we said we would, or made alternate arrangements due to scheduling. Thank you.

We are deeply grateful that you supported us and made this year possible. Thank you for the wonderful feedback about our first five issues. We are immensely proud of the work we’ve done. We think Uncanny Magazine Year One is the best thing we’ve ever produced. We’re so happy to have had the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps along for the journey.

So now we can rest… Or run the Uncanny Magazine Year Two Kickstarter, which is pretty much the opposite of resting. (You’ve met us, right?)

The Uncanny Magazine Year Two Kickstarter is still open for another 24+ hours, so it’s not too late to join in the excitement and help support one of the most promising new magazines this field has seen in some time. Get the details here.

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Out of the Mouth of Madness

Out of the Mouth of Madness

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Derleth MythosI spent the past year in the frozen tundra on a quest not for gold or oil, but rather that elusive will o’ the wisp men call Ha of Saskatoon. I barely escaped with my life, a sad and broken man. Over the course of many months, I poured through John D. Haefele’s exhaustive tome, A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos which the redoubtable Don Herron bequeathed to me in an effort to restore my shattered mind. Having recently closed the book for the final time, I come forth with this my 250th article. A mere trifle for the more prolific blogger, but a milestone for this shadow of a man who once was.

Now in absolute fairness I should disclose a few facts before continuing. First off, I am not an H. P. Lovecraft cultist. I like aspects of the Mythos more than I do his actual fiction. This will be heretical to many, but I did not come upon his prose until later in life – long after Roy Thomas introduced me to his work in various comics he authored for Marvel in the 1970s and well after the time I had absorbed bits and pieces of the Mythos unknowingly while devouring Robert E. Howard’s stories in the pages of the Lancer or Ace Conan paperbacks with their stunning Frazetta cover art which, like that of Boris Vallejo and Neal Adams, frequently displayed brazen muscular buttocks in a fashion that touched something primal and possibly even impolite in my already warped adolescent brain.

I must also refrain from joshing my readers that a particular Lovecraftian scholar earned my enmity like no one since S. J. Perelman when I purchased a pricey, but beautifully bound and illustrated Sax Rohmer collection that was published in recent years only to find said literary critic’s introduction to the same was dismissive, condescending, and pompous in the extreme. It took much restraint not to craft an analogue for this bloated windbag in my third Fu Manchu book and allow the Devil Doctor to feed this bleating goat’s delicate parts to starving centipedes. Despite the appeal of such a notion, I chose instead to let karma find him and that it may have done with Haefele’s scholarly work.

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