Browsed by
Month: October 2015

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: A Closer Look at Some POV Styles Commonly Used in Fantasy (Starting with Some Intriguing Uses of 2nd Person)

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: A Closer Look at Some POV Styles Commonly Used in Fantasy (Starting with Some Intriguing Uses of 2nd Person)

Comments 1 comment

Castle POV

This is Part 3 in the Choosing Your Narrative POV Series.

Most English teachers will tell you there are 3 Point of View (POV) forms: 1st Person, which uses the I pronoun; 2nd Person, which uses the you pronoun; and 3rd Person, which uses the he, she or they pronouns. That’s true, as far as it goes. But like a good jazz improvisation, there are a lot of unique riffs that can be built around these three foundations, often mixing, matching, and masquerading as one of these three forms.

My friend and former co-editor Eric Cherry and I once brainstormed more than 25 POV variations, and realized we could have come up with even more. But over the course of this series of articles, I’m going to highlight and explore eight of them.

…

Read More Read More

The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part II of II

The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part II of II

Comments 0 Comment

British Hussars attack Russian guns at Balaklava

Read Part I here.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

There were four speeds for the cavalry:

Walk: not to exceed four miles per hour
Trot: not to exceed eight and a half miles per hour
Gallop: eleven miles per hour
Charge: not to exceed the utmost speed of the slowest horse

The Light Brigade started at a walk because the horses could not maintain the charge speed for over a mile. When the first line was well clear of the second, Cardigan ordered “Trot.” The more experienced men knew at that speed it would take them about seven minutes to reach the battery. As they trotted down the valley, ten Russian guns could reach them.

…

Read More Read More

World Building 101: The Village

World Building 101: The Village

Comments 3 comments

Terra Incognito A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination-small

The heroes paraded back into the village, leading their mules laden with treasure liberated from a nearby dungeon. As they entered the small village in the middle of nowhere, they soon split up to take care of their spoils. Three of them met with the local jeweler, presenting him with the choicest gems and fine jewelry they’d acquired on their adventure. The others descended on the local merchants to sell off the more mundane treasures while the sorcerer carried the magic items the party did not need to the convenient wizard’s tower, turning them into useful gold coins. The rogue slipped away to meet with the local guildmaster to make his abeyance and provide him with a cut of the treasure. The guildmaster smiled at the bounty and passed on a list to the rogue for items to search for in his further adventures.

That evening, the sounds of merriment filled the air of the village. A crowd had gathered at the local tavern and the barmaids whirled away from those patrons who became too “inquisitive” as they delivered the mugs of ale and heaping piles of food to those assembled. The female barbarian noted with approval the new bartender was a strapping young man who was returning her admiring looks. Only the poor watchman was left out, standing his lonely guard as he patrolled the streets of the village, staring out into the darkness that hid who knows what.

If you’re like me, that scene sounds awfully familiar. It’s appeared too often in bad fantasy stories, bad fantasy movies, and WAY too many role playing games. “But Rich,” you say, “the party has to have somewhere to spend their treasure. Otherwise, there’s no point in giving it out?”

And my response is, “You’re absolutely right, but for the wrong reasons.” Let me explain what I mean. (Good, otherwise this would be a darn short blog entry – Editor).

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

Future Treasures: Weighing Shadows by Lisa Goldstein

Comments 0 Comment

Weighing Shadows-smallLisa Goldstein has had a stellar career. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, and her first novel, The Red Magician (1982), won the National Book Award. Under her own name she has produced over a dozen books, including The Dream Years (1985), Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (1993), and Summer King, Winter Fool (1994), and under the name Isabel Glass she’s written two high fantasy novels, Daughter of Exile (2004) and The Divided Crown (2005). Her latest novel, Weighing Shadows, is a time-traveling fantasy that arrives in early November.

Ann Decker fixes computers for a living, and in the evenings she passes the time sharpening her hacking skills. It’s not a very interesting life, but she gets by — until one day she’s contacted with a job offer for a company called Transformations Incorporated. None of her coworkers have ever heard of it before, and when Ann is finally told what the company does, she can hardly believe it: TI has invented technology to travel in time.

Soon Ann is visiting a matriarchy in ancient Crete, and then a woman mathematician at the Library of Alexandria. But Transformations Incorporated remains shrouded in mystery, and when Ann finally catches her breath, there are too many troubling questions still unanswered. Who are Transformations Incorporated, and what will they use this technology to gain? What ill effects might going back in time have on the present day? Is it really as harmless as TI says?

When a coworker turns up dead, Ann’s superiors warn her about a covert group called Core out to sabotage the company. Something just isn’t right, but before she has time to investigate, Ann is sent to a castle in the south of France, nearly a thousand years in the past. As the armies of the Crusade arrive to lay siege, and intrigue grows among the viscount’s family, Ann will discover the startling truth — not just about the company that sent her there, but also about her own past.

Weighing Shadows will be published by Night Shade Books on November 3, 2015. It is 318 pages, priced at $15.99 in both trade paperback and digital formats. The cover is by Cortney Skinner.

October 2015 Nightmare Special Issue: Queers Destroy Horror! Now on Sale

October 2015 Nightmare Special Issue: Queers Destroy Horror! Now on Sale

Comments 0 Comment

Nightmare Magazine Queers Destroy Horror-smallThe October issue of online magazine Nightmare, issue 37, is now available.

This month is a massive special issue, Queers Destroy Horror!, containing far more content than regular issues, but the digital edition is still available for the same low price ($2.99). The issue was funded as a stretch goal of the incredibly successful Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign for Lightspeed magazine, which was released in June.

Nightmare 37 an all-horror extravaganza entirely written and edited by queer creators. Guest editor Wendy N. Wagner has assembled new horror from Chuck Palahniuk, Matthew Bright, Sunny Moraine, Alyssa Wong, and Lee Thomas, and reprints by Kelley Eskridge, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Poppy Z. Brite. There’s also a generous assortment of nonfiction articles edited by Megan Arkenberg, and written by Lucy A. Snyder, Sigrid Ellis, Catherine Lundoff, Michael Matheson, Evan J. Peterson, and Cory Skerry, that take a hard look at queer achievements and challenges in the horror genre. Plus there’s a selection of queer poetry selected by Robyn A. Lupo, and an original cover by AJ Jones.

Like the supermassive Women Destroy Science Fiction! issue of Lightspeed,, the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Nightmare is also available in print — as a 198-page trade paperback for $12.99.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents, including the free content on the website, as well as the exclusive paid content available online in the print and ebook editions.

…

Read More Read More

The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part I of II

The Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava, October 25, 1854, Part I of II

Comments 7 comments

Hell Riders-smallIntroduction

At 11:10 a.m., on October 25, 1854, one hundred sixty-one years ago, the almost seven hundred men of the Light Brigade stood waiting. The Brigade moved forward when the officer’s trumpeter sounded the “Walk.” It was immediately taken up by the regimental trumpeters to the right and left, so that it could be heard by the whole body of cavalry. When the first line was clear of the second, the order came to “Trot.” The bugles sounded again and the regiment increased its pace to about eight miles an hour. The more experienced cavalry men were adept at judging distances and knew at this pace, it would take them at least seven minutes to reach the enemy.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of volumes have been written about the events during and leading up to that seven minutes. An in-depth analysis of the battle is beyond the scope of this article. The story for this anniversary is told as much as possible in the voices of the men who rode down that valley. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes and facts are from Hell Riders The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade by Terry Brighton (2004). This is possible because the author, Terry Brighton, a British military history, using his unique access to regimental archives, draws on twenty years of research to tell the story of the survivors, in their own words. Only a small portion of their stories can be told here. This fascinating book is available online and is highly recommended.

…

Read More Read More

Making Comics and Animated Shorts: Ian McGinty and Welcome to Showside

Making Comics and Animated Shorts: Ian McGinty and Welcome to Showside

Comments 1 comment

welcome-to-showsideComic artist Ian McGinty has worked on Adventure Time, Hello Kitty, Fraggle Rock and many other titles, for publishers such as Archaia, BOOM!, Dynamite and now Z2. Ian is making his creator-owned debut with Welcome to Showside at Z2 Comics 28 October, 2015.

Not only that, but Welcome to Showside has also been developed into an animated series, with McGinty serving as showrunner and one of the voice actors. I wanted to e-interview Ian to chat about his successes.

Thanks for the chance to chat, Ian! You must be crazy busy in these last days of October!

Haha, yeah it’s definitely been pretty insane on this end, but it’s also been super rad and exciting to see everything coming together. A lot of hard work on many people’s parts have gone into Welcome to Showside, both the comic and the animated show, and to finally be seeing the end result, it’s like, damn, you know? I never expected such a great response from people, and it’s still sort of sinking in.

…

Read More Read More

The Mid-October Fantasy Magazine Rack

The Mid-October Fantasy Magazine Rack

Comments 0 Comment
Beneath-Ceaseless-Skies-183-rack Beneath-Ceaseless-Skies-184-rack Black-Static-48-rack Scrolls-of-Legendry-1-rack
GrimDark-Magazine-5-rack Swords-and-Sorcery-Magazine-September-2015-rack Interzone-260-rack Lightspeed-October-2015-rack

Lots of exciting magazine news in late October. D.M. Ritzlin has launched an intriguing new publication that promises to review the best in forgotten fantasy, Scrolls of Legendry, and the first issue more than lives up to that promise. Contributing Editor Rich Horton checked in with his latest Retro-review, a look at the October 1960 issue of Amazing Stories, with classic stories by Clifford Simak and A. Bertram Chandler. Donald Crankshaw shared the good news of a new market for short fiction, the upcoming Christian anthology Mysterion, and Fletcher Vredenburgh and Learned Foote review the best new fiction in Clarkesworld, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and Grimdark.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our October Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $12.95/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

Comments 0 Comment

Silver on the Road-smallLaura Anne Gilman’s 2009 novel Flesh and Fire, the opening book in The Vineart War, was nominated for a Nebula Award. Her latest novel is an immensely appealing Weird Western featuring Isobel, who on her sixteenth birthday makes the choice to work for the devil in his territory west of the Mississippi. But this is not the devil you know. This is a being who deals fairly with immense — but not unlimited — power, and who offers opportunities to people who want to make a deal… and they always get what they deserve.

East of the Mississippi, in the civilized world, dime store novels and gossips claim that the territory to the west is home to monsters and magic, wild Indians and disreputable whites. They claim that in order to survive, any who live there must make a deal with the Devil.

Some of this is true.

Isobel is a child of the Territory. She grew up in a saloon, trained to serve drinks and fold laundry, to observe the players at the card tables and report back to her boss on what she saw. But when she comes of age, she is given a choice….

Isobel chooses power. Chooses risk. Chooses to throw her cards in with the Devil, Master of the Territory.

But the costs of that power are greater than she ever imagined; the things she must do, the person she must become… And she needs to learn her new role quickly: pressures from both outside the Territory and within are growing, and the Devil’s Hand has work to do…

Silver on the Road it the opening novel in a new series titled The Devil’s West. It was published by Saga Press on October 6. It is 382 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Jude Palencar. Read an excerpt at Laura Anne Gilman’s website.

That Churl Death, and the Cat That Stands at One’s Back

That Churl Death, and the Cat That Stands at One’s Back

Comments 2 comments
"houses of the dead" Illustration by Pauline Baynes
“Houses of the dead” Illustration by Pauline Baynes

“When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover” — Shakespeare, Sonnet 5

I was in the middle of writing up a review of Goosebumps, which I wanted to finish this week while it is timely — it is the number one film at the box office. But I find myself sidetracked by a real encounter with fear, and so today I shall not write about a fun, sanitized entertainment but instead about the terror I felt last night.

Beneath all fears — the greatest fear of all, as Lovecraft so eloquently informed us — is fear of the unknown. The most primal fear for any of us creatures both blessed and cursed with the ability to think is the thought of our own annihilation. Running deep below the fear of how we might be taken out — running like the impenetrably black, charnel waters of the River Styx — is the fear of the fact that we will be taken out.

…

Read More Read More