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Month: January 2016

Haunted Bushes, Serial Killers, and Mysterious Strangers: Algernon Blackwood’s The Listener and Other Stories

Haunted Bushes, Serial Killers, and Mysterious Strangers: Algernon Blackwood’s The Listener and Other Stories

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The Listener and Other Stories-smallThe Listener and Other Stories
By Algernon Blackwood
1907/1917

The Listener and Other Stories was Blackwood’s second fiction collection. It was published a year after the first one, The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. It contains “The Willows,” a novella that’s arguably one of his best known works and one whose reputation is well deserved. The rest of the collection doesn’t come off quite as well as the previous one but it has some good moments.

“The Listener”

An understated story, as with so much of Blackwood’s fiction. As the story progresses the narrator, who lives in a boarding house that isn’t exactly the Ritz, has various odd experiences and seems to be coming apart at the seams. Well done, but for some reason it didn’t really work for me.

“Max Hensig — Bacteriologist and Murderer”

No supernatural or weird content in this one but it’s not a bad effort. Max Hensig is a sort of prototype of the Hannibal Lecter type of serial killer, who happens to like poisoning people. Plays out as a cat and mouse game between the killer and a reporter.

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The Series Series: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

The Series Series: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson

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The Girl with Ghost Eyes-smallHere’s a great problem to have:

Your first novel just appeared in bookstores a couple weeks ago, and you’re getting ready to host an author event. It’ll be a night of martial arts movies that inspired your story of a Daoist exorcist priestess battling malevolent ghosts in 1890’s San Francisco Chinatown. You’ll have a full house. You’re all set to give opening remarks, to field questions, and to sign autographs. Lots and lots of autographs. There’s just one problem.

The book has sold out.

Not just at all your local bookstores. Not just at the local warehouses of the big distributors. At the offices of the press that published you, and at all of Amazon, too.

Your word of mouth is so strong, an entire print run’s worth of readers couldn’t wait for author events or the holidays. They had to have your book right now. Your publisher is scrambling to print a second run to satisfy all that glorious demand, but it won’t come in time for this night’s autographing.

Man, I would love to have a problem like that. But if it couldn’t happen to me, I’m delighted that it did happen to my longtime friend M.H. Boroson.

I want to tell everybody at Black Gate how awesome The Girl with Ghost Eyes is, but I can’t pretend to objectivity about this book or its author. How can I be objective about a friend who’s been important to me since we met at 14 in a writing summer camp? I’ll have to let Publishers Weekly, and all those other review outlets that are notoriously stingy with starred reviews, do that whole objectivity thing in my stead. Brilliant, dazzling, wonderful, thrilling, say various objective reviewers who haven’t known Matthew for two-thirds of their lives. Glad they got that all those adjectives checked off for me, because really, those words do belong in any review of The Girl with Ghost Eyes.

What I can do is tell the readers who gather here why this book they might not immediately realize is for them is exactly the kind of book Black Gate readers love.

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New Treasures: Conspiracy of Angels by Michelle Belanger

New Treasures: Conspiracy of Angels by Michelle Belanger

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Conspiracy of Angels-smallMichelle Belanger is something of a celebrity with modern vampire subculture. She was featured on five seasons of A&E’s Paranormal State as an advocate for the “vampire community” (whatever that is), and she wrote several of its foundational texts, including The Black Veil, an ethical guide for vampires. If you’re a vampire nut, she’s your girl.

Closer to our interests, she’s also the editor of several horror anthologies for Llewellyn Publications, including Vampires in Their Own Words: An Anthology of Vampire Voices (2007) and Walking the Twilight Path: A Gothic Book of the Dead (2008). Late last year she released her debut novel, Conspiracy of Angels, the first of the Novels of the Shadowside.

When Zachary Westland regains consciousness on the winter shores of Lake Erie, his memories are gone. All he has are chaotic visions of violence and death… and a business card for Club Heaven. There Zack finds the six-foot-six transexual decimus known as Saliriel, and begins to learn what has happened.

Alarming details emerge, of angelic tribes trapped on Earth and struggling in the wake of the Blood Wars. Anakim, Nephilim, Gibburim, and Rephaim — there has been an uneasy peace for centuries, but the truce is at an end.

With the help of his “sibling” Remiel and Lilianna, the lady of beasts, Zack must stem the bloodshed before it cannot be stopped. Yet if he dies again, it may be for the final time.

Conspiracy of Angels was published by Titan Books on October 27, 2015. It is 426 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the print and digital editions. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd.

December Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

December Issue of Swords and Sorcery Magazine Now Available

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Swords and Sorcery Magazine November 2015-smallIssue 47 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated December 2015, is now available. Each issue of contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue features brand new fiction from Dan DeFazio and Frank Martinicchio. Here’s the issue summary from editor Curtis Ellett:

“The Death of the Bastard D’Uvel,” by Dan DeFazio, tells a tale of daring deeds, black magic, and questionable morality. DeFazio’s work has previously been published in Dungeon Magazine. This is his first story in Swords & Sorcery.

“Arbor,” by Frank Martinicchio, is the tale of a young man who finds an unexpected mentor. Martinicchio has previously been published in Tincture Journal.

I was glad to see that, after months of searching, Curtis has found a suitable number of volunteers to help him select the contents of a Best of Swords and Sorcery Magazine anthology.

Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue #46 in his November Short Story Roundup, with particular praise for “Last Stand at Wellworm’s Pass” by Nick Ozment, which he called “a perfect dose of old school storytelling… Any S&S story that can stuff in werewolves, demons, and djinns is alright by me.” Read the current issue here. We last covered Swords and Sorcery Magazine with Issue #46.

See our Late-December Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent magazine coverage here.

Guides to Worlds Fantastic and Strange

Guides to Worlds Fantastic and Strange

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I’ve always loved maps — following rivers to the seas, tracing the shores of those seas, and then crossing them by fingertip to a distant land. My dad had a giant Rand-McNally atlas that I took possession of when I was ten or eleven and never returned. I would pore over its pages, puzzling out how to say the names of cities like Dnepropetrovsk or Tegucigalpa and wondering what exactly was the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Today, my favorite atlas is the Cram’s Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World 1889 that my grandfather scavenged from a work site. As with my dad’s, I quickly assumed ownership of the book. Better than a lot of history I’ve read, it conveys the reality of the past in finely drawn lines. The vast scope of the British and Russian empires — the web of conquered lands covering Africa and Asia — are right there in clear pastel pinks and yellows. Images conjured up in my brain while reading were made concrete on the pages before me.

And, of course, I love maps in fantasy books. Always have, from those very first ones I saw in The Lord of the Rings and the Conan books. While Tolkien’s maps are intricate, lovingly created works of art, and the one of Hyboria is spare and undetailed, both intensify the illusion that the books’ worlds are real. They may not have been as vast and detailed as my dad’s atlas, but they were as captivating. While a book doesn’t need to include a map, I’m a fan of one that does. It’s an added bonus that I really dig. (To read another piece I wrote about maps several years ago, you can click HERE).

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Future Treasures: This Census-Taker by China Miéville

Future Treasures: This Census-Taker by China Miéville

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This Census-Taker-smallChina Miéville is one of the most acclaimed modern fantasy writers on the market. His novel The City & the City won the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards in 2010, and his novels Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council were all nominated for both the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. That’s a damned impressive record.

His latest book is a long novella that’s been called “A thought-provoking fairy tale for adults” (Booklist). It will be released in hardcover by Del Rey next week.

In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries — and fails — to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape.

When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over.

But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?

Filled with beauty, terror, and strangeness, This Census-Taker is a poignant and riveting exploration of memory and identity.

This Census-Taker will be published by Del Rey on January 12, 2016. It is 224 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition.

See all our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.

Notes On Some Dramatic Presentations

Notes On Some Dramatic Presentations

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Fantasia FestivalI’d hoped to put up the fourth of my series of posts on the fiction of C.S. Lewis last week; I didn’t, and this isn’t that post either. I ended up spending more time running around over the holidays than I’d expected, so while I’m hoping to get the Lewis post up next Sunday, for the moment I want to do something different. Having seen a number of discussions about Hugo voting emerge over the previous days, I’d like to put forward some suggestions for the Dramatic Presentation categories.

Regular Black Gate readers may remember that this past summer I covered the 2015 Fantasia International Film Festival in my home city of Montréal. I got to see a number of wonderful science-fiction and fantasy films from around the world. And I thought it might be worth looking back at those movies, partly to help people looking for works to nominate on their Hugo ballots, and partly to draw a bit more attention to some excellent work. So here are some films of possible relevance to Hugo voters, with quick summaries and links to my reviews. (I reviewed several movies in each post, so some of the different links go to the same places.)

In this post I’m going to stick to movies that are pretty clearly science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. I’ll divide my lists according to the Hugo rules: films ninety minutes long or more are eligible for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and those less than ninety are eligible for Short Form. I’m going to list movies in alphabetical order, with brief descriptions and the occasional critical observation. I’ll err on the side of completeness, listing even marginally genre movies. Although Worldcon membership skews American (or so the Hugo Awards web site states, under “Country & Language of Publication”) I’ll include films that have no American release listed, as presumably some readers aren’t American, and I have no idea what’ll be coming on Netflix or other venues in the next month or two. Note that I’m not necessarily recommending all the following films, and certainly not suggesting that Hugo ballots should be put together just from these lists. I’m only trying to highlight movies people might not otherwise have heard of, but might want to investigate now or later. If you want to look through all my reviews of the 2015 festival, you can find links at the bottom of the post linked here.

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Let Lawrence M. Schoen Hypnotize You Into Becoming a Writer

Let Lawrence M. Schoen Hypnotize You Into Becoming a Writer

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Lawrence M Schoen-smallMost writing advice takes the form of simple directives — Don’t be afraid to make mistakes / Write every day, even if it’s crap / Stop over-editing and submit that story / If it doesn’t sell, put it in a drawer and move on — all of which are useful bits that have certainly helped me over the years. Unfortunately, their common focus is on what one does as a writer. None of them gets at the core issue: how to be a writer.

So let’s talk about that, about being a writer. At one level, I think this is simply something you choose to do. You’re a writer when you decide you are, and an easy test is when someone walks up to you and asks what you do. If you say, “Oh, I’m a [insert day job title here]… and I also write” then no, you’re not a writer yet, not in your own head. You haven’t embraced that choice.

To help you with that, I’m going to switch hats for a bit, and go from being a writer to being a hypnotherapist. All that other writing advice, that’s all stuff for your conscious mind, all stuff you should do. To get to how to be a writer, we need to tap into your unconscious.

The unconscious is where all your emotional memories live, it’s that portion of the metaphorical mental iceberg below the water line. It’s a realm that’s much more interested in possibilities than problem solving, and it can be notoriously difficult for a person to access (let alone guide) directly. Fortunately, you have me.

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Vintage Treasures: Tales From Gavagan’s Bar by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: Tales From Gavagan’s Bar by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

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Tales From Gavagan's Bar-small

In March of 1925, the great Lord Dunsany created the character of Joseph Jorkens for the short story “The Tale of the Abu Laheeb.” Dunsany would return to the character many, many times, writing over 150 Jorkens tales over the next 32 years. They were some of his most popular stories, published in widely-circulated magazines like The Strand, Atlantic Monthly, The Saturday Evening Post and Vanity Fair. The Jorkens tales are widely credited with creating the genre of the “Club Tale,” which take place almost exclusively in comfortable settings like clubs or bars, where the narrator (himself, in Dunsany’s case) hears outlandish and fantastic tales from regulars and the occasional traveler from far away.

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, both skilled American fantasists, imitated Dunsany with their own series of barroom tall tales, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1950-1959. The first 23 tales were collected as Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (Twayne Publishers, 1953). Bantam Books released a much-expanded paperback edition in 1980 (above), which contained six new stories and a chatty essay on the origins of the stories by de Camp, “By and About,” written in 1978, after Pratt’s death.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: 2015 Links Compendium

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: 2015 Links Compendium

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Cumberbatch
I don’t have any idea how to salvage this train wreck of a show. Do you?

So, for the first post of 2016, I think the most important thing to recognize is that I made it to the end of my second calendar year at Black Gate without getting axed (it helps that I work cheap. As in, ‘free.”). By my reckoning, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has appeared here every single Monday morning for the past 96 weeks. As I had serious doubts that John O’Neill would even approve  a Holmes-themed column (I mean, it’s a fantasy website!), I’m pretty pleased it’s still around.

During 2015, I helped with Black Gate’s outstanding “Discovering Robert E. Howard” series, which featured guest columns from a slew of very knowledgeable folks; and there are still a couple fine posts remaining in the series. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed putting together Part One of my history of Necromancer and Frog God Games, Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder RPG publishers extraordinaire. Part Two is pretty much written, but still needs some serious editing.

The three-part piece on Granada’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett, was a favorite and there will certainly be another in the series: likely a few more. And I even managed to have the most viewed post in a month with a look at what went wrong in season three of BBC Sherlock (sadly, my hopes that the January 1 special episode would get the franchise back on track were horribly dashed).

With a couple of extras that I wrote outside of PLoSH included, I’ve linked 54 posts from 2015 below. It’s no surprise, with the name of this column, 27 were about Sherlock Holmes or Arthur Conan Doyle. With another 5 about the best of the Holmes pastiches, Solar Pons.

Next up were 8 posts related to fantasy and 1 for science fiction. Then we’ve got 5 Hard Boiled/mystery posts and 8 miscellaneous ones.

If you’re at least a semi-regular reader of the column, I try not to write “here’s my opinion” posts. I like to share information about things I like, be it the Richard Diamond radio series or a different way to look at a Holmes story. Hopefully in 2015 you came across a topic that you either wanted to go explore a bit or that you learned a little more about. There’s lots more I plan on writing about in 2016 (can’t believe I didn’t write a single Nero Wolfe post last year!), so grab a cup of coffee and check in on Monday mornings. And thanks for reading The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes!

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