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Author: Elizabeth Crowens

Elizabeth Crowens is the author of SILENT MERIDIAN, book one in the Time Traveler Professor series. A 15-year Hollywood veteran, journalist, an alumnus of Algonkian and Gotham Writer’s Workshops, active Sherlockian, member of the Horror Writers Association and Mystery Writers of America. Won Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s short story contest for Emerging Writers and is on the short list of finalists for both Chanticleer’s 2016 Cygnus Awards for Speculative Fiction and their 2016 Goethe Award for pre-1750's Historical Fiction.
The Poison Apple: Have Long Sword Will Battle, An Interview with Martin Page

The Poison Apple: Have Long Sword Will Battle, An Interview with Martin Page

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Martin Page demonstrating German Longsword at Compulsion

Martin Page demonstrating German Longsword at Compulsion

Martin Page is a regular contributor to Black Gate and writes novels, such as the alternate history mash-up Swords versus Tanks and non-fiction books like Storyteller Tools, under the pen name, M. Harold Page. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland and teaches Medieval German longsword at Edinburgh’s Dawn Duellists Society.

Martin, what have you been working on?

I’ve been taken a break from blogging while working on a space opera series. I’ll shortly return with a series of articles on the new edition of Traveller, the famously gritty Science Fiction roleplaying game.

Traveller?

Massively influential game from the same era as Dungeons and Dragons but still going strong. Traveller has been around so long at this point that people recommend books or TV series that are strangely like the game, because they were probably heavily influenced by it!

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Tea and Sympathy with the Paranormal: An interview with Steampunk Goddess Gail Carriger

Tea and Sympathy with the Paranormal: An interview with Steampunk Goddess Gail Carriger

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Photo by Vanessa Applegate

Gail Carriger has published several series of best-selling and award-winning novels starting with her Parasol Protectorate Series.

Gail, you have developed what the publishing industry considers as a distinctive brand. Not only have you capitalized on the subgenre of Steampunk, but you’ve also added a distinguishing paranormal twist with many of your major characters being Preternaturals, Werewolves or Vampires. What inspired you to carve out this niche for yourself?

From my perspective, I felt that the real momentum of social media happened around 2007. I knew that to be a published author I’d have to choose to have a social media presence. So, I poked my nose about to see what some of my favorite authors were doing — who was doing a good job of it and who wasn’t — and made pretty thoughtful choices form the get-go about everything from how my website was designed as to how I would appear on social media, as well as my public image. That might sound a bit manipulative, but I’m one of those evil authors that are a bit Machiavellian — that all I’m doing as an author is playing with your emotions.

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The Poison Apple: The Paintbrush is as Mighty as the Sword — An Interview With Lissanne Lake

The Poison Apple: The Paintbrush is as Mighty as the Sword — An Interview With Lissanne Lake

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Cover for Hammer of the Gods, photo by E. Crowens

Lissanne Lake is a Sword and Sorcery fantasy illustrator with an artistic career spanning over thirty years. A New Jersey resident, she’s designed everything from book jacket and magazine covers to tarot cards, games and wall murals for public art projects and has also worked with famous authors such as Sir Terry Pratchett. On the side, she’s a fencing instructor, a re-enactor, and is learning to speak Japanese.

Crowens: Were there any particular artists from whom you drew your inspiration?

LL: Western art paintings and illustrations by contemporaries Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington. Comic book art most likely had its genesis from Russell, and certainly he was (Hall of Fame action-style Sword and Sorcery and comic book illustrator) Frank Frazetta’s hero.  Russell’s work always captured motion — the horses are charging, the bears attacking, and hats are flying off cowboys’ heads.

Were these strictly fine art paintings?

They were illustrations for newspapers. I believe he wrote the articles, as well.

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The Poison Apple: Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire

The Poison Apple: Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire

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Steven Van Patten from That Metal Show

For our next “victim” of the new Black Gate column, The Poison Apple, I’d like to introduce Steven Van Patten. Steven is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association and when vampires are supposed to be sleeping, he works as a TV show stage manager. In the past he’s worked on shows such as MTV’s Total Request Live, The Dr. Oz Show, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. He straddles two extremes of a busy lifestyle but still manages to write about topics that are underexplored in the speculative fiction realm. He’s written the Brookwater’s Curse series, Rudy’s Night Out, a children’s vampire story, and Killer Genius: She Kills Because She Cares, which was nominated for the African-American Literary Show Award.

Crowens: What got you into vampires?

SVP: As a little kid and an only child, often I had to entertain myself. Back in the day, that included Chiller Theater and being inspired by movies with Christopher Lee. When Blacula was released, that stuck with me as a strong, dominant character but in a sea of stereotypical nonsense in a Blaxploitation flick. As I got older, I started getting annoyed as to what happened to the brothers in a horror movie — they were dead before the credits rolled and characters were underdeveloped.

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The Poison Apple: An Interview with T.J. Glenn

The Poison Apple: An Interview with T.J. Glenn

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TJ doubling The Toxic Avenger (photo by Robert Griffith)

The Poison Apple is a new semi-regular Black Gate column. Interviewer Elizabeth Crowens will be talking with atypical authors with unusual backgrounds or passions in the speculative fiction arena, and sharing their stories here.

The first “victim” to take a bite out of the Poison Apple is Teel James Glenn, known to most as T.J. Glenn, winner of the 2012 Pulp Ark Best Author of the Year, Epic eBook award finalist, P&E winner, Best Thriller Novel, Best Steampunk Short, multiple finalist for Best Fantasy short stories, author of the bestselling Exceptionals series, the Maxi/Moxie series, the Dr. Shadows series, the Renfairies series, stunt double and fight choreographer, and more.

Crowens: T.J., you seem to be living the dream of what Oscar Wilde would call art imitating life, being pretty much an action fantasy character day in and day out — a cross between Errol Flynn and Qui-Gon Jinn with a touch of James Bond villain thrown in. What attracted you to this world?

T.J.: When I was a kid I wanted to write comic books, draw them and then play the character. Here I am fifty years later, and I’ve sort of done it. I’ve never been able to completely separate them. Sometimes I do full renderings of the rooms my characters live in. I always do physical portraits of them. Often I conceive a character visually and work backwards from there. I’m a better writer because I’m a fight choreographer; I’m a better fight choreographer because I’m an actor; I’m a better actor, because I’m a writer. It all morphs together for me.

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