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Author: John ONeill

Mighty Pirate Kingdoms, Weather Wizards, and Quarrelsome Ghosts: Sarah Avery’s The Imlen Brat

Mighty Pirate Kingdoms, Weather Wizards, and Quarrelsome Ghosts: Sarah Avery’s The Imlen Brat

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To me, The Imlen Brat will always be the story that got away.

After I bought “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” from Sarah Avery (it appeared in Black Gate 15), I begged her to send me something new. She responded in spectacular fashion, with a dynamite novella called “The Imlen Bastard.” It was a marvelous tale of mighty pirate kingdoms, weather wizards, quarrelsome ghosts, secret magics, and deadly court intrigue, all seen through the eyes of an adopted daughter in an enemy royal house. I told Sarah I wanted to buy it, and happily set the wheels in motion to publish it.

Alas, it was not to be. BG 15 was our final issue, and I was forced to return all the fiction I was holding for future issues — including “The Imlen Bastard.” Scarcely three years later, Sarah won the Mythopoeic Award for her first book, Tales from Rugosa Coven, and the world finally began to realize that Sarah was  a major new talent. Her successful Kickstarter to self-publish the novella wrapped up late last year (see her blog post about it all, “Kickstarting a Belated Black Gate Story: The Imlen Bastard“), and the book, now known as The Imlen Brat, is inching closer to release. Last month Sarah shared the gorgeous final cover design (above), saying:

This morning the book designers sent me a proof of the cover design, and it looks like just the kind of book I’d pick up if I saw it on the bookstore shelf… As a thank-you for email list subscribers, I’m offering a free short story ebook, a spin-off about Stisele, the heroine of The Imlen Brat. For at least the next three years, this story will be available only to my list subscribers.

The Imlen Brat will be released later this summer. The cover art is by Kate Baylay, and the cover was designed by designforwriters.com. Click on the image above for a bigger version, and subscribe to Sarah’s e-mail list here to get the free 9,000-word story, “The Enemy in Snowmelt Season.”

Vintage Treasures: The Best of Clifford D. Simak, edited by Angus Wells

Vintage Treasures: The Best of Clifford D. Simak, edited by Angus Wells

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Clifford D. Simak has been experiencing something of a renaissance recently, thanks chiefly to David W. Wixon, editor of the six-volume Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak from Open Road Media. That’s a delightful series, and it makes Simak’s previous collections largely superfluous. But nonetheless, I still find myself compelled to track down the last few missing titles to complete my Simak collection.

Right now, the most elusive is The Best of Clifford D. Simak, edited by Angus Wells. It was published in paperback by Sphere in 1975 with a knockout wraparound cover by Eddie Jones.

Simak had two Best Of collections in the US, Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (Paperback Library, 1972) and Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak (Berkley, 1978). Those contain the classic tales you’d generally expect, including “Huddling Place,” “The Ghost of a Model T,” “All the Traps of Earth,” “Skirmish,” and his masterpiece “The Big Front Yard.”

Angus Wells’ The Best of Clifford D. Simak is a different beast. It skips all the stories I mentioned above, and contains instead an eclectic mix of stories, including a handful of his early pulp tales and two Hugo nominees, “The Thing in the Stone” and “The Autumn Land.” Needless to say, it’s highly prized among Simak collections — yours truly included.

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The Digest Enthusiast #4 Now Available

The Digest Enthusiast #4 Now Available

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The Digest Enthusiast 4-small The Digest Enthusiast 4-back-small

The Digest Enthusiast is fast becoming one of my favorite magazines.

Yeah, maybe that’s because I’m an obsessive collector of digest magazines, so finding a publication devoted to my special interests makes me feel all tingly. But seriously, this magazine is a fun read, cover to cover.

Take for example Steve Carper’s excellent article on The Galaxy Science Fiction Novels, 31 SF novels published in magazine format between 1950-1958 and edited by Galaxy‘s legendary editor H.L. Gold. I bought a story from Steve Carper, “Pity the Poor Dybukk,” which appeared in Black Gate 2, and it’s great to be reading him again. In less skilled hands this article might be nothing more than a dry recitation of facts and publishing dates (not that I wouldn’t find that thrilling, mind you), but Steve greatly livens up the proceedings with fascinating and highly informed commentary on the novels Gold chose, and the often surprising history behind them. Here’s a taste.

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New Treasures: Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the Third Shadow Police Novel by Paul Cornell

New Treasures: Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, the Third Shadow Police Novel by Paul Cornell

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I bought a copy of Paul Cornell’s London Falling, the first novel in what was to become his Shadow Police series, shortly after it was released in 2013. It followed Detective Inspector James Quill and his team after they came into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight, enabling them to take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London’s streets. I missed The Severed Streets, the second in the series, completely, so I was very grateful to receive a review copy of the third book, Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, released in trade paperback by PAN on May 19. This series looks like a lot of fun, and I’ve already started a search for the middle book to complete the set.

The ghost of Sherlock Holmes is dead, but who will solve his murder?

The Great Detective’s ghost has walked London’s streets for an age, given shape by people’s memories. Now someone’s put a ceremonial dagger through his chest. But what’s the motive? And who — or what — could kill a ghost?

When policing London’s supernatural underworld, eliminating the impossible is not an option. DI James Quill and his detectives have learnt this the hard way. Gifted with the Sight, they’ll pursue a criminal genius — who’ll lure them into a Sherlockian maze of clues and evidence. The team also have their own demons to fight. They’ve been to Hell and back (literally) but now the unit is falling apart…

Paul Cornell’s most recent publication here in the US was the acclaimed novella Witches of Lychford, published by Tor.com.

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes? was published by Pan Books on May 19, 2016. It is 358 pages, priced at £8.99 (around $12.76 in the US).

Future Treasures: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay

Future Treasures: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay

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Disappearance at Devil's Rock-smallPaul Tremblay wrote what is easily one of the most acclaimed horror novels of last year, A Head Full of Ghosts, about a hit reality TV show that captures a real exorcism, and the investigation into what really happened, 15 years later. Nathan Ballingrud called it “Outstanding. Creepy, surprising, occasionally funny, always compassionate… one of the best horror novels I’ve read in years.” Tremblay’s follow up novel, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, arrives in hardcover next week from William Morrow, and needless to say, expectations are sky-high.

Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park.

The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock.

Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journal begin to mysteriously appear — entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them.

As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy’s disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

Disappearance at Devil’s Rock will be published by William Morrow on June 21, 2016. It is 336 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. Read an excerpt at (of all places) the Wall Street Journal.

Celebrate 200 issues of Excellence With Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Celebrate 200 issues of Excellence With Beneath Ceaseless Skies

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 200-smallBlack Gate would like to salute editor Scott H. Andrews and the entire team at Beneath Ceaseless Skies for achieving a remarkable milestone: publishing an amazing 200 issues over the last eight years. (To put that in perspective, that’s 185 more than Black Gate, every one of them on time! I get light headed just thinking about it.)

Simultaneous with their landmark 200th issue, the magazine wrapped up their subscription drive aimed at enabling the magazine to publish longer stories, and announced that they are now open to stories up to 11,000 words. Sweet!

But the big news is the big double issue. Issue #200 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is dated May 26 and features fiction by Catherynne M. Valente, Kameron Hurley, Yoon Ha Lee, and Seth Dickinson, podcasts by Yoon Ha Lee and Seth Dickinson, and a Gaunt and Bone reprint by BG author Chris Willrich. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

“The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery” by Catherynne M. Valente
So it came to pass that over the weeks remaining until the parturition of Perdita, I fashioned for her, out of crystal and ebony and chips of fine jade, twin organs of sight not the equal of mortal orbs but by far their superior, in clarity, in beauty, even in soulfulness. If you ask me how I accomplished it, I shall show you the door, for I am still a tradesman, however exalted, and tradesmen tell no tales.

“The Judgment of Gods and Monsters” by Kameron Hurley
She shouldn’t have gone to the trial, or talked to that stupid reporter, even for a second. Her father would know, now, that it was her who had his file. It was her who had been called upon to bring him in. She wouldn’t have shown up at the trial otherwise, and he knew it. “Two bits to the one whose family it isn’t,” she said to Merriz, and rolled up to get a look at the shooters.

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A Choose Your Own Adventure Board Game: Red Raven’s Above and Below

A Choose Your Own Adventure Board Game: Red Raven’s Above and Below

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Above and Below-smallWhen Kickstarter first became popular, it seemed every month I was getting deluged with updates for a dozen campaigns for new board games. Many failed, of course, and more than a few never delivered. But lots of those promising projects did deliver, and the result has been some fascinating products over the last few years.

Ryan Laukat’s Above and Below is a great example. It was a Kickstarter project with a $15,000 goal, and ended funding on March 25th, 2015 with $142,148 pledged. The last few copies shipped out to the 2,553 backers in October of last year, and the game has been available to the rest of us ever since.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. The game’s premise should be warmly familiar to most fantasy readers.

Your last village was ransacked by barbarians. You barely had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before they started the burning and pillaging. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and even paddled a log across a rough sea, kicking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped tightly to your back.

Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With any luck, you’ll build a village even stronger than your last — strong enough, even, to turn away the barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Players explore a massive cavern, building a new village above and below ground in what more than one reviewer has called a Choose Your Own Adventure-style board game.

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New Treasures: The Wheel of Osheim, Volume Three of The Red Queen’s War by Mark Lawrence

New Treasures: The Wheel of Osheim, Volume Three of The Red Queen’s War by Mark Lawrence

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Mark Lawrence is the author of the bestselling Broken Empire trilogy (Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, and Emperor of Thorns), the final volume of which won the 2014 David Gemmell Legend Award. The trilogy told the story of Jorg Ancrath’s devastating rise to power, and Mark returned to the same world for his second trilogy, The Red Queen’s War, which began with Prince of Fools (2014) and The Liar’s Key (2015). The final volume, The Wheel of Osheim, was published in hardcover last week. Here’s the description.

All the horrors of Hell stand between Snorri Ver Snagason and the rescue of his family, if indeed the dead can be rescued. For Jalan Kendeth, getting back out alive and with Loki’s key is all that matters. Loki’s creation can open any lock, any door, and it may also be the key to Jalan’s fortune back in the living world.

Jalan plans to return to the three w’s that have been the core of his idle and debauched life: wine, women, and wagering. Fate however has other plans, larger plans. The Wheel of Osheim is turning ever faster, and it will crack the world unless it’s stopped. When the end of all things looms, and there’s nowhere to run, even the worst coward must find new answers. Jalan and Snorri face many dangers, from the corpse hordes of the Dead King to the many mirrors of the Lady Blue, but in the end, fast or slow, the Wheel of Osheim always pulls you back. In the end it’s win or die.

We published the first chapter of Prince of Thorns, with a brand new introduction by Mark, here, and Howard Andrew Jones’s interview with him is here. Mark’s long article on writing and selling The Prince of Thorns (and the early rejection letters he got from Black Gate) is here.

The Wheel of Osheim was published by Ace on June 7, 2016. It is 432 pages, priced at $27 in hardcover and $13.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jason Chan.

John DeNardo on How to Start Reading Science Fiction: Short Stories

John DeNardo on How to Start Reading Science Fiction: Short Stories

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Year's Best Science Fiction 8 Dozois-smallSF Signal editor John DeNardo has been writing some fine articles for Kirkus Reviews recently — like February’s Speculative Fiction Books You Can’t Miss, and The Best of the Best of 2015. I’ve been browsing through some of his earlier articles, and particularly enjoying his 6-part series on How to Start Reading Science Fiction from 2011. Here’s a snippet from Part 4: Short Stories, which packs in some terrific recommendations for SF readers old and new.

Just like snacks, SF/F anthologies — collections of stories by a variety of authors — come in an assortment of flavors.

Some great anthologies for folks starting down the road of science fiction include Science Fiction 101 edited by Robert Silverberg; The Science Fiction Hall of Fame series, edited by various editors; The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction edited by Arthur B. Evans, et. al.; and The Secret History of Science Fiction edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel — all these offer fantastic, well-rounded selections of stories.

A handful of retrospective anthologies offer editors’ picks for best stories. Popular ones include Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction series, the longest-running retrospective series in print… The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year series edited by Jonathan Strahan; [and] The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Year’s Best Fantasy series edited by Rich Horton…

Sometimes anthologies are centered on a common theme… Anthologies don’t necessarily need a theme to be good. Some notable unthemed anthologies include Lou Anders’ Fast Forward series; George Mann’s The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction series; Sharyn November’s Firebirds series; and Jonathan Strahan offers Engineering Infinity, Life on Mars, as well as the Eclipse series of sf/f. Top-notch fiction abounds!

Read the complete article here.

Vintage Treasures: The Sky Children by Donald Olson

Vintage Treasures: The Sky Children by Donald Olson

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I don’t know a lot about Donald Olson, but IMDB tells me The Sky Children was his only novel. He did publish three short stories, in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and The Twilight Zone Magazine, between 1973 and 1981, but that’s about it.

But Mr. Olson isn’t really the most intriguing thing about The Sky Children. That would be the moody and effective cover, by an uncredited artist who also produced many covers for Avon in the mid-70s, including several anthologies like Roger Elwood’s Demon Kind, and others. A little investigation has not produced an immediate answer to this riddle, so I thought I’d post it here and see if anyone can help.

The Sky Children was published by Avon Books in 1975. It is 144 pages, priced at $1.25. The cover artist is uncredited. I bought an unread copy online last month for under $1.