Black Gate

It is much easier for me to do this thing called NOT writing than it is to actually write. I imagine it’s easier for all writers to NOT write, except that when we’re NOT writing the NOT part eats away at us. Me, when I’m NOT, I feel more and more like a failure, or simply a wuss. Yet if I sit down and write 500 words I’m not satisfied. I say to myself, well, if I’d actually had two or three hours to write, I could have written a few thousand words, why didn’t I get it together? Wuss. On those extremely rare days when I actually have time to crank out a couple of thousand words I do feel a small sense of satisfaction, then plan to magically find time to make it happen the next day, and the next, so that whatever I’m writing will get done much faster than it ever really can. For me at least, writing is a continual act of self deception. The funny thing is that I’m not at all that unforgiving or unreasonable with other writers. Just with me.

For the last six months I have been concentrating solely on novel writing. One novel is making the rounds and I am trying to have a second, related novel finished should someone come calling. I’m enjoying the process, but it comes with different challenges. Maybe they’re all obvious, but I’ll go ahead and talk about them. Since a novel is a lot longer than a short story and I have limited time, it takes a long time to finish. I don’t like sharing my rough roughs, so I don’t show the work in progess to anyone for feedback until I’ve had a chance to finish and go over it at least once. I don’t need adulation, but I do like a pat on the back, even if it comes with someone pointing out the flaws (too, there is always a sense of satisfaction when you reach a conclusion). When I write short stories, I can finish one, then talk about it with the group of writers I exchange stories with. When I publish a short story, I can go talk about short stories with other writers and we can congratulate each other and trade notes. I miss that sense of community.

I’m not writing short stories right now, though. I love writing short stories and I have scads of ideas. But let’s face it. There are few markets out there that accept what I like to write, and cracking the short story markets doesn’t really establish you as a novelist. It is extremely difficult to make a living as a writer these days, but if you’re going to do it, you’d best be writing novels, not short stories. I tell myself that if the novels sell, maybe I’ll have time again for the short works. Maybe I’m deceiving myself about writing. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Whatever I do, I have resolved to write what makes me happy, because who knows what, if anything, will come of it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Robert E. Howard, who made a living writing in the 30s by writing for a variety of markets, and I have made attempts to try that myself. In retrospect, me trying multiple markets was probably silly. In Howard’s day there were many, many more markets. And THAT Howard was writing full-time. I barely squeeze in a few hours for writing every week. Rather than trying a scattershot approach with market and style, I decided that I would use that small amount of time to hone my craft and get as good as I could writing the kind of stories I liked to write. When not typing, my fingers are still crossed that something will come of it. I mostly enjoy writing, except when I’m NOT, or when I feel like I should be writing MORE, which is, honestly, most of the time. I think writers are a little crazy. I know I am…

Howard

My thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions. Monday’s a pretty busy day, or I’d try to set up a reader poll and have folks vote on their favorites. Well, I’d select five or so and then see which ones garnered the most votes.

The first column is up here, but it is without title for now. Next month, it will have a title, likely chosen from some of the excellent ones suggested here.

Howard

I’m starting a new monthly column over at the Black Gate web site, dedicated to pencil and dice role-playing games. The point will be to highlight overlooked games or supplements. In other words, I won’t be reviewing any and all things, but only affordable items I think are worth a look, especially items that might be missed. The items have to be obtainable, i.e., in print.

I’ve got months and months worth of ideas already; what I don’t have is a column title. Does anyone have a suggestion? Preferably a serious suggestion?

Howard

I’ve heard from a few regular blog visitors wondering where I’ve been. I wish I could say that I was off digging through Black Gate stuff, or that I was in the throes of a creative muse, but the truth is I just haven’t been very good company lately and I haven’t felt like subjecting myself on anyone, much less recording any compaints or whines for posterity. Fortunately, friends seem to have radar about such things. One of my very best called yesterday and lifted my spirits without even knowing I needed it.

On to some good stuff. I am excited about the cover of issue 12. Here it is, from the masterful Bruce Pennington.

John is just about done cramming in the stories, and I’m pretty excited about those as well. We’ll have 7000 more words than we had even last issue. Here’s what you can expect:

• More Morlock from James Enge.
• More Giliead and Elias from Martha Wells.
• More adventures from Ed Carmien.
• We dragged Todd McCaulty out of his cave and got him to finish another story, and you’ll find it within as well.
• And hey, there I am, with another story John bought from me before I joined the staff.
• John Fultz and Constance Cooper haven’t appeared in Black Gate before, and we’re excited to be introducing you to their work.
• We have a classic reprint, as well, the final Tumithak story from Charles R. Tanner, which completes Tumithak’s entire run. “Reprint” is a bit of a stretch here, because this one never actually appeared in a magazine before.

As usual, we’ll have articles, book reviews, and game reviews. I hope you’ll pick up a copy (and read it!) and that when you do so you can spread the word!

Lastly, I’ve been meaning to point visitors here to James Van Pelt’s latest series of posts on writing, if you haven’t yet seen them. Really good stuff. My link starts you on the first one. There’s three or four, interspersed with other entries that, while NOT about writing, are still worth reading.

I’ll get back here in a few days.

Warm Regards,
Howard

Today I want to give a shout out for a book from the minds at the new Flashing Swords E-zine.

Return of the Sword is a multi-author collection of adventure stories. If you’re looking for sword-slinging, action-packed mayhem then you ought to be pretty happy with what you’ll find within. (If you’re more into lit fantasy or urban women who sleep with vampires, then you should probably wander elsewhere, but I won’t be wandering with you.)

In addition to featuring a Morlock story by Black Gate stalwart James Enge, the book contains a thrilling Cossack short from Harold Lamb, tales from authors who’ve sold stories to future issues of Black Gate, like S. C. Bryce and Robert Rhodes, and fiction from numerous friends and colleagues now working with Black Gate or dating back to my own tenure at Flashing Swords, like Bruce Durham, Nathan Meyer, Steve Goble, Thomas MacKay, Allen Lloyd and Bill Clunie, and many others. RotS editor Jason Waltz asked me to introduce both the Harold Lamb story and an in-depth (and interesting, and helpful) essay on fiction writing by E. E. Knight, so my name’s on the table of contents as well.

If heroic fiction and sword-and-sorcery are your thing, or maybe just an occasional guilty pleasure, I urge you to pick up this book. Jason and the rest of the crew at the new Flashing Swords are out fighting the good fight trying to give folks another market for adventure fantasy. They need your support.

For even more details, Eric has covered the book in great depth. Click on the picture above for more information.
Howard

Warning — there’s RPG-heavy talk in this post. Non gamers will probably pass out from boredom…

Our role-playing group gets together almost every Friday, and we decided to work our way through an old 1st edition D&D module to remember the passing of the father of role-playing games. We didn’t know it was Gary Con until I visited The Lair of the Evil DM today (I usually visit once a week or so). The idea of Gary Con was that everyone get together to play a game this weekend. A fine idea, and I’m sure we’re not the only gamers who decided on a tribute without even knowing there was something of an official movement.

I divested myself of almost all my D&D modules at some point in the ’80s. There were a few I couldn’t sell off — not because of sentimental value, but because everyone in my group then, and in other groups in the area, thought Shrine of the Kuo-Toa was dull and that Tomb of Horrors was impossible. For those not in the know, Tomb of Horrors is an expedition into the tomb of an undead wizard and is infamous for its difficult, nay, ludicrous challenges. Because I didn’t want to kill off my players or try to work the dungeon into the existing fantasy campaign, where it had no place, I just told them they were having a shared dream.

This time, what had seemed impossible and annoying proved a laugh-riot. The traps WERE impossible. “Why would anyone DO that?” we found ourselves asking. Instead of grinding our teeth in frustration when something went amiss, though, we dissolved into laughter. All the characters got blasted into smithereens when someone touched an exploding altar, so  I ruled that they woke up from their dream, had a little trouble returning to sleep, then reappeared in the tomb in the same spot…

We didn’t quite finish the whole thing, but we had fun, and afterward we all reminisced about early campaigns and looked over copies of the 1st edition books one of our players had retained. All of us had come from different groups, but we’d all started with AD&D. It’s funny, but I hadn’t ever thought about how MANY of my friends come from role-playing, and for most of us, that started with AD&D. One little game had a huge, long-lasting, extremely positive impact on my life.

Friday I played part of a module from Dark City Games with my kids, and another part of it with them today. They loved it, and so did I.

Some say that tabletop RPGs are on their way out. I sure hope not. I’m a little too tired to wax too philosophical about it, but I sure hope not. Here at the southern outpost of Black Gate, on the shores of the Sea of Terror, we’ll be playng for many a year to come.

Here are two more links I wanted to share. The first is to a nice RPG celebration my good friend Eric Knight put up over the weekend.

The other is a nice cartoon from Order of the Stick.

Next time I post I’ll finally put up that small Black Gate 12 sneak preview I mentioned.

Howard

Well…. Damn. My cat’s dead.

I’m not really a cat person: I like medium to large-sized dogs that you can play frisbee with or hike with or wrestle with… but this little yellow longhair  tabby has been part of the family for 18 years and when I came home and found her lying there all still I got a lump in my throat.

Damn, she could be annoying as hell. But she liked to sit next to me while I was working at my desk, and she greeted me every morning (and sometimes in the night for no good reason) with that meow that sounded increasingly like a rusty hinge these last few years. She was a good mouser, and she liked my kids. She was the queen of the house, a grumpy old lady who liked sleeping in the sunbeams and grew increasingly brazen the last few years — standing on the table top while we were clearing it off after dinner, for instance. Maybe we all get more stubborn and determined when we’re older.

I’m going to miss little Camilla. Hell, she’s been our cat since before we were married, back when we had a dive apartment and a sequence of crummy first jobs. Even though mostly she’s been sleeping for the last three years, in retrospect it was nice knowing she was somewhere around. The house will seem a lot more lonely without her.

Now I’ve got to tell the kids, and pick out a nice spot in the yard to bury her. Near a tree, maybe, where the sunbeams will fall in the afternoon.

Howard

Some people light a candle or two in the house of imagination; Gary Gygax fired an immense bonfire, and one which has sparked countless other fires as well.

I know I’m not the only one who called up old gamer friends yesterday to mourn the passing of an age. Even if you haven’t played the game in a dog’s age, or a couple of dog’s ages, if you’ve gamed, you’ve been influenced by Gygax. And I don’t mean just pencil and paper gaming — the mindset behind D&D permeated electronic fantasy games and the newer online worlds. I haven’t used D&D mechanics for years (mostly because I, as the game master, can’t keep all those numbers and charts straight) — but D&D was the first role-playing game I ever played. Like countless others, if I hadn’t played THAT one, and if it had never existed, I would never have played the others. Countless hours of entertainment and inspiration can be traced back to the game Gygax helped create.

Lest we forget, Gygax also introduced gamers  to fantasy literature. Those of you who had that first hardback Dungeon Master’s Guide may well remember the suggested reading list, mentioning such names as Howard and Leiber and Moorcock and Vance and so on. I remember heading to the library with that list. Gygax led me to Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death, which has remained one of my all-time favorite fantasy collections. I was talking with Black Gate‘s Ryan Harvey just last night, and he told me that list had introduced him to one of his very favorite writers, Clark Ashton Smith.

I never had the opportunity to meet the man, but his friends and family are in my thoughts. E. Gary Gygax  was an opener of the ways. He will be missed.

An especially thoughtful remembrance can be found here at the Paizo blog.

Howard Andrew Jones

I mostly blame this blog on Harry Connolly, who had once suggested to John that a Black Gate blog would be of interest. John and I discussed a blog as I was first coming on board the magazine, and I decided to put one together once I’d made deeper inroads into the slush. Here it is, for better or worse.

I set it up as “bg_editor” so that either John or myself could post, but John has his hands quite full with sundry Black Gate duties, so I’ve finally just realized I’m stuck with this thing and decided to fill out the profile or user info or whatever it’s called with my interests and my bio. In an odd way, it feels like I’ve finally acknowledged that yes, I do have a blog. Mostly it’s about Black Gate, but I’ve let other stuff that’s of interest to me creep in. I’d get bored if all I did was report on slush status and what not.

Coming soon — a sneak peek at the contents of issue 12.

Howard