BG Staff – Page 50

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Wednesday, December 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

It always gets quiet around the Black Gate offices at Christmas time. It’s a good time to let go of the daily hustle and bustle of running an online magazine, and reflect on the really important things.

People frequently ask me what Black Gate is all about. There’s so much to the story — fifteen issues of a terrific print magazine, hundreds of original stories, the new writers we’ve discovered, nearly 4,000 blog-posts since 2007 — but none of that really tells the story. No, I always say the same thing when people ask.

Black Gate? We’re a loose collective of writers and artists who care about fantasy. We work together to promote forgotten classics, and celebrate overlooked modern writers. And especially, to promote each other. Black Gate has helped launch the careers of some very talented writers, and that hasn’t changed since we switched to an online venue. Drop by if you’re interested in discovering some of the very best new and classic fantasy. I guarantee you, we’ll point you towards something that will delight you.

I’ve been running Black Gate since 2000, and I’ve never been prouder of the team who write, edit, and produce the magazine. We have some of the finest writers in the industry, and they work tirelessly week after week to keep you informed on a genre with hidden depths and constant surprises.

It’s been an incredible year for us. For a second year in a row, traffic has very nearly doubled. While we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished, we know that the real engine of our growth has been you. You’ve been enormously supportive — with your comments, letters, and especially by spreading the word, and telling others about us.

So thank you once again, from the bottom of our hearts. On behalf of the vast and unruly collective that is Black Gate, I would like to wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Continue being excellent — it’s what you’re good at.

The Top 20 Black Gate Fiction Posts in November

Tuesday, December 24, 2013 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

For the second month in a row, our exclusive excerpt from Mike Allen’s dark fantasy novel The Black Fire Concerto tops our fiction charts. Those interested in more from the book can listen to our own C.S.E. Cooney read from Chapter One, in a lengthy podcast at HauntedStars.com.

Last month’s third place holder, Dave Gross’ Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos, moved on up into second place this month. You folks certainly enjoy novel excerpts.

In third place was Mark Rigney’s “The Find,” part of his perennially popular Tales of Gemen series; fourth was E.E. Knight’s “The Terror in the Vale,” his second tale of The Blue Pilgrim, following “That of the Pit.”

Rounding out the Top Five was Vaughn Heppner’s brand new Lod story, “Draugr Stonemaker,” the sequel to “The Oracle of Gog” (Black Gate 15), “The Pit Slave,” and “The Serpent of Thep.”

Also making the list were exciting stories by Joe Bonadonna, John C. Hocking, Martha Wells, Alex Kreis, David C. Smith, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Howard Andrew Jones, Aaron Bradford Starr, Jamie McEwan, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and David Evan Harris.

If you haven’t sampled the adventure fantasy stories offered through our new Black Gate Online Fiction line, you’re missing out. For the past year we’ve presented an original short story or novella from the best writers in the industry every week, all completely free. Here are the Top Twenty most-read stories in November:

An excerpt from The Black Fire Concerto, by Mike Allen
An excerpt from Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos, by Dave Gross
“The Find,,” Part II of The Tales of Gemen, by Mark Rigney
“The Terror in the Vale,” by E.E. Knight
“Draugr Stonemaker,” by Vaughn Heppner
“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum,” by Joe Bonadonna
An excerpt from Pathfinder Tales: Queen of Thorns, by Dave Gross
“Vestments of Pestilence,” by John C. Hocking
The Death of the Necromancer, a complete novel by Martha Wells
“The Renunciation of the Crimes of Gharad the Undying,” by Alex Kreis

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New Treasures: Tales From Rugosa Coven by Sarah Avery

Monday, December 23, 2013 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Unless you’ve ever been a submissions reader, I don’t think you can truly appreciate what it was like to discover Sarah Avery in the slush pile.

The story in question was “The War of the Wheat Berry Year,” a slender and deceptively simple fantasy in which The Traitor of Imlen finds she must face her old instructor on the battlefield at last. After a long day reading amateur tales about unicorns, knights slaying dragons, and teenage girls with vampire boyfriends, it was a revelation — packed with a rich and fascinating back story, subtle characterizations and, like all the best fantasy, the tantalizing sense that you were being given the briefest window into a wider tale.

I bought “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” for Black Gate 15, where it won acclaim from Keith West at Adventures Fantastic and other sites. And believe me, I kept a weather eye out for future work from Sarah.

So I was delighted when my copy of Tales From Rugosa Coven arrived last week. Rugosa Coven shows off Sarah’s talents with a collection of three linked novellas of contemporary fantasy focusing on a coven of modern witches living on the Jersey Shore. If you’re eager to find the next big name in fantasy, do yourself a favor and order a copy today.

Catch a glimpse of a New Jersey even weirder than the one you think you know, as a covenful of very modern Wiccans wrestle challenges both supernatural and mundane — and, occasionally, each other.

The personal injury attorney who chose kitchen-witchery over his family’s five-generation lineage of old school ceremonial magic would like to miss his dead parents, only now that they’re dead they won’t leave him alone. The professional fortuneteller stands out at forty paces, with her profusion of silver amulets glittering over her Goth wardrobe, but nobody has guessed her secret sorrow, especially not the covenmates who see her as their wacky comic relief. And the resident skeptic, a reluctant Pagan if ever there was one, will have to eat her words if her coven sister’s new boyfriend really does turn out to be from Atlantis.

The Jersey Shore’s half-hidden community of Witches, Druids, and latter-day Vikings must circle together against all challenges. It’s a good thing they’re as resilient as the wild rugosa roses that hold together the dunes.

Tales From Rugosa Coven was published by Dark Quest on December 21, 2013. It is 341 pages, priced at $15.95 in trade paperback.

Win a Complete Autographed Set of John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper Trilogy!

Saturday, December 14, 2013 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Last week we celebrated the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third and highly-anticipated final volume in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper trilogy.

The trilogy opened with Seven Princes (January 2012), which Barnes & Noble called “flawless epic fantasy,” and Seven Kings (January 2013), which thebookbag.co.uk called “wonderful stuff… Tarantino and Tolkien have a literary love child and his name is John R. Fultz.” Seven Sorcerers brings the sequence to a close with thundering climax that does not disappoint.

Now you have a chance to win a complete autographed set of all three volumes, compliments of Orbit Books and John R. Fultz.

How do you enter? Simple — just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “Seven Sorcerers” before Friday, December 20, 2013, and we’ll enter you in the drawing. One lucky winner will win all three books.

Can’t wait for the contest? Try some of John’s exciting fiction right here at Black Gate, including “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which appeared as part of the Black Gate Online Fiction line, or the three stories that appeared in our print version: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine”(BG 12); “Return of the Quill” (BG 13); and “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). And you can read more about John’s philosophy of fantasy in his recent article, “One Man’s Trash…”

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Terms and conditions subject to change. Sorry, US and Canada entrants only. Not valid where prohibited by law. Eat your vegetables. And good luck!

One Man’s Trash…

Wednesday, December 11, 2013 John R. Fultz Comments 22 comments

When I was growing up, everybody tried to tell me what to read.

My parents wanted to me read “normal” books, not “trashy” books with Frank Frazetta covers featuring scantily-clad maidens, sword-wielding barbarians, or hideous monsters. My teachers wanted me to read Modern Literature — and they made sure I was exposed to as much as possible — although my favorites were Hamlet and Beowulf.

In college my instructors pushed Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver toward me and I read them, but only because I was required to. None of this depressing and introspective realism caught my fancy. I was made for more fantastic stuff. Oh, I read. Voraciously. From the time I was old enough to hold a book I read non-stop. It began with The Hobbit in third grade, and before I finished middle school I had finished The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But I read what I loved, not what people THOUGHT I should read. I read fantasy. (With liberal doses of horror and sci-fi.)

I read Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, Lin Carter, Weird Tales magazine, and later Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, William Gibson, and Lord Dunsany. I read fantasy fiction with a dark edge, sword-and-sorcery, horror, and sci-fi. I even read my share of Stephen King, David Eddings, Piers Anthony, and John Norman. I didn’t give a damn what people thought I SHOULD be reading. Still don’t. I didn’t care that most of my literary heroes were from the pulp fiction era, and that their work was largely dismissed as “trash” when they were producing it. I read their works three or four generations after the fact, and I loved it.

Today I enjoy discovering new authors who take those pulp-inspired roots and do something entirely new with them–who breathe fresh life into classic concepts. I’ve found such writers in A.A. Attansio, R. Scott Bakker, and Guy Gavriel Kay, to name a few. If somebody recommends a book or an author to me, I’ll check it out. But it doesn’t take me all that long to figure out if it’s for me. If I like it, great! I’ll spread the word about that author and his/her work. I love to shout about the things I really dig. But if I don’t care for it, that simply means that a particular piece of fiction didn’t meet my personal taste. No harm done.

Because that’s all that really matters, when it comes to fiction. Personal taste.

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John R. Fultz’s Seven Sorcerers On Sale Today

Tuesday, December 10, 2013 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

We’re celebrating a major publishing event at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters today: the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third novel in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper series.

When Seven Princes, the first book in the series, arrived in January 2012, it marked the debut of a major new fantasy talent. Seven Kings cemented that reputation, and over the next two years, John graduated from promising new novelist to full-fledged literary star. The critical acclaim for the first two books has been stellar — Barnes & Noble called them “flawless epic fantasy,” Library Journal praised Seven Princes as “A stand-out fantasy series from an author with an exceptional talent for characterization and world building,” and io9 labeled the same novel “Epic with a capital EPIC.”

John’s talent is too big to be contained just in novels — on June 3, 2013, 01Publishing published his first collection The Revelations of Zang, gathering his baroque and fascinating sword & sorcery Zang Cycle, featuring the tale of a revolt against the nine Sorcerer Kings whose power displaced the gods themselves.

We published three stories from John R. Fultz’s Zang Cycle in the print version of Black Gate: “Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine,” that tale of Taizo the thief and his daring heist in spider-haunted Ghoth (BG 12); “Return of the Quill,” in which Artifice’s long-simmering plan to bring revolution to the city of Narr finally unfolds (BG 13); and the prequel story “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15). Next, John took us back in time to Artifice’s first year as a member of the travelling Glimmer Faire in “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye,” which appeared as part of the Black Gate Online Fiction line here in January.

Somehow missed out on all the excitement? Read the excerpts and stories linked above or try the complete first chapter of Seven Kings for free. Get more details on Seven Sorcerers here.

Seven Sorcerers was published today by Orbit Books. It is 448 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. Look for it in bookstores everywhere — and stay tuned to Black Gate for a special opportunity to win a signed copy!

Black Gate Online Fiction: “That of the Pit” by E.E. Knight

Sunday, December 8, 2013 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

We last saw E.E. Knight’s hero, The Blue Pilgrim, in the acclaimed “The Terror of the Vale” — one of the most popular stories we’ve ever published. He first appeared in Daniel Blackston’s 2004 heroic fantasy anthology Lords of Swords; here’s Todd McAulty’s review from Black Gate 8:

The real payoff in Lords of Swords comes from three long pieces by three different writers, any one of which could stand alongside the work of the masters mentioned above — and all of which deliver on the promise of the best adventure fantasy: strong characters, fast action in colorful settings, and genuine flair and wit…

Finally, we have what may be my favorite piece: “That of the Pit,” by Vampire Earth novelist E.E. Knight. The Blue Pilgrim is a rebel against the cruel rule of the Sayhrae, and a practitioner of The Way, an ancient devotion that gives him considerable martial prowess and subtle mental arts. But he is virtually alone in his battle, and when he’s captured he discovers the dark sorceries of the Sayhrae are not all masquerades. The climax of this tale is one of the most effective I’ve read in a long time.

We’ve long been fans of “That of the Pit” and we are pleased and delighted to be able to present the story to you in its entirety online for the first time, as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction library.

E.E. Knight is the author of the Vampire Earth series, which began with Way of the Wolf, and the six-volume Age of Fire books. He is a frequent blogger for Black Gate.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vaughn Heppner, Howard Andrew Jones, David C. Smith, David Evan Harris, Janet Morris and Chris Morris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, C.S.E. Cooney, and many others, is here.

“That of the Pit” is a complete 6,300-word short story of heroic fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Rejecting the Golden Age: Gareth L. Powell on Escaping Science Fiction’s Pulp Roots

Wednesday, December 4, 2013 John ONeill Comments 31 comments

Over at SF Signal, author Gareth L. Powell has issued a call to stop recommending classic SF and fantasy, and start putting newer works in the hands of readers curious about our genres. His comments apparently arise from his experiences talking to a reading group who hadn’t read any SF written in the last 50 years.

The only way we’ll escape the legacy of our pulp roots is to promote the innovation, literary merit, and relevance of the best modern genre writing. Some fans will always cling to the ‘golden age’ works of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and I can understand why. They provide a magic door back to the simple pleasures of a simpler world – a world before global warming, oil shortages, terrorism, and economic uncertainty; relics of a world where the future was easily understood, and (largely) American, middle class and white in outlook, origin and ethnicity.

Part of me understands and sympathizes with that need for security. I still draw comfort and enjoyment from those old books. Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Philip K. Dick… These writers are the elder gods in my personal pantheon; but they are neither the beginning nor the end… being a fan’s a bit like being in a marriage. You have to accept that the person you’re with will mature and change, and you have to embrace that, and change with them in order to keep things fresh…

So, the next time a non-SF reader asks you what they should read, resist the temptation to throw them a copy of Foundation or Slan, and point them instead at something published in the last five years… Give them something modern, and they’re more likely to find characters, ideas and attitudes with which they can relate.

Powell is the author of Silversands, The Recollection, Ack-Ack Macaque and its new sequel, Hive Monkey — which he freely notes employs “the furniture of 1930s pulp literature – Zeppelins, Spitfires, cigar-smoking monkey pilots, evil android armies.”

Read the complete article at SF Signal here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in October

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was our look at Mike Resnick and Robert Garcia’s new anthology Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (A few weeks later Robert Garcia wrote his first Saturday blog post for us, a fond look back at The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay. Do we bring the heavy hitters, or what?)

Second on the list was E.E. Knight’s open letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, a character on The Big Bang Theory, on her controversial theory that Indiana Jones had no impact on the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fight the good fight, Eric.

Third was Jon Sprunk’s look at his favorite fantasy films, followed by his article on the use of elves in fantasy lit. Way to hog the list, Jon. Rounding out the Top Five was James Maliszewski’s “Appendix T,” an attempt to craft a hypothetical Appendix N for the great Traveller RPG, listing roughly 20 works of classic science fiction that clearly influenced the game’s creators.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in October were:

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“This is the Real Thing for S&S Fans”: Charles R. Rutledge on “Vestments of Pestilence”

Monday, November 25, 2013 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Novelist and columnist Charles R. Rutledge weighed in on John C. Hocking’s newest Archivist tale last month, saying:

Do you like sword and sorcery? The real stuff, I mean, where sorcery is something dark and dangerous and people get hurt when they fight with sharp edged weapons? Something that’s a little exotic and makes you think of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, but still is very much its own thing? Then boy have I got a story for you.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a short story by John C. Hocking… There are some mystery elements, some humor, a lot of action, and considerable sorcery, all told in a smooth first person voice that has echoes of hard boiled heroes like Marlowe and Spade, but not the overblown snark that seems to be so popular in current urban fantasy…

The feel of the story is nice and dark but the story telling itself is very modern. I was aware as I read that the pace and the suspense were slowly being ratcheted up until I was racing through the last couple of scenes to see how things turned out. There’s also some marvelous characterization in the tale, and trust me, in a story of this length, that’s a hard thing to do… This is the real thing for S&S fans.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is the second Archivist tale we’ve published, following “A River Through Darkness and Light,” in Black Gate 15, which SF Site called “a strong blend of the old sword and sorcery action and mood, but with modern attention to character development.”

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by David C. Smith, David Evan Harris, Janet Morris and Chris Morris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Peadar Ó Guilín, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Vestments of Pestilence” was published here September 29. It is a complete 10,000-word novelette of sword & sorcery. Read the complete story here.

Read Charles’s complete review on his blog Singular Points. Art for “A River Through Darkness and Light” by Storn Cook.

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